Hello and welcome back. I am so excited you're here, and this is a topic I've been wanting to do for a long time. Today, it's just you and me, no guest, and we are talking about food now. Food has so much involved in it. I'm going to be sharing my best tips and tricks from my own practice and from my very own life as a busy woman of how I eat healthy for myself and help my family to eat healthy. Now, the biggest barriers most of us face aren't willpower, although we think it is. They're really about how to incorporate these things into real life. How do we make systems around food that make it a little easier for us? You might feel like you don't have time to cook our meal prep, like you don't know where to start, or you're just too busy juggling everything else. Add into that all of the conflicting nutrition advice out there, and it's no wonder so many of us are struggling. So today's episode, like I said, I'm going to share my very best tips for food changes that actually work in real life. I'm not talking about the Pinterest perfect version, but the sustainable, nourishing kind that may not always be the most straightforward or the most attractive, but we're going to make it work, and we're going to talk about how to simplify your decision making and that decision fatigue and brain effort that goes into food, and we're going to talk about how to actually feed your body without burning yourself out, and how to celebrate progress without falling into that darn trap of perfectionism. So whether you're starting from scratch or you just want to feel more consistent or fine tune your food, this episode will give you practical tools that you can start using today. So let's dive in.
I know this is a big deal because, well, number one, it's a big deal for me too, and I'm in it right with you, trying to be busy, take care of a family, working full time and still having to figure out food. Don't you ever wish that it would just appear in front of you, all prepared and you could just eat it? I think I would eat a lot of things if someone just put it in front of me. But here we are in the real world where we're trying to juggle budgets and juggle the amount of time it takes to prep, how to not let the food go bad, how to cook in a way that it's good for my health, but also something that my husband won't complain about, and something that my kids will eat. So first of all, let's just pause and give you a giant pat on the back for even trying to navigate this jungle, which is food management. But I'm going to give you my best tips and tricks. These are tips that have worked for me and have worked for a lot of my patients as we've been trying to really improve food. So let me back up before I get into those tips, and just remind us all of why food is so important when it comes to our health. I'm not going to spend a ton of time here because I know that this is kind of obvious, but I do want to share something I think I've shared here before, but it's something that really hits home for me when we think about food. A lot of us have this diet culture ingrained in our brains that says food is about being thin, food is about being skinny. And so we kind of constantly have this thing in our brain that says, if we eat too much, we're bad or we should be ashamed. We also have this thing in our head that says, If we manage to skip a meal and feel fine about it, that we should pat ourselves on the back, because, yay, we ate less food. And I really want to offer a different framework around food. I know we hear the phrase food as medicine, and this is a little bit different than that. I like to think about food as ingredients and a recipe. So if I ask you to make chocolate chip cookies, and then I hand you the ingredients and the bag is full of pasta, you would tell me, Mallory, I'm never going to be able to make chocolate chip cookies out of this. All you gave me is noodles. There's no way that cookies are coming out of this. Even if you were the very best chef in the world, you don't have the ingredients that match up to the recipe to create the outcome that you want. And this is exactly what happens in the body. The body has a recipe. It has a certain set of ingredients that it needs to create the outcome that we want. So pause for a second and just think like in general, what outcome Do you want? Some of the biggest ones that I see are, I want energy. I want my brain to work really well. I'm tired of this brain fog, or I'm tired of my mood not being stable. I'm tired of being irritable. Another one I hear is I want to lose weight. I don't want this added cushion around my middle right? Or another one would be I want to get pregnant, or I want my hormones to be stable. I want to age gracefully. These are all really great outcomes, but they have a recipe. They have a set of instructions that adds up to that outcome. And if we are completely oblivious or disregarding that set of instructions, you're not going to get the outcome. There's no like Plan B or Plan C or Plan D. You have to have the ingredients that it takes to create the outcome that you're looking for. And when we think about those ingredients, there's a huge variety of them, but they're all food. I mean, we have other things too, like stress, recovery and sleep and sunlight, and there's definitely other things involved. But when we're just thinking about the food needs, the vitamin needs, we know.
Know that certain things require certain things in our body. So in order to build neurotransmitters, we need enough protein to break down into amino acids. The amino acids are what build up to make those neurotransmitters. We also know that there are things called co factors. These are vitamins that you've heard of, and minerals, things like magnesium and vitamin D and zinc and iron. Those aren't just vitamins. They're necessary to cause the right chain reaction in the body. Think of them if you're baking cookies like baking soda Right? Like you could put all of the sugar in and all of the flour in and all of the butter in, and they still would not puff up, right? They wouldn't have that right reaction. And that's exactly what some of these co factors do, is they say, yeah, you've got enough protein, you've got enough B vitamins, you've got enough other things, but you don't have the key to actually make them blend together and work and and when we think about what are the ingredients that go into the body to give these outcomes that we need, there's a few different categories. Okay, these are not
going to shock you. These would be exactly what you would guess would be the categories. One is going to be protein, like I said, protein breaks down into amino acids. And amino acids you've heard are the building blocks of life, right? The amino acids are what get put together to build so many different things through the body. We have vitamins and minerals. Those would be vitamin the B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc and magnesium, sodium, potassium, we also have fiber. Fiber is what breaks down and does a lot of good in the gut. It can also help with satiety and can help with cardiovascular disease. Another big category that we think of and that we often demonize is carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are really important for energy. That's the main source of energy that we have. The last category I'll mention is phytonutrients. They're what make beets red and grapes purple and blueberries purple and other foods red. They're what color are foods. And those phytonutrients have really powerful mechanisms in the body, again, to be part of the recipe that creates the outcome that we're looking for. So this is why we're talking about food, because it's really, really important. Oftentimes, in my functional medicine practice, people come in and they want to know, do I have mold? Do I have Lyme? Do I have, you know, adrenal dysfunction? Do I have hypothyroidism? Are my hormones out of balance. Those are all really good questions, really important questions. But when we're diving into the solutions, if your food is not at all where it needs to be, I'm going to have to look in a lot of different places to fix the body. If you can fix your food and be eating enough of all of these great nutrients, oftentimes that will solve the problems, because that's what helps our thyroid, and that's what helps our hormones, and that's what helps our gut and it's what helps our heart. If we're eating a really great diet, a really great nourishing diet that has all those ingredients that it needs, oftentimes it makes my job and your job way easier to feel your best, because now you have the things that your body is running off of. So that's where we're diving into this. I am going to go through some of the tips and tricks like I mentioned that that have been really helpful for me. Now I'll share a little bit of my own food journey. So you know where I'm coming from. When I became a doctor, I was not really taught much about nutrition at all. I knew some stuff, but I really didn't know very much at all. And I certainly wasn't very mindful of my own nutrition. I was very much in survival mode for many years, and really just eating what I could to get by. And there are some days that you think, Oh, I know I should eat healthy, so I should eat a salad, or I should add some broccoli, but I had really no framework. I was just eating what I had, and it was a lot of what you would expect someone in their 20s and 30s to eat, you know, a lot of pasta. I'd have some vegetables with it, maybe sandwiches, maybe a bowl of cereal. You know, these foods that are what a lot of us grow up eating, and are the quickest thing, and we can grab it and go and and we're fed like well done us. And so first, let me say yes, well done. You like, if you are fed, then I congratulate you, because that is really the first step and the number one goal. Now in my own journey, as I started to realize I don't feel well, and started to wonder what I could do to feel better, I am not the good example. I did not go to a functional medicine doctor and I didn't go to a dietitian. I just started kind of chipping away at things myself as they made sense to me. And so one of the things that I did first was just saying, Okay, I'm not in a position to cut out things, to remove all sugar, to go gluten or dairy free, like I'm just not there. So what I can do, though, is I can start to add more nutrients. I can start to make sure that I'm getting more vegetables in mine was probably a one to two year journey of figuring out food. I'm still very much in the thick of it. I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to food, because it just won't happen like I just can't be with where I'm at in my stage of life and with my children and family. And I think that's okay. I think what we're going for is getting.
It right most of the time, and having everything in there as much of the time as possible. And I promise the body will work better, and when the body works better, it's a lot easier than to stay on target. So I found that food was massively restorative to my body. I wasn't doing a ton of supplements. I wasn't doing a ton of magical things. I really was just focused on food. And really, not from a very academic standpoint, I was just kind of doing what made sense, and it really did make a huge difference in my body. So I'm going to share these tips now. The first one that I want to focus on is, before you ever try to remove something, focus on what you need to add. We see this a lot with women who will say, Oh, I cut out this, or I cut out that, you know, I cut out sugar, I cut out fat, I cut out seed oils, I cut out gluten and dairy, and I didn't feel any better. I didn't get what I wanted, or I couldn't sustain it. And when we're dealing with food, it's really important that we nourish before we remove if, for example, you're relying on a lot of processed carbs for your food, and you come to me and I say you should remove processed carbs. You're going to be really hungry. You're not going to have anything that's there, like magically appearing because you got rid of the processed carbs. Now you have other food there available. Now some people might, but generally speaking, it's so much more effective if you focus first on what you're adding. I really think of it like this conveyor belt. If your conveyor belt is loaded up with processed foods, or with sugary foods, or, you know, with cereals and pretzels and chips and things like that. Picture, that conveyor belt just packed full with those things. If we start taking things off that conveyor belt, there's just not going to be anything left on the conveyor belt. But what if instead we start loading from the back, we start loading vegetables and fruits and protein sources onto the back end of the conveyor belt. As that conveyor belt shifts, those processed foods fall off the edge, they'll just go away. And I know that's oversimplified, and it's not exactly how it works, but I do think it is a big part of how it works. Is if you're constantly saying, How can I get one more nourishing food in my body, other foods will drop off. There's just not enough time in a day to eat all the nourishing foods and all of the other foods. You just won't crave them. You won't be buying them. They will drop off the edge. So instead of prying them off and leaving a gaping hole in your nourishment, really focus on what you can add.
I'm often asked exactly what items I use and recommend. So I have a little gift for you. I have gathered my go tos in one spot on our Amazon storefront. If you need deeper sleep, you'll find the light blocking sleep mask that lives on my nightstand and that I use every night. If you're working on your bone density or your posture, check out the weighted vest I recommend for walks and workouts. We've also added the magnesium body lotion I reach for to calm the nervous system, my favorite laundry soap and cleaning products, and even the cast iron skillet that's currently sitting on my stove top. All of these and more are organized by category, so you can browse trusted products without the overwhelm of trying to figure out what's the best thing to buy. You can head to amazon.com, backslash shop, backslash uplift for her, or tap the link in the show notes or from our website to explore the items I personally use and love. I hope this makes your life just a little bit easier. Now, back to the show. So that's my first tip. Is before you ever think about removing add, add. Now I'm going to go through some sort of general tips, and then I'll get it down into the nitty gritty a little bit more, and I'll come back and talk a little bit more about what to add. But the second major tip that I would give is, start small. There are lots of meal plans and coaches and all sorts of people who will overhaul your diet for you. They will give you a meal plan that you can follow to the letter, I find those to be pretty unsustainable for most people. Now, they are great and they can be a really good jumpstart, and I use them myself with patients. But if you're just getting started and things feel hard, or you've had some setbacks, or, you know, you're just getting kids back to school, and you're not sure where to begin. Sometimes a complete overhaul is not the best idea. And so if you're really struggling and you've had some quote, unquote failures where you've tried that and it didn't work, I would start really small, and the way that I prefer to do that is to choose one meal a day instead of focusing on okay, I need 120
grams of protein, and I need 30 grams of fiber, and I need to have three meals a day, and I need to have electrolytes, and I need to have all of these different things. Can we just fix one thing at a time? And that one thing that I would fix first is breakfast. There are exceptions to this in that some women will do best by skipping breakfast, but most will not. And if you are tired, if you are fatigued, if your body is feeling more broken down than strong and repairing and growing, then I would add breakfast back in religiously for a time, at least, before you go back to intermittent fasting. Intermittent Fasting is a topic for an.
Other day, but it's not my favorite thing to start with. Really, if you're struggling with fatigue, you got to fuel. You have to eat at the beginning of the day, so that's the first thing that I would work on.
Now, some great things about breakfast are that most of us are not very picky at breakfast, right? We just got out of bed. We're really just focused on getting the day started. It's busy and it's hectic and it can be rushed, but we're not picky. I think by the time it comes to dinner, especially if we're hungry, I know in my brain I will be craving all the things at dinner time if I am hungry, if I haven't eaten well that day, I know that I'm going to be really picky about what I'm eating. But breakfast, I will eat just about anything. The other nice thing about breakfast is that most of us aren't super picky about how many different things we eat for breakfast. So for dinner, I'm not going to eat the same three things over and over and over for breakfast. I probably would, you know, maybe three to five different breakfasts. It makes it a much easier problem to solve than solving Dinner. Dinner has more variety. We're also cooking for our families and trying to prep the food at the end of the day. It's just harder.
So we start with breakfast. If you can find three to five protein heavy breakfasts, ideally with some fiber in them, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds. If you can do that religiously, I very frequently see that energy fluctuations and that afternoon crash and the cravings, the sugar cravings, very frequently, quickly, will resolve. So really start with breakfast. What can you do to get a good breakfast? Now this is where you can go to chat, or you can go you can use whatever AI tool you like. You can go to Pinterest. You can go to Instagram and start getting ideas. This leads me to my third big overarching tip, which is watch out for perfectionism. I think that Pinterest and Instagram and social media, it can be really easy to get sucked into this idea that that good food is supposed to look a certain way, or it's supposed to be fancy a certain way. I'd go real simple. Like, as as simple as you can get it. I will often tell patients, aim for ugly. And what I mean by that is sometimes we're like, well, that's not a real meal. That doesn't look like a real meal. Like, who cares? Make it ugly. If there's food and you get it in your mouth, then I call it good. So whether that's sometimes, I'll grab and go on the way, maybe scrambled eggs, and maybe I'll add some blueberries on the plate and then add a scoop of sauerkraut and maybe some carrot sticks. That's a really weird meal, right? That's not something that I would put on Pinterest and be like, Hey, look at this gourmet breakfast that I made myself. But honestly, I love it. I am very proud of that breakfast, and I feel like it hits those goals for the day. It has some healthy carbohydrates, it has lots of fiber, it has protein, it has probiotics for my gut, right? It's really hitting a lot of those needs. And so if you can figure out how to do things without that perfectionism, that can really be helpful. And then the last overarching tip that I'll share before we go into a couple more detailed tips here would be to really focus on the progress you've already made and to celebrate your wins, like I started talking about food is no joke. It's a lot of effort, it's a lot of knowledge, it's a lot of understanding. It is not something that is easy. I think a lot of us feel like sometimes food is supposed to be easier than this, like we should just be able to eat. And I do think if we were cave people like that probably would have been easier, because you just would have only had so many options. Now we have so many options and so many things competing for our time and energy that it really becomes this puzzle of how to get these good things in in that period of time. So I do hope you will pause and say, if you got a good breakfast in I hope you pat yourself on the back. If you find three breakfasts that you can rotate through that are easy, you you maintain those groceries. They're always there when you wake up in the morning, you don't have to think that hard about what to eat. You should pause and celebrate. You should really give yourself a pat on the back, because it really can be a big deal. So those are the big reframers That I would put in there. And where I would start is, number one, add before you remove anything, and I'll get into that in a minute. Number two, start small. Just fix one meal at a time, and I recommend starting with breakfast. Once you've gotten breakfast good, then you can move to lunch or dinner, but really start one meal at a time. Alternatively, you could start one macro at a time. So you could start with just protein. Don't worry about how much sugar you're having, don't worry about how much fat you're having, don't worry about how many carbs. Just get the protein in. And then when that's sort of become less burdensome on your brain, then you can focus on getting fiber in, and then you could focus on cutting down on sugars, etc. But doing it all at once can be really overwhelming. And then that third overarching thing is, Don't over complicate. Make it simple. Make it ugly. And the fourth overarching tip is progress over perfection. Really look for ways to celebrate.
Yeah. Now let me get into just some other tips and tricks. These may be a little all over the place here. So as you're listening, what I wouldn't want you to hear is do all of these things, unless that works for you. But what I want you to do as you're listening is just listen to that thing that hits home that says, Do you know what I could do that that would work actually really well for me. So don't worry about getting these perfect. But I am going to go through just several different things. First, I'm going to go back to that adding, when I add, I do recommend that patients add either protein or fiber first. There is a reason for this. The reason is that these foods are highly satiating. These are the ones that help us feel full. So if we are full, it's way easier to then go back and cut out or cut down on what we maybe don't want as much of in our diet, like chips or pasta or highly processed foods or candies or treats. When people come to me and they say, I know I need to cut down on sugar, like, why would you cut down on sugar based on what you're eating, sugar is the main fuel source that you're getting right now. Sugar is the thing that's giving you energy. So why would your body be okay with you cutting that out? Spoiler, it won't. You'll crave it. Sugar cravings usually come because you're missing something, and sugar and glucose are the quickest form of energy. If you don't have enough fiber, you're going to crave sugar. If you don't have enough protein, you'll crave sugar. If you don't have enough carbohydrates, you'll crave sugar. If you are super stressed, you're going to crave sugar so that you can go fight your tigers. Have the energy needed to fight your tigers. If you are tired, you're going to crave sugar. And if you are low on minerals or water, you're going to crave sugar. If you are unhappy, you're going to crave dopamine. What's the best form of dopamine? Sugar. So if you are craving sugar, I don't want you to feel bad about yourself and say, Gosh, I must have an issue, like, I must be flawed because I crave sugar all the time. Instead, I want you to look back and say, What did I eat today? Did I have enough protein? Did I have enough fiber? Did I have enough water? Did I have enough electrolytes? Those four categories? If you've had those four categories and you're still craving sugar, then I want you to pay attention to what kind of cravings you're having. In my mind, there are two types of sugar cravings. One is the type of sugar craving. That is, I will literally eat chocolate chips that I find in the back of the cabinet, right? Like I will find something with sugar in it that is a desperate cry for help from your body, but you're missing something. So get the chocolate chips out of the cupboard. But also go back and say, Okay, first I'm going to drink some water. I'm going to add some electrolytes to it, so I make sure that I have enough potassium, etc, in my body. I'm going to maybe have a little protein snack, maybe have some some fiber, some blueberries, or some carrots or something like that. But it's a little bit of a mind game, because for a lot of us, if we say and I'm not going to have the sugar instead I'm going to have blueberries, I'll tell you, what my brain will say is, I don't want blueberries. I want chocolate. And so instead of saying I'm going to be healthy, I'm going to have blueberries instead of chocolate. One of the tricks that we can play in our brain is say, I'll come back for the chocolate. I'm going to have the chocolate in a minute. I'm going to set it out right here on the counter, but I'm going to go eat these other things first,
and then you eat those things, and you you walk out, you walk out of the kitchen, you say, I'll be back for the chocolate. There's no problem. I can come back for it. Oftentimes, I have found the more that I do this, and I had intense sugar cravings before, the more that I do this, the more I honestly will forget about that. And if you would have told me that, you know, five years, seven years ago, I would have been like, No, I will not forget. I will remember. I will deeply remember the treat that I was saving for later, but the more that I could get my protein in and get my fiber in water electrolytes, the more that I really didn't crave that sugar. So that's sugar craving type one. Is that voracious, like I will find sugar somewhere and that needs to be fed. It needs to be fed by something else. Now, if you go through all of those things and you still have that sugar craving. This is type two. The Type Two sugar craving is a little more like, Ooh, I like treats. I would like, you know, to find something delicious. I would also put in this category that stress component, you know, like, gosh, I just need something to make me happy. I had a really long day. I've been really stressed. I just need one thing to make me happy, and if that's food, honestly, that's fine. Go do it now, if that's your only source of happiness ever, then we've got bigger issues, and we need to work through that. But if you have a random day that's a really hard day, and you know that that that chocolate will make you feel better, honestly, what I would say is eat the chocolate and then look for ways to cope with stress and look for ways to do all of the other things. But those are the two different types of sugar cravings. So I want you to pay attention to which type. And if it's the voracious kind, I want you to feed it. If it's the other kind, then you can try to distract it. You could, you know, go for a walk. You could do other things like that. If you're bored, then try not.
To be bored. If you need a little treat, have a little treat. But those are different types of sugar cravings, and those are the types of sugar cravings too that respond to healthier types of sugar. So if you have dark chocolate in your cupboard, if you can have some dark chocolate, that's going to be better than eating a full Snickers bar. You know that's going to be better than eating a full two scoops of ice cream. If you can have just a smaller treat, then do that, and that will often satiate us, but if we have that violent urge for sugar, then you're missing something you need to be fed.
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to really see the results. So if we're wondering
if gluten affects us, and someone says, Well, I'm mostly off gluten. I don't know what that means. I don't know if that means that you're sensitive to gluten or not, because you really have to go all the way to do a science experiment on yourself and see how do I feel if I cut out gluten, and then how do I feel if I reintroduce gluten? Sugar is the same way as much as I would like to say, let's live 8020 and I do live 8020 with sugar. Sometimes there is a big benefit of going 100% and saying, I'm eliminating sugar for this month or this six weeks to really see what impact it's having on my body. So mostly we try for 8020 but sometimes we do go 100% for a time and then back it off to get the results that we're looking for. But I would really try to avoid doing any sort of elimination or any sort of extreme anything, if we haven't yet added the nutrients that our bodies need. So add, add, add. The third thing that I would add is foods that are rich in phytonutrients. So that's already going to be fruits and vegetables, so it's a little bit duplicate, hopefully that will have already fixed it. Now I want to move forward to one of the issues that we see the most, that I certainly see the most, is brain energy and brain space. Oh, my goodness. Hopefully you know what I'm talking about when I just say that, because the amount of energy it takes to think through some of this food problem solving, it's intense. And so I want to call attention to that we as women, especially dominantly, have the role of feeding ourselves and feeding our families, and it's exhausting. So I haven't figured out how to not have that role, but I do just want to acknowledge that it is exhausting. And so when we're looking for tips, I want us to be looking for tips that take some of that burden off of the brain, that make it feel like it's not quite as difficult. So here are some things that have worked for me and my family and my patients. Number one is, if you have a meal that you stumble upon that you love, the family loves it. The kids are eating it. And by the way it has vegetables in it, and it doesn't have a lot of sugar in it, or it doesn't have a lot of simple processed carbohydrates, then that's one that you want to keep written down. This is the way that I have done this in the past, and would invite you to try something similar. So I have a notebook that I keep in the kitchen on my cabinet next to my cookbooks, right? And in that notebook, that's where I plan my meals for the week. Now, some weeks I nail it, and some weeks I do not, but I have a notebook there every week, so that's good. And so on that notebook I will write Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I save for later. I just can't get there. We'll figure it out later, right? And really, most.
Of the time I plan just Monday through Thursday, but in that notebook, I'm writing down just the dinners that I want to do. And sometimes I will have dinners that I'm really proud of, things like soups with tons of vegetables, or stir fries with tons of vegetables, something that I feel like, gosh, this is a good meal. This hits all the boxes. It has plenty of protein, plenty of fiber, plenty of vegetables. My kids are getting a variety of vegetables. Meatloaf is another favorite around our house. We make mini meatloaf with vegetables snuck in, and my children love them, and that's how they get onions and mushrooms and carrots and bell peppers and zucchini, and I sneak all those things in, and those are the ones that I'm super proud of as a mom, because I know everyone's getting their veggies in, and it's quick and it's easy. So as I go through these meals, I'll have some of them that I kind of star or make a mental note of that's a keeper. That's definitely one that we want to have in the rotation frequently. And then I'll have some that are like, you know, one of my kids favorites is Fettuccine Alfredo. Fettuccine Alfredo is not evil. It is pasta, and they eat a lot of it, and the alfredo sauce is maybe not the best thing to be eating, you know, on a regular basis. So those are the types of meals that I might have two categories and say, Okay, these are kind of our treat meals. If they have a special event and they want to celebrate or they want to have a fun meal. That's not always so vegetable heavy. That would be one that I pull out, but it's not going to be the one that I have in my weekly rotation. That's that I'm going to default to, because it doesn't quite hit the same needs for me and my family. Doesn't mean we don't have it, but it's not one that I'm, you know, gunning for to eat over and over and over. So I have that notebook and I will plan out those meals on weeks that I have my act together. I feel great about that I can kind of think through. That's when I'm going back
through my Pinterest list, maybe cookbooks, maybe recipe books, maybe posts that I've saved on social media. And I'm saying, What do I want to do here? And I will just make that list of four meals at the same time I make the grocery list, I go through and I see what do I have already for these meals, and what do I need to use up, and what do I need to go get at the grocery store? Now this is, I'm sure, very similar to what a lot of you do. I don't think this is magic. What I have found is the magic is you keep that notebook and you keep working on it, and so on the days where we feel like our brains have less capacity, that notebook can be a really great resource. It's better than any cookbook and any recipe book, because these are the ones that have worked for your family. It's not ones that you look up and you're like, oh gosh, that looks good. I'd like to try that my kids will never eat, that you want to go through and say what works for my family, and then it saves so much brain energy, because you're not having to come up with it from scratch. I have a lot of sisters, and we very frequently will have texts like someone give me an idea of what to make for dinner, because I got nothing. And this is where I literally will pull up my notebook, and I'll say, I don't know, but I've been making dinner for years, so surely there are things that I can make for dinner, but somehow my brain comes up with nothing. So that notebook can really be gold, and you can use that to, I mean, I'm not a very fancy person. I'm not a very organized person. So I'm sure some of you could come up with better notebooks that you can really focus on those meals that are winners, and those meals that are treats, and those meals that use up the, you know the extra food that you have in your freezer, but look for ways to use less brain energy and writing down a list of what your family already likes, and that hits your needs with what you're trying to do, if you're trying to eat more vegetables, if you're trying to, I don't want to say, lose weight, but I guess that is the thing. If you want to lose weight, then you're looking for foods that are more nourishing and not as calorie dense, then you want that list there and ready for you. Another thing that can really take away from that brain burden is having a pantry list, having a running grocery list, and that notebook can be really helpful, because when I first started doing that, I wasn't efficient with it, like I wasn't really looking and seeing, you know, what foods can I use out of my freezer? I was just saying, like, I got to find four meals this week, and so we did spend more money because we were going to the store, and it was not an efficient use of groceries. But I was able to refine it over time as I came up with meals. That's step one. Just do it one step at a time, find the meals that you like, and then going back through those meals and saying, Oh, these ones both use beef, you know, ground beef. So I'm going to have, I'm going to buy ground beef once, I'm going to make it once, and I'll make this meal on Monday and this meal on Wednesday. So you can definitely start to refine that and make it more efficient over time. But as I make those meals and then I write that grocery list, I start to see what are the things that I'm always getting at the store, and then I can put that into I use an app on my phone called paprika, not sponsored, but I do love it. I share that with my husband, and he can see the list, and I can see the list, and I can add to it. He can add to it. And then you can go through the grocery store. It organizes it by.
Section of the grocery store, and you can just cross it off as you go. And it also stores all my recipes and will upload the groceries from the recipe. So it's dreamy. I love it. I've used it for years. I will develop a list in there that are my go tos. These are the ones we're getting every week. Usually we get some number of vegetables. Every week we're getting broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, zucchini, bell peppers. Those are the ones that we're kind of rotating through every week. And then I have my staples that I have in the freezer, usually, those are the ones, those big bags from Costco, of the green beans or peas or the roasting vegetables. And between that, then I have all of my vegetables covered. Then we'll rotate through which proteins we're getting? Am I getting chicken that I've frozen from Costco, or am I getting fresh chicken because I know I'm going to be in a rush that week, or ground beef or turkey, or whatever it is that you're doing. It just saves that brain space once you know I'm choosing from these regulars, instead of trying to come up with something from scratch every single week, or every single night. That's just too much brain energy. We just do not have time for that. So keep a running list of your go to groceries, and you can cut a couple of them off if you don't need them that week, or you can add a couple of them on some other things that are kind of staple pantries. I'm sure is the same for a lot of you. Would be things like cilantro or lemons and limes that I'll use a lot in sauces tomatoes. We do a lot of Pico or a lot of Mediterranean food that has tomatoes in it. Feta is something that I keep on hand for Mediterranean meals. So really, just knowing what does your family eat, and are there basic categories of things that you can keep to conserve your brain energy, this is one thing that hasn't worked very well for us, but might work for you is some people will prefer to rotate meals every week. So Monday night is Taco Night. Tuesday Night is Kids Choice. Wednesday night is pasta night. You know, Thursday night is Asian. It doesn't really matter how you do that, but, but, man, that can save a lot of brain energy if you don't have to think about it. It is so much easier, and there's also no big rules here. So a lot of people will be like, Well, I don't want to do that. I'll get sick of it. Well, if you get sick of it, then change it, right? So if you get sick of Monday night, taco night, then change it to something else. But at least those weeks where it was working, that can be really helpful. I also think plan to change, because especially those of us with kids at home who have a lot of activities and who are needing to be driven around from place to place, then it's helpful to look at your week and just acknowledge that up front, if you have a really crazy Tuesday, then you know no one's going to have any time to cook on Tuesday. Then maybe Sunday, you make a soup and you put it in the fridge, and then you just heat soup and do a quick salad for everyone, or a side of green beans or something. If you have a little bit more of a chill night where you have a little bit of a gap, maybe that's the night that you make a little bit more of a sit down dinner, like meatloaf or something like that. So be honest with your schedule, and then when your schedule changes, change that template that you're working from so that you don't have to keep coming up with it. I know, and this could just be me, but I know there are some times when I don't have my act together, where just every Tuesday I'll be like, Oh man, again, I don't have dinner ready. What happened? Like, I didn't have time to do it, and I had this I didn't plan it. Like, back up and be honest with yourself, if you know you're never going to have time on Tuesdays, then figure out where you're going to solve that problem. There have been times in our schedule where we say, like we eat out on that night because no one has time, and we don't even have time to go home. We're going from place to place to place. We're just going to have to eat out. And we can build that in. We can say, Okay, well then we're going to go to this restaurant where someone can get vegetables, or we're going to budget that in so it's not as much of a problem. So give yourself permission to not make it look ideal, but at least have something on the plan so that it's not well, we ended up eating out five days that week, or we ended up, you know, eating frozen pizza every night that week. There will be weeks like that. I promise there will, right? We all know that, and that's okay, but for the most part, if we can plan out
and then another thing that works really well is figuring out how to prep in a way that works for you. Now, I know that there are a million different ways to meal prep. And social media looks makes it look so easy because they put it on fast forward, and then at the end of 60 seconds, they have, like, a whole week's worth of meals. For me that has never worked. I've tried it, it doesn't work. I've tried the soup, the salad jars. I've tried the the individual tupperwares. I've tried bulk prepping, the protein. It's just not something I've been able to make work for me at this point. Although I love it, if it works for you, then do that. I think that's really great
for me. It has worked better to meal prep in the way that I mentioned with my notebook, so I at least have the things ready to go I know the night before what I'm going to make for dinner the next night. And so if I need to take something out of the freezer, I've already thought that through. If I need to chop something up, then I.
Can do it the night before if I want to. The other thing that works well for me is if I have a night where I am having a little bit more time to prep dinner, then I'll try to prep veggies for the other dinners. So if I'm chopping carrots for soup one night, then I try to chop a couple other carrots for carrot sticks for all of us to snack on during the week, or for carrots to add to the next recipe on Thursday. So thinking
through what works for you is really beneficial. If it works for you to spend two hours on a Sunday to meal prep your whole week, then I love that. For you, I think that's wonderful. Don't keep trying it 18 times. If you've bought the food and then the food goes bad in your fridge because you didn't meal prep it, or you meal prep it, or you meal prepped it and then didn't want to eat it. Then just abandon that one. Just say that one didn't work for me and try another method to get your prepping done. So be honest about your prep and try lots of different methods. Other meal prep methods that may work for you would be bulk prepping protein. I think that works well for someone. If you make a lot of ground beef all at once, and you say, Okay, we're having a dish with ground beef on Monday and another one on Thursday. Okay, now we can it's already prepped. Same thing with chicken. If you do a big instant pot full of shredded chicken, and you take it out and you flavor some of it like barbecue chicken, and you flavor some of it like more of a Mediterranean style chicken, then you're done for the week. So I know that works well for some people. A couple other things that I think we forget about are frozen vegetables. There is no reason to be afraid of frozen vegetables. We can do frozen vegetables. A lot of people, I think, feel like, if you're going to eat healthy, that it's supposed to be fresh from the produce section. And that's just not true at all. There's no reason to not do frozen vegetables. So make sure that as you're planning things out, you give yourself permission to do that, because that can make things easier as well. And I will say pre cut vegetables are another really easy thing that maybe $1 more. You know, they may be a tiny bit different in price, but if you're buying whole carrots and they go bad in your fridge every week, then spend the extra dollar. And just be honest with yourself and say, Okay, I need to buy the pre cut vegetables. And I'm fine with that. Buying a veggie platter that you would buy for a party and then just putting that out every night before dinner, it will get eaten. I promise you, the kids will eat it better when they are hungry before dinner than they will eat at any other time. Another tip is to leverage your freezer, the freezer, like I said, frozen vegetables, but also, if you make double the meal, you can freeze half of it, and then thought another night on one of those really quick nights where you're running late, this is especially helpful for people who have smaller families, or maybe you're living by yourself, or it's just you and your spouse, and you don't want to keep cooking. Can you find one night that you can cook and make a really lovely soup and then freeze it, and then another night when you don't feel like cooking, you can thought, I think when we're in a small family that is just your you, or just you and your partner, man, I have a lot of sympathy there, because it's not very exciting to make the mess of the meal and then have two people eat it and then clean it all up again. But if you can do that once, and it meets two meals or three meals, then that may be worth more. Worth it. There are lots of different freezer dishes and soup cubes. Is one of my favorites, of making a double batch of soup and freezing it into cubes, because then it's easier to store in thaw is better. So lots of ways to leverage your freezer. And then another tip is just to realize that if you are at a stage in your life where this is not working out, maybe this is the time that you give yourself permission to purchase pre prepared meals. The meal kits that come in the box with the ingredients can be a good option. We've done those. I find them to be pretty time consuming because they're a meal that you're not familiar with. So especially with kids, you can't really go on autopilot and make it very quickly, but it was fun for my husband and me when it was just the two of us, and we could try new meals, and we kind of had the little bit of luxury of taking time to cook a meal, but I don't find it the best for efficiency, but there are other pre prepared meals that send you the whole meal, and that may just be where you're at, especially if you're Looking at lunch or breakfast, just give yourself permission to buy the meal and be done with it. The biggest thing, I would say, is going back is really watch out for perfectionism. This is a journey. Most of us are not going to fix our food overnight because it's hard and it's so dependent on taste and palate. It's dependent on time. It's dependent on schedule. It depends on our interest in cooking or our knowledge of cooking. There are so many factors that go into this, and it really needs to be somewhat customized for you and your family and where your family is at the time that you're doing it. And so give yourself permission to match it to where you're at in life. And if that's not quite perfect, then it's not quite perfect. But if it's better than it was before, then you should pat yourself on the back. Remember to add before you try to subtract, veggies. Veggies, veggies. Veggies are such a magical part of our diet, and if you can't tolerate veggies, then you need to work with someone to fix your gut so you can tolerate veggies. But really.
We should be getting veggies in and be able to support the body with these vitamins and minerals. Also, protein is a really good place to focus. So I hope this has been helpful for you. This is exactly what we go through as part of our clinic, and it's something that we focus on with a lot of patients, honestly, all, or most of our patients. So if this is something that's still really a struggle for you, you can work with us online. Our health coach will work through these with you, one by one. Our dietitian can work through this with you in a coaching capacity. So feel free to look them up on our website, and you can just schedule them online if you need more involved help. Then then myself and my staff, this is something that we work with regularly with women, because it's a legitimate thing, but it really can make a big difference in your health. So I hope this has been helpful. If so, I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear if there are any tips that you've incorporated that are making your life easier, because that's really what I want out of all of this, is to make all of our lives easier but healthier, and help us have the energy that we want at the end of the day. So reach out, leave us a review. It's really helpful for us. If you can share this with a friend, this is how we keep offering this free content for you. So hopefully we can get the word out that there are really good ways to stay healthy and other than that, happy eating, Happy Meal Prep, and we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. We are grateful for the incredible support from our sponsors and to all of you listening. We couldn't do this without you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform. You can find us on our website, uplift for her calm YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And if you found value here today, please share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. Leave us a comment or give us a review. It really helps us reach more listeners like you. Thank you for being part of our community. Stay tuned for our next episode. Lastly, this information is for educational purposes only and not intended to be medical advice.
