The Mind Your Body Podcast: Tools for Healthy Transformation

FOOD PREP 101 FOR BUSY PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO EAT

WHY FOOD PREP IS SO HELPFUL

• The food we surround ourselves with is the food we’re most likely to eat.  

THE “CHIPOTLE STYLE” FOOD PREP APPROACH:

When most people think of food or meal prep, they think of those little containers with compartments that ALL contain the same foods.  It does NOT have to be this way!

1) Cook basic ingredients that can be combined into a variety of different meals and macro combinations.  

• Proteins 

2) Switch up the basics from one week to the next.

3) Be sure to have plenty of fun “extras’ on hand:

• Condiments

4) Do 2 food prep sessions per week, 1 on the weekend and one shorter one mid-week to refresh your proteins 

TROUBLE SHOOTING Q&A: 

1. How do I know how much food to buy and cook?  Think 4-5 oz of protein per meal for adults and 2-4 oz for kids

1. How do I get myself to actually DO it?  Get it in the calendar and set up some rewards!

1. What if my kids or partner don’t like the food I cook?  If you use the Chipotle style, everyone can customize their own meals according to their preferences!

1. Do I have to cook for the whole week?  No, in fact this isn’t a good idea for both boredom and health reasons (especially with meat). 

1. What if I get bored with the food I prepped?  It’s important to be creative with the basic components AND the flavorful extras to avoid boredom.  It’s so easy to get in a rut and then throw in the towel! 

1. Can I store my food in plastic containers?  Only store raw veggies in plastic.  Don’t reheat in plastic or store hot food or acidic food in plastic.   Square or oblong glass containers with lids are ideal!

• If I want to start eating higher quality protein sources, where do I find it?

• Ranchers

NOTE:  For the highest quality, look for grass fed AND grass finished beef and lamb, organic pastured poultry and eggs, pastured pork, and wild caught fish. 

We’d love to know your thoughts.  Was this helpful? Do you have other topics you’d like to hear us discuss?  Let us know on our MYB Facebook page! 

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

MYB EPISODE 39: ESCAPING THE PRISON OF “SHOULD”:  RECLAIMING THE POWER TO CHOOSE

THE PROBLEM WITH “SHOULD” 

How many times have you said something like:

• I should eat healthier

Now:  How many times did one of these “I should” statements motivate you to do the thing you think you “should” do?

OR, did saying “I should” trigger you to move in the OPPOSITE direction out of a sense of rebellion, resistance, guilt, shame, or overwhelm at the mere prospect of doing the thing? 

Even worse, did saying “I should” damage your ability to enjoy what you actually WERE deciding to do because of the overhanging guilt of what you thought you “should” be doing?

This is the problem with should:  It is NOT motivating; quite the opposite, in fact! 

WHERE DOES THE IDEA OF “SHOULD” COME FROM?

Should comes from a sense of external pressure, rather an empowered choice to take action because we’re clear on the payoff.  

It comes from comparison with what others are doing, saying, or achieving.  

It does NOT come from an intrinsically driven decision about what WE want and feel worthy and capable of achieving.  

And, because it doesn’t feel like our choice, we aren’t remotely motivated to take action! 

This gap – or prison - between what we think we “SHOULD” do and our inaction or rebellion triggers us to feel: 

• Guilty

This is SO damaging!

• It undermines self-trust because we think our lack of motivation and willpower

HOW TO ESCAPE THE PRISON OF SHOULD

• Become aware that you’re in it. Catch it when you hear yourself making “I should” statements.

IT’S TIME

Our time here is finite.  It’s incumbent on us to rise up in our own lives and DECIDE how we want to live!   

Should is joyless prison of guilt, shame, and inertia. 

Fortunately, the key to the prison door is in our own hands.  We just need to use it.  

We’d love to know your thoughts.  Was this helpful? Do you have other topics you’d like to hear us discuss?  Let us know on our MYB Facebook page! 

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

MYB EPISODE 38: ADJUSTING THE DIAL OF INTENSITY INSTEAD OF

 THROWING IN THE TOWEL

Most of us have viewed “getting healthy” as a series of sprints.  We go ALL IN when conditions are perfect, focus hard on achieving a short-term goal, then we do one of two things:

1. quit because “life” is happening

Neither of these “finish lines” create sustainable health or healthy habits.  This is why yo-yo dieting or on-the-wagon/off-the-wagon plans are the norm.

LET’S ACCEPT THAT LIFE HAS NO PAUSE BUTTON.

The key lesson here is that, like it or not, the game of life keeps going.

There is no timeout.

There’s never going to be a moment when things are magically easier.

You can’t escape work, personal, and family demands. Nor can you escape the need for health and fitness in your life.

We can’t “take a break” from parenting, from our marriage or partnership, or from our job or business.  

We understand that we just have to muddle through, even when it’s hard or we don’t feel like it.  

We find strategies to make it tolerable, to make things work better, to customize our own approach.  

This is what we need to do when it comes to taking care of ourselves.  

HOW TO STAY ON OUR OWN TEAM, NO MATTER WHAT

As we discussed in Episode 37, it’s NOT about being perfect, it’s about staying WITH ourselves no matter what “Life” is throwing at us.  

(Episode 37 here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/37-embracing-imperfection-other-superpowers-for-getting/id1286869495?i=1000460000175)

As with everything in life, the “All or nothing” mentality rarely gets us “all”.  It usually gets us “nothing”. Our new mantra should be “always something”, no matter what it is.  

SKILL 1: Adjust your intensity to fit what’s happening in your life. 

Instead of focusing on what you are NOT up for, put your energy and focus on what you ARE willing and able to do today to be healthy mentally and physically.

• Are you willing to fill a big water bottle and commit to drinking it?

SKILL 2:  Aim for a little better.

Don’t overlook seemingly small opportunities to make better choices.  This is the OPPOSITE of throwing in the towel!

Examples:

• Sparkling water instead of alcohol

SKILL 3:  Identify likely obstacles and plan for them.  Otherwise known as: Know thyself!

Becoming aware of our patterns and most common obstacles – and getting creative about workarounds – makes life feel so much more peaceful!

Examples:

• If you know your mornings are hectic, can you pack a lunch the night before?

• If you know your weekday evenings are busy, can you plug in a crockpot, prep some food on the weekend, or make a healthy casserole to re-heat?  

• If you know you are likely to talk yourself out of going to the gym, can you schedule with a friend so you feel more accountable?  

EXTRA CREDIT: 

To dive deeper into this perspective shift, and the skills required to hold onto it, check out the article from Precision Nutrition that inspired this episode:  

https://www.precisionnutrition.com/pause-button-mentality

We’d love to know your thoughts.  Was this helpful? Do you have other topics you’d like to hear us discuss?  Let us know on our MYB Facebook page! 

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

Episode 37: EMBRACING IMPERFECTION AND OTHER SUPERPOWERS FOR GETTING (AND STAYING!) HEALTHY

One of the most common reasons people give up on their health goals and habits is they make a “mistake”. 

This one mistake often leads to a cascade of bad decisions because “I’ve already screwed up anyway”.

The EMOTION around “falling off the wagon” is heavy, weighty, and overwhelming. We often can’t sit in the friction of it.  So we tell ourselves one or a combination of:

“I never stick to anything”

“I’ll get back to this when life calms down”

“Nothing every works for me so why try”

“I need someone to hold me accountable/slap food out of my hand”

“What used to work for me doesn’t work anymore!”

This is the endless loop so many of us find ourselves in when we decide to “get healthy”.  Today we’re going to share how escape this cycle and figure it out for real! 

BUILDING YOUR SUPERPOWERS FOR SUCCESS

Before you even start THINKING about food and exercise, you need to set yourself up for success/not repeating the same mistakes of the past.  Below are some of the key ingredients you will need:

SELF-COMPASSION & LETTING GO OF SHAME:  

You’ve been doing your best up to this very moment with the tools, resources, information, and support you’ve had.  The coping tools you’ve used served a purpose. Perhaps it’s time to build a better tool box but LET GO of judgment about what you’ve needed to feel safe and grounded. 

You did NOT invent your relationship with food, body, and diet culture.  This was handed to you through your circumstances and your environment. Let go of this baggage and allow space to start to create something new.

A DECISION TO NOT GIVE UP:

This is a big one.  Once we decide that we are worth the effort, you start to be able to find solutions to the obstacles that seemed insurmountable.  

Not giving up requires us to:

• Embrace imperfection

• Be honest with ourselves

• Set and gently enforce healthy boundaries

You WILL have learning opportunities but this doesn’t mean anything about your character, degree of willpower, or your destiny.  Instead, they are opportunities to learn and to iterate – to become the scientist in your own life!

NOURISH YOURSELF > RESTRICT YOURSELF:  

There are life-changing benefits to nourishing your body, the least of which is weight loss or body composition.  

These include: 

• Better energy

CURIOSITY AND EXPERIMENTATION:

Once you let go of rules and start to partner WITH your body instead of battling it, much of the sense of rebellion and confusion starts to dissipate.  You logically understand that whole, nourishing food makes more sense than chemical laden processed food products. From here, you can start to experiment with the types of real food that work best for YOUR body, lifestyle, preferences, family, and goals.  

Start with one meal.  Instead of a fast food breakfast, experiment with making a protein smoothie or an omelet at home.  See what shifts. Keep experimenting.  

You deserve to feel good.  Most of us weren’t taught how to take care of ourselves.  The good news is that it’s never too late and it’s not nearly as hard as you might believe. 

We’d love to know your thoughts.  Was this helpful? Do you have other topics you’d like to hear us discuss?  Let us know on our MYB Facebook page! 

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

MYB EPISODE 36: Travel Light through the Holidays

(Also, stick around for some "light" bloopers at the end)

In Episode 10, we shared our best tips and strategies for navigating the holidays in a way that makes you feel healthy, joyful, empowered, and connected.  

https://themindyourbody.podbean.com/e/10-setting-yourself-up-for-healthy-happy-holidays/

Even if you’ve listened to that one, you might want to go back and listen again.

In today’s episode, we’re talking about how you FEEL about the approaching holiday season. 

Many of us feel stressed just THINKING about the holidays.  

REGARDING THE HOLIDAYS, WE OFTEN STRESS ABOUT:

• Finances

Even for those who love the holiday season, just thinking about the holidays can cause us to clench up!

WHAT IS STRESS? 

According to the Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine:

“Humans experience stress, or perceive things as threatening, when they do not believe that their resources for coping with obstacles (stimuli, people, situations, etc.) are enough for what the circumstances demand. When people think the demands being placed on them exceed their ability to cope, they then perceive stress.”

So basically, stress often is our perception of a situation rather than the situation itself.  

SWITCHING UP OUR APPROACH/MINDSET FOR THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

What if, instead of viewing the next couple of months as an inevitable landslide of overspending, overcommitting, and placing everyone’s needs above our own, we decided to take the pressure off IN ADVANCE?

What if we this year we decide to TRAVEL LIGHT through the holidays? 

TRAVEL LIGHT:  A DEFINITION

Having the mindset of traveling light means not taking a situation more seriously than absolutely necessary.  

In this scenario, it means prioritizing the things about the holidays that are meaningful to you and letting go of all the perfectionist details (the perfect gift, the perfect décor, the perfect party, the perfect macros.)

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN REAL LIFE?  

• It means communicating to your family/friends that you intend to ENJOY the holidays this year which means focusing on CONNECTION.  

We’d love to know your thoughts.  Was this helpful? Do you have other topics you’d like to hear us discuss?  Let us know on our MYB Facebook page! 

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

In this podcast we are not here to talk about "calorie burning", we are going to dig much deeper into the benefits of exercise. (The intended audience is not for those struggling with an ED related or exercise compulsion disorders)

Physical & Emotional Benefits:

• Creates a closer partnership between you and your body

Exercise as a Path to Connection:

• Exercise can help you find a tribe of health-minded people, whether it’s a friend you walk, a weekly yoga or fitness class, a running group, a Crossfit box, etc.

Tips/Ideas to Experiment With: 

• Start where you are given your motivation, time, energy, and ability.  Take small movement breaks, try a free class, schedule a walk with a friend. 

We’d love to know your thoughts.  Was this helpful? Do you have other topics you’d like to hear us discuss?  Let us know on our MYB Facebook page! 

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

Escaping the Gap Between Knowing and Doing

In our last episode, Episode 33, we discussed the importance of setting the right goals and creating a realistic plan to help you reach them. 

Today, we’re going to backtrack a little to address the dreaded gap between knowing and doing.

So many of us are living in the chasm between feeling like we SHOULD do something (eat better, exercise, meal prep, go to bed earlier…) but just NOT doing it.

We talk endlessly to our friends and family about it, we think about it constantly, we guilt trip ourselves every evening, and yet we’re STILL not taking action.

What IS that?! Often, we don’t even know what’s happening here and it’s zapping our emotional energy, mojo, and mental bandwidth.

1. Overthinking:  Overthinking without action often leads to frozen inertia.  We think we have to have the perfect plan in order to make progress. We think we’re such a HOT MESS that a complicated, battle worthy plan is necessary for us to unravel all of our “brokenness”. 

1. Overwhelm:  We think we have to go ALL IN in order to move the needle.  This leads to a sense of overwhelm before we’ve even taken one step.

1. Resistance:  Internal resistance or rebellion can come from a variety of sources. 

• FOMO:  We may have an underlying sense that it’s unfair that we have to eat differently than the people around us. 

• Lack of support: The people around us may not want to make any changes and this can make it really hard to get motivated to take action.

• Pain point isn’t acute enough: We may simply not feel sufficiently compelled by our situation to make the sacrifices necessary to do things differently.  I think this is the biggest - and least recognized - culprit that keeps us stuck in that gap between SHOULD and taking action. 

Living in the gap between knowing and doing is a damaging state of existence.  It’s SO draining!  If you’re simply not ready to take action, LET IT GO for now. 

Consider setting a date on the calendar to reevaluate in a month or two and make a conscious effort to not think about this until then.

We’d love to know your thoughts.  Was this helpful?  Do you have other topics you’d like to hear us discuss?  Let us know on our MYB Facebook page!

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

In this episode, we talk about the importance of setting health promoting, realistic goals and making sure the approach (pace, level of flexibility, etc) aligns with your vision of health. 

Many of us don’t think this through which is why we either get impatient and throw in the towel OR we get sucked into the obsessive vortex of counting macros, worsening body image, and trying to get ultra lean when this wasn’t even our goal at the outset. 

https://www.precisionnutrition.com/cost-of-getting-lean:

Myth #1:

Myth #2:

Of course, neither of these are true.

Reality #1:

Reality #2:

Reality #3:

HOW TO SET HEALTH PROMOTING, REALISTIC GOALS

Step 1:  Get very specific about what you want to achieve:

• Do you want better energy?

Step 2:  Get clear on the amount of time and attention you’re willing and able to devote to this goal

Be realistic, knowing yourself and your schedule as you do

Step 3:  Seek support

• Friends

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

Episode 32: How to Restart When You Feel Stuck

STRATEGY 1:

Stop focusing on feeling stuck or overwhelmed.  Ruminating on the problem is only making you feel more stuck.

STRATEGY 2:

Shift your focus and attention from the problem to, “What’s ONE small thing I can do in THIS hour to move forward?”

There’s an endless variety of things we can do immediately to remind ourselves that there is NO crisis and that we are, in fact, NOT STUCK:

• Get up and stretch, taking several deep belly breaths

You may be thinking:  “But NONE of these things are going to make a big difference anyway so why should I even try?”  

This, right here, is the problem.  We UNDERVALUE the small things that make us feel like organized, intentional action takers.  

We expend so much energy focusing on HOW FAR we have to go that we freeze.  

We feel a panicked, clenched sense of overwhelm that makes us feel helpless, hopeless, and stuck.  

STRATEGY 3: IMAGINE YOU’RE COACHING SOMEONE ELSE WHO IS FEELING STUCK:

You would remind them of ALL the hard things they’ve handled. 

You would invite them to have compassion for themselves

You would lighten their burden by helping them shift their focus from feeling stuck to small opportunities to take action TODAY.

You would encourage them to let go of fear of failure.

STRATEGY 4: NOTICE YOUR EXCUSES AND QUESTION THEM:

1. This day has been crazy, let’s just run and grab something.

There is ZERO judgment in any of these excuses.  The problem is that they are INCOMPLETE THOUGHTS and they make us feel like there are multiple versions of ourselves that are at war with one another!

1. If you’re going to run and grab something, could you run and grab a chef salad, a bunless burger, or a rotisserie chicken?

THE GREAT NEWS:

It takes about 3 small actions to start building confidence and momentum.  It takes 24 hours of eating better to notice a change in our mental and physical state.  

STRATEGY 5: PRACTICE

NONE of this is one and done.  You can’t hear this and simply say, “Ok, I’ve got it now!”

• Practice refocusing  your attention when it starts to drift back to emotional overwhelm or feeling stuck.  

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

MYB EPISODE 31: Why We Benefit from Guided Support or Coaching 

Good coaches do the following: 

• Create a safe environment that allows you to see yourself (patterns, behavior, personal narrative, past traumas) more clearly and objectively;

Why is it so hard to do this work alone?

• Change is really hard but staying stuck is harder

The importance of hiring a coach who is a good fit for you:

• Are your expectations similar?

On July 14th, my 6 week transformation program launches and runs through August 25th.  

THE PRIMAL TRANSFORMATIONS 6 WEEK COACHING PROGRAM WILL HELP YOU ACHIEVE THE FOLLOWING:

• Create a real food template that shows you which foods make the most difference for fat loss without hunger and without supplements/gimmicks

WHAT THIS GROUP IS NOT ABOUT:

• This is not a one-size-fits-all diet program or meal plan. We’ve all done them. They either give us short-term results or we quit and think it’s because we have no willpower. I will help you create your OWN unique diet and success formula that is based on YOUR unique lifestyle, health goals, and personal preferences.

Summer Coaching Group Weekly Modules:

Week 1: Mindset for Success (How to Get Out of Your Own Way!)

Week 2: Nutrition for Health and Body Composition

Week 3: Exercise/Movement

Week 4: Lifestyle: Sleep, Stress, Joy, Connection, and Purpose

Week 5: How to Stay Consistent When “Life” Happens

Week 6: Bringing it All Together: How to Make Progress, Avoid Drifting, and Stay on Your Own Team

As always, we’d love to know what questions you have and what your experience is!  Reach out through our Facebook page and let us know.

xo,

Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts

The Mind Your Body Podcast

Jenny's website: https://www.somawichita.com/

Lisa's website: https://www.primaltransformations.com/