E38. Making Meal Planning Easier for You with Health Coach Heather Sayers Lehman

Today's topic is about eating, in my ongoing series, "What Works For Me?" 🤔

In this episode, I will walk you through the four steps I use to break down eating: Planning, Shopping, Prepping, and Cooking. 

Once we quiet the diet culture voice telling us we need to eat certain things, we can begin to listen to ourselves and what we want and start planning our meals. 

I will talk through my journey with eating and how it was not linear. 🎢

How you plan, shop, prep, and cook will often change with the seasons, your lifestyle, the amount of time you have, and much more. 

I will talk about getting kids involved in the process and continuing to focus on you and your progress if a partner is not on board. 

Much like exercise, eating is also not one-size-fits-all. 🙅🏻‍♀️

When we peel back the layers and ask ourselves what it is that we like and what works for us, the process can become more manageable and even enjoyable! 🧅

Resources:

@workweeklunch

…..

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Download your free 3D Journaling Guide here: https://heathersayerslehman.com/journal/

Ready to improve your self-care game? 💕

Download 3 Foundational Meta-Skills for Healthy Living that Lasts here: https://heathersayerslehman.com/meta-skills/

Trying to figure out if a program or activity will actually promote healthy behavior change? 🙋🏻‍♀️

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Air we Breathe. I'm your host, heather Sears-Laman. I'm a national board certified health and wellness coach, certified intuitive eating counselor and certified personal trainer. I help you get organized and consistent with healthy habits, without rules, obsession or exhaustion. The Air we Breathe a finding wellbeing that works for you is a podcast created to help you establish a trusted foundation of doable healthy habits and smart self-care skills that can endure every season and last you a lifetime. My guests and I will share ways that you can focus on your physical and mental health with purpose, flexibility and ease.

Speaker 1: 0:35

This podcast may contain talk about eating disorders and disordered eating. We minimize mentions of specific behaviors and numbers, but it's still a topic nonetheless. There also could be some squares and or adult language here. Choose wisely if those are problematic for you. Hi everyone and thanks for tuning in.

Speaker 1: 1:01

I'm very excited to talk about food today and I'm just going to call it eating. Talk about eating, although we hear is it healthy eating? Is it meal planning? Is it meal prep? Is it a program? I'm just going to call it eating. The context of what I really want to talk about is what works for me. If you listened last week when I was talking to Laura, we were talking about trying to figure out what works for you.

Speaker 1: 1:30

This can be very challenging for a lot of people because they weren't raised to focus on themselves and what their interests were and what sounded good for them. So many of us have a hard time identifying Like I don't even know what I would want to eat if I could eat whatever I wanted, because, again, there's also so much diet culture, so many rules, so many shoulds, so many musts. So I wanted to step back a lot of steps. We're going back to help you, especially the mindset piece of working with food and trying to have it become so neutral in some aspects that it's not loaded with the good snack, good or bad, but really focusing on the principles of intuitive eating. One that I am very invested in is how do I feel so? Obviously I have health conditions and I'm very invested in making sure those don't get any worse and I'm preventing other conditions. But I also want to focus on regularly how do I feel so there might be foods that I could have for lunch, but they make me so tired, or some things I eat that give me a horrible gurd and I've got a heartburn for hours. So I think it's really important, as a kind gesture to ourselves, that we focus on how we feel. I think that is a piece of self-kindness and self-respect to pursue things that make us feel good. And again, caveat, that's not to say that, oh, that makes us bad when we eat things that don't make us feel good. Or now I'm super tired, was I bad?

Speaker 1: 3:24

No, approach this conversation assuming that I have your best interests at heart in helping you find a comfortable and easy relationship with food and food preparation. Because it's so loaded from so many angles, because we've got the diet culture piece, obviously we should be eating whatever is going to make us the smallest. That's a big piece, and so we want to leave that behind and we want to focus on really what makes us feel good. And again, many of us have health conditions, so you might have cholesterol, blood sugar issues, blood pressure, different pieces where you really want to make sure that you are eating what's best for your health conditions as well. So I think that finding some clarity around what is going to work for you as far as basically getting those meals into your belly, because there's so many things there's planning, there's shopping, there's prep, there's cooking A lot of pieces go into this. So I want to do my best in simplifying, giving you some things to think about, as far as getting to a place where you are comfortable with the choices that you're making.

Speaker 1: 4:47

So I really do elevate clarity and organization, because I think those two concepts make everything a lot easier. And clarity, certainly, around centering yourself, which again the audacity of centering yourself in something. But when we're not clear, and then especially in the moment we have to make a lot of decisions, we have decision fatigue at the end of the day. So that's why it makes dinner so hard to decide at 6 PM, like what we want to do. Many times we're hungry at that point also, so it makes it really hard to follow through on some of the things that we have said we want to do. But the organization also helps us save time, it helps us save money, it helps us prevent wasting food.

Speaker 1: 5:43

So I do really encourage all my clients to have some clarity and organization around this for those reasons, because obviously nobody likes to say here is my plan and then veer off at the last minute, and also none of us feel great about wasting time, money or food. So I keep those in mind, especially as you are embarking on this, because I also know everyone is busy, everyone has a lot of responsibilities. You might just be responsible for yourself, you might be responsible for yourself in a pet, or you might have a family, you might have a partner all sorts of different configurations but I just don't know anybody that's sitting around with tons of emotional energy that they're willing to waste on this. So I want to help you get to a point where it is much easier for you really emotionally and physically. So when we talk about eating, we've got that kind of diet culture piece that's already telling us like, ooh, as little as possible, as light as possible, so we're starting to ignore that.

Speaker 1: 7:02

There's also a lot of deep feelings, because I know there are a lot of women that listen to me and that it could have become their responsibility for feeding their family. If you're single it's a lot easier. You don't get as resentful because you're like I gotta feed me, somebody's gotta do it. But many times and for lots of reasons, lots of layers, many years, we can become the center of this conversation. I will say for myself, as I've talked about before, my husband does all the cooking, he does all the cleaning up. So I am very fortunate and I can give tips if you want to find a partner that does these things or really enjoys them, because he enjoys it, it is his jam. So I was a single parent for 13 years, so lots of experience in how to figure out doing this, but one piece.

Speaker 1: 8:06

I think that is really important because we can have that element of resentment and that kind of martyr edge, if you will, within the process, because we're mad about having to do it all. So that also brings us to the point of we've got all this history up until this very moment. You have all of this very loaded history with eating and with feeding yourself and maybe others. So what we want to focus on now is what we want to do now. We can't go back and change anything. We can start to get information on how we might want to move forward differently, with people or without people, and I think trying to create a blank slate for yourself can be really helpful. As far as being more balanced emotionally, because, again, it can be so easy to become angry and resentful. I guess I'm doing this again, especially if you've got a partner that is not helpful. You have a partner. That is one of those. I'll do whatever you tell me to do, but doesn't actively get involved. There are a lot of partner pitfalls when it comes to eating. Those things are what they are and now we can choose what we want to do with those things because, again, we're not going to change a person absolutely not. We can have different input and different parameters of how we want to move forward. I do invite you to look at that and to see that, okay, so I have some power to change things, should I want to. So you are empowered with that now.

Speaker 1: 10:06

So when we come to eating, as I said before, I've got health conditions, so I'm interested in nutrition as a way to supplement, to augment. I don't believe in the oh like food is going to cure everything. I tried that. That did not work. I'm not a big glum. Food is medicine, medicine is medicine. Food is part of a healthy lifestyle. Anyway, those particulars are not important, but you can have some goals and outcomes that you're interested when it comes to food. So some of it can be like satisfaction and maybe you're tired of eating stuff that you don't want to eat, tired of not feeling satisfied after a meal, very tired of doing the thing that you're supposed to do, but then it doesn't light you up inside at all. So that can be a goal Trying to cook some things that, like you, get a little more jazzed about.

Speaker 1: 11:06

You can be interested in adding a vegetable here and there, like that can be a very easy goal. Like I want to add one vegetable lunch or dinner. You can be trying to cook at home more often. You may be interested in more variety, that you want some different recipes, some different things to eat. It can be trying different, different foods. It really might be like you know what? I don't know what to do with cabbage. I want to try doing something with that. You may be interested in changing the ratio of what you've got.

Speaker 1: 11:41

So with your I will say fruits and veggies, your carbs and your protein, you may be just trying to increase your fruits and veggies, maybe cut back on a little bit of carbs. So maybe if you have had blood sugar in the issues in the past and you're interested in how to find a better combination for that and many times it's not cutting out carbs, it's just finding a different ratio between your fruits and veggies, your carbs and your protein you can be working on lunches, like you're really trying to get something better for kids lunches or your lunches if you're working, and maybe recently you've had some sort of intolerance pop up for my age group left, so some tolerance things to really pop up and you're trying to find some ways to work around that. So I think that it's important to try to figure out, like, is there something specific I'm trying to do here? As I've said many times, I don't necessarily like weight loss to be something that you're specifically trying to do. You could be trying to again get more fruits and vegetables or have foods that make you feel better, that satisfy you longer. So really just think about what would you want to get out of this as an exercise. That's a big thing.

Speaker 1: 12:59

And again, journaling you can always download my 3D journaling guide on the website HeatherSairsLamoncom backslash journal and talk to yourself. Have a conversation. I don't know what do we want to do. I feel unsatisfied with what's going on right now. I feel angry with what's going on. I'm bored of it. What's the deal? So, excuse me yourself I don't know if that's a proper term but dig around and see what's going on and see what you're trying to do Again, having some sort of direction is incredibly helpful.

Speaker 1: 13:35

If we're trying to change things, what are we trying to change them to? So when I work with clients, we are working on some sort of plan and again that is not chiseled in rock plan, like never can change, like here's the thing, it's going to be the same all the time. But different personalities work in different ways. What you have to realize is what is your personality, what works best for you? So we talk about planning. I usually just give the options just to see how they feel with people of having a work week plan. So most of us are Monday through Friday, not everybody. So whatever your work week is, what if I do my meal planning for that week? Or if you are a beginner, two days is a lot.

Speaker 1: 14:27

One concept around food and eating and meal planning is like that. It needs to be like this really long amount of time, which is nuts, and it's not helpful to be like here's my 31 day plan. Nobody's going to stick to that. As with any habit, we start small. So a two-day plan legit, a three-day plan legit. You can do a one meal plan. It's really figuring out what works for you and what works for your bandwidth and what you think you can be successful with. Say that again, what you can be successful with Trying the biggest thing eating the elephant in one bite is not going to work. Success begets success, so we want to try something that is going to work. So, for most people that are either reconstructing this process or trying it again, start with something closer to a two-day plan.

Speaker 1: 15:26

Now I will say again in my house, the house of anomalies, dennis does. He loves variety, so he wants something different all the time. I could eat the same stuff, so I'm like, whatever you want to make, like it's fine by me. I am the appreciative recipient of cooked dinners and I don't bulk about much. It's more of what makes him happy, because I don't doesn't really matter to me and I think that's also something that's really important to think about. Again, I could eat a lot of the same foods, because food in that way doesn't matter because of the things that he makes that I just love. We could eat those all the time. Again, like, looking at your personality, do you need a lot of variety? So he will make, he will go to the grocery store on most days it's it's a half a mile away at best so easy for him. He has a type of job that he works from home and to slip away to the grocery store is no problem. So that's his thing and I think he likes doing it that way. We've certainly had conversations because when we met and I'm like crack in my knuckles, I do this for a living, right. I help people with meal planning and, as it turns out, he's not interested. He likes to figure out on that day, like what sounds good. He will flip around and find recipes and yeah, I want that. And then ask me, like, how's that sound? I'm like sounds like you're making dinner, sounds good to me. And then he goes to the store, gets ingredients and here we are. So that type of approach works for him.

Speaker 1: 17:05

Many people. If you have, the more responsibilities you have, the more that's not going to work for you, and planning it ahead has to be a piece of it. So there are different approaches that you can take. So you can look like Dennis and like the meal ideas, the recipe, look at that first and, okay, this is what sounds good. You can also look at your ads or your apps and look at what's on sale, what's in season. So being budget conscious, I think is important to most people when it comes to food, especially the last couple years, food prices are bananas and so running through your app and I'm gonna I'm just gonna talk about my Monday through Friday work week, so please adapt as you need to, but on Saturday morning, because we get those I think everybody in the mail gets all of those flyers about what is on sale, so super easy to flip through there and oh, okay, it looks like chicken breast is on sale, like broccoli is very cheap, so I can see what I can get a good deal on and then I can make meals out of those ingredients.

Speaker 1: 18:13

Also super important to look at what we already have. Are there some things in the freezer that we really need to use quickly? Do we have some fresh things that are on their way out? Do we have some things in the pantry that are collecting dust and we need to use? But absolutely it's a sunk cost. You've already spent the money on it. Focusing on using what you have Can also have an approach of what do the kids want?

Speaker 1: 18:39

What does my partner want? I think that I really enjoyed Laura's perspective in the last episode that she really grew up with her mom, involving her and her sister, so then showing to her that what she wants is a priority and that's important, which is so empowering, versus if you are just fed what you're fed, that it never really seems like it's about you, because it's not so. I think that it's important to have other people involved and that's also from an actual labor perspective as well, because there are age appropriate things that kids can be doing to prepare meals and there are different resources that you can look at. I'll share some in the show notes about what is actually going to be helpful for them to do. And I will say again, when I was a single parent and my kids growing up were sous chefs all of the time, they could cut anything up, prep any veggies, prep meat, even though they had a bit of dry heaps doing it. But I knew that at some point they're going to leave the house and they need to know how to do this stuff anyway, and I also always wanted it phrased they were never helping me. This is part of their family and part of their responsibilities in this household.

Speaker 1: 20:08

So having those different approaches meals first, what's on sale, what we already have, what the kids and spouse want I think is good direction. And again, you've got to see, okay, what is going to work for me. Maybe I have a partner that's like me, that's I don't know whatever you want to do Well, thanks for no help. And maybe you have a partner that's I'll do whatever you want to do, or they really have opinions. So I think that you've got to think about, like, your own circumstance and look at which approach is going to be more beneficial. And again, like we're not getting any face tattoos here, so if this approach that you try doesn't work very well, you can try that approach in a slightly different manner or you can try a different approach.

Speaker 1: 20:54

I think it's always important to understand like none of these things are permanent and you can change them at will. Have you ever felt like the do it yourself approach to improving your healthy habits ends up doing nothing except making you feel overwhelmed, guilty and defeated? Have you been struggling to find sustainable routines that work for your responsibilities, lifestyle, budget and personal preferences? You don't need more rules, influencers or structured programs. Let me help you discover what you want, what works for you and how to maintain healthy habits during the ever changing circumstances of your life. If you're ready to create systems that stick head to heathersayerslaymancom, backslash, health dash, coaching and click let's do it.

Speaker 1: 21:46

So when we look at planning, it feels so overwhelming. But I think the overwhelm of our regular lives can be tamed by some organization, and this doesn't mean that I need to get my label maker out or I've got to have all of this written down, printed out. Whatever it may be, it's not about perfection. It's not about obsession. We're going to start small with this, and I think one of the smaller pieces that you can do is to think about what you're gonna eat tomorrow before you go to bed. So I followed the Tenants of Intuitive Eating and it is absolutely focused on what sounds good to you, what's going to make you feel good, and we also have the realities of life that we might need to prepare things. So if I'm going to put something in the crock pot, I'm going to either need to have that done before I go to bed or early in the morning. So I'm not going to know exactly what I'm in the mood for at 5pm, but I need to have that all hashed out. So that's some food for thought.

Speaker 1: 22:56

When you're looking at it, it seems very overwhelming Again that we're not doing 31 days of planning. We might not even be doing five, you might be doing one or two, but knowing what you're eating tomorrow before you go to bed can be helpful. So, again, when we're planning some of the pieces I talked about of making sure we're looking at what we have, what is a bargain that we can get, but also looking at our schedule for this week. So in a week especially when my kids were younger, it might be we've got this robotics practice, we've got this track practice, this basketball, like whatever it is, or it's going to be a band recital night. So then that hijacks dinner completely. So, really, looking at your calendar before you start the week because, again, what might seem overwhelming I'm going to make five dinners. We're going to be on the road during dinner two nights this week, so we're probably going to drive through, so we don't even need to plan for that.

Speaker 1: 23:57

So, again, talking to the family again, they're not doing you any favors, they're working on feeding themselves and there are a lot of apps that are helpful. I know I use any list, any list, all the time to track our groceries or grocery lists. So we have a list for Costco, we have a list for Safeway, we have a list for Walgreens, we have all these different lists so that we both can put them in and we both can pick things up. So those, I think, are really helpful when you're starting to plan of like, where am I keeping track of all of this stuff? So when you're starting to make a plan really what are you going to eat, but also who is eating, and then what ingredients do we need? And then when do you want to do the pieces that are applicable, when I'm trying to find a pattern for myself or a rhythm that's going to work for me.

Speaker 1: 24:50

It's not just them making dinner, because we have a planning component of what will we be making for dinner, and then we have a prep component am I doing any of these things ahead of time? Like I just mentioned a crock pot, and it's easy to do some of that because sometimes chopping and whatnot involved you can do that ahead of time. We also have shopping. We've got to get the things. So I think that making sure you're not just looking at, oh okay, I'm cooking, but in what way do I want to do these other pieces and I'll say, for typical work week, saturday can be a great day to plan and to shop.

Speaker 1: 25:32

Sunday is a good day to prep because you're not doing it all at once. But then again, look at your personality. Some people like to do it all at once. They're like, ooh, I want to go, I want to get it, I want to get it all done, put it in my containers and be done with it. And then some people are like, ah, I got to break it up, so again, you've got to start looking at which one sounds good. And one of the things that you find out when you're doing the stuff. So when you're like Saturday and Sunday, oh my gosh, I feel like this is eating my weekend. I would rather just do it Sunday than try it on Sunday and see how that fits.

Speaker 1: 26:07

So when we are shopping, we've already got a list, we've got a strategy. Do not show up at the grocery store without a list and a strategy. It won't kick you out Like nothing bad is going to happen to you, but you end up with a lot of things that might not go together. If you've been doing this for a while, then maybe that might work for you. If you're getting started in the preparation, I think having that list because shopping is actually faster if you don't go up and down every aisle, if you know what you need to get and then you get it, keep it all business like and then get out. I think that saves a lot of time. It saves a lot of kind of angst and anxiety and you can have recon missions. If you are looking at different ingredients or, again, depending on where you are, what you're looking for nutritionally like, you can go on some separate fact finding missions to read labels and explore different products.

Speaker 1: 27:10

There are so many different ways to shop now too, which is really interesting. It didn't used to be this way, because if you're a farmers market person, okay, that's Saturdays, wind days, whatever it is in your area. I used to use this place. It was called Market on the Move. I haven't done it in a long time because, again, I seemingly retired from cooking, but it was 60 pounds of produce for $10. What are you supposed to do with 60 pounds of produce? You end up chopping up a lot, sharing with friends, freezing different things like that. There's so many prepped food delivery services. There's also grocery delivery that is so much more affordable than it used to be to get your groceries brought right to your house and, depending on your time, is it different stores for different things. I always go to Costco, but then we have to go to the grocery store as well, and then, before we were together, I went to a different grocery store because again, it was just me and I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1: 28:07

I was thinking about what type of shopping and again trying to figure out what's going to work for you. What works for you in March may not work for you in October because again, your mood might be different, your needs, your responsibilities, your budget. So these things, again, are not written in stone. But you might say you know what, I really want to get my groceries delivered, and then you might do that for a while and you're like I can miss going. So then go Again.

Speaker 1: 28:38

Leaving yourself flexibility within all these different processes is incredibly important. Don't paint yourself into a corner because again that's not going to work for you and then you're going to quit doing it. But the way you shop also can be a great way to introduce new variety, because I've had different, like prepped food delivery services. It's because I wanted to try something different, because again, like when I say I can eat stuff like all the same, until a point where I don't want to eat it anymore and then I pick something else and then run through that for a very long time and get my doubt on that. So different food delivery services were helpful for me sometimes to try some different things and have something made by somebody else. That was something that I might not make myself. So, again, think through those different options and see what feels like a good fit now. That is something that would work for you now and be prepared later that you can also change it.

Speaker 1: 29:40

So when it comes to meal prep, this is always interesting because there are a couple people I love to follow work week lunch and have her cookbook and it's organized and she follows intuitive eating. So it's not just all. Oh, we're only making veggies. She has some other foods that are easier to access, I will say. But when we talk about planning, I feel like the Instagram world of planning. It makes it look like it is just like a whole day. Here I am and I'm a little bit chopping and blah, blah, blah, but I think it can be not quite as overwhelming because, also, you can put on a movie, listen to a podcast, you can listen to an audiobook, so it doesn't have to be like this really awful thing I'm having to do, but you've already got your plan of here's what I want to do, so you know when you're going to prep. You've picked a time that's going to work for you, and if this is something that you're new to, there's certainly a lot of videos that can give you instruction.

Speaker 1: 30:51

I did not necessarily grow up in a house that cooked, so I had to learn a lot of things. Blanche, who's blanche? I don't know what that means and now it's so easy to get all of that information about different cooking techniques. As I said before, getting kids involved in age appropriate tasks Google kitchen age appropriate tasks for kids and figure out there are like really cute little, not sharp knives that kids can use. But I some people like to cook in service of their family.

Speaker 1: 31:29

When I was bringing up my kids, I always was thinking about the fact that they were going to have to go out on their own and they were going to need to know how to do this. So that was my mindset is I wanted them to be prepared to become adults who cook. So I involve them for that reason, because also involving your kids can be a much bigger hassle than what you would like and you might have foot stomping or that. I don't know how to do that. It can be a hassle and it also will get easier over time.

Speaker 1: 32:02

I think that one of the things about prep that can be overwhelming is the cleanup. So when you prep, and the more that you use, the more that you wash, so it's something to be very cognizant of. Maybe while you're there rinsing out a bowl and using it for something else, be careful with your germs and your meats and all that stuff, but you don't want to use so many different things that it just brings this onerous, huge pile of dishes with it. So when it comes to cooking again, like video resources are so helpful, I think that a lot of this can all feel overwhelming because it is different and it is a skill set that you might not have, and we develop skill sets for things all of the time. We do it in our personal lives, we do it for work and this is no different. It doesn't mean that you have to have this raging passion for it or you're super excited. But if you watch a video on salmon, because I don't want the skin, I don't want the skin and there are ways to cook it where the skin comes off easier. So it doesn't make me a big chef, but that's something I was interested in, looked up and then found.

Speaker 1: 33:18

So again, when you're cooking, have a game plan. If you've got time to do any of the prep ahead of time, that absolutely speeds up cooking. So that might be if you've got to trim any meat or cutting up chicken, whatever that might be. The veggie prep is always easy to do ahead of time as well. I think veggie prep is really helpful. If you're using fresh vegetables, you can absolutely use frozen or canned as well, but if you're using fresh, like, prepping that stuff ahead of time does really save time when it comes to cooking.

Speaker 1: 33:52

And then when you're starting, you're absolutely going to have timing mistakes. You're going to have something done well ahead, or you ended up cooking something too long because it was waiting and I find that was stir fried, like if I don't get the rice right and then my bell peppers get a little soggy in my stir fry and that makes me pretty sad. So these are what I would call just timing mistakes. I was a bit off and I can do it differently next time. I always tend to err towards less seasonings and dressing because you can use more. You can't get rid of them once they're on. There's nothing worse to me than a salad with too much dressing, and just something about it really yucks me out. So if you are new to the process, then you can use less and then add more in later. I just think we ever talks about that. But if you've had food that's overseas and are over assaulted, you're you're very familiar with why that might be helpful.

Speaker 1: 34:51

Ok, so now I have gone through all of these different elements and this might be something where you really have to like stop, go back, listen, like what's going on. But I have talked about the different pieces that are involved the planning, the shopping, the prep and the cooking and so, listening to those pieces, you really have to center yourself in this experience about what is going to work for you. And because there are these big four elements and there are so many decisions that you are making within these elements, which this is exactly why people are like just tell me what to do, but again, when somebody tells you what to do, it doesn't work for you and then you quit doing it. So you're working on developing something that is going to be helpful for you in the long run. So really have a lot of grace for yourself, if you're trying to solidify this one, that it's not always going to be really easy or really quick, and that this is a learning process and you're learning what works for you and nobody's been asking you. So you're asking yourself a lot of questions here.

Speaker 1: 36:11

You want to really approach it with some self kindness because you might not know, might ask yourself like what I really want to do? Do I want to do two days or three days? You're like I don't even know. Pick one, try it and then, if that doesn't work very well, then try the other one, because this is not a finalized process. Oh, I have finalized how I eat Absolutely not. It will change constantly because your life changes, your needs change, your family changes, your budget changes, seasons change All of these different things come into play. So don't really feel like you're trying to paint yourself into OK, here it is, here's the thing that works like. Here's what works right now and I might change it up. I might change it up because I want to, I might change it up because I have to and I think again.

Speaker 1: 37:07

I have so much feedback from clients about partners and I will just say this your partner is your partner and if you're planning on staying with your partner, then your partner is really your partner. And so you have to figure out what do you want to do, because maybe you don't feel like dragging them on this journey because they're acting like a big sack of potatoes and boohoo the whole thing. Then you can do it yourself and trying to let go and accept like that's who they are they're big sack of potatoes and they're going to boohoo and I want to have some food that I like better. So here we are. Or, if you're trying to change something, how do I approach this and how do I get better cooperation? Like those things are all possible to work on.

Speaker 1: 37:58

We have the limitations of what their limitations are, but I think expressing what is a priority for you is helpful for you, because at least I've put it out there, at least I have asked the questions, I've asked for collaboration, I've tried to come up with a plan for partnership, and then you get a lot of information about your partner. Depending on how they respond, what you do with that information is certainly up to you, but all of those things existed before you went through this process. You just might not have asked and might not have gotten as much feedback. Anyway, focus on centering yourself in this process and what's going to work for you and then really see what that opens up, because I think, again, journaling is so important HeatherSeraSlaymancom backslash journal to figure out what is coming up for you within this process, because you want to know what's going on with you. It's important, you're your friend and you want to know what's happening. So good luck walking through this process. I hope it gave you a little bit more information about how to figure out in the realm of eating what's going to work for you. I will see you next time.

Speaker 1: 39:16

Thanks so much for listening today. Do you know what would be really fun if you popped over to my Instagram at HeatherSeraSlayman and dropped me a DM and let me know what topics you want me to cover? Something bugging you, something holding you up? Please just let me know and I will tweak some content and get an episode out just for you. As always, please follow the show or you can leave a five star review on Apple or Spotify. That would be fun too. See you in the next episode.