CategoriesNutrition

The One Simple Trick that Can Change Your Eating Habits, Improve Your Food Choices, and Help You Lose Weight and Feel Your Best. No, Really!

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Minneapolis based nutrition coach, Megan Schall. 

Megan contributed a guest post to the site a few weeks ago that ended up being very popular, and today she’s back with another gem that I feel can help a lot of people.

Nutrition can be a highly confusing and convoluted topic to write about. Countless books have been written saying fat is the enemy; no, protein is; oh, wait, actually, it’s carbohydrates. May you forever be sequestered to the depths of Mordor for having the audacity of partaking in an apple.

Asshole.

Facetiousness aside, Megan has a unique ability of recognizing that it is a mess out there, that information is uncannily biased (book sales over common sense!), and that, more often than not, it’s the simple things that most people need to focus on.

Enjoy!

Copyright: Evgeny Atamanenko

The Trick 👇 👇 👇

Spoiler Alert: This blog post is *not* going to be about how you must never eat bananas or how, if you stop eating after 6pm, all your dreams will come true (although, if either of those things are working for you – that’s cool! Keep doing your thing!)

This one trick is going to sound stupidly simple and maybe even too good to be true. It’s something you can do anywhere, with any food, and it costs zero dollars.

What’s the secret?

Eat slowly.

Yes, you read that right. It may not be sexy but slowing down when/how you eat can be a complete game changer.

If you’re thinking this sounds a little too simplistic or basic to be of any real use, I get it. But before you close this tab and go back to watching hilarious goat videos, let’s break down some of the reason why this works:

1. Eating Slowly Helps You Register Your Hunger and Fullness Cues

You’ve probably heard it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that you’re full.

When you take your time and eat more slowly, you give yourself a chance to actually feel when you’re no longer hungry vs. wolfing down everything on your plate.

If you eat super fast, it’s very easy to eat more food than you need.

via GIPHY

2. Slower eating = Better Digestion

Taking your time to relax, breathe, and chew your food well helps turn down the stress and activate your ‘rest and digest’ state. This means you’ll not only taste and enjoy your food more, but you’ll also experience better digestion.

Win-win!

3. Eating Slowly Can Improve Your Food Choices.

When you slow down and really savor your food, you can pay more attention to the taste and texture.

Try eating a processed “food-like” item slowly and mindfully and you’ll likely find it to be rather disgusting. Or you may discover certain foods make you feel not so great, while others leave you feeling like a rock star. That oatmeal you’ve been eating for breakfast for the last ten years? You might discover that you actually kind of hate it (true story from one oatmeal hating client).

4. Eating Slowly Can Be Done In Any Situation Involving Food[footnote]I mean, you can technically “eat” a Tide Pod, but fast or slow you’re an idiot.[/footnote]

You don’t have to follow a certain meal plan or eating window or count points or macros.

Whether you’re alone or in a group, you can eat slowly.

If you’re eating out (remember when we did that?) you can eat slowly. If you’re at home or traveling or eating while you’re working or driving, you can still eat slowly (although maybe try not to eat while driving).

But How?

Now that we’ve established that eating slowly is a good thing, how do you actually go about it? While eating slowly is a simple thing to do, that doesn’t mean it’s easy – a deadlift is a simple motion but takes a lot of practice and is always a work in progress.

Eating slowly is no different.

If you don’t believe me, I’ll challenge you to try a little experiment: At your next meal, start a timer. Eat normally. See how long it takes. (Don’t worry if it’s an appallingly small amount of time. This is totally normal.)

At another meal, set a timer for 20 minutes. Sit down at the table. Do not get up until your timer goes off. Try to make your meal last that long.

via GIPHY

It. Is. So. Hard.

Luckily, there are many strategies you can employ to make it easier to practice.

  • Setting a timer and trying to stretch out the number of minutes it takes you to eat is a great place to start. Maybe try adding 1-2 minutes to each meal.
  • You can put down your utensils between bites, or take a few deep breaths or a sip of water.
  • Put away your phone, turn off the TV, and sit down at an actual table. Eliminate distractions and focus only on your food. It’s much easier to eat quickly and mindlessly when you’re also.
  • If you’re eating with other people, try pacing yourself with the slowest eater (and if you’re eating with small children even better! Kids tend to eat quite slowly and can be great pacers).
  • Engage in conversation with your eating partners. Take a pause from eating to listen to what they say.
  • Pick a time when you know you can schedule a slow and mindful eating experience and go all in. See how long you can stretch it out.
  • Set an alarm on your phone or put a post-it note somewhere you will see it with a reminder to eat slowly.
  • Or, if you really want to go all in you could do what I did and get braces as an adult. Not necessarily the first strategy I’d recommend, but it is ridiculously hard to eat in general, much less to eat quickly.

Again, just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.

In our world of constant distractions and noise, it’s really hard to sit for 15-20 minutes with no interruptions and just focus on eating. Our culture doesn’t exactly support the concept of slow and mindful eating, so it may take some practice and no one is going to be able to eat slowly all the time.

But it’s worth taking the time (literally) to give it a try and it’s something you can always return to if you feel your food or eating habits are getting off track. Even if weight loss is not your goal, being able to tune into your hunger and fullness cues and notice how food is affecting you is a useful tool to have in your tool belt!

If you’re trying to make changes to your nutrition habits, becoming aware of what’s happening when you are eating and how that is affecting your choices is a great place to start. And you can’t observe what is happening unless you slow down.

Try a slow eating experiment and you just may be surprised by the results.

About the Author

Megan Schall is a certified nutrition coach and personal trainer located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Through her customized online nutrition coaching programs, Megan helps you clarify your goals and take action to address all aspects of well-being: nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement, mind-body awareness, and more.

By building skills and routines that fit into your real life, Megan will help you make changes to your nutrition and self-care habits to meet your health and wellness goals and create sustainable, lasting results.

Website: HERE                 YouTube: HERE

CategoriesNutrition

Set Yourself Up For Nutrition Success With a Kitchen Refresh

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Minneapolis based personal trainer and nutrition coach, Megan Schall. Megan’s been a distance coaching client of mine for a number of years (I write her training programs), but is someone I’ve referred many other clients to when they have any nutritional needs or questions.

She’s an awesome coach.

I’m always excited when I can provide sound nutrition based content on the site and I think you will appreciate Megan’s down-to-Earth approach and tone.

I hope this will be the first of more submissions from Megan (hint, hint. nudge, nudge).

Enjoy!

Copyright: serezniy / 123RF Stock Photo

The Kitchen Refresh

When I first started distance coaching with Tony, I told him one of my goals was to be able to do a pull-up. So for the first several months my program included a shit-ton of upper back work (so. many. rows.) and core stability exercises.

After a steady progression from month to month, the day finally came and…

…I walked up to the bar (well, I walked up to a box underneath the bar because I’m short) and did my first strict pull-up, no problem.

via GIPHY

I admit I was a little nervous that it wasn’t going to happen! But looking back I realize I had no need to worry – Tony had set me up for success. His plan had created an environment where it was basically impossible for me to ‘fail’ because all the pieces were already in place.

This same concept applies when it comes to our eating habits and food choices: setting up your environment in a way that makes better choices easy and less great choices difficult (or impossible) allows you to conquer your nutrition goals.

Enter the Kitchen Refresh

The kitchen refresh is exactly as it sounds: You are going to clean out and refill your kitchen, updating it to support your needs and goals.

It’ll be fun, I promise!

This can be especially helpful right now, as most of us are spending a lot more time at home and thus a lot more time in or near the kitchen. As hard as it might have been to avoid treats in the office, having your kitchen a few steps away (or maybe your kitchen is your office now) makes it that much more challenging, not to mention the stress, boredom, and social isolation also affecting our food and eating choices.

Let’s walk through it step by step:

Step 1: Prepare

This is where you will make a plan for what will stay and what will go. Determine criteria that will make it easy to decide whether to keep or toss items – there’s the obvious ‘toss’ items (anything that has expired or that looks like a lab experiment), but otherwise this will vary for everyone. Defining clear guidelines for what you want to have around and what needs to go will make the cleaning out process much easier.

One strategy for doing this is to make a list of red, yellow, and green light foods.

Red Light Foods = Things that you know don’t make you feel good or are just too tempting if they’re in the house (this may include things like highly processed foods and/or certain ingredients, and anything that feels mentally challenging to have around or you find difficult to eat in moderation).

 Yellow Light Foods = Those that may not be the ‘best’ choice but that you are comfortable keeping around and can eat in moderation.

Green Light Foods = Items that make you feel great and help you reach your health and wellness goals (generally all whole/fresh foods, fruits and veggies, etc.).

(Note From TG: My “red light foods” are honey wheat pretzels, Cheez-Its, cereal, and those pills that Bradley Cooper took in that movie Limitless).

Step 2: Toss

Grab a trash bag (or several) and get to work. Read labels carefully. Remove red light foods and move yellow light foods to harder to reach areas or out of sight.

Put green light foods front and center.

This can also be a chance to clear out some of the extra “stuff” that might be hanging around the kitchen. Those 17 extra spatulas you never use? Give one to each of your friends, donate them, or find a creative new use.

Step 3: Restock

Use your green/yellow light foods to make a grocery list and stock up. Rearrange or reorganize so the “better” choices are also the easiest – keep fruits and veggies accessible and visible in the kitchen or fridge. Keep the items you use most often in easy to reach places.

BONUS Step 4: Upgrade

Is there anything that would make life easier when it comes to your food prep or kitchen organization?

  • A great blender that would make you happy to put together a post-workout smoothie?
  • A sharp knife and good cutting board to chop veggies?
  • Decent food storage containers?
  • A time machine to head back to November 2019 to invest in Zoom stock?

Investing in some equipment can make a world of difference, and now’s the chance to take inventory of what you might want or need.

Wasn’t That Fun?

Okay, “fun” may have been a bit of a stretch. The kitchen refresh isn’t like demo day in an actual renovation where you get to pile drive your old cabinets.

However, what WILL be fun is the better sense of control you’ll have over your eating habits.

Cleaning out the kitchen can feel overwhelming, and it certainly does not have to be done all at once. Start with one drawer or cabinet. Set a timer for five minutes and go to town. Maybe you keep a trash bag in the kitchen and get rid of whatever isn’t working for you whenever you come across it, or aim to toss one item a day.

Make a game out of it and get the whole family involved!

Use this as a guide, but feel free to be creative and find what works best for you.

One more thing to note: This process can be challenging if you have multiple family members who all have different wants/needs/food allergies etc.

Some compromises may need to happen – if your red light foods include ice cream and tortilla chips but your significant other or kids likes to have them around, are there compromises that make it work for both of you? (eg: buy smaller containers and keep them in the back of the freezer or out of sight.) It may take a little problem-solving to make sure everyone’s needs are met, but it can be done!

Just as your workout program helps you reach your fitness goals, the kitchen refresh is a great way to make your environment work for you and set yourself up for success. Give it a try and you’ll be well on your way to your first nutrition pull-up!

About the Author

Megan Schall is a certified nutrition coach and personal trainer located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Through her customized online nutrition coaching programs, Megan helps you clarify your goals and take action to address all aspects of well-being: nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement, mind-body awareness, and more. By building skills and routines that fit into your real life, Megan will help you make changes to your nutrition and self-care habits to meet your health and wellness goals and create sustainable, lasting results.
YouTube: HERE