Stop Overcomplicating Food - Here's What Actually Matters

Most nutrition advice makes eating feel impossible. This episode cuts through it.

We're covering the foundational habits that actually create results - whole foods, protein, fiber, what to do about caffeine, and why struggling to stay consistent with food is often a nervous system problem, not a willpower problem.

Simple, practical, and built for real life. This is episode two of the nutrition and training mini series.

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Transcript

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Welcome back to the role model you never had. I'm Jess, trauma-informed strength and identity coach, former crisis counselor, and the woman who rebuilt her body and her life from the ground up. Here's what I believe with everything I have. Your body is the foundation of your healing, not the destination, not the goal, the foundation, the place where everything else starts. The first place you stop abandoning yourself and start becoming her. That is the movement we're building here. For women who have survived everything and are done just getting through it. Women who are ready to stop surviving and start becoming the role model they never had. For themselves first, and then for every woman watching who needs to see that it's possible. On the last episode, we busted some of the biggest nutrition and training myths. And today we're going to build on that with what you actually need to focus on. Simple, practical, and built for real life. We are continuing our discussion about nutrition, so let's get into it. So let's start our discussion with whole foods, because I know you're not eating enough of them. Before macros or tracking anything else, we need to discuss food quality. Because no amount of tracking your food is going to compensate for a diet that's built on processed foods. Whole foods are foods that are close to their natural state: eggs, meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. Your processed foods that you're eating every single day, like your protein bars, are engineered to be hyper-palatable. And it makes it harder for you to feel satisfied. The single most impactful change most people can make is shifting the majority of their diet towards whole foods. And because I know a lot of you are eating protein bars, I'm gonna give you a rule of thumb for this. Your protein bar for every 200 calories should have approximately 20 grams of protein. Many of the protein bars that you're eating are extremely high in sugars and other ingredients that are going to make you bloated and not actually give you enough protein. A good brand to buy are the Bear Bells protein bars. Stay away from things like the Quest bars and the protein cookies, because some of your protein bars only have 12 grams of protein for over 200 calories, and you can find way better options to hit your protein goal, especially while you're traveling. Look for things like beef jerky, hard-boiled eggs, some packs of yogurt, protein shakes. Some of them have up to 42 grams of protein. And when you're looking at ingredient labels for processed foods, I want you to look at the first few ingredients on the ingredient list. If you cannot pronounce it, you probably shouldn't be eating it. And it may not say sugar directly as the first ingredient, but it could have some sugar derivative, a different structure like sucralose, sucrose, fructose listed on there instead. Companies can get away with listing them as these different chemical structures because they can list them in smaller amounts if they're broken down, and that food will appear healthier. So just because it doesn't say sugar as the first ingredient doesn't mean that it's not high in sugar. This is why it's important to have a better understanding of nutrition and how to read nutrition labels as well. Building off that brief discussion of protein bars, let's talk about protein because if there is one macronutrient that I want you to pay attention to and track to some extent, it is protein. Most of you are not eating enough of it. Protein, as you've heard before, is essential for muscle repair and growth. It keeps you full for longer, which also is going to help you with your late-night sugar cravings, by the way. It has the highest thermic effect of any macronutrient. So out of your carbs, your fats, and your protein, protein requires the most energy for your body to break it down, meaning it burns more calories when it's trying to break down the protein. It also takes more time. Again, it's going to keep you full for longer. It's also going to support your hormone health, your immune function, and again your recovery from workouts. And if you don't know where to start, if you don't know how to calculate your protein intake, a good general rule of thumb is one gram per pound of body weight per day. And if tracking with a scale feels too overwhelming for you, I want you to start by using your hand. You need to create awareness with how much you're eating. So using your hand as a portion control method and also taking pictures of your food is a great way to start creating awareness for yourself. So a palm-sized portion of protein at every meal of cooked food, not raw, is going to be a great starting point for you. Chicken, fish, eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, legumes, all of those are solid sources. And if you're lifting, I want you to aim for one to two palm-sized portions of protein per meal, three meals a day. The hand portions are proportionate to your body. This is from Precision Nutrition, which is a really well-known nutrition certification. They have done research on this about how accurate it is compared to actual macro tracking. It's about 95% accurate. So, again, this is a great starting point for you. Next, let's move on to carbs, fiber, and fats. Carbs are not the enemy. I know we've all been made out to think that carbs are really bad for you, they're what cause you to gain weight. The reason that you gain weight when you eat more carbs, by the way, is because carbs hold on to more water, which increases your weight on the scale. It doesn't mean that you gain fat. And I know that most of you are eating the wrong type of carb sources. You're eating the quick digesting carbs most of the time: rice cakes, cream of rice, white rice, white breads, pastries, etc., those are not going to help you sustain your energy or help with your bloating. If you're somebody who experiences a lot of bloating every morning when you wake up, you're going to want to pay attention to this. Carbs are your body's preferred fuel source. And I need you to be choosing quality carbs. Yes, you can have rice, but you need to mix in other things like oats, sweet potato, fruit, whole grain bread. Again, this is going to help for sustained energy. Keep you full, prevent sugar crashes, prevent late-night eating. It takes longer for your body to digest than the quick carbs that you're relying on. It is okay to mix in those quick carbs once in a while, but the majority of your carbs should be coming from, unless you're fueling for endurance training, like super long runs. I have a client in half Iron Man training right now. You require a different type of fuel, faster digesting carbs. But the average person who is just lifting in the gym or just getting started with their fitness journey, just trying to build a healthier lifestyle, you need to be including more complex carbs throughout your day to day. You're also going to get fiber from these carbs. Lack of fiber is why so many of you wake up bloated and uncomfortable every single day. And it's not just going to come from your complex carbs, it's also going to come from vegetables. You need to have one to two fifths of vegetables at every meal. And once you do that, your gut is going to thank you. You need about 25 to 35 grams of fiber per day as a woman. And when you eat this much fiber, you also need to make sure that you're drinking enough water so it can actually move through your digestive tract properly. The final macronutrient we're going to talk about are fats. If you have lost your period, for example, you have a really abnormal cycle, you probably aren't eating enough fats. Fats are essential for your hormone health, also your brain health. They've done a lot of studies on the effects of omega-3 on people who have depression, and which is why, if you do struggle with depression, your doctor may have recommended that you take omega-3 supplements in addition to whatever medication they had put you on. In your day-to-day from whole food sources, you're going to want to look at things like avocado, olive oil, nuts, eggs, fatty fish. One tablespoon per meal. And if we go back to the hand portions, that's going to be about one thumb size of fats per meal. And I want to say, like I did with carbs, carbs don't make you fat. Fats also don't make you fat. What makes you fat is your overall calorie intake. That is how you gain weight. Moving on. Let's talk about caffeine. If you are relying on caffeine to get through your day because you're not eating enough, that is a fueling problem worth addressing for your body. Caffeine is masking it, not solving your energy problem. Caffeine temporarily suppresses your appetite. So if you're running on caffeine all morning and not eating, it really messes with your body and also your nervous system, which we'll talk about in a second. When you have your coffee, I want you to eat something small before that or eat something with it. And then cap your caffeine early in the afternoon so it doesn't disrupt your sleep. Sleep is when your body actually starts to repair itself. And if you're waking up not feeling rested, this could be why. I personally cut my caffeine off at like 2 p.m. Because the half-life, if you look it up for caffeine, is really long. It takes a long time to fully get caffeine out of your system. So if you're pumping energy drinks or coffee after 3, 4 p.m. and you're like, well, it's not really affecting me. I can still go to sleep. It's still affecting you. Your body is not relaxing fully when you're sleeping. And that is why you're waking up not feeling rested. Now let's move on to the next piece, which is your nervous system. There's been a lot of research that's come out in the last few years about the connection between your nervous system and nutrition. When your nervous system is in chronic stress activation, chronically in fight or flight, you feel like you can't relax, your body is going to prioritize survival over digestion, which means your nutrient absorption from the food that you are eating is going to be compromised. Cortisol also drives cravings for high sugar, high-fat foods, those really hyper-palatable foods. If you're binging late at nighttime on things like chips or chocolate bars, ice cream, that you sit on the couch, and you're like, I'm just going to have a little bit, and you haven't portioned it out, and all of a sudden the entire container, the entire bag is gone, you're probably emotional eating, and that's something worth addressing. And it's going to be addressed by fueling your body properly earlier in the day. Your nervous system is also going to explain why you can eat perfectly for a few days and then blow it completely when something stressful happens. This is not a willpower problem for you. This is a nervous system problem. And that's why I work on all of it all together. You have to address the underlying stress activation, the chronic state of stress that you're in because of your childhood trauma, your toxic relationship, your stressful job. You need alternative coping strategies and you need to fuel your body properly throughout the day. So when that stress does hit, your body isn't freaking out as aggressively. And if you want to learn more about this, I can do a deeper dive into nervous system and nutrition in a different episode. But for now, we're going to move on. Ultimately, I want you to keep things simple. Simplicity is consistency, especially when you're just starting out. So I want you to find a handful of meals that you enjoy that hit your protein, your carbs, your fats, and your vegetables and rotate them. Time block your meal preps on Sunday to remove the daily decision fatigue that is leading you to poor choices throughout the week. When you're stressed and you're sitting there at the end of the night and you're like, well, I'm really tired from work. I don't really want to make anything. Let's just get takeout, or I don't have the energy to cook something, so I'm just going to eat these snacks in my pantry. That's why it's important to meal prep at the beginning of the week. So you have options available to you. Consistency is going to be perfection every single time. And if you can't meal prep everything for your meals, you don't want to put everything in separate containers, just batch prep it and then build your meals throughout the week. Prep a couple protein sources, some chicken, some ground beef, ground turkey, tofu, if you're a vegetarian, whatever it is that you enjoy eating, bare minimum, prep your proteins. Then I want you to prep two carb sources. It could be roasted sweet potatoes, super easy to make. Just put them in the oven, add some seasonings, some spray olive oil, 45 minutes, and you're golden. And then some rice. Those are two simple carb sources you can add to your meals. If you're like, well, I can't eat chicken and rice every single day, add some sauces. Simple. That is how you're going to start seeing results. And that is how you're going to start building consistency and building self-trust and taking your nervous system out of that chronic stress state from not fueling yourself. Okay, that is all I have for you on this episode. I like to try to keep things as short as possible so you can get some information that's going to help you on your day to day. You can implement it right away. But we will be continuing our nutrition discussion in the next couple episodes. So the next episode, we're going to be talking about fueling for your specific goal, how to eat to build your body composition in a very different way from how you eat to train for endurance, and understanding the difference that changes everything. The foundation that we talked about today is exactly where we start in my one-to-one coaching. Nutrition habits built for your psychology, your nervous system, and your actual life. Not another plan you white knuckle through for two weeks and then abandon. Most of my clients start with that hand portioning method that I talked to you about. So if you're ready to start building something at last, the link to apply for coaching is in the show notes. And remember, every no to what drains you is a powerful yes to yourself. Your body is the foundation of your healing. I'll see you next episode.