The Catholic Pursuit of Excellence

3 Easy Eating Habits That Will Boost Your Energy, Focus, and Mood

• Jessica Castillo • Episode 14

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#014 - Can cutting back on sugar really prevent obesity and diabetes, and how does protein contribute to our overall well-being? 

Join me as I unravel the overwhelming tapestry of diet advice. Inspired by the Pareto principle and the book "The One Thing," learn how laser-focusing on 3 things can revolutionize your health, mood, and body composition. 

I debunk common myths about protein intake and shed light on its crucial role in our bodies. 

Tune in to simplify your approach to eating and make lasting improvements to your health, guided by faith and a commitment to excellence.


Are you ready to build high-impact habits of body, mind, and soul that actually stick? Check out the Catholic Path to Excellence today to find out how you can be more consistent in your habits and excel in every aspect of your life.

Feeling "stuck" in your life? Coaching could be the solution you need to break through whatever is holding you back. Book a FREE Call with me today to find out how I can help you.

Speaker 1:

You're listening to the Catholic Pursuit of Excellence, the show that helps you accomplish more, stress less and become the saint God created you to be. I'm your host life and health coach, jessica Castillo, and this is episode 14. Have you ever found yourself completely overwhelmed and confused by the huge amount of advice about what you should be eating? There are so many different diet styles and types and strategies and things, and, honestly, a lot of it can get really, really complicated. What I want to do in this episode is break down what are some of the highest impact habits for your diet that you can take, with three simple little strategies and tips to focus on, which you can kind of think about this as the Pareto principle applied to your diet. If you're familiar with the Pareto principle, it's basically that 80% of your results are going to come from just 20% of your effort, and we can apply this concept to just about everything, including what you're choosing to focus on with your diet. If you focus on just these three things that I'm going to teach you about in this episode of the podcast, then, honestly, it is going to simplify and make so much easier the results that you're getting from your diet.

Speaker 1:

This whole thing was inspired by a book I was reading called the One Thing. Now, if you're familiar with this book, it basically asks a question what is one thing that you could do such that, by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? So this book famously asks this question, and as I was reading the book, I was thinking to myself how can I apply this concept to what I'm working with my clients on when it comes to improving their nutrition and healthy eating, clients on when it comes to improving their nutrition and healthy eating? So the question that I asked was what is the one thing that you can do that would improve your body composition, your mood and your overall health such that, by doing it, everything else would become easier or unnecessary? And the answer, of course, that I came up with was improve your diet. There's a lot of things you could do. You could improve your sleep, that's great. You could get moving more, also great. But, honestly, you cannot out-exercise a bad diet and sometimes improving your diet can actually happen a little bit faster than improving your sleep. That might be something that you work on a little bit longer.

Speaker 1:

So the one thing is improving your diet, but, like I said, there's so much advice out there on how you should be eating, how you could be eating, what different diet strategies you might have to apply, and probably every diet you've ever tried has likely failed, and it's not because of you, it's not because you lack discipline or willpower or whatever. It's just that these diets that are overly restrictive or overly complicated are really hard to stick with for life, and so the principles I want to talk about today are three things that you can focus on, that you can continue focusing on for your entire life long, and you don't have to have an absolute perfect diet. You don't have to apply these principles 100% of the time, but if you can focus on doing this most of the time, these are going to be those 20% habits that, when you consistently apply them, are going to have the biggest benefit, the 80% outcome for your overall health. Now, when I presented this to my clients and my group coaching program, the Catholic Path to Excellence, we created a challenge called the One Thing Diet Challenge, but my joke was the one thing is actually three things, and, of course, as Catholics, we're pretty used to one thing being three things, or at least one God being three persons, so this shouldn't be too difficult of a concept for us to think about. So I'm going to tell you what are those three things. I'll go a little bit into detail about some of the reasons why I'm including those as the three things, and then I'll go into more specifics about how you can actually do it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so the three things that will have the biggest impact on your mood, your energy, your body composition, your focus, all the things when it comes to diet, are just this One limit sugar. Two, limit processed foods. And three eat adequate protein. Okay, I'm going to go through with you. Why those things? Okay, first of all, why should you limit sugar? Now, you probably are already familiar with how bad for you sugar is, but just in case you need a little extra motivation, I'm going to talk through a little bit of the reasons why limiting sugar is going to have such a big impact.

Speaker 1:

The first, of course, is just obesity. High sugar intake, especially from sugar. Sweet, of course, is just obesity. High sugar intake, especially from sugar-sweetened beverages, which is the worst that is strongly linked to obesity, and even for children, consuming sugar-sweetened beverages increases their risk of obesity by 60% for each daily serving of a sugary drink that they're drinking. There's also, of course, the rise of type 2 diabetes. Excessive sugar consumption does lead to insulin resistance, which is a precursor to type 2 diabetes, and so high sugar intake is going to heighten your risk for that.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people don't realize how sugar impacts your heart health. One study found that people who consumed 17 to 21% of their calories from added sugar had a 38% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared to those who consumed 8% or less. When it comes to heart health, a lot of people think of cholesterol, they think of fat, but really we often forget how big of an impact sugar has on your heart health. Sugar also impacts your liver health, and this is something that's surprising for people, because we think about alcohol with liver health, but non-alcoholic fatty liver disease can be caused by excessive fructose consumption, and that's because the liver metabolizes fructose into fat, which can accumulate and cause liver damage over time. Of course, sugar is hurting your teeth and your dental health, but one of the things that I think about the most when I think about high sugar consumption is what it does for your mental health.

Speaker 1:

High sugar consumption has been linked to an increased risk of depression. A study found that men consuming high amounts of sugar were 23% more likely to be diagnosed with a mental disorder, and of course, this doesn't just apply to men. This is something that I dealt with myself when I was dealing with a lot of depression. My sugar intake was extremely high and what I found was, when I reduced and eliminated sugar, my mood almost immediately started improving. And then, whenever I had times where I ate a high amount of sugar again, I could literally feel the difference in my mood. So if you're hoping to have better mood, better mental health, limiting sugar is such a good bet. And then for everyone who wants to age well and have nice skin, you should know that excess sugar causes glycation. It's a process where sugar molecules bind to proteins, forming what are called advanced glycation end products, which are appropriately acronymed ages. These ages damage your skin, collagen and elastin and lead to more wrinkles and premature aging. So if you want to age well, limit your sugar.

Speaker 1:

There are so many other reasons why you should limit sugar. Cancer risk is increased from excessive sugar consumption your cognitive function, including memory. It can cause brain inflammation, which is interesting because you do not feel inflammation in the brain. You just notice the effects of inflammation in the brain because you don't have pain receptors there, you're not feeling that inflammation. But high sugar can cause more inflammation in the brain. Because you don't have pain receptors there, you're not feeling that inflammation. But high sugar can cause more inflammation in the brain, which just messes with your cognitive function.

Speaker 1:

And of course, sugar is highly, highly, highly addictive, actually in some studies more addictive than cocaine. So once you start eating sugar, you might find it really difficult to stop eating sugar. Or if you have a little bit of sugar, it may be hard to stop at a little bit of sugar and you want more and more and more and more, and that's just your brain really getting addicted to sugar. So you probably knew this or have at least had some awareness of this. But I wanted to go over again why limiting sugar is one of the most important things you can do when it comes to just improving every aspect of your diet. So if you only did one thing limit sugar Now if you only did two things limit processed foods.

Speaker 1:

And we're finding more and more a lot of studies are coming out about how really bad for you processed foods are. These are foods that have been really tinkered with by mad food scientists to be insanely satiating or appetizing, and so as soon as you start eating these processed foods, your brain literally will go into overdrive, telling you to eat more of them. And it's a problem for a lot of things, not just because of what these foods contain in and of themselves. They usually contain a lot of garbage ingredients and things that are causing obesity, that are also hurting your heart health, increasing diabetes risk. A lot of the same risks, honestly, that come from eating a lot of sugar, are there with eating processed foods too, including mental health aspects like higher risk of depression and anxiety. So all of these things happen. Inflammation, reducing longevity all of this stuff is happening when you're eating too many processed foods.

Speaker 1:

But another downside of eating too many processed foods is that it just crowds out in your diet the better foods that you could be eating. So whole foods or nutritious foods, nutrient dense foods you're not eating as many of them because you're loading up on processed foods. So limiting processed foods is the second thing, number two. And then, finally, if you're only going to do three things or focus on three things, the third thing would be to get enough protein. Now, enough protein. This is sometimes controversial, because you might have heard people say oh well, we're already eating too much protein or your body can only use so much protein at every meal and everything else is just excess and wasted. And that is that's been hard to prove.

Speaker 1:

So what's been coming out lately is we're seeing that protein is the most satiating of all of the macronutrients. So when you eat enough protein, you actually feel more full. It's necessary, totally necessary, for your muscle growth and repair. If you are working out really hard but not eating enough protein, you are not going to be building muscle mass or even maintaining muscle mass, which is really important as we age, because muscle mass starts to kind of atrophy and shrink, especially as we are getting older. So there's like age-related sarcopenia, which is age-related muscle loss, and higher protein intake is correlated with reversing this and making sure that you are actually building adequate muscle. Protein of course helps with your weight management because it's more satiating.

Speaker 1:

Protein is really important for your metabolic health and this is because protein has what's called a higher thermic effect, and a thermic effect is basically the amount of energy required for your body to digest, absorb and metabolize your food. So that's the thermic effect of food. Well, the highest thermic effect of food is from protein, so you're actually burning more calories because you're eating more protein. It helps with bone health and bone density, your immune function, because if you don't have enough protein, the production and function of immune cells is impaired. Protein is important in your hormone regulation, your skin, hair and nail health, recovery from illness and injury. It just does so many things. It also plays a key role in transporting nutrients and oxygen in your blood and also in enzyme functions. So these are all very important for your overall metabolic health and functioning and all the things.

Speaker 1:

Sufficient protein can provide so many benefits and you honestly do not have to worry, unless you are a person with compromised kidney function. Most people are not at all at risk of eating too much protein, and while some studies have shown that your body could only use a certain amount of protein after each meal, your body can continue using the protein that you've eaten longer than just that initial window. So most experts would recommend that you increase your protein intake, especially if you're trying to improve your overall health. So those are the three things limit sugar, limit processed foods and get enough protein. Now you might be wondering okay, how much protein do I actually need?

Speaker 1:

Well, there's some simple calculations you can do. There's online calculators, but I can tell you now a pretty simple calculation. It depends a little bit on your activity level. So if you're a pretty active person and you work out regularly, you want to think about getting about 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. So as an example, you can use your ideal weight for this calculation is 130 pounds. That's approximately 59 kilograms, which yields about 94 grams of protein per day. So you might think about having about 30 grams of protein broken up over three meals breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you're not very active, if you're not strength training, you might be able to get away with 1.2 to 1.5 grams per kilogram per day of protein. So in this example, if your ideal weight was 130 pounds, that would be about 71 grams of protein per day.

Speaker 1:

Now you might be wondering how do you get all this protein? Because some people think well, okay, I hear eat more protein, I hear I need to get this many grams of protein, but how do you do that? So I'm just going to share with you some simple protein sources about where you can get protein, both animal-based protein sources and plant-based protein sources, just so you have a general rule of thumb and you know about how much protein you can get from some sources. For instance, chicken breast about 100 grams of cooked chicken breast is 31 grams of protein. Turkey breast is about 29 grams, and all of this is per 100 grams. Lean beef is about 26 grams of protein. Pork is about 25 grams of protein per 100 grams. Cooked salmon is about 25 grams of protein per 100 grams. Tuna, shrimp, eggs for one large egg, it's about 6 grams of protein. Greek yogurt, cottage cheese these are all excellent animal sources of protein and if you're thinking well, how much is about 100 grams of any of these foods? Well, you can think 100 grams is about a deck of playing cards or the size of your palm. So these are all really good sources of animal-based protein.

Speaker 1:

You can also get plant-based protein sources. They tend to have less protein and sometimes they don't have a complete protein, but one cup of cooked lentils is about 18 grams of protein. A cup of cooked chickpeas is 15 grams. Black beans one cup is about 15 grams. Quinoa also has protein about eight grams per cooked cup. You can think about the simple and humble peanut butter about two tablespoons of peanut butter is about eight grams of protein. So these are just some ideas for how you can actually get more protein in your day, once you've calculated how much protein you think you need.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so that's it. These are the three things that I would recommend everyone focus on if you're trying to eat for better focus, better mood, better energy, all of the things. Take everything you've ever heard about diet and you can probably boil it down into focusing on these three simple strategies. Boil it down into focusing on these three simple strategies Eat less sugar, eat less processed food and get enough protein. This doesn't have to be applied perfectly. If you occasionally have sugar, that's probably fine. If you occasionally eat processed food, also probably fine. If you occasionally don't get enough protein, it's probably not going to kill you. What you need to think about is what can you consistently maintain and keep doing over time?

Speaker 1:

Now, if you're hoping to find an easier way to eat healthy meals, one of the things that I offer in my group coaching program, the Catholic Path to Excellence, is, every week, I actually send out a healthy meal plan that includes not just all of the recipes in the meal plan, but also the shopping list, and it's just the written plan. It's really easy. So if you're looking for a simple way to get healthy meals or even healthy meal ideas. One of the things I recommend to my clients when I send out these meal plans is hey, you don't have to use this exactly as it's written, take what you like and use that. And I include nutrition information so you'll know how much protein, fat, how much carbohydrates, how much fiber all of the things that you're getting from your meal plan. It's included in there so you can see it and you can learn. And over time, what happens is you start to build the capacity to quickly and easily put together your own healthy meals, because you will have gained experience and you'll know well, this is about this much protein. This is an easy meal I can make that. My family likes that sort of thing. You'll start building your own repertoire.

Speaker 1:

So if you are interested in joining us in the Catholic Path to Excellence this is my group coaching program. For anyone who's hoping to really build high-impact habits of body, mind and soul that stick then you can join right now using our summer sale. In fact, the time this episode comes out, I think there's one more day left in the sale, which ends on July 31st. So if you're hoping to save $100 a month on the Catholic Path to Excellence. I highly recommend you check it out today.

Speaker 1:

It's a thrivingcatholiccom forward slash path. You will find all the information there about what's included in the program, including a weekly group coaching call and training on high impact habit, a weekly review, continuous micro coaching in between all of these healthy meal plans, recipes and shopping lists, as well as monthly workout plans. So all of this is included in the path. It's a really great program. I highly encourage you to check it out if you're at all curious because, like I said, that sale is ending and it's such a good deal. So go check it out at thrivingcatholiccom forward slash path and I hope to see you on our next call. All right, that is it for me this week. Until next time, remember that it is Jesus who inspires you to do something great with your life, so don't let yourself be ground down by mediocrity. Bye for now.