Little Nutrition Changes Mean Big Changes In Your Health

Little Nutrition Changes Mean Big Changes In Your Health

Little Nutrition Changes Mean Big Changes In Your Health

It’s amazing how many little changes can add up to big results. This gets overlooked so often due to the culture of dieting we live in. The idea of going all-in gets the attention when making a few little changes over time can add up to much stronger long-term results.

The main focus of the What’s Your Body Telling You? Workshop is learning to listen to what your body is telling you through food. From there it’s taking steps to make those little changes.

You don’t need to do a fancy diet like Keto, an intense program like 75 Hard, or to get drastic like eliminating all of the sugar for the rest of your life. Instead of overhauling your nutrition in a way that might be overwhelming or not work well with your body, take it one small step at a time.

One change a week, month, or quarter.

Why Start Small When You’re Working on Your Own

There are so many factors that go into your nutrition, especially when you are working on your own.

First things first there’s your lifestyle. Going with the example of eliminating sugar completely. If you are someone who is used to eating out 2-3 times a week, you will now have to find ways to replace that meal. If you work in an office environment where there are often treats and food brought in, you have to take that into consideration when making the changes.

Then there’s the factor of other people you live with. Just because you are making changes to your nutrition does not mean they are too. Sure, it would be easy not to buy ANY junk food but are they going to be happy with that decision?

From there we run into the availability of foods like fruits, vegetables, etc. If you are jumping into a diet like Whole30, it could be hard to find some of those foods, especially if they are seasonal. While you may be going in with good intentions, it could quickly become hard to truly replace everything you need to.

Finally, if you don’t understand how your body reacts to certain foods, overhauling your diet could backfire in a number of ways.

Making small changes is:

  • More realistic to your surroundings & less overwhelming.
  • Takes into account those in your household.
  • Ensures you have access to the fruits and vegetables needed.
  • Helps you get a better understanding of What Your Body Is Trying To Tell You

How To Make Small Changes to Your Nutrition

To start making changes, start small with one thing. If you have been tracking food in a food journal take a look in there or a look at your overall meals. Inside of it what is one piece of a meal you would like to see change?

For example, maybe you eat two bags of chips with your sandwich every single day at lunch. What if you swapped it out for a bag of steamed vegetables? Not only will vegetables fill you up much longer than chips will but vegetables are full of vitamins and minerals. If you aren’t a fan of steamed vegetables, grab some carrots and hummus or guacamole and give it a try.

Try it for a week and see what happens.

Instead of filling your body with empty carbs, like the chips, which don’t have any nutrient value, you are filling your body with something that is very nutrient-dense. A small change can contribute so much in the long run.

Maybe chips aren’t a problem or you want to try something like removing pop (or soda). An easy swap for pop is sparkling water. There aren’t as many additives in (most) sparking waters so you are able to get the fizzy drink without all the extra junk. Try different ones and see what you like.

Over time that fizzy water might change into just plain water. You never know!

Another easy swap to make is fruity yogurts. It’s often deemed a healthy option, however, yogurts tend to be loaded with sugar. Instead of buying yogurt with fruit in it already, start with plain yogurt and add honey and your own fruit.

Honey will help your immune system and the lack of extra sugar will help your overall health.

Last but not least, a very common swap is to replace ground beef with ground turkey when you are cooking. It’s a simple swap but can make a big difference with the amount of fat and grease.

Be Prepared

The only way to see success in making changes with your nutrition is to go into it prepared. It’s going to be easy to fall back on old habits until you have established a new habit.

If you caught our New Year’s resolution conversation in podcast episode 19, it can take 66 days on average to build a new habit.

Every week, be prepared. Get in the habit of prepping it all ahead of time.

When you get your groceries as you’re unloading them, wash your fruits and vegetables. It’s a super stupid, simple step that you aren’t even going to realize is going to make a difference.

Don’t be afraid of long-term change but don’t get overwhelmed when someone tells you to overhaul your entire pantry. Little steps can add up to big results.

What’s Your Body Telling You Workshop

Knowing how your body reacts to food is a key component of making changes to your nutrition. To get a better understanding of your body, I invite you to work through my self-paced workshop What’s Your Body Telling You? to get a better understanding of your relationship with food. As a blog reader and podcast listener, you can save $5 with the code PODCAST.

What changes are you making to your nutrition this month?

ABOUT ME

Hey There, I’m Kristin! I coach women to make small changes in their daily nutrition to become the best version of themselves.

How To Make Small Nutrition Changes

Little Nutrition Changes Mean Big Changes In Your Health

Holidays, Food & Mood – Episode 17

Holidays, Food & Mood – Episode 17

On Sunday morning, over on Instagram, I hosted a morning coffee chat to talk about Holidays, Food & Mood. It was a good chance to chat about some last-minute reminders heading into the holiday season but also a chance to interact a little bit more one on one with all of you. Instead of having a completely separate podcast this week, I decided to share the audio from the live. In case you missed it, you can stream it here.

This week I’ve had some great conversations in DMs with different people about how easy it is to ignore the simple things going on with our bodies. It’s easy to chalk stress up to the time of the year. Brain fog can be attributed to the to-do list that is a mile long.

However, this time of the year there are ways around pushing your body and brain to the limit. Everything going on around you isn’t perfect but by using food that your body reacts the best to, you can put yourself in a better position going through the holiday season.

How To Control Your Mood With Food

Find The Right Balance: This time of the year, the treats are everywhere and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, when we ONLY indulge in treats, it’s easy for our body to want to shut down. When we eat too much processed sugars, the good nutrients can’t get to where they need to go, leaving our brains to try and functino on what it has. This can lead to an increase in anxiety and brain fog.

By adding balance to your day with whole foods, you can indulge in the sweet treats while still helping your body function at it’s best.

Watch Out For Too Many Inflammatory Foods: Piggybacking off the balance note, watch out for too much of these inflammatory foods: corn, wheat, soy, dairy & egg. All of these can lead to an inflamed gut which can lead to your body not quite functioning properly.

Instead of Focusing On Weight Loss… Go Back To Basics: All of my clients have heard this one recently. Focus on what you can control and stick to the basics. Make sure you are getting a solid breakfast and including whole foods with each meal.

Keep Moving Your Body: As hard as it might seem right now, continuing through your morning routine or workout routine will keep your body on a schedule.

Focus on What You Can Control: Listen to what your body’s telling you. If your mood is starting to swing and you are struggling, take a step back, go back to basics.

What were your biggest takeaways?

 

ABOUT ME

Hey There, I’m Kristin! I coach women to make small changes in their daily nutrition to become the best version of themselves.

What is Your Body Trying To Tell You?

Little Nutrition Changes Mean Big Changes In Your Health

What Is Your Body Trying To Tell You? – Episode 16

What Is Your Body Trying To Tell You? – Episode 16
Some things with our body have become so normal to us that we don’t even realize our body is trying to tell us something is not right.

If your body is screaming at you, in the form of anxiety, brain fog, acne, exhaustion, bloating, etc… it might be time to stake a step back and listen.

Believe it or not, most of these problems can be solved with changes to diet or health habits. Today on Be Your Best Self Health Chats we’re going to dig into what might be going on and how to tell if your body is trying to tell you something.

Food Affects Your Mood

A lot of what we eat is because we think our body is craving something, such as sugar. It’s great at the moment you consume it, but 30 minutes later we wind up more exhausted than we were to start with.

Your Immune System is Affected By The Foods You’re Putting In Your Body

90% of your immune system is in your gut. This is where your food goes once you eat it. If your gut is inflamed when your body is attacked by a virus, etc. your immune system can’t fight it off because of all of the other things it’s dealing with such as processed foods

Anxiety & Focus

What we eat affects our brain. Our gut is often referred to as our second brain, one of the big reasons I love gut health is because of how much it can affect things like anxiety and our ability to focus. It’s amazing what happens with a clear gut.

If your anxiety is higher than normal, and you can’t pinpoint why? Take a look at what you’ve been eating for the last few days. Is it a situation such as coming off thanksgiving where you are eating more sugars and salt than normal?

In a similar situation if you’re struggling to focus it could also be due to inflammatory foods and your gut. Instead of being able to focus your body has to work on processing the foods that you are putting into it.

How Do You Learn About Your Body?

Step 1: Take a mental inventory of what you’ve eaten in the last few days.
Step 2: Start a food journal, start paying attention to your mood swings, energy levels, etc.
Step 3: Look for the trends. If you need help processing them, shoot me an email (kristin@bestselfhealthcoaching.com) and I would love to help you sort through them.

How To Make Adjustments For Your Health

To tackle the nutrition on your own, start with looking for little changes such as replacing a bag of chips with a cup of vegetables. Little changes will add up to big results.

Five inflammatory foods to watch out for:

  • Wheat
  • Soy
  • Corn
  • Eggs
  • Dairy

Not all five of them are bad, but it’s possible that your body doesn’t like them.

Start moving your body more. You don’t have to go do high-intensity workouts, but take some time each day to move your body a little bit… whether it’s a walk, a stretch through yoga, or lifting weights.

Watch your sleep. When your sleep is off, you tend to reach for more junk food, when you reach for more junk food you tend to move less.

Give your body some time to heal. It won’t heal overnight but start with little changes. You will notice improvements on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis with this one.

ABOUT ME

Hey There, I’m Kristin! I coach women to make small changes in their daily nutrition to become the best version of themselves.

What is Your Body Trying To Tell You?

Little Nutrition Changes Mean Big Changes In Your Health

Is Calorie Tracking Still Okay?

Is Calorie Tracking Still Okay?
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Author:

If you missed our post two weeks ago, we are digging into tracking your food. It can often be overwhelming and hard to figure out where to start. As I mentioned, I think food journaling is the perfect place to start for someone who is brand new to their food and really wants to get a feel for how food interacts with their body. 

Moving from there, the next detailed step would be counting calories. Let’s dig into it. 

Why Should You Track Calories? 

At the end of the day body weight is determined by calories in, calories out. Yes, I know that sounds way too easy. Truth be told it is not really that easy because HEALTH really is a lot more than that. 

Calories are here to tell you how much you eat vs. how much you are burning in energy each day. I often look at it as a step up from food journaling in terms of data. Not only are you tracking what you are eating, but you are starting to track how much you are eating. 

It’s a great starting point for someone looking to lose weight and control their portion sizes. 

Calories Sometimes Get A Bad Reputation

Calorie tracking is something that is often demonized for a variety of reasons. 

  1. Many people rely on an app to give them a target number of calories to eat per day (that sometimes is too low and dangerous).
  2. It doesn’t necessarily help you eat healthier (just less).
  3. You don’t learn much about how your body reacts to food. 

For what it’s worth, I agree that all of these are reasons to try something OTHER than tracking calories. However, I spent a better part of 6 years tracking calories and I have that tracking to credit as reasons I was able to overhaul what I ate. 

Lessons were learned and while right now I have no intention of going back to tracking calories (I like more data), I do believe that despite its bad reputation calorie tracking is not bad if done correctly. 

How Do I Calculate My Calorie Intake

This is your reminder that no adult can be healthy while eating 1200 calories a day. A toddler should be eating about 1200 calories a day. Many will tell you that 1200-1400 calories a day is the best way to lose weight, however it is not the HEALTHY or SUSTAINABLE way to lose weight. 

Now that we’ve established that, there is also no one-size-fits-all way to say how many calories a day you should eat. [Sorry]. 

Many apps will help you calculate your calories based on your goals. Please know, these are to be taken with a grain of salt. 

If the app suggests that a female goes below 1600 calories or a male goes below 1800 calories, chances are you need to re-evaluate your goals. It is healthier, and more sustainable to adjust from 2-3 pounds weight loss a week to 1 pound weight loss a week if it means properly feeding your body. 

Another factor may be exercise.  You want to make sure to account for that in your calorie intake. Do not hesitate to reach out to a health or nutrition coach if you have questions on how to figure out how much you should be eating. 

Where Do I Track My Calories?

If you look in any app store there are hundreds of apps and websites to help you track your calories. A few of the more popular ones are MyFitnessPal, LoseIt and FitBit

It really comes down to what you like and how detailed you want to get. Some apps will be loaded with food options, barcode scanners and extra data whereas other apps will be more straightforward and just give you your calories for the day. 

I would suggest downloading a couple of them and finding one that works best for you. 

Have you ever tracked your calories? What was your experience? 

ABOUT ME

Hey There, I’m Kristin! I have a strong passion for helping women make small changes in their everyday lives that add up to the healthy life they desire. Whether it’s a mom looking to find her confidence or a family who needs help making changes in the kitchen I believe every health goal can be accomplished.

Is Calorie Tracking Still Okay

Little Nutrition Changes Mean Big Changes In Your Health

How To Use A Food Journal

How To Use A Food Journal
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So you want to start tracking your food, but are overwhelmed and don’t know where to start? One person on Instagram says to use macros but your friend on Facebook loves counting calories. Then there is the idea of a food journal and now you’re just not ready to do anything at all. 

Does that sound about right? 

In the days of social media it’s easy to see trends go in one direction or the other. Between macro diets, calorie counting and food journaling it is easy to get confused on what might be best for you.

All three of these options have one thing in common:  you track what you eat. Among the three there can be overlap, and various ways of eating can fit into each of them differently. 

It’s important to keep in mind that what works for one person, might not work for another. So it’s always a good idea to understand the benefits of each different type of tracking and how they will play into your overall goals. 

Over the next three weeks we are going to dig into food journaling, calorie counting and macro tracking. We will look at the pros and cons of each and how they may help you with your goals. 

We’re going to start simple with Food Journaling. 

What Is Food Journaling? 

The good news is, food journaling is as simple as it sounds.  It is writing down the different types of food you eat throughout the day. 

However, to really use it as a tool you keep track of more than just exactly what you eat. 

Food journaling helps you keep track of how your body reacts to the different foods you eat, such as how they make you feel. It’s a great way of tracking for someone who is looking to understand their body’s relationship with food or who has a history of crash-course diets. 

As a coach, I think it’s a great starting tool for someone who is new to nutrition because it is simple and only requires a piece of paper. 

The beauty of food journaling is that you can track as little or as much information as you like. 

For example if you are looking to keep track of your portion sizes, you can write them out in your journal. If you are just looking to get a better idea of what you eat throughout the day you can just write the name of the food. 

Food journaling isn’t meant to help hold you accountable to a number. This is why I like it for someone who is new to tracking. Instead of having to pay attention to all of the numbers an app might give you, it’s a way to start just looking at what you’re eating and nothing else. 

So… What do I Write? 

As I mentioned above, food journaling is for you to write as little or as much as you like about each meal. 

My basic template is: 

  • What did you eat?
  • What time did you eat?
  • How did your body feel 30 minutes after you ate it? 

These three questions will help you learn more about your body and the way it reacts to certain food. 

Some other questions that you could answer: 

Food Journal Ideas: 

  • How was the food eaten (on a plate? From the container? Standing in the kitchen?)?
  • How did you feel 30 minutes before the meal/snack?
  • What was your mood prior to eating?
  • Did the food satisfy your hunger? 
  • Did you enjoy the food? 
  • How long did it take to eat the food? 

Have you ever taken inventory of your eating habits with a food journal? What was your experience?

ABOUT ME

Hey There, I’m Kristin! I have a strong passion for helping women make small changes in their everyday lives that add up to the healthy life they desire. Whether it’s a mom looking to find her confidence or a family who needs help making changes in the kitchen I believe every health goal can be accomplished.

How To Food Journal

Introducing The Gut Check – An Introduction To Gut Health

Introducing The Gut Check – An Introduction To Gut Health

Introducing The Gut Check – An Introduction To Gut Health
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When your gut isn’t happy, your body isn’t happy. Gut health is one of the most overlooked pieces of our health. All of the crash diets and medicine in the world can’t fix an inflamed gut. 

We’ve experienced it first hand in our house. The difference between an inflamed gut and a healthy gut is night and day. 

Gut health is a newer trend out there. Research for gut health really started between 2008 and 2012. At the time gluten-free was becoming a popular weight loss trend, but it also began to open the eyes of researchers as they saw what was happening to those who were healing from diseases they didn’t know they had.  

What did they discover about gut health?

  • 70% Of The Immune System Is In Your Gut
  • 95% Of Serotonin Is Made In Your Gut
  • 90% Of American’s Have Gut Issues

In 2020 we became more focused than ever on our health. A large piece of our health that continues to come up time and time again is gut health and it’s ability to help with our immune systems. 

The ability to heal your body from many ongoing problems may begin in your gut. 

Where Do You Start Learning About Your Gut Health? 

This is where the exciting news comes in. I’m officially launching my new course called The Gut Check:, An Introduction to Gut Health.”

Through The Gut Check we will talk more about what gut health means, how it affects your day-to-day life and how to start the healing process.

We Will Break Down The Basics of Gut Health

When your gut isn’t happy, your body isn’t happy. We will talk about what this means and what the signs are of poor gut health. 

You Will Gain The Knowledge Of What Questions To Ask

The biggest struggle with gut health is that many of the symptoms don’t take place in our gut. Rashes, acne, bloating, anxiety, brain fog, the list goes on.  By learning the basics of gut health, you will be armed with knowing where to start when asking questions in getting to the root of your own health problems. 

I Will Share My Framework To Heal Your Gut. 

The healing process is different for every single person. I will introduce you to my method explicitly created to heal your gut. This framework can help you come up with your individualized plan for taking your gut health into your own hands. 

Who Is This Course For? 

The Gut Check is for anyone who is interested in learning more about their gut and their own body. The two are one in the same. 

How Long Is It?

Great news! The Gut Check is five modules with videos no longer than 5 minutes in each module. There is an assignment that comes with each module to help you learn more about your body. 

It is self-paced so you can go through it as quickly or as slowly as you want. 

You will have lifetime access to The Gut Check so you can go back as often as you would like. You will also receive any updates made to the course in the future right in your course portal. 

How Do I Purchase It?

You can purchase The Gut Check by clicking on the image below!

The Gut Check - Introduction To Gut Health

ABOUT ME

Hey There, I’m Kristin! I have a strong passion for helping women make small changes in their everyday lives that add up to the healthy life they desire. Whether it’s a mom looking to find her confidence or a family who needs help making changes in the kitchen I believe every health goal can be accomplished.

Why Is Gut Health Important