Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.
In episode #116 of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with movement and nutrition coach Tyler Hammett.
Tyler is NASM Certified Nutrition Consultant and NASM Certified Personal Trainer. He is the founder of Nourish, a community focused on uplifting individuals through fitness, nutrition, movement, and overall wellness.
He is also the spouse of a full-time professional writer!
During our discussion, Tyler describes:
- What it’s like living with a professional writer
- The role habit formation plays in both health and writing
- Ways writers can work movement and stretching into their daily writing routine
- The importance of hydration, sleep, and time outdoors
- How health and fitness can increase creativity and productivity
- And much more!
Listen to the full podcast episode:
Watch the video of the interview:
The Writing Coach Episode #116 Show Notes
Episode Transcript
Today on the podcast, I have Tyler Hammett. Tyler, Welcome to the show.
Kevin, it’s a pleasure to be here, sir. Thank you for having me.
I’ve always had this idea that I wanted to do a show where I bring on maybe my wife and interview her about what’s it like living with a writer, but we’re going to get all into nutrition and stuff today, but it seems like this is also an opportunity to get into that this guy shouldn’t because in addition to being an expert in all things, nutrition and exercise and health and sports, you’re also the spouse of a writer.
Yes, I’m an amazing writer. Lauren Writes her Instagram handle, give her a shout. She is she’s absolutely amazing in terms of her focus and her ability to do the things she does. I don’t know how you guys write full books. My brain doesn’t think that way. So to live with someone and to see what they do every day, the mannerisms that they have in order to write a book and get in their zone and is pretty crazy. The creative process is insane to be walked through. As I see her walk, I’m writing her own novel as well, but
Before we dive too much into the writing side of things, let’s just tell the listeners a bit about who you are and what you do.
Yeah, for sure. So my name is Tyler Hammond. I so what I do is I have a personal training and fitness and nutrition company. It’s called a nurse with Thai. So what I do is I coach clients one-on-one through fitness where you do most things, basically strength, mobility based movements you know, practices that I’ve learned and had to Institute it from, you know, years and years of playing basketball, beating the crap out of my body, to be honest, and you know, really starting off very unbalanced and, you know, going through a lot of pain throughout my career. So there’s a lot of there’s many practices and modalities I’ve instituted with through myself and to my clients as well that I’ve allowed me to live my most pain-free life. And honestly, most energetic life at a young age now, 29. So I’m getting up there.
As someone who is so focused on movement, sports, health, what have you noticed about living with a writer and the, maybe the challenges of, of that career when it comes to the health side of things?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, number one, and this is something that I actually think about on a day to day basis simply based off of my height, off of being seven foot tall posture posture wise, the, and I mean, again, unless you’re at a standing desk or doing things like that, but more so you’re pretty much a hunched forward. I know you’re a prone position, your pecs become tight. You’re getting a really rounded position, which leads to not much movement throughout the day. I know you guys tend to sit at your computers most of the day. Your eyes are strictly stuck to the blue screen and not getting much sunlight. You know, so as far as regular, everyday health, you become very, very, very, very sedentary you know, in relation to, or in comparison to something like some something, what I do, you know, for a job every day, which is a main reason why I’m driven to do it is I like the physicality part of it. But yeah, I do notice that right. As you guys are very sedentary unfortunately, but
Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned standing desks what other sorts of things might a writer do over the course of the day to work movement into their, their routine?
Yeah, so I actually have a 50, you can call it either a forty five, fifteen or a 50 10 rule. So in terms of sitting down, if you’re having to do, you know, emails, writing, whatever it is, if you’re setting a set for 45 to 50 minutes, I want you to vary that up in terms of interval and say, all right. So if we did 50 minutes, we have to stand for at least 10 minutes, get up and do some quick mobility, stretch out your hips. You know, your pecs, get your upper back, fired up a little more. You can have even just a quick band around to do some band pull aparts. I got really focused on the muscles that you are becoming the most weakened and tightened in terms of your posture. So upper back muscles will be, will tend to become very stretched out front part.
So your PACS, your front part of your body tend to become very tight and very out here together. So we want to do the opposite and work on sitting up taller, getting out, taking your time even for 10 to 15 minutes, go outside, get a walk in, you know, just adding small breaks throughout your day. As, as we’ve talked about before, I’ve seen how, when a deadline is around that, you know if you have a deadline at the end of the day, maybe you’ll sit there for 10, 12, 14 hours straight without moving sometimes without even drinking water. So again, we have to take care of it. We have, what I like to say was we have to take care of our meat suits while the brain is working. That’s what, that’s what Lauren says holds on.
When you talk to them about these, you know, the 50 10 rule or, or this idea of taking physical breaks from your work on a regular schedule, it’s interesting. I often recommend that there’s the Pomodoro technique, lots of productivity. People talk about this idea of taking a break on a regular basis while you’re working. It’s largely for psychological reasons though, to give your brain a break. It’s interesting to bring the physical aspect into it, which makes me think what is the relationship between physical health and mental health too, and productivity and creativity, how might writers improve their output or their writing by getting healthier?
So great question kind of. So I would say by doing so generally speaking, if you’re able to increase your health, you know, so say you feel better on a, on a daily basis, you have more energy, you have more productivity that will spill into any type of creativity any type of writing, you know, anything of that nature, simply for the reasons of, if your metabolism is moving faster, if you’re able to maintain hydration. So you’re staying, you know, much more clear-headed, it was a focus on, you know, set task in front of you. And generally speaking, the body is meant to be in motion. You know, motion is lotion is something I actually say quite a lot. It’s a slogan I’ve tried to trademark, but, and just in terms of most in the body is meant to physically be in motion. I mean, society in general has formed us to be in a place of where most of our life is very sedentary.
We don’t move. Was it, whether it be our form of travel you know our form of even think of on a daily basis of, you know, using escalators elevators, things of that nature, we have been formed into a society where we generally are like meant to not move very much. When the opposite finger, prior to times of big cities and things of that nature, this is going back, you know, a history, we were meant to travel hunter and gatherers. We are meant to be out moving and moving our bodies on a daily basis or for a majority of the day. So I think to combat those things and get back to where we move better as humans, and to simply implement more of those types of modalities into our, our practice every day and allows us to stay more productive from a mental standpoint as well. You know, again, back in those days and have computers and things where they were glued to, you know, the blue screen for hours and hours you know, and the, the body was meant to move and be able to move on a daily basis. So we’re again, living in a society where we’re not able to do that as much. So we have to fight and fight to find the non-negotiables that allows to stay mobile every day. And again, that leads to more productivity overall.
Great. Let’s get into the nutrition side of things a little bit here. You mentioned this idea of working a 10 hour day on the computer, and maybe not even drinking water, I’ve heard coffee often referred to as writer fuel. And so I have some thoughts, or I’m wondering your thoughts on coffee, tea versus water. How might a writer better drink throughout the day?
Yeah. So in terms of hydration in terms of your proper hydration. So I know there’s a huge thing. If you go on the internet, it’ll say everyone tells you to drink a gallon of water. Now that has to be a myth simply for the fact of someone my size, right? Seven feet tall, and say, Lauren, who is five foot eight would not need to consume the same amount of water every single day. Like that’s just not possible. And I actually have a friend who says she’s a five one. She cannot, you know, consume the same amount of water every single day that like that I would be able to in what my, our body needs. So a general basis of thumb as well. I do say cut your weight in half, and that’s how many ounces you want to have per day. So say if someone was to 40, they cut it into half.
They went on the shoot for about 120 ounces of water per day. And you can spread that out. However you would like in terms of ease of access, I always have a nice big glass. It’s actually not a glass, but a large container of water. So keeping something that is large in terms of ounces, just having a larger water bottle around a general more general part of the day, whether it’s on your desk right next to wherever it may be. You’re more apt to just drink it just because it is next to you. You don’t have to get up. And again, the sedentary sedentary part, I know we’re not, we’re trying to go within arms reach. So again, just keeping that around shooting for about half your weight in ounces each day is a pretty solid guideline. Other tea are other tidbits to notice also, honestly, as looking at the color of your urine, if it’s dark and you need more water, if it’s light, you’re doing pretty good for the day.
I know something that you’ve talked about is this idea of not demonizing food groups. But that said, should I worry about too much coffee, too much caffeine, too much tea? Or can I kind of say, I’m getting my hydration and I’m getting a little pick me up to get my writing done as well.
So I’ve, I’ve found that in terms of caffeine consumption, it definitely varies depending on an individual basis. Again, prime example that could use myself I’m as hyper sensitive to caffeine. I can actually maybe say, have like a sip of coffee and I feel it right away. I get hot sweaty. And then I know people writers, I know a couple of the writers who could have, you know, a whole pot of coffee at eight o’clock at night and go right to sleep. So it’s definitely on an individual basis. I would say more thinking from intrinsically and from a house standpoint, knowing that having a stimulant within your body all of the time, whether you feel it or not, it does keep your body in a flight or fight mode. So that being said over time too much caffeine consumption can you know, cause some adrenal problems and use the problems with kidneys, things of that nature.
So it’s being aware of how that’s affecting you and knowing your levels in terms of your your health, blood giving proper blood tests, yearly things of that nature being really in tune with your health, but as a general basis. Yeah, it is on an individual basis. And if you’re still able to get quality rest keyword, quality quality, rest, quality sleep every night, and you’re, you know, you’re managing your coffee consumption and it’s not affecting you on a daily basis. And then the negative ways you have to combat that through motion and proper nutrition and things of that nature should be pretty good. So
You touched on the topic of sleep and rest there. I think this is something that’s often overlooked when people think of health and exercise, they’re like, what do I need to do? How many kilometers do I need to run? Or what food do I need to eat for this idea of sleep playing such a big role in our lives? And I know a lot of writers, you know, there’s, there’s the professional writers like Lauren who were writing 10 hours a day, maybe, but there’s also most of the people I work with have full-time jobs, have families when they get time to write, it might be 10 30 at night. And so w w how do we find this balance of getting enough rest and sleep, but also being able to get the writing and work done that we need to do in our lives.
So I’ve found as I do not have to write quite as much as you guys, but in terms of say, you know, a deadline, I think proper preparation in terms of being able to schedule in your time and still it’s hard. I mean, I will not say it is not easy getting proper sleep is one of the toughest thing that I’ve found personally, and with pretty much most of if not all of my clients, that this is where they struggle with, again, with kids being a huge thing and, you know jobs, again, deadlines, just stress, things of that nature. That is, that is the toughest part. So in terms of the types of hours, get people is to have when, you know, a certain set of hours that you can block together, make sure you’re practicing proper sleep hygiene. So what that means is you are taking 30 minutes before you go to bed to unplug and look away from a blue screen.
From there, I would say getting up, doing some type of mobility, move your body. And then from there, just making sure that you’re taking time to distress, even some slight meditation for five, 10 minutes, deep breathing allow, allow your nervous system to calm down and relax from the stresses of the day, the stresses of looking at the screen you know, things of that nature, practicing proper sleep hygiene and forming a habit, no matter how much time you have, you know, sometimes they’re going to be three hours, you know, and other days you may have nine or 10 of rom vacation, you know making sure that you have that proper practice of getting you into the right mindset to receive this rest and your body to fully heal is is key.
You touched on the topic of habits there. When I’m working with my writing clients, I tend to book white, absolutely only book a month at a time as the shortest, because I really think from a coaching perspective, that habit formation of weekly regular calls is where I can help people the best because there’s momentum and it grows, and the habits are formed and clients see success. And I suspect it’s very similar with exercise and probably nutrition as well. Can you talk a bit about the role habit formation plays in success?
Oh yeah. A hundred percent. So in terms of nourish and you know, the, I have these four main pelvis, so as nutrition, movement habits, healthy habits and success. So in terms of, let’s say healthy habits is what on the prior three are what lead us to the success in the end. So that means that healthy habits is number one in my book. I mean, honestly, I think if you’re able to build healthy habits, you then from there can plug in, you know, proper nutrition, your work your workouts, your movement, things of that nature in terms of forming healthy habits, I think they’re necessary just realistically they’re key in terms of being able to lead yourself to long-term success. So for example, for my nutrition climbs, I have them sign up for three months upfront. I want people to be committed to the health, to be willing, to make the sacrifices and to, to be able to honestly form those healthy habits it takes time to do so.
I think there’s a, there’s a common misconception that most of us whether it’s us, ourselves, or things that we see out in the marketplace, you know, let’s lose 40 pounds in two weeks, or, you know what I mean, let’s drop 50 pounds in a month. Like these are unrealistic expectations that are set upon us. And whether we put on some extra body fat, or we become, you know, slightly unhealthy than we would like to be, we have to realize that we didn’t do that in one day. We didn’t do it in one week. We have to commit to the process and forming these healthy habits over time that will lead to the long-term success and consistency.
Absolutely. I worked with a lot of the writers who come to work with me. It’s like, often they’ve already read 10 books on writer’s craft. They know what they’re supposed to do, but it’s executing it. That becomes the challenge. So on the health side of things, people generally have a sense of what’s healthy food and what isn’t people generally have a sense. They should probably be exercising or moving their body regularly. How do you help people over that gap of knowing what you should be doing and then act actually executing on it?
So in terms of what I find when it comes to exactly what you’re speaking about. So when it comes to taking action, right, taking that first step is where most of us tend to rely on motivation. I, I think something I preach to my clients again and again, is to realize that motivation is very fleeting. Motivation is, is going to come and go based upon it could be based upon quality arrested, got whether you had a great cup of coffee, whatever it is that day motivation is not. What’s going to allow you to lead yourself to that longterm consistency what’s going to allow you to do that is exactly like how you talked about the way you engage with your clients on a week to week, day to day basis. It’s taking those healthy habits and applying those everyday, taking the education that we learn and applying those day in and day out to now, then look back in hindsight, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days out. Wow. Look at all of these changes that I’ve made. Look at all these things that I’ve been able to do and realizing again, that it takes time for us to get the Rome wasn’t built in a day. We have to, you know, take it one step at a time. We get the actual,
What about that? I think most who have found themselves in a bit of a rut out, you know, an unhealthy rut. It’s not like they’re not just exercising. Like let’s say someone has an exercise in years, eats terrible food and maybe drinks too much. Do you tackle all those things at once? Do you kind of say one thing at a time, how do you go about helping someone with multiple issues that need to be addressed on the health front?
Mm. So, Ooh, excuse me. So I think when it comes to, when it comes to realizing that it is just more than one thing, you know, each client is different in terms of what their needs are. I think when there’s someone who has felt like they’ve fallen off the wagon in terms of health, nutrition, movement, kind of all the, all of the boxes are being left unchecked. I think it’s starting with whatever is going to be the, the easiest thing to change. And then building ourselves up from there, from tackling the more difficult and rooted psychological effects that have caused us to, to be in the position we are. So a lot of times what I find works, honestly, the best as we started with the nurse pillar of movement on a day-to-day basis, we have to move, whether it’s either getting up to just go to the toilet, or if it’s getting up for our bed or something of that nature, we’re going to move our arms to just pick things up, you know, so starting there, it always seems to be a place at which I can start with most people, whether it’s going on a five minute walk for some clients I’ve had is to the point of, it’s just simply, I was about to get a rep in, but simply just standing up from your, your chair where you’re sitting and going back down and doing some body weight, squats movement is honestly say motion is lotion.
It sounds funny, but honestly, again, the human body isn’t meant to be in, in motion. So not only by being in motion and, you know, spring movement, we’re also causing ourselves to take action by taking action. We can then take that. We can then take that momentum and roll that in. So our discipline, which allows us to then stick to it consistently, again, not relying on our motivation to get us to go to the next step.
So we’ve touched on movement. We’ve touched on nutrition, we’ve touched on sleep. But I know something else that you’re interested in is simply being outside. And I know for myself going into the second year of the pandemic here that’s been a challenge. You know, we we’ve, we we’ve had all this you know, news, like don’t go outside, don’t interact. And I know it’s played into all my like worst Gora phobic hermit tendencies, you know, I’m most happy doing this, sitting at a computer, talking with writers, doing interviews or working on my own writing, you know? And so when the government says, like, don’t go inside, I’m like, great. But you know, at this 0.2 years in, I feel like I am starting to feel the effects of being divorced from outside. So can you talk about the role that just nature and fresh air and whatnot plays in health?
Oh yeah. A hundred percent. So getting outside in terms of say, whether it be just movement or your exercise in general as well, I will always try to shade my clients towards doing, getting outside of simply for the fresh air, what it allows you to do in terms of calming your nervous system. Number one Kevin, I know where, where we’re located in upstate New York. So I don’t know if you know how the weather is here. It’s pretty much gray and gloomy pretty much every day nonstop. Doesn’t, you know, it’s, it’s crazy. So that being said on the days that when there is some sunshine, right, we try to capitalize on those days, getting out in sunshine, honestly again, in terms of managing your stress it’s great for your skin and you know, weed naturally occurring. We do produce some amount of vitamin D.
But again, depending on where you are, sometimes I will suggest for people and I actually do so myself, take a vitamin D supplement simply for the fact of not enough sunlight and what it can do in terms of you know, your mental clarity in terms of your mood and, you know, not getting enough sunlight can, can lead to and have experienced seasonal depression, you know, which is, which is a big thing in places where the weather is consistently, you know, not great, but getting outside, enjoying the sun, trying to soak up as much sunshine as you can and on a daily basis. And again, if there aren’t days where the sun is going to be out, still getting outside and moving your body outside I like to go barefoot a lot in the grass. I allow myself to get grounded in the soil and the roots, and it, it there’s a many calming effects of that as well.
And again, it helps to what that does is that helps to work on rebuilding your circadian rhythm throughout the day. As we get all over the place from looking at screens, you know, that strictly just blue light nonstop and living that sedentary lifestyle. What it does is allows us to get back in a flow in terms of building that healthy sleep hygiene in terms of getting quality rest. So it all works, everything works synergistically in terms of being outside in nature. There’s actually a study that I saw on it. It was spending 30 minutes a day out in nature, but this has to be out like where there’s only trees and out like, you know, out in a field or something of that nature, not where there’s houses and things around, like, not out in the neighborhood per se. It set you a 75% more or less likely to keep your stress levels like down for your entire life, entire life, like 30 minutes a day, that’s all you need. So that’s always a goal personally for me, is in terms of on where I’m living to be somewhere near some nature. So I can experience that everyday, just simply for the health benefits and what it offers to everyone. You’ve mentioned
Blue light a couple of times now, I think I’m kind of casually aware of it, but could you use it? Is this something I should be worried about as a writer? Can you speak a bit about blue light and what it is and then whether I should be concerned?
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So blue light is it’s the, the back screen or the lighting that is provided from most of, if not, pretty much all of our electronic devices what, it, it just, it lights up the screen. It’s the way in which our eyes are attracted to the screen. But what it does is in reference to what I was speaking about before is too much blue light. So you can get blue light from other sources not simply from just a screen, but again, we’re most of us look. So that’s where our attention is going to what too much blue light will do is it will start to throw off our circadian rhythm, which that’s why. So prime example if you found that you’ve looked at a screen or looking at your phone 30 hour, hour, and a half before, you’re going to bed, and you’re trying to turn it off.
For many people, they’re unable to go to sleep right away. It takes them sometimes an hour or two hours and, and, or the quality of their sleep will be very poor. So again, we have to learn to balance and to go and to control. I thought I had some movie glasses right here too, but I was gonna say, so there are glasses that others is really big orange glasses. What they do is they allow you to, again, filter through the amount of blue light that you’re getting on a daily basis. If it’s something you haven’t tried, I would suggest to you, and honestly, anybody that’s a writer anybody who looks at a screen all day, that it would be, be great in terms of being able to manage that. And in terms of your health, if you did nothing else, if you did, didn’t take care of your nutrition, you didn’t go move. You didn’t do any of those things. Now I do suggest them. If you simply did this, I think you would start to notice changes in your sleep patterns.
All right. So if people have heard this, they want to learn more about you. They want to see what programs you offer services. How can people get in touch with you? Where should we send them?
Yeah, for sure. So I do have a website is Nourish with Ty. And I also have Instagram. You can get me right on there. And I had nurse with Ty also, and email Tyler at nurse with Ty. So nurse with Ty, as the theme here, guys you had checked me out. I also have a podcast. I’m also a fitness health, wellness podcast called talking fit. Right. It’s on apple and iTunes. So any information I’m on there, Facebook, wherever you are you guys
Fantastic? Well, this is the, this is the we’re recording this Saturday, the 18th of September. And I know you have a challenge coming up. Did you want to pitch your challenge to folks?
Yeah, for sure. So I have a challenge starting up actually two days, September 20th. I is the season of change challenge. Now this challenge is going to be geared towards either people who are beginners have never really paid attention too much to their nutrition. You know, I’ve never really realized how they’re feeling themselves on a daily basis. And it’s also, honestly, for people who have fallen off maybe a bit from the summer I know summertime and honestly probably the past three to four weeks is a huge time for people for vacations and things of that nature. So if they need a little boost and need to get back on track and get some consistency and some accountability in their life, this is a chance to do so if they’re interested again, check me out on any of the information I’ve provided before and yeah. Look forward to seeing you guys there.
Fantastic. Tyler, thank you so much for being a guest on the show today.
Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.
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