Balancing Feasting and Your Goals

This podcast episode emphasizes the importance of incorporating a recovery diet into regular eating habits, especially around times of indulgence like Thanksgiving. Additionally, regular "recovery days" with clean, strict eating are encouraged to balance out indulgences. The aim is to maintain a sustainable cycle of feast and famine, allowing for enjoyment of special occasions while staying on track with health and fitness goals.

Transcript

(00:09):

So let's talk balance here. Let's talk your recovery diet from the perspective of how do you balance indulgent and non indulgent so that you can have your optimal feeling of yourself. So the holidays are coming up. We have Thanksgiving, we have Christmas, we have New Year's, we have lots of parties. If you are meet, we have birthdays, things of that sort. So we have lots of events coming up, lots of celebrations coming up. I want you to enjoy all those celebrations and the key to enjoying them without feeling like you're in a giant hole. Come January is building in recovery. I'm Julia. I'm the founder of Jo Life. I am passionate about nutrition and metabolic help, and our company creates amazing nutritional plans, fully prepared for you to have your best life. I love to teach people about nutrition. I love to teach people how to create balance in their lives.
(01:18)
And so today we are diving into recovery, eating, as I call it. So your recovery days that are a part of your regular schedule of keeping yourself in a good space. So what do I mean by in a good space in life, there will be times of feast and famine, and that's how we're set up for it. That's how our biology is set up. That is how our metabolism is set up. That is how we are pre-programmed for times of feast and famine because it used to be that there were actual times of feast and famine for us. Nowadays, those real feast and famines are very, very rare. And for most of us living in near me in the United States, it doesn't exist. But we do have periods of feasting. And so to remain healthy and to keep ourselves from gaining the traditional five to 10 pounds during holiday season, we need to artificially create that cycle of feast and famine.
(02:32)
And that creation of that cycle is what I call building in recovery days. So building in days that balance out your days of feasting. So what does that look like? That looks like if you are, there are two scenarios here. One is an anticipated time of celebration. So let's talk Thanksgiving here. Thanksgiving we know it's coming. It's the same time every year. We know it's coming. That means that the days leading up to Thanksgiving, and I usually give myself one to three days leading up to Thanksgiving. I'm on a lightning diet. So in the Jo Life Meal program are pre Thanksgiving meal is really light and it gets progressively lighter the closer we get to Thanksgiving. Why? Because we want to create a caloric deficit in our bodies. We want to shed a little bit of extra body fat so that on Thanksgiving day when we're eating things that we may not usually eat like stuffing or when we're eating quantities of food that we may not usually have more than one dessert.
(03:47)
We have room to absorb it without. Its showing up as us not fitting into our clothes. That's why we go through that recovery diet. We are the pre Thanksgiving diet, shall I say, we're just lightning up. We're just lightning up. It's not like we're starving ourselves, we're just lightning up. So maybe we're choosing salads, maybe we're choosing some plain yogurt. Maybe we're choosing fish instead of beef. We're just lightening up our diet, then we are enjoying our Thanksgiving. And then the post Thanksgiving, which is the day after your celebration, generally I don't eat until hunger sets in to true hunger sets in. So it's tempting to wake up and say, okay, I'm back on my regular schedule. Go eat breakfast. Go eat lunch, go eat dinner. But literally that's not necessary. So think about the animal. Kingdom lion catches another animal. They feast, they feast, they feast.
(04:52)
And for the next day they basically sleep. They do not eat. They are using all the food that they had on feast day to fuel their body. And that's what you're doing. So the day after a big celebration, you have opportunity to, as one of my clients says, to eat in that means you are allowing the things that you ate yesterday to nourish your body. Now you're allowing your body time to utilize those extra nutrients, those extra calories, that extra energy and this allowing of yourself to not eat, to use what you ate the day prior also allows you not to gain weight, not to start down a slippery slope of holiday overindulgence and allows you to pull back in the rains. And so when we anticipate days of feasting, we balance it with leaner days ahead of time and leaner days afterwards, day after, we only initiate eating when we are really truly hungry and day after we eat lightly.
(06:05)
So that means more vegetables, that means less fat, less protein, less carbohydrate, because we basically double filled our cup the first day. So we're eating out of that double filled cup that we had when we were celebrating. So that's recovery time. And you can use this approach to recovery, pre vacation, post vacation. So the week leading up to vacation, you're eating lightly, you're sticking to your exercise routine. Maybe you do a cleanse, but you put yourself in a good space. And then post vacation, again, we go back to what I call my thinning diet. So the diet that allows me to release all the extra calories I stored over vacation and my thinning diet might look like a deep reset. If that's offered, it might look like just ordering for me salads and soups and having that as my lunch and my dinner for the week after my vacation week.
(07:17)
It might look like being completely vegetarian and plant-based that week. There are many ways that you can do the recovery diet, but the important thing in terms of maintaining your body and to feel and look the way that you want is that you build in a natural rhythm of recovery. So for example, last night I had a special dinner and I ate more food than I would ordinarily eat in the sense that there were apps beforehand, there was dinner, there was wine. And so this morning I am not eating until I really feel hunger because I know that the food that I ate last night is still on deck. So those calories are still waiting to be used. And so I'm going to go for a really long walk and I'm going to not eat until I'm really hungry so that those calories can get used.
(08:20)
And then once I start eating, I have my schedule planned where I'm having a plane, a morning cup, I'm having a salad, I'm having some sauteed greens for dinner. I'm just eating lightly so that the calories that I had last night can all get used and don't show up for me the next day. So your recovery diet is super, super important. And when we talk about recovery eating, I really want you to frame it as a way that you take care of yourself, a way that you create balance for yourself, because I never wish for someone to be in an antagonistic relationship with food. Instead, I speak a food mastery. You are the master of food and being the master of food, not being mastered by food means that you manage it. And this means that you intentionally make decisions that are pro you. And so your decisions might be that, okay, I'm going to completely and utterly enjoy my Thanksgiving dinner, my Thanksgiving day.
(09:46)
That is a completely wonderful positive decision to make. And in making that decision, there should be zero guilt for what you eat on that day. There should be zero feeling of, oh, I blew it, or, oh, why did I eat that? Or whatever. You might feel a little tinge of that the next morning because maybe you don't eat gluten and you had stuffing and your stomach is upset, or maybe you ate more salt than you usually do, and you feel like everything's a little bit puffy. That's a different kind of like, okay, my body is reminding me this is what happens. But there should be no feeling of guilt of like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just did that. Instead, you are conscious of it. You chose to do X, Y, and Z. And in the same vein, in the same energy, in the same feeling, you choose your recovery.
(10:49)
And so that's why I work so hard, and I really wish this for clients, is that you instead of adopting the mindset, I have to be good all the time, you look at your relationship with food as a whole and you say to yourself, I need to create balance overall so that I can look and feel the way that I want to look and feel. And that creation of balance allows for times of overindulgence, it allows for times of eating something that I don't usually eat. It allows for times of indulging in foods that I love but may not love me back. And there are times for that. And there are times that I build consciously to recover from those days or those meals or the vacation of indulgence and to be in that rhythm. That is called true balance. That is called true sustainable health.
(12:02)
And that is when you become the master of food, when you achieve food mastery and as it relates to recovery eating. The other thing that I would say is depending on where you are in your health journey, different things get emphasized in your recovery. So let's say that you are working on inflammation, or let's say you are working on gut health, then your recovery is going to look a little bit different because you're going to integrate in tools that help you mitigate the damage. And so let's say you want an anti-inflammatory diet. Then post Thanksgiving for instance, you're going to choose things that are really nourishing from an anti-inflammatory state. So maybe you're going to get some green juices to drink the next day. Maybe you're going to go for pumpkin soup the next day for not overtight it with pumpkins or green soup. You're going to do things that feel anti-inflammatory.
(13:10)
Maybe you go to the sauna, maybe you get a massage that day. Maybe you do a cold shower or a cold plunge. You go for a walk. You do activities that help your body get back in balance. If you find that you struggle with digestive issues, then the day after a day like Thanksgiving, it might be a day to do a cleanse. It might be broth cleanse day or soup cleanse day or juice cleanse day, just to give your system your digestion, a time to rest itself, a time to take a deep breath and be like, okay, I have a moment to recover. And I offer that information so that you can tailor your recovery to your health goals and you can tailor your recovery to making yourself feel better. And you can create that as a habit. And we're coming up on holiday season.
(14:13)
This is a great, great time to really create that habit, to create that habit of rest and recovery, rest and recovery, rest and recovery. I'm going to switch gears a little bit and talk about recovery diets in general as opposed to responding to events. So the other way that I use recovery diets is in my weekly eating plan. So I love to have a little bit of extra stop going on in the weekend. I love some dinners out. I love a little special breakfast. I love some extra stuff happening in the weekend. I love a good cocktail. A dry martini is my favorite. So I build in recovery because I like certain things in my life. And so for me, I choose two days a week that are going to be recovery days. And what those two days look like is I am very strict in terms of my eating, and then I work out a little bit more.
(15:13)
So usually I do the Joll life plan. Sometimes I customize it for myself. And on Mondays for instance, I will start my day with a smoothie and then I will move to a soup, and then I will have a salad with protein for dinner. And that salad is whatever bowl or salad that is on my weekly menu. And I do mix and match my Jolie life delivery. So that would be one of my recovery days. I usually have another recovery day on Thursday leading up, or it's, let's say it's a pre-day leading up to the weekend. And that day looks very much like Monday where I'm having my protein smoothie, I'm having my soup, I'm eating my greens and my salad, and some really good protein. So I also highly recommend that you build recovery days into your week, particularly if you are the type of person like me who likes to have a little space.
(16:14)
Traditionally when my kids were little, I had a family pizza night. And so on Fridays I would eat a Friday. My Friday lunch was always a salad to make room for pizza night. And then my Saturday breakfast was always fasting, and I would start eating around 11 or 12 on Saturday to help balance out the family pizza night. And part for me, pizza makes me feel really heavy because I don't eat wheat. Generally speaking. My stomach, I wake up, I feel full, and I just don't eat. Until then, that's how I managed my recovery day. And I did this during my weight loss journey. So I had Friday pizza night the whole time during my weight loss journey. It did not get in the way because I built recovery in at the beginning and I built recovery in afterwards. So that's just a little tidbit for you so that if you are the type of person that, okay, I like this on Fridays and I still want to feel good and I still want to lose weight, or I like going out for brunch on Saturday, I'm here to tell you there's a way that you can work it into your schedule that feels good and is aligned with your goals.
(17:36)
You just have to put a little thought in it and have a bit of intentionality. Also, I'll leave you with one other clue. So with family pizza night, I learned to roll out dough super, super thin so that I would get the most bang for the fewest grams of wheat. So you can also do that, just allow yourself the thing that you love, but in a way that puts it into a space where it's easier to recover or you are just exposing yourself to less of it so you have less to recover from. So that's it. I hope that this has helped you. Perhaps it will make your holiday season a lot better, a lot more stress-free, a lot more controlled where you feel in control, you don't feel like you're getting controlled by circumstance. And if this helped you, share it, like it subscribe, give me comments, let me know what you're thinking about, what you want to know about.
(18:33)
I am here to serve you and have a beautiful day. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, the Julie Life Podcast. And if this podcast helped you in any way, I invite you to share it with your friends and your family and whoever you come across that you think might be helped by this podcast. I would love to hear your comments. And you can contact me at julia@thejulielife.com. And please follow us on Instagram, the Jolie Life. Our website is the jolie life.com. And it would be lovely if you would subscribe and if you would rate this podcast and go back and share this with someone. Let the ripple effect happen. Let the joly life be the beautiful life that keeps on giving.