Christa 0:00
Okay, so today I want to talk about something around diet. And it can be really, really confusing when we don't know, do we do keto? Are we vegan or vegetarian? Are we high carb? Are we low carb like there's so high protein, there's so many different avenues that we can go up for one thing is for sure, we know that Whole Foods is absolutely the absolute right over processed foods. So we're not really going to talk about, you know, one type of diet or the other, but I want to touch on the power of just choosing full whole nutrition, because that's ultimately what it boils down to. And I also want to talk about the challenges that come with making that decision. Because I think most people, if you ask them, hey, what's the healthier thing, a bag of Lay's or a salad. I mean, most people know what the healthier option is. But I know that for myself, for my patients, for I'm sure your clients, Cherie, that busyness really gets in the way of what we know to do and what we actually do. So I would love to kind of hear on your end Cherie working with, you know, especially in fitness and being a personal trainer, and then as a nutritionist, like, what are the tips and tricks that you have, and then I'll share some of mine as well that have really helped people stick to what we know. And that's Whole Foods. I
Sheree 1:17
love this. And I think Whole Foods is such an underrated approach. You know, we look at any kind of diet, and it's some level of restriction and yes, Whole Foods is removing processed foods. But you know, something that I love, and I've heard numerous times, processed foods aren't even really food, there are a whole bunch of chemicals, actually food a lot of the time. So, you know, any kind of diet you look at has got some level of restriction, you typically removing a whole food group, like, it's ridiculous. So coming back to whole foods, eating whole real foods as a foundation of eating is really really like the natural way like caveman days, we were eating whole foods, things that came out of the ground flew in the sky, like walked on the earth, or that sort of thing. And so one of the biggest things I think people struggle with and you hit the nail on the head is the busyness you know, and meal prep, honestly, and I don't know if it's just like the PT and me. But meal prep makes the hugest difference. And also just having really simple go twos, I say to my clients all the time, I am such a simple cook, you know, you pick up a recipe book, and it's overwhelming, because you open the page and you're like, cool, I don't have three quarters of those ingredients. I also don't know what three quarters of those ingredients are, I don't know if I'm gonna like them. And I'm sure as heck not gonna go down to the grocery store and buy them to be able to use a teaspoon of them in some meal. But I don't know if I want to make and so we can look at it and feel overwhelmed. And what I love to do is absolutely simplify. You know, I think when we're thinking about Whole Foods, this is where it becomes so easy to eat gluten free, which is you know, one of the most inflammatory foods that we can be putting into our bodies on a daily basis. It's really not a whole real food. Because it's not natural, like one thing I say to people is when you go grocery shopping, if you just imagine right now, like, Don't close your eyes if you're driving. But if you imagine right now, if you closed on your eyes, you enter a supermarket, the first thing you see is a whole lot of fruits and vegetables, then you go around the back. And there's normally all of the meats, and the poultry and the fish and all that sort of thing. And if you keep going around the side, you're normally going to wind up with maybe like the eggs and a little bit of the dairy, then you can leave the frickin supermarket like you don't really need to go up and down the aisles, there's not much in those aisles that are going to support you. Everything with an ingredient list is in those aisles and the more ingredients something has, the less likely it's going to be good for your health. So that's really the first thing I get people to do. And make sure when you do go grocery shopping, it is not on an empty stomach, you're gonna be far more likely to pick those unhealthy foods if you're walking around hungry. So top tip I only always go on like a Thursday night after I've hit the gym because once you've hit the gym, you're like, oh, everyone nourish my body, right? You're not walking around going, I am going to put a whole load of crap, you actually feel so good. You've got those endorphin release, that that's really helpful. And then if you're shopping on like a later night in the week, like later in the week, you're also far more likely to eat the food over the weekend, then opt for going out for heaps and heaps of meals. So that's one big tip is like look at your grocery shopping. The other thing is keep it simple. You carry your portion sizes with you. So if you think about it this way, your thumbs are your fats, right so can we get some whole food fats, avocados, nuts, seeds, maybe an oil into your meal, pick a fat, pick a protein, you've got your palm for like red meat up to your knuckles for your chicken or your whole hand is your fish. Right so like you can use these sorts of measurements, then you've got to fistfuls of vegetables, very easy to do. And if there's two cups, right, that is how we can start to structure and build out our plate. So very quickly, you've got half a plate of salad, or half a plate of veggies, you might have some chicken breasts, and maybe you've got some roasted potato as carbohydrates. And that's cooked and a little bit of olive oil. Like it gets to be so simple. And I think we overcomplicated and use it as an excuse as to why we can't do it. Like, does that make sense?
Christa 5:32
For sure, I mean, simplicity is the name of the game, I applaud these people that blog and have these amazingly, you know, extensive, and I'm sure these meals are great, yes. And there are what they are for, you know, here and there. When we're talking about a person, even ourselves, going from I want to shift, you know my habits and not grab and go, we have to have simplicity, I find that most people when they're describing to me, yo, I work from home, so they're at home, they have accessibility for something, even if they don't work from home, they're grabbing something or they're ordering out for lunch time at their workspace, it's not mean they're taking some amount of time to grab something. So it's about the choice that you make and showing up for yourself early show up for your future self each week. And what I've been practicing is getting vegetables, because I find that getting vegetables is hard for most people. But the power of that is that foods themselves like vegetables that have been cut, actually release more of the potent like healing aspects that plants can do for ourselves. Because they're, you know, they're they're actually trying to heal themselves from being cut by the knife, but that then they impart that to us, the powerful antioxidants, the way that they really help our gut microbiome flourish. So there's so much power in these vegetables, but it's really hard and complicated, I think, for most people in their minds to get the right amount. And so one thing that I've been doing and being committed to is just buying a variety, cutting it all up putting that in the fridge, so everything's cut and ready to go. And then each evening, I put it all in one bowl, so I've got this massive salad. And then I make my own homemade dressing as well. Because when we're trying to eat healthy, we don't want to sabotage it with fried proteins like New York restaurant and you think I'm gonna order a salad and then you got fried chicken all over it. And you know, high, unhealthy inflammatory oils in those salad dressings are kind of negating. So being committed to making a quick dressing that I make at home with avocado oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and lemon, very simple. And adding all that and then pre making, you know, maybe chicken breast or some shrimp or hard boiled eggs or tuna in a packet. Like that's kind of my lunch because truth be told, most people do not really care about what they're eating at breakfast and lunch. Especially when people are busy. They're usually just trying to make it through the workday, I think more creativity than comes for dinner. But dial in what you can do, whether that's protein shakes, and add in veggies and fruits into your shake, and then creating some kind of veggie and like maybe what I'm doing at lunchtime and just making that standard and then getting a bit more creative at dinnertime. But even with dinner, you've got to think ahead a little bit I need to have the ingredients for even the simple dishes like what you just shared, it does not have to be complicated. But the alternative then, is that we order fast food we run through the drive thru, you know, and I get it like I have kids in sports. Sometimes the evening creeps up on you. So knowing maybe some crackpot ideas or batching a bit that you know, you can freeze. I know that we know these things, but you've really got to be true to yourself and say, What what's actually going to work for me because the only change that's going to be worthwhile is one that you can stick to. And I think some of it comes you have to really boil down your why sometimes it's not, you know, if you don't need to lose weight, great. Sometimes even the desire to lose weight kind of comes and goes depending on your cravings, right. I think it needs to be a deeper why I think you know the prevalence and the cancer on on the rise with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and things like that on the rise. You know, the biggest the biggest things that take us out of the most common things that people die from are going to be cardiovascular disease, cancer, those are the top two, let's say and those are primarily lifestyle diseases. I hate to say that because people are going to be offended but a lot of them are flat out lifestyle choices that you have made. And you don't want that ship to sail. So I think having a really deep why I mean that's really what's driven me to be more proactive in pre cutting the damn veggies. It takes me 10 minutes, you know, and then each night when I'm putting it together, it takes me five it really is I made it a bigger deal than it needed to be. But the point is, my Y has gotten deeper just by you know, you step into your 40s and you realize wow, I mean it's not unheard of for people in my in the in 40s and beyond to commonly get cancer As and medicine as food, food and medicine, I reverse that food is medicine. And it can be bad medicine and it can be good medicine, and you've got to make some choices. And it ultimately is not as hard as sometimes we make that mountain to be, it's just making different choices.
Sheree 10:15
Oh, definitely. And I think like you say the power is in the choice. And really, I think one of the biggest things I hear from clients like Biden realize it got to be this simple. Because we've gone down the path of, maybe you've counted calories in the past, maybe you've like been trying all these different diets. And if we're just sticking to the baseline of whole real foods, it does become a lot easier to just be like, Okay, this is the parameters. And there's actually a number of foods that fall into that, like, you can make beautiful, one of my favorite, like types of foods is Mexican. And so you can get all filled through tortillas, you can get, you know, beautiful things that you can just very easily throw together that don't take a lot of time. That still tastes great. And I think a lot of people go, okay, Whole Foods, it's like literally what I said before some chicken and some salad and some roasted potato, but doesn't have to be like that. And also your taste buds change over time. So you get to acquire more of the nutritious tasting. And one thing I really want to touch on here is because I think a lot of us have grown up with the mentality that, you know, if you want to lose weight, if you want to be healthier, quote, unquote, you know, it's all about calories in calories out by just eat less and move more, that's the solution doesn't really matter about the quality of the foods and so much research. I mean, it's been out for years, but so much research even more. So it's coming to light about a lot of these additives that are being put in our foods, you know, we're not just talking about the MSG that, you know, most people know to avoid. I'm talking about the spot. I mean, I'm talking about all the different artificial flavors and colors, and sweetness that affects our gut health, they start to disrupt our microbiome and the bacteria that's there, which therefore starts to impact our brain. So if we're thinking about this from a longevity perspective, from an avoiding disease perspective, you know, all disease begins in the gut, we're going to start to turn the wrong things on and maybe turn the wrong genes on with these sorts of things. Because altering our microbiome, it's altering the quality of our cells, it's altering the cells in our brain by consuming these types of foods. So just because the zero sugar coke has, you know, zero sugar in it, that's not actually better than having the coke itself. Because we're one it's about 400 times sweeter. So we're now retraining our taste buds to reach for something sweet all the time, but you are then putting in something that is actually damaging your gut lining, it is damaging your brain cells, right. And then there's more and more research coming out to support that. So we're not just coming at it from a Whole Foods perspective that you need to eat these foods to nourish and reduce inflammation, it's also to avoid the damage that you can be doing and triggering a lot of these diseases.
Christa 12:59
Oh, yeah, I mean, in clinic, functional medicine, I mean, the majority of everything, the result of where people are, their starting point comes from lifestyle, it comes from the types of foods they've been choosing. And I think we can both agree that we can see it as a mountain, or we can just see it as hey, it's not as difficult as we're making it out to be. And the truth is, the more like you said, the more we eat whole foods, higher proteins from animal proteins that are not marinated at the store in all the chemicals you kind of want to make your own marinade, which does not take that much time. But the more that you're conscientious about what you're fueling your body with and also viewing food as fuel, not as entertainment can really help shift your perspective and and also just dig into your why why do you care, maybe self loves love your body like fuel your body, you'll start to see that these choices become easier than you thought and easier than you thought quicker and easier.
Sheree 13:53
We hope you got something out of that. It's a beautiful little snippet. And just a reminder, sometimes that's what we need to really nourish our body with those whole real foods. And if you need more support, reach out to Christopher and I we're more than happy to help guide you along this path. Take care and we'll see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
