Transcript of Ancestral RDs podcast, Episode 14

Transcription

1 Transcript of Ancestral RDs podcast, Episode 14 Transcribed by Ari Cohn Speakers LS: Laura Shoenfeld Kelsey Marksteiner Marie Pearl Bieber Laura Sassy Ligos Introductions LS: LS: Hi everyone welcome to the very first episode of the Ancestral RDs podcast. I m Laura Shoenfeld. I m a registered dietician with a masters in public health. And I m Kelsey Marksteiner. I m a registered dietician with a masters in human nutrition and functional medicine. Kelsey and I are excited to have not one, but two guests on our show today. I m hoping our internet will be able to handle four RDs on one podcast. It s a little crazy, but I m excited. First, let me take care of the basics. Just to remind you all, if there is a topic you want to hear us cover, remember to send your questions through the online submission form located on our site. As always, just as a reminder to everyone, what we talk about on this podcast is just general advice and should not be used in place of medical advice from a licensed professional. Today, with us we have two dieticians. The first is Laura Sassy Ligos and [second is] Marie Pearl Bieber, so their nicknames are Sassy and Pearl. They are two RD s who also believe in our real food message. Laura is a registered dietician with a bachelor s in nutrition and an MBA. Marie is a registered dietician with degrees in both nutrition and psychology. In this episode, we are going to talk about meal planning, so not only how to get started with a meal planning not only how to get started with a meal plan but also how to make them stick. So, ladies, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourselves?

2 LS: LS: LS: LS: Hi there. Thanks for having us, guys. Absolutely. Super excited. I m Sassy, aka Laura. That s Marie over there, and we met working in a hospital together as dieticians/dietary people. We both actually fell in love with the idea of real food nutrition, because we ended up reading Deep Nutrition, by Dr. Kate Shanahan. No one else in our office believed in it, so we joined forces and realized that we could save the world one bacon-wrapped avocado at a time. That s great. I currently live in Albany and love hiking and snowboarding, and actually just got done snowboarding right now. So sorry if I m still out there, my head is still in the mountains. I m so jealous. That sounds so great. It is. Neither of us can sit still. We were actually born two days apart, so we always laugh that we are twins that were just separated at birth. Our moms decided to just pretend we were separate. I m Marie, over here, aka Pearl. I live in Rochester, New York, and I currently work at an eating disorder treatment facility, so that s kind of my specialty area. But yeah, like Laura said we were both obsessed with Deep Nutrition by Dr. Kate Shanahan. We got eye rolls all the time. We tried our first batch of sardines in our office, and people were looking at us, giving us dirty looks, and it was great. I feel like that s not the best place to break out the sardines on your first try. We didn t care. We wanted everyone else to see what we were doing and realize how important eating real food is. That s awesome. I don t know if I would have had the guts to do that. That s why we have each other. We give each other the guts to do it. You need a partner in crime, definitely. Did you two have any interest in this stuff when you were in school? Or was it that you

3 discovered it when you were working together at the hospital? LS: LS: LS: LS: LS: Like I said originally, I have two degrees. My first degree was in psychology, and my second degree was in nutrition. I believe it was my first year of going to school for nutrition that I read the book. So, throughout the entire time that I was in school, I ve always taken this real-food approach to it. But I don t know, not before. It wasn t until I was already going to school for nutrition that I started looking at things this way. And what about you, Laura? I was in my internship. I was super-struggling with my own health. My mom was just diagnosed with Celiac Disease, and I was just super-frustrated, because I was like I should understand this, and I was studying to be a dietician. A girl in my program actually handed me The Paleo Solution by Rob Wolf, and she goes, I think this is going to clarify a lot of things for you. I just kept asking all the professors and whatnot and my preceptors, Why are we doing this? Why are they getting Ensure, Boost, all the supplements? And they said it was good for them. And I m like, This doesn t make sense! Once I read that [the book], I was like OK before I put it into practice, I should try it myself. Honestly, I can t tell you the health benefits that I achieved just by going Paleo for 30 days. Then I was like, OK, I need to learn everything about this ancestral approach, and that s how I got started. Cool. Deep Nutrition wasn t one of my first books, but it was one that helped me out and understand the science behind it all. Yeah. That s funny that one of your classmates gave you Rob s book. It s just Surprising. Yep. Hard to believe. I guess you never know what people, where people come from, and in any nutrition program, there can be a lot of different ideas about what people think is healthy. I think, these days, it seems like more and more registered dieticians are at least aware of the information if not kind of on board with it. I think it s really cool. I think it s super exciting that there was another future RD that was doing it. I think that it really speaks to the fact that it is not just a phase or a fad diet. Everyone is catching onto the fact that this is exactly the way that we should be eating.

4 Team Nutrition Genius Yeah. It sounds like you two are both on board with the real-food/paleo/ancestral type of nutrition recommendations. How do you guys use that in your I m assuming you have a business together how do you guys use that in your business? Laura, you want to field this one? Sorry I hope you don t hear any background noise; people are yelling. We have what we call Team Nutrition Genius, is our business. We originally started apart and then decided that two is better than one. We know that we are not nutrition geniuses, we are not geniuses, per se, which is kind of like a play on it. If you ever listen to our podcast, we like to make fun of ourselves and joke about ourselves, because life is too short, and you can t take yourself too seriously. But we take a real food approach in that we really stress to people that whole #JERF mentality: Just Eat Real Food. Not jerk, people, but JERF. we try to incorporate it into any lecture we re giving or seminar or even one-on-one consults. We make sure that people understand that you don t have to go Paleo, or you don t have to go ancestral, you don t have to put a label on what you re doing, but you do need to eat real food. Stop looking at things that say, stop looking on the front of the label, and start looking on the back of the label where the ingredients are. That s [a] really good place for people to start, and it s kind of our philosophy. Don t be so hard on yourself. I love that you mention that you don t have to put a label on it. I think people get really, really wrapped up in that. It makes life a little bit difficult and a little bit stressful. Marie, you probably can understand this from the psychology background part of it. When people start to say, Oh, I eat Paleo., they really try to stick to those very, very specific rules. I think they can get themselves into trouble by doing that sometimes. Absolutely. One of the things that I see a lot with my eating disorder clients, too, is that they start to look at things, like you said, in black and white. In this real food approach that we take, that s another thing that we try to instill upon our clients: food isn t all black and white. It s shades of gray. I think that by calling it Paleo or ancestral or whatever, it gives you that black and white connotation of This is good, and this is bad. By doing that you, there s a lot of guilt that goes along [with that] if you cheat or you go off of what is supposed to be. So, we do try to really encourage people to not be so hard on themselves. You know, you are going to slip up and eat a brownie every once and a while. If that happens, it s not the end of the world. You re not going to die. Is there a better choice that you could have made? Certainly. So, how do we get you to move? How do we change your environment, so that brownie isn t around in the future? How do we make you more prepared? How do you plan your meals ahead of time, so that you re not going to be in a situation where you feel the need to go the vending machine.

5 Why meal planning is important That is so important: that environmental changing, what s around you to affect your behavior. So, that s exactly what we are going to talk about today: meal planning! Which is I think one of the best things people can do to get themselves in that right environment to make good choices. I definitely think it is super-crucial for anyone who is just starting this approach to eating, because when you are kind of unsure of what it is you are supposed to be eating, and you re referencing a book all the time to try to check back, by having this plan already in place, you know that it s in alignment with what you want to be eating. Absolutely. Do you guys want to jump right in and talk about meal planning? Then we ll get you guys at the end too, because I know you both see clients and everything, so I want people to be able to find you. Let s talk about the meal plans, and then we ll tell everyone where they can learn more about you at the end. The first steps of meal planning Cool. Marie, do you want me to start? Yes, please do. Like Marie was saying, we love talking about meal planning. This is more of a real-food approach to it. There are so many meal plans out there that are going to include icky, gross supplements. I won t name any names, but, we get approached by them all the time, and I m sure you girls do, too. We just want you to realize that you can put together a plan for you and your family and be successful. Like Marie was saying, we always say on our podcast, if you were going to fall down a few stairs, would you fling yourself down the rest of them? No! That s the same thing with eating. If you mess up, even if you plan, and you mess up, just get right back up and try again. It s not the end of the world. Don t, like Laura was saying, don t fling yourself down the stairs for the rest of the day. Sometimes people might say, Oh crap, I don t have any eggs in the house, so now I m just going to go eat cereal. Then they are like, Oh shoot! I already ate cereal, so now, I m just going to have this be my cheat day, In that situation, you are flinging yourself down the stairs for the rest of the day. Just dust yourself off, and recompose yourself for your next meal, not your next day. Yeah, that s huge. Make your next meal your best meal. So what, when talking about meal plans and trying to get started with this, because I know I get questions about this from clients, and I get s about this a lot, people

6 don t really know where to start. What s the first thing that you need to do to get yourself on track to make the meal plan? I think one of the biggest things is cleaning out your pantry and cupboards and kitchen. What happens is that you go to write the meal plan. Then you go grocery shopping. Then, in the middle of the week, you don t feel like cooking, and you still have those cookies and crackers and things that just aren t real food in the cabinets. So what do you do? You reach for the convenience foods. So, if you can, donate to kids in need. I m not saying that those are the best foods for them, but some food is better than no food. Just cleaning out and getting a fresh start, and then making sure your whole family is on board. People always say, well I m just going to plan this menu for me, and everyone else can just eat that. No you re not a short-order cook. You re only one human being. If you are the main cook in your house, then people need to realize that they are going to eat what you make, they can go out to eat, or they can go hungry. Eventually, they are going to eat; that s what happens. Eventually they get hungry, so I think those are my, before you even sit down to try to plan a menu, meal, those are my first two things. Clean out your pantry, [and] then get your family or significant other, whoever is with you on board. Even your dog! Any tips for how to get family on board? I know that is something that people struggle with a little bit. I think [number] 1, by not labeling it. Like we were talking about before, it s superimportant, because the second someone hears, I m going to do the Paleo diet. or I m going to start eating healthier., the other person, who might not be 100% ready to make that change, is going to pull back, because all they hear is healthy and bland. It s so frustrating that the two of those things, in people s mind, go hand in hand, because they really don t have to. I think that one of the ways you could start is just having a recipe ready and some pulled pork recipe that is coming out of your crockpot. I mean, who is going to complain about that? Right, that sounds delicious. So just saying, Hey, I think I m going to make this for dinner, instead. Show them what your plan is, as opposed to just saying, Hey let s eat healthier. Just say, This is what we re going to have this week. Planning, phase 1: dinners That s great advice; I love that. So, once you ve cleaned out your pantry and everything, you ve got your family on board, how do you actually sit down and start to write out a meal plan? I start with dinners, because I think that s kind of the biggest part of it. I really like to

7 use my leftovers throughout the week, whether that s at lunch or at breakfast. I know Laura is on the same page as me. We love leftovers for breakfast. LS: All the time. I usually start there. Make a seven-day menu. You can do this somewhere [as] easy as Excel. Just by writing the days across the top, and then the meals and snacks down the side. Start with dinner. Have whatever protein it is, one to two vegetables, and a starch. Then just pick and choose the things that you really like. I think meal planning always sounds really complicated, but when you really think about it, it s quite simple. It doesn t have to be complex. You can just pick your protein, your vegetables, your starch. That s really what it comes down to, you know? There s so many different recipes and food bloggers out there. That the choices that you can potentially have are infinite. There s so much that you can do. [For] Anyone who might say, Oh well, my husband is a really picky eater and he s not going to eat this, there s definitely a real-food option out there that you can try, or there is some sort of Paleo or ancestral version of a traditional recipe that they really liked. It s not hard to find once you know the right places to search for them. I think Laura and I often recommend a website called Chow Stalker that pulls from a lot of different Paleo blogs and recipes and is a really great resource. We ll link to that as well. Oh, cool. I don t think I ve ever heard of that before. It s especially helpful for people that have specific dietary restrictions. Say you can t have eggs. You can do an advanced search and leave out eggs. I use it a lot when I am creating meal plans for clients that have really complex needs. It can take a while if someone is low FODMAPs and auto-immune Paleo or something like that. That s usually the kind of meal planning I m doing for clients. It s really complicated like that. But for someone, say, that they just want to find a chicken recipe, and they want it to be Paleo, they can just search chicken on this website and it will pull up a bunch of chicken recipes. So it s really helpful. The website Epicurious I don t know if anyone has ever used that for recipes but that s the one that I used to use before I really was doing Paleo. But, a lot of the food [on Chow Stalker] is really gourmet. Then you can search for individual ingredients, so whatever you have on hand, you don t have to go out and buy all the ingredients specifically for a recipe. Right, and I think they [Chow Stalker] have a quick option, too, if a lot of recipes that take 30 minutes or less. Unless you are looking for something super complex or gourmet, you don t need to go that route, either. That s pretty cool. It s awesome. Definitely seek out those resources, guys, because meal planning gets a

8 lot more fun, I think, when you have something to pull from. You have different recipes that you are excited about trying. I think a lot of people get stuck in this little bit of a rut where they just cook the same things over and over again, and that may be fine for some people, but Laura and I often talk about variety, and how variety is so important. So that s one side of it. You definitely want to get many different kinds of foods into your diet. Also, you want to keep your taste buds happy. Often times, we get sick of the same food over and over again. To make it fun for you and your family, I think it s a great idea to really expand your taste buds and try different things. LS: I think it s important to remember to not make things excessively complicated, especially at first. If you re just getting on board with the whole Paleo/ancestral diet thing, you don t have to make these super-gourmet, multi-course dinners for it to be enjoyable. It may be just as simple as starting with a roast chicken, some vegetable side dishes, and some baked sweet potatoes. That could be all that you do, and that may be a big change for your family and your own diet. Sometimes, starting with some really basic stuff, and then, as time goes on, bringing in the variety and the recipes it s a little less overwhelming. Certainly you don t have to spend as much time cooking, unless you really like it. If you really like cooking, that s great. But if you don t, it s not like you have to have a culinary degree to eat Paleo. Yes, it can be easy! It can be. And getting everyone involved, that would be great. [Get] chowstalker.com pulled up, and maybe have the kids pick a meal for a week, or have dad pick a meal for the week. I personally like to use a white board. I put it on the fridge, and that way my husband knows what s for dinner during the week. He makes requests now. He says I see that you re going grocery shopping on Sunday. I d really like x, y, or z this week. I think it s a fun way to get people on board when they re not, when you re not labeling it, Oh, I m eating gluten free. Instead, be like, Hey I m making the meal plan, and whatever I get at the store is what we re making. Make sure they are on board with it, so that they can have fun with it. I like the white board idea, that s cool. I think by writing things down, too, and then saving a record of what you do, it can kind of help increase your variety. You were talking about earlier, Kelsey, because you can reference things back. Maybe someone starts to feel meal planning is starting to get a little bit monotonous. So, you can say, There s this meal plan that I had from two months ago that was really good., or I want to take this recipe from that one and that recipe from that one, and put together a new week worth of recipes, but just different combinations. Yeah, absolutely.

9 LS: LS: I like Pinterest for that. Pinterest is great for that kind of stuff, so good. I plan my meals all the time. I m like, OK, I want this for dinner and that. you know. Never looks as perfect as Pinterest, but at least it gives you an idea. Once you made your first week, and I think that s what you said, you recommend starting with dinners first and doing a 7 day menu. Is that correct? Yep. Planning, phase 2: breakfasts Once you have the dinners planned, what s the next thing that you plan from there? I, personally, do breakfast, and then I fill in lunch later. Breakfast, to me, if you don t have an egg allergy, and for those of you that do, there s many options, but for those that can have eggs, they are such an easy thing to start with when you re not sure how to eat real food. One of my favorite, and now Marie s favorite, I make these bacon and egg cups. It tastes like unicorn tears. They are so good and so portable. So for people who, my clients who say they are rushing to work and can t eat breakfast, I just have to eat a granola bar. I m like, No! Don t do that! So, bacon and egg cups are great. Frittata, we have a smoked salmon one on our blog. That sounds good. I think the thing she is failing to mention, which is the most amazing part about those bacon and egg cups, is that they taste good whether they are hot or cold. We also keep calling them, oh, we called them bacon and egg cups, just so it s clear that there is bacon involved. Gotcha. It s perfect then. Exactly. I used to be known as the bacon dietician at my last job, because I would be at the heart unit, like, Is there any bacon today? And they are like, You are a dietician, what s wrong with you? And I m like, You re eating low-fat disgusting yogurt. You ll have to put a link to that. Make sure you guys send us something, because I m sure people would love to check those out. So that s what we do next, because it s pretty easy. You can get two dozen eggs and feed your family breakfast for the week.

10 Then just play around with it. Maybe you do a frittata one week, then some leftovers the next week, or just kind of playing around with it. What s nice about the egg cups and the frittata is that you can put veggies in them galore. You can hide veggies, which is nice for the kids, and then you can put any type of meat in there. So, if you like chicken, you can put [in] chicken. If you like the smoked salmon like we do, smoked salmon is great. Beef, pork you can go on for days. But it s a great way to pack a lot into this delicious meal, and you can eat it hot or cold. There s no excuse to be eating that granola bar in place of it. Along those lines, it sounds like something that you really do you make those ahead of time? Make them on the weekends, so you have them ready for the week? Absolutely, yes. Is there any other sort of batch cooking or batch prepping that you recommend people do? Like she was saying about the frittata, before, too that can be prepared. I do mine in one of those big 8 x 11 glass pans one of those glass pyrex [dishes] that I have. Definitely doing that ahead of time. And talking back, like we were saying, about reusing the leftovers from meals by cooking two to three times the amount that you actually need for that meal. Then you have the ability to use them again for your other meals. Right, and that s awesome. I m not really an egg person, personally, but I love doing leftovers from dinner for breakfast the next day. Super easy. Or lunch, that as well. And most people probably use their leftovers for lunch. I can t believe you re not an egg person! I could eat eggs just fried eggs every day, every morning for my entire life. I wish I was an egg person I really do because it s so easy. I do eat them. I definitely handle them, but I just don t love them. I think I ate them way too much when I first started Paleo, and I got sick of them. Make a little variety. So, not every week having eggs, because people, exactly, like anything, you ll get tired of it. Variety is the spice of life, man. Yeah. I m so proud of you for getting another phrase right. Laura is notorious for screwing up phrases. So, by her saying variety is the spice of life, that is monumental. Yeah, Laura, I m clapping for you. I m not a phrase genius. I m only a nutrition genius got it.

11 Planning, phase 3: soups Something else I make in really big batches is soups obviously, using our bone broth, but you can use leftovers throughout the week. So, let s say you made a roasted broccoli earlier in the week, and you have leftovers. You can throw that in the soup. I like to make a soup at the end of the week, so you can use any leftovers that you might have had earlier. Yeah, that s a really good idea. Do you do that in the summer, too? Even when it s hot out? Yeah, I think soup is my specialty when it comes to cooking. So I like to make it all the time because I think it s one of the better things that I make, so I enjoy it. Soup is great. Especially because you get that bone broth in there by making it. So, I think it s a great thing for people to be doing on a weekly basis, definitely. Agreed especially this time of year. I wish I had a soup tonight. Planning, phase 4: lunches It sounds good. So, we ve covered dinner, and we ve got some breakfast ideas going. How about lunch? What do you guys recommend there?

12 Episode 14: Real food meal planning LS: Laura Shoenfeld Kelsey Marksteiner Marie Pearl Bieber Laura Sassy Ligos LS: Hi everyone. Welcome to Episode 14 of the Ancestral RD podcast. I m Lauren Schoenfeld. I m a registered dietician with a master s degree in public health. And I m Kelsey Marksteiner. A registered dietician with a master s in nutrition and functional medicine. LS: So, Kelsey and I are excited to have not one but two guests on our show today, which is kind of amazing, and I m really hoping our internet will be able to handle four RD s on one podcast. It s a little crazy, but I m excited. But first let me take care of the basics. So just to remind you all, if there is a topic you want to hear us cover, remember to send your questions through the online submission form located on our site. And as always, just as a reminder to everyone, what we talk about on this podcast is just general advice and should not be used in place of medical advice from a licensed professional. And today with us we have two dieticians, the first is Laura Sassy Ligos and Marie Pearl Bieber, so their nicknames are Sassy and Pearl. And they are two RD s who also believe in our real food message. Laura is a registered dietician with a bachelor s in nutrition and an MBA. And Marie is a registered dietician with degrees in both nutrition and psychology. In this episode, we are going to talk about meal planning, so not only how to get started with a meal plan but also how to make them stick. So, ladies, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourselves? Hi there. Thanks for having us, guys. LS: Absolutely. Super excited. So I m Sassy, aka Laura. And that s Marie over there and we met working in a hospital together as dieticians/dietary people. And we both actually fell in love with the idea of real food nutrition, because we ended up reading Deep Nutrition by Dr. Kate Shanahan, and no one else in our office believed in it, so we kind of joined forces and realized that we could save the world with one bacon-wrapped avocado at a time. That s great.

13 So I currently live in Albany and love hiking and snowboarding, and actually just got done snowboarding right now. So sorry if I m still out there, my head is still in the mountains. LS: I m so jealous. That sounds so great. It is. Neither of us can sit still, we were actually born two days apart, so we always laugh that we are twins that were just separated at birth. Our moms decided to just pretend we were separate. And I m Marie, over here, aka Pearl, I live in Rochester, New York and I currently work at an eating disorder treatment facility so that s kind of my specialty area. But yeah, like Laura said we were both obsessed with Deep Nutrition by Dr. Kate Shanahan and we got eye rolls all the time. We tried our first batch of sardines in our office and people were looking at us, giving us dirty looks, and it was great. I feel like that s not the best place to break out the sardines, on your first try. We didn t care. We wanted everyone else to see what we were doing and realize how important eating real food is. That s awesome. Yeah, I don t know if I would have had the guts to do that. That s why we have each other. We give each other the guts to do it. You need a partner in crime, definitely. Exactly, and that s what we are. LS: So did you two have any interest in this stuff when you were in school? Or was it that you discovered it when you were working together at the hospital? So I started, like I said originally I have two degrees, and my first degree was in psychology and my second degree was in nutrition so I believe it was my first year of going to school for nutrition that I read the book. So throughout the entire time that I was in school I ve always taken this real food approach to it. But I don t know, not before. It wasn t until I was already going to school for nutrition that I started looking at things this way. LS: And what about you, Laura? I was in my internship and I was like super struggling with my own health and my mom was just diagnosed with Celiac Disease and like I was just super frustrated because I was like I should understand this and I was studying to be a dietician. And a girl in my program actually handed me The Paleo Solution by Rob Wolf and she goes, I think this is going to clarify a lot of things for you. Cause I just kept asking all the professors and whatnot and my preceptors why are we doing this? Why are they getting Ensure, Boost, all the supplements. And they said it was good for them. And I m like, this doesn t make sense! And once I read that I was like okay,

14 well before I put it into practice I should try it myself. And honestly, I can t tell you the health benefits that I achieved just by going Paleo for 30 days. So then I was like okay, I need to learn everything about this ancestral approach, and that s how I got started. LS: Cool. Deep Nutrition wasn t one of my first books, but it was one that helped me out and understand the science behind it all. LS: Yeah. That s funny that one of your classmates gave you Rob s book, it s just. LS: Surprising. Yep. Hard to believe, I mean I guess you never know what people where people come from and in any nutrition program there can be a lot of different ideas about what people think is healthy and I think these days it seems like more and more registered dieticians are at least aware of the information if not kind of on board with it. So I think it s really cool. LS: I think it s super exciting that there was another future RD that was doing it and I think that it really speaks to the fact that it is not just a phase or a fad diet. Everyone is catching onto the fact that this is exactly the way that we should be eating. Yeah. Well, anyway, it sounds like you two are both on board with the Real Food/Paleo/Ancestral type of nutrition recommendations. So, how do you guys use that in your, I m assuming you have a business together, so how do you guys use that in your business? Laura you want to field this one? Well, sorry, I hope you don t hear any background noise, people are yelling. So, yes, we have what we call Team Nutrition Genius, is our business, we originally started apart and then decided that two is better than one. And we know that we are not nutrition geniuses, we are not geniuses, per se, which is kind of like a play on it, and if you ever listen to our podcast we like to make fun of ourselves and joke about ourselves because life is too short and you can t take yourself too seriously. But we take a real food approach in that we really stress to people that whole #jerf mentality: just eat real food. Not just, jerk people, but jerf. But we try to incorporate it into any lecture we re giving or seminar or even one on one consults, we make sure that people understand that you don t have to go Paleo, or you don t have to go ancestral, you don t have to put a label on what you re doing but you do need to eat real food. Stop looking at things that say, stop looking on the front of the label and start looking on the back of the label where the ingredients are because that s really good place for people to start and it s kind of our philosophy. Don t be so hard on yourself. I love that you mention that you don t have to put a label on it, and I think people get really, really wrapped up in that. And it makes life a little bit difficult and a little bit stressful and

15 Marie, you know, you probably can understand this from the psychology background part of it. When people start to say, Oh, I eat Paleo they really try to stick to those very, very specific rules and I think they can get themselves into trouble by doing that, sometimes. Yeah, absolutely, and one of the things that I see a lot with my eating disorder clients, too, is that they start to look at things, like you said, in black and white, and in this real food approach that we take, that s another thing that we try to instill upon our clients which is food isn t all black and white. It s shades of gray. So I think that by calling it Paleo or ancestral or whatever, it gives you that black and white connotation of this is good and this is bad and by doing that you, there s a lot of guilt that goes along if you cheat or you go off of what is supposed to be. So we do try to really encourage people to not be so hard on themselves because you know, you are going to slip up and eat a brownie every once and a while. If that happens, it s not the end of the world, you re not going to die. Is there a better choice that you could have made? Certainly. And so, how do we get you to move, how do we change your environment so that brownie isn t around in the future? How do we you know, kind of make you more prepared, how do you plan your meals ahead of time so that you re not going to be in a situation where you feel the need to go the vending machine. Right. And that is so important, that environmental changing what s around you to affect your behavior. So that s exactly what we are going to talk about today! Meal planning. Which is I think one of the best things people can do to get themselves in that right environment to make good choices. For sure, and I definitely think it is super crucial for anyone who is just starting this approach to eating, because it, when you are kind of unsure of what it is you are supposed to be eating and you re referencing a book all the time to try to check back, by having this plan already in place you know that it s in alignment with what you want to be eating. Absolutely, absolutely, cool. So do you guys want to jump right in and talk about meal planning? And then we ll you know get you guys at the end too, because I know you both see clients and everything, so I want people to be able to find you. So let s talk about the meal plans, and then we ll tell everyone where they can learn more about you at the end. Cool. Marie, do you want me to start? Yes, please do. Okay, so, like Marie was saying, we love talking about meal planning. This is more of a real food approach to it. Because, there are so many meal plans out there that are going to include icky, gross supplements. I won t name any names, but, we get approached by them all the time and I m sure you girls do, too. So, we just want you to realize that you can put together a plan for you and your family and be successful and, like Marie was saying, we always say on our podcast, if you were going to fall down a few stairs, would you fling yourself down the rest of them? No. So, that s the same thing with eating. If you mess up, even if you plan and you mess up, just get right back up and try again. It s not the end of the world.

16 Right, and don t, like Laura was saying, don t fling yourself down the stairs for the rest of the day. Sometimes people might say, oh crap, I don t have any eggs in the house so now I m just going to go eat cereal. And then they are like, oh shoot, I already ate serial, so now I m just going to have this be my cheat day and so, in that situation, you are flinging yourself down the stairs for the rest of the day. Just dust yourself off and recompose yourself for your next meal, not your next day. Yeah, that s huge. Make your next meal your best meal. Absolutely. So what, when talking about meal plans and trying to get started with this, because I know I get questions about this from clients and I get s about this a lot, people don t really know where to start. What s the first thing that you need to do to get yourself on track to make the meal plan. So I think one of the biggest things is cleaning out your pantry and cumpboards and kitchen. Because what happens is that you know you go to write the meal plan and then you go grocery shopping and then in the middle of the week you don t feel like cooking and you still have those cookies and crackers and things that just aren t real food in the cabinets. And so what do you do? You reach for the convenience foods. So, if you can, donate to kids in need. I m not saying that those are the best foods for them, but some food is better than no feed. But just cleaning out and getting a fresh start, and then making sure your whole family is on board. People always say, well I m just going to plan this menu for me and everyone else can just eat that. No, you re not a short order cook. You re only one human being. And if you are the main cook in your house then people need to realize that they are going to eat what you make or they can go out to eat, or they can go hungry. Eventually they are going to eat, that s what happens. Eventually they get hungry, so I think those are my, before you even sit down to try to plan a menu, meal, those are my first two things. Clean out your pantry then get your family or significant other, whoever is with you on board. Even your dog! Any tips for how to get family on board? Because I know that is something that people struggle with a little bit. Well I think one, by not labeling it. Again, like we were talking about before, is super important because the second someone hears I m going to do the Paleo diet or I m going to start eating healthier, the other person, who might not be 100% ready to make that change, is going to pull back because all they hear is healthy and bland. And it s so frustrating that the two of those things, in people s mind, go hand and hand because they really don t have to. So I think that one of the ways you could start is just by saying, having a recipe ready and some pulled pork recipe that is coming out of your crockpot. I mean who is going to complain about that? So. Right, that sounds delicious.

17 So just saying, hey, I think I m going to make this for dinner, instead. Show them what your plan is, as opposed to just saying hey let s eat healthier. Just say this is what we re going to have this week. Yeah, so that s great advice, I love that. So once you ve cleaned out your pantry and everything, you ve got your family on board, how do you actually sit down and start to write out a meal plan? I start with dinners, because I think that s kind of the biggest part of it and because I really like to use my leftovers throughout the week, whether that s at lunch or at breakfast. I know Laura is on the same page as me. We love leftovers for breakfast. All the time. Yeah. So, I start, I usually start there. Make a 7 day menu, and you can do this somewhere easy as Excel. Just by writing the days across the top, and then the meals and snacks down the side. Start with dinner, have whatever protein it is, one to two vegetables and a starch. And then just pick and choose the things that you really like. And I think meal planning always sounds really complicated, but when you really think about it, it s quite simple. And it doesn t have to be complex, you can just pick your protein, your vegetables, your starch. That s really what it comes down to, you know? Right. And there s so many different recipes and food bloggers out there. That the choices that you can potentially have are infinite. There s so much that you can do. So anyone who might say, oh well, my husband is a really picky eater and he s not going to eat this. There s definitely a real food option out there that you can try or there is some sort of Paleo or ancestral version of a traditional recipe that they really liked, and it s not hard to find once you know the right places to search for them. Absolutely. I think Laura and I often recommend a website called Chow Stalker that pulls from a lot of different Paleo blogs and recipes and is a really great resource. So we ll link to that as well. LS: LS: It s especially helpful for people that have specific dietary restrictions. Say you can t have eggs, you can do an advanced search and leave out eggs. So it s, I used it a lot when I am creating meal plans for clients that have really complex needs and you know, it can take a while if someone is low-fib ness [PART II 6:36] and auto-immune paleo or something like that, and then it, that s usually the kind of meal planning I m doing for clients. It s really complicated like that. But for someone, say, that they just want to find a chicken recipe, and they want it to be Paleo, they can just search chicken on this website and it will pull up a bunch of chicken recipes. So it s really helpful, and it s almost like I don t know, the website epicurious, I don t know if anyone has ever used that for recipes, but that s the one that I used to use before I really was doing Paleo. But, it s, a lot of the food is really gourmet, and then you can search for individual

18 ingredients, so whatever you have on hand, you don t have to go out and buy all the ingredients specifically for a recipe. Right, and I think they have a quick option, too, if a lot of recipes that take 30 minutes or less, so unless you are looking for something super complex or gourmet you don t need to go that route, either. That s pretty cool. Yeah. It s awesome. So you know, definitely seek out those resources, guys, because meal planning gets a lot more fun I think, when you have something to pull from. You have different recipes that you are excited about trying. I think a lot of people get stuck in this little bit of a rut where they just cook the same things over and over again, and that may be fine for some people, but Laura and I often talk about variety, and how variety is so important. So that s one side of it. You definitely want to get many different kinds of foods into your diet. And also, you want to keep your taste buds happy. Often times, we get sick of the same food over and over again. So to make it fun for you and your family I think it s a great idea to really expand your taste buds and try different things. LS: I think it s important to remember, to not make things excessively complicated, especially at first. So if you re just getting on board with the whole Paleo/ancestral diet thing, you don t have to make these super gourmet multi-course dinners for it to be enjoyable. It may be just as simple as starting with a roast chicken and some vegetable side dishes and some baked sweet potatoes. And that could be all that you do, and that may be a big change for your family and your own diet and you know sometimes starting with some really basic stuff and then as time goes on, bringing in the variety and the recipes and that kind of thing, you know, it s a little less overwhelming and certainly you don t have to spend as much time cooking. Unless you really like it, if you really like cooking that s great. But if you don t, then you know it s not like you have to have a culinary degree to eat Paleo. Yes, it can be easy! It can be. And getting everyone involved, that would be great. Getting chilestalker.com [PART II 9:27], it sounded weird when I said it, get that pulled up and maybe have the kids pick a meal for a week or have dad pick a meal for the week. I personally like to use a white board and I put it on the fridge and that way my husband knows what s for dinner during the week. And he makes requests now, he says I see that you re going grocery shopping on Sunday. I d really like x, y or z this week. And I think it s a fun way to get people on board when they re not, when you re not labeling it oh I m eating gluten free. Instead be like, hey I m making the meal plan and whatever I get at the store is what we re making and you know make sure they are on board with it so that they can have fun with it. I like the white board idea, that s cool.

19 I think by writing things down, too, and then saving a record of what you do, it can kind of help increase your variety. You were talking about earlier, Kelsey, because you can reference things back or you know, maybe someone starts to feel meal planning is starting to get a little bit monotonous, so you can say oh there s this meal plan that I had from two months ago that was really good. Or I want to take this recipe from that one and that recipe from that one, and put together a new week worth of recipes, but PART IIl Just different combinations. Yeah, absolutely. LS: I like Pinterest for that. Pinterest is great for that kind of stuff, so good. LS: I plan my meals all the time. I m like, okay, I want this for dinner and that, you know. Never looks as perfect as Pinterest but at least it gives you an idea. Right, absolutely. So once you kind of made your first week, and I think that s what you said, that you recommend starting with dinners first, and doing a 7 day menu. Is that correct? Yep. So once you have the dinners planned, what s the next thing that you plan from there? I personally do breakfast. And then I fill in lunch later. Breakfast, to me, if you don t have an egg allergy, and for those of you that do, there s many options, but for those that can have eggs, they are such an easy thing to start with when you re not sure how to eat real food. And one of my favorite, and now Marie s favorite, I make these bacon and egg cups. It tastes like unicorn tears. They are so good and so portable. So for people who, my clients who say they are rushing to work and can t eat breakfast, I just have to eat a granola bar. I m like no! Don t do that. So bacon and egg cups are great. Frittata, we have a smoked salmon one on our blog. That sounds good. And I think the thing she is failing to mention which is the most amazing part about those bacon and egg cups is that they taste good whether they are hot or cold. We also keep calling them, oh we called them bacon and egg cups, so just so it s clear that there is bacon involved. Gotcha, it s perfect then. Exactly. I used to be known as the bacon dietician at my last job, because I would be at the heart unit like is there any bacon today? And they are like you are a dietician, what s wrong with you? And I m like, you re eating low fat disgusting yogurt, so.

20 You ll have to put a link to that, so make sure you guys send us something, because I m sure people would love to check those out. So that s what we do next, because it s pretty easy. You can get two dozen eggs and feed your family breakfast for the week. And then just play around with it. Maybe you do a frittata one week, then some leftovers the next week, or just kind of playing around with it. And what s nice about the egg cups and the frittata is that you can put veggies in them galore. You can hide veggies, which is nice for the kids, and then you can put any type of meat in there. So if you like chicken, you can put chicken. If you like the smoked salmon like we do, smoked salmon is great, beef, pork, you can go on for days. But it s a great way to pack a lot into this delicious meal, and you can eat it hot or cold, and there s no excuse to be eating that granola bar in place of it. Yeah, and that s awesome. And along those lines it sounds like something that you really, do you make those, like ahead of time? Make them on the weekends so you have them ready for the week? Absolutely, yes. Is there any other sort of batch cooking or batch prepping that you recommend people do? Well, like she was saying about the frittata, before, too that can be prepared. I do mine in a, one of those big 8 x 11 glass pans, I don t, baking dish. Yeah, one of those. That thing. One of those glass pyrex that I have. Definitely doing that ahead of time. And talking back, like we were saying about using your dinners for leftovers, excuse me, for meals, reusing the leftovers from meals by cooking two to three times the amount that you actually need for that meal. Then you have the ability to use them again for your other meals. Right, and that s awesome. I m not really an egg person, personally, but I love doing leftovers from dinner for breakfast the next day. Super easy. Or lunch, that as well. And most people probably use their leftovers for lunch. I can t believe you re not an egg person. I could eat eggs just fried eggs every day, every morning for my entire life. I wish I was an egg person, I really do, because it s so easy. I do eat them, I definitely handle them, but I just don t love them. I think I ate them way too much when I first started Paleo and I got sick of them. Make a little variety. So, not every week having eggs because people, exactly, like anything you ll get tired of it. Variety is the spice of life, man. Yeah. I m so proud of you for getting another phrase right. Laura is notorious for screwing up phrases. So, by her saying variety is the spice of life, that is monumental. Yeah, Laura, I m clapping for you. I m not a phrase genius.

21 I m only a nutrition genius, got it. So something else I make in really big batches is soups, and so obviously using our bone broth, but you can use leftovers throughout the week. So let s say you made a roasted broccoli earlier in the week and you have leftovers. You can throw that in the soup. So I like to make a soup at the end of the week so you can use any leftovers that you might have had earlier. Yeah, that s a really good idea. Do you do that in the summer, too? Even when it s hot out? Yeah, I think soup is my specialty when it comes to cooking. So I like to make it all the time because I think it s one of the better things that I make, so I enjoy it. Soup is great. Especially because you get that bone broth in there by making it. So, I think it s a great thing for people to be doing on a weekly basis, definitely. Agreed. Especially this time of year, I wish I had a soup tonight. It sounds good. So when we re talking lunch, so we ve covered dinner and we ve got some breakfast ideas going, how about lunch? What do you guys recommend there? First off: pack your lunch. Plan to pack, because what happens is that, if you say oh well lunch will just be leftovers. And I ll figure it out as I go. Because you re going to end up going to work, end up buying or ordering out, which happens, always happened with all the nurses at my job. It made me so angry. I am like, you re wondering why you re feeling like crap. For lack of better work, because you re eating Chinese from the local Chinese store. And honestly, you ll save money and then you ll perform better. Marie and I always joke that we re obnoxious because we re so energetic that people probably hate us. But honestly it s probably because we eat the way we do. Yeah, that energy is good. I think you re right. People just aren t used to having that kind of energy, so it can be a little off-putting if you re someone who isn t eating well, you don t feel great all the time. But making this lifestyle and diet change makes a huge difference in your energy. So it s worth it. For sure. It s always been really helpful for us. People will look at us sometimes and ask how do you have this much energy? And I m always like, good nutrition! Let us tell you! Perfect advertising for you guys. For lunch, obviously pack. But then, having things on hand so you can pack. So, we like to suggest doing lettuce wraps instead of having the bread on hand. People are always wondering, okay, we can t eat a sandwich now. Well yeah you can, just think about it in a different way. Having canned fish on hand, as well, that s something that you can store in your cabinet for almost an infinite amount of time and make sure you read the label and it s actually good quality. But, you could have that on hand and you can have tuna, tuna salad, you could do salmon or sardines like Marie does. You can scare your coworkers with your sardines.