Busy seasons are not the problem. A lack of strategy is.
In this episode of Stay at the Top, I walk you through the practical framework I first developed in elite sport to help athletes return to pre-season in peak condition, while still enjoying their off season. Today, I use this same framework with executives, senior leaders and clients navigating travel, end of year events, social commitments and festive celebrations.
If your calendar is full of lunches, dinners, corporate events or travel, this episode will show you how to protect your health, energy and habits without saying no to your life.
You will learn how to use my decision making tool, the Trifecta, to stay on track across nutrition, movement and alcohol and how to anchor your physiology with simple, repeatable habits that can hold even when life gets full.
In this episode I share:
- Why high performers default to extremes in busy seasons
- The real reason routine falls apart when the calendar fills up
- How the Trifecta works and why it helps you stay consistent
- The most common mistakes people make with meals, alcohol and movement
- Why skipping breakfast backfires and leads to overeating
- Simple morning anchors that protect energy and appetite
- How understanding your physiology helps you make better decisions
- Practical tools to enjoy the season without undoing your progress
Key Quotes
“Busy seasons are not the enemy. A lack of strategy is.”
“You can enjoy the festive season and look after your health. You can do both.”
“You do not need perfection. You need anchors that support your physiology.”
“When you understand your decision making tool, you can stay consistent no matter what the calendar looks like.”
Episode Resources
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess Spendlove (00:28.654)
Today we’re diving into a topic which so many high performers face generally multiple times a year, which is how do I balance and prioritize my health with a busy season or period? Now, this busy season or period might be travel, international travel for work or for life.
This also might just be lots of corporate lunches and dinners and drinks and entertaining and all of the things that come along with being a high performer in the corporate world. Or for a lot of people, which is the season that we are in or about to start, the festive season.
balancing your health during busy seasons can be quite tricky. And what I often see is most people defaulting to one of two extremes. They either try to be perfect and white-knuckle their way through, or they write off the whole season and they tell themselves, of January, new year, new me, it’s a future me problem. Now, neither of these strategies have to be the way that you approach this festive season.
And what I want to take you through today is a decision making tool that I first developed in elite sport to help the elite athletes that I worked with navigate the off season to how they can show up at the start of preseason day one, being in the condition that they needed to be, but so they could still enjoy the off season. And more recently, I’ve been using this in speaking events with corporate clients and senior leaders and CEOs and with clients that I coach.
one on one. For me, this tool seems really simple and it seems really simple, but it has delivered amazing results. And I’m going to take you through exactly what it is. And I hope that you see today’s session as a really practical approach and a way that you can navigate both things, how you can prioritize your health.
Jess Spendlove (02:38.198)
and you can also enjoy the festive season. I hope that sounds like a plan. That’s what we’re covering here today. So on that note, let’s get into today’s episode.
Jess Spendlove (03:01.844)
know about you but the diary is starting to be fuller for myself, for my clients and for people within my community. Now I’m sure you’ll look at yours and you’ll think wow the days and the weeks are evaporating. We are basically on the edge of December which is wild and with that it means Christmas, it means New Year’s, it means Christmas parties, it means corporate lunches, corporate dinners. There’s a lot happening.
And often with all of that is a lot of fun, but it can mean more eating out, more drinks, exercise or morning routine skipped. And all of a sudden we feel like the inroads that we’ve made throughout the year with our health have gone out the window.
Jess Spendlove (04:01.366)
Now, regardless of whether you’ve got a holiday coming up, whether you’ve got 20 events in the calendar, which a client of mine told me last week, which is wild, but this is the reality. People have a lot of events on at this time of year. So what is the strategy? How can we find a way to navigate this?
Now, the issue isn’t the event itself. It’s also kind of like Christmas. The way I see Christmas, Christmas is one day. But I guess when Christmas becomes a week or a month, you know, all the leftovers and the extra catching up and the immediate family or, you know, your friends or the people that you choose to spend this time of year with, all of a sudden a day turns into a week, turns into a month and…
it’s been a month of indulgence. Now, this is not about you not enjoying the things you like. I think if you’ve listened to me for long enough, you know I like to live in the real world and I also really want to help people have it all. Now, having it all often just means there’s a decision-making matrix that needs to occur. There’s a hierarchy, but if I can give you a tool or a framework or a way that you can navigate it, I really do believe you can have the best of both worlds.
Jess Spendlove (05:23.534)
guess the reality is what tends to happen though when there’s more functions on, we’re eating out of routine, you we might just be snacking on the canapes that are there and we don’t really have a proper meal and then we’re enjoying all of the drinks and then we get to the end of the evening and we’re starving so we stop in at whatever our, you know, end of night.
location of choice is whether that’s the kebab shop or McDonald’s or whatever we’re ordering on Uber Eats and we’re getting to bed later than normal and then we’ve had drinks so we don’t have as good of a sleep because we don’t get into our deep and REM sleep as much and then we’re tired the next day and then we don’t set the alarm or we snooze. Sound familiar? I’m sure it does.
With this, guess the reason I’m calling this out is to kind of name it and also go, well, what can we do about this? How can we balance the events and the fun and the travel and the social events or the Christmas parties or the end of year celebrations? How can we balance that with?
and with some of the habits that we already have every single day. And it doesn’t have to be zero to a hundred. It doesn’t have to mean not drinking at events. I mean, of course, if you’ve got a lot of events and there are some that you can choose. But what this episode is really, I just hope it’s a kind of a voice of reason or an insight into a conversation I would have with a client one-on-one when they tell me, like the person I said before, I’ve got 20 lunches in December.
Okay, that’s a lot. How are we approaching this? I had another client who went to Europe for eight weeks or the US and Canada and Europe for eight weeks. And he’s been on this journey this year where he’s really prioritizing his health and he needed some tools to navigate that.
Jess Spendlove (07:25.44)
Or similarly at the start, touched on how I developed this framework originally when I was working in professional sport for over a decade and I would see time and time again, the same thing unfold. I would see athletes finish the season. I would see them given off season targets and programs. And then I would see return to training targets, which generally meant some element of fitness. like a running test, a strength test, and also a
body composition component. And so what I mean by that is body fat and muscle. Now, if the athletes weren’t given a strategy, which worked in the real world, what that generally meant for some, and particularly I would find the younger athletes who hadn’t had as many off seasons and didn’t know how to kind of manage it all.
They’d have a blowout, they’d go overseas, they’d do all of the things I just mentioned, drinks, eat, not move as much as they should or what their program was, and then they’d come back and one of two things would happen. One, they would either over restrict,
in an attempt to kind of meet the requirements that they needed to make or they just turned back to day one and they wouldn’t meet any of the targets that they needed to make. And so this got me thinking, how can I have a conversation and a tool and a strategy with these athletes to help them rest, enjoy, travel, do all the things that they haven’t been able to do.
in this season, but come back day one of pre-season and meet their targets and then not have to do extra training or extras in any way, shape or form if they didn’t meet them. And so this I kind of developed over, I don’t know, maybe a two, three, maybe a four year window. And it’s what I call the trifecta. I actually also call it the triangle. Maybe if you’re listening, when you hear me run through it, let me know if you prefer the trifecta or the triangle. But basically it calls out at any one time,
Jess Spendlove (09:26.926)
you know when we’re socializing, when we’re traveling, when we’re entertaining, there’s three elements that shift. There’s our nutrition, there’s the alcohol, and then there’s the exercise. And like I mentioned at the start, generally when the nutrition’s out or we’re more relaxed or we’re snacking on the canapes or we’ve got a really nice lunch and then we’ve decided to skip breakfast as a way to kind of manage our intake.
and then we overeat at the lunch because of that or whether we go straight to the drinks and we don’t properly eat and then we’re just snacking on things and then so at the end of the night we’re ordering you know some high calorie high fat food that we’re just craving and then on top of that we don’t move the next day well all of a sudden there’s like a triple negative now
This is not to say those things should never happen. You need to live your life. But the more these things happen, the more it’s like a three-fold effect in terms of you moving away from the baseline of your health habits. And so the trifecta is really a way that you can think about which one of those three things is going to be more relaxed in this situation and how can I lock in or stay dialled in as much as possible with the other two.
Now the great thing about this is it doesn’t have to be okay well the nutrition you know I’m eating out I’m going to be snacking whatever it is that’s what it is and that’s always what it has to be.
The great thing about this is it gives you autonomy and decision making in the moment, in that event, in that day, in that trip, in that location, whatever it might be, what is going to be the thing. And so that can evolve. And so the message is, guess, one of those things that any one time can slip and it’s not going to completely derail your health and your habits and all of the inroads that you’ve made across the year. And then you lock into the other two. Now, a client I’m thinking,
Jess Spendlove (11:23.744)
of who went on a trip recently. was a mixture of work and pleasure and professional. And he was in a variety of different cities and countries. And this was a strategy which he hadn’t heard of before and he was using it for the first time. And he just found it so useful because when he was hiking in Canada, well, he was moving a lot.
and the meals at the hotel and everywhere he was were pretty good. So, and he loves wine, so he was enjoying the wine. But keeping those other two things locked in helped him kind of stay on track and prioritize his health while relaxing more there. Now, in some of the other places he was at,
he wasn’t able to move as much because he had meetings and whatever the reasoning was. He just wasn’t able to move as much. And so the other two areas he locked in and he focused on.
I guess the point of this is saying this is a decision making tool that you can use for the festive season, for the travel, for your corporate lunches and dinners to think about, okay, which one of these three things is going to be more relaxed in this moment? And then how can I make the best decisions I can for the other two?
Jess Spendlove (12:54.818)
The other thing I want to call out here and I see this a lot with lunches and dinners. Now, I guess I’ve mentioned the corporate lunches and dinners and the entertaining and there’s a lot of that at this time of the year, but it can also be social and personal side of things is, okay, I’m having dinner out or I’m having lunch out. I’m just going to restrict or starve myself or fast across the day.
I really advise against this strategy for a few reasons. One, if you’re going into your lunch or dinner hungry, you’re going to overeat in that moment. Or you’re more likely to overeat in that moment.
And with that, when you are eating out, know, food tastes amazing because of how it’s been prepared. You know, there’s extra oils and fats and different things in there, creams, often we don’t even know what’s in there, but there’s extra things in what we would add at home that make the food so tasty.
Whereas if we have something that nourishes us, that satisfies our appetite in the morning or before we go and we kind of stick to our normal routine and rhythm, when we go out for the lunch or the dinner, yes, we’ll still have the food and we’ll enjoy it.
but we will eat to satiety and we won’t eat as much. And so therefore if what I’m getting at here is this is really a way of managing energy in and energy out. Um, with the client I mentioned before who has 20 lunches and dinners over this next period, that’s what he was thinking. I’m going to train in the morning, I’m going to fast and then I’m going to get to the lunch. But even he said, but then I’m going to be so hungry. And I’m like, exactly. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to stick to what we normally do. Maybe we have a modified.
Jess Spendlove (14:37.976)
version so maybe we’re really protein focused, we’re really fiber focused, know, yes maybe we pull out some of the extras and some of the extras for him so he has a smoothie some days. I said okay let’s let’s cut the honey that I know you really like but I hear you we need to kind of balance out commitments and goals and all of the elements because he has a weight loss goal.
around five kilos that we’re trying to achieve. And so we do need to make some decisions, but the decision is not to fast and then be starving. The decision is let’s have a smoothie, you know, something pretty simple, some berries, milk or coconut water, some whey protein or plant protein, or a couple of eggs and one slice of toast. You know, normally he has avocado. Okay, let’s cut that out at the moment. Just again, from a managing overall energy intake.
not forever, just for this season. But let’s do that. Let’s recover from training. Let’s manage our appetite. Overall, it’s a pretty low energy meal. And then that’s going to set you up for lunch to be more satisfied to enjoy the lunch, but not overeat at the lunch. So I’m sure you can see what I’m getting at here by having this decision making and knowing what is actually going to support us versus
What isn’t is a really helpful tool.
And so I guess this really comes down to.
Jess Spendlove (16:12.3)
I guess this really comes down to an element of understanding your physiology. It’s not about perfection and it’s also about retaining an element of what works for me. What is the rhythm that works for me with my movement, with my exercise, with all of the things and how can I…
retain that as much as possible within the context of all of the festive season commitments or travel that I’ve got going on. And so if I can give you a few areas to focus on and these are tips that I give all my clients. The first thing is as much as possible, nail the start of the day. This is what I call the charge up. If you can control the controllables and start the foundation of your day how you would normally and for a lot of my clients that means exercising in the morning, a high protein
because that’s really something we focused on, nailing their hydration, retaining a level of movement and where possible, still getting as good a sleep as possible, that is really going to help set the day up for success. But if we just, you know, we don’t have a good sleep or we sleep in and we’re out of routine, you know, we order a greasy breakfast, we don’t move,
all of the things that can happen, we’re then kind of on the back foot, even though in the short term we think it makes us feel better, what will actually rebalance you back out is implementing your morning routine as much as possible. And so if you’ve had a few extra drinks the day before, well, that’s the area that you’ve relaxed on, but how can you lock into your nutrition and how can you move in a way that is still aligned with how you would normally?
And what I really want you to think about with these kind of non-negotiables or pillars or domino habits that you want to think about in the morning is how can I retain my protein? A high protein breakfast and pulse it across the day. How can I focus on my hydration? You know, using an electrolyte drink and some water. And this is both before the event and after. That is a huge piece of this. How can I retain some level of movement?
Jess Spendlove (18:21.578)
They’re just a few and again think on that they don’t have to be huge shifts they are just simple strategies which can make huge impacts to you navigating this festive season with fun but retaining a level of health and habits that are aligned with how you typically operate.
Jess Spendlove (18:52.248)
The last thing I want to say here, this is not about advocating for alcohol. So obviously if you can reduce your alcohol intake, if you can have some events which are alcohol free, that is amazing. Of course that is the ideal situation. But…
I guess this episode, as I said at the start, I really want it to be a real world conversation and a way in which that feels it’s going to help more people. If I’m honest with you, conversations with a lot of my clients, it’s like, I know I shouldn’t be drinking as much alcohol, but it’s something which they find challenging for different reasons. One, they enjoy it and especially in a social event or two, it’s just a bit of a cultural norm. And so yes, we can have strategies around, we’ll have some water at the start and between each drink,
a glass of water, 100 % you should be doing that. But also in terms of being a practitioner and a coach who’s actually delivering real-world results for these people, we need to have honest conversations that are going to land and that are going to give them strategies to help.
And the other thing I guess really important to call out aside from alcohol and how it impacts our health and all of the additional calories and energy that it adds, something really important to understand and this is for people who are training, who are trying to build muscle mass, who train regularly. So obviously like the elite athletes I work with, with the military and the special forces that I work with, very active and people listening here, you know, some people train every
The other thing you need to know about alcohol is that it impacts or blunts your muscle protein synthesis. So this is the pathway of gaining and retaining lean mass. We have the breakdown from the training and we have the synthesis or growth from the nutrition. If we are training and drinking alcohol and all of that, that interferes with that pathway.
Jess Spendlove (20:51.56)
And it’s something really important to call out. aside from the health and aside from the additional calories, it is going to impact your body composition in terms of an interfering with the muscle that you’re trying to gain, retain or maintain. And so I guess,
Work around here obviously modify alcohol intake is the main one But this is also why we don’t want to just skip our meals and restrict and then go out and you know eat whatever and drink whatever What you would be better off doing is retaining a level of consistency that looks like you’re normal whether that’s breakfast whether that’s a snack So you are getting that hit of protein because the less pulses across the day, the more that is unraveling that process.
I do some work with the military and I was out at the holes where the army barracks speaking at the human performance optimization symposium the other week and this was something that I addressed there because in that context very physically demanding jobs, they’re always in a state of recovery but they’re also on the weekend or when they’ve got the opportunity wanting to go to the pub and have drinks etc. So how can we have the best of both worlds? How can we not completely undo
of the gains that have happened across the week, but how can we support our recovery as much as possible, but also set them up for the reality of what their weekend might look like as well. And so this is the conversation I was having there. It was around have the breakfast, have a smoothie or a protein shake, have a meal. you know you’re going to, I’m using the pub as an example, but whatever space you go into to have drinks, if you’re going around lunchtime and you’re intending to have lunch, but you know that you typically don’t,
Jess Spendlove (22:40.13)
just start drinking and then lunch is pushed back, we’ll have the lunch before you go. So then you’ve had those two or three pulses which is better than the none or the one that you might have previously had.
Jess Spendlove (22:55.694)
And so I guess this is really, like I said, a practical, tactical episode, which is to give you some tips and tools to manage a busy season and so that you don’t see a busy season as a reason to fall off, but a way that you can have some strategies that can help you have the best of both worlds.
Jess Spendlove (23:25.006)
And so I guess the takeaway here or something for you to think about and reflect on is busy seasons are not the enemy, a lack of strategy is. And when you understand your biology and you’ve got a decision-making tool like the trifecta or the triangle, let me know your preference there. When you know what your non-negotiables are, when you make these kinds of decisions, when you have systems and an operating system that supports you and you’ve got
agency to make these decisions, well this is how you can balance both. This is how you stay consistent. This is how you stay energized and this is how you stay in a way that this is how you stay operating in a way that feels aligned with yourself.
You don’t have to put your life on hold to be healthy. If you build systems at work everywhere, life takes you, then this is going to help set you up for creating some sustainable high performance in work and life.
Jess Spendlove (24:31.318)
I really believe you can enjoy this season, you can enjoy the travel and you can look after your health. You can do both and with the right strategy and the right decision making tool like the trifecta around nutrition, movement and alcohol, you can balance the best of both.
That’s all I’ve got for this week’s episode. If you’ve enjoyed it, if you think it would be useful for a friend or a colleague or someone in your network, love for you to share it. It’s something like I said, has been really resonating with a lot of clients recently. And I thought given the time of year, and this is something I wanted to record a dedicated episode to. So I hope you found it helpful. If you have, please let me know. And otherwise, I’ll be back again next week with a guest episode, helping you not only reach the top but sustainably stay there. I’ll see you all then.