The SheerLuxe Show: Gabriela's Tips for a Summer Reset

This week Gabriela joined Charlotte Collins on the SheerLuxe Show sofa to talk through her 5 key tips for feeling energised, finding balance and getting your glow back in time for a feel-great summer. 

Discussing everything from food, hormones, sleep and skin, you can watch the full interview here or have a read below!

Charlotte: So Gabriela, we should say from the get go, this is not about summer bodies and losing weight, this is about feeling good as the summer approaches?

Gabriela: Absolutely, feeling good in your skin and within your body and we all love to do that before the summer! 

Charlotte: You have your five key principles that we can all put into practice now to feel our best over the next few months.

Gabriela: Plenty of time! 

Charlotte: So we’re going to start with eating. What are your key principles for eating, especially over the coming weeks and months to feel our best from the inside out?

Gabriela: My first tip would be, set an eating window.

We do overeat and we do eat for long periods of time throughout the day and what I find within my practice is, by shortening that eating window a little and by following principles of intermittent fasting there are numerous health benefits.

I have to start by saying, I really don’t like the work ‘fasting’, it’s really not about not eating, I'm just talking about limiting your eating window so you’re not eating all day long.

What I’ve been doing with my patients is the 16:8 method of intermittent fasting, where you’re not eating for 16 hours within a 24 hour period and, obviously, for much of that you are sleeping. You then only eat within an 8-hour eating window and by doing so, you’re giving your system and digestion a bit of a break.

The ongoing research around intermittent fasting is really incredible, it’s very health balancing and very much supports longevity which is really interesting as it cleanses the body by cleansing the cells. By practicing intermittent fasting you’re going to see and feel results.

Charlotte: What kind of changes might you notice from doing it? As well as the health benefits? Will it help you sleep better and what kind of things can you expect to feel?

Gabriela: Even after a week or two you will notice that you’re sleeping better and your energy levels will be nice and balanced too. It doesn’t sound obvious but by adjust the time during which you eat actually really helps with your energy levels.

Charlotte: I’m sure you’re not going to say that we should be eating air, I know you’re all about a varied and healthy diet anyway but does this mean keeping your existing diet and just truncating it?

Gabriela: Well I guess that really depends on what your existing diet is!

Charlotte: Haha yes! Assuming your existing diet is balanced and not takeaways every day...

Gabriela: I have to say I’m really not about big restrictions, every dietary plan I put my patients on needs to be sustainable. You obviously need to focus on eating relatively healthily but even just by reducing your eating window it’s going to be beneficial and then it’s just eating as well as you can around it.

Charlotte: Ok yes, that makes total sense. So, for each of your 5 tips you’re going to recommend some supplements, because of course that’s what you do, so what else can you do to aid your digestive system supplement wise?

Gabriela: For intermittent fasting, what I find is really helpful is fibre. Most of the British population aren’t getting enough fibre in their diet. I like soluble fibre because you can mix with water and have that before your main meals so that balances your blood sugar levels and helps with those cravings you might have for certain foods.

Charlotte: Ok, and you’ve got a hero supplement in your range…

Gabi: I do, it’s called Feel Great Fibre.

Charlotte: Amazing, and we certainly all need that.

Ok, second tip - Boosting your energy levels. Gosh, I think just about everyone is talking about how sluggish they feel at the moment, how tired they are. What can we do to feel more energised? What steps can we take?

Gabriela: Energy is an interesting one because it’s actually very simple. Our energy levels will reflect directly from how we're eating. So we must make sure that when we’re eating, we’re balancing our blood sugar levels as much as possible because if your blood sugar levels are bouncing up and down, your energy levels will become very erratic which is horrible. You will have a boost but you will also have very quick dips.

So with regards to energy, I would really focus on meal composition and what you’re eating. It’s very tempting to reach for those refined carbohydrates such as that lovely toast and butter in the morning. You can still have that but it’s important to also have protein with it because when you have protein and carbohydrates together, it will release sugars into your bloodstream much slower and your blood sugar levels will remain nice and balanced.

Charlotte: The blood sugar level thing - I think we all know that if we have a chocolate bar will make it spike, but are other things we might be eating such as juices that we should look to avoid that might be spiking our blood sugar levels without us knowing?

Gabriela: As you said, anything sugary but it’s not always as obvious as pastries or chocolate, it could be drinking juices on an empty stomach. Unfortunately with blood sugar levels you never win - if you spike your blood sugar levels you will feel incredible for say, 20 minutes but 20 minutes later you will be on the floor.

That being said, I’m not really against sugar, as long as you’re nice and balanced throughout the day. If you going to have some sugar, a green juice for example, always have it with a main meal, never on an empty stomach. Always remember with sugars, always have a protein in your stomach first.

Charlotte: Yes, I’ve learned that the hard way. I’ve had to quit juices actually!

We should also touch on exercise! Moving is an essential part of having good energy levels.

Gabriela: Absolutely, that goes without saying.

Charlotte: Ok, so something else that requires all of these things is learning to sleep well. Gosh, this is something we could all do with tips on. What do you recommend for a good nights sleep?

Gabriela: So a good nights sleep, this will be very reflective on how your energy levels are throughout the day. Our bodies are incredible, how everything works together, so a little imbalance on one side will cause a greater imbalance on the other side.

Sleep is incredibly important, it’s restorative and the only time our bodies switch off. There are some great supplements for sleep but definitely balancing your blood sugar levels throughout the day will really help.

Also, your bedtime habits and bedtime routine. A lot of my patients don’t really think about it, I know I don’t always think about it but it’s little things like the temperature in your bedroom. Your body doesn’t like to sleep in a really hot room. Sleeping in a room that is relatively cool and makes you want to have a blanket over yourself is optimal.

Obviously, visual stimulants such as the television or phones and iPads we all know disrupts our sleep but another little tip that I give to my patients -  you know that feeling when you’re just drifting off to sleep and you’re suddenly disturbed by something like ‘oh gosh I need to empty the dishwasher!’

Charlotte: Oh yes, how do you stop that happening?!

Gabriela: Have a pen and paper next to your bed, rather than having your phone and leaving yourself messages, like I do sometimes!

One nutrient that I love for sleep is Magnesium, it works like magic. Late afternoon or just before bedtime, a really good magnesium supplement really works.

Charlotte: Are there any foods we should know about to aid good sleep?

Gabriela: Actually, something that I’ve always found fascinating is foods that contain Tryptophan. So Tryptophan is an amino acid, which is a particle of protein and it’s a precursor to the neurotransmitter Serotonin and Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that makes us happy, but also makes us go to sleep.

So foods which are high in Tryptophan are perfect a perfect pre-bedtime snack

Charlotte: Any examples?

Gabriela: Yes of course! Dairy - I like to recommend a couple of spoonfuls of live yoghurt or cottage cheese before bed and maybe a turkey slice as well.

Charlotte: Ok, nice! I’ll do a bit of pre-bedtime turkey slices, sure!

Let’s talk about hormones. In terms of feeling good for summer, I mean, particularly for women is such a key thing to feeling good isn’t it?

Gabriela: Absolutely...

Charlotte: So where do you start with resetting your hormones?

Gabriela: I think it’s quite important to start by saying, hormones are very easily imbalanced, you can imbalance them just by living quite frankly! We live in London or in cities, stress is a huge hormone imbalancer. You don’t always link feeling stressed to actually having really high levels of cortisol in the blood stream and this is the hormone that starts disrupting your system.

Being overweight can also really disrupt your hormones so being your healthy weight is really important, as well as nutritional deficiencies.

Charlotte: And that’s being a healthy weight for you, right? For the weight that you’re supposed to be?

Gabriela: Absolutely, your healthy weight!

Charlotte: Ok, so nutritional deficiencies…

Gabriela: Nutritional deficiencies are again, really important because, as I’ve mentioned, everything within the body works together. If you have one deficiency it will affect other aspects of your health and hormones over time, so it’s really important to take a good quality supplement alongside a health, balanced diet.

Charlotte: And so, do you recommend people go and have a test and find out what they’re deficient in first or can you get started with supplements without having the blood tests and knowing?

Gabriela: Definitely. I’m a clinician, I do these blood tests all the time and they can be quite expensive. To have a good quality multivitamin, I always recommend this to my patients as well as some Omega 3 as a baseline for hormone balancing, especially important for women.

Charlotte: Ok great, that’s great to know.

You say here, supplements for gut health as well. Gut health, we could probably do a whole episode on that but that all ties into your hormones, right?

Gabriela: Yes, so supplements for gut health. Probiotics would be an obvious one, to balance the bacteria within your intestinal microflora and again, fibre is interesting - fibre feeds the good bacteria.

Charlotte: Wow, I did not know that fibre was such a key ingredient - so now we know!

And finally, getting the glow! That’s what we’re all after really and that all starts from within doesn’t it? So what are your tips for glowing from the inside out?

Gabriela: That’s such a cliche phrase but it really is! Beauty starts from within, so obviously what you eat is very important.

It’s such a popular topic to talk about but collagen, and foods that contain collagen are important but also, something that people don’t talk about so much are foods that support the collagen production because our body will produce collagen itself. You want to hit it from both sides.

Collagen containing foods include oily fish and eggs but then you have good old vitamin C which stimulates collagen production and is fantastic, so that’s all of the citruses and grapefruit actually has a higher level of Vitamin C than lemon which I didn’t know!

Charlotte: Really?! That’s fascinating, who knew!

Ok, so can we talk about the outside part of it all? Are there any treatments or products we can be using to get that glow?

Gabriela: I can tell you from my personal experience, I love Vitamin C for the skin, very protective against free radicals and UV rays. A bit of hyaluronic acid as well is great.

Actually, a brand new one that I’m just about to launch, which you take internally is Astaxanthin.

Charlotte: Wow, ok…

Gabriela: Astaxanthin is a red pigment algae which is actually what makes flamingos pink! They are actually born grey but get their pink colour from eating the algae. It’s been shown to have these amazing antioxidant properties which is obviously important for immunity but is also amazing for skin health. There are products coming out now for topical products and the research is incredible.

Charlotte: That’s cool! Remind me of the name.

Gabriela: Astaxanthin.

Charlotte: Amazing! Finally, for getting the glow, your hero supplement is Gold Super Blend?

Gabriela: It is, because it contains collagen as well as all of the nutrients you need for collagen production and all of the antioxidants, as well as protein which you need for skin maintenance.

Charlotte: Alright, well thank you so much Gabriela! I feel so armed with tips and good knowledge so thank you!

Gabriela: You’re so welcome, thank you!

To watch the full interview head to our Instagram or watch the full show on the SheerLuxe Youtube channel.