Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl
Pivot in Nutrition: Say Goodbye to Fad Diets to Say Hello to Sustainable Weight Loss
Ever wondered why fad diets like keto often fail you? Stuck in a weight loss plateau? We've got you covered with actionable advice. We are joined by Dani, a registered dietitian and CEO of Pivot Nutrition, about the secrets to sustainable fat loss and a healthier mindset. Dani reveals how to escape the all-or-nothing mentality and embrace a balanced lifestyle where nourishing foods and "fun foods" coexist without guilt. This episode promises to equip you with practical strategies for lasting health and weight management.
Dietitian Danielle Rancourt's IG:
@dani_the_rd
https://pivotnutritioncoaching.com
You can watch the full episodes on our Youtube
Youtube - Confessionsofawannabeitgirl
Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl’s TikTok:
@wannabeitgirlpodcast
Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl’s IG:
@confessionsofawannabeitgirl
Ever wondered why fad diets like keto often fail you? Stuck in a weight loss plateau? We've got you covered with actionable advice. We are joined by Dani, a registered dietitian and CEO of Pivot Nutrition, about the secrets to sustainable fat loss and a healthier mindset. Dani reveals how to escape the all-or-nothing mentality and embrace a balanced lifestyle where nourishing foods and "fun foods" coexist without guilt. This episode promises to equip you with practical strategies for lasting health and weight management.
Dietitian Danielle Rancourt's IG:
@dani_the_rd
https://pivotnutritioncoaching.com
You can watch the full episodes on our Youtube
Youtube - Confessionsofawannabeitgirl
Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl’s TikTok:
@wannabeitgirlpodcast
Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl’s IG:
@confessionsofawannabeitgirl
Welcome back to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl, the podcast to help you filter out the BS in pursuit of becoming the next it girl. And let me tell you, every it girl, in my opinion, and wannabe it girl at some point has tried a fad diet. I mean, it's fair to say we all wanna be living our best lives in our dream bodies, looking fit, whatever it may be, having body goals up down, left or right. I'm not here to judge what they are. I honestly have my own body goals I would like to achieve and usually the way we try to get there, especially pre-Ozempic, was through fad dieting. So in this episode we are tackling how to really sustainably change our lives, change our mindset, get rid of that fad dieting. We are joined by Dani, a registered dietitian, certified sports dietitian and CEO of Pivot Nutrition, as well as hosting her podcast called but First Pivot. This episode we are giving you the keys to weight loss, making it simple, making it easy to start on this journey and hopefully stick through it as well, because we're shooting for sustainability. Dani makes this approach super easy and fun and I hope this episode gets you going with those health goals. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. I'm your host, marley Fregging, and I'm here to help you filter out all the bullshit and become the next it Girl. This podcast explores the reality of what it really takes to make it out there. As it turns out, it is way less Instagramable than I thought it was going to be. I'm still very much a work in progress, but there's simply nothing else I'd rather be doing than chasing my dreams. So let's learn from my mistakes and work together to achieve our dreams with more confidence, clarity and direction. Let's get after it. All right, guys.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. I am joined by Dani, a nutritionist coach. I'm so excited to dive in with you today, dani. Welcome to the show. What's up everybody? Thanks so much for being here. I have so much to talk about in regards of nutrition. I feel like, you know, in the age of Ozempic. You know a lot of people are looking at maybe to lose some weight, feel self-conscious. I mean, the battle of weight and health is always battling. So let's dive in with talking about what is really like the borderline between being healthy and being obsessive, or being completely unobsessed with health and being very unhealthy. How do we find the balance within that.
Speaker 2:Right and that's the perfect word to describe what I do is balance, because most people want to be healthy for the most part. I think about two thirdsthirds of Americans are actively seeking weight loss, so most people want to improve their health. Most people want to lose weight, but they don't want to give up their favorite foods and most diets are restrictive and people don't like to feel restricted and this is why they get stuck in this all or nothing cycle, because they're like OK, I want to lose weight, I got to go all in, I have to go 100% intense. And all or nothing leads to nothing most of the time, because it's kind of like marathon analogy is my favorite way to explain it when the gun goes off and the marathon starts, if you start sprinting as fast as you can, you're not going to finish that race. You're not, you can't sprint a marathon. And sustainable fat loss the key word being sustainable, because who wants to lose 30 pounds and gain it back? Nobody, no one.
Speaker 2:The success rate of fad diets is 5%. Five that's worth than a fail in school, like 5% is not even a thing. You wrote your name. That's 5%, and so in order to have sustainable fat loss, we need to realize that it is a marathon, not a sprint. So the key is to find a balance between nourishing your body, eating wholesome foods, but also including what I call fun foods, which most people refer to as bad foods, but we don't use that language. That's negative. We call them fun foods because they're fun, they're delicious and you don't have to feel guilty for eating them. And that's where most people struggle and why people come to me. They just they don't want to feel bad about having a donut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, we don't. We don't want to feel bad about having a donut at all. So I want to talk a little bit about, you know, the hamster wheel of diets. I think there are so many fad diets. I mean, I'm in LA so I live in the Mecca of where most of them are created and I'm marketed to them every single day. You just said that only 5% of these you know fad diets work. Is it because fad, the diet itself doesn't work, or just because it's not sustainable?
Speaker 2:Both the diets don't work because they're unsustainable. 5% is basically you know like, and the thing is they work but not long-term, so they don't actually work. So when people reach out to work with me, I always ask what diets have you tried and why did they or didn't they work? And almost always they will say, oh, I did keto and it worked, but it wasn't sustainable. So then I'm on the phone with Susan trying to figure it out and I'm like so, susan, if you gained all the weight back, did it actually work? And she's like well, I guess not. Aha, that's the aha moment when people realize all of these diets where they lost 20 pounds, gained it back lost 20 pounds, gained it back they didn't actually work because if it's not sustainable, it doesn't work. So we're not looking for the.
Speaker 2:Nobody wants a temporary solution and that's kind of the problem with these fad diets is people cannot sustain them because they feel deprived. For example, the keto diet is one of the most popular diets and sure you can lose 60 pounds in three months if you cut out carbs, which you know is actually a little bit more than just carbs. But most people do it temporarily. There's an expiry date and as soon as you have an expiry date to your diet, you're basically setting yourself up for failure, because you're like, oh, I'm going to do this until the wedding, and then what? Go back to your old habits. Of course, you're going to gain the weight back. The missing piece to most diets is the exit strategy, and that's what we implement with our clients and that's why we work with them for nine to 12 months on average, because, even though we can help Susan lose 20 to 30 pounds in six months, Susan needs an exit strategy, because maintenance is the hardest part of fat loss.
Speaker 1:I want to dive into that. I love what you're saying about having an exit strategy. Being somebody who definitely went through college and did the whole calorie counting thing and lived my life, I don't think I realized that naturally I got very tired of staying so restricted. So I naturally created an exit strategy. But how do you realistically, healthily I'm not saying I did it in the healthy way, I definitely didn't I was 22 and knew nothing how do you create a healthy exit strategy? And prior to the exit strategy, is there a lot of restriction or are you still already working on balance?
Speaker 2:Right Balance. The goal is balance all the time, because another note that I want to say is people want what they can't have, and that's human nature and that's everything. If everybody had a Lambo, nobody would want one, right. And it's the same thing with nutrition, whether you're talking to a child or a teenager or an adult. You tell a child they can't have the lollipop, they want it more. You tell a teenager they can't go hang out with John after school they sneak out, right. You tell Susan that she can't have carbs. She's thinking about carbs more and will likely cheat on her diet and eat more carbs than she would if she were allowed to eat carbs.
Speaker 2:So the number one thing when it comes to this balance is actually giving yourself permission to include all foods. When I tell my clients this, they're like that sounds like it's not a good idea. I can't give myself permission to include all foods because then I'm going to eat it all. I'm like you might think so, but when you don't feel restricted, you're less likely to overindulge. So when pizza's fair game all the time, you don't really want pizza every day. But when you're restricted and you say I can't have pizza, you have pizza all the time and five slices instead of two. So it's. I tell most people that reach out for help. It's not a nutrition thing, it's a mindset thing. Mindset is at the foundation of sustainable fat loss. This all or nothing mindset, this perfectionist mindset, does not get us anywhere.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the mindset here. So you know, you just said like you could eat pizza basically all day and that's going to make you want it less. You know, for somebody on the outside it does sound ridiculous on some level to believe. How do you get people to full send it with this mindset?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's definitely not that it's easier said than done, right? People listening might be like, oh my gosh, I could never trust myself to have all of my favorite foods. And it takes practice myself to have all of my favorite foods. And it takes practice and there will be speed bumps, which people might call failures. But the way I help people through these barriers is an exercise called failure is feedback. So we always practice balance where the goal is, you know, eat fuel foods. So there's fun foods and fuel foods. That that's how I teach nutrition to 50 year olds, 20 year olds and eight year olds. Fuel perfect fuel foods fuel the body, they have lots of nutrients, they are more nutritious. And then fun foods are what people you know deem like bad foods or junk foods or less nutritious is more of a positive way of saying it. And it's really a balance of, I would say, at least 80, 20, you know, maybe 90, 10 for people who are a little bit more dialed in, but it's definitely not like a hundred to zero or 50, 50. And you know, step one is just saying out loud I give myself permission to include all foods is a big step forward because you might not believe it yet, but saying it is, you know, moving forward, but it's really just working through it.
Speaker 2:I have a new client. She's about three weeks in right now and she struggles with an all or nothing mentality and she does not. She wants to believe that all foods fit, but it still blows her mind that I help people lose weight all the like hundreds of people, and they include all foods. And she goes well, it doesn't make sense. I was like what do you mean? Like you're doing it. You just lost eight pounds in three weeks and you went out to eat three times last week. You are living proof. Like the proof is in the pudding. You are including fun foods and you feel better and you're losing weight.
Speaker 2:So sometimes it's not about just believing it. Sometimes you have to see it to believe it. So oftentimes it's just, you know, helping these clients get comfortable, being uncomfortable with including these foods and just kind of showing them the way rather than just telling them like, yeah, all foods fit Well. That's all foods fit Well. That's hard to believe. But when you almost like, force them to include fun foods, people are like, wait, you're a dietician and you're like forcing your clients to eat Reese's cups sometimes, because if not, if we're not including them not every day, but if we're not including the fun foods we want.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like a build up of like I'm saving my calories or you know I'm. You know say just yeah, saving my calories is probably the best way to describe it. Like I'll be good Monday through Friday and then what? And that's the most common example is people don't get anywhere with their weight loss journeys because they're good Monday through Friday and then they binge and overindulge on the weekends because they feel like they earned it, they justify their actions and then they take one step forward, one step back. Every weekend is a step back because of this all or nothing mindset. But this is where it's like Susan, you can have Dairy Queen on a Tuesday, you don't have to wait till Saturday. And because Susan is like, oh, like I can have some, I don't have to overdo it. She gets a mini blizzard instead of her usual extra large on Saturday, because she doesn't feel like she needs to overdo it Absolutely so, dani.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask you what is your fun foods and your fuel foods, just to give us all an example.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, Well for people that are watching the video version of this.
Speaker 1:I was wondering if the avocado sweater was going to come in.
Speaker 2:I'm wearing this granny avocado sweater that my mom sent me for Christmas in the mail. This is all she sent me for Christmas was this avocado knitted sweater and I thought it was so appropriate. So my logo if you can see behind me, it's actually an avocado donut, so instead of a avocado pit, it's a donut. I wouldn't say donuts are my favorite foods. I'm definitely more of an ice cream person. Ice cream, definitely at the top. I love those Magnum bars. There's ice cream bars. It's a raspberry chocolate so good. That's my favorite, for sure. We always have those in the freezers. And the Oreo bars it's kind of like the Oreo ice cream sandwich, but the bar version. I just love ice cream bars. That's probably my favorite. Fun food, Fuel foods. Avocado definitely at the top. Obviously it's everywhere. But blueberries, Blueberries probably up there too it's. You know, berries are in season right now. It's summer, so yeah, I'll eat all the berries all day. Watermelon I'll crush so much watermelon.
Speaker 1:I was going to say I think mine's watermelon Like that's a fuel food for me, like I can eat watermelon all day, every day. But it's kind of a fun food too, because I douse that baby in tahini.
Speaker 2:And some foods are in between. And the thing that's important to note is that nutrition is not black and white, and that's why I don't like good versus bad. First, food does not have morality Like you're not and the problem with categorizing foods as good and bad is that then people take on that themselves. So if they eat a donut now, they feel like they're a bad person because donuts are bad and now they're bad. But food should not have morality. Food is food. It's either more nutritious or less nutritious. That's a positive reframe that we use, because there is a big gray area in nutrition, because there's foods that are kind of in the middle and people ask me that all the time. They're like well, what about this? It's kind of in the middle because it's fuel. It's you know, it's fuel ish, but it's also fun ish. So we're just going to throw it in the middle.
Speaker 1:Throw it in the middle. I love that. So speaking about maybe like a middle point in people's journeys is like sometimes people get on this weight loss journey, they get started, they get real into it maybe on a fad diet and they hit kind of like a plateau and they're stuck at a point, and I think you did a post about this. Can you talk about, like, how to deal with getting through that stuck point and maybe like a fat loss journey or gaining nutrition journey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love a good weight loss plateau. I get a lot of calls for plateaus and it's very exciting because this is where the Nancy Drew comes out, where it's like okay, why is it happening? The client I was just telling you about earlier, the one who lost eight pounds in three weeks she reached out because she was at a plateau. I feel like we didn't do that much in the last three weeks and she lost eight pounds. Sometimes it's creating awareness. That's step one to change creating awareness and for people that are not tracking their calories or their macros, just doing that for a few days and being truly honest with yourself can be the light bulb moment. Oh, this is why I'm stuck, because some people just start eating healthier, moving their bodies a little bit more, and they start to lose weight. But plateaus are normal and I think it's important to normalize plateaus. Plateaus are the body's way of protecting itself. The body doesn't want you to lose all your body fat, because fat is protective. So just know that when you hit a plateau, your body is saying I love you, not I hate you, because people say like, oh, my body's broken. No, your body is actually working. The plateau is a protective mechanism, but how do we break through them? So if you're not tracking your calories and macros and you're stuck, nothing is happening. The scale isn't moving.
Speaker 2:First, I would consider taking progress photos and measurements for anyone on a weight loss journey, especially if you're strength training, which I highly recommend doing, because most people want to lose fat, not muscle, and in order to preserve your muscle mass while focusing on fat loss, strength training is so, so, so important, because most people that want to lose weight want to lose fat. So lift those weights and I promise, ladies, you're not going to look bulky. Okay, unless you start taking testosterone, it's not going to happen, so have no fear. But taking progress photos and measurements is so important because the scale doesn't always tell the whole story. If you're strength training and you're eating higher protein and you're doing all the things right, you might lose inches and maybe the scale stays the same. I've had a client who had this amazing transformation. The scale did not go down, but her body looked completely different. It was wild. That's what we call body recomposition, where the scale doesn't really change, but you're losing inches, which means you're losing body fat.
Speaker 2:So I would not use the scale as your only way to measure your progress. So let's make sure that we do that. And then let's say you're not making any progress. Like the pictures don't look different, your clothes isn't fitting better, you're not losing inches and the scale doesn't move. Track your better. You're not losing inches and the scale doesn't move. Track your food. If you're not doing it, and plug everything in.
Speaker 2:I had someone the other day who told me that macro tracking didn't work, and I'm trying to figure out why it didn't work. And then she told me that she didn't track the fun foods. Of course she said the bad foods, she goes, but I didn't track the bad foods because I felt guilty. I'm like you're telling me that you were calorie tracking, but only tracking the healthy things, and it's important to note that the healthy things add up too. Some people don't track the healthy things or they think that if I just eat healthy, I'm going to lose weight. Well, no, like, a calorie is a calorie. If you eat 4,000 calories worth of avocados, you're not going to be in a calorie deficit. So if you're not tracking calories and you don't need to do this. But it really creates so much awareness for clients who are stuck and they might be like oh my gosh. I didn't realize that all the white claws I had on Saturday totaled up to 800 calories and I'm like, just because it's 100 calorie, white claw doesn't mean they don't add up.
Speaker 2:You have eight, that's 800 calories. Now we're not in a deficit, okay. So creating awareness, and if you're already tracking and you're at a plateau, this is where and this is fat loss 101. There are situations that are more complex, where the thyroid comes in and hormones, but let's keep it simple. Let's just keep it to simple fat loss. We got to eat less or move more, or a combination of both. So you, you know, drop two to 300 calories from your average intake or bump up your movement, just adding 20 minutes of walking per day, or a combination of both. That's just simple. Breaking plateaus 101. Sometimes it's more complicated than that, but that's a whole other episode on its own, talking about the thyroid and that stuff.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. How does somebody find like their calorie intake? Is it just like we go through a week or two and log everything and then see about what the average is? Or is it we plug in our height and our weight and it will tell us which are?
Speaker 2:we looking at Both. I would recommend both, because those online calculators which are called RMR calculators, so resting metabolic rate, so we use those to get an estimate and kind of like a ballpark. So let's say Susan calls me up and she's like Danny, I'm stuck, I don't know what's going on. I will plug in her gender, height, weight, activity level to populate a maintenance calories. So, okay, susan is likely maintaining her weight if she eats this much and in order for her to lose body fat or weight, we're going to need to drop, you know, two to 500 calories from that number. That's kind of a step one. But what we do is we make the calculations, we get the maintenance calories, the estimated fat loss calories, but then we compare it to their true intake. And that's where most people go wrong is they decide that they want to lose weight, download MyFitnessPal, plug in their age, gender, height, their goal weight and MyFitnessPal is their age, gender, height, their goal weight and my fitness pal is okay, ashley, in order for you to lose one pound a week, you need to eat 1200 calories. And Ashley's like okay, and she's all fired up because she's motivated. She downloaded my fitness pal, she's excited, and then she does it Monday, tuesday, wednesday, friday and then Saturday. She's like I earned a burger and fries and a blizzard I'm not going to track it because it's just one day. And then she does that for three weeks. The average diet lasts 21 days. She's like man, I'm hungry 2100 calories sucks. And then she takes a break from my fitness pal for five months, and you know. The cycle goes on and on.
Speaker 2:So what we want to do, instead of just letting some robot tell you how much to eat is you, use these RMR calculators on Google to get a number. And then, actually, I wouldn't even do that first. First I would track your typical intake. So because the number that the calculator is going to give you might make you change your intake. So, before you do anything, let's reverse Step one. What you want to do is just track your typical food intake, typical, and this is the number.
Speaker 2:When our clients come to us, they don't start working with us for at least seven days. We give them access to our app and I say, susan, I need you to track your typical intake and it is utmost important that you do not change your current eating habits. So if you had plans on Friday night to go out with the girls and have bottomless margaritas and queso and chips. I need you to do that. And if you skip breakfast, I need you to do that. And if you eat Eggs Benedict for breakfast, I need you to keep doing that. Because what we want is baseline intake, because what you're going to do is you're going to track your food honestly and accurately for five to seven days. Make sure to include a weekend, because weekend calories count too, and you're going to compare that to the number.
Speaker 2:So let's say Susan is stuck. She tracks her food. She's very, very honest. Her average intake is 2,200 calories average. It's very important to look at the average, because some days might be 1,500 and some days might be 3,000. So over the seven days, her average is 2,300. Well, what do you know, susan? Based on our calculator, the estimated maintenance calories is 2,100 to 2,400. So this is why Susan is stuck. It makes sense. She thought she was in a calorie deficit, but when she added up all the peanut butter and all the unlimited guacamole and the margaritas, she's like ooh, I didn't realize that I was actually eating 2,200. I thought I was eating 1,500. So then, what you wanna do from your average intake is create a deficit of about three to 500 calories on average. Sometimes you can honestly just start at maintenance with a higher protein intake and go from there.
Speaker 1:It really like is taking some of the mystery out of what I feel like there's been huge industry on diet, culture and exercise and get skinny quick and all the things. But I want to talk about something, if you're comfortable talking about it is you have a baby?
Speaker 2:or how old is your baby now?
Speaker 1:She'll be like she's eight months. Yeah, it's a lot, you know, and I mean, obviously there's changes in the body there, like how are you approaching having a kid and being a new well, almost one year full mom? Like how has that all been?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been wild and it sounds weird, but I, when I was pregnant, I told my husband that I was excited to be a mom, obviously because I always wanted to be a mom, but, honestly, to be able to relate to my clients more because most of my clients are busy moms and it's one thing to, you know, give them advice and coach them, but without being a mom, it's almost like I had a different perspective. And once I was in it, I was like, okay, this is why it's hard for the moms. Yesterday was her first day of daycare and I didn't have anything more than a protein shake. Because I'm getting her ready for daycare like running up and down the stairs where are the wipes, I need diapers, she needs like her hat and she needs her water bottle and I left. I was like, oh my gosh, like I haven't skipped a breakfast in my entire life and it's day one of daycare and all I had I was a protein shake. I was like this is exactly what my clients are doing. So it's just. I honestly love it because it's just so raw and so real.
Speaker 2:But I think the most important thing and this was my goal, because I you know, I'm all I'm very much a believer in practicing what you preach. Like. I would never tell my clients to strength train at least twice a week if I didn't do it Like. I practice what I preach, and so I. I know that a lot of people that reach out to me um, struggled postpartum and, just you know, feeling like themselves again and I really didn't want that to be me. What I told my husband is I really don't want to lose myself in motherhood, because I feel like a lot of the women that reach out feel lost, like they kind of lost themselves for years, like years, I would say like five years, seven years and they kind of, you know, forgot who they were and they haven't felt like themselves. And I wanted to avoid that at all costs.
Speaker 2:And in order to that, the key was asking for help, even though moms can do it all they can. If you're a mom like you can do it all, moms can do it all. You don't have to. You can do it all, moms can do it all, you don't have to. And that is one of the most important things that I want to put out there you can do it all, but you don't have to. And, yes, it sometimes feels good to be like I did all the things. You don't get a trophy for that and your health is negatively impacted by doing so and it's not worth it.
Speaker 2:And so for me, even though I have, I didn't have full-time daycare until this week, like eight months old baby. I asked like I had like a village raise this baby with me because I knew it was important to go to pelvic floor therapy to get my workouts in, to have my me time to clean my kitchen, to cook and people. I would honestly text people and be like, hey, I want to come over and hang out with the baby while I take a shower and cook some dinner. They're like, oh my gosh. Yes, most people are willing to help or hang out with a baby. So asking for help honestly is the biggest game changer when it comes to not losing yourself in motherhood.
Speaker 1:I love that. I mean it's super inspiring. I don't have kids but I am engaged and you know, I feel like it's a thing a lot of us women kind of worry about, especially in the hustle and bustle of today's culture. And you know, being so like go get it, like you can do it all but you don't have to. So I love that. That being said, you are so on the go as a mom, but also dealing with people who may be on the go. How is your approach to getting into like oh, I winced at even saying it meal prepping, because I am the absolute worst, I'm just a grab and go kind of girly. How do you get your clients to make the shift?
Speaker 2:Yeah, meal prep is one of those things where I have to be honest. Until I was pregnant, I was the meal prep queen. I would hashtag meal prep Sunday every single week. I would weigh it out. I would even weigh out my husband's and then I stopped doing that because I realized he doesn't care what it weighs. It was a whole like. It took me months to realize that and you know, I still meal prepped up until probably my third trimester, where I was so uncomfortable it was summer and I and I tell people this all the time like I ordered so much pizza during my third trimester, but you know, you just balance it out, add a veggie. That's my thing. Hashtag add a veggie.
Speaker 2:And so when it comes to meal prep, I think poor planning leads to poor choices. So step one is plan Like just write it down and you don't have to get fancy, or you know, get a fancy like meal prep, like you know, pad for your fridge, what I did, you know, pre-pregnancy we just moved into in a house so I told my husband like, okay, once we unpack this kitchen, we have to come back to the meal prep, because it has been so random and I think people appreciate the realness that, even though I'm a dietician, a fat loss coach, like sometimes I live on Tropical cafe, like that's been happening for two weeks. I just want to put it out there. This is not like a plug, but that's just the reality of moving. It's not always going to be perfect, but it's about not letting that slip away, like don't let it snowball too far, uh, but back to the meal prep. Speaking of snowballing, sometimes I like to go on a tangent, but we won't go there with the smoothies.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to meal prep, what I used to do is just pick two recipes. So I'd be like, okay, what sounds good this week? And I would pick two things. I may or may not call my husband and ask for his input, but you know he'll just eat whatever I cook, and sometimes he cooks too. But pick two recipes and just get the ingredients for those recipes and it doesn't have to be complicated.
Speaker 2:I think the hardest part about meal prep is people are overwhelmed before it even starts because they think it's complex. But some of my most simple meal preps I went through a phase of doing easy meal Mondays on Instagram and just to give you a very simple example of what a meal prep could be. You could go to Target, buy some chicken sausage, buy those little potatoes. Just to give you a very simple example of what a meal prep could be you could go to Target, buy some chicken sausage, buy those little potatoes it's actually called the Little Potato Company.
Speaker 2:They're like in a cute little bag or a container and then just buy like two veggies and you're just going to cut up the chicken sausage pan, fry it, roast the little potatoes they come in like a little foil thing or just throw them on a pan olive oil, salt and pepper the directions are on the little cute bag and then you just steam. You can steam a frozen veggie, like you don't even have to roast them. Roasting does taste better, but three ingredients plus olive oil and salt and pepper, like it doesn't have to be complicated. I think that's where people get overwhelmed and they don't even start. They're just like ah, like no, it's too scary and there's too many ingredients and I'm not a good cook. You can cut a chicken sausage, you can throw potatoes in the oven and you can steam veggies.
Speaker 1:Boom, that's meal prep. Keep it simple. I feel like there's a lot of just like. Let's make this simple, it doesn't have to be complex. I am listening to you say that, just being like, why don't I do that? I don't know. It's like really not that hard. And now I'm picturing myself walking through Target and I have to break this up because I feel like there's a little bit of controversy out there recently too, about kind of the caffeine intake and healthy soda game, and I saw you do a post about caffeine. I just kind of want to like, what do you think about these healthy sodas? Like, are they actually healthy? And then also, if you could touch on caffeine intake for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, are we talking about the prebiotic sodas that are going through the lawsuit, the huge lawsuit? Yeah, yeah, I have been talking about that for the past three days with I was even like ranting to my husband about it. He just has to hear all of my thoughts. I'm like I can't believe this girl sued Poppy. That's ridiculous and for those who are like what's happening, so long story short let's, let's take a step back. So there's regular soda slash pop. Do you call it soda in California?
Speaker 1:Soda.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm Canadian, so we call it pop back home. But right, it's all the same.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm originally from New Mexico, so we call every soda Coke, so it's soda. Okay, so we'll call it soda.
Speaker 2:So obviously we have our regular sodas like Pepsi and Coke and things like that. And then recently, I think in the past year or so, pepsi and Coke and things like that. And then recently, I think in the past year or so, the industry came out with these prebiotic sodas. So they're about 25 calories and there is a claim on the label like gut healthy, because they add fiber to these drinks and there's a little bit of added sugars. There's five grams of added sugars, but your typical pop, like a Sprite, will be like 30 plus grams. And so Poppy got sued because this girl I don't know her name, but she was like I would have to drink five of these, or maybe it's four, to get the prebiotic benefits.
Speaker 2:And I'm just like why would you do that? Like nobody eats one thing to get all the prebiotic benefits. Like I love poppy, I always have them in my fridge because water yes, water is number one. But sometimes you just get sick of water and you just want something sweet and bubbly and personally I don't love sparkling waters. I think they're boring and not sweet enough. So poppy and olipop are like the perfect thing because there's a little bit of added sugar, a little bit of fiber.
Speaker 2:But I don't buy poppy because it's going to improve my gut health. That's not even a thought in my head. If you want to improve your gut health, that's not even a thought in my head. If you want to improve your gut health, eat more fruits and vegetables and whole grains and manage your stress and find a way to poop daily. I mean, that's gut health 101.
Speaker 2:So I just can't believe that this girl was like so upset to the point that she sued the company Like I would have to drink four of these a day to have prebiotic benefits. It's like avocados. Avocados are super gut healthy, they're a good source of fiber, but I'm not going to eat five a day to improve my gut health. No, variety is actually one of the number one recommendations to improve gut health. To be specific, the evidence supports eating 30 plant foods per week to basically help your gut thrive. So do not drink five of the same cans of soda per day, because that's not the way to go. So this whole poppy thing is, I feel, bad for the company because I mean they're not saying like you have to drink five of these to be healthy.
Speaker 1:No. But that being said, like do we? Should we really be drinking five of anything? So I'll throw back the caffeine question. Like, what about the caffeine intake? I mean, I'm a like girl that needs to have one for flavor, one for caffeine and one's my water. So, like what, what are we doing to ourselves with this caffeine?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I am a fan of coffee, but the yeah, like I love coffee, but not to a point where I need it, and that was, honestly, I never had coffee until I was 20, 20 some years old, when I was driving from my hometown, sudbury, ontario, to St Louis, missouri, to go to grad school, that was the first time I had coffee. I was like this is a 16-hour road trip. I need a McDonald's iced coffee ASAP. But the recommended daily amount is 400 milligrams of caffeine per day. That's not that much. For example, I'm almost positive that the grande iced coffee from Starbucks is 140-ish milligrams of caffeine and that's just like a grande coffee. So just to. I would say like four eight-ounce cups of coffee would be 400 milligrams. One energy drink could be 100, but those bigger ones are 300 milligrams.
Speaker 2:When it comes to caffeine, everyone has a different tolerance, which is important to note. But I think my biggest concern with caffeine are teenagers, because teenagers seem to be obsessed with caffeine. I work with a lot of high school athletes and they drink more caffeine than most adults, I know, and that's actually a concern. But when it comes to adults, I would say you know, like if you love coffee or whatever it is like, go for it, have your coffee, I'm not going to stop you. I have a coffee almost every day, 10 am ish, with my perfect bar. It's like a ritual, to the point that I brought perfect bars to Mexico because I think my coffee tastes better with my perfect bar and my Perfect Bar isn't the same without coffee. Like no joke, I like brought Perfect Bars to Mexico for my wedding ceremony. It was intense, but anywho, that's a whole other thing. I love the dedication, super dedicated, the only time I don't eat Perfect Bars.
Speaker 2:When I was pregnant, baby did not like Perfect Bars, like it was just just I had to take a break and it was so sad, but it's just, it's the only thing that didn't sound good. Coffee and perfect bars my two favorite things. And the baby was like we don't like that, not us, yeah, but when it comes to the caffeine, I think that if you're, if you're struggling with sleep, having a caffeine cutoff I would say noon or 2 pm the latest can be a total game changer. I work with a lot of women struggling with perimenopause and they have a lot of difficulty sleeping and when they live by the 12 pm caffeine cutoff, things magically start to get better. So it really depends.
Speaker 2:Some people thrive with more coffee but honestly there's so many people that come to work with me that are drinking. I had a client that was drinking like three energy drinks per day, the 300 milligram ones and once she started nourishing her body and having an all foods fit mindset and focusing more on balance she she was down to one a day and now she barely has one. She might have like one or two a month. Once you start to eat better, you don't need coffee for energy, because most people some people do it for the taste, but some people do it for the energy, like they can't function without it, and usually those people don't have a good foundation of lifestyle habits. So once you improve those lifestyle habits they're like oh my gosh, it's so great I don't have to rely on coffee anymore to function Like who would have thunk.
Speaker 1:Dani, you are such a fun wealth of knowledge in this space, making this so approachable for us. Is there something in the space that you're excited to see or something you would like to debunk for the audience? Maybe the social media of it all?
Speaker 2:in our final words, as we wrap up today, yeah, the greatest myth that I want to debunk, which I touched on for about half a second earlier, was that carbs are not the enemy. I think that's the most important thing to put out there. So many people, both men, women, even high school athletes, college athletes have a fear of carbs, and I get it because I've been there. In my early 20s, one of my trainers put me on a low carb diet and I got super lean, but it kind of messed up my mindset for a few years around carbs. But it is so magical when you can finally learn to eat carbs guilt free.
Speaker 2:Carbs do not directly cause weight gain and people are like no, no, no, danny, they do. Like I look at a muffin and I gain five pounds. What people don't realize? Because they think like oh, when I cut carbs, I lose weight. And it's important to realize that most foods that have carbs are really high in fat, for example, the muffin. People think like, oh, yeah, like I cut out pastries and lost weight. Pastries are. There's most things that people think are high carb are significantly higher in fat and sometimes higher in fat than carbs, for example, pizza. People might be like oh, yeah, like I'm going to cut out all carbs. So they cut out pizza. Pizza has more fat often than carbs, and the calories from fat add up more than twice as fast, and so that's why, when you go keto or low carb, you lose like so much weight so fast. Not only did you cut out carbs, you cut out fats too, so now you're basically just eating protein and veggies. So just know that carbs are not the enemy.
Speaker 2:Carbs do not directly cause weight gain. Fruit is also not the enemy. So many people are afraid of bananas, and this is me telling you you have no, you should have no fear in bananas. Like and it's crazy because, like I have to say this the same people that are terrified of eating bananas drink alcohol Like they have like 10 beers on the weekend. How is that better than the banana? How? I just don't know. It ain't. It's not like we don't have an obesity epidemic because people are eating too much fruit or too many bananas. That's a fact. So if you're afraid of carbs, just know that you don't have to fear carbs and you can improve your health and you can lose body fat while including carbs. So many of my clients are doing it and they're eating over like 200 grams of carbs per day, living their best lives because carbs are delicious.
Speaker 1:Beautiful Carbs are delicious. Dani, please tell everybody where they can find. You find your podcast. All the good things.
Speaker 2:Yep. So my website is pivotnutritioncoachingcom, so that you don't forget it. Just think of the Friends episode Pivot. That's literally where I got the name from, because I love friends. So you know when in doubt pivot and my podcast is but first pivot. It's basically like but first coffee, but but first pivot, because the first step is to pivot away from restriction, because you don't need to feel restricted awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for taking the time to be here and having this convo.
Speaker 2:It was so much fun. Let's do it again, woo.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. Don't forget to rate and subscribe to the show. As always, we'll see you next Tuesday. Thanks for watching.