Ep 027 Four Healthy Eating Habits that Move the Needle (Not the Wallet)
Ever feel overwhelmed by the endless stream of diet advice? With so many fad diets and conflicting nutritional guidance, it’s no wonder we struggle to make lasting changes.
Join us for episode 027 on the Wholly Well Journey podcast as she uncovers four simple yet transformative healthy eating habits that can have a huge impact on your overall well-being… without spending extra time or money on another diet plan.
We dive into the true meaning of "diet" and how our society's obsession with weight loss has skewed our understanding. Also, we highlight the dangers of yo-yo dieting and offer practical tips on how to shift from temporary diet plans to sustainable, life-long habits.
You'll learn why prioritizing whole foods, staying hydrated, eating more protein, and practicing moderation can make all the difference in achieving your health goals.
Subscribe now and tune in to discover how you can start applying these habits today for a healthier spirit, soul, and body. Don't forget to leave a review to help more people find the Wholly Well Journey podcast and join us on this path to holistic health.
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Show Transcript
Note: Podcast transcripts are automatically generated and may contain some errors. The transcript below has been lightly edited for grammar and readability, so may not match the podcast audio verbatim.
Ep 027 4 Healthy Eating Habits with Huge Impact
[00:00:00] Stephanie Hodges: If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the endless stream of diet advice out there, you are not alone.
There are so many fad diets. There's so much conflicting nutritional advice, and you've probably tried a lot of different diet plans in the past. If you're like most people. So it's no wonder that diet is just a bad four letter word for most of us. And we struggled to make lasting changes because these diets are only temporary. But today we're going to talk about four healthy eating habits that have a huge impact. and you can start applying them easily today.
Welcome to the Wholly Well Journey podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie Hodges. Join us for weekly faith based conversations on holistic health to uncover practical tips for how to thrive and apply biblical wisdom to our busy modern lives. From fitness to food to fasting, we're here to discover what it means to have a healthy spirit, soul, and body.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
[00:00:50] Stephanie Hodges: Before we dive into today's topic. I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate with y'all because we've started this podcast. Just this year, it's only been a couple months and we've reached some milestones. We've gotten over 25 episodes. In the queue and we've had over a thousand downloads by this point. And one of the most powerful things that you can do to help this podcast is to leave a review. And so you just need to tap in, go to the show itself and you can scroll down and write a review, leave some stars.
This is the best way to make sure that this podcast is going to get out to more people. So I thank you so much for your support. I thank you for listening. I love to hear the feedback and see what you like best when she want to hear more of, and, what topics are most interesting to you. And so I actually did get feedback that nutrition and healthy eating are topics that are of huge interest and of course it impacts our lives every day.
I talk about that often, when it comes to our goals and our healthy habits, eating is something that we do every day. And so it's important that we have the right mindset about it. So much of it is about mindset. First. It's also about setting up the environment that's around us. It's about having the right support in our lives.
And then it's about actually doing the thing. And there's a big difference between diets and habits. Because when we go on a diet, we have this mindset that we have to follow these rules. We have to follow this protocol and it's going to get us to our goal,
but our endpoint and the, the end goal that we have in sight is just reaching typically that weight that we want to get to.
Um, it's not about. What will it look like five years from now? What will it look like 10 years from now? Will I still be able to eat this way? Will I still be able to follow this meal plan? And most of the time, the answer is no. Now the actual definition of diet is simply what you eat. It's not a restrictive plan for weight loss, but that's typically what it means in culture.
When we use the term of I'm going on a diet, or I follow this particular type of diet. And, you know, it's okay to mix things up over time. It's okay to try new things. But what we want to avoid is this extreme swing of yo-yo dieting. Up and down and back and forth because it's mentally exhausting for people.
So often when I talk to people, they've just tried so many different things, they feel defeated. They've almost lost their hope that they're ever going to get to this point where they can have a healthy relationship with food and their body. But I want to tell you that is absolutely possible.
But it does start with the big key of getting out of this dieting mindset out of this temporary extreme plan mindset. Because with yo-yo dieting, when you get into this cycle of losing and regaining weight. It can cause a lot of damage to you physically, it can really mess with your metabolism. Typically, what happens is that when people lose weight quickly and rapidly, they're not just losing fat, they're losing muscle.
They're losing water. And so that water weight can come back really easily depending on what you eat or even fluctuations throughout the month. If you're a woman who's menstruating.
But then if you're losing that muscle, it's going to slow down your metabolic rate, which is something you really don't want. And having healthy muscle is important for so many reasons, especially as you age, because as we age starting every decade after 30, we're losing a certain percentage of muscle mass if we do nothing.
We're naturally going to start losing muscle mass, unless we work hard to maintain it. Which is something we're going to talk about today, too. The big key to maintaining that muscle. But there's other physical things that can happen when we're on these restrictive diets that can lead to nutrient deficiencies that can lead to increased risk of chronic diseases. I already mentioned the mental part of it.
It can really wreck people's self-esteem and just promote this feeling of failure in disordered eating patterns. So instead of focusing on the diet, that's going to be the quick fix. It's going to be the result in 30 days or 90 days. We've got to come back to some of the basics.
I've actually been surprised.
There's been a particular diet that's gotten really popular. The woman that's promoting it. She's very stylish. She's very charismatic. But a lot of what she's promoting is just really basic advice. It's like stuff that your grandma might've told you to do. And so that's not to diminish it. That it's bad advice.
It's just that sometimes we're always looking for a new solution. That's where a lot of weight loss drugs come in. It's like, well, maybe this is the key that's going to help me finally break through. Or maybe there's been some kind of secret all along, which is why it's easier for some people to maintain their weight than others.
[00:05:19] ATR2100x-USB Microphone-3: And genetics do play a part and environment does play a part and we do have the media and the convenience food factors to consider the fast food drive through is on every corner. But overall, it really comes back to doing some basic boring things consistently. And so that's what I'm going to encourage you today is be boring.
Do these four things. That you probably heard before, and they're not going to be news to you.
But there are things you can do for the rest of your life. There are things that aren't going to require necessarily a ton of extra time on your part or a ton of extra energy.
It's making four adjustments that will really have a huge payoff for you over time.
And the first one we've talked about this before, but it's eating whole foods over processed foods. I actually did a whole episode on this. I can link to in the show notes. That was really about the fact that when you look at all of these different diets, whether you're comparing a carnivore diet to a vegan diet, the one thing that they're all going to have in common is encouraging you to eat your foods. Whole food sources rather than the package stuff.
. So to define whole foods, that means fruits and vegetables. Whole grains, not necessarily the breads and crackers that are made out of flour. But something that's actually coming out straight out of the ground, minimally processed. Lean proteins are a big one, healthy fats and oils. Because these foods are packed with so many essential nutrients that are going to feed your body, and they're going to feed your gut along with that healthy fiber. So it's not a juice, even though a juice might say it's, you know, a hundred percent fruit and oranges are the only ingredient, but in this less processed form, you're going to get food as your body was intended to consume and digest it.
When we're eating all this ultra processed food, it's going through our bodies so fast that our body can't even register that it's full. It can't even register hardly that it's eating when you have things like cheetos and chips that literally melt in your mouth.
So on the flip side is these foods are full of good nutrition for you, but those processed foods are not, and not only are they not full of the good nutrition and the healthy fiber they're full of preservatives and chemicals. And sometimes we can get off on a tangent about the toxicity of our environment, but the biggest source is a lot of what we're eating.
That's chemical in nature. Our body can't always process that out. And that's not going to do us any good. So if you can get to a place where you're looking at your meal plate and seeing that you have a lean protein source, that you have vegetables, if you do have a whole grain.
It's something like quinoa or rice
and nutritionally for our body. A lot of people can't process grains or anything containing gluten very easily. So a potato or a sweet potato or a starchy vegetable like corn. Those can also provide you. With that complex carbohydrate source.
Another big one here is what choices are you making for snacks? Because snack foods are typically the ones that are the most processed, the cookies and the crackers and candies. But whole foods, snacks would look like celery and peanut butter, fruits and vegetables. Nuts and seeds or trail mix hard-boiled eggs, cottage cheese.
' cause when you're snacking on that other stuff, it's so easy to overeat.
[00:08:40] ATR2100x-USB Microphone-3: It's not going to necessarily fill you up, but when you can make snacks more like mini meals that are intentional, where you're sitting down. And you're eating with a purpose. You're not eating just because you're bored or because you're so hungry, you have to just grab something out of the vending machine. But you've been intentional about what you're going to snack on for the day. .
So that's the first one eating whole foods.
The second one is drinking water. It's filling up on water and that's again, important from two directions. One is that water is vital for our body.
It helps with digestion. It helps improve our energy levels and our cognitive function and even weight management.
But the other side of that is that water has no calories in it. And so many of those other drinks, if they're energy drinks or juices or smoothies, even those like juices and smoothies sound really healthy, but they can be loaded with sugar. Soft drinks are another big one.
When we prioritize water. Then we're also displacing the amount of those other beverages that we drink.
Another side note to that is so many drinks have caffeine in them now. There's caffeine and soda there's caffeine and coffee and tea. And then there's all of the energy drinks that are out there.
Although the FDA says up to 400 milligrams of caffeine per day is generally safe for adults. That's still a lot of caffeine and people just have totally different responses to caffeine that may be too much for someone some of the side effects of too much caffeine can include heart problems, increasing your heart rate and blood pressure.
It can affect your mood and increase anxiety. And for some people it can cause stomach issues. And then I think the most obvious one is causing sleep problems. So for a lot of people having caffeine after noon, like after 12:00 PM. Will disrupt their sleep at night. Some people can have it a little bit later in the day and it doesn't affect them in the same way. But for a lot of people, even if you don't have trouble falling asleep at night, you may not be getting as much deep sleep as you need.
And it may be interfering with your sleep cycles and you don't even know it. And so a lot of people will notice when they cut down on caffeine or they cut it out or they at least move to only having caffeine in the morning. They notice they start sleeping a lot better at night. But it obviously becomes a vicious cycle that if you're not sleeping well, then you feel like you need more caffeine in the morning and throughout the day, because you're tired. And then you end up just in that cycle of then not sleeping as well, and then needing more caffeine.
And while some people can do without it, and they can have it or not have it, most people will develop a dependency . So if you decide that you want to reduce your caffeine, Most of the time, you don't want to go cold Turkey cause that's going to cause some pretty severe headaches and side effects, but you want to slowly taper that down over time.
But a lot of times feeling tired and foggy is actually a result of dehydration. And when we wake up first thing in the morning, You know, you haven't been drinking for eight hours. So instead of reaching for coffee first, you really need to reach for water first and rehydrate your body. So by going for water first and then seeing how you feel and then to having the caffeine, secondarily, you're going to get your body in a healthier pattern there. And then the last drink I want to mention, because we talked about caffeine.
We talked about the sugar content of so many drinks, which adds just a lot of empty calories into your diet. Would be alcohol and alcohol is also, you know, empty calories. Basically. There's no nutritional value there. And , you know, even though there were some famous studies that said wine has. Certain antioxidants and those have a health benefit.
It's nothing that you can't get from other types of foods. So there's no reason to drink alcohol. It's just something that we do, because we enjoy the taste or because it's social,
but alcohol and moderation is really important for a lot of obvious reasons, but from a nutritional standpoint, not only is it adding empty calories into your diet, but then it lowers your inhibitions.
So you're much more likely to overeat or eat things you didn't really intend to after you've had a drink or two. So there's a lot of people who just decide it's not worth it when you're on a healthy eating program. When you're really trying to get clear and get focused and meet your goals, it might be a time to just cut out alcohol completely and see how you feel.
So back to drinking water, it is good to measure how much water you're drinking to know how big your water bottle is.
And how many times do you need to refill that throughout the day. The baseline recommendation for water rule of thumb is eight, eight ounce glasses or 64 ounces a day.
So according to the Institute of medicine you want. Three for men, 3.7 liters or 125 ounces of fluids. And 2.7 liters or 91 ounces for women. Now fluids would include not just water, but all the beverages you're drinking, plus the fluid content of foods, which is very hard to measure, you know, if it's a soup or fruits or things like that.
So for many people, they want to start with that 64 ounces of water if they're not getting that yet. But someone suggests up to a gallon of water a day, which is double it's 128 ounces, which is quite a lot. If you're going to do that, make sure you'd get that water in earlier in the day. And you're tapering down as the day goes on.
So you're not up all night having to go to the bathroom. And again, it's like with all changes, if you are currently not drinking that amount of water. Increase it gradually. So your body will have some time to adapt and be able to process through it.
So we talked about eating whole foods. We talked about drinking water. And then the third habit is eating more protein..
Now some diets encourage you to count calories. Some will encourage you to focus on certain types of foods or cutting out other types of foods. But eating protein is really important. Protein is crucial for building and repairing all tissues in your body. Not just muscle.
Producing hormones and supporting so many of your body functions. And like I mentioned, previously, protein is critical for helping you maintain muscle mass. And build muscle mass. Protein also helps you feel full. It increases your satiety. That just satisfaction you have from what you're eating. Which can be a really huge help in weight loss and a really huge help when you're on a plan. To get you feeling full.
So when it comes to how much protein you need, that depends very much on an individual level. On your age, on your gender, your activity level, your goals. The basic RDA is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. That's 0.36 grams per pound, but that is really a bare minimum and the more and more research. That has been done on diet and successfully maintaining lean body mass, which is everything that's fat-free. You really want to be eating on the higher end of protein.
So more protein is recommended for older adults, for most people who are in a healing process. And then for people who are very active or athletes, or if you're trying to reach a goal where you want to increase your lean mass and put on some more muscle. So in that case, an easy rule of thumb is. Point five to one gram of protein per target, body weight.
Now that's a lot of protein. And so for some people, again, to take those baby steps where you need to start, might be getting a hundred grams of protein per day. And in order to do that, you're going to need to be splitting it up throughout the day, and really including protein at breakfast, including protein in your snacks. And we have two blog posts that we can link to.
One is about high protein breakfast options. And the other is the other post is on high protein snacks. So that will give you some ideas of places to start there. But again, when you're looking at your plate, your bowl, whatever you're eating off of. Make sure you have that high protein food source at each meal.
And so meat is an obvious one fish seafood. It can be eggs, dairy. if you're plant-based tofu and Tempa are good sources and then beans and legumes. And remember that there's protein also in certain vegetables, there's protein in certain grains like keenwah. And so don't try to get it all from one source, eat a variety of different foods that will give you protein.
So if you're snacking, it can be a Greek yogurt. Or it could be nuts or it could be a protein smoothie,
but again, you want to avoid the packaged foods and there's so many granola bars and everything. Uh, claims to have added protein to it, more protein, but a lot of times that's a really low quality protein. So, if you can get it from a whole food source, that's always going to be better. And then if you do eat, plant-based, you're going to have to be really intentional about it.
You're going to have to look at some high protein sources like keenwah and lentils and tofu. If you are vegetarian, if you can add in the eggs and cheese and some dairy products, if you're not sensitive to that.
Those are other good sources of protein as well.
So finally, the fourth healthy habit I want to talk about is moderation. It's getting out of this idea that there's good foods and bad foods.
Again, it's no longer being on that pendulum from being on a really tight and controlled meal plan to having it just be a complete and total free for all. None of us are going to eat perfectly all the time. And to say, eat perfectly. I don't even know what that means because there are different people who Excel and find their optimal health on different types of meal plans, different types of diets.
So there's no way we can say there's one perfect way for everybody to eat.
But what we do know is standard in different times and in different cultures was not to be constantly snacking. Was not to be constantly consuming food as you were doing other things, it used to be much more intentional. And again, in other cultures, this is still the way it goes is when you're eating, you're sitting down at a table and you're eating.
You're not eating at your computer. You're not eating while you're driving. You're not doing other things. But meal times are set apart. And so just that mindfulness part of eating, of being fully focused when you eat will go a really long way in helping you to be moderate over time to be listening to your body's cues and signals.
So part of that moderation is about not just eating continuously, but eating at defined points in time.
Mindful eating. And then it's also, of course, the amount that you're eating. It's not eating these super jumbo portions of everything. And you probably seen some of those pictures that show a McDonald's meal back in the 1950s was just a little burger and a small fry and a small Coke and things have like quadrupled in size over time.
And our body's just not meant to eat that much food.
So it's not that you can never eat out. It's not that you can never have foods that you enjoy and you just really love the taste of them.
But moderation and variety are so key for us to have that healthy diet. Then when something changes or you hear some crazy news, like, you know, some people come and say, Hey, I heard spinach and kale is bad for you. Well, it's not bad for you, but it can cause some problems if you eat too much of it, it can interfere with the absorption of other vitamins
but balance is just so key having some of everything and having it in a portion that's not going to overwhelm your body.
And so until you really learn how to do this until you kind of build that muscle to be able to automatically do this, it does help to weigh and measure your food. Then, you know, portion sizes, you know, there's that saying? My eyes were bigger than my stomach. When you get too much food, you can't finish it. Well, so often we're actually trained to clear our plates.
And so if there's a lot of food on your plate, You're going to finish it, even if you're full, a lot of people are programmed to do that. I know I am. It's really hard for me to leave food on my plate. But that's where it can be really, really helpful to weigh and measure your food until you're really good at eyeballing a portion size. And being able to just make that mental adjustment to say it is okay to leave food on my plate.
You know, I may not want to waste food, but it's not going to do me any good to overeat it and cram it all into my body.
So when you're eating out, you can ask for, to go boxes.
You can eat off of smaller plates when you're at home or you can make sure that the serving dishes all stay in the kitchen and not at the table. So if you want more, you're going to have to get up and intentionally go and get it.
So I hope these four things have been helpful to you in just thinking about your eating habits. And how without going on some crazy type of diet. And doing any one of these four things and doing it consistently could actually help you to lose weight if that's your goal.
And these four habits will also definitely help you to be healthier, to have more energy. Those are goals that we all want to have. It's not just about the number on the scale. It's about how we feel inside and out.
And so I want to talk through, like I would with a coaching client, just what are these small steps that you can take? So trying to do them all at once that might be overwhelming depending on how you eat right now.
But if it comes down to habit, number one, which is about eating whole foods, Maybe you start with just one meal a day. Maybe you're always grabbing like pop tarts or some kind of grab and go breakfast. And you want to start making your breakfast at home.
Having some things put together in advance that you can take. Or maybe it's choosing to eat whole foods for snacks every day, this week, subbing those out for whatever you have been eating previously.
When it comes to habit, number two, drinking more water. And reducing those other beverages that can start by just starting to slowly taper down the amount of caffeine or alcohol or other sugary beverages.
And at the same time, carrying your water bottle with you everywhere you go and making sure you know, how many times that water bottle needs refill throughout the day.
When it comes to habit, number three, prioritizing protein. Maybe it starts by just tracking your food for one week to see how much protein you're actually eating.
There's all kinds of free apps. You can use my fitness pal or one of those to put in your food log and see how much protein am I actually eating.
And then go check out those blog posts and consider adding in some of those high protein foods to your various meals and snacks.
And then finally that moderation mindset. Part of that is just mentally being aware of what's going on in your head when you're eating, when you're thinking about food. Uh, are you letting yourself get too hungry?
Do you need to eat more regularly? Do you need to stop being so restrictive with how you're eating and eat in a more balanced way? And then maybe it's deciding that for this next week, along with logging your food, you're going to measure it so you can be really accurate so you can get a great picture of what you're actually consuming.
So the bottom line, the big takeaway. I want to give you here is that these things cost you no money. These don't require you to buy a book and follow a program, um, or invest in doing something really crazy and off the wall.
But these are some foundational things that if you're just going with the flow of culture and you're eating. You know, a standard Western diet and you're eating out a lot. It's really easy to lose these simple and basic things. And you might think, well, I know to do all the things that you said, Stephanie, these are all very basic. But truly ask yourself if they're things that you're doing consistently. And if not, how can you take one of those small action steps we just talked about and implement just one thing in this coming week. So I hope this has been helpful to you.
Again, I want to remind you if this show is helpful. If you're enjoying it, please go to the show and leave a review. We would appreciate that so much. It would be incredibly helpful and a great blessing to us. And I pray that you have a blessed week.
Just a reminder and disclaimer that this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for medical advice or professional counseling. Please be sure to consult your doctor before making any changes to your diet or exercise plan or starting to fast.
