More Than a Plate: Unpacking the Emotional Side of Nutrition and Stress

Though a professional GRID League athlete, Samantha Secord felt a frustrating disconnect: her physique didn’t reflect her elite level of fitness. She was tired of it.

“Obviously, there was something missing, or a lack of education on my part about nutrition,” she said.

And when she saw some posts on Instagram from various Games athletes talking about CBG, she decided to reach out.

“I wanted someone to help me discover what works specifically for me, and I was dealing with an injury at the time, so I wanted to maintain my strength and not gain fat as I was recovering,” said 31-year-old Samantha, a full-time firefighter.

Her second goal was to find a program that she could stick to long-term. In the past she had tried both the Paleo Diet and tracking macros. She found that she couldn’t stick with either for very long. That lifestyle was not sustainable.

“I didn’t want to work with CBG just for temporary results. I really wanted it to be a life-changing kind of thing, something I could do for the long term,” she said.

What Happened Next

She teamed up with CBG Coach Kelly Butler and was immediately impressed.

Coach Butler took the time to get to know Samantha: her lifestyle, her goals, and began digging into her relationship with food.

The two looked into Samantha’s history in regard to her nutrition, and Samantha had an epiphany: she was unnecessarily hard on herself, especially when she tracked macros. Ultimately, she realized her relationship with food wasn’t as good as she thought.

“I didn’t realize that what was going on in my life affects what I eat. I didn’t understand how stress, anxiety, relationships, how all of that comes into play for me,” Samantha emphasized of what Coach Butler helped her see. “There was this whole emotional size of nutrition that I was super unaware of.”

Something else Coach Butler helped unpack was the anxiety Samantha feels when she goes out to eat with her friends.

“I’m a very social person. I like to hang out with my friends, and alcohol was always one of my issues. I was feeling social anxiety or pressure because I didn’t want to be the boring friend who doesn’t drink. But I didn’t even realize that anxiety was happening,” she said.

Coach Butler then helped Samantha build some tools so she can navigate eating and drinking with friends in the healthiest way she can.

“I have a ‘go to’ drink and I limit it to two drinks, and that’s all I need…. [Coach] Kelly has helped me see I can live a little bit, and that’s OK,” she added.

Sixteen Weeks Later

Not only is Samantha’s relationship with food considerably better than it was, but her body composition has seen some significant changes.

She is down five or six pounds, which is a fair amount considering she was lean and fit when she started.

“And I have little abs now, which is nice,” said Samantha, who is eating “three times more protein” and more vegetables now than prior to CBG.

As for her performance, Samantha feels like she is on the rise. In fact, she just PR’ed her deadlift at 355 pounds.

Best of all, Samantha is confident she will be able to stick with this healthier way of fueling her body well into the future.

“The CBG Blueprint is really easy. The proportions are really easy to understand,” she mentioned.

Through the trial and error process, she admits she has “made mistakes and I have caved into things, but now I’m not so hard on myself about it, and I have built some super healthy habits. [Coach] Kelly has helped me stay consistent.”

She added: “There are a lot of fad diets out there and people telling you what to do, but through working with [Coach] Kelly, I have learned so much about myself and what I need. [The CBG Blueprint] is personalized, and it has made eating healthy do-able and something I can do forever.”