Food Guide
Not really rules, but just some key things that I pay attention to when navigating meals, parties, food shopping, and what my day to day eating looks like. As a person with a history of disordered eating and a notoriously unhealthy relationship with food, these things have helped me heal, learn to love grocery shopping and cooking, and feel great about what I’m eating every day.
Grocery Shopping
The grocery store can be a really hard place to step into when your relationship with food is tense at best. There’s so many options, and when you start thinking about ingredients it can get really stressful trying to decide what to buy that you’ll use up, vs what will sit and rot in that crisper drawer (I’m lookin’ at you Celery).
Having a menu each week, even if it’s only for lunch or a snack that you specifically create and set up for yourself for the week,a menu can be an absolute game changer. That menu can help you budget out your groceries with much more effectiveness, because you won’t just be buying random ingredients you like to have around or that you feel you should have in your fridge. This way, you use those ingredients you buy, and there isn’t a graveyard in your crisper drawer anymore.
I know when you have kids this can seem like a really impossible task, and I’m not saying don’t buy snacks at all- I’m saying plan for them. If you know that your kids will plow through the fruit and won’t touch the pantry until they’re gone- then buy less for the pantry and plan more for the fruit bowl. If you know you won’t eat that kale salad every day, then don’t buy it, buy a veggie you will eat. Having a plan for the ingredients we buy goes a long way in changing your food relationship.
Diversity of proteins is another must for me. I get so bored if I feel like all I’m eating is one or two kinds of protein through the week. This can be challenging, because I have food allergies, but with a little break-away from traditional breakfast foods and tweaking ingredients- it’s very doable and comfortable. When I buy meats for the week, I get a large cut of pork loin roast, half of it stays roast and the other half becomes boneless pork loin chops. I save money this way and provide my family with the protein for 2 different meals. I love a good chuck roast- it’s versatile because you can pot roast it in the crock pot, oven roast it, or grill it and it’s always amazing. I love chicken thighs because of the versatility they present as well- shredded into tacos, slow cooked for soup, grilled up and served with rice or on kabobs. If I buy fish, I’m buying a whole side so that I can divide it into multiple meals. The point is to buy meats that you can do multiple things with, because that versatility doesn’t end once you’ve made one meal with them- often times the leftovers can also be transformed into new meals.
Avoid the Inner Aisles like someone puked in them. I mean it. Unless you’re there to specifically grab a seasoning or a box of pasta, don’t just go wandering down them. They’re full of sidestacks of colorful packages filled with hyper processed ingredients. If you’re ever going to see me say anything like diet-talk, it’s this: Processed Foods are not great for you, and for many people they hinder a health journey. Processed foods are inflammatory foods, and inflammation can manifest as excess water weight, inflamed joints, muscle tissue, headaches, gut bloat, and so many more symptoms. And if you want a real rabbit hole to dive into, look into how the brain responds to bright colors and then think about why a marketing team for a processed food item might want to decorate their packages that way.
I do my best to avoid as much hyper processed foods as possible, which is why so many of my recipes are whole ingredients. It is worth the extra effort and energy to use them vs hyper processed ingredients.
If you’re a visual person like me, the 70/30 rule is a great way for me to divide my plate as I’m putting food onto it. I try and keep 70% of my plate some kind of vegetable assortment and 30% of it protein. If you’re not a visual person, you can always try the one for one concept: something you want, and something you need. The idea being that you eat something you want to eat, but you pair it with something that you know your body needs to eat. This can look like: All I want in my life is a bowl of mac n cheese. So I’m going to eat the mac n cheese, but I’m going to eat some chicken breast with it. Or I really desperately need some chicken nuggets in my life… so I’m going to eat them with some fresh veggies and make it a more nutritious meal. KWIM?
Cooking At Home
Homemade Sauces save me big time as an easy way to add in more vegetables to a meal. In soups, stews, salads, sandwiches or gravies- having some hidden veggies in there cooked down into sauces can be a total game changer, especially if you’re known to be picky about textures or ingredients, but like a good umami flavor profile. I’ve taken to blending onions and garlic once a week into a quart mason jar, and when I cook I use a tablespoon of it to flavor foods and add nutrition in a way that doesn’t bother my extra sensory kids preferences. Simple hacks like that can save you a lot of time in the kitchen as well as help you get in your veggie servings throughout the day. For people with issues digesting fiber, this is also helpful because by liquifying the food into a sauce, it becomes easier to digest.
A big sturdy pot, and a one pot recipe are a match made in heaven. Not only is this a great way to get in a variety of vegetables and some solid flavors, but this is your meal prepping best friend. Meal prepping can seem so daunting because the first thought is always “But I don’t want to clean up that mess,” and I hear you! I don’t want those extra dishes either! So we use One Pot recipes to prevent the kitchen blow up, and still yield you a quality meal you can portion out for multiple days.
For that matter, cooking in large batches is a great rule to apply to the kitchen in general, because if you’re meal prepping you can eat on it for days. If you’re cooking for a large family, it’s great because you know everyone gets enough to eat. And in any case, leftovers can be turned into other things when you cook in large batches, so you can always change it up a little every day if you have a lot around.
Prep Your Veggies as soon as you get home. I know I know I know, you’re exhausted from the store and the last thing you want to do is drag out all the tupperware and rearrange the inside of your fridge to accommodate them. I feel you, I see you, I am you. But listen, I adopted a little routine that makes this so much less stressful and I want to share it with you because I want you to live your best life eating the freshest produce and stop wasting money on those forgotten vegetables in the back of the fridge or those hairy-used-to-be-strawberries you don’t even remember buying.
The night before you grocery shop, take inventory in your fridge and pantry. See what is empty, what needs to be cleaned out, replaced, all the things. Clean out the crisper drawers, the cheese drawer, make sure all the containers you’ll need are ready to go. You too, can be a clean fridge person, against all odds and history. Just take 20 minutes to do this routine the first time, and each week you do it, it takes less time because you’re no longer buying random ingredients anyway, you’re buying what you need to have on hand. Plus, each week your fridge gets a quick wipe down so it’s actually nice in there, and there’s room for you to see what you have without all the clutter and riff raff.
Now when you get home from the store, you have all the clean containers ready to store things: wash your veggies, peel and chop your carrots, cucumbers, onions, salads, and get them ready to live in the fridge for the week. There’s another article on how I prep my veggies and fruits specifically for the week, so make sure you read there how I store certain things and the containers I use.
Prep some freezer meals and be ready for real life. Don’t act like you haven’t had a day where everything fell apart and making dinner felt like a monumental challenge, we’ve all been there. So make your life a little easier and make some things ahead. It doesn’t have to be complicated, it doesn’t even have to be a whole meal, it can just be certain components. Prep the meatballs and sauce and freeze them, or bread the chicken tenders and freeze, make a lasagna or moussaka and freeze it so you have it for a despicable day and you need something you can throw in the oven. Or if you know your day is going to be insane, fix up some crock pot recipes with all the ingredients you’ll need in one freezer bag, and toss them in the crockpot in the morning before you start your day, and you get to come home to dinner already done.
Out and About
Restaurants can be intimidating and challenging in more ways than one might think to a person on a wellness journey. Either you’re tempted to eat all the things, or you feel ashamed for ordering something on a big plate, or worse yet- you deprive yourself of such a fun experience by limiting what you can order, the list goes on and on with the ways we torment ourselves when faced with choosing from a menu at a restaurant. Let me help you relieve some of that anxiety.
Drink some water as soon as you sit down and take some deep breaths. Focus on how cold the water is, if you have a straw or ice, how it feels to drink it, the tinkling of the ice in the glass. Ground yourself to it for a moment if you find yourself really uncomfortable.
Recognize that you are a human, and you deserve food, because your body needs food to live. It’s as simple as that. There are no rules, if you are hungry, you eat.
Order whatever the f*ck you want. I mean it. Read that again and let it sink in. If you want the cheeseburger with bacon and dripping with sauce- you better get that cheeseburger. If you want the noodle bowl the size of your head so you can swan dive into some alfredo- get that bowl. The idea that we cannot enjoy ourselves on a wellness or health or fitness journey and that we must only restrict our food choices to become healthy and beautiful is a disgusting media driven lie. Don’t buy the lies, buy the food that you want, because you deserve to eat great food and have a great time.
Don’t punish yourself if you indulge. Eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full, don’t be afraid to bring home a box of leftovers, and if there aren’t any, good for you babe. Your body loves when you feed it great tasty food.
But what about when I’m at a party and there’s a grazing table? The anxiety this used to give me was intense and would always drive me to binge at the table. I’d find a favorite food and just devour it. I totally understand how difficult it can be. This is what I do to help me.
Ask myself if I’m truly hungry. If I am, I eat. I try to keep my plate as balanced as I can while at a snacking station, and fill up my plate with enough variety so that I can feel like I tried everything. This way my brain is satisfied with the different foods and I don’t get the food scarcity mindset of “I need to eat that now before someone eats it all.” As a person who grew up riding that poverty line, food scarcity was a real problem I faced and definitely still experience some residual anxiety from it. It’s quite a common issue, and one that can easily undermine the most determined individual on a health journey. So checking in with myself and seeing if I actually need to eat is a good first.
Keep water in my hand. I always have water in my hand. Every time I go back to that grazing table, or if I feel my eyes wandering over there constantly when I’m not hungry- I drink my water. Sometimes the issue is an oral fixation, so the act of drinking my water helps respond to the desire to put food in my mouth without me eating when I’m not actually hungry. The same trick can be used with chewing gum.
Get some fresh air. Warm cozy settings have a tendency to make me want to go full teddy bear and hunker down in a soft corner with some snacks. Stepping outside into the fresh air wakes me up a bit and distracts my brain from the food table.
Wait between eating. This is like, waiting between plates mostly, and only really when you have a full sized plate. If I filled up my plate all the way the first time and had a large variety and drank all my water, I’m going to wait a little bit before going for seconds. Not because I don’t trust my stomach, but because it can take upwards of 20 minutes for the stomach to recognize that it’s full. So if you eat quickly, waiting at least 20-30 minutes after ingesting your food will give you a better idea of if you’re truly still hungry or not.