018: Lou Walker – Rethinking ‘let them eat cake’ at work

Lou Walker

 Lou is a health coach. She helps clients change those sticky habits that get in the way of health and living life to the fullest. She has a particular interest in the benefits of eating ‘real food’, weight management, and workplace health and wellbeing. As well as working one-to-one with individual clients, she works within organisations, coaching people, running workshops and helping employers make it as easy as possible for people to be healthy at work.

For 16 years Lou was a leadership development consultant, specialising in behavioural diagnostics and personal development. But a longstanding interest in the relationship between health and performance led her to a Masters degree in Obesity & Weight Management and a postgraduate certificate in Human Nutrition, and then a career change towards health coaching.

Her Masters research was the first academic study into workplace cake culture.  Its findings have implications for workplace health and Lou is campaigning to help organisations rethink workplace snacking and food-based reward culture to reduce workplace sugar consumption.

Outside of work she is an athletics coach and sports massage therapist, an ambassador for the UK Public Health Collaboration and on the Steering Group for the Real Food Campaign. 

In this episode, athlete and researcher, Lou Walker started her low carb journey to find out what was the optimal for her Ironman performances.  

Lou didn’t have any ailments and wasn’t over weight but she edged her family towards low carb by cutting out potatoes, rice and pasta. She then signed up for The Real Meal Revolution and went fully keto.

Lou recognises that stress and boredom make her want to eat carby foods but she doesn’t give in to the urges.

Lou has swam in open water and accessed the fat on her body to keep her energy going. This helped her not have to take in nutrition whilst she was swimming.

Bread is a treat for Lou on Christmas Day and her birthday.

Lou did a Masters in obesity and weight management. Her original research was on cake in office culture. She interviewed 1000 UK office workers to understand what office cake looks like. Listen to all the different areas she looked into.

Lou's Books

Office Cake Culture research  

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJWHM-03-2019-0039/full/html 

Walker, L., & Flannery, O. (2020). Office cake culture. International Journal of Workplace Health Management.

Lou's Top TipsFocus on all the things you can eat rather than what you can’t eatLearn to cook and adapt recipesBe prepared to explain what you are doing and fight your cornerListen to your appetiteJust try it for 6 weeks 
Resources Mentioned

Real Meal Revolution - Prof Tim Noakes

https://amzn.to/3kueiXg

Rangan Chatterjee 

https://drchatterjee.com/

Podcast

https://drchatterjee.com/blog/category/podcast/