Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I'm so excited today to talk about food planning Now do not tune out on me yet cuz it's going to be good today When I think about food planning, I don't get overly excited, however, I will tell you what I see how it transforms people when they do a little bit of it and how you could do it in a really easy way. So first of all, how's the weather by you? I feel like definitely we're in spring summer's coming. The weather is turning so nice. We're outside more. That is definitely helping me out. I'm also, I don't know if I've shared this with all of you, but I'm also soon in the middle of a move here. As of June I'm gonna be in Chicago and so it's kind of coordinating. Whatever you can do with childcare and living and all those kind of things. So it is quite the busy season around here, but I'm really loving it, just getting to experience the weather changing. I think it's making all of it better. So let's get to today's topic. I wanna talk about. A lot of people wanna get to a new place with their weight and with their health goals. And you know, I always talk about body image. There's lots of things that people wanna change, but they keep finding themselves in the same place. And let's just start here. That is normal. And one of the things I wanna just introduce to you today, if you haven't heard much about it, and there's lots of different names for this, but I like to call it the Habit Brain, that about 90 to 95% of the things we do are run by the habit Brain. You could also use the word subconscious. The point is you're not thinking about it, like you're just, when you're walking, you're not thinking about it. And then I put one leg in front of the other, right? You acquired that skill as a baby when you started to learn how to walk. Maybe if you're driving a car, you're not thinking about every single thing you're doing. You sort of, maybe when you at first learned to drive, that was something you had to do, but then you got better. And so I want you to think about, I wanna give you another example here. Imagine when you, when you start a new job, it's very taxing, right? You're like, oh, I'm learning all these new processes, all these new things to do. I don't know where the bathroom is. It's like everything is work and you're really exhausted that first week or two and you think, am I gonna be able to keep doing this? That's the same way that it is when lifestyle change is involved. In the beginning, Nothing is running in the habit brain. Nothing has been locked away and just running on autopilot. So everything is conscious and when everything is conscious, it's a very exhausting process. I want to normalize to you if you are either at the beginning of your journey, Or maybe you've plateaued somewhere and now you're kind of needing to go through the next sprint where you kind of figure out what else am I gonna change? What else am I gonna do? Because ultimately we're gonna have to keep changing what we're doing. Otherwise our body gets used to it. We, we kind of know this based on metabolic adaptation. So if you are at that place, It can feel really exhausting when you think, oh my gosh, I have to think about everything that I'm eating and doing and moving, and it just gets exhausting. But this is what I wanna tell you if we can use a little bit of planning. But today we're gonna focus on food planning. If we're able to use that as a tool, you can get a different outcome and this can be something that can be really powerful. So how is it that you start to break some of these patterns that, like a computer, you start to program something new away into that hardware? How do we do that? How do we change your neuroplasticity in your brain? Get a different outcome. It's through making decisions ahead of time and using planning. And what this is gonna do when you do. You are going to make the decision ahead of time and then you're gonna go with it even if you don't feel like doing it the next day, because you never feel like doing it. Something always looks like it's gonna taste better or you're gonna wanna do something else, but there's that moment when you planned it and it's a gift to yourself. If you can just go ahead and follow through with what you planned, and it's going to reveal a lot. So let's talk about planning real quick. Number one, I wanna talk about. We have those habit loops, right, that I talked about. It's everything's just running on autopilot, that habit brain, and it's like a computer where everything's been programmed away in a certain way. And when you make those decisions, what you're gonna do is you're making that plan ahead of time and you're able to set the intention of how you want things to go. You are able to intentionally form new habits and unlearn old habits. Otherwise, the past keeps repeating itself. This was something radical when I learned about it. I had just never heard about it, said in this way that if we're not living an intentional life, if we're not planning things, if. Putting a little bit of thought into what we're doing. The past just keeps repeating, am I the only one that thinks this is powerful? I remember when I heard that and I thought, oh my gosh, yes. The past just keeps repeating. So if we wanna break that pattern, we need to put a little bit of intentionality into it. So again, we're able to intentionally form new habits, unlearn old habits, we're able to decrease urge driven eating. It's because you've already decided. Even though you might wanna go do those things, you are going to maybe choose to eat what you plan because you know, hey, my blood sugar's gonna be a little bit better balanced. Ultimately, if I can do this for a few days, I know I'll actually feel better mental health-wise. We're gonna decrease some of those habits because you've decided on how to best support yourself. Things are not having to be decided when you're in the middle of panic. Remember when you are in the middle of panic. The reasoning brain is very low. So if you're very emotional, you are not gonna sit there and really be reasoning and thinking in a great way. We wanna decide some of these things before you're in those scenarios. Again, we wanna program away new things and then, The other thing that's going to become very obvious when you do planning, which is just such a magical place to get to, is that you're gonna see there are many places that you could intervene. It's not complicated. So for example, you might be like, okay, what if I packed a different snack? What if I tried a different lunch or dinner? You get to play around with things before you're in them, and again, then you feel so limited and boxed in and this is never gonna change. The other thing I wanna stress, I briefly said this, but. Gift to decide ahead of time. It's our prefrontal cortex where we make decisions. It's, that's the small percentage of things. We get to stay in charge of things instead of it kind of happening to us. And this is really something that people struggle with with food, is that they feel very out of control. Like it's something they're not ever gonna be able to get a hold on. And there is that initial stage where we need to take conscious control of it with the prefrontal cortex. And that involves planning. The other thing is you can have meals that are ready to go. Things that you know you like, and this does not need to take a lot of time. Again, initially you're gonna do some of this planning, but then things start to run on autopilot. So number one here was if we can do planning, we can break some of these habit loops and some of this automatic thinking and program away new things. All right? Number two is this. With planning, we do not want perfection. No perfection allowed. You might be someone that. Writes food down after you eat it. You might be someone where planning for you means I'm gonna plan the foods I'm gonna bring into the house, and then I will pick from those options at the meals. You might be someone that's like, no, and this is, I fall more along these lines. I need things already ready to go and, and this is kind of funny, I wanna share a little bit of background. The person that helps me to edit this is actually someone that has known me for the past several years, and she's gonna listen to this and she can attest to this. I have it all ready to go in the fridge, literally. I will take a thing of blackberries. I will take cottage cheese and I will just throw the blackberries on top of the cottage cheese. Like I will eat it like that. I have, these cabbage salads that I buy that are already pre-made. You just put the dressing on it and I actually like when the dressing kind of like marinades on it for a little bit. I have that literally ready to go. There's some hard boiled eggs ready to go. These things need to. Already in smaller containers. So part of my planning, it's not only what comes in the house, cuz there's certain staples that I keep and I think we've talked about that. It's also how readily available it is to me. Your planning is gonna look really different based on what your. Place in life is right now. I have some patients that are more retired and they just love making these beautiful, healthy meals, and I love, they'll even share some pictures with me. I'm so inspired by it. It's just based on what place in life they're at and what they enjoy. Some people love cooking, so go ahead and cook every meal. No problem. So planning. Will look different. You don't have to a hundred percent write out what you're going to eat. Part of your planning could be I'm gonna get a veggie and a protein with every single meal. That's something that I generally like to encourage with patients, and so, That's something that I don't know that you're gonna be successful in that if you don't have those things in the house or maybe even have them prepped a little bit. So that's a decision that that you get to make. But my point here is this, we don't need perfection. It's not always gonna go perfectly. And here's the thing. We wanna learn from that. So I always say, don't let an overeat go to waste. I want you to learn when you overeat or when you eat off plan, things like that. Why, why did that happen? So within my clinic, we have something called it, write it down and move on worksheet. And this looks at, where was I sitting? What was I thinking? What was I telling myself? Okay, what could I do differently? Next time you start to learn. Where are the cues, the triggers? When is this happening? Because it's usually the same thing all the time. We like to think it's dramatic and I'm never gonna be able to be successful and I can't believe I'm doing this. But usually it's the same thing all the time. If we let go of perfection, that's not required for you to plan and to take care of yourself and be more intentional in this area, life gets a lot. The next thing I wanna get into with planning is that it gives you data for later to look at so that it's not drama. How are you gonna change if you have nothing to look at? You're not able to really be the scientist of your body. I always say that in multiple aspects. One being the scientist of your body is, okay, how does food feel like an hour or two after I eat it? Right? That's one way. The other way of being the scientist of your body is to literally just look at the data. Okay, here's what I'm eating, here's what the numbers are doing. If your weight is plateauing, you're not losing more weight and you know, yep. I have a lot more to lose, so I know I'm still heading on the way down. Guess what you're eating for maintenance, not a problem, but your body's letting you know for what you're doing right now. That's where it's wanting to maintain and again, I always say work with your doctor and a registered dietician or who, whatever your team looks like, because sometimes it's that you're continuing to eat too much and we need to work on that. Sometimes though, again, depending on if you're a med or not or I don't know what your scenario is cuz everyone's different. Some people actually are undereating. And they're shutting down their metabolism. So I know that's not helpful cause you're like, well, which 1:00 AM I? Well, this is why, again, I give you broad strokes here, but I do want you to work with your team. If you don't have the data, if you tell me, my weight's plateauing, and I say, okay, send me your food journals from the past few weeks and you don't have consistently what's going on, it's very hard to come up with the next plan because we don't know what's happening. The thing that needs to happen here though, is, you know, I said number two was no perfection. If you're being perfectionistic about it, you're never gonna have all that data because at some point you're gonna overeat something or eat off plan, and you're gonna maybe have shame and not wanna write it down. So we have to let go of all of that and we just write it down just so that we have it. It allows for data when you do planning. The fourth thing is this. It's got to be. In my clinic, we have a planner that you can use, but I'm not even dogmatic about saying that people need to use that. It's a resource. It has some suggestions, but maybe you wanna just take your phone and do it in the note section. I used to do reverse chronological order and I would write the things I ate and just. Just literally one day after another and always starting at the top so that I didn't need to scroll all the way down. Because the other thing is most of us are creatures of habit. And so we'll just literally, you could just like copy and paste the last day to the next day and change what you do. It's usually not hard. Are you someone that just likes a little pen and paper? I realize it just works really great for me. I guess I'm old school, I will just write things down. In that capacity it. Keep me aware of what's happening, but here's the key that I always say two sentences or two minutes. This is not this massive process where it's taking over your life. When people say, oh, am I gonna have to keep the future forecast? Am I gonna have to do this for the rest of my life? And they're doing those things and I say, I don't know, I can't answer that question right now because just like we spoke about with time, these new habits are gonna get kind of programmed. So a lot of those habits, the longer we do it, the longer we can stick with it. The longer it's actually an integrity with how we wanna live. Those things do actually get filed away. Is it gonna look the same right now when you start compared to five years down the road? Of course not. But maybe there's gonna be some level of accountability. Again, if we look at that national weight registry, people are tracking in some capacity. They're weighing themselves, they're walking daily, they're doing things like that. I have found personally, when I stop tracking, cuz of course there's times when I don't track, I just notice the weight go up, and I've just come to this place where I say, all right, if it takes a minute or two daily for me to roughly think of the proteins I'm going to eat and how I'm gonna. That's worth it for me to keep this weight off and to keep going. And then I'm also able to keep working on some different things. Otherwise, I just forget that this area of life exists. That's just the way my brain is and that's okay. But if it's complicated, you are not gonna wanna come back to this. So remember, planning can just be, I make sure that the food is stocked in the house once a week. Whatever your routine looks like. Planning could be. No, I literally package it up and have it good to go for the next day. That's more my. Planning for you could be. I've got vats of protein and veggie and I just dip into it when I'm hungry. It can look so different. But the first thing is you've gotta get honest with yourself. So here are some questions that I want you to think about this week. If this is something that you either are doing or want to start doing. So what would a loving plan look like? Remember, we're gonna leave perfection at the door. What could it really look like? A loving plan. What would you do? What could you get excited about? This is so crucial cuz I have to tell you, I'm not eating things that I don't like. I can't stick to it long term. So what can you get excited about? Are there things that you can plan in for that week that you really love? What can we do in that capacity? What could you stick to that might be the one that goes at the top of the list? Because again, if you're not 10, outta 10. Yes. I like that. I'm going to eat that. That sounds good. If we're doing that unicorn planning, Oh, I'm gonna have carrots with hummus at night. And you hate both of those. That's just not a way forward long term. So really asking yourself, what could I stick to? And then the other question that you could ask yourself is, do I need help on this? So there is an aspect often of, I just say, a skill gap. This means that you may be really don't know how to. Planning easy. You don't know how to do things a different way. Maybe you're so indoctrinated in, I use this term diet culture. It's where someone said this is, this is a hundred percent what you're gonna do. You're gonna follow this meal plan, you're gonna do these things, and you've never been able to stick to it long term. So if you don't know how to think creatively and think outside the box and ask yourself some different questions and have ideas for how to tell what hunger is and what enough is, and maybe some ideas for what to plan. Get yourself some help. Is it talking to a doctor? Is it talking to a registered dietician? I myself just met with one. It was super helpful. I didn't know the protein goal. You know, I'm continuing to lose weight and I just needed some guidance. What am I supposed to do here? What's interesting is, I'm a vegetarian and I know just from having looked over my data, I'm not getting enough protein. But honestly, I had a block. Can you imagine this? I'm Obesity Medicine board certified. I help patients with clarity all day long on this, everyone's getting results. And for myself, I can't see it clearly. That is the nature of this. We often cannot see our own brain. We often cannot see things in our own life clearly. So who else needs to get involved here? Do I need to do a session or two with a dietician? Is there some emotional eating going on? Do I need to talk to a therapist? Is there a coaching program? There are so many resources and maybe we need to do a whole episode on that, but where do I need to get some additional help so that I can increase my skills so that this is easier? All right, I'm gonna go ahead and leave it there. That's what I have for you today. If you are loving this podcast, I wanna make sure that you all know that I have an email list. We can call it a newsletter, but it's an email that goes out once a week. It lets you know what episode's coming up. It has some really great information in there every so often, different things that I wouldn't announce on here. So if you wanna get on that, the best way to do that, it's to go to rentier clinic.com. I'll have the link in the show notes, and if you click on the podcast link on the upper right hand corner, you can subscribe to the email newsletter for. The Obesity Guide with Matria md. So I hope that I see all of you on there, and then that way you just make sure that you don't miss out on anything. Thank you so much for being on here today. I hope you got some great ideas and hit reply. If you're on that email list, hit reply this week. I wanna know what your thoughts are, do you like to plan or not, and what's the challenge for you? All right, speak to you all next.