Anna-Louise Coaching

28/02/2026

It felt quite emotional writing this one and looking at photos of so many missed opportunities or experiences that were meant to be so beautiful but now they are memorable for all the wrong reasons ✌🏼🌻🖤

There’s something in the health and fitness world that we don’t talk about enough. We are hearing about it a little more now which is fabulous but still, not as openly as would be beneficial. We're not talking 'over training', 'toughness', carbohydrates, HIIT...we're talking energy availability....

28/02/2026

I shared on my post earlier in the week that my swimming feels dreadful at the moment, and it does…but not when I’m actually doing it. I actually feel stronger and smoother than ever.

Do you know when it feels like trash?

When I go on Strava and look at my pace per 100m compared with others that I follow.

How sad is that?!

I feel good, until I go online. I only felt slow when I checked Strava.

I’m working really hard on this – there will always be someone, many people most likely, better than you. That isn’t to say we can’t work to improve, that’s important for many of us but comparing is a horrible use of our energy…I’m trying to use that energy to work on improving myself!

Repeat after me…comparison changes nothing about my actual performance. I felt strong until the internet told me I wasn’t.

Easier said than done, believe me, I’m living it, progress feels slow but comparison is a horrible use of our time. ✌🏼🌻🖤

26/02/2026

Saturday was a lesson in teeny tiny changes making all the difference.

Bike fit and oh so necessary, swim coaching. All with the brilliant — who I can’t even explain how grateful I am for the support of this project. The kind of support that makes it possible.

We had a bike fit on my pride and joy and then headed to the pool to start all over again because I feel like a disastrous swimmer at this point! We looked at what I think I’m doing versus what I’m actually doing… pick apart and rebuild.

Humbled and very grateful…I’m excited, we have work to do! ✌🏼🌻🖤

24/02/2026

I work with young people every day and there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t hear about the power of Tik Tok – I don’t go on it myself, seems quite toxic, but have been watching the rise of “skinny tok” with a heavy heart from a far – here’s the thing.

NO BODY is ‘wrong’, weight loss isn’t ‘wrong’ but we’ve been here before and know how damaging this messaging can be.

As someone training hard for performance, to see what my body can do and how strong and energised I can feel I am intentionally eating more than I ever have. More total energy. More consistency. More carbohydrates – because the body demands it.

If I’m totally honest, even with a background in nutrition and years of experience at this point, fuelling properly while watching “thinness” trend again is not easy.

When everything is telling us that we should try to achieve ‘smaller’ it’s quietly teaching us that hunger is a virtue, we shouldn’t eat unless we are hungry, fullness is wrong.

I am consistently telling myself, under the guidance of Helen Money Nutrition and Coach Dan from Club Coaction that fullness is necessary, glycogen storage is necessary, muscle repair is necessary, performance often requires a surplus.

These trends are NOT promoting performance in sport or in life…especially not in cancer recovery for the young people that I work with.
We CANNOT normalise training hard, being super lean and under-fuelling our bodies and expect health to come along with it.

Strength, resilience, function matter SO much more than shrinking yourself.

And for those, like me, working hard on fuelling well while the algorithm tells you it’s wrong – you are NOT weak for finding it difficult…you are courageous! ✌🏼🌻🖤

21/02/2026

I’m doing a LOT of work at the moment with the guidance of .helen and fabulous to increase my carbohydrate intake to properly fuel training. I feel FULL!

There’s a lot of debate in fitness circles about our “preferred” fuel source, particularly in endurance sport.

Carbohydrate is the body’s most efficient fuel source for moderate to high-intensity exercise…endurance, strength training, or repeated power, the evidence says so.

Carbohydrates are broken down into glucose and stored as glycogen in our muscle and our liver. Glycogen can be utilised quickly and used through a process we call ‘glycolysis’ to produce energy at a much faster rate than fat allows.

Dietary fat is still essential to get in and still helpful, especially at lower intensities, but it can’t generate energy quickly enough to sustain higher intensity efforts. It’s science.

Protein is NOT a primary energy substrate during training and so is not a direct replacement for carbohydrates as part of your energy intake. Using it as a replacement for adequate carbohydrate intake compromises performance and recovery, despite what you may think.

We are working on the mindset that under-fuelling carbohydrates is a limitation. It DEFINITELY isn’t a badge of honour.

Eat away my friends. ✌🏼🌻🖤

19/02/2026

I got upset about ‘skinny tok’ and wrote a blog about it…

I work with young people every day, and there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t hear about the power of TikTok.I don’t use it personally; preference, partly preservation of my own sanity — but I’ve been watching the rise of “skinny tok” and the 'skinny' trend, from a distance with...

19/02/2026

In 12 weeks I’ll be on the start line of in beautiful Scotland — my first organised event as part of a few big organised training days prepping for the 900-mile challenge for MOVE.

I am so excited to ride in that part of the world – it looks breath-taking, but I’m still scared I won’t make it up the hills and Scottish weather does what the hell it wants! All good practice I guess – weather hardiness, fuelling, pacing, resilience, all that jazz.

The ’12 weeks to go’ email yesterday reminding me of another exciting (but all too close!) stepping stone that I’m lucky enough to get to tackle this year, also get to ride in a jersey for this one!

12 weeks to build endurance, strength in these pins, nail some more big fuelling and get comfy being very, very uncomfy! Also backing it up with another big hilly one at Hampshire hilly hundred the following week so to see how we recover is exciting too.

So great to have some milestones to hit as part of the longer journey, and sharing those with bigger communities of athletes is fun too! ✌🏼🌻🖤

17/02/2026

I talk a lot about my training – partly because I love it but also because I’m not very good at asking…

But I’m learning with a project like this you have to, but also people want to know where their hard earned pennies ACTUALLY go.

So £5 and a young person living with or recovering from cancer can have a set of resistance bands delivered to their home – simple to most of us? For them it means they can start to move and rebuild strength that they lost so quickly before they even knew it. They get to start getting their body back with such a simple piece of equipment that feel manageable to start.

£25, less than half of a weekly shop for most of us, and that young person can have an hour of 1-1 specialist cancer rehabilitation support tailored specifically for them, from the comfort and safety of their own home, so that they can start to navigate this crazy life again more confidently.

That reassurance and someone helping them to realise that their body is still capable so personally, is a ‘money can’t buy’.

If we reach my lofty target for this project (I’d LOVE it if we could start to creep it up there early!), we can help at least 6 more young people to go through multiple hours of that support alongside reaching HUNDREDS more in the years to come.

Thank you so, so much for supporting this work that means so much to me and families going through it all.

https://www.justgiving.com/page/anna-powell-4?utm_medium=FR&utm_source=CL

14/02/2026

This Valentine’s Day – another of the loves of my life pictured right here 🌻

Physical activity is endless, it can’t be ‘finished’, it will change, of course, but if we want to be strong and healthy it should almost always form part of our lives in whatever way looks and feels good for our goals, needs and preferences.

Do you know, we lost my beautiful Nanna last year to cancer, and just weeks before she left us, she was confined to her room but she was still talking about going to the chair exercises down the hall? She was in her 90s and lived on her own right up until she left her home just weeks before – not a bungalow, she didn’t drive, had a better social life than us all. She walked, she danced, she did everything herself, gardening…the lot. An inspiration as to how truly it should be done.

So, whatever your goals, I hope they don’t finish there – I hope they allow you to settle into this daily mindset, routine and habits to allow progress long term. If we embrace the parts that we enjoy to carry forward into different seasons of our lives it becomes a whole lot easier! ✌🏼🌻🖤

12/02/2026

I chatted last week about the inspiration I’m taking at the moment from others, I felt this particularly hard after chatting with and seeing some amazing people speak at the Run Show in Birmingham this year.

chatted about getting more women into the endurance space with a couple of other fabulous women and this line really stuck with me.

I’m a massive advocate of women in sport, making it accessible to every BODY, whatever movement looks like for them. The finish line looks different for us all – it might be in sport, it might not be.

But whatever the finish line you are working towards at the moment, ladies, I hope it gives you the powerful feeling that you so deserve ✌🏼🌻🖤

07/02/2026

There’s a couple of newbies here this week which is so lovely to see, thank you for showing an interest in what we’re up to and welcome!

Off the back of my podcast with Jen at The Toughest Finish Line and a chat with my own therapist yesterday too there’s a little something I wanted to chat about.

I asked the therapist I work with yesterday, do I really live with depression or is it as a result of physiological complications within my body impacting my mental health? Maybe my mental health resulted in those physiological complications, I don’t really know.

Answer - I don’t think anyone really knows. For me, it’s an ongoing battle as I learn to manage a myriad of health complications as I moved through my 20s and now my 30s, mostly related to my mental health and historical disordered eating.

I still often feel heavy, sad, ‘other’, different to others, like I don’t belong in anyone’s circle. I don’t understand why some things seem so easy for others when simply existence feels difficult for me sometimes. I am chronically lonely despite having the most wonderful people in the world around me, I carry a cloud over me almost constantly and I wish I could explain why.

BUT the majority of the time now I feel positive, I have learned to manage those things – this is something I have promised myself I will chat about more this year because if I can help just one person to not feel so ‘other’ to everyone else, then that would be so special. ✌🏼🌻🖤

05/02/2026

I’m really pleased to share that .helen has joined the charity project challenge for MOVE as a nutrition partner 🤍

As you know, I’m a nutritionist myself, I’m a big believer in practising what I preach and have recognised that on this journey I need a little bit of external support, not from an education perspective but all the other wonderful things that come from having a good nutrition coach on board.

In the last couple of weeks I have realised the gravity of the challenge ahead. Training load is building and that excites me hugely but I’m nervous for the challenge itself is the long and short of it!

With a disordered eating history it can bring its challenges when those thoughts inevitably rear their ugly head, particularly with endurance training, having another paid of very experienced eyes on my fuelling, for injury prevention and performance is invaluable.

Sustainability in training, health, and showing that performance and care for our bodies can, and should, coexist is the name of the game here, you know that by now.

Working with Helen allows me to take the pressure off doing everything on my own, that’s proving tricky for my little brain, and instead focus on training, recovery, and the wider purpose of the challenge. I’m so grateful to have Helen supporting me as I prepare.

I’ll be sharing regular updates, not just what I’m eating and how I’m fuelling sessions, but how we’re approaching fuelling in a way that supports both performance and wellbeing because I’m not making it to Edinburgh on July 4th if I’m injured or unwell ✌🏼🌻🖤