Lucy Jones on The Red Sofa
Interviewer: Good afternoon and welcome to The Red Sofa. Today, we have the pleasure of welcoming Lucy Jones from Lutrition. Lutrition offers an excellent range of supporting services, including corporate well-being, 1-to-1 support, brand consultancy, and support for and work with women during perimenopause and menopause. Good afternoon, Lucy.
Lucy, please give us a bit of background on Lutrition and what made you decide to set up your own business.
Lucy: So I started Lutrition because there is so much misinformation out there about nutrition and healthy eating. About 98% of the information that you see online about nutrition is actually false and incorrect in one way or another. And that’s really scary because you only have to jump onto TikTok or Instagram these days,, and everyone is claiming they’ve got the next miracle that is going to absolutely change your health, and it’s just not true, and it is really harmful, potentially.
So I started Nutrition because I wanted there to be somewhere where you could go for really trustworthy, evidence-based information that’s also really practical and realistic. Again, you go online, and everyone is like, selling these potions and supplements and products. We got to do such complex routines, but the reality is that healthy eating and getting the right nutrients in for whatever your goal is can be really easy. I try to make it easy for people and actually make it accessible.
Interviewer: What key areas does nutrition help people with?
Lucy: So my really big area of focus that I am so passionate about helping people with is perimenopause and menopause. Before I started nutrition, I actually worked for a menopause organisation, which is how I developed a strong passion for helping women at this stage of life. When I’m not working 1-to-1 with people, I am out in workplaces offering well-being support, and again, this is an area I’m so passionate about because not enough workplaces are offering nutrition as part of the well-being support they offer.
Interviewer: What would be typical symptoms that people would have that would make them think something isn’t quite right or they need to change their lifestyle?
Lucy: For me, a really big area that I help women with is weight loss during perimenopause and menopause. And when I was working for this menopause organisation that I used to work for, one of the biggest things that we would see was women really struggling with their weight. And that is because about 60 to 70% of women at this stage of life really struggle with managing their weight because weight gain becomes so much easier.
So through my clinic doors, I get a lot of women who have probably tried losing weight on their own before, who’ve really struggled and are now reaching out for my help.
Interviewer: Let’s discuss more about supporting women during perimenopause and menopause.
What differentiates nutrition within this, and importantly, the benefits of nutrition for a woman going through these stages in their lives?
Lucy: What really differentiates me is that I am very realistic and practical in terms of the advice that I give people. As I said before, so much of the advice that is given out there is just so unachievable.
I try to really strip it back to the basics, make it easy, accessible, and actually enjoyable for people. And by doing that, that’s how they get the best results. Also, I appreciate that I am a much younger woman who is working in the field of menopause. And whilst I don’t have that first-hand experience of menopause just yet, I have spent half a decade listening to so many women’s stories about menopause and trying to understand what they’re going through. And that’s how I can try to relate back in different ways to help these women.
So I’m always trying to learn, always trying to listen and then taking the theory of nutrition and how we can support someone to achieve their goals. Taking the stories that I’ve listened to and then making them practical and realistic, and that is how I think I can get people the best results.
Interviewer: As previously mentioned, I noticed that you offer corporate well-being as a small business ourselves. Can you explain the benefit of nutritional well-being within the workplace?
Lucy: Absolutely. I personally think that all-sized businesses, no matter how small or big, can benefit from having well-being support in their place, particularly nutrition support. So, actually, only 56% of businesses in the UK provide some type of good lifestyle support.
Now, in my eyes, that needs to be 100%, and the reason why I’m so passionate about more workplaces talking about and getting nutrition support in it can have a massive impact on things such as people’s productivity and their energy levels.
If someone is feeling really low in energy, they’re probably showing up to work but not being their most productive self, and that probably means that your outputs and your deadlines aren’t being met as well as they possibly could be. So that might be having an impact on revenue. But also, it’s really important that your staff have energy so that they can get their day’s work done, but then still go home and do all of the activities they’ve got planned for the evening as well.
There’s a statistic out there that says about 43.6 days per year are lost due to poor health in the UK. So that’s potentially 43.6 days per staff member where they are coming into work, but they’re not feeling their best, so they’re not being as productive as they could be. And if you think about how many staff you may have at your company, actually, those 43.6 days per person really do start to add up. And the way that nutrition can come in is, well, it can support energy levels, it can help people to strengthen their immune system so that they don’t get colds and end up needing to take lots of time off work. Because if they’ve got a stronger immune system, they’re better able to kind of fight that infection and keep going and feel better like that.
Interviewer: Is there anything new on the horizon that you are looking to do with nutrition?
Lucy: Absolutely. Something that I’m really trying to focus on this year is making, as I said, one of my missions really is to make nutrition advice more easily accessible and practical. So something I’m really investing some time in this year is expanding my education hub on my website and this is a resource with lots of fantastic blogs on there that are written by myself that will evidence base.
I’m really lucky that I found some trustworthy nutritionists who are helping me to write these blogs so that I can try and produce as many as possible, so that there’s more information out there that is evidence-based, so that we can start reducing that percentage of misinformation out there.
I’m also trying to get out there and do more webinars as well, so that no matter where someone is in the UK, even, you know, globally, they can come along to a webinar and learn more about nutrition as well.
Interviewer: That’s great. Thank you for your time today, Lucy. That’s Lucy Jones from Nutrition.
Please check out her website here.