The Food Mindset That Helps Me Reach My Goals

In this episode, I’m breaking down the mindset around food that actually helps you reach your goals without feeling restricted or controlled by what you eat. I talk through some of the dumb nutrition myths that keep people stuck and make healthy eating feel way more complicated than it needs to be. I also share what my day of eating looks like and how I personally approach food in a way that feels realistic, flexible, and sustainable. This episode is for anyone who wants to stop overthinking food and build a healthier relationship with eating. 

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The way that you view food directly affects how you make choices around the food that you eat. Welcome back to the embodiment lab. My name is Addy, and I am in my brand new apartment. And I just want to start off by saying that this AC in this apartment is so loud and I don't have my office set up. So if you can hear the wind that is blowing through my apartment apartment right now, I'm so sorry. But we're just gonna have to deal with it for today because my office is not set up. My desk comes in a couple days, and I'm really freaking ready to get my office space set up. But for now, I am on the couch listening to just the wind storm that is happening in my apartment right now. But, anyways, so I just moved this past weekend. And when I say I am the world's fastest unpacker ever, I mean it because I cannot stand to have my my place, my space, my home just like in shambles, a complete disaster. So we basically packed up my boyfriend's apartment and brought like all the big furniture and everything over Saturday. And I had everything unpacked by 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Like I move fast. So we are, I think, on day four of living here in this apartment, and it has been amazing. It's been so nice having everything under one roof. I freaking love it. I feel super comfy and at home, and I'm ready to just like hit the ground running and get to work in my new office the second that I have it set up. Um so yeah, that's my life. I feel like it's been absolute chaos because usually I record these episodes on Friday, the week before I upload these episodes. And these episodes usually go out on Thursday morning, and it is Tuesday, which means that I have two days to get this episode edited and up for you guys. But hopefully this week I will be back in my normal routine and I won't feel so damn rushed to get episodes out every single week. So back to regularly scheduled programming, and I'm so excited about it. But today we are talking about your mindset around food because there is a lot of myths and confusion around food, and I want to talk about it, and I want to break down kind of what a good ideal day of eating looks like and how to eat without feeling guilt or shame around the foods that you eat. So, first things first, I just want to say that the beliefs that you have around food can either really help you or they can severely hinder you. So, especially if you are someone who views food as good or bad. Like in your brain, you label foods and you put them in these categories of like this is a junk food, an unhealthy food, a bad food, and this is a healthy food. That makes it very toxic in your brain when you are looking at foods, because then you start telling yourself that if you have the bad foods, that those bad foods will make you fat. And that if you eat the healthy foods, then you will be lean and skinny and thin. And let's start off by saying that eating a specific food does not make you fat. What makes you fat is a caloric surplus over time. It is the sum of your habits that make you fat. So if you are eating above your maintenance calories, or in other words, you're eating too many calories, that's when you gain weight. Not eating a bag of chips one day does not make you gain weight. If you eat a bag of chips and then you go out to breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day of the week, that's a bit of a different story. But having a bag of chips right smack in the middle of a really well-balanced, nutritionally smart week is not going to make a break you. Actually, that will probably help you because if you do listen to your cravings and you allow yourself to have some things here and there in moderation, then your urge to go overboard later on just won't exist because you're not withholding yourself from having foods that you actually enjoy and love. So just as the mindset of if I eat this, then I've ruined everything and this is bad for me, I'm gonna get fat, just as that is harmful, the guilt after you eat that is also harmful because the guilt can make you react in one of three ways. The first way is you feel so guilty that you ate the bad food or you made the wrong decision that you go in the opposite direction and you restrict heavily to make up for the fact that you ate that food, or you go to the gym and you do cardio to burn off those calories, right? So you are super restrictive and you're trying to just like eliminate from your body ASAP so that it doesn't affect you as badly as you think that it will. Second way that your guilt can affect you is having an all or nothing mindset with it and thinking that just because you messed up means that absolutely nothing that you do matters anymore because you messed up that one thing and now you're going to overindulge and eat way too much of that one item or go finding other things to indulge on and letting it spiral into just this binge fest where you're eating crap and not really giving a shit about what you're putting in your body because you mess up that one thing. The third way that you could respond, and this is the ideal way, this is the way that I want you to respond, is you have the bag of chips, you enjoy it in moderation, and then you move on. And the next thing you eat is a nice nourishing meal, and you just continue on with the routine and habits that you had prior to that bag of chips, right? So that bag of chips is a little blimp in the grand scheme of things, and you just move right on past that blimp as if it doesn't even affect you because guess what? It doesn't. What you do in response to that matters way more than that bag of chips. So that's the first myth. The second myth is that eating healthy is boring, and that if you want to be lean and shredded and look good in your body and be healthy, then you have to say no to all the foods that you love and you need to eat boring, bland, nasty foods like salads and chicken and rice and steak and whatever. And that is not the case. That's definitely what I thought back in the day. I thought that I had to eat boring, nasty food that I did not like. But when I tell you that I actually, sorry, my brain is all over the place. When I used to consistently crave fast food, that's what I thought. That I couldn't ever have fast food again. I couldn't enjoy fun foods like that. And then one day I got in a really good habit of making food at home. I discovered an air fryer that absolutely changed my life. I found different recipes and fun things like on TikTok and on Pinterest. And I started making fun foods that were really healthy, really nutritional from home. And I remember one day thinking, whoa, it's been like months since I've even had fast food. And even since I've wanted fast food, like there was a couple times that I was like, could I go get fast food right now? And then I thought, no, actually, I don't even want fast food. Like I would so much rather go make salmon and rice with sriracha mayo and soy sauce. Like, are you joking? So when people say this to me, of like, oh, I just I can't eat healthy. Healthy food is boring. I'm like, what are you talking about? Obviously, you just don't know how to cook. Because healthy food is not hard to find, healthy food is not disgusting, and it's not boring. It doesn't mean just eating chicken and rice and vegetables and calling it a day. No. It's the way that I look at food is did it come from the earth? Whole natural foods, fruits, veggies, proteins, animal products, dairy, grains, like all of that make up whole foods. And you can do so much with them. Also, have you heard of seasonings? There are also sauces. Now, with sauces, you have to be kind of careful because some of them are super calorically dense, but that doesn't mean that I don't eat them and I don't enjoy them. I'm just definitely aware of the calories that I'm putting in my body so that I'm not blind to the fact that a meal might be six or seven hundred calories. You know what I mean? You just kind of have to look at it. But sauce your meals up. Go look through Pinterest and TikTok and find fun recipes and look at the ingredients, right? Like use your brain to decide, okay, is this made up of mostly whole foods or is this packaged? Right? Is this super processed foods or are these foods that came straight straight from the earth? Is it man-made or is it from the earth? When you look at food like that, you can make a plethora of different recipes that taste so, so good. So I don't have a hard time eating healthy now because it's actually quite simple. You can make different kinds of flavors of chicken. I love steak. You can do like steak and fries in there in the air fryer. You can do tons of different things. Healthy food does not mean eating boring food. Okay. So that's myth number two. Myth number three is a salad is always the healthier choice. No, it's not. No, it's not. Okay. A salad can be either way too little calories with virtually no protein, or it can be a shit ton of calories because it's filled with a bunch of crap. Either one, not ideal. Obviously, you want your meals centered around protein. And if there's not protein in a salad, I don't want it, right? If you're gonna have a salad as your meal, you better make sure that there is protein in there. But just know that a salad is not always the healthiest choice on the menu because that can be filled with a ton of different stuff that is adding a bunch of dumb calories to your diet that you don't need. So I want to talk through what my day of eating looks like. Now, I want to note that I am in a surplus because my goal right now is to put on some muscle and build out my lower body specifically. So I am eating quite a bit of food. Okay. So I've also taken up several years of building up my metabolism and making sure that I am eating enough food. Um, I'm not somebody who's starved myself for the last several years. That was definitely like several years ago that I was, and since then I've come a very long way. So my maintenance calories is 2,500 calories. Right now, I'm in a surplus where I am eating 3,000 calories. And it's very difficult for me to gain weight. Very, very difficult. So I'm really focused on using those calories to build muscle. I'm working my ass off in the gym. So that is not what most people consume. Most people consume anywhere from, or they should be, anywhere from like 18 to 2200 calories. That's typically what I see with the women that I work with. That's where their maintenance calories are. So, what you're gonna do is you're gonna listen to what my day of eating looks like. Take it with a grain of salt, but I just want you to see how I'm structuring my meals and how I'm structuring my day to make sure that I am hitting my calories. And you can see how I do allow some flexibility with my diet and how following this makes my life so much easier. So basically, with the 3,000 calories, I split that into six meals. So I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then I have snacks in between that. So basically, my day looks like breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and then like a pre-bedtime snack. So that's how I space my meals out. One of the first things that I have new clients do is I have to get them eating a consistent calorie intake per day and eating consistently throughout the day, right? So when we have a bunch of like inconsistency in when we're eating food, how much food we're eating, and how we're spacing it out throughout the day, that can cause a lot of discomfort in your body because your body is not getting like consistent cues from the food that you're eating. It your body really likes consistency. So it likes to know when you're gonna eat and it likes to know that it's going to be given enough food. Because when it doesn't know that, it will freak out and it will contribute to some inflammation and bloating and digestive issues, and it will make losing fat and leaning out very, very difficult. Okay. So look at your meals. Do you want to get your calories in three meals spaced out throughout the day? Do you want three meals and a snack? Do you want three meals and two snacks? Like, look at how you want to structure your day and stick with that. Be consistent with that, right? So my breakfast, I have it around 7:30 in the morning. I'll have two pieces of toast, two eggs, and two pieces of turkey bacon. And I put that together into sandwich. So I'm starting my morning off with really nice protein and I'm having a bowl of raspberries on the side to get some fiber in. So that's how I make sure that I have nice, decent calories in the morning, nice protein, and I'm getting my fiber in in the morning as well. My mid-morning snack is an apple with some peanut butter, and I measure out my peanut butter to make sure that I'm not going absolutely crazy with the peanut butter. And this is great because I'm giving my body some nice omega-3s, some healthy fats, along with the carbs and simple sugars in the apple. So my body really needs carbs to grow and build muscle, and it needs healthy fats to make sure that I'm feeling full and satisfied throughout the day. Otherwise, I'm just starving all day long, right? So then my lunch is salmon, a bowl of rice, and an avocado with some sriracha mayo and soy sauce. So this is also really good. We got decent carbs, protein, fats. All of my meals are nice and balanced in terms of their macros. Then before I go work out in the afternoon, I have a bowl of Oikos Pro vanilla yogurt with strawberries and granola. Again, decent carbs pre-workout. We're getting in some protein, getting in some nice fats with the granola. And then I go work out and I feel nice and full and satisfied and ready to go lift some heavy ass weight to build some glutes. Okay. Then for dinner, dinner is where I allow a little bit more flexibility. So this is where I like to eat some different things throughout the week. So this week I'm actually having steak alfredo, which is super fun. Um, this is also the meal that my boyfriend will do cheat meals. So twice a week we do cheat meals on Tuesdays and on Saturdays. So that's when we'll go out to a restaurant and we'll get something fun to eat. So there is some flexibility in my diet, but notice how the rest of my day looks really good and clean and whole foods. So my dinner can be something fun, but it's not over the top. It's not like a thousand calories of just like whatever the fuck I want, right? It's still like within my calories because I'm not starving myself all day long and then feeling super hungry and feeling the need to go overboard at dinner. No, I'm eating until I'm full and satisfied. I'm not pushing myself to feel stuffed, and that way I still feel comfortable in my body, and I don't wake up the next morning feeling bloated and gross, right? And then, so that's my dinner, and it's different every night. Then I have for my pre-bedtime snack, I have a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch for some extra carbs and a cup of milk with flavorless protein powder. Look, I am not the biggest fan of protein powder. I can't stand the taste of it. So I do flavorless and I mix that in with my milk and I drink that super fast before I go to bed. My boyfriend thinks it's like the craziest thing that I have sedamin toast crunch before I go to bed. He's like, How the heck? But like that's just the freedom that I can have around food because again, look at the rest of my day. It looks really, really good. Most of what I'm eating is coming straight from the earth. Whole foods that I'm assembling together and making taste really, really yummy. And I stay full and satisfied all day, every day. And I just repeat that every single day. Now, a big thing that I preach is eating the same meals on repeat. Okay. A lot of people tell me, oh, I just I get so bored so easily. I need different foods every single day, which is fine, completely understandable. We are human beings. We like variety, we like different things, but also think about the fact that it takes a lot of thought and a lot of decision fatigue to come up with different recipes every single day, every single time you're gonna eat. Okay. That is why I have most of my meals the same and I allow some freedom at dinner so that way I'm still getting variety, but I'm not losing my mind and stressing myself out going, oh my gosh, what do I eat? I don't know what to eat, right? I get up in the morning, I know exactly what breakfast I'm gonna have, and then I go throughout my day and I'm able to still hit my numbers very consistently because I'm eating the same things for the most part throughout the day with some variety. This also makes it really easy when I have a crazy day and maybe I need to like move some meals around. I can easily just swap. Like there was one day I had a crazy busy day where I was like in and out of the house and I couldn't like make my salmon. I couldn't like because I didn't have my air fryer. And so I literally just assembled my yogurt, I ate that for my lunch, and then when I was back home and I could use my air fryer, I made my salmon. So you can move around meals and swap things out so that it's easier for you to get your meals in on busy days, right? So if you know what you're gonna eat ahead of time, you can plan your day around that so you don't fall short on certain macronutrients. So having a plan and structure like this really helps your mindset around food become a lot more positive, right? So making foods fun, giving your body consistent fuel, not letting yourself go hungry for too long, making sure that your body is getting fed consistently so that it trusts that it's being fed. All of these contribute and play a role in how you view food, right? So we busted the myths at the beginning of how you view food of good versus bad or healthy food has to be boring, all of that. And then I showed you exactly how I structure my day. And this can be completely customized to you and to your calorie intake based off of what your specific body needs, which makes it very simple to make sure that you are eating at maintenance, or if you're wanting to build muscle, eat in a surplus, or if you're wanting to lose fat and lean out, going into a deficit, and you just adjust these things and you shift them to match your specific goals. Something else that I'll hear people say is, oh, I just don't have time to eat throughout the day, or sometimes I just forget to eat. And what I have to say to that is you are a grown adult, right? You have the ability to have the discipline to stop and be like, it is lunchtime. I should stop work and fuel my body. It's literally that simple. If you just get up and you skip breakfast and you just go about the day and let the day literally just carry you on and do whatever it wants to you, you have control to take control of your day. You have control over your actions. Take it. You want to lean out, you want to build muscle, you want to build a body that you feel good and confident in. Take responsibility for the actions that you take throughout the day. Because you have control over that. You can stop and eat lunch for 20 minutes. You can make yourself eat breakfast, you can do these things, you can change the way that you view food so that you don't feel like shit every single time that you eat. You can learn how to incorporate fun foods into your lifestyle in moderation and in a way that still allows your body to respond, lean out, and build muscle. So just remember that. What you're not changing, you are choosing. So I feel like I just yapped and went a little nuts in this episode, but basically I just wanted to talk about how I have freedom around food and how my structure around food creates that freedom for me. I don't have a restrictive mindset around food. I don't make myself feel any type of way for eating any specific type of food. I literally just eat the foods that come straight from the earth in a way that's fun. I enjoy it. I allow myself to have fun foods in my lifestyle as well. And that's it, right? Just like I talked about in the last episode, you can utilize the foods that you give your body for good. You can bring all of that food that you're eating to the gym and build muscle with it. So it can be this super efficient machine that you turn your body into that's able to be lean, strong, muscular, all of the things. So that is it for today's episode. I hope that you got a lot of really beneficial information out of this. I hope that you could see how I structure my day and how I approach food from day to day in a way that actually helps me to reach my goals, hit my numbers, and make sure that I am actually staying lean, building muscle, doing all the things. If you have any questions about this, head over to my Instagram, send me a DM. I would love to chat more about this. And of course, if you loved this episode or you love the podcast, let me know over there as well. I love receiving messages from you guys telling me that you love the podcast. It makes me so, so happy. And of course, if you want to work with me, the link to apply to Embody You is in the description of this podcast. Basically, in Embody You, we assess where you are at right now and we figure out what exactly your body needs from you and we build up from there. So we implement custom strength training workouts that are meant to build muscle and change the shape of your body in less amount of time. So you're not spending your whole life at the gym, as well as tailoring your nutrition to make sure that you are eating an adequate amount of food for your body to respond, lean out, and build muscle so that you're able to transform your body and learn how to approach fitness and health and nutrition in a way that is freeing and not restrictive. The method that I use inside this program has absolutely transformed so many women's lives. I have clients come to me and tell me that their mindset has been completely shifted and the way that they look at their bodies and their food and their workouts are completely different after going through this process. So I believe in it with my whole entire heart. And I know that this is going to do amazing things for you and your body as well. So if you want access to that, the link to apply to embody you is in my bio. But that is all that I have for today's episode. I hope that you enjoyed and I will chat with you in the next one. Bye.