02 - 3 Simple Nutrition Shifts that Yield Big Results

In this episode of the Nourished Living Podcast, I’m sharing three simple, sustainable nutrition shifts you can start implementing today to feel better, boost energy, and support your health—without restrictive diets or complicated meal plans.

You'll learn:
- Why nutrient-dense foods keep you fuller longer and help reduce cravings
- How to eat the rainbow for a variety of essential vitamins and minerals
- The benefits of eating seasonally and how it supports optimal health

These small but powerful changes can help with everything from reducing inflammation and brain fog to increasing energy levels and balancing blood sugar—without feeling deprived!

If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend who could use these simple health tips! I appreciate your support!

Connect with Courtney: 

Instagram: @nourished_living_

Work With Me: Nourished Living

Transcript

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Welcome to the nourished living podcast, where I will be diving deep into nutrition, holistic wellness, and practical tips to help you live your healthiest, most vibrant life. I'm Courtney Podany, a nutritional therapist, certified personal trainer. Type 1 diabetic and mom. And I'm here to help you take charge of your health with ease and confidence. Together, we'll explore how to nourish your body, mind, and soul in a way that feels good and sustainable. So, grab your favorite beverage, take a deep breath, and let's get into the episode. Hello, and welcome back to the Nourished Living podcast. I am your host, Courtney Podany, and I'm excited to be here with you. Today's episode, we are going to be talking about three Simple nutrition changes you can make right now to improve your health. So this will be especially good if maybe you haven't been feeling very Well and you know that you need to make a change, but you don't necessarily know where to start. There's a lot of conflicting information out there. And I feel like usually when people go to make a change, they just think that they need to eat less or follow a restrictive diet or start, tracking calories and macros and all of that. And that's fine. It's the only way that they're going to achieve the health goal that they set, but that is not really the case. So I'm going to be sharing with you three non diet ways that you can change your focus to improve your health. And this could really help anyone despite what you are trying to achieve. So that could be weight loss. It could be trying to gain energy, maybe reduce inflammation or reduce brain fog. This will definitely help tackle all of those things. But either way, if you start to implement these, you will feel better. I know that everyone is bio individual, meaning that we all have unique physiology. So not. Everything will work for every body since they are all different. So even if your neighbor, saw great results with the keto diet, that might not necessarily work for you. However, just making these few shifts will improve your health. I promise you that. So the first one is Eating real nutrient dense foods. And why is that? So nutrient dense foods will actually keep you fuller. For longer periods of time. So especially if you are someone that tends to snack or graze throughout the day, this would be good for you. So when you are eating foods that are filled with nutrients, you might actually end up eating less because your body is getting what it needs. A lot of times when you, maybe you found yourself just binging on like chips, you could go through like a whole bag, just sitting there snacking on chips because you feel hungry and you don't feel like you're getting satisfied. That is because your body is not getting all of the nutrients that it's looking for. So it does in fact tell you, keep eating, I'm hungry. But it's really, it's not hungry for what you are giving it. However, it is still looking for those nutrients. When you eat those nutrient dense foods, you fill up quicker, and you might actually be able to just eat about three meals a day, because these meals might hold you over, the the four or five hours that are typical between meals. You might not feel hungry until it's about time to eat your next meal. Also, when you focus on nutrient dense foods, you're eliminating the risk of eating things like artificial flavoring, artificial colors, preservatives, things like that, that, aren't actually beneficial to our body, right? They don't typically have a lot of nutritional value. So when you avoid those, you avoid also, potential side effects that they might bring about as well. So how can we accomplish focusing on eating real nutrient dense foods? Think about shopping the perimeter of the grocery store. Think about it with me for a second. If you were to just walk around the perimeter of the grocery store, that's where you would encounter these nutrient dense foods. all of your produce. So your fruits and vegetables will be there. That's also where they keep typically the meats. So your beef, your chicken, your fish, your eggs, things like yogurt and dairy. And it's not until you get down the aisles where there are things that might be, lab made ingredients. And Not necessarily great for you in large amounts, long term. So if you start your grocery trip by going around the perimeter and trying to get as many of your foods from there as possible, you will be well on track to get there. Shifting your diet to a nutrient dense diet. And of course, I still buy things down the aisles of the grocery store, right? I do not just survive off of the perimeter. So I'm not saying to completely avoid them. I'm just letting you know that once you get down the aisles, you will probably be okay. Want to start checking the ingredients and nutrition facts on there, just to see what really is in a product, right? If I asked you, hey, what's in that cracker? Off the top of your head, you might not know exactly, but if I asked you, hey, what's in that blueberry? You'd be like these are just blueberries, right? So real foods are the ingredients. You can also think of it that way. When you do go down the aisles, I would just get comfortable checking the ingredients of the products that you're buying, right? Just be curious about what you're putting in there and you might not be familiar with everything and that's okay. You don't need to use that as your basis for whether you buy. an item or you don't buy it, but just get comfortable looking at those things. And yeah, like I said, be curious about what you're choosing to put in your body or your family's body. Another way to think about nutrient dense foods are definitely foods from animals or the earth. And you can also achieve this by shopping at your local farmer's market. If you think about a time where you've been at one, you definitely find all the beautiful produce that has been grown by you. They, lots of times will offer, meats and chicken eggs, things like that. So if you hit up the farmer's market once a week, you would be on your way to eating those nutrient dense foods. Okay, number two, the nutrition shift, how you can upgrade your health is to eat the rainbow. So each different color of produce provides our bodies with different nutrients. So if you are eating a red apple, that is going to give you different nutrients than if you eat a yellow banana. So isn't that fun? You can channel the Skittles logo, motto here of eating the rainbow. And in this case, the rainbow includes red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, and black. So there are a couple extra colors there, which is great. So the more colors you can include into your diet, the more nutrients you are getting. So I typically like to eat a minimum of three colors of produce throughout my day. So that can be achieved either by one color of produce with each meal, or you could, if you made like a really nice vegetable stir fry or something for dinner, that would probably include more colors, but. Either way, just try to think about including variety and hopefully you're not picky and you're like I only eat broccoli. That's the only vegetable I eat. Maybe we can work on expanding those horizons. So we're able to include more colors or you can focus on getting all the colors from fruit or something. But. I always like to say at least three colors of produce each day. So I know there was that saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but maybe we can change that to, a rainbow a day keeps the doctor away. So that one should be easy too, especially if you do go to farmers markets, they have so much produce there for you. Just grab a couple different colors and you'll be good to go. So that one's easy, okay, and then the third thing, third shift, for upgrading your health is to eat seasonally. Eating seasonally helps us in a couple of different ways. This means that you are switching up what you're eating every couple of months. Variety is definitely very good for our bodies. We don't always want to just eat the same things over and over. You can achieve this easily by shopping at your farmer's markets, because they're only going to be able to provide what was grown during that season because it's local, so it'll change with, the climates and the temperatures and what have you. It helps with eating the rainbow and getting and eating different produce every couple of months. And, if you think about our ancestors who came before us, this was the only option that they had. They were only able to live off of the land. That meant, only eating. what was produced during that season. They weren't able to, ship things in from far away, from a different climate. Because they were that a different part of the world was able to grow it at that time. So when we eat seasonally and when we shop at farmers markets, it also means that the produce that we are purchasing was able to be picked at its peak ripeness, meaning that it had time to develop and bloom and make all of the nutrients available that we need from those foods. When produce has to be shipped from far away because, we're used to having all produce at all times of the year, It means that the produce has to be picked before it's become fully ripe, and that ultimately means less nutrients from those foods. And that's not why we're eating them. We are eating them for the nutrients to provide for our body, to support our body and to feel good. We want to try to eat this produce. That is picked at its peak ripeness. And so that is definitely achieved at your local farmer's market. Okay, I hope these are easy enough shifts where it's oh yeah, I could do that, and I could implement it right now, so you could start seeing changes next week. You don't have to restrict anything, maybe you'll even be adding more things into your diet, because maybe, you don't eat orange produce right now, but you're gonna add it in now. Anyway, again, just to recap. Three ways that you can begin to improve your health right now are to try to focus most of your foods, most of your eating throughout the day on nutrient dense foods. So those are the foods that are located around the perimeter of your grocery store or at your farmer's market. You're going to eat the rainbow and include as many colors of our produce rainbow as possible. And again, that includes red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, and black. At least try for three colors each and every day. And then we are going to be eating seasonally. So we are buying produce from the season that we are in. Right now we are in winter, so we're buying winter produce. And that can be done by shopping at your farmer's market. And this helps because we are able to benefit from all of the nutrients possible. It didn't have to be picked before it was ready. All right. I hope you enjoyed the show and were able to take something that you can implement right away. Thanks so much for hanging out with me. I'll see you at the next episode. Thanks for hanging out with me today and tuning in to the Nourished Living Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found something you can start implementing right away to kickstart your nourished transformation. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who could benefit from these insights. You can also connect with me over on Instagram@nourished_living_ for more resources and support. Until next time, stay nourished.