DISCOVER YOUR ZEN
Creating Your Plan for Eating Healthy
Coaching Call Video Replay:
WEEK 2 – Day 3
Call Transcript:
Welcome to the Coaching Call for Week 2 of the Discover Your Zen Program.
As always, before we start, I need to offer this short disclaimer.
DISCLAIMER: I am a physician, but I’m limited in the ability to perform full exam & work-up on this call. So the information provided here is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice and is not intended to replace a complete consultation with your physician, nor does it constitute a doctor-patient relationship.
Today’s we’re covering creating a plan for eating healthy.
Eating healthy, as part of your everyday life is the best way to reach any health goal you have for yourself. If you look at eating healthy as a diet with an ending, you’ll never be able to stick to your goals for the long term. I’m going to review some tips and tricks to help you eat healthy as part of your daily life and ensure that you reach your goals today as well as in the future. By doing this, you’ll be able to live a happy, healthy, long life void of deprivation and struggle.
Prepare Your Own Meals
The more you take charge of preparing your meals, the healthier you’ll be. If you don’t know how to cook, a meal delivery option can help you stay on track. When you cook for yourself, you control what goes in your recipes and swap out less healthy ingredients for more healthy ingredients.
In all honesty, preparing food at home doesn’t take long and is often a lot tastier than when you eat out. There are healthy meal delivery programs that deliver the raw ingredients and provide cooking directions. ThePurpleCarrot.com has healthy vegan options and Helofresh.com has more fresh options. There are many options today. Just do a Google Search for “meal prep delivery services” in your area to see what’s available.
Some areas also have grocery delivery options. This is a great if you already have recipes. You don’t even need to go shopping. Staying out of the grocery store may also help you save money as well as avoid unhealthy, last minute purchases. You may also want to try out shipt.com and others. Just do a search for “Grocery Delivery in Your Area” to see if you have that yet.
Plan for Dining Out
Everyone eats out and goes to parties. You don’t need to give that up. Part of eating healthy is also enjoying the delicious abundance of “not so healthy” foods out there on special occasions. But Friday night is not a special occasion. Your birthday is, your wedding is, and so are the holidays. The trick is to make the special meals and/or day truly special by limiting it to that time.
If you must eat out on a regular basis, choose places that offer healthy foods as well as healthy cooking methods. You can always opt to skip the dressing or ask for dressing on the side. The salads at many restaurants are large so if you get a dinner salad with roasted chicken, eggs, and so forth, the best thing to do is ask for a to-go box right away. Put the extra protein, fat, and all the processed carbs in the to-go box or give to someone else. Keep the veggies. You can eat a lot more veggies than you can other macronutrients without issues.
Another option is side dishes. Many restaurants offer steamed broccoli. Get two servings and ask them to “hold” the oil or butter. Most restaurants will help you stick to your goals. Don’t be embarrassed to ask for what you want. Don’t listen to others who think you’re too difficult. If you’re paying for it, you have a right to get it the way you want. The restaurant will be happy to do it and the chef at “from scratch” places will love the challenge.
Call ahead, if you haven’t been to the restaurant before. They are usually more than willing to help you find suitable items on the menu. If there isn’t anything on the menu you should eat, you may be able to request and/or pre-order something suitable for your needs. If that isn’t an option, bring your own food. If it’s a lunch meeting, they’re probably won’t notice and even if they do, they’ll understand.
Make Healthy Substitutes
One way to enjoy your food is to think about the flavors you crave and then substitute a healthier form of that flavor. For example, you can make many different types of chicken wings. One way you can make them with is with baked chicken and use a low sugar sauce.
You can even make a dish from cauliflower that tastes similar to wings. The flavors matter most. Choose healthy ingredients to get the flavors you love based on your eating plan.
You can find substitute lists online too. Just look up “healthy substitute for (whatever)” you want to sub for. It’s amazing what you can by substituting ingredients. For example, instead of eating a rich sugary dessert full of fake ingredients you can create lovely desserts from fruit instead. Once you stop eating “added sugar,” you’ll be surprised how naturally sweet fruit tastes.
Keep it Simple
Don’t make things too hard on yourself. No matter which diet you chose to follow, keep it simple. You don’t need weird ingredients. You don’t even need to chop veggies, if you don’t want to, since you can buy pre-chopped veggies. Frozen food is just as good for you as “fresh” so don’t feel pressured to make it hard on yourself.
If you’ve never heard of the 80/20 rule, learn about it. It’ll change your life. In addition, consider reading The Compound Effect, by Daren Hardy. These two together are very powerful. Essentially the 80/20 rule says that you get 80 percent of your results from 20 percent of your efforts. In dieting, you can bet that if you’re perfect 80 percent of the time and not so perfect 20 percent of the time, you’ll still reap 100 percent of the rewards.
The compound effect essentially states that little changes that you barely notice add up to big results. For example, if you only lost 1 pound a week you’d lose 52 pounds a year. Even if you only lost 1 pound a month you’d lose 12 pounds a year which is perfectly fine when you’re trying to set yourself up to eat healthy for life so that it’s part of your life forever and not a temporary thing.
Also, meals don’t have to be elaborate to be healthy. You can make healthy meals in 20 minutes using simple to find ingredients, from almost any grocery store. You don’t need to stock up on “healthy” additives and extras that cost a lot of money and probably really aren’t that healthy.
Living a healthy lifestyle is about the little things. Eat an apple daily instead of a donut and you’re going to be healthier. It’s just a fact. You can still eat a donut on occasion once a month or less, but usually, you’re not going to want to after you’ve experienced the effects of eating fresh whole foods on your health and palate which will come to prefer healthy food over processed food.
So let me review really quick what you’re action steps are so far this week.
Right now, you should be in the midst of reviewing your meal plan. I gave you yesterday, today, and tomorrow to review the meal plan, see if there’s any foods you want to change using the Food Swap list I’ve provided. You’ll take an inventory of what you have on stock and determine what it is you still need to buy. For those of you who don’t want to do any cooking, I provided some resources in yesterday’s module for companies who will deliver prepared meals to you. I also gave you some companies who will provide simple to follow recipes and deliver the ingredients to your home, if cooking is not the issue, but recipe planning and shopping are more troublesome tasks for you.
Questions? Be sure to get back to me by replying to any of the daily emails or post in our Facebook group.
TODAY’S ACTION STEPS:
1) I’m giving you plenty of time to prepare for the meal plan. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow is your time to look through the meal plan and determine if you want to follow it strictly, or perhaps swap out a few things (I provided you a Food Swap List along with the Meal Plan). Review the recipes. Go through the Shopping List, see what you already have and make a list of what you need to buy.
2) You may want to try out a meal delivery service if that fits your lifestyle better. If so, these 3 days can be spent researching companies that deliver to your area (possibly the ones I suggested above) and place your order so you can start getting your food by next week.
2) If you have any questions about the meal plan, or anything else, let me know in the Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/discoveryourzen/
3) Join us for the coaching call today, WEDNESDAY, November 1, at 8:15pm ET (5:15pm PT). A replay will be made available for those who can’t make the call.
Previous ACTION STEPS: (Not a complete list, but some important highlights.)
1) Log in to the Fitness App on your COMPUTER – https://doctorvenus.com/app-login/ – and go to the FORMS tab. If you haven’t completed the Client Agreement form and the PAR-Q form from Day 1’s ACTION STEPS, do that today and sign them. Be sure to click SAVE when you’re done. (You can not receive the meal plan and workout plan when they are released until we have those completed forms on file.)
2) If you haven’t done so yet, send an email to team@DoctorVenus.com and state whether you want a vegetarian or non-vegetarian meal plan. It will be sent to your Fitness App by this evening…JUST for you to review, if you’re interested. You don’t have to worry about getting everything ready to start the diet by tomorrow. I’ll take you through this whole process, step-by-step, in the upcoming week.
3) Download the Set Your Goals Checklist and complete it. CLICK HERE to download.
4) Download the Program Planner that you can start using, if you wish. CLICK HERE to download.
5) Download the Kitchen Clean Out handout and use it to guide the clean out of your kitchen BEFORE you start your meal plan. CLICK HERE to download.