Wave goodbye to the one-size-fits-all diet dogma and say hello to a bespoke banquet of balance and nutrition. I promise, by the end of our podcast, you'll be equipped with the tools and strategies you need to craft a meal plan that sings in harmony with both your taste buds and your health goals. We're not just talking about any meal plan; think of this as your own culinary compass, guiding you through the jungle of juggling work, family, and that ever-elusive 'me' time. With actionable worksheets and a treasure trove of resources, you'll emerge with a blueprint to navigate the complexities of daily nutrition, tailored just for you.
Ever feel like breakfast is a chore rather than a choice? Or maybe you find yourself reaching for snacks out of boredom rather than hunger? You're not alone, and this episode is the ally you've been looking for. I share my personal battle with morning munchies and midday cravings, revealing simple yet transformative shifts that can turn your eating habits from foe to friend. We'll explore ways to kickstart your day with zest, outsmart snack attacks, and decode the emotional eating enigma. And because we're all about practical advice, there are plenty of savvy swaps and smart strategies to pocket along the way.
As we wrap up this nutritional novella, I want to thank you for your voracious appetite for knowledge and your zest for better health. Don't miss the grand finale, where your burning questions take center stage in an in-depth Q&A, garnished with a special offer exclusively for our listeners. So, while the Facebook group might be taking a bow, the conversation is far from over. I'm committed to continuing this journey with each of you, ensuring our community plate is always full of support, encouragement, and a dash of delicious wisdom. Stay tuned for the next step in our collective path to a healthier, happier you.
Wave goodbye to the one-size-fits-all diet dogma and say hello to a bespoke banquet of balance and nutrition. I promise, by the end of our podcast, you'll be equipped with the tools and strategies you need to craft a meal plan that sings in harmony with both your taste buds and your health goals. We're not just talking about any meal plan; think of this as your own culinary compass, guiding you through the jungle of juggling work, family, and that ever-elusive 'me' time. With actionable worksheets and a treasure trove of resources, you'll emerge with a blueprint to navigate the complexities of daily nutrition, tailored just for you.
Ever feel like breakfast is a chore rather than a choice? Or maybe you find yourself reaching for snacks out of boredom rather than hunger? You're not alone, and this episode is the ally you've been looking for. I share my personal battle with morning munchies and midday cravings, revealing simple yet transformative shifts that can turn your eating habits from foe to friend. We'll explore ways to kickstart your day with zest, outsmart snack attacks, and decode the emotional eating enigma. And because we're all about practical advice, there are plenty of savvy swaps and smart strategies to pocket along the way.
As we wrap up this nutritional novella, I want to thank you for your voracious appetite for knowledge and your zest for better health. Don't miss the grand finale, where your burning questions take center stage in an in-depth Q&A, garnished with a special offer exclusively for our listeners. So, while the Facebook group might be taking a bow, the conversation is far from over. I'm committed to continuing this journey with each of you, ensuring our community plate is always full of support, encouragement, and a dash of delicious wisdom. Stay tuned for the next step in our collective path to a healthier, happier you.
Hello guys, welcome to day four of the food freedom experience. I hope you have been learning a lot. I also want to say that, even though we had all this information, the main goal of this four day experience was I kind of wanted you to get a different perspective on nutrition from the fad diets that are out there, and you have to eat XYZ and look at nutrition through the eyes of me. This is how I see nutrition. This is how I teach nutrition to my clients. Um, you know, there's not necessarily good and bad foods. It's about fitting what you want into your meals while also trying to eat healthy, and it is possible and it's different depending on everybody's goals. So, with all that information too, I will leave this group up for a little bit, a few days, before I make it go dormant. Essentially, I don't know if you're still going to have access to stuff, but Facebook allows you to pretty much make the group inactive. That you can't delete groups. It's weird. So I will definitely be emailing out all of the roundup documents that give you all the teachings and the worksheets and let it sink in. You know you're not going to learn everything in one day, so give it some time to sink in and really absorb the information, go back and revisit it, try to implement some of the things, let your brain process through it, because it is a learning experience. I also have a very fun offer for you guys. Um, with this being the last day, I will post that in the group in a separate post. Being the last day, I will post that in the group in a separate post. Definitely a fun offer that you guys might want to check out, okay. So, anyways, we're going to go into the Q&A. So this is really weird, but I'm on a screen recording app and apparently Facebook. I saw that they were getting rid of like third party apps. They won't allow you to use third party apps on their website and when I was trying to screen record in Facebook, it would not let me.
Speaker 1:
So I copy and pasted all of the questions and things over into a Google Doc and we're gonna go over it that way, okay. So the first section is I made a post on day one that said what is your biggest struggle with nutrition? And I said that I was gonna answer those at a later date because I thought that would be good to touch on. I mean nutrition, and I said that I was going to answer those at a later date because I thought that would be good to touch on. I mean, tackling your biggest thing that you struggle with is going to help you greatly in your journey. So again, I copy and paste them no names, but for you watching if your answer is here, pay attention. And for those of you who did not ask, I'm sure that you probably struggle with some of these as well, so you will definitely get plenty of value. As a side note, I did take some of the questions from the post I made this morning. For those of you who did not get a chance to answer a question, please go back to that post. That'll be the day for Q&A post. Post your question there and I'll be happy to create a separate personal video to answer that question for you. Okay, I'm just on time restrictions and this is when I have time to record the video for you guys. All right.
Speaker 1:
So, diving into the Q&A First, we have let me get this little bar out of the screen here. Okay, first we have the biggest struggle meal planning or lack of I fail to plan, therefore, I plan to fail, and by far this is the repeat most biggest thing that I get. The biggest struggle I get is the meal planning, and you know it sounds simple, but I think getting good at meal planning is going to come with understanding all the other nutrition components that we talked about. Right, it's very contextual and, again, very unique to everybody. I have people that are shift nurses. They're working 24 hour shifts and they need to figure out what they can eat on the go when they can't sit down. I have people that don't have time to cook. They have certain dietary restrictions. Maybe they don't like to eat certain things, they're picky eaters. They're cooking for their family. So there's a lot of different restrictions. But I am going to redirect you and this is for everybody who struggles with meal planning. So I chatted with this woman a little bit more and she has a unique case.
Speaker 1:
But in general with meal planning, I literally please go back to the step-by-step guide of meal planning, because when we talk about meal planning, meal planning is literally sitting down before your week starts and figuring out what am I gonna eat? What am I gonna eat for breakfast? What am I gonna eat for snacks? What am I gonna eat for lunch? What going to eat for snacks? What am I going to eat for lunch? What am I going to eat for dinner? And you have to plan it. You have to plan it. If you go in with no plan, the likelihood of you eating in a way that fits your goals is not going to happen. You're going to feel rushed, you're going to be tired. You're going to have decision fatigue. You're going to be just grabbing random foods. You're going to feel panicked. You're schedule and sit down and figure out your meals. Follow this step-by-step guide.
Speaker 1:
I give you prompts to search to find good meals and fit it to what your needs are, because everybody's a little different, and I will tell you that this was a little bit of a trial and error process. I have a Pinterest board on my Pinterest profile of healthy recipe ideas and anything that's a success. I keep on there and I've tried foods and it doesn't work out for some reason. Maybe it doesn't taste good, maybe it wasn't filling, maybe I didn't like it, maybe it was too hard to make. That's okay. You're going to run through that. But ideally, after weeks and weeks and weeks of doing this, you will kind of create your own recipe database of healthy recipes. Now I have my go-to's. I kind of mindlessly do it, and this process takes me a couple minutes. So once you figure out what you want to do, it's a matter of prepping it, planning it, and it makes your week so much easier. You don't have to think about the foods you're going to eat, you don't have to figure out how it's going to fit into your goals. You simply just make the meals, eat them and have a peace of mind knowing that you're eating the right things. Okay, so it is pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Okay, so definitely refer back to my step-by-step meal planning guide.
Speaker 1:
We have number two, which is the biggest struggle, is breakfast. This is another big one that I get from people, so I would need a little bit of context about this. But as far as breakfast goes, if you don't feel hungry when you wake up in the morning, okay, this is usually from an underlying issue with people whether it's crappy sleep. You eat late the night before, you're a generally stressed out person and you may not even realize you're stressed, so you kind of don't have an appetite. I've noticed a lot of things with this, but in general, you do want to try to eat something when you wake up. It helps start your metabolism and helps start everything going and it gives you energy. And I don't know about you but me. If I'm like, oh, I'm not too hungry, within an hour or two of moving, I'm starving, I'm stuck at work, I have nothing to eat, and then I usually make a bad decision.
Speaker 1:
So start small, right, because you're probably not going to be super hungry. But you have to train your body to want breakfast, because it is possible, just like when we diet and we have hunger cues and they kind of go away after a while we can train ourselves to want to actually eat a little bit more. Okay, so I would start with something simple. A protein shake is a great option. And fruit maybe you could do yogurt and fruit, something light, but keep it balanced and nutritious. And ideally we do want to lead with protein. In the morning, a bowl of oatmeal is good, like I said, with some fruit in there. So start small, see if you can build up to a more full meal where maybe you make like a veggie omelet or you make those little egg veggie bites, you kind of bake them in the oven and they're grab and go. You can do protein pancakes, you can have avocado toast with some hard-boiled eggs. There are many, many breakfast options. It is my favorite meal. So if you need more ideas, feel free to message me. I can definitely shoot you some, but that's just my suggestion there as far as breakfast. So start small and build up with it. You will feel better for sure for doing this and you're less likely to eat more later on in the day because you're starving, okay, so we have that.
Speaker 1:
The next one, snacking when you're bored. Okay, this is a big one. I feel like these are all gonna be big ones. You have two routes to go. When there's anything that pertains to emotional eating, I would say boredom eating does fall under the emotional eating category. You gotta figure out why you're doing it or when you're doing it. Right You're doing it. Or when you're doing it right, you're doing it because you're bored. But are you actually hungry, or you just do need to do something, right? So if you're hungry, I would encourage you to actually snack, but make it healthier, lower calorie snacks. So maybe you snack on some veggies with hummus, it could be pretzels. You plan little snacks into your day that fit your goals, but they're going to be healthier choices.
Speaker 1:
Fruit, I know me for the longest time I had that reaction that I needed dessert after dinner. And I still think it's possible I can fit dessert in without going over my goals, but it just I didn't want to do it right now and I just occasionally eat dessert now when I want it. So every time I had that craving I actually replaced it with fruit, because fruit was sweet and it was enough that it kind of got that habit out. And it was tough the first one or two weeks, but now I literally never have dessert after dinner anymore. It's a treat for me now and I don't even think about it, which is crazy, because I grew up in a house that we ate ice cream every single night. I saw my dad do it, my sister do it, we literally ate Breyers ice cream, turkey Hill, whatever Chocolate marshmallow was my favorite like every single night. And that's a hard habit to break, literally for years of my life, over 20 years, and I broke it. So okay. So that's number one. You can replace it with something healthier and then maybe eventually you won't even feel the need to do it at all. Or you can, when you're feeling that way, replace it with another habit, whether you like.
Speaker 1:
Okay, I'm going to go read, I'm going to go work out, I'm going to go clean my house, I'm going to do something else, something to get your mind off it and train your brain. Like, hey, when I feel bored, I'm not going to eat, I'm going to do X, whatever that thing is Okay. So that's my advice there. It 100% works if you implement it. Next thing emotional eating, so kind of in the same roundhouse when things go bad, I tend to want to eat bad things. When I'm feeling happy and good, I tend to be motivated to eat good things. So this is interesting.
Speaker 1:
I actually touched upon this in the group messenger chat. If you guys aren't reading those, definitely go in and check, because I dropped some really good stuff yesterday. I'm actually probably gonna make that a post in a podcast episode because it's so good. So, um, I think a lot of this has to do with marketing, okay, and I want you to think about it, and I think once we know where things come from, it gives us power. So think about how they market healthy food.
Speaker 1:
Right, healthy food is often marketed. You see it in. Healthy food is rarely marketed like whole food. You don't really see ads for it, um one, because they don't make money from it and and two, you know the other stuff is cheaper and easier and more fun to to market and make um. But two, when you're in movies people are going on a diet. Oh, why are you eating a salad? You know there's always a negative association. Or the healthy food looks gross, it looks bland, um, crappy, tasteless. Oh, I gotta eat healthy, I gotta go on a diet. Doctor told me I gotta go on a diet. You know, have this veggie juice.
Speaker 1:
It's never like the meals I teach you guys, right, like how you can eat healthy, like you can have a big mac, um burger casserole, and it fits your macros, it's nutrient dense and it has whole ingredients. Right, you know, having the pancakes, like fun protein pancakes. I'm just trying to think of stuff I did fish sandwiches, there's healthy candy bars, snickers bars, a recipe I just sent out to my teenest tidbits email, high protein cookie dip from the Christmas time. So like they never show those things, it's always the negative connotation with healthy and I think that's one reason. And also just from growing up, cultural experiences, family experiences, it's like when you feel sad, let's get ice cream, let's, you know, burgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, greasy food, potato chips. These are also fun and exciting. Anytime you go to the bar, we're gonna get, you know, wings and greasy food. It's so fun. And every time we go to a party there's going to be cake and fried chicken.
Speaker 1:
So it's always it's in our brain that we associate it with like unhealthy, more less nutrient, dense food with and more processed foods, with good times, and healthy food is generally viewed as bad or annoying, or cumbersome and gross. And I think I challenge you to reframe your mind around it, reframe your personal experience. You know, think about when you're eating that food. You know, eat the fruit when you're happy and be like, wow, this big fruit bowl is so good, it's so vibrant, it's so delicious and I love it. Same thing when you cook a healthy meal oh, my God, we're having so much fun, we're hanging out with friends, this is a delicious, wonderful meal, I'm having such a good time, I'm happy.
Speaker 1:
So start to associate healthy food with happy feelings and I think when you are feeling bad, and even when you're feeling bad, like I said, try to turn that positive note around, like I'm going to eat this fruit. It's going to make me feel better, it's going to make me feel happy. It's going to be a lot easier when things are bad to change and turn that around right. So that's something. Again, it's a deeper work type thing, which a lot of these things are, which is why people struggle with nutrition so much. But if you work at it, putting a little bit of effort in now pays off in the long run by far, and you got to ask yourself what's the alternative. If you don't do anything, you're going to go backwards even more. You're going to gain more weight. You're going to possibly set yourself up for, like diabetes, heart disease. You know certain things that are preventable through diet, so you might as well just work on it and be better off for it, right? So we have that.
Speaker 1:
Then the next question want versus need and using food as a reward or item for celebration. I think what we said there kind of covered that as well. The rewarder item for celebration. I think we need to attach non-food things. I'm sure you've heard that Like hey, when I reach this milestone, I'm going to buy myself some cute workout clothes and make it a non-food item to reward yourself. Hello, I think we've also been programmed. When we were kids I know me growing up Pizza Hut had the. If you read books you got a free pizza. Like everything was food rewards for me growing up, so I totally get it with that. But again, if we try to have it as a non-food reward, that will definitely help. And same thing with the want versus need.
Speaker 1:
I think just catching ourself in the moment and it's an emotional thing, being like you know I'm okay that I want this right now, but I don't need it and it's not going to serve me and my goals. So your desire to reach your goals in that instance has to be better than your desire to want the item Okay. So that's why you need a strong purpose and remind your purpose of being healthy and you want to feel confident. You don't want to feel uncomfortable in your clothes or your body and revisit that why? Because that why should be stronger than eating an ice cream bar. Right, and it's okay to treat yourself every once in a while. When you do treat yourself, you know I go out once a week to eat and I don't track anything and I have a great time and and throughout the week I incorporate fun foods into my meals. But I make sure I hit my goals. But when you hit those, it feels good. It feels better when you intentionally plan it and you eat good and then when you finally do actually eat some fun foods, it just feels better, it tastes better. So that's some things, some tips for that.
Speaker 1:
The next thing meal prep and ideas that are healthy and filling. Yes, so some of the components that we were going through throughout the days and making sure it has enough protein in there, because protein keeps us full. So keeping protein high and fiber through veggies and fruits. It's going to be lower calorie, but adding that volume in to keep the meal balanced. So many times our meals are like super high carb, super high fat, even though it may look okay on the outside, which is why I encourage you guys to log your food to see what's in it, and we just simply need to eat more protein in the day or make our meals a little bit more balanced. You know, instead of going for a granola bar, if we paired that granola bar with a high protein Greek yogurt or a protein shake, that would digest a lot slower and we would feel fuller. With that. There's context.
Speaker 1:
I will say that me personally, and I'm sure some of you guys can relate. Everybody's body is different. I have eaten healthy, balanced meals that had good macros that leave me hungry in an hour or two, okay. So for me personally, I know my go-to meals to eat from trial and error and experimentation that are going to work. I wish I could spoon feed it to you and say hey, you know, if you eat this combo you're going to stay full, but it doesn't work that way, so you have to. Also I apologize if you hear my Roomba in the background I had to lock myself in my bedroom, but you have to go through some trial and error.
Speaker 1:
So, again, pay attention to your body when you eat a certain meal, notice how, if you get hungry fast and you're, you're going to know and notice if it keeps you fuller longer and incorporate more of the things that keep you fuller longer versus the things that, um, you know, keep, like, make you hungry instantly. So that is a thing that I've ran into. For instance, if I do avocado toast with hard-boiled eggs, as much as I love that meal, for some reason I'm hungry. I am hungry instantly. But if I have like eggs with egg whites and veggies and an English muffin with butter, keeps me full, keeps me full. If I have my protein pancakes keeps me full I don't know what it is because the avocado toast is healthy. There's other things too that should be filling and they're not for me. Just the way my body is, it does not like it.
Speaker 1:
So, you know, be open, use some trial and error, go in and obviously make healthy, balanced meals. Use all the tools you learned today, but just be aware, be a little scientist for your body and keep track. All right, the next thing keeping on track for a while and then getting decision and planning fatigue, and then that derails me. Yes, I think this is part of the process, so I think it's something to accept when you're new. I want you to know this might hurt a little bit, but it's gonna take six plus months of consistent effort to really make something stick. You're obviously going to make progress in a month, in three months you are going to make changes, but you have to stick with it and there's going to be times that that happens.
Speaker 1:
You know how many times I've messed up over the years tracking macros. I fell off. I've come back to it. There was periods of time I was under eating. There was periods of time I was overeating, but the fact is that I kept coming back to it. I kept trying, I kept working towards it, and that's where you learn. I mean, think about anything in school. They just breeze through school and everything was perfect and you never failed an assignment. You never struggled with a topic sports you never struggled with sports. You never had a downtime life. You've never had a downtime. You've never struggled with sports. You never had a downtime life. You've never had a downtime. You've never struggled with something. So your fitness is not going to be different.
Speaker 1:
The key is is you have to keep at it. You have to keep at it. You have to be keep it exciting for yourself, keep wanting to learn, keep wanting to improve and motivate you and continually drill these ideas into your brain until it sticks. And I think having that support system is very important. But I do think that sometimes the planning fatigue gets in the way and it's all about getting better at it, like the meal planning. I'll tell you, this past week I was super busy and last minute I had to plan the meals and go grocery shopping and just because I've been doing it for so long, it was like a mindless thing and I got it done and I'm set up for the week. It wasn't always like that, but you will get there, so you just got to keep at it, okay.
Speaker 1:
And then we have a double question here. So first question what are better? Protein powder brands that are quality products and don't cost an arm and a leg and taste great too? Or what do I look for to make sure it's healthy and not junk? So this is tough, because rarely are you going to find a cheaper protein powder that's quality, unfortunately. Okay, there might be a couple out there that you really got to dig for. Okay, there might be a couple out there that you really got to dig for, but generally the proteins powders, I will say the powders that you are getting at Sam's Club, walmart, you know even some at GNC in the vitamin shop. You know those cheaper, like they're 20 bucks a tub, 30 bucks a tub. They're usually lower quality because supplements are not regulated in the United States. They're not regulated by the FDA, they are in Canada. It's sad they're not.
Speaker 1:
So you can kind of put whatever you want in there, unless they are third party tested. You want to look for a company that third party tests that does certain verification methods, because when they have a third party tester. They're having somebody that's a neutral company come in and verify that what's in there is in there. This is why I like Legion Athletics. Legion Athletics covers all of the bases. They are a little bit pricier but I'd say they always run discounts. They always have a point system. Your first order you can get 20% off and they're, I think they're fairly priced. They're like the Nike of the fitness industry, of the supplement industry. You know how Nike is a little bit more than target but it's not quite Lululemon prices. They're in the middle. And that's how I would say Legion is priced. They're priced fair but they're going to be a little bit more than what you would find at like, walmart or vitamin shop, because, again, I would stray away from Walmart and stuff.
Speaker 1:
Because there are and you can Google the brands and you know, check the quality of them and see what they're ranked and you can do your own research on it. Because they did one, they did a couple of protein powders. They'll say, oh, it has 25 grams. They tested it for pure pureness, I guess potency, and it had nine grams per serving. So you're wasting your money even though it's cheaper. They water it down, they add fillers to their supplements. So you think you're getting 25 grams when in reality you're getting nine. So you're better off investing in the better quality stuff to assure that you're getting what's actually in the product. It's sad that we do this and this is a thing.
Speaker 1:
But yes, it's true, and the same goes for multivitamins. Fish oil, like any of your supplements, are pretty much going to be like that. Rarely are there ones that are affordable like cheap I should say that are going to be quality right. The taste tastes great. I think Legion tastes pretty good. There are a lot of good tasting ones out there but again, I found from personal experience, because I've tried many, many brands, the ones that taste good are usually the ones with the fillers in them, the ones that have lower protein count because they had other stuff into it to make it taste good.
Speaker 1:
Although, with that being said, I will say that the pre-mixed protein shakes are good. Although you are paying more because they're pre-mixed, the powder you're going to get a little bit cheaper um per serving like a protein shake. You're probably looking anywhere from like two to four dollars for a bottle legion proteins powder is like a dollar um a scoop, a dollar a serving. So you see it's a little bit cheaper. In that aspect. I really love core power. They're a little pricier though three to four dollars a bottle, sometimes five if you're looking at the 42 grams. But they are delicious, they are a treat to myself.
Speaker 1:
Um, sometimes you go to sam's club and get them in bulk. They will sell them in bulk so you can get them a little cheaper. Amazon maybe. Um, the premier protein shakes aren't too bad. I do enjoy those as well. Again, you can buy them in bulk at walmart and they are pretty quality. They have, you know, um, the amount of protein that's in there and the calories are good. So that's my recommendations there.
Speaker 1:
Um, and again, really just do your research on the website, look, look and see if it's third party tested. Um, look to see if they have an itemized breakdown of the nutrition, like if it has a proprietary blend. If it has a blend, there's probably fillers in there, like Legion. Actually, if you look on the nutrition label and a lot of supplement companies have followed lead because Legion does this they actually give you an itemized statement of everything that's in there. It'll say there are 3.4 milligrams of this, there are two grams of this Cause, you know, five, 10 years ago, a lot of supplement companies were like, oh, we have our fun unique blend and you know it'll say, oh, you get like 1% of whatever it's claiming to have and the rest is like filler crap, okay. So definitely, you know, check out the nutrients, check out reviews.
Speaker 1:
There's a lot of popular companies that kind of rate the quality of them. Like I said, if you Google like, hey, this protein quality, look through. And if you see a trend of like, hey, these work, I love these, they taste great, they're safe, if you see that trend, after looking at maybe three, four different articles, go with it. Also, legion does back their stuff up with scientific articles. If you look on each individual item, they will actually say, hey, we put this item in here at this dosage because, based off of these scientific articles and research studies, these are optimum for most people and it'll actually tell you why they put what's in there. And, honestly, I've yet to find another company that's as in-depth and on point with their science and reasoning for doing things.
Speaker 1:
Natural ingredients they never use anything processed. All natural, real ingredients. They're 100% the best that I've seen. So I definitely recommend them but, like I said, there are some other ones out there. I just haven't really looked because I love Legion and I don't really need any beyond that. You just got to do your little bit of research, okay.
Speaker 1:
So, with that being said, that is going to wrap up our Q and a. Again, if you have any additional questions and you missed this please feel free to comment on the post that I made for day four for the Q and a, and I will send a personal video. I'll probably drop it in the comments responding to whatever your question is, cause I do want to serve you, guys, all right. But other than that, stay tuned for the deal that I got for you. It's a fun one, you're gonna have fun, you are in control with this deal and it's only for people who are in the experience. All right, guys. So thanks for tuning in, thank you for being in this experience with me, thank you for continuing to show up and participate Everybody who participated because your participation makes these groups, it makes it fun, the community makes it fun. So I do appreciate you guys showing up and we will chat soon, guys. Bye.
