The Win On Purpose Podcast
The Win On Purpose Podcast focuses primarily on health and fitness tips and discussions, but we love to celebrate ALL THINGS in regard to being the best you can possibly be in business, relationships, and personal development. Win on purpose means just that, purposefully taking action to become your best self, and following your purpose to develop the passion needed to excel at anything in life!
The Win On Purpose Podcast
Emotional Eating Part II- Beyond Hunger: How Emotions Shape Your Diet
Your emotions might be controlling your eating habits more than you realize. In this eye-opening second part of our food dependency series, I explore the powerful ways our emotions drive our food choices—often completely separate from our body's actual nutritional needs.
We all know what stress eating feels like, but did you know your cultural ties, family traditions, and perceived need for variety might be equally powerful drivers sabotaging your health goals? I break down how our anxiety and stress create food cravings, why we feel obligated to participate in unhealthy food traditions, and the fascinating psychology behind our modern obsession with endless food variety.
Drawing from years of experience coaching clients through these exact challenges, I share a game-changing approach to meal planning that provides enough variety to keep you satisfied while maintaining the structure needed for success. You'll discover why many people who claim they need constant food variety are actually eating the same core ingredients repeatedly—just packaged differently!
This episode isn't about eliminating all emotional enjoyment from eating. Rather, it's about understanding when your choices are driven by genuine hunger versus emotional needs, and finding that sweet spot where you can honor both while staying aligned with your health goals. Whether you're struggling with weight management or simply want to improve your relationship with food, these insights will transform how you approach eating.
Whatever you do today, make sure you do something good for yourself, something good for your health, and remember to win on purpose.
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Hey guys, welcome to the Win On Purpose podcast with coach Adam Kelly. Appreciate you guys for tuning in. So this is part two of a two-part series in which we are talking about emotional eating and food dependency. Now, again, this is not medical advice. This is my own personal opinion, my experience, what I've seen in the reading and studying that I've done, but, most importantly, what I've seen with dozens and dozens of my clients over the years and my family and friends who I've talked to about this subject.
Speaker 1:So this episode we're talking more about emotionally driven eating. So why we lean towards eating certain ways, why we think that we need to eat certain ways, and why these ideas and these preconceived notions may actually be hindering our results and stopping us from ever reaching our health goals or ever bettering our health. So there's plenty to take out of this for everybody. Share it with somebody that you love, and if you are looking to take control of your health and your eating and just know that you're doing what it takes to reach your goals and to feel your best, then this one is for you. Guys, as always, we will see you on the other side.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Win On Purpose podcast From health and fitness, business, personal development, relationships and more. We promise you will find inspiration to help you win on purpose in all areas of your life journey. Now for your host, adam Kelly.
Speaker 1:What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. I appreciate you guys for tuning in for another week and another very good episode. Guys, I'm super excited for this one. So it is Monday, it is April 21st. We're going to try to edit this and release it on the same day. So trying to get back to those Mondays. You know, life has been crazy, life's been busy, but life has been good. So we're not going to complain there. We're just going to keep picking up, pushing forward, moving forward and getting better than yesterday. So, like I said, appreciate you guys.
Speaker 1:So, if you don't mind, of course, like always, if you don't mind, please sharing this, liking it, giving us five stars. Guys, you may feel like you're a little bit of bit of impact or your little bit of you know, your review or your input doesn't make a difference. But I promise you, every single star matters, every single comment matters, every single share matters. So I would highly appreciate you guys if you would help me there, if you've benefited at all from this information or from this podcast in general, or if you know of anybody who may benefit themselves from sound information that can be applied to any person, any walk of life, any health journey, no matter what the goal may be. These are general principles that we can all apply. It doesn't matter if you are a general population right off the streets, never exercised before, versus a competitive bodybuilder or a pro athlete. You can apply these principles to your journey to help you be better, to help you do things smarter and help you get more out of your training and out of your health journey and your lifestyle. Okay, so appreciate the love and support there, guys. So we are now using mic number four. Uh, so, sound may be a little bit different again, but I think we're narrowing things down. Um, so appreciate you guys there for, as usual, being patient and not just tuning out because it doesn't sound like all the professional podcasts out there, because you know, that's not what this is about. We're not here for the glitz and glamour. We're not here to impress anybody. We're not here to try to have the best sound or the best show. We're here to try to help as many people as we can. So that is the focus, all right. So, with all that being said, welcome to today's episode, in which this is part two of a two part series that I'm doing about emotional eating, about food dependency. So if you missed the first episode, last week's episode, definitely stop this and go back and listen to that. Even if you don't stop it, you definitely want to go check that out after you, listen to this one at the least, because it was very, very good.
Speaker 1:Guys, I go in more into my personal story my struggles with food dependency, with emotional eating, how that's affected my life, some strategies that I've been able to implement, some stress management techniques that I've been able to apply and that many other people have been able to apply to help overcome this, to help control it. Some things in life you just never truly get over. I believe that this is one of them for almost everybody. I can't speak for everyone, but for most people who deal with these types of eating situations and food dependencies, it's just something that we have to learn how to grind out each and every day, and there'll be easier times. There'll be harder times. Again, we're human. This is not about being perfect. This is not about getting things right all the time. This is about what we do over the long haul, what we do the most. As I like to say, whatever we do most matters most and it's going to be the thing that shows. So, learning how to improve our relationship with food, improve our relationship with eating, the whole experience itself, you know, understanding the nutrient content behind the foods that we eat, why it's important to consume these different foods, what they do for our body and what they do for our health is so important, guys. So that's always going to be the.
Speaker 1:The nail that I drive home is why do you do what you do? You know you may have saw your favorite fad diet that you, that you're trying now. You may have saw it online and you have these fitness influencers or nutrition influencers who make it seem like it's so easy and effortless and no problem, but for some reason you can't seem to stick to it. So many different scenarios that you may have gone through or going through, and you know it's at the end of the day, what matters is what works best for you and what you're going to be able to stick to for the long haul. So this is, unfortunately, part of the process that we have to figure out. Okay, this isn't just. You come into my gym, I write you a program, I give you what everybody else is doing and you're going to get the same results as everybody else. I don't care if you have an identical twin. You're not going to be able to follow the same program to a T because there's going to be so many life variables that are going to affect what that program actually looks like for your results, for your goals. Okay, so let's just get that out of the way.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, like I said, we're following up on that episode. You're diving a little bit deeper into this thought process, kind of unpacking it a little bit more, and so today I want to talk about emotionally driven eating. We talked about emotional eating in general. We talked about, like I said, food dependency versus food addiction, where food addiction doesn't really appear to be a thing in the scientific literature, but food dependency is a very real thing and a lot of us have experienced it. So this episode we're looking more at emotionally driven eating.
Speaker 1:So why do we eat the foods that we eat? Why do we feel that we need the foods that we eat? Why are we stuck in these same cycles and these same patterns? And does it have to do with a physiological need, like, is our body actually hungry and we're trying to fulfill those nutrient needs, or is it based strictly off of how we feel. So some of these points that I want to bring up may not sound like emotionally driven, it may not sound like emotions evolved it at all. That's kind of a broad you know, broad, blanket statement to talk about how we're affected by our appetite outside of physiological needs, like I said, outside of our body needs energy, our body needs amino acids, our body needs vitamins.
Speaker 1:Outside of that, why are we driven to eat how we eat and how could this be holding us back from being successful on our journey? Because that's what matters. It doesn't matter what we're eating, it doesn't matter. None of these things matter. The only thing that matters is what do we see at the end of the day? Are our daily actions, are the things that we do over the weeks, over the months, over the years? Are they leading us towards the direction we want for our life, or are they leading us away from it? That's the question that we always need to ask ourselves and that's our North Star. That's how we stay on the right path, that's how we stop from going back and forward to different goals and different ideas, and we stay the course in order to end up, you know, reaching the treasure. Okay, so, with.
Speaker 1:That being said, what is emotional driven eating? Like I said, this can look like many different things. So the number one thing that we're all going to think of and it's probably the number one issue when it comes to being emotionally driven towards eating is when we allow our anxieties and our stress to dictate our food choices. Like I said, this is not a physiological thing. This is not. I'm being driven to eat by my body because it needs nutrients. I'm being driven to eat by my body because it needs nutrients. This is strictly our anxieties, and our stresses and our emotions are the reason why we're choosing the foods that we are. So this just is emotional eating 101, food dependency 101. We're receiving some sort of pleasure, some sort of excitement, some sort of enjoyment from these foods that we're eating. You know, rather, if it's the dopamine spikes, if we want to talk about the hormonal side, which there's a lot of debate there, if that's, you know, a legitimate thing or not, you know there's. But at the end of the day, this is much different than what our body, just like I said, giving our bodies what it needs.
Speaker 1:So, whenever we are driven by an anxiety and stress maybe we had a bad day at work, something went wrong. You know, as soon as you get there, everything is going bad. And then you had a flat tire on the way there, and so you know what? The vending machines downstairs. I can go down there and grab me some snacks and I'm going to feel a little bit better. I'm going to go out and have me a big old pizza for lunch just to kind of you know drown out the stress. Or maybe you know we've had a super long day. You know, and we know that we have to go home and cook our healthy meal for our family, and we know that that's what we should do, but instead we end up turning off to McDonald's and grabbing something for the family because we really just don't want to cook or we're too overwhelmed, or we just want to go home and kind of veg out and not have any responsibilities and take the easy route, which is totally understandable. We've all been there and we'll all probably be there again.
Speaker 1:So that's just another example of when we allow our anxiety, our stress, our mood to determine what food choices we make. We allow our anxiety, our stress, our mood to determine what food choices we make, and you can even look at the physiological side, when it comes to sleep deprivation, when we see people who aren't getting adequate sleep or quality sleep, that hunger cravings actually increase. And now this is again physiologically. This isn't like something we're choosing necessarily. This is our body's response. Physiologically, this isn't like something we're choosing necessarily. This is our body's response. So it makes us crave quicker, fast digesting sources of energy, aka food, usually ultra processed foods and our willpower goes down as well, so we have less wherewithal to to abstain from these certain things or to limit ourselves from these things, so we end up just going for them all and eating it all. And so you know, like I said, that's more of the physiological side of what's happening when we're sleep deprived, but still how we feel in that moment.
Speaker 1:That day is affecting our food choices rather than what we know is best. And this is an area that we really want to work on. And this is where I see probably the biggest stumbling block for most of us, including myself, is when those days happen, are those days where we're super overstimulated. You know we're overstressed, we had a bad day, something bad happened, our kids are acting out. You know our boss chewed us out. You know our car broke down on the way home.
Speaker 1:Like different scenarios come up in life and for a lot of us, we find comfort in eating, so that's just what we do, or you know, again it's now. I had a flat tire on the way home from work so I had to stop and change that. It cost me 45 minutes. Now I'm getting home 45 minutes later and I still have to come in, I still have to cook this meal, clean up the kitchen, all that when I can just stop and grab a $5 pizza or whatever they cost. Now, inflation's probably screwed that up for us, but I can go buy a quick made pizza and be done with it.
Speaker 1:And again, I can totally understand that thought process. But we also have to understand that that thought process is self-sabotaging, okay, it's sabotaging our goals and our health and that's not what we want, all right. So how else would I consider emotionally driven eating being a thing? Well, you have cultural ties, okay. Now again, when I consider emotionally driven eating being a thing, well, you have cultural ties. Now again, when I say emotionally driven, I don't mean literally just based on your mood, I mean things outside of a physiological need of just needing food to survive. So our cultural ties, this dairy things like that, typically, not always, but you know, if you're from Italy, if you're Italian, you probably have quite a bit more Italian food, more pastas, more things like that. You know super high calorie fatty sauces, things like that like that. You know super high calorie fatty sauces, things like that, you know.
Speaker 1:So we see this cultural thing within civilizations, within you know, cultures. And then you have, like American culture where you know, basically there's a holiday every month and it almost always has to do with food, starting with the, you know, the American New Year, where there's going to be drinks and food involved, and then you have Valentine's Day, where it's all about candy. And then you have Easter, where it's all about candy. And then you have, you know, just Fourth of July, where it's all about grilling out and having all the tasty foods and all that. It's just one after another, after another, and so, as we're going along this process, trying to improve our health along the way, but every month, every six weeks, we have the next holiday, the next event, that's all food focused. Boy, that sure puts us in a tight place and a difficult place to be when we're trying to achieve our goals.
Speaker 1:So you know these cultural ties could be, you know more of just like for your household, for your family. Maybe your family has a big Sunday dinner and you guys just go all out all the fixings, all the desserts, all that stuff, and it's something you do regularly. Or maybe you have pizza night Fridays or whatever that may look like for your family. You guys have certain traditions where maybe you go out for dessert so many times per week or you guys sit around the TV and eat ice cream watching a movie, whatever it may look like. Not that anything is wrong with those independently, but those can be super hard things to let go of when we know that those things are interrupting our health goals, that they're getting in the way of our health goals, that they're harming our health at the worst case. And maybe some of these things we don't really need to keep.
Speaker 1:You don't have to have food at every event in order to enjoy the event, and that's a very hard concept for us to grasp. You know you don't have to have cake and ice cream for birthdays very hard concept for us to grasp. So not that you shouldn't have these things, not that you can't work them in, it's just the fact of understanding that you don't have to do these things. So if you go to a birthday party you go to your little niece's birthday party you don't have to eat cake and ice cream just because everybody's eating cake and ice cream or just because they offer you some and then you feel obliged, aka it's a good excuse to have some. You don't have to do that. You can be the person that says I'm okay, you don't have to make a big scene about it, a big deal about it. Even if you don't want anybody recognizing or you don't want to feel weird or awkward, you can always just leave the room during that time recognizing, or you don't want to feel like weird or awkward, you can always just leave the room during that time, whatever. Again, however, you need to orchestrate your plan of action, but you don't have to do those things just because of that.
Speaker 1:You know, look at any of those holidays. There's ways that we can enjoy ourselves and make those memories and have that quality of time where tasty junk food is not involved. Okay, so cultural ties are big. You know, my family's always ate this way. My family always had pasta, or this is a big one that you'll hear a lot. Well, my family always had a pantry full of, you know, junk food. Like we just it. My parents never put restriction on us and you know, that's just. It was normal for our kitchen to look like that. Well, that may be a problem because if it's now affecting you if you're eating is affecting your health, and now it's affecting your children's health that may not be the best way to go about things. Although it feels nostalgia, you know you get that satisfaction and you know you feel like you're doing your family good. Is it really benefiting them to have a pantry full of junk food, just so everybody feels good for those snacks, like you know.
Speaker 1:This is something again that we can evaluate ourselves and our habits and the things that we do and ask ourselves do I really need to do this? Like, is my life really going to be worse if I don't do these things? It may be an adjustment period. You know, if you have a birthday and you don't have cake and ice cream, like that's going to be quite the adjustment but it's very doable. And then you realize at the end of the day that that cake and ice cream didn't make the birthday what it was. It was the fact of you're with friends or family or you're celebrating somebody and you're recognizing this day, like that's what the birthday is about. All those other things are just extra things. So, again, it's not like you can't have cake and ice cream. You can have your cake and eat it too, but understand that you don't have to.
Speaker 1:And the worst thing I hear from people, from clients, even from I don't really deal with this anymore, but I have in the past and that is the guilt that comes from when you're trying to make better health choices for yourself but the people that you're around aren't making those same choices or they don't have those same values, and so they you feel guilty for eating healthy. You know you feel guilty for turning down these desserts. You know, just because you know Mimi made it, grandma made it, just because aunt Sally always has her special pecan pie, that you know you just can't turn down. Or you know Grandpa Joe has his famous dish that he makes every year, that everybody knows is terrible for you but it tastes amazing and it's Grandpa Joe's and you got to eat it Like I promise you you don't have to.
Speaker 1:And that really, just really is frustrating to me when I hear that from clients because it's like man like if we care about people, we should want what's best for them. And just because what's best for them isn't what we feel is best for us doesn't mean it's any less best for them. So if I say that I care about my family member but yet I'm guilting them for, you know, making better choices for their health or eating differently than I am, you know what what kind of family member does that make me Like I'm just, you know, kind of reflecting my own insecurities onto them, and that's so wrong, like you know, and you should be able to be in those environments and not feel pressure. But you should also have I'm going to be honest guys you should also have enough backbone that if you are in those situations and someone's offering you something, or they're trying to guilt you into it, or they're making a big deal about it or whatever that you're not bothered by it, because at the end of the day, you're doing this for you. You're not doing this for them. Anyways, you're doing this to make yourself a better person, so who cares if they got something to say about it or if they have an issue with it. That shouldn't be any of your concern. You're making the right choice for you in that moment and you're going to go on with your life like it never happened, because you're going to totally forget that you turned down that cake and ice cream, probably the next day, and everybody's going to be fine, they're not going to be hurt that you skipped. You're not going to be hurt that you skipped. You're still going to be on track for your goals, everything's fine.
Speaker 1:So, like I said, there's nothing wrong with these cultural ties. But we have to understand that when we set a health goal or when we have health issues that we need to reverse, we can't always do what we've always done. And we can't always do what our family's always done and expect to have different results in what they're dealing with. If your whole family is obese and every family get together, everybody is gorging themselves and overeating and stuffing themselves and that's just what your family does and you're looking around at all your family members who have all these health issues. You don't have to follow into that line. You don't have to, and that doesn't mean that you can't enjoy those cultural experiences and those cultural foods. It's just understanding that, hey, I have to have control where I need control. I need to have restraint where I need to have restraint and I need to have enjoyment where I need to have enjoyment, and if we're keeping those three areas clear, crystal clear, it's going to make our decision making that much easier. We're not going to struggle with it, we're not going to have to deal with that guilt and all that stuff that comes with it. So, like I said, guys really watch for those cultural ties and ask yourself is it really worth it in any given moment?
Speaker 1:Okay, another one that I consider like an emotionally driven eating is the false idea that we need a bunch of variety in our diet. This is probably right up there with stress and anxiety eating, if not above, because even people that don't deal with stress and anxiety eating they're going to fall into this category of I need variety. So you see this a lot. Now, this isn't to fault anybody. I'm not picking on anybody, I'm not calling anybody out, but I will mention my wife, because she loves me and I love her, and you know, hey, I'm married. I can talk about her. Not really, but my point is is she has always been one of the types of people that you know she really likes variety, she likes a variety of different foods. She doesn't like to eat the same dinner more than once or twice per week. You know she doesn't really like having the same breakfast every day. Like she likes to have her variety and that's fine, you know, there's nothing wrong with variety.
Speaker 1:But we also have to understand that, as human beings, variety is really kind of a new thing to us, like until the time of, you know, really mass producing agriculture, but even more relevant to that, to where we learn how to store foods and preserve foods and then getting in refrigerators and freezers and, you know, deep freezers and everything that we have now, having massive amounts of variety all the time is a fairly new concept. You know, having a place that you can go into where there are thousands of different items that you can choose from and you can buy them all if you want to, because you know for most people groceries are still somewhat affordable that's a new concept. Our great-grandparents never didn't experience that. Our great-great-grandparents never heard of that. Our ancestors would have probably had their minds blown if they known that's what we were going to have access to. So the idea that we need a bunch of variety in our eating is really, like I said, a new concept and I it's an unfortunate one, because at the end of the day, again, you have your physiological need of food and you have your emotional need of food, and I'm not saying that we need to neglect our emotional desire for food. That's part of what drives us to go get food rather than just sitting around and wasting away and enjoying food.
Speaker 1:Genetically, that's part of how we learned how to avoid toxins and how we learned to avoid poisonous foods and things like that. You know, someone eats a berry. They get super sick. The rest of the tribe is like okay, we probably shouldn't be eating those berries, because two of us dropped sick this week or two of us died, you know, from eating these berries. We probably shouldn't eat these. Or it's super bitter and tart. And it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, this doesn't taste very good. I don't think this is for us. But then you get these blueberries or strawberries that you find. You're like oh my goodness, these taste amazing. You're probably good there. So, like, that's how we that's a very important tool that we have genetically on figuring out what we should eat and what we shouldn't eat.
Speaker 1:But now we live in a time where food has been hijacked and where everything has been made to be super, duper, tasty, super enjoyable, and so now we couple having massive amounts of variety, massive amounts of accessibility. You know ways to store massive amounts of food for long periods of time, and you add all that together and you get the obesity crisis that we're in at least part of that. So that's something that I really have to address a lot with clients, because this is probably the hardest one. Again, everybody knows when they're stress eating and when they're eating due to anxiety and depression and frustration and all that. But this one is a little bit different, it's more tricky because, again, a lot of us feel that we need this variety, that we can't eat the same thing every day.
Speaker 1:Like when I tell people, you know, oh yeah, you know I have this meal for breakfast, and they're like, oh yeah, like today. I'm like, yeah, and yesterday and the day before and the day before, and they're like, how, there's no way I can do that, there's no way keep eating the same meal over and over again. And I used to feel that way. So I totally relate to this mentality. I used to be that person like man, after one or two times, like I can't eat the same thing again, and there's times I'm still like that to a degree. I mean, I don't really know anybody who literally eats the exact same meal every single meal, every single day. Outside of you know physique competitors who are like right there at the finish line, or you know people that actually have an eating disorder it's not very common to see that. But also I don't have to have major variety all the time.
Speaker 1:So what I typically do, and what I coach my clients to do, is make you a little list. You know, have you three, four or five different breakfasts, different lunches and different dinners? Ok, and now you can plug and play these throughout your week. So you're choosing meals and foods and ingredients that you know align with your goals. So, rather, if you're trying to lose weight, you know that you're still in a calorie deficit by this amount of food you're eating throughout the day, what these meals are compiled of.
Speaker 1:So, knowing that, say okay, let me take that back a little bit. Say you're starting a fat loss phase. Okay, you're going to go on a 12-week fat loss diet, and so you're trying to map that out. You're figuring out how many calories you're going to need. You know, maybe you're working with a coach and we're trying to estimate, you know, when we may have to make adjustments as we go along. And so we start mapping out your food choices, because this is very important that a lot of people don't spend the time to do. Then, all of a sudden, they start their diet and they have no idea what they're going to eat and they crash and burn immediately. We're smarter than that, so we're not going to do that.
Speaker 1:We start figuring out what your food choices are going to be and what your meal selection is going to be. Like I said, I have you start with. Okay, we need to formulate two, three, four breakfasts, lunches and dinners that align with your goals, so that it's going to keep you in a calorie deficit. If you're saying, for example, that you need 1,500 calories to be in a calorie deficit and to lose at the rate of loss that you want, well then we divide that down to three meals. That's 500 calories per meal, or maybe 400 calories per meal, and then you've got 300 calories worth of snacks left over for the day. However, we divide that down and then you base those meals off of that amount of calories that you need for those meals. And so, now that you've proportioned those meals out. You know, these three, four breakfasts need this much of each item to reach this amount of calories for my goal. Same thing with lunch, same thing for dinner.
Speaker 1:Now, like I said, you can plug and play these different meals and these different selections throughout your week. So maybe for a couple of days you have the same breakfast and it's like, okay, this is kind of getting a little bit old, so let me swap out this breakfast with this other breakfast. Well, now you've got a couple more days of still variety, but it's a smaller variety, but at least it kind of eases some of that mundane. You know, just, I'm eating the same thing again and again and again, and then once that next breakfast, kind of. You know, okay, I've had my fill of that. You know, obviously you're developing meals and designing meals that you enjoy eating. They're foods that you actually like. Okay, let's start there. But after a few days even the foods that you like can get old. So you're like, okay, well, it's time to switch it up again. Now I plug in that next breakfast. Now I'm on my third breakfast cycle. Do that for a few days.
Speaker 1:Next thing, you know, you're already a whole week in, so you just keep repeating that cycle, then maybe swapping out one of those breakfasts every so often with a new recipe that you know aligns with your goals, that you know you enjoy eating. And then now you have this variety, this meal log that you've built out of different meals that you can eat, and you do the same thing for lunch and for dinner. And this is the easiest way to go about it, because it takes away a lot of the stress of having to have variety all the time, literally every meal. It takes away a lot of the stress of having to have variety all the time, literally every meal, because again you're choosing foods and you're choosing meal compilations that you enjoy eating. Again, you're not forcing yourself to eat just plain chicken breast and broccoli, but even though you may like that and that's one of your meals. But again you're choosing foods that you actually like eating, you know that align with your goals, but yet you're swapping them out once they start to get a little bit stale, a little bit old. That way you're never getting burnt out on any given meal, and so this has been by far the most successful strategy I've ever implemented. It's still something I do now and I'll probably keep a meal in for six months or more on rotation.
Speaker 1:So maybe you know like for my lunch, for example. It's one of my most simplest meals of the day because I don't have very much time to eat lunch usually, so almost always, it's going to be a meat like a lean ground beef, a lean ground chicken, a chicken thighs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, boneless skinless chicken breasts, whatever. Those are usually my staple meats, and then it'll be usually some sort of carb source. So I like these little microwave bags of rice that take 90 seconds. The calories are pretty good on it, for my needs anyways, and then maybe I'll add in some veggies that I have pre-made with that or not. Sometimes it's just the, the protein and the carb, and then I get veggies and fruits on the other meals around those. So that literally has been a staple meal for me for lunches for probably at least the last year.
Speaker 1:And you know I change up the rice sources every now and then. I change up the meat sources every now and then I change up the seasonings that I use, I change up some of the low calorie, zero calorie sauces that I use, and it literally pretty much creates a whole new meal and then when I get burnt out on that, then I'll swap it out with something else. Just swap a couple of those items and that way I'm constantly eating healthy, nutritious foods. I'm staying on track for my health goals. Rather, if that's a calorie deficit, maintenance surplus and then I'm also making sure that I'm not getting overwhelmed with trying to create so much variety, because, again, that's where most people get burnt out is because we're so used to variety and we like having such variety that we think that we have to have some new recipe every single night for dinner, some healthy alternative to our favorite comfort food or whatever. Or maybe it's like desserts that you're big on, and so, like every night or every couple of days, you're making a new low calorie, low carb, whatever dessert. And eventually you're going to get burnt out and you're going to retract back to those quick, easy foods that you're so used to eating.
Speaker 1:And I was talking about this with a client the other day. It's kind of, when I thought about it, I get amazed by the smallest things. I was kind of baffled at this thought. To be honest, it's the fact of you hear a lot of people talk about. Well, I don't like to eat the same things. I don't know how you do that. Maybe they see you with your Tupperware and they're like I don't know how you keep eating the same meal all the time, or how you're always eating this, this, this, this and this. I can't do that. I need more variety.
Speaker 1:Well, what I like to do is I talk to that person. I'm like, okay, well, why don't you explain to me what you had for for dinner this week? Okay, just just lay out your dinners for me. Oh well, you know, monday we had burgers and then, you know, tuesday I grilled up some steaks. That was pretty good, and then, um, wednesday we had chicken fajitas at the Mexican restaurant. Thursday, I had pizza meat lovers pizza. Friday, I had burgers again, because we went to our favorite burger place instead of fast food, because it's Friday and we got more time, and Saturday, sunday looks similar to that. And so I'm like, okay, well, that sounds cool and it sounds like you got a lot of variety. But do you realize that you had beef four times this week and chicken three times this week?
Speaker 1:Okay, so you feel like you're eating variety because it was packaged differently, but you're not really eating much variety. You're still eating pretty much the same foods all the time, like there's not a whole lot of difference between a juicy cheeseburger and a meat pizza. You've got your bread, you've got your cheese, you've got your protein source probably a fatty protein source you have your sauces on there. Maybe you throw some veggies on there. That's not much different, it's just packaged differently. And that's the same way when you change up your seasonings or you change up your carb source or your veggie source, rather than thinking that you need a whole new meal Because, again, at the end of the day, we're all eating the same stuff all the time. There's only so many meat protein sources, there's only so many carb sources, only so many veggie sources. And now, with ultra processed foods, it looks like thousands of different items, but at the end of the day, when you look at the ingredient list, the main items are all the same.
Speaker 1:Go down the chip pile. I mean, how many different things? Not like some of the nuanced chips, like quinoa chips and all the different stuff, but just your basic potato chips, hence the word potato chips. The majority of the chips down the chip pile are made out of potatoes and corn. Okay, so you may feel like you ate seven different chips throughout the week, but you ate corn almost every time, or you ate potato almost every time, or you ate flour almost every time, and so, again, it seems like we're eating a lot of variety, but we're not really eating a lot of variety. At the end of the day, we're just packaging it differently and, because we didn't have to prep it, it feels like we're eating something completely different. But you're not Okay. If you had steak tonight and you had burgers last night, you had beef two times in a row. What difference does that make if it would have been, you know, a lean steak with some vegetables both of those times? So I digress At the end of the day, variety can be a killer, but it can also be a good thing.
Speaker 1:So don't feel like you have to eat the same meal every day. I know people like to take something and then they go to the exact opposite extreme, like, oh well, variety is bad, so I need to eat the exact same meal every single day. Now, if you can do that and you can sustain that, enjoy that. Totally fine, don't get me wrong. But for almost all of us you know, like normal people, no offense For the rest of us that ain't the case, like, I don't know too many people who can eat the exact same meal every day, although there are people that do it, and y'all are machines, and I give you the utmost respect and salute to that, because I wish I could do that, but I don't like that. I get burnt out. So having some of those meals I can swap in and out has been a game changer for me. So hopefully this information is useful to you guys.
Speaker 1:Just some kind of things to think about.
Speaker 1:We didn't really like dive, not really like giving out any solutions or anything here or any different ways to think.
Speaker 1:It's just some ways that you may not realize that you're being driven to eat based off of your desires or based off of your emotions rather than based off of what you need.
Speaker 1:And again, this is not to say that you should not enjoy your food, that you shouldn't have times where you know what I'm only eating, eating this because I want it. I'm not eating it for the protein, I'm not eating it for the nutrients. I'm only eating this because I really want it, like that's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But living our life like that versus having those moments and experiences are the difference between us getting close to our goal, or and keeping our health quality high for as long as possible, versus constantly in the rat race of gaining weight, trying to lose it, gaining weight, trying to lose it, or just getting worse and worse over time, when we're really trying not to get worse over time. So, with all that being said, guys, whatever you do today, make sure you do something good for yourself, something good for your health, something good for those you care about and, whatever you do, make sure you win on purpose. Talk at you next time.