Your Friday Five: The “Prepared, Not Perfect” Nutrition Reset

In this New Year edition of Your Friday Five, we’re talking about the ONE strategy that consistently transforms my patients’ nutrition—and my own. Winter is here, the days are darker, and this is the time of year when energy dips and cravings rise. Instead of fighting it, let’s set you up to feel better from the inside out.

In today’s episode, I walk you through my simple “2 protein + 2 fiber” system that keeps your meals effortless, balanced, and ready when you need them—not after hunger hits. I share exactly how I prep my fridge, the card-stock list I keep posted, and the easy breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack combos that make nutrition feel doable (even on your busiest weeks).

You’ll also hear how to grab my free “Prepared” PDF and the lentil red sauce (“Steve”) recipe, plus how to comment on social to get them sent straight to your DMs.

This episode is all about real-life support—not perfection. When you have go-to meals ready, you give yourself a fighting chance for better energy, better mood, and better consistency as you move into the year.

Links:
→ Note I miss-spoke on the episode and it's comment "sauce", not Steve, to get the red sauce recipe. Also not instead of ground beef I use a can of pre-cooked lentils. Comment “Sauce” on the this post to get the full PDF
→ Comment “Prepared” to get the ideas for the 2 protein and fiber concept 

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

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Transcript

0:29

Welcome back to another, your Friday five, but this time we're in a new year. Yay. I hope you all had a great holiday time. Hopefully you got some rest. And here we are now in the next few months when it is cold and dark and dreary if you're in the Midwest or anywhere else where you have the Four Seasons. We're gonna have to do a lot. So that we don't get depressed. Let this episode give you some ideas for how you can take care of your nutrition so that you can feel better. We do know that there is a direct gut brain connection that if you are eating foods that support you more, you will feel better. It's part of it, not everything, but it's part of it. This very much so matters. A few months ago on social, I shared a tip that I tell all my patients and I do this myself and it helps people be so successful. So I'm gonna describe it here, what I do. But I wanna tell you, there's a great video that I have with this where I literally show up my resources and if you comment under that video, the word prepared, you'll get sent A PDF. It is a killer PDF. That's amazing. Where. I have all of this written out and you can create it for yourself. I'm not even getting your email. It's literally just when you commented on social, it gets sent to you in a direct message and it's super easy. So underneath this audio, wherever you're listening, there's gonna be a link. And if you click that, you just comment the word prepared underneath that video and it's even, you'll see everyone else has commented on that video. Here's what I think you need to do to be successful with nutrition. You always need to have in the fridge. Two protein and two fiber that are good to go at all times. And here's the key. You cannot be in the middle of high hunger or urges and cravings or in the middle of a busy day and then prepare things. These things need to be a hundred percent ready. It's not even, oh, you made the Greek yogurt with Hidden Valley Ranch powder and you have it in a big tub, and now you need to put it into a small dish and you also need to get the veggies out. No, you have a container where you have a little Raman of the. Ranch, Greek yogurt thing, and you have the cut veggies next to it. You just take it outta the fridge and you have it. I find you going old school to be the most helpful. So I buy this hard card stock from Michael's. It's a craft store by meme. I mean, I buy it in industrial amounts because that hard card stock, it is perfect to put behind coloring pages so you don't have the bleeding to the next page. And then my son uses these, we go through them in an industrial amount, but, okay, so what I do is I write on this sheet. At the top. B for breakfast in the middle, L and d for lunch and dinner, and then on the bottom snack and to the right drinks and at the top sweetener. I have all the different categories that I'm gonna fill out. And so under breakfast I will write what are the things that I like that are easy, that will give me protein and fiber. They don't have to be perfect, but they have to at least get those two. Examples of this might be when I do, for example, I'll do Greek yogurt and then I'll do like a cup of frozen Costco, wild blueberries. It is such a perfect combination. Remember, berries have a ton of, fiber in it. Greek yogurt has a ton of protein. It's an amazing balanced meal. If you wanted to get more carbohydrates in there, you could put some new trail, which is a nut granola on top if you wanted to get, again, more fats and carbon there. So there's always ways that you can modify it, but that's an easy one. The other one that I just love and it actually is easy if you take a piece of toast. Either Ezekiel from the freezer or I get this, bread, it's called fitness bread and it has a lot of fiber in each slice. I'll toast that. I'll do a little bit of butter and then I will put on there. A slice of cheese, some avocado. If I have cucumber, tomato again, all this stuff is always cut in my fridge and I'll just assemble that and that breakfast makes me feel amazing. I might have some fruit next to it again, depending on what my hunger levels are like. I have all these things ready to go, or if I make a devotion mug cake at. This is written on the fridge and it is literally, I just look and I'm like, oh yeah, I could make that. Before I made these lists, even though the food would be in the house, I would forget the combinations that I could make. Who's opening the freezer every single time to, to come up with ideas? No one You have ideas for breakfast, for lunch and dinner. So I'm an equal opportunity person. I don't, for me, it's not like oh, that's a lunch food and that's a dinner food. Frankly, I'll eat any food at any time, but I have on here, I really love for dinner. Uh, sometimes I'll do cottage cheese, roasted veggies, and I might have already made that on the weekend and I'm just taking out a handful to warm up. And then I might make some gorilla protein plus noodles, have that with some Parmesan, so the cottage cheese, getting the protein, the veggies, and then there's even more protein in the noodles, but it balances it out. Sometimes I'll like, there's this, uh, tomato. Lentil sauce thing that I make, and again, I have a handout for that too. If you go anywhere on my social and you comment the word Steve underneath any video, so S-T-E-V-E, if you want the recipe to that, but what I love is that it has lentils, it has a tomato sauce in it there, there's carrots, celery, onion. So all of this together, it's very high protein and fiber. I will put it on a bed of spaghetti squash and I'll have that for dinner now. These things. You might be hearing these and you're like, Matea, that's super involved. No, it's not. Why? Because if I know I'm gonna have this during the week, I will already have the spaghetti squash made and I have it in a few different glass Pyrex containers. All I'm doing that evening is putting a scoop of the red sauce on top, sticking it in the microwave, and then putting some cottage cheese next to it. Then I have this extravagant, amazing dinner. I don't have to work at it because I decided that's gonna be one of my protein fiber that I have good to go. I always make sure to have one or two things good to go, or like an egg salad. It's easy for me to grab it when I need it. I don't need to think about it. It's written on the fridge. Under snacks I have, again, same thing. It would be like raw veggies that are caught up that you would do with Greek yogurt and some ranch powder. Fruit and cottage cheese. I really love that sweet and salty combination. I put on here things like protein bars, but I'm gonna level with you. Okay? Protein bars don't do it for me. So there's the brand, Mela. I really love them and I do eat those, but I need to have something else with it. By the way, they're dairy free, they're vegan, they're all the things, they're gluten free They have 10 grams of plant-based protein, but I need to eat something else with it. But at least it tells me like some days I'm a lot more snack ish and I, despite balancing and doing all the things I might be pre period or whatever's happening. So those bars will be incredibly satisfying during that time. But I have it as an option. I don't do it often. The devotion mug cakes again, or a protein drink or right now with it being cold. I am loving devotion, hot chocolate, I do about three fourths of a cup of hot water, fourth of a cup of milk, just so that the water's not scalding hot. You put a scoop of the brownie batter in there, you blend it up you can have it as is, or you could put some whipped cream or cool whip on top. I'm telling you, it is so satisfying. It truly tastes like it's hot chocolate. In fact, the other night I made my son his hot chocolate and then. I made that version for myself, the devotion one, and it was better. I'm not joking. I literally drank a sip of his and I was like, this is disgusting. That was the name brand one. Let me just put it that way. And I made it all nice for him, i'm not like trying to make things healthified and I literally said I like mine better. That's insanity. Anyway, so drinks and pr, the sweeteners, all that kind of stuff. Again, if you want that handout, you can get it. You need things to be prepared. If you're someone where you have a ton of time where like every meal, I'll never forget, I saw this social media influencer in the past and she. Every single meal. Was it? It must have been like an hour preparation. Of course, she was like a YouTube star, right? I was sitting there, and of course I was mesmerized by these videos, but she literally was like. Baking pastries and stuff for the evening and everything was from scratch, and she would make a soup in the middle of the day, but it was, every single meal was a new thing that she was doing. And if that's you, that's amazing. In fact, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet that you actually have an amazing relationship with food and you feel great and your gut health is amazing. Of us that do not enjoy doing that all day long. You too still need health. And so if you have this stuff repaired, you give yourself a fighting chance. All right. I hope you're having a great start to the new year and we'll talk soon.