In this episode of Stay at the Top, I unpack the simple health dashboard every high performer should be using to better understand their energy, performance and recovery.
Your body is communicating with you every single day through signs and signals like your energy, appetite and performance. When you learn how to read those signals and combine them with the right objective data, you move from guessing to making informed decisions about your health and your performance.
This episode explores how to use both subjective signals and objective data to create a simple dashboard that helps you spot patterns earlier, prevent burnout and sustain high performance over time.
In this episode I share:
- Why high performers track business metrics but ignore health signals
- The concept of a daily health dashboard for performance and wellbeing
- The three subjective metrics everyone should track: energy, appetite and performance
- Why these signals often escalate when we ignore them
- How objective data from wearables can help reveal what is happening beneath the surface
- Why the combination of subjective signals and objective data is the sweet spot
- A personal story from my first international keynote where this dashboard helped me recognise early signs of illness and make a smarter decision
Key Quotes
“You cannot improve what you are not measuring.”
“Energy is not something you either have or you don’t. Energy is something you create.”
“When you start paying attention to the signals, patterns emerge.”
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 (00:07.458)
What’s the saying, where focus goes, energy flows? When it comes to your career or business, I bet you track progress. You monitor the numbers, you watch the metrics, you pay attention to the signals that tell you how things are performing. Because you know you cannot improve what you are not measuring. But when it comes to your own health, so many high performers are operating in the dark.
So many, but when it comes to your own health, so many high performers are still operating in the dark. They push through fatigue, ignore early signals from their body, and assume feeling run down is just part of the job. But the reality is your body and your brain are giving you feedback every single day. Through signs and signals like your energy, your appetite, and your performance.
When you learn how to read those signals and you combine these with the right objective data, you stop guessing and you start making informed decisions about your health and your performance. And that is exactly what we are unpacking in today’s episode.
Jess Spendlove (00:06.028)
Be honest for a moment. How many times have you gotten sick at the absolute most inconvenient time? If you’re honest though, in the lead up, you might have been pushing through fatigue or under stress and sleeping poorly. You might also be finally taking that holiday that was well overdue, only to get sick at the worst possible time. Maybe for you that was right before a presentation.
or an important board or pitch meeting. Or it might be, like I said, that holiday that you’ve been looking forward to months. I’ve had my fair share of these moments and I’m sure you have too. Because if you’re listening to this podcast, chances are you have big goals. You’re determined, you’re motivated, and you’re a hard worker. That is not the issue.
The issue is that many high performers put everyone and everything ahead of themselves. And you do that because you have the best intentions. But as the saying goes, when you say yes to something, you say no to something. And when you’re saying yes to everyone and everything else, you’re saying no to yourself. And eventually that way of operating comes at a cost. Now,
Imagine if you had access to information in those moments that told you how you were really operating. Information that helped you understand whether you were just a little bit tired or whether you were on the brink of getting properly run down or sick. Well, that information exists.
One form is always available to you. This is what I call subjective metrics. The other is something that you can easily access through objective data. And the combination of these two things as your daily health dashboard is the focus for today’s episode.
Jess Spendlove (02:30.67)
Not sure if you’re aware, but your body and your brain have its own language. Most people just don’t know how to translate it. And the way I like to talk about this is as if you’ve been to any other country that you don’t speak the language of. So if you’ve travelled somewhere, you’ve got a few ways to get around. One, maybe you use Google Translate.
In these instances, you eventually get there, but everything takes longer. It’s a bit clunky. Sometimes you’re guessing, sometimes you’re getting lost. Sometimes you’ve got a rude cab driver who isn’t being particularly helpful. I guess that’s all part of the fun sometimes. But now if you think about that instance and then you compare that to travelling with someone who speaks the language fluently, or even better, maybe you’ve got a local guide. In these kinds of situations,
decisions become faster, you avoid unnecessary friction and you see what matters. I remember when I went to Rome, I was only there for a really short period of time. I was spending one day at AS Roma and then I really had one day to see the city. That is definitely not enough time. But I engaged a tour guide and within four hours we saw so many of the key landmarks and the best bit, because she was connected with everybody, we got to
skip the queue, we got to jump to the front of the queue at the Vatican and some of these are in the Colosseum and all of these.
Jess Spendlove (04:08.171)
We got to jump to the front of the queue at the Vatican and then at a few other places. And so I was able to save so much time. I got to see exactly what I wanted. She spoke the language. She knew who to speak to. And she also recommended me the very best restaurant. One of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten at. To this day, I specifically remember what I ordered. It was phenomenal.
So if you think about those two instances, trying to navigate it on your own or getting an expert guide, the way I like to talk about this is the same as what’s going on with your body. At the moment, your body and your brain are constant.
At the moment, your body and your brain are constantly communicating with you, through signs and signals like your energy, your focus, your mood, your cravings, and your performance. The thing is, most people haven’t learned how to interpret this language, or they’re too busy to pay attention.
Jess Spendlove (05:13.451)
But what these signs and signals are, are your subjective metrics. Now, there are three.
there are three very important subjective metrics that I encourage people to tune into. They are one, your energy. With your energy, this is how stable is my energy and how elevated is it? And how does that look across the day and across the week?
The second is appetite. And this is about how do I show up at each meal and each snack and how do I show up across the day? Do I have cravings? Am I moving throughout my day pretty consistently or am I swinging from being starving to being over full? Am I having a giant energy crash in the afternoon or am I craving sugar in the afternoon?
All of these things are signs and signals around your appetite. And the third one is performance. Now, this is the most individualized of the three, and it’s really looking at physical and cognitive performance. Now, depending on who you are, you’ll have different ratios of importance for both of these things. So for example, an elite athlete, physical performance is very high on the scale, and so is cognitive. But if you’re…
If you’re someone like me who, yes, you exercise every day, but the big focus for you is your cognitive performance, your focus and your ability to sustain your cognitive output and your ability to focus and your ability to do deep work, then that’s going to see in a very different ratio to what it would for an elite athlete. And then depending on where you are, what you’re training for, what your day looks like, what your specialty is, you’re going to have different ratios of both of those forms of performance.
Jess Spendlove (07:09.273)
Thanks for
Jess Spendlove (07:16.491)
And so if you’re honest with yourself, yes, you probably tune into these things occasionally, but are you tuning into them every single day? Because the truth is these three subjective metrics, your energy, your appetite and your performance are communicating to you every single day. Maybe you’re a leader and maybe you notice in the mid afternoon you have a big focus drop. Maybe you’re a founder and you’re constantly feeling wired and tired and exhausted and at five o’clock in the afternoon,
you’re constantly reaching for some salt and vinegar chips or a chocolate bar. Or maybe you’re a busy mother trying to juggle your business, your career and being a mother and you’re realizing that you’re getting to the end of the day or the end of the week with no energy and then you’re spending your weekends laying on the couch recharging rather than doing activities with your friends and family which is what you actually want to be doing.
The truth is most people do notice these signals, but they don’t pay attention to them. They don’t dive deeper and say, what is this communicating to me? They push through them or they caffeinate over them or they reach for that sugar or salty treat to give them a short term pick me up. Because pushing through feels easier in the moment, but what happens is the body escalates.
Whispers become nudges, nudges become warnings, and warnings eventually become so loud that they are something that you can no longer ignore.
Jess Spendlove (08:52.097)
And so I’ve got a question for you.
Jess Spendlove (08:59.797)
If you had to rate your current energy out of 10, what would you give it? Now I want you to ask yourself, where would you realistically like to be? Is there a gap between those two numbers? Where you are and where you would realistically like to be. Now,
I ask this question in a lot of my keynotes and workshops and 99 % of people put their hand up and say there is a gap. And if someone doesn’t have a gap, get them to, if they’re happy to, share what they’re doing because it means they’ve really paid attention and they’ve really found a way of operating that is customized to them.
But if you’re like the majority of people, if there is a gap with your energy in terms of where you are and where you would like to be, remember this, energy is not something you either have or you don’t. Energy is something you create. And now two episodes ago, I dedicated an entire episode to this, where we looked at some key strategies that you can implement across the day to elevate your energy. And so I’d highly encourage if you haven’t listened to that, or I’ve actually had a
few people reach out saying I’ve had this episode on repeat it was so impactful go back and listen to it as a refresher, pep talk, whatever you want it to be.
But if we come back to these subjective metrics, your energy, your appetite and your performance, these subjective signals tell you most of the story. If you tune into them on a daily basis and you think about what you’ve done, what your behaviours have been and how it feeds into that, you can interpret nearly everything that you need. And so I always recommend people start here because that information is always available if you choose to tune into it.
Jess Spendlove (10:57.899)
But what can also be really helpful is being able to view what is happening under the hood. And so what I mean by this is what is happening with your physiology? What is happening?
And so what I mean by this is what is happening with your physiology? What is happening under the surface before it comes to the surface and you can feel it through your energy, your appetite and your performance.
What I’m talking about here is things like changes in recovery, your nervous system load, stress that might be accumulating, fatigue that is elevating, what is happening with your sleep architecture, how much restorative sleep are you getting in your deep and your REM, and how is that tracking over a period of time?
Jess Spendlove (11:55.852)
The thing is with all of those that I’ve just mentioned, these are often hard to detect before things have been cascading in the wrong direction for a period of time. And so this is where the daily dashboard for your health and your performance, I really believe is complete by pairing subjective metrics with objective data. And this is where having a tool like a wearable can come in.
So what I’m talking about with a wearable are things like an aura ring and a woot band.
And now if you’re getting to this part of the episode and you’re feeling some resistance and you’re thinking, no, this isn’t for me, well, that’s okay. That does not mean that this episode is not helpful for you. As I mentioned at the start, your subjective metrics are the most important. That’s why I start there. I always start there in my upcoming book where I dive into all of this in a lot more detail. I always frame it with the subjective metrics first, but then I leave it up to
And I present this information because I know for me and I know for a lot of my clients and I know for a lot of high-performing people they find that having this objective data from a wearable like an aura and an aura ring or a boot band and yes I’m a nerd and yes I actually have both
I like to wear both because my clients use both and it helped for me to see what’s happening, what changes are being made and to truly have my finger on the pulse. I also feel like when I talk about this information, I really need to understand it. And for me, I’ve found using both of them at this phase of life, last year I was predominantly using an Auraring and that was sufficient for me. But right now I’m using both.
Jess Spendlove (13:48.226)
But as I mentioned, for me, it is largely because of the work that I do and helping me be completely informed with what I consider the two best options on the market that are the most accessible from a price point of view, that give you the data that you need. I also like that both are not giving you information in real time, so you wear them and then you need to go into your phone to actually get the data. You know, it’s not a watch which is pinging and dinging and giving you all the notifications
and the information and look, yes, if you’ve got a watch and I also have an Apple watch, I just turn the notifications off. And so if you have an Apple or a Garmin, then you can definitely do that. But for the purpose of this episode, for the purpose of the work that I do with my high performing clients, whether they’re athletes, executives, founders, or anyone who just is a high achiever and is seeking to better themselves and their health and their performance, these are the two options that we look at.
And depending on who they are and what they’re tracking, I will either give them the option or if they ask me which one is best for them, then we will have a discussion around that. If I’m honest, I actually find for most people the consideration is their lifestyle. You know, the aura is a ring that you wear on your finger and the whoop is a band that you wear on your wrist. So it really just depends.
But I guess in saying all of this, it’s really important to understand that this is not about the device being the answer. What this is about is awareness. The wearable simply gives you another lens.
The way I like to think about it is a profit and a loss analogy. And the objective metrics from your wearable is like a profit and loss sheet for your health. It helps you track information that might be difficult for you to feel straight away. Things like your recovery, your sleep quality, your stress load, what all of these are doing, how this is tracking. And for me, most importantly, how is this trending over time?
Jess Spendlove (15:58.698)
what behaviors or what circumstances or what is going on in my life and how is that impacting me at a physiological level from a recovery aspect, from a strain aspect, from a sleep aspect, from a restorative sleep, from a quantity of sleep. How is my movement? What about my steps? How are we housing all this really important information? Which as I mentioned, for me, the most important piece of that is having that information
over a period of time so the wearable gets to know you and then when you’re sitting out of your normal range it flags up and it gives you the heads up and that’s really what I want to share with you in this personal story and where this really cemented for me that the sweet spot is the combination of your subjective metrics and this objective data.
Jess Spendlove (17:01.229)
And so if I think back to April last year, 2025, I had my first international work trip. It was a keynote. It was to a group of CEOs. They were their founders. So it was a range of…
founders more at the start of their journey, all the way up to unicorn founders. And so if you work in this space, you’ll know that a unicorn founder means that they have created a $1 billion company. So we are talking high performing, high octane.
highly motivated, highly driven individuals. I was so excited. This was my first international keynote. I was excited by the people in the room. I was looking forward to contributing my knowledge and having impact and helping them have practical tools that they can use on their founder journey. And I had been preparing for months. At the same time,
At the same time, the…
The summit fell 14 weeks after I had Millie. Now I appreciate going back to work that early is not for everybody. That was my personal decision based on the circumstances, based on the belief I had in myself, based on the opportunity that had presented. This was something that I didn’t want to say no to. And so I said yes and it was one of those kind of figure it out later situations.
Jess Spendlove (18:41.721)
I had the option, it was a three day event to fly in with everybody at the start of the summit or to travel the next day and just be there for my keynote. So my keynote was the closing keynote. I decided to fly the Wednesday morning and return with everybody because it was like, if I’m going, I want the full experience. I want to make the most out of it. I also want to be in the room for the other conversations and the other keynotes and the other panels so I can really get a feel for the event.
As a speaker, that is really important so you can personalise and customise any information relevant in the moment and it just helps you get a pulse check of everything. Now, when I arrived in Queenstown, I was feeling a little bit off.
It wasn’t showing up in my data. I looked at my aura ring and there was nothing there, but subjectively, and this is what I would say if you’re using both forms, subjectively is where you want to tune into first. Because what you want to do is have the objective data corroborate how you’re feeling rather than drive or dictate. So in that moment, I was feeling a little bit off and when I arrived, I thought, you know what, I’m just going to say a quick hello, meet a couple of people, go to my room and rest because we’re going to dinner that night.
Now I rested, I went to the dinner, I went there a little bit later, met a few people. I wasn’t feeling 100 % so I left on the first shuttle of people heading back and I thought I just need a good night’s sleep and I’ll be sweet. So I was waking up then day two, I wasn’t speaking until day three, went down to breakfast, was talking to a few people, some of the partners from Airtree and also some of the founders.
having a great morning and then I felt it and you know when you start you
Jess Spendlove (20:38.517)
You know when you start to get sick and you just can’t regulate your body temperature? You go hot and cold and you’re just feeling a little bit off? Well that is what happened to me. And I remember thinking, shit, this is not good. So I went back to my room, I didn’t want to look at my data in the breakfast room. I thought I’m gonna go back to my room, I’m going to check.
And there it was in complete sentences. My physiology was talking to me, telling me everything that I needed to know in black and white. The first thing when I opened my app from my aura ring was major symptom radar. Now, I had never seen that before.
and I couldn’t believe myself. I thought, my goodness, in this moment, subjectively how I feel, objectively what the data is telling me, I need to take cover. In terms of the information that the Auraring gave me, my body temperature was up, my respiratory rate was elevated, my HRV, which is my heart rate variability, had dropped, my resting heart rate had risen, and my overall readiness score, which is normally in the 80s or 90s,
was in the 30s. At that moment, the decision became super clear. I needed to rest. And even though I had travelled to another country to network, to meet people, to be at the event, to make the most of the opportunity, the writing was on the wall. I needed to take cover. I needed to rest. Because if I had pushed through that day, there was every chance that I might not have been able to deliver my keynote, which I had flown to another country to do.
And because I listened, because I pulled back, which was not what I wanted to do, if I did not have that data, I would have found a way to justify, I don’t actually feel that bad. Because be honest with yourself, how many times have you done that? How many times have you felt run down, you felt on the brink of getting sick, but you’ve had something really important personally or professionally, and you’ve pushed through? You’ve gone, you’ve done the thing. And then the next day you’ve woken up and you’ve been sick,
Jess Spendlove (22:54.131)
and then next minute you’re out for a week. Now you probably haven’t taken a week off. You’ve probably taken a day or two and then started to come back and then you’ve sat at medium to not feeling very well for an extended period of time. But realistically you needed to take a week off. Yeah.
If I didn’t have that data, I would have done that because I would have said, I don’t feel that sick. I don’t want to miss out on the five-star lunch and the keynote speaker and the panel event and all of the things. I definitely did not want to miss out on that. But what I needed to do was miss out on that. What I needed to do was stay in my room and order lunch and order dinner and take cover and rest and recuperate.
And now what happened? The next day, I felt much better. I didn’t look at my Auraring data before my keynote because I thought, you know what, if it’s terrible, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. In the moment, subjectively, I felt better than the day before. I’m in a position where I can actually get up and present. You know, when you’re really hot and cold, I thought, if I get on a stage, I’m not gonna be able to regulate myself. I’m probably gonna pass out.
That was not what I was there to do. So I rested, I got up, I spoke. I use this insight in my keynote because in the keynote I talk about this. I talk about this information, learning the language from your body and your brain. That’s also why I’m talking about it in my upcoming book, which I’m so excited. I don’t know when the pre-sale is going to be available, but it is going to be, I think, within the next few weeks or month. So as soon as it’s available,
I will let you know if this is if if what I’m talking about here is of interest then you’ll definitely like the you’ll definitely enjoy the book
Jess Spendlove (24:52.215)
but I would have found a way to justify it. And yeah, if I had of it would have been catastrophic. So I used it to my advantage. I talked about it in my keynote, even though I missed out on the five star experience, even though I left Millie in Australia while I traveled to New Zealand.
The things that you learn. I mean, I was a first time mom. I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought it would just be easier. I could just get on with it. But anyway, I’m pretty sure part of me getting sick had to do with leaving her and feeding and pumping and mastitis and all of that. So…
Jess Spendlove (25:33.24)
So the lesson is this, the subjective metrics are the most important to tune into, but if you’ve got the capacity and you’ve got the interest to have the objective data, it can really add significant value. And so as we come to the end of this episode, if you take one thing away from it, I want you to start using a simple health dashboard.
Each day, ask yourself three questions. How was my energy today out of 10? How did it start? How did it end? From an appetite perspective, was my appetite steady today? Or was I swinging between starving and over full? Did I have cravings? Do I have cravings regularly?
and from a performance lens, how well did I perform today physically and or cognitively, depending on what’s relevant for you. That’s it. They’re the three questions. They’re the three things for you to start reflecting on a daily basis that are going to help you start to tune into the language of your body and your brain. Because the truth is when you start paying attention to these three signals, patterns emerge.
And that is when you stop guessing and you start making smarter decisions about your health that are going to help you achieve sustainable performance. And if it feels helpful.
or when you’re ready, or if you’re already doing it, you can layer in the objective data. For me, tools like wearables give you visibility into things like your sleep, your recovery, and your stress load. They give you access to information that you can’t necessarily feel on a daily basis until things really escalate to the surface. And this is not about obsessing over the numbers, but it is about spotting patterns over time.
Jess Spendlove (27:31.275)
And so for me, this is why the sweet spot when it comes to your health and your performance dashboard is a combination of subjective metrics and objective data. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Stay At The Top. If you liked it, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you found it helpful and think it would make a difference to someone’s life, maybe share this episode with them.
Otherwise, I’ll be back again next week with a special guest episode helping you all not only reach the top, but sustainably stay there. I’ll see you all then.