Foreign. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to Body and Belonging, where we break free from food guilt, calm down the food noise, and rediscover joy at the table. I'm Jamie, a registered dietitian, and each week we explore the deeper reasons why we struggle with food and why we have such a hard time feeling like we belong in our bodies. I blend gentle nutrition with nervous system awareness, and I teach you biblically rooted health principles to move you away from dieting and restriction and into care and nourishment. So grab a seat at the table and let's dive in. Today we get to dive into the very practical question I'm sure you're asking after the foundation laid in the last few episodes. And that question is, Jamie, what should I eat? We're having all these conversations about belonging in our body and how our nervous system impacts our hunger and our cravings. But at the end of the day, what should I eat? Maybe you're asking this question while you're standing in the pantry wondering what you should grab for a snack. Or maybe you're right on the edge of starting a new diet that all your friends are doing and you're just feeling a little nudge of should I? Maybe you've been bouncing between trying to eat perfectly and giving up all together. If any of these resonate, this episode is for you. Something I want to make abundantly clear here at the beginning of this conversation is I want you to start loosening your grip on feeling like you need more nutrition information. Yes, good information is very, very foundational and allows you to make decisions in alignment with your goals and decisions that you can sustain and decisions that you can walk forward with confidence in. But we can get so obsessed with information gathering that it actually hinders our action, it actually hinders our implementation, it actually hinders our making progress because we start to have a scarcity mindset, even with information. Oh, if I just knew more, If I just understood better, if there just was a plan that was curated to me. So I want to loosen your grip on that just a little bit, because most women don't actually need more information. We already live in information overload. Am I right? There's conflicting nutrition advice everywhere you look. You can chatgpt a meal plan in 3.2 seconds flat. But if more information set people free, I wouldn't be doing this podcast right now. So what we actually need is less food noise. Not just the hunger type, but less noise around food in general and in our head. Less overwhelm, less decision fatigue. I do believe we need more trust. More trust that God created our bodies with wisdom. And somewhere along the way, we stopped listening to our bodies and we started listening exclusively to diet culture. We started trusting the numbers. We started putting our faith in points, in macros, in calories, because it felt more safe. It gave us structure, it told us what to do. And if you've ever used numbers, points, macros, apps, if you've ever used that type of structure, it makes sense because it does feel safer, it does feel more secure. But over time, something subtle happens. We start to trust the numbers more than we trust our body. We start to outsource our decisions. You start outsourcing your autonomy and your freedom. If the plan says it's okay, then I'm okay eating it. If it fits in my points, then I'm okay eating it. If this person says that that's good for me, I'm going to go with that. That person might say it causes inflammation. We're outsourcing our decisions and we're losing connection with our hunger, with our fullness, with our satisfaction. And instead of asking, what does my body need? Not, not what does her body need? What does my body need? We start asking, what am I allowed to have? And that creates disconnection. So the shift here we're making, the foundational shift that we're building on here is moving from this precision, structure, tracking to wisdom and intuition and gentleness. So we're going to go over some principles, some gentle nutrition principles, and I think it's going to bring some freedom.

Principle number one is define your desire. Where are you going with this? Jamie, I want you to pay attention to how many of your decisions are made from a place of avoidance. You want to avoid weight gain, you want to avoid an allergic reaction, you want to avoid the high cholesterol your grandparents struggled with. How many of your decisions regarding your

food and your lifestyle and your habits

and your nutrition and your food choices are from a place of avoidance? See, avoidance based decisions are actually rooted in fear. They're made because you're trying to avoid something, you're scared of something, you want to avoid something. They're not wrong. But pay attention to how many decisions you're making from this place of avoidance or fear. They serve a purpose, to a point. But when the vast majority of your decisions are rooted in fear and rooted in avoidance, it's repeatedly and consistently telling your body that you're not safe, the world is unsafe, everything in the future is unsafe. And you need to be hypervigilant to avoid that contrast. That with desire based decisions. I desire to feel energized. I desire to be able to focus on my tasks without hunger. I desire to set a good example for my kids. I desire to feel good in my body. I desire to think clearly. I desire to feel balanced in my energy throughout the day. So that's just a little piece of homework for you. The next time you notice yourself making a decision out of avoidance, see if you can identify the desire behind it and swap that in your brain and switch it to a desire based decision.

Principle number two is add before you take away and I want to talk about this because diet culture has told you repeatedly, you can't have this, you can't have this, you can't have this, you can't have this. Take away this, take away that and it's exhausting. And at a brain level, it throws you into scarcity. Because that part of your brain that is activated has about the maturity of a three year old. Now I'm not calling you immature, I'm saying that part of your brain has about the maturity and the executive function of a three year old. And this is the lower part of your brain. When we are told we can't have something, we shouldn't have something, we want it all the more, right? If you tell a kid, oh, you can't have candy today, all they're going to think about is candy. If you tell a grown up, oh, you can't have Reese's Peanut butter cups today, all they're going to think about is Reese's peanut butter cups. But yet so many diets go straight to oh, you need to cut out meat, or you need to cut out carbs, or you need to cut out sugar, you need to cut out artificial food dyes, or you need to cut out insert whatever you've been told and what the trending diet of the decade is. We start with elimination, we start with taking things out. And I take a completely opposite approach in my work with clients. Before we take anything away, we start by adding in because I do not want to trigger that scarcity part of their brain at any point. Because once we're in scarcity, we're not using our full brain. A far more helpful approach is to start any health endeavor with the mentality of what can I add? Can I add water? Can I add fiber? How can I add more variety in my produce? How can I add healthy fats to my meal? How can I add mindfulness? How can I add chewing well? How can I add something that's satisfying and nourishing how can I add a walk? How can I sneak a micro workout into my day? This keeps your brain in abundance. It keeps your brain in creative problem solving mode. And it is so much more sustainable than a mentality that's going to take away. Takeaway, takeaway. And so at most of your meals, ask what could I add to this meal to make it more nourishing at the beginning of each day? What could I add to this day that would get me closer to my goals? That's principles number two. So principle number three, this is where we get to dig more into the what should I eat? But I wanted to lay that foundation for you. Principle number three is build balanced plates. Now, I'm going to give you some categories that you want to make sure show up on your plate at each meal and then we'll talk a little bit about pros and cons, better foods, more helpful food, less helpful food, and just some common questions. I get in that category. Now, I do need to give you the disclaimer here that I am a dietitian. I am not your dietitian. So please run any lifestyle changes, any diet changes past your doctor, your dietitian. This is not medical advice. This is for educational purposes only. So a big category that really is trending right now is protein. Protein foods include eggs, chicken, fish, yogurt, any dairy products, any meat products. We also have plant based proteins like soy and beans and legumes and nuts and seeds. And it is true that we need protein on our plate. Protein gives us a sense of fullness. It breaks down into amino acids and amino acids are the building blocks of our body. It's what your body uses to build muscle to repair from injuries. It takes, generally speaking, the longest to digest, meaning it gives you a sense of satiety or fullness. If you are missing protein at a meal, you are probably going to get hungry a lot sooner than at a meal that has a decent protein portion. Now, again, staying very general here for the sake of this podcast, but I would say you would want to pursue a minimum of 20 to 30 grams of protein at each meal for that meal to be satisfying, to meet your goal of at least 60 to 120 grams per day. So that would be, you know, 20 times 3, 30 times 3. Either one of those is going to get you in that category and I would encourage variety in our protein sources. So variety of plant based proteins and animal based proteins. It is possible to get enough protein on a plant based diet and even on a vegan diet, even on A diet with no animal products, and that's completely fine. With that said, there are some nutrients that are harder to get from plant based proteins, so we would want to make sure there was a source of fortified B12, maybe in a soy milk or a fortified product. Now here is my thoughts and approach on animal proteins versus plant proteins. Animal proteins are going to be more dense nutritionally. You're going to get more bang for your buck nutritionally, but at what cost? They generally are going to be more heavy on your body, they can cause inflammation, they can be burdensome to your kidneys and to your organs, and they can come with other things inside that we probably want to eat less of, maybe saturated fat, for example. So I will not give you a clear cut. You should only do plant based proteins. You should only do animal based proteins. On this podcast, I think it's a far more nuanced conversation that you should have with a health professional with your full history in mind, as well as what food is available to you. The next category we want to talk about is carbohydrates. Now when I say carbohydrates, you probably think bread, rice, cereal, donuts, biscuits, potatoes. You probably think all the white stuff. And it is true that those contain carbohydrates. However, they are not the only carbohydrate. All fruits contain carbohydrates. All vegetables contain carbohydrates. Yes, even your bell peppers and your cucumbers and your kale contains carbohydrates. Which is why I get so cranky when when people say, oh, just eliminate. I just eliminated all these carbohydrates like you don't know what you're talking about. But anyways, all fruits, all vegetables, all whole grains, legumes like beans and lentils also have some carbohydrates as well. Now carbohydrates are our main energy food. Any diet that tells you to eliminate them long term is not going to be sustainable for you. Yes, our brain can run on fats, our brain can run on proteins, our body can run in ketosis. But it's not the most ideal way for our body to run and there are long term consequences of that. Now I have put people on a low carb diet, short term, maybe to prep them for surgery or to really tackle fatty liver disease, or to try to slow down a diabetes diagnosis or keep somebody off of insulin for maybe their gestational diabetes. But these are case by case medically supervised short term interventions. Generally speaking, we need to focus on the quality of our carbohydrates and dialing up the fiber and dialing up the nourishment and dialing up the freshness and dialing up the produce and trading out, so maybe trading a whole grain for a white grain, swapping those out, adding more fruit into the diet, switching to a whole fruit at a meal instead of fruit juice, for example. Because a fruit juice is going to spike and drop your blood sugars, whereas a whole fruit contains the fiber, your stomach enzymes, your digestion needs to break it down. It's a slow trickle of sugar, sugar into your system that's very, very different from the spike and drop that we get from a juice or a sugar sweetened beverage. Now, a question I get really often when it comes to fruits and veggies is, is fresh or frozen or canned? What are we going to do with that? These foods can seem costly, especially if you live in an area where they're only seasonally available. And I can tell you right now that fresh and frozen are nearly equal. And I say that because depending on where they are produced, how long they're on a plane and a train in an automobile before they get to your grocery store determines how much of breakdown that has happened this time of year. At the time of recording this, it's June in Minnesota. I can go pick blueberries, I can go pick raspberries. I just picked a strawberry off of one of my strawberry plants this morning. So of course that's going to be power packed with nutrition and enzymes because it's alive, it's attached to the plant until moment, moments before I eat that. Contrast that to winter in Minnesota where the blueberry is nowhere near Minnesota. It's picked, it shipped, it's how many weeks old before it even hits the grocery store shelf. In that situation, a frozen blueberry that was picked when it was ripe, flash frozen, that nutrition was locked in and saved and preserved via being frozen until I actually saw those or blend those into a smoothie. So do you see how it's really a toss up there of fresh versus frozen? They're nearly equal. So whatever fits your budget, whatever you have available in your local grocery store, whatever's actually going to get eaten. Some people have really strong preferences about fresh versus frozen or they only like things blended versus the unpredictability of something fresh. Really, they're going to be pretty similar there. Canned fruits and vegetables is where we start to run into less enzymes, start to run into the conversation about maybe microplastics in the lining of the cans. Again, again, any fruits and vegetables is gonna be better than none at all. If canned is all you have available, please still consume them. But I would rank canned as slightly below the fresh and the frozen. Another question I get is what about organic? And the debate on organic versus non organic is a whole conversation in and of itself. But what I will say for today is if a organic budget is limiting your variety, meaning your grocery dollars aren' as far in the organic section as they are in the non in the conventional section, I would prefer you have greater quantities of fruits and vegetables, greater quantities of produce, because that is proven over and over and over in the research. To be so protective and so helpful to your body. I would not want you to dial back the variety in order to purchase organic. So unless the budget is unlimited in that category, err on the side of variety and abundance and plentifulness of produce over being really picky about organic. And don't underestimate and don't overlook your local sources as well. There may be a lot of small communities or small farms in your local area. It costs a lot to go organic. It's a multi year process and there may be some great local farmers that don't use excessive chemicals, excessive pesticides, excessive sprays, but do not meet the qualifications to be organic. And something local is going to be fantastic for you. Plus you're supporting the local economy, which I'm very much a fan of. So those are all things to consider over it just being a black and white question of should I buy organic? Another category in that carbohydrate category is breads and rice and cereal. Now if you do not have to avoid gluten free medical condition, of course there's reasons that people have to go gluten free. But grains and ancient grains and whole wheat versus white versus bread versus sourdough versus Sprouted versus Ezekiel bread. That's Maybe we'll do a whole episode someday about bread, but the closer you can get to old fashioned, the closer you can get to it being made without a lot of preservatives. The closer you can get to your flour being either fresh milled or more recently milled, the better you're going to be in that grain perspective. I do not believe that grains are the enemy that they've been made out to be. However, there is a vast difference between a fresh milled loaf of sourdough leavens bread that goes moldy in three days because it's like alive versus Wonder bread. There's a. There's a whole spectrum there. And look for baby steps to move towards those more nourishing grades, look for baby steps to use a whole grain versus a white grain. Look for the words whole on the ingredient label, not enriched. Enriched sounds fancy, but it basically means they took out a lot of nutrients and just put a few back in. So even though enriched sounds nice, it's not as good as when it says whole on the label. So look for that. So that's a little pep talk on carbohydrates. Another thing I want you to keep in mind with carbohydrates is, generally speaking, don't have your carbohydrates alone, don't have naked carbohydrates. Maybe you've heard that term. And what I mean by that is a carbohydrate all by itself, especially if it is refined or juiced or heavily processed like a white bread or a fruit juice, and is gonna have the tendency to get absorbed really quickly into your system, Drive up your blood sugars, and anything that goes up must come down. And anything that goes up quickly tends to come down quickly. And that can feel like nausea, it can feel like a headache, it can feel like a stomachache, it can feel like you're all of a sudden dizzy, it can feel like hanger, all of a sudden you're really hangry, really hungry. And one thing we can do to lessen the impact of the more refined carbohydrates is to partner them with with protein, with healthy fat. This is going to make the blood sugar roller coaster less drastic. For example, apple juice by itself, I would consider that a naked carbohydrate. You take one step towards more gentleness with eating the whole apple, because the fiber is going to slow down the digestion. I mentioned that. Now, let's say you have that apple, but you have it with some peanut butter, a healthy fat that's also got some fiber and some nutrients. Now your blood sugar is going to go up even slower, and it's going to go down even slower, and it's going to last you much longer. So those are simple little adjustments that you can start making. Maybe, for example, you're gonna have a cinnamon roll for breakfast. But you're like, you know what, Let me scramble some eggs and have some eggs on the side. That would be an example of adding protein to that carbohydrate to buffer the aggressive rise and drop of your blood sugar. That's going to make that meal last you longer. It's going to leave you feeling more nourished, and it's actually going to help fight inflammation and Cravings on a bas are not putting yourself on that roller coaster first thing in the morning. So that leads me to the third and final category that we're gonna talk about today, which is fats. Now, fats have been praised in some decades and demonized in other decades, and it just kind of flops back and forth every 10 years. I've been in this nutrition space long enough to see it go back and forth. Many people still feel that low fat is better. A lot of this actually happened in the 70s and 80s when eyes were starting to look sugar as being a root cause of inflammation. And the sugar industry did not want that attention. So the sugar industry paid for marketing to turn the attention towards fat and encourage people to go after fat instead. This is when people stopped eating eggs for breakfast and started eating fat free muffins. And it did no good. In fact, our health outcomes are worse than they were 50 years ago because of the push against fat. Now here's my caveat. I'm not going to give you a blanket permission to eat as much fat as you want. Fat is dense. It has more calories per gram than carbs and protein. So you get more bang for your buck, calorie wise. But that also means that we can overdo on it. We can consume more than we need. And fats vary widely from fats that are anti inflammatory, that are very nourishing for us, that are very soothing and healing to our body, and fat fats that drive inflammation and are damaging to our bodies. There's a whole, whole spectrum there. Again, I want to take a food forward approach here. So we're going to come at this with a whole food perspective. And the whole food perspective on fat is look for the way that fat shows up in nature. Nuts grow that way, seeds grow that way. A whole avocado, it grows that way. A whole coconut, it grows that way. Milk and dairy products, it comes out of the cow with fat inside of it. So if you can go after fats the way they show up naturally in nature, those are going to be some of the best fats for you. Now, once that is changed and manipulated, now let's take the peanuts and let's turn it into peanut butter. That's a little bit of processing. If we take the whole avocado and we squeeze out the avocado oil, that's a little bit of processing. If we take the olives and we squeeze out the olive oil, that's a little bit of processing. If this is done carefully, done in a cold environment, these oils and these products from the fats can still be a part of a very healthy diet. Where we want to start keeping an eye on fats and maybe dialing back our intake is the more heavily processed seed oils like canola oil, vegetable oil, oils that are heated to high temperatures in processing. We definitely want to keep our eyes out for trans fats. If you see the word hydrogenated on a label, that is indicative that there is trans fats in that product. And over and over and over, research shows us that trans fats are some of the most fats for us. So that's just a little bit about fat there. Now people will ask, well, should I buy fat free sour cream or fat free yogurt or fat free cottage cheese? Here's what I want you to watch for. Often when fat is removed from ranch dressing, for example. In fact, test this out. Test this out. This week when you're at the grocery store, I want you to find a fat free ranch dressing and I want you to find a regular ranch dressing and I want you to turn that over and I want you to look at the ingredient label and tell me which of those ingredient labels is long, longer. Next, start reading the ingredients. Now, they may not be great, but it is my suspicion, and usually improved. Right. That the regular ranch is actually going to have less salt, it's often going to have less preservatives, it's going to have less stabilizers, it's often going to have less sugar because the naturally occurring fat in the oils used serves those purposes. The fat free ranch. Yeah. Although the fat isn't there, they've had to put in other ingredients to serve those purposes and it ends up with a longer, less familiar ingredient list. So test that out. Look at your yogurt, look at your cottage cheese, look at your salad dressings and test that out for that reason. So building a balance plate of protein, fat and carbs. If all three of these are represented on your plate, you're gonna be pretty satisfied, you're gonna be nourished, this meal is gonna stick with you. You're probably not gonna have bottomed out blood sugars, making you hangry before your next meal. This is not a rule, this is a guideline. So my is to look at your plate and mentally check protein, fat, carbs. Is it there? Am I repeatedly missing a category? Or maybe you're totally missing protein at breakfast and lunch and then you're trying to catch up at dinner time and you're not sure why you're hangry all afternoon. Like look for the three of these things to show up in your meals and just start gaining awareness of how that's impacting how, how you're feeling. And I want you to remember that the most nourishing meals are not perfect. They are consistent. A salad, a perfectly balanced salad doesn't make you healthy and a delicious cookie doesn't make you unhealthy. Patterns matter more than any particular moment. So I want you to look at your meals as a whole and just start building that awareness. Because as I've mentioned before, what we don't have awareness of, we don't have authority over. Now. There's some other things that we can talk about in a future episode. About paying attention to our hunger, checking some satisfaction boxes, Meal planning. I think we'll dive into that next week. I think I'm going to share my 5 minute meal planning framework for you because that again, is a very tangible, very helpful piece. So I think we'll, I think we'll dig into that next week and I'll have a helpful resource for you as well. But I want to leave you with this today. If you are waiting until you can eat perfectly, before you feel peace around food, you'll be waiting forever. This was never meant to be another source of bondage or another complicated, overwhelming thing. We need to start taking steps towards delighting in delicious food again. And the goal here is learning to nourish the body God gave you with delight, with wisdom, wisdom, with freedom, and with grace. So if today's episode was helpful, I'd love for you to join my email list. That's where I share practical tools and encouragement and additional resources to help you walk this out in everyday life. Find that link in the show notes. I will see you next week. Sa.