Get ready to unlock the secrets of sustainable wellness through the transformative power of effortless eating. Our deep dive investigates the vital role of consistency in dietary choices, as we reveal how to sidestep the chaos of yo-yo dieting and instead nourish your body with purpose. With a focus on selecting nutrient-rich foods and establishing simple, reliable eating habits, this episode unpacks the art of sending the right signals to your body. You'll learn how to indulge in any food without the guilt, by effectively managing your needs and interpreting your body's cues through a balanced diet.
Take the reins on your health journey with our practical guide to making healthy eating a breeze. I'll share my personal strategies for meal planning, and you'll get a glimpse into my fridge—stocked with quick options that fit seamlessly within health goals. Discover how to harness the power of convenient, nutritious meals and the importance of clear food messaging to your body. Plus, don't miss the chance to perform a self-audit with our starter food list designed for optimal gut health and energy, available in the show notes. Whether you're a seasoned health enthusiast or just starting out, this episode is your gateway to a lifestyle where food becomes your ally in achieving lasting wellness.
Get ready to unlock the secrets of sustainable wellness through the transformative power of effortless eating. Our deep dive investigates the vital role of consistency in dietary choices, as we reveal how to sidestep the chaos of yo-yo dieting and instead nourish your body with purpose. With a focus on selecting nutrient-rich foods and establishing simple, reliable eating habits, this episode unpacks the art of sending the right signals to your body. You'll learn how to indulge in any food without the guilt, by effectively managing your needs and interpreting your body's cues through a balanced diet.
Take the reins on your health journey with our practical guide to making healthy eating a breeze. I'll share my personal strategies for meal planning, and you'll get a glimpse into my fridge—stocked with quick options that fit seamlessly within health goals. Discover how to harness the power of convenient, nutritious meals and the importance of clear food messaging to your body. Plus, don't miss the chance to perform a self-audit with our starter food list designed for optimal gut health and energy, available in the show notes. Whether you're a seasoned health enthusiast or just starting out, this episode is your gateway to a lifestyle where food becomes your ally in achieving lasting wellness.
Welcome to the Simplicity of Wellness podcast. I'm your host, board-certified holistic nutritionist and professional life coach, amy White. The purpose of this podcast is to share information that you can use to become leaner, stronger and healthier by losing weight, shedding inches, maintaining muscle and managing your mind, all while living your normal busy life in this modern, sugar-filled world. Welcome, simplifiers. Today I want to talk about letting food feel easy. I want to tell you why you want to let food feel easy and I want to explain what that looks like. What do I mean by food feeling easy? So first let's start with why you want to let food feel easy. To me, when food feels easy, it makes being consistent about what you're eating really easy. Losing weight for the last time or creating any positive change requires one thing lasting change. Make the change and that change becomes your new reality, your new lifestyle. Lasting change comes from consistent action over time. When it comes to feeling better in your body, losing that weight once and for all, you need to be consistent. Oftentimes I feel like people get really wound up in the food what they can eat, what they can't eat. Really focusing on what they can't eat, feeling deprived, then jumping in and overdoing it, kind of that yo-yo back and forth, but when you let food feel easy, you can consistently eat the things that help your body shift into balance. You don't have good days or bad days, it's just all good days. Your body is getting the same message from you every single day. Can you imagine what will happen when you don't yo-yo, when you don't confuse your body with mixed messaging, when you actually consistently tell your body the same thing time and time again? You're telling your body you want specific things, you want more energy, you want to sleep well, you want to shed these inches in this extra weight. You want your body aches to go away. You don't want to crave sugar. You want to feel in control with food. The food that you eat is information, and if that's what you want, you need to be able to tell your body that you need to say these are the things that I want, and you do that with food. However, if you're doing the right things or telling your body the right thing one day, and then the next day you're going crazy and having cookies and doing all the things that you weren't doing the day before. Now you're sending your body mixed messages and now it's going wait a minute. I thought you said you wanted more energy, but the information I'm getting from this food is telling me that you want to actually feel super tired, which is exactly the opposite of what you want. You want to send a clear, consistent message to your body about exactly what it is you want, so that you can have those things.
Speaker 1:
Making your food feel easy is all about making the healthy food that works for your body feel easy Nutrient dense food. This is going to be the proteins, the healthy carbohydrates, so lots of veggies and fiber, maybe some fruit, depending on if your body can tolerate that at this point. Because, again, when you're going into balance or bringing your body into balance, it's different than living in maintenance and, yes, there may be certain things that you can have less of as you're shifting into balance. But once in balance, again the goal is to be able to eat anything you want, anytime you want, totally guilt-free, because you understand how to now manage that balance, because you understand how to send your body the right messaging through your food. Food feeling easy.
Speaker 1:
To me, that means you don't spend a lot of mental energy on figuring out what you're going to eat. You basically know the things that you like to eat. You make sure that they're available in your kitchen, in your refrigerator, so these are your easy go-to foods. Everybody sort of feels like they need to be this sort of fancy gourmet cook these days, right With all the recipes on the internet and everything that looks so simple. Try this If you haven't made things before or if you're not somebody who's comfortable in the kitchen, trying those new things is going to be challenging. Anything that's new is somewhat challenging. Why not stick with the things that you know? Why not stick with the foods that you like? Keep it super, super simple. I literally eat almost the same thing every weekday. Now on the weekends we try new recipes. We do different things because we have time During the week. I know exactly what I like. I know exactly how long it's going to take me to put it together. It's very, very simple.
Speaker 1:
I always have a giant salad made and in the fridge. I usually have to mix that salad up twice a week. I usually can get two and two and a half days out of the salad. So maybe twice to three times a week. I always have the salad ready. I always put my protein on top of the salad and then the protein choices are going to range from roasted chicken, leftover pork chops, leftover meatballs, tuna, eggs. Those are my basics. Those are my go-to weekday quick foods. I always make sure that that stuff is ready and available in the refrigerator and we do that on the weekends.
Speaker 1:
I think about the week ahead. I make sure I have all my go-tos. I love that food. It's tasty. I enjoy it. I want it to be in the refrigerator, I want to open the refrigerator and I want to see those foods. So on the weekends I make sure that my food will feel easy.
Speaker 1:
During the week, I make sure that my refrigerator is packed the way I want it to be packed. I'm making my food feel super easy and this allows me to stay consistent. This allows me to eat the way I want to be eating. This allows me to make sure that I'm in control of the message that my body's getting. I'm in control of the information so that my body knows exactly what I want from it. I want to feel good. I want great energy. I don't want to gain any weight. I want to feel strong. I want to build muscle. I don't want aches and pains. I don't want mood swings. Those are the things.
Speaker 1:
That is the message that I want my body to get every time I take a bite of food, and I do not want to confuse my body with mixed messaging. I do not want to eat really well for five days and then go crazy on the weekends. So now my body's like wait, what are we doing? I don't get it. I'm very confused. I do not want my body to be confused. I want my body to know exactly what the plan is and not deviate from that plan. And that's what it's like when I make my food feel easy because I don't deviate from the plan. So let's recap we're talking about letting our food feel easy so that we can consistently eat the healthy foods that tell our body exactly what it is we want. If weight loss is something that you want, you have to make sure that that's the message that you're sending to your body. You have to make sure the food that you're eating is saying hey, body, let's use onboard fuel, let's burn body fat. Your food tells your body that, but it has to be the right food.
Speaker 1:
The other way that I make food feel really easy is I use convenience foods, I use deli meats, I use pre-packaged foods. I keep my freezer stock with meals that are already pre-made that go in the microwave. That is one of the ways I really make food feel easy. So when I'm tired, when I don't have a plan, when the refrigerator ends up running out of the food that I expected to have for the next two days, no problem, I just go to the freezer and I grab one of the things that I have stocked in there that I know I can have done and ready in two to three minutes because it goes in the microwave. Yes, I am selective about the food that I put in the freezer. I'm selective about my pre-packaged foods. I read the nutrition label, I look at what's in it. I check to make sure it fits my nutritional parameters, what I want for my body. There is a line in the sand of things that I will be okay with in an ingredient list and things that I'm not okay with, and so, yeah, I check the ingredient list and if the things that I don't like are in the ingredient list, then I'm going to put that one back.
Speaker 1:
But first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to look at the nutrition label. I want to see how much protein is in it. Then I want to compare that to how much fat there is. At the very most I would do a one-to-one with the protein to the fat, meaning if there's 30 grams of protein and there's 30 grams of fat, I will consider it. I will then look at the carbohydrates. Ideally I want something that's going to have 30 grams of protein and 10 or less grams of fat. I want a much higher protein profile than fat profile. So when you're looking at a nutrition label, look for protein. See if you're going to be getting close to 30 grams of protein in a serving. Then look at the fat Is it equal to the protein or is it less? You really want less fat than protein. And when it comes to the carbohydrates, again it's per serving. When I'm looking at a nutrition label Ideally 20 grams or less carbs per serving and if it's getting up there between 15 and 20 grams of carbs per serving, then I'm going to look at the fiber and I'm going to say, well, okay, but I want to make sure there's a decent amount of fiber in there, so that it's kind of bringing my overall net carbs down a little bit. So for me, I think I generally, like you know, somewhere around 10 grams of carbs per serving, maybe a little more, certainly more if it's a high fiber food. That just gives you a little bit of an outline of what to look at when you're looking at a nutrition label, when you're shopping for a pre-packaged healthy foods that will fit into your lifestyle. That will tell your body the consistent messaging that you want it to have. Let's recap Today we're talking about letting food feel easy.
Speaker 1:
The reason you want food to feel easy is because you want to be able to eat consistently in the way that supports your body. So you want to be eating food that's sending a consistent message to your body about exactly what it is you want. You don't want to be yo-yoing back and forth with the healthy food and then the not healthy food, because then you're sending mixed messages and your body isn't going to know what you want. The healthy foods telling your body oh, I want to have more energy, I want to feel really good, I don't want to have any bloat, I don't want to have any gas, I want to lose weight. But then you jump over and you yo-yo back over to sort of the bad foods or the things that send your body a different message oh, I want to have really high blood sugar. I want to feel really tired. I want to be on a roller coaster of energy ups and downs all day. I want to crave sugar. Those are very mixed messages.
Speaker 1:
So, again, making food feel easy so that the healthy food that you enjoy now I'm not suggesting you eat things you don't like figure out what are the healthy foods that you enjoy that are sending the right message. And then don't get tricky, just stick with the things that you like. Keep it very simple and then, once you're feeling really solid with the pattern that you're on sure, you can start maybe introducing some different things, adding some stuff in. But at this point you also need to understand how to watch your body metrics. Are the things that you're adding in working or are they throwing your body out of balance? Are you ready to be adding new things in? Have you solidified the habits with the other simple, healthy food, the food that you were making feel really easy?
Speaker 1:
All right, the reason we want to make food feel easy is because I want you to just have mental space. I don't want you to be spinning around what should I eat? When should I eat? How much of this should I eat, negotiating with yourself over something that maybe you shouldn't eat. Well, if I only have a little bit or just a bite, yeah, just clear the mental drama. Make food feel easy. All of that mental drama will drop away and it becomes very clear oh, I eat this, I don't eat that. And again, this is temporary, right. You're bringing your body into balance and the main goal is, once you're in balance, I want you to be able to eat anything at any time, guilt-free, because you know what it feels like to be in balance and therefore you know what it feels like when you're shifting out of balance, and so you can correct that.
Speaker 1:
I hope you found this episode interesting and helpful. And listen, if you're confused about the messaging that your food is sending your body, I can help you with that. I do a little mini audit for non-clients which you can sign up for. I can take a look at your. You know you have to give me information. You know what are your goals, where are you at, what do you want? What are you eating? I want you to outline your food for me and I'll get back to you about what it is that I see what information I believe the food that you're eating is sending your body.
Speaker 1:
If you liked the episode, please give me some stars. Drop a review. That would be so helpful. It'll help me. It'll help the podcast. It'll get the podcast out to more people who could use the information. Certainly share it if you have friends or family that you know would like the information. I really appreciate you being here with me and I will see you in the next episode. Have you ever said to yourself I wish someone would just tell me what to eat? If so, today is your day. Go to the show notes and click the link your healthy kitchen what to eat to download the starter food list that I share with all of my angry to healthy weight loss clients. These are the foods that will calm your gut, eliminate the bloat, boost your energy and shift you into a fat burner. This list is your first step toward body balance and weight loss for the last time.