Our guest is Niki Campbell, CEO of The Flourish Group. Niki is a nutritionist, certified health coach and personal trainer and the company specializes in delivering health coaching to executives, entrepreneurs and other senior-level professionals.
It really focuses on five areas, sleep, stress, hydration, and food and fitness. Hi there. My name’s Nikki Campbell, and I’m the owner of a company called The Flourish Group. And I am a dietetic professional, so a nutrition professional as well as a certified personal trainer and health coach. And the people I work with primarily are busy professionals, and in that group include healthcare workers, first responders, people who work shifts people who have high stress careers. And I actually kind of thrive on that because I find the challenge of helping people who are helping others really to be very fulfilling. So the work I do it really, it really focuses on five areas. And it’s sleep, stress, hydration, which people often leave out and food and fitness. So my coaching and the work that I do is built on those, what I call the foundations of flourishing.
And so when I work with people and I try to stress the importance of self-care a lot of people think that I’m gonna tell them to go on a diet or, you know, get to the gym, and it’s not always that way. I like to start with some of those very basic lifestyle changes. Things like getting better sleep, managing your stress, drinking enough water. Those three things alone can change the health status of someone, especially people who are working off hours or crazy shifts or under high stress conditions. So I start with those. And then we add in the nutrition and the fitness and some of the traditional things that people think a health coach or a personal trainer might do. So oftentimes healthcare workers, critical care workers, people in those fields deprioritize their own health, meaning they put themselves last because what are they doing?
They’re caregivers. They’re taking care of everyone else. And that includes patients, clients, people like that, but also their own family members. They may come home from a, an overnight shift and have to get their kids on the bus and have to get, you know, things done around the house. So we will put ourselves as healthcare workers often last on the list, and I see it even in my own profession. And so what I always tell people, especially the caregivers of the world is, and it’s it’s cliche, but you know, put your oxygen mask on first. If you are not operating at a high level, if you are not focused and healthy and well rested and well fed and all of those things, are you going to be able to provide the care for others that your job demands? Are you going going to be able to provide the care for your family, your friends, your extended family?
You know, often we’re, we’re juggling all of these balls. Are you going to be able to provide the care that you so desperately want to if you’re not taking care of yourself? And the answer is no. So it’s really important that even if it’s 15 minutes of exercise or you know, a really good healthy breakfast that gets you started on the right foot for the day or packing a healthy meal to take with you on your overnight shift, those little things that might take 15 minutes to a half an hour can really set you up for better health overall. So understanding that every person is different, every shift is different schedule and that type of thing. I really work with my clients on making these lifestyle changes and this healthy lifestyle a part of your current lifestyle. So often I’ll see people who come to me and say, I’ve tried this.
I tried to go to the gym, I tried to do this meal plan. It just didn’t work for me. And that’s because it’s not customized to your lifestyle. You are different from even the, this, the people who are in your department or unit, you are all different. So your wellness program has to be customized to you. So for many people that might mean three different 10 minute workouts throughout the day to get those 30 minutes. Some people it might be 45 minutes at one time, three times a week to get the, you know, the minimum recommend recommended exercise minutes. So it’s, it’s not one size fits all. It really has to be what works for me, what works for my family, what works for my work situation, and how can I prioritize those things, food, fitness, you know, getting enough water and make it fit into my lifestyle so it’s not get up at 5:00 AM.
Not everybody is that, that person. So is it do it right after work when you are already outside the house and you can stop at the gym, you know, whatever works for you, but it’s not one size fits all. There are some things that everybody can do, and that is things like, you know, drinking more water and getting enough lean protein and good quality carbohydrates and things that will give you energy. But how you get them and when you get them during the day, that really is very personal. When you’re working in these types of fields, it’s really easy to rely on convenience foods or you know, if you work in a, in a doctor’s office or you’re a nurse on a, you know, critical care floor and somebody drops off some donuts you know, a family member who’s had somebody on your unit, it’s really appreciative and they bring in donuts, have the donut.
First of all, you deserve the donut. Donuts are delicious. But it’s also important to balance that. So what we’re trying to do when we talk about food, if, for example, is we’re fueling your body for the work that, that you need to do. So if you are a firefighter and you have on a lot of equipment and it’s a very physically demanding job, that donut is not going to give you the fuel that you need. It’s fine, have the donut, but you know what, you’re also going to need some really good quality protein. Some you know, carbohydrates to give you energy, things that are going to sustain you through a shift. Same thing with nurses and, and other folks who are, you know, in and out patients rooms and things like that. You know, it’s really easy to you know, go downstairs to the vending machine and grab a couple of things and have that as your lunch, you know, a little bit of preparation, you know, bringing a salad or something like that, that you can eat just as quickly, but it’s gonna give you that energy that you need.
So it’s very tempting to go through the drive-through or to, you know, just have a couple of donuts and it’ll, you know, give you that sugar rush to get you through the afternoon. But I also want you to think about how can I pair that and have that donut, but also then have something that’s really gonna give me the energy. And I always say that you want energy to get you through your day.
So let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. And, and specifically when people set boundaries and prioritize their own self-care, I worked with a woman who had a very high level, very stressful job in a corporation and working all hours across time zones, always traveling very little sleep a lot of stress. And so when we worked together, her first, her first comment to me was, I don’t have time. I don’t have time to do this. Everybody needs something from me. And when we really looked at her schedule at the demands that people were making on her what her boundaries were, she basically had no boundaries but what, you know, what she was doing. From a professional standpoint, we found that by setting some boundaries, by prioritizing her health and prioritizing her time and space on her calendar for physical health that she could find the time.
So over the course of six months or so, we worked together to put, put together a schedule, like I said before, that works with her lifestyle. And she was able to just start to take walks at lunch. She cleared up that space on her calendar, she was able to take walks at lunch. She was able to do some meal prep on the weekends because she wasn’t working on the weekends. She wasn’t, you know, taking all the work from the five days during the week home and, and continuing that. And over a period of six to maybe nine months, she lost 50 to a hundred pounds. It was over more, you know, a year or so when it was all said and done. But at the end, she had lost over a hundred pounds. And she said, you know, it was never, it was never difficult.
Like it wasn’t anything that she had to, you know, convince herself to do. It was just finding that time and protecting it. So it’s really important. Your physical health very much depends on how you prioritize yourself, your time, your boundaries, those types of things. So that’s just one example of as you look at how you can be healthier, it starts sometimes with setting boundaries, looking at your calendar and blocking that time. And so then we’ve covered all of the physical things, you know, nutrition and getting exercise and things like that. Part of this and what really, you know, does play into your physical health is your mental health. And I’m not a mental health expert, but as somebody who has worked with a lot of people who struggle with, you know, depression, anxiety just general you know, not feeling great about themselves when that happens and when they kind of get stuck in that it does affect their physical health and here’s why it disrupts their sleep when they’re, their sleep is disrupted because they’re nervous about something or anxious or worried, and they’re tossing and turning all night the next day, they’re physically not, you know, energized enough to go and work out.
They crave high sugar processed foods because it’s gonna give them a quick sugar rush. So you see, it becomes this kind of vicious cycle that when you aren’t taking care of stress, when you aren’t taking care of your mental health, when you’re not getting good sleep, it absolutely affects your physical health. And so again, I go back to what I started with those first three things in the foundations of flourishing, sleep, stress and hydration. Sleep and stress can stop your metabolism almost. I don’t wanna say that it does, but it can slow down your metabolism. It c can create more stress hormones in your body. So your mental health, your emotional health, your ability to sleep and rest and recover is very much tied to your physical health. So I would start there, I would start with those two things. Am I getting enough sleep? Am I managing my stress properly? And if so, then let’s add in the physical side of things.