06 - Healthy Eating Swaps Without The Overwhelm

In today’s short and sweet episode, we’re talking about simple and realistic food swaps that can make a big difference in your health. If you’ve ever felt stuck in a food rut or unsure of what to eat, this episode is for you!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How to easily increase your protein intake with simple swaps like Greek yogurt, chickpea pasta, and quinoa
• Ways to add more healthy fats to your meals to keep cravings in check and energy steady
• Smart substitutions to get more fruits and veggies into your daily routine
• The best natural sugar swaps for baking so you can enjoy treats without the crash

If you found this episode helpful, I’d love for you to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend! Your support helps me continue creating valuable content to help you live your healthiest, most vibrant life. I appreciate your support!

Connect with Courtney: 

Instagram: @nourished_living_

Work With Me: Nourished Living

Transcript

0:00

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. Welcome back to episode six of the Nourished Living Podcast. Before we get into the topic for the day, I just wanted to share that I saw my dad the other day and after he listened to the last episode about produce, where I recommended to try to add in all the colors of the produce rainbow. Which consists of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and white. He let me know that I had missed a color, color brown, specifically for chocolate intake, which gave me a good laugh. I definitely enjoy some good chocolate from time to time, but unfortunately that will not be counting towards our fruit and vegetable intake or eating the rainbow. But it was a nice try This will probably be a short and sweet episode, but I talk to so many people where they express that they just don't know what to eat, or they don't know what changes to make to their diet. And you know, it's really easy to just stick with what we know. So if that is you by chance, then this episode is definitely for you. Today we are going to look at some easy, healthy swaps. So some good alternatives if you are looking to incorporate more protein, more fat, more vegetables, or more fruit into your diet. Or maybe just to reinspire you if you feel like you have been in a food rut and need a little variety in your life. We will start with protein. If you get sick often experience cravings, get hungry within one to two hours after eating, have dry skin or get rashes or encounter muscle weakness. You might need to up your protein intake. Here are some ways to do that. Rather than eating pasta, you could switch that out for chickpea pasta or lentil pasta. If you enjoy yogurt, you could swap that out for Greek yogurt. Instead of a rice, you could have quinoa rather than snacking on chips or crackers, you could have some seeds like pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds. You can also add protein into your favorite morning beverage, like coffee or tea, to ensure that you are starting the day with protein. I get the vital proteins, unflavored protein, so I don't even taste it, and I can just drop that into my coffee every morning For fats. You might need some more healthy fats in your life if you are hungry frequently, if you experience sugar or sweet cravings, or if you have a hard time focusing or poor memory. Rather than putting granola into your yogurt, you can mix in nuts and seeds instead. Instead of using mayo on sandwiches or burgers, you could use avocado. Instead of using store-bought salad dressings, you could use olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The store-bought salad dressings typically use inflammatory oils as their base and have added sugar, so you're kind of killing two birds with one stone here. However, there are some brands like Brianna's that actually do use avocado oil as their base. If you still wanted to purchase an actual dressing. And when roasting vegetables, you can drizzle some avocado oil on them. Fruits and vegetables are both carbs, so they will have the same symptoms, but you might not be eating enough carbs if you experience energy crashes or inconsistent energy throughout the day. If you get shaky, anxious, or irritable, if meals are delayed. If you get headaches when you go without food or feel hangry, you might need to increase your carb intake to increase your vegetables instead of bread for a sandwich or burger, you could do a lettuce wrap rather than chips or crackers. With hummus, you could have carrots or celery instead of a regular flour pizza crust, you could get a cauliflower crust. Rather than rice, you could have a riced broccoli or a riced cauliflower. I actually really enjoy turning riced cauliflower into a fried rice dish, and I add a bunch of protein in with it like chicken and bacon, and then a ton of other vegetables like peas, carrots, corn, and green beans, and already right there that is like half of the produce rainbow within one meal. So if you have not tried it out, I definitely recommend it. Or instead of pasta, you could use zucchini noodles, zoodles, butternut squash noodles, or sweet potato noodles to increase your fruit intake. Again, rather than having chips or crackers with hummus, you could have cucumbers or bell peppers. Instead of toast with peanut butter, you could have an apple or banana with peanut butter or almond butter, whichever nut butter you choose. You could have a smoothie. There are tons of frozen fruit mixes available where you can already buy them with like two to four different types of fruit included. And you can add fruit to a lot of things like salads on top of yogurt or. Oatmeal or when making your own trail mix. So these are some ideas to get you started. I also have a few baking swaps. So refined sugar should only be eaten in moderation, if at all, which I know that might be controversial, but it provides no nutritional value and we can get natural sources of sugar from fruits. Since they are carbs as well, refined sugar will exacerbate any symptom that you might be experiencing. So this could honestly be anything like digestive issues, bloating, or heartburn. It could be mental health issues, like feelings of anxiety or depression. It could be headaches, fatigue, joint pain, inflammation, migraines, toothache, you name it. If you are going through something, you're experiencing some type of pain or health issue, eating refined sugar is only going to make it worse. That's why it can be dangerous. Also, when we consume refined sugar, it depletes our minerals, so just for our bodies to metabolize and detox from sugar, it takes a ton of minerals. So they get depleted quickly and a lot quicker than if we were not consuming sugar. Luckily there are lots of sugar alternatives, so if you are baking something at home and if a recipe calls for sugar, you don't actually need to use the sugar. Instead, you can use local honey agave, maple syrup, apple sauce. Bananas, monk, fruit, sweetener, coconut, sugar, or molasses. These are all natural forms of sugar or glucose, and these will not exacerbate your symptoms. This last Thanksgiving, I used maple syrup as my sugar alternative for a pumpkin pie that I baked, and it came out great. I did have to cook it a little longer than suggested just to have it firm up a bit because I used a liquid instead of a solid, but it ultimately got to that. Same consistency, and I didn't tell anyone, but I still got great reviews on it. When you are substituting like this, it will typically be a one-to-one ratio. So if the recipe calls for one cup of sugar, it will be one cup of honey instead or one cup of whatever you choose to use. Rather than using white flour, you could use almond flour, coconut flour, or oat flour. When white flour is processed, it removes the nutrients and fiber content, and when it comes to table salt, it's a processing thing. Again, the processing that occurs strips out all the minerals and all the benefits from it. So rather than table salt, I would recommend unrefined sea salt or Himalayan pink salt. With these, you are getting the salt in its natural sodium form, and we do need sodium despite what some people might say for fluid balance within the body, regulating blood pressure and muscle contraction and relaxation. And remember, our hearts are a muscle, so sodium is essential for our hearts. Okay, I hope you found these helpful. If you're looking to make some changes or switch up your routine and get out of your rut, or maybe this will just get your creative juices flowing again when it comes to the typical foods and meals that you eat. Thanks for hanging out with me and I will see you in 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 at nourished underscore living underscore for more resources and support. Until next time, stay nourished.