I’m going to be giving you the most important skill for healthy eating
Episode Transcript: Welcome back to the Health REBELs podcast. Today’s episode, I’m going to be giving you the most important skill for healthy eating. And always remember here at Health REBELs, we help you build a happier, healthier life by redefining what healthy habits are to redefine healthy, we follow the REBELs Oath:
We swear to
- Reject extremes
- Energize ourselves through healthy habits
- Break free from common standards
- Excite ourselves about our potential, and finally,
- Love ourselves and act accordingly.
Anyway, let’s dive into today’s episode and talk about the most important skill to eating healthy.
You know, when it comes to eating healthy, you might think that the most important thing that you can have is motivation, or desire, or just natural tendencies to naturally eat really healthy. But I don’t think that’s true. And I can explain some of the shortcomings with this idea.
The last couple of weeks, I was at my brother’s house. I was dog sitting while he was on vacation in Hawaii. And I was being an awesome brother watching his house and watching his dog while he was away. And of course, my dog was excited to get a puppy playdate for like, 10 days straight.
But I was at his place, I was out of my routines, I was in a different place. And I hate to say it, but I didn’t eat that great. In fact, I went and I had fast food. Gosh, over 10 days, probably close to 10 times. Normally I only eat out maybe once a week or once every other week. But during this 10 day period, I was eating a bunch of junk food all the time, once or more most days.
And the reason why I ate junk food, it wasn’t because I’m a bad person. It wasn’t because I don’t want it enough. It wasn’t because I’m not motivated, or I don’t care about my health. We know that those are not true. We know that I’m motivated. We know that I care about this. But the difference was, I was out of my routine. And I didn’t create a plan.
The reality is planning what to eat is the most important skill for healthy eating.
Planning what to eat is the single most important skill for healthy eating
Planning is something that is shockingly uncommon. I see this all the time, especially I’ve been doing a lot of house sitting in the summer for my siblings as they go on vacations. And we get to let the dogs play together. And as I look through the fridge, it’s really apparent that they kind of fell into the same trap that most people do. They go to the grocery store, thinking “What should I buy this week? What should I eat this week? What’s be good to have?”
And then they buy a bunch of stuff that they don’t intend to eat, have no plan to eat, just kind of ends up getting thrown in the trash a couple weeks later, or a couple months later, as I discovered at one of my sibling’s house.
We sometimes don’t have a plan, we just buy food, thinking that it might be good or that we might be able to do something with it. But if we can create a plan, what that does is creating a plan really eliminates decision fatigue. Have you ever had those moments? (I had this moment at my brother’s house) Have you ever had those moments where you look in the fridge trying to figure out what to have for dinner? There’s a ton of food in the fridge, and there’s nothing to eat. Right? Have you ever had that problem where there’s a lot of food in the fridge? And none of it seemed to make sense together? Or really, you couldn’t really figure out what to do.
So instead of eating healthy and eating the food that you purchased, you order pizza, because it’s easy to figure out what to do with a pizza. Right?
What ends up happening is we at the end of the day after work after messing around with the kids after, after all the errands and all the chores. When it comes to be dinnertime, you open up the fridge and you just can’t make another decision. All your thought power has been used up at work. And what we end up with is what psychologists called decision fatigue.
When we have to make too many choices. We end up getting locked up. You’ve probably heard the term paralysis by analysis. That’s what happened when I was looking at my brother’s fridge. There was so much stuff in there that I just kind of froze and didn’t know what to do. And so I I went and bought a pizza.
Right? Sometimes there’s paralysis by analysis, where we start trying to think and make two many decisions, we’re not able to make the right decision. Having a menu- having a pre planned meal plan, something that you know Monday night we’re going to have spaghetti with meatballs. Tuesday night, we’re going to make homemade pizza with with a side salad. Wednesday night, we’re going to make homemade burritos, right? A plan makes healthy eating easier.
When you have that decision pre-made, then when you get to Monday night, you don’t have to think about what to make. When you get to Tuesday night, you don’t have to think about what to make. That decision has already been made, and you no longer have to think about it.
And don’t worry, don’t worry, I know we’re talking about trying to save decision making. And that first time when you’re setting up that meal plan, it can be tough, right? If you eat three times a day or three meals and a snack, that’s 20 to 30 different meals throughout the week. That’s a lot of decisions to make up front.
But I got good news. Menus can be streamlined. We can make that easier. A big example is every week when I make my meal plan, when I write out my menu, my breakfasts are all the same. I plan my breakfast are all the same. So I only have to come up with one breakfast menu, right? And then lunches, what I take into the office with me, tends to be pretty consistent, that tends to be the same menu items. So that saves something. And then again, in my situation, what I end up doing is when I make dinners, when I make the dinners that I decided to make, I end up making two times the portions that I need. What that does is that means I need to make less decisions, fewer decisions, half as many decisions, because some of it repeats.
Your menus can be streamlined to make it easier to eat healthy. If you have the same breakfast that saves decisions and cuts out six meal decisions. If your lunches are pretty consistent, or if they’re leftovers from dinners, that eliminates a whole slew of meals. That eliminate seven meals there. And then if we get a little larger portions at dinner, we can get half as many meals that we have to decide. All that can make the menus even easier for you and give you less decision fatigue as well.
What I would recommend, the best way to go about this is to have a dedicated day each week where you write out your menu. And the reason why I’m saying write out a menu each week, instead of having a traditional meal plan where you only have a certain amount of options is because I want you to have the freedom and the flexibility to eat the foods that you enjoy. I’m a bit of a foodie myself, and I like exploring different dishes. And I want to give you that option! Home cooked food, most of the time is going to be so much better than food that you get outside the house. It’s going to be more healthful, it’s going to have less salt. (Not that salt’s bad, but we do over consume it when we eat out.) Home cooked meals are going to allow you to control the ingredients. And it’s going to allow you to have fresher ingredients. And ultimately, it’s more healthful to eat in the home than outside the home.
But I want to make sure that you’re eating foods that you like, right to do this long term, you also have to enjoy it. So having a dedicated we day each week allows you to get some variety to enjoy the process to enjoy the foods that you’re eating. And so what I want to leave you with today on today’s podcast is, you know, set a time this week to plan out your meals for the upcoming week.
I do this on Saturdays. I post this with my clients every Saturday, I asked them what their menu is for the week ahead. Right? We set out a dedicated time Saturday to set this up. We creating a healthy eating plan. Maybe it’s not Saturday for you. Maybe it’s Friday or Sunday or whatever day you prefer to do your grocery shopping, but set a time this week to plan out meals for the upcoming week.
And if you need some additional help, what meals do I eat? What kind of dishes do I want? What I usually do for my clients is I’ll give them two recipe packs, a high protein recipe pack and a vegetarian recipe pack so that they can have some variety, they can have some exploration, they can try new things, some variety is what I’m going to do for you.
If you email me as a listener of this podcast as another health rebel, I will actually email you a free copy of the high protein recipe pack. That’s usually a client exclusive. I’m glad to give that to you just email me that [email protected] So make sure to check that out, email me asking for the book and I’ll send it your way.
And then finally, man, I would love for you to join the health rebels Facebook group and then share your healthy meals with us. You know, there’s other rebels trying to eat healthy, share some ideas with other people, right? Get some excitement about what your menu looks like.
And the most important skill for healthy eating really is creating a plan, making a plan of what you’re going to eat. That is the biggest skill. The problem when I was at my brothers was I was out of my routines. I didn’t know what to expect. So I didn’t make a menu. I didn’t make a plan. And it turned out without a plan. I ate a bunch of junk food. I went out I got a couple fast food burgers, I got some pizzas, and I didn’t have a plan and I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t eat well.
Having a plan is the most important skill set sometime this week to create a plan. And if you need help, shoot me an email and I will be glad to send you the recipe pack. And until I see you again for tomorrow’s episode of the Health REBELs podcast. You know what to do REBEL, keep the oath
I hope that episode helps give you some steps you can take to break free from common standards so that you can live a happier, healthier life. I’d love to continue to support you on that path to redefining healthy living. So I want to invite you to join my free Facebook group, the Health Rebels community. There we post daily content to redefine what healthy living means. By following the holistic wheel and the rebel oath. You’ll also get community support with like minded health REBELs. If you’re not already a member, search for the health REBELs community on Facebook or go to facebook.com/groups/healthrebels. I look forward to seeing you in there, REBEL