#45 5 Game-Changing Hacks to Organise Your Eating and Lose Weight Effortlessly

Do you think eating healthy has to be time-consuming, tedious, or complicated?

Think again. In this episode, Max and Mollie discuss their clients' strategies for organizing their eating, saving time in the kitchen, and setting themselves up for effortless weight loss.

From stocking your kitchen like a pro to mastering quick, nutritious meals, you'll discover practical tips that make eating healthy work for your busy life.

Plus, find out why planning doesn’t have to be tedious—and how it could transform your results.

If you're ready to ditch the overwhelm and finally make healthy eating easy, this episode is for you!

Watch my The Cravings & Fat-Burning Masterclass:  https://www.neverdietagain.uk/register-podcast

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/max.lowery/

Book a Food Freedom Breakthrough Call: https://www.neverdietagainmethod.uk/call-ig

Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00.088)
Do you feel like eating healthily is just too overwhelming? Maybe you don't have the time, energy or motivation to figure it all out. Maybe you've tried meal planning and prepping before and it felt like a second job. If that sounds familiar, then this episode is for you. Today we're breaking down the exact strategies which our clients use to make eating healthier much, much easier. We're talking about getting more organized, saving time in the kitchen and building habits that stick without spending hours and hours planning and cooking.

By the end of this episode, you're to have actionable steps on how you can make eating healthy effortless. Even if you've got children and a packed schedule and you feel like you've tried everything.

Speaker 2 (00:39.298)
How do you create a life that allows you to lose weight, eat the foods that you love and sustain the results? Over the last 10 years, I've helped thousands of people do exactly that. I'm Max Lowry. I'm an author, personal trainer and weight loss coach. In this podcast, I'm going to share my top tips and tricks from within my one-on-one coaching program. It's my goal to give you the tools and understanding so that you never diet again.

Hello, welcome to today's podcast. I'm Max Lowry, weight loss coach and creator of the Live 360 program. And we help women over 40 lose weight and keep it off for the rest of their life using the latest in behavioral change techniques. Today I'm joined by Molly, one of our coaches who not only is a coach herself, but has actually been through the program who has a unique perspective on what it takes to get long-term success and shift mindset. So hello, Molly. Thanks for joining. Yeah. So as the title says today,

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:33.422)
We want to help you get more organized with how you are eating and eating healthily. Because I would say, I don't know about you, Molly, how often you hear this, but I would say like a big barrier for entry for people wanting to lose weight is the belief that eating healthily has to take a long time, that it consumes your life. And there's a bit of a limiting belief. People believe they don't have enough time to lose weight and get healthy. So I want to use this episode to share our top tips and tricks on how you can get more organized and

increase the efficiency of you eating healthy, nutritious food. Because I would say one thing that we've recognized in our clients is the ones that are more organized, the ones who are able to plan ahead, get better results. And I appreciate that probably sounds really tedious, really boring, I'm planning, everyone knows you should plan. But if you actually just get into the habit of planning your life, and I'm not talking about spending hours creating meal plans and meal prepping and...

you know exactly what you're gonna eat in breakfast and lunch. Nothing like that, but just forward thinking once a week and looking ahead and thinking, what are the difficult situations that are coming up? What are the social situations I have coming up? How much work do I have next week? Am I traveling for work? Do I have people coming over? Just looking ahead and planning and using your schedule to get yourself more organized. Yeah, we wanna break down that our kind of step-by-step process on how you can get more organized to eat healthily.

because one of the staples of our Live360 program, and not just for the Live360 program, but we believe to be fit, healthy, and to make weight loss much easier is to cook from scratch from fresh ingredients and eat what we call nutrient dense meals. So let's talk about how we can do that. So I would say step number one is get your kitchen ready. So get some staples in, olive oil, salt,

pepper, if you don't have proper saucepans, get some saucepans. If you don't have proper Tupperware, get some Tupperware, because Tupperware just makes life so much easier. And to be honest, what I've recently done, I've got rid of all my plastic Tupperware and I'm now using glass. And that's mainly because I'm, this is a subject for another day, but I'll briefly describe it. It's because I am concerned about the increase in cancer in young people, especially colon cancer. So I want to eliminate.

Speaker 2 (03:56.118)
as much plastic as I can and it turns out putting plastic tupperware or anything plastic in the dishwasher is definitely a bad idea because those microplastics spread all over your dishes which you're eating and it's all over the food. So doing everything I can there. Get your kitchen ready to the best of your ability so that it's easy to prepare nutritious food. Anything I missed there, Molly?

But I was, as we're going through this, think an interesting thing to think about. I definitely fell through this trap. As we're talking, you might be thinking, this sounds like a lot of time. It sounds like a lot of time that I'm going to have to use to be this prepared. But what we would challenge you as you're listening to this podcast is how much time across your day and your week are you thinking about what to eat? Are you spending time during your working day having to scramble and make your meals? How much time are you?

going to social events and worrying about what to eat. So I think as we go through this, really actually think about how much time at the moment is being consumed by thinking about the food decisions you're making, versus actually using a small but focused proportion of your week to get really prepared and how that will support you throughout the

Yeah, 100%. And I think is again, oh, this sounds really hard. Choose your heart. What's harder, staying overweight and unhappy for the rest of your life. So it impacts your health, your social life, your relationships, or is it just getting a bit organized? And really it's not hard. doesn't take a lot of time at all. And initially when you're doing it, can take time, but then once you get into the habit of planning, it just becomes automatic and part of who you are. So step one, get organized with your kitchen and pantry. Just make it...

Reduce friction between you and the habit you want to incorporate. This is classic James Clear or habit forming. Have as little friction between you and the positive habit that you want to incorporate into your life. So in other words, let's say your kitchen, you have no cooking utensils, you've got no Tupperware, you've got no sharp knives, you've got no chopping board, then it's just gonna be a lot of faff and effort to cook. And obviously if you're trying to get into the habit of cooking and you're reluctant, any excuse to not cook.

Speaker 2 (06:04.43)
is going to stop you from cooking. You're go, I'll get a takeaway. I'll go out for dinner or whatever. So remove as much friction as you can. Make it as easy as possible to prepare healthy meals. You don't have to spend a bomb. Just get decent knives, decent chopping board, decent cutlery, decent saucepans. And again, on that kind of, I'm going to get rid of all these nonstick pans and I'm going to go to stainless steel or cast iron. I haven't decided yet. So if you haven't bought any yet, I would definitely think of cast iron or stainless steel.

I would say another one we can add here as well is just to remove the temptation. Is that what you're going to say, Molly? Do it. You can, you can say it. Yeah.

Yes, free. I think with this, it's, there's two things. It's what can you add? So how can you get your kitchen more prepared? But then it's also, what can you remove? So having a look at certain foods, that you don't want to be easily accessible. So there's less temptation. A few of our clients have children. often they do have little snacks for their children. We're not saying you necessarily need to remove everything from your house or your kitchen.

But as Max said, just creating that friction. a huge change for me was moving my small tin of biscuit to the top cupboards and closing the door. So when I went downstairs to make coffee, it wasn't at the forefront of my mind. So when you're thinking about preparing your kitchen, what are you adding? But also what are you moving or creating that friction?

Yeah, it's not about demonizing certain foods and saying these foods are bad and you're not allowed to eat these foods. It's just you want to set your life up for success. What's the point in having to use loads of willpower, motivation and discipline just to not eat the food that's in the crisps that are in the cupboard? I've experienced this firsthand recently because on the whole, I don't buy crisps, ice cream, sweet stuff. I don't buy snacky stuff and it really pisses my friends off because they come over and they're like...

Speaker 2 (07:59.97)
You've only got ingredients. Like I can't snack on anything here. And it really annoys my wife as well, but she's got used to it now. But I've been filming all this, all this content where I'm trying to talk about the, how snacking can be a problem. And I'm using B-roll and I'm filming myself eating these snacks and these foods that I don't usually have in the house. And yeah, it's very hard not to just go and eat them all. Like, and I'm someone that has a good relationship with food. I'm someone that doesn't have a problem with my weight. And when I know these foods are in the house, I'm thinking about them.

I'm craving them. Whereas when they're not there, I'm just not craving them at all. And I eat these foods when I'm out of the house. And if my friend's house is, just don't have them in the house. So honestly, set yourself up for success. If you're trying to retrain and get yourself out of the habit of snacking and grazing on food all day, and you're struggling to lose weight, don't have them in the house. And I would actually challenge what you said, Molly, about the children thing. And this is a big thing that we hear all the time. It's like, oh, I can't possibly get rid of these snacks because of my children. Do you want your children having access to these foods?

all day, every day. it's again, it's not to say that they are bad and you want to start restricting them. But I grew up in a house where we didn't have a snack drawer, we didn't have a sweet drawer. And I hated my parents for it. I absolutely hated my parents for it. And yeah, would, my parents would allow me to have it at school or outside the house. It just wasn't in the house. And although I hated them at the time, actually I'm quite

thankful that they did do that because I see these foods for what they are, which is their food like products created by industry to make us consume as much as we possibly can. They have virtually no micronutrients or vitamins and minerals and nutritional value at all. And yeah, they can improve your mental health from eating them. They taste good in the moment and I do eat them. But I think just questioning what you are normalizing with your family is it's worth asking yourself that question. And to be honest, often it's not the children that complain.

the most, it's husbands and partners that complain the most. So yeah, if you can't do that increase, do the opposite. So you want to decrease friction for positive habits that you want to incorporate and you want to increase action for negative habits or bad habits that you want to get rid of. So stick him in a cupboard high up where you have to step on a step ladder or something like, like Molly said, which is great advice. So that's step number one.

Speaker 1 (10:11.838)
Just a question for you Max, if we're thinking about our stocking our fridge, what components would, people that aren't necessarily know the different components of building a balanced plate, what kind of components would you think about and type of ingredients to stock your fridge up with?

So, step number two is if you've got a house and a fridge full of healthy, nutritious food, guess what? You're likely to eat the healthy, nutritious food. So, our clients are often surprised when they first join the program because we're not coming in and radically changing what they're eating. We don't give strict meal plans. Meal plans are a waste of time. Like they really are. They get you absolutely nowhere. They don't teach you anything about what's going on with your psychology, your mindset.

When you have willpower motivation, you'll be able to follow a meal plan. So instead we give our clients nutritional principles. And one of those principles is to yes, cook from scratch from fresh ingredients, ideally in season and local, even better. But then we have some others as well. So protein is your best friend when it comes to weight loss for a variety of reasons. Number one, it's the most filling macronutrient. So obviously when you are trying to lose weight, you're eating in a calorie deficit.

which could mean that you're going to feel a bit hungrier. But if you really up your protein to much higher levels, you're going to be in a calorie deficit, but you're not going to feel hungry. You're going to feel fuller for longer, which obviously just makes this whole process much, much easier. Plus when you lose weight, you don't just lose fat, you lose muscle, you lose water. The higher your protein levels will change the ratio of what you're losing. So you'll have a high ratio of fat and a lower ratio of muscle that you're losing when you lose weight.

And you want to retain as much muscle as possible because the more muscle you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate will be, which means you'll be burning more calories on a day-to-day basis, which again makes eating a calorie deficit easier and makes long-term weight loss easier. And it's one of many reasons why men find it easier to lose weight than women is because we have more muscle, which means burning more calories on a day-to-day basis. Plus there is what's known as the thermic effect of food, which

Speaker 2 (12:23.136)
accounts for 10 % of your daily calorie burn. So it's worth talking about. And that means that when you eat food, you burn energy, you burn calories to process that food. And protein is the most demanding on the body to process. So essentially by eating protein, you're to burn more calories. So that's why protein is incredibly important. And ideally lean the sources of proteins. We're talking tuna, turkey, ham, salmon to a certain extent as well.

Basically, certain cuts of beef, things, she's talking like low-centred fat, mince, things like that, you can get turkey mince as well, because when they're lean, it means less fat, and the fat does contain more calories. Again, fat isn't bad, you need to make sure, we're not low fat here, but we're just talking about being efficient when it comes to losing weight, because the goal is to eat as much food as you can, but still be in a calorie deficit. And if you're eating very fatty cuts of meat, you're not gonna be able to eat a large volume of that.

The second thing that we advise to our clients when it comes to losing weight is filling up on what we call high volume, low calorie foods. So these are things which don't contain a lot of calories so you can eat them at very high volume. And this is great because it feels like you're eating a lot of food but actually you're still going to be in a deficit and you're still eating less than before. So it's things like all leafy greens, broccoli, cabbage, pepper, basically any

vegetable which isn't a root or a starchy carb are you can fill your boots. You don't have to calorie track these really. You're not going to over consume broccoli for example. You're not going to over consume cucumber. It's almost impossible. So you can literally fill your boots with these kinds of foods and obviously they're full of micronutrients as well. And the other reason this is important is because there are a variety of ways in which your body sends signals to your brain that you are full and that and one is the stretch of your stomach.

So if you are filling yourself up, if you're really filling your boots with these kinds of foods, although they don't contain a lot of calories, your stomach's going to stretch and you're going to feel full. Whereas if you're sticking to what we call the opposite of that, so it's high calorie, low volume foods. So essentially quite a lot of processed food, very fatty foods, things like nuts. Again, nuts are full of micronutrients, but may not be efficient eating loads of them, snacking with them for weight loss. You're going to consume all these calories.

Speaker 2 (14:47.726)
but you may be going to still feel hungry because you're not getting the stretch of the stomach. So this is quite broad advice. We're not specifically saying individual foods necessarily. It's just principles that we give our clients because ultimately it comes down to taste. We want you to enjoy the food that you're eating. If we suddenly come and say, you have to eat chicken and broccoli every single day, but you don't like chicken or broccoli, then guess what? You're not going to sustain that. You're not going to enjoy that. So sticks to the foods that you enjoy eating within these nutritional

principles. That answers the question you think, Monty?

Yes, I think as well with even flavouring, have a think about the kind of spices you might like, salt, pepper, this doesn't have to be. So think about paprika and making sure that you've got the spices also in your cupboards to flavour or any particular taste that you want these foods to taste like.

Yeah, 100%. I think if you are used to eating very rich foods and getting takeaway a lot, this way of eating, this kind of simpler, almost like I call it single ingredient eating. You go to the shops and you're mainly buying things which are just single ingredients. They don't have a list of ingredients on them on the whole. It's much simpler way of eating. Like on the whole, my plate is three or four things. For example, for lunch yesterday, I had trout, sweet potato and sauerkraut that I'd made from scratch.

I think if you've come from that place of eating very rich foods, you could think these, eating this way is bland. And to a certain extent, initially, it might be bland because your taste buds are so used to being bombarded with a lot of very intense flavors. But actually, once you do get used to eating this way, you really do appreciate the flavors of the food that you're actually eating. So the ingredients that you're actually eating.

Speaker 2 (16:34.776)
And this is even more important to eat the in-season and local stuff because that is the most flavor rich, the most flavorsome, love that word, flavorsome ingredients that you can eat, which I appreciate in the Northern Hemisphere. It's easy for me to say living in the South of France on the border of Spain where a lot of this stuff is grown and shipped to England. I appreciate it's more difficult. Even throughout the winter, you can eat season and locally in the UK. So it does take a bit of shaping your palate.

but also knowing exactly how to bring out the flavor of the food that you're eating using herbs, spices. And I'm actually just about to start an Instagram series on low calorie sources as well. Cause I think if you know how to just make basic sauce in a blender with fresh ingredients, which you can keep in the fridge, which is low calorie, it's not full of hidden oils and calories that you don't know are there. Then you can increase the flavor of most foods that you eat. So a lot on step two, but really it's get organized. What food...

within these principles that we've given you today, do you enjoy eating and then make sure that you're going to the shops every single week. If that's not going to happen, biggest hack that we give our very busy clients, especially who have children and who are working at the same time is get the food delivered, get the shopping delivered. live in the UK or the US, I'm pretty sure that's pretty commonplace. Unfortunately, where I live, it's not. I certainly would do that if I didn't have to do, if I could. But yeah, just get the same ingredients that you know you can eat and you can know you make some recipes on repeat every single week.

Frontload your decision making. Take the decision making out of the process ultimately so you're left caught off guard where you had a busy day, you get home and you realize there's nothing in the house so you have to get a takeaway. Sounds such simple basic advice but honestly it really works. If you do this consistently, plan better, get the stuff delivered, it makes a huge difference.

With all of these as well, I think it's just, it's important to get it as specific as you can. And I think when people are really busy and there's lots of priorities that you have, often you go into these thinking, what am going to eat this week? But that's quite a big question. And I think really breaking it down to think, what am I going to have for breakfast? And then going through what Max said of what's my protein source, my salad or fiber.

Speaker 1 (18:48.832)
element, what's my carbohydrate? And I on a Sunday, friends laugh at me, but I will genuinely sit and go through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, breakfast, lunch and dinner and identify my protein source, my carbs source, my fat source and my vegetables and salads and get that specific so that you know exactly what ingredients you need, how much of each ingredient you need. And then you also know what you're doing day on day. So I'd really encourage with all of these to get as specific as you can.

Really quick one for me guys, I don't run ads on this podcast and I do aim to give you as many high value tips and tricks as I can for free. All I ask in return is that you help me spread the word. That way I can help as many people as I can to never die again. The way to do that is to rate, review and share this podcast. A review will only take 30 seconds but it would mean the world to me but more importantly it could help change the life of someone else.

Speaker 2 (19:50.498)
Yeah, for sure. This kind of leads us into step three, which is planning your meals for the week. And there's different ways you can do this. You could spend a whole Sunday meal prepping. I have to admit, that's not something I've ever done, but some of our clients really enjoy doing that. And it's a mindful experience and it can just take the, again, front load your decision making. I think if you're particularly busy and you're getting home very late, we've had some lawyer clients who have really benefited from this. Just on a Sunday spending an hour or two prepping most of the food can make a huge difference.

And then, just like Molly said, just again, I'm to use that word again, front loading the decision-making makes a huge difference. So just thinking roughly what you could be eating in the dinners for dinner, what you could be having for breakfast when you're at home. You don't have to go super granular here if you don't want, you don't have to write an actual schedule and a meal plan and stick it on your fridge. You can if you want. And we have our clients who've done that, but just having a basic idea of what you can eat and what's in the fridge. And it's also things like

I keep most of my meat and protein in the freezer. It's just waking up in the morning and getting in a habit of thinking ahead, okay, what am I going to have for lunch? What am going to have for dinner? Taking it out of the freezer. And usually I've taken it out of the freezer and buy lunches, different than the one for dinner is certainly defrosted. And they do just become automatic. They do just become a routine. And you get to the point where I'm at really, I'm not the best chef or cook in the world at all. I enjoy it. But what I would say I'm very good at is...

It's all just very quick thinking for me. So I don't even have to write a shopping list. I go to the shops and I know exactly what I want to get and it changes based off what season it is. And I know exactly what I can make with those ingredients. So it's just, decide to go to the shop. I buy all the things that I need. I go home and I use all those ingredients and I make five to 10 different meals out of those ingredients. And I think if you are new to cooking, this can be very daunting.

this idea of cooking from scratch and all it's gonna take forever. And I would say like, I'm 34 now, I got into cooking when I was 20, I think. I always had the attitude that I'm always gonna have a woman to cook for me. And look, trust me, this is terrible thinking. I went to an all-boys school, so I had some very deluded ideas and beliefs about the world. Then I started dating my now current wife when I was 22 and realized she wasn't gonna cook for me, so I had to cook for myself.

Speaker 2 (22:10.38)
So then I just, and my dad's a really good cook. So I asked my dad, right, can you just teach me one or two recipes? And this is when I was moving out. And I just learned these two recipes and made them on repeat for like weeks and months and got really good at them. So it was just like, I didn't even have to think about it. It was just automatic. make them really quickly. And just had this conversation with Lila, my wife, the other day. I can't remember who we were talking to, but she said what she found really interesting about the way that I cooked was I did exactly what I just described. So I would.

get excited about a new recipe, I'd look up a recipe, and I'd make it repeatedly for weeks and months, which annoyed her because she thought it was quite boring. But it meant that over time, and I did this repeatedly, I've done since then, I've just got a repertoire of meals which I can make with my eyes closed and I know exactly what the ingredients are. And they take me on average 20 minutes to make, like 20 minutes tops, all in. So start cooking and you're eating 20 minutes later, sometimes less, 10, 15 minutes. So start really small.

with the recipes. Choose one or two, make it repeatedly until it's boring and you don't need to follow the instructions and it's all automated and quick and efficient. Makes a huge difference.

And you can start with one meal. me, breakfast, I'm the exact same with you when it comes to my breakfast. I have the same thing every day, Monday through to Friday. And it's a mix of mackerel, mushrooms, boiled eggs. I will batch, cook boiled eggs on a Sunday. So I've got 10 going into the next week. So all I need to do in the morning is get my mackerel out, which is I eat cold. My boiled eggs are already there. I've fried some mushrooms on the Sunday. So.

Sometimes I time it just to see how quickly I can make my breakfast. And it probably takes me about a minute and a half just from preparing for about five minutes on a Sunday. So I have a bit more variety around lunch and dinner, breakfast for me is that one meal that I, it's almost habit. I eat it and it's, don't even have to think about what I've just made or how I've made it.

Speaker 2 (24:09.932)
Yeah, this is really good advice and something we're really leaning into in the program. It can be really overwhelming to think, my God, I've got to suddenly eat healthy food, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Let's take this really slow. Let's just optimize one meal to begin with. So if you know your breakfast is a complete shit show, you're eating cereal bars, cereal, just, or maybe you're just skipping breakfast entirely, which we won't go into intermittent fasting now, but if you're doing it because you're in a rush and the rest of your day is a shit show as a consequence of skipping breakfast, then just focus on breakfast.

How could you get more protein and fiber in your day? And even making things like scrambled eggs literally takes two minutes with a piece of like, with a piece of toast, maybe some on the side, smoked salmon. was my go-to breakfast when I did eat breakfast. So take it, just nail one meal for like the first week or two, then move on to lunch, then move on to dinner until all of it is automated and you're layering habits one week at a time.

gradually and that's exactly how we help our clients. Cool, so next step tip is step number four and we've spoken about this a bit, but optimizing cooking timing makes a huge difference. So just building on what I was talking about before where the food that I take, that I make, especially for dinner usually takes 10, 15, 20 minutes. We've had quite a number of clients who don't believe this and this has been an ongoing discussion in the group and I'm gonna use her as an example again, I won't name her but she may or may not listen to this.

I used her an example on Instagram, but this client explained that it took her an hour to make salmon, broccoli and sweet potato. And for me, I was just like, did you go and fish the salmon from the river in that time as well? It just bog, it really boggled my mind how that took an hour. Cause for me, the same meal would take 20 minutes tops and I probably do it in less time depending on how I cook the salmon. So it turns out she made a little sauce for the salmon, which is yeah, great, do that.

but she did that first without having anything else cooking. So let's say 15, 20 minutes are gone making, sorry, less than that, maybe 10 minutes making this sauce. Then I think she started the sweet potato and I think she baked the sweet potato in the oven, which is the longest it's gonna take. So 40 minutes or something. Then she got on with the salmon, then she got on with the broccoli. So essentially, how do I make the same meal in less time? It's all to do with...

Speaker 2 (26:32.782)
being efficient and logical with when you are starting with timing, basically. What are you starting to cook first? So the thing you should do first is whatever takes the longest. So in this case, the way that I would cook the salmon is I love cooking. I love basically, it's almost poaching it, I think. I'm not poaching it. You wrap it in foil and you stick it in the oven. I put like some spices in there, some salt and pepper, and that's in there for about 18 minutes at 180 degrees. Okay, so that's on there cooking.

The next thing I do is the sweet potato and I actually usually cook sweet potato in the microwave. It takes 10 minutes and it's essentially just a potato. You could finish it off in the oven, which gives it a bit of a kind of texture and some people think it tastes better, but to be honest, I think it tastes fine straight out in the microwave. So even a big sweet potato, I wash it, put it on a plate in the microwave, roughly eight to 10 minutes. So again, whilst that's cooking, I'm then doing the broccoli. And for me, I think she boiled the broccoli, which for me tastes absolutely awful. So I usually...

saute it with oil, garlic, salt, pepper. But then I actually, it's a kind of a mixture between sauteing and steaming. Cause then I'll stick like a few tablespoons of water in there or like a splash of water and stick the lid on. And you've got the combination of like sauteing, you've got all that flavor, but then it's cooking it quicker. And that honestly takes five to seven minutes. Then, so whilst that's on there, I'm then making the sauce, which should take a few minutes. So, and I'm going to be done doing all that. And the salmon is probably just going to be getting ready.

So again, about 80 minutes in total for that meal. So again, you're not gonna get this straight away. Just start thinking, okay, what takes the longest? I'll do that first, then what's the next, what's the next, what's the next, what's the next? And basically just getting better at multitasking because cooking from scratch for fresh ingredients, eating healthily does not need to take a long time. Another example we could give is, you know, if you do like steak and you wanted some steak,

Often, like especially a summer meal or summer lunch for me is a piece of steak and I make it like a massive salad. I make the salad whilst the steak's cooking. Steak takes seven minutes to cook. Salad takes five minutes. Done. Seven minute meal. Full of nutrition. Keeps me full for the protein and I'm really going to town on the salad because it's high volume and low calorie. How are you this morning?

Speaker 1 (28:44.974)
Getting better. I think I really enjoy, I think they call them like one pot meals. Often I'll come home from work, I'll actually prepare everything. So usually salmon, chicken, new potatoes, vegetables, cut it all up, put it on the tray, put it in the oven. And I know it's usually gonna be in there for about 25 to 30 minutes, but I'll do that as soon as I get home from work. And then I've got that time while it's in the oven to jump in the shower.

sort the house out so that actually it's preparing everything, still having a bit of time to do everything and the few other bits that you need. And then by the time dinner's finished, I'm ready to enjoy my meal and not then knowing I've got everything else. So I think for me, it's actually often slightly longer cooking time, but finding ways to prepare it all, shove it into the oven and then have time to do other things. think one of, I think we were speaking about this on the group call actually the other day around people using pots, especially as we into winter.

soups or casseroles or chillies where you can put it all in, leave it for a bit of time, do extra things that you need to do, but that's cooking alongside house jobs, putting the kids to bed. It's just really thinking about it and working out where you can multitask. But yeah, one tray bakes are very helpful for me.

Yeah, for sure. It's not actually something that I do a lot for, I don't know why it's just, I'm out of the habit of it, but yeah, that's a great one. Yes, the cooking time takes longer, but you're not actually doing anything in that cooking time. can go off and do other things. And all this is, it's forward thinking and thinking on the way home from work, if you're commuting, okay, as soon as I get in, what am I putting in the oven? And you're okay. Yeah. And then you get home and you go do that, stick it in the oven and then you can get everything else ready. So that's another great tip, but it's really just getting into the habit of multitasking.

And look at this like as a skill. Like right now you might be very bad at the skill of planning and the timing with food and the cooking. But with practice, you can get better at the skill. And honestly, it always surprises me or yeah, I'm surprised. We have clients who say, when I haven't planned exactly what I'm eating, I end up getting a takeaway. And I'm thinking, yeah, so obviously you haven't planned, but then what?

Speaker 2 (30:58.35)
in that moment when you get home from work, why is it that you're then ordering a takeaway? And they're like, oh, because it's quicker. And then I find out that basically it takes them an hour to cook their food. Because for me, I'm like, well, do you have the ingredients in the house? And they're like, yeah. So I've had the ingredients in the house, but I hadn't exactly chosen exactly what front loaded what I was going to eat. So they order a takeaway. And I'm thinking, well, you can cook them in 15, 20 minutes with the ingredients that you've got. So empowering yourself with that knowledge and that skill will not just help you lose weight,

but it will save you money in the long run. If you're turning to takeaways and delivery all the time, you're gonna be spending a bomb and your gut health, your overall health, your immune system, your energy levels, everything is gonna improve as a consequence of this.

as well. If you have a family or you live with friends or a partner, get them involved on a Sunday, sit together and decide what would you all like to eat throughout the week. And I definitely noticed it living with friends. We decide what we want to tweet. And if we knew that something wasn't in the house, one of us would grab it from the shop on the way home. So you're actually distributing the responsibility at times as well. If ever you do need someone to help, or if you're running late from work, you can message your partner who's at.

home, they know what they're having, they know the ingredients are in the fridge, can they put something in the oven for you if you miss the train, for example. So even getting your family involved and getting prepared as a unit and a team, if there ever are any occasions where things happen, you get stuck at work, you've also got someone else to help you and make sure that you're still able to plan and get everything in the oven if you need to.

Yeah, a hundred percent. It's a really good tip because it's well documented that if you have a partner who is supportive and helping you in your goals and respects you and your goals and what you're trying to do, you're more likely to get results. And unfortunately on the flip side, if your partner is difficult getting in the way and not open to helping, then everything's going to be a constant struggle. And this is something that we do. This is the type of advice that we do give our clients.

Speaker 2 (33:01.996)
This isn't exactly something I was going to talk about today, but I do think it's really relevant because you brought it up is sometimes what I've seen with clients is because I know exactly what some of the listeners may be thinking right now is that there's no way my partner is going to help with that. There's no way that he or she is going to do that. And actually, often that is a misguided belief because certain in certain relationships, people have got into certain roles and

sometimes it can seem like those roles are irreversible and can never ever change. So it can be that like our clients are women. So I'm going to talk about our experience with that. The role is of the woman that no matter what's going on, they're always doing the shopping, they're always doing the cooking and the partner is never ever going to help. And sometimes for whatever reason, the clients that we work with are a bit afraid to ask for help in this respect. And they just have this belief that there's no way that he's going to help. And I'm always like, well, look, how about you give him the opportunity?

of helping. If you approach it in a way where like, look, I'm really finding this difficult and I really need your help and support on this because it's going to make my life much easier and I'm going to be much happier as a consequence, which is going to improve all our family's lives. I find it difficult to believe that most partners in loving relationships, most men won't get involved in some way, shape or form. So I think part of getting long-term change is having these difficult conversations with your partner, explaining exactly how you're feeling and what you're finding difficult and trying to

get your partner to help and make things easier in this entire process. Because if you do, like Molly said, life's much, much easier. If you're a team, if you're both working together instead of working against each other, then you're far more likely to get the results. I think we should probably mention takeaways and eating out. So we won't go too much into this. So we follow the principle of 80-20. So 80 % of the time, you're cooking from scratch, from fresh ingredients, eating all the following principles that we spoke about today.

And that gives you the freedom and flexibility to go out for dinner, get the odd takeaway once a week and still get results. And the 80-20 principle can get you out of labeling foods as good or bad, can get you out of feeling guilty whenever you do have a takeaway. Because on traditional diets, if you have all or nothing thinking, then a takeaway when you're trying to eat healthily, a single takeaway is a failure. You failed. You have the takeaway on a Friday because your partner wants it. You have the takeaway. You feel guilty. fuck it. I failed.

Speaker 2 (35:26.016)
I might as well just eat what I want all weekend, go to town, overindulge because I'm going to start restricting and deprive myself again on the Monday. So if you're stuck in that cycle, we can help you get out of it, give us a message, but it's going to be almost impossible to get long-term success like that. So incorporating the 80-20 principle, if you want to get really granular with this, if you are tracking your calories, if you work out your weekly average calorie target, okay? No, sorry. If you work out what's the total amount of calories,

that you can eat in a week, right? So adding up your daily calorie target times seven and then working out the of that number will give you how many calories you can consume with takeaways, donuts, whatever it is, fill your boots. So if you are tracking calories and you wanna get really precise with that's how you do it. Cool, is there anything else that we've missed, Molly?

Just wanted to add on the restaurant or socializing again with that, there's some preparation you can do for me. If I go to any restaurant, I look at the menu before purely for excitement, but having a look at the menu, thinking about the, few things that you might want to order, even going into those occasions. If you consume alcohol, especially as we're getting into kind of the festive period, just

preparing and starting to think about some of the decisions that you're going to have to make and even front-loading that as Max has said. So how many drinks would you like to have? What meals would you like to order? Is it a time when you'd like to have a dessert or not? So you can actually start preparing and answering some of these questions before you go into these social situations and occasions as well to just feel more prepared.

Definitely really powerful tip, which a lot of our clients do because the issue is when you're in a social situation, it can be very overwhelming. Your monkey brain is going to be on going on overdrive and essentially you're just going to go into automatic behaviors. You will go and order and behave in exactly the same way that you did the time before. And likely if you're struggling with your weight, maybe that time before isn't what's going to help you achieve your goals. So front loading that decision-making again, looking ahead, just pre-planning what you're going to have.

Speaker 2 (37:35.554)
will mean that you're in a lot more control in those moments. So yeah, powerful tip. Cool, so let's give a recap. So step number one is get your kitchen and pantry ready. So organize yourself, decrease friction between you and the action of eating healthy foods. Step number two is master your food shopping. So either you're going to the shops every single week, same time, same place, you know exactly what you're getting because you front loaded your decision making or you're getting

weekly delivery of the staples that you want to fill your fridge with. Then step number three is planning your meals, doing any prep and you can take this to any level that you want. It doesn't have to be creating a whole meal plan but just again front loading your decision making and having a vague idea of what you're doing. Number four, optimize cooking time is

one of the most powerful things that you can do because it just again decreases friction between you and the action. If you are thinking, my God, it's going to take me an hour to cook a healthy meal. Guess what? You're going to, you're not going to do it. You're going to order a takeaway. Whereas you get good at that skill of it only taking 10, 15, 20 minutes, then much more likely to do it. And then finally, more front-loading your decision-making. Follow the 80-20 principle. If you are going out and being social and pre-plan what you're going to read at certain social situations. Cool.

I think that's everything for today. Hopefully this has been useful. Let us know anywhere in email, Instagram, you can comment on these podcasts as well if you have any future requests for podcast episodes. The best way to support this podcast is to follow it on Spotify or on podcasts or wherever you're listening from and even better, share it with a friend. Like if you think that a friend is going to benefit from the advice that we've given in this podcast,

then share it. That is a really powerful way to tell the algorithms that we are creating good content and content that is helping people. If you want to take it to the next level and potentially get the proper support and accountability that you need to get you out of the situation that you're in, then you can click the link below to book in for a very quick 10 minute chat with one of our team. There's no selling on this call. We're not going to be offering a spot on the program on this call. It's literally to understand your struggles and assess to see if we can help you. And if we can, we'll talk about

Speaker 2 (39:52.718)
what the next steps look like. If you're not ready for a conversation, which is going to be 99 % of you listening to this right now, it is what it is. A lot of you aren't going to be ready to have that conversation. We're here when you are, then you can click the link below and sign up for a in-depth masterclass, which goes into a lot of detail about exactly how we help our clients. And finally, I've just created a brand new email campaign or newsletter where essentially for 52 days, I will send you 52

different tips on fat loss and fitness 100 % free. So if you click the link below, sign up for that email flow and you'll get 52 days of fat loss tips. Excellent. Thanks very much, Molly. We will be here same time next week. See you there.

See ya.