The Simplicity of Wellness Podcast
The Simplicity of Wellness podcast is about learning how to bring your body into balance so that you get leaner, stronger and healthier as you age. Each week I'll share thoughts and ideas that help my clients build the self-awareness, self-confidence and self-reliance to lose weight, shed inches, manage muscle mass and master their mind so that they can stop dieting and enjoy living at their healthy weight with optimal wellness.
The Simplicity of Wellness Podcast
Weight Loss Tips: Feel The Difference In 2 Weeks
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What if the secret to effective weight loss isn't about the number on the scale? Join me, Amy White, as we uncover a fresh perspective on redefining health and wellness. Together, we'll navigate the journey beyond traditional weight loss paradigms, embracing a holistic approach that prioritizes feeling better and stabilizing mood and appetite. Forget restrictive diets; instead, learn how to cultivate sustainable habits that honor your body's unique signals and promote long-term well-being.
Explore the profound impact of protein and master meal composition with practical tips designed to enhance your nutrition effortlessly. I dive into strategies that revolve around clean proteins, vibrant vegetables, and nourishing fats, offering guidance on how to structure meals that satisfy hunger and support your health goals. Consider a tantalizing challenge: eliminating grains for two weeks to discover potential improvements in your well-being. This episode is packed with actionable insights that empower you to listen to your body and make informed dietary choices.
Embark on an adventurous journey as I recount a thrilling Rim to Rim hike across the Grand Canyon. Discover how I adapt my wellness principles during this demanding trek, providing a glimpse into maintaining nutrition and health while on the move. Follow my escapade on Instagram and TikTok under "The Simplicity of Wellness," where I share a behind-the-scenes look at my dietary adjustments on this adventure. This episode is not just about learning—it's an invitation to experience wellness in its most engaging and transformative form.
Protein Snack Challenge: Get It Here
Weight Loss Coaching Program: Hangry to Healthy™
Get Your Food Audit Here
What to Eat Guide: Healthy Food List
Schedule Your Free Consult: Lose Weight For The Last Time
Website: The Simplicity of Wellness
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Welcome to the Simplicity of Wellness podcast. I'm your host, board-certified holistic nutritionist and professional life coach, amy White. The purpose of this podcast is to share information that you can use to become leaner, stronger and healthier by losing weight, shedding inches, maintaining muscle and managing your mind, all while living your normal, busy life life in this modern, sugar-filled world. Today, let's talk about weight loss. Let's talk about what does that really mean in the scheme of life. Losing weight or wanting to lose weight doesn't necessarily motivate people. The idea of just getting on the scale and seeing a different number tends not to be very motivating. I hear this from my clients all the time. They're like weight loss really isn't my goal. Yes, I would like to lose weight, but it's not really the goal. The goal is I really want to feel better. I really want my food to stabilize my mood and my appetite. I don't want to be thinking about food all the time. I actually want to live my life. I want to enjoy my life.
Speaker 1:Losing weight isn't about being skinny. If you're losing weight without that perspective of getting healthier, then yeah, you're going to get skinnier. You're going to get more frail. You're probably going to go to the doctors and find out that you have frail bones, that you have osteoporosis. This is not how you age well. This is not how you move through your 50s, your 60s, your 70s, your 80s as an active, healthy woman. Losing weight just to be skinny is not going to help you enjoy your life.
Speaker 1:This is why I talk about the idea of leaner, stronger, healthier. Yes, weight loss can help you feel better. If you're overweight and it's uncomfortable to you your clothes don't fit right you just feel uncomfortable in your body. You have more aches and pains then losing weight is probably a good idea. You will feel better. But how you lose weight is so important. You have to lose weight in a healthy way. So there's certainly many, many, many different ways to lose weight.
Speaker 1:But when I talk about losing weight in a healthy way, so that you do become leaner, stronger and healthier, that means you're going to start prioritizing food that your body actually needs. That would be protein. Your body needs protein. Your body has to have the right amount of protein so that it can function properly and so that you maintain the muscle that you already have and hopefully gain even more muscle, without losing your strength, without losing the integrity of your skeletal system. You don't want weak bones. You don't want to fall down and break something. For older women and older men, when we fall down and we break something, that's really when mortality starts to show itself. That's when we start to decline. The more we can do to stay lean, strong and healthy, especially with those strong bones, the better we're going to age and the longer we're probably going to live.
Speaker 1:Back to this idea of weight loss. If you are comfortable in your body and maybe you're over what some chart says is your healthy weight. But if you're comfortable in your body and you like the way you look and you like the way your clothes fit and you don't have excessive amounts of regular daily aches and pains and you're sleeping well in all the things, all the, you're checking all the boxes, everything looks really good on paper and feels really good in your body, then you're fine. There's no goal, there's no weight that you have to achieve to be that healthy person. If you feel really good and your blood work is good and everything about your life is going the way you want and you can participate in the way that you want, you're great. There's no such thing.
Speaker 1:I used the phrase beach body recently in one of my Instagrams, but there's no such thing as a beach body. There are beach bodies and they're all different and they're all right in their own way. So, as long as you feel great, you are in your beach body, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. It only matters what you think. However, if you aren't able to check all those boxes, if you aren't sleeping the way you'd like to be, however, if you aren't able to check all those boxes, if you aren't sleeping the way you'd like to be sleeping, if you don't have daytime energy the way you want so you can do all the things you need to do, but also all the things you want to do.
Speaker 1:Perhaps you have a lot of excessive aches and pains. So getting up and down, getting in and out of the car, going up the stairs, just isn't comfortable for you. Let's say, you get your blood work back and it doesn't look good. It's actually got you kind of moving toward the wrong end of the spectrum of health. Your clothes are uncomfortable, you have gas, you have bloating, you have heartburn, you're constipated or you have diarrhea Any of these discomforts then yeah, it's probably time to take your health seriously.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you know this, but you're the only one who can fix it. You're the only one. Your doctor is not going to give you a pill that's going to fix it. There is no silver bullet. You actually have to figure out how to live your life in a way that's going to support a healthy body, because the only way you actually lose weight and keep the weight off is by doing the same things consistently. If you do certain things to lose weight and those things feel weird and awkward and they're challenging for you to do, you're not going to be able to do them consistently. You might be able to lose the weight, but then you're going to slide right back into your old habits, the things that feel normal and natural, and you're going to gain that weight right back.
Speaker 1:Healthy weight loss means you're adapting and changing course, correcting some of the things that you do that aren't actually beneficial into things that are beneficial, that do work for your body. It's not about turning your life upside down. It's about shifting, making adjustments so that you are doing your normal things, but you're doing them in a way that's a little bit different. They feel normal, they feel easy, they fit into your life, but now you're doing them in a little bit of a different way so that they're actually benefiting you, making you better rather than making you worse. So to bring all that together when I talk about healthy weight loss, that's what I'm talking about. How do you figure out what your body needs and then figure out how to give that to your body so that just living your normal everyday life supports your healthy weight, your ability to move and be active, the way that you want the sleep that you want to get the daytime energy that you want to have all of that? If I were going to give you five quick tips, five things that I think you could make adjustments to, that would benefit you immediately. You would start seeing change quickly within the next two weeks. This is what I would suggest.
Speaker 1:Number one protein. I know you guys are hearing this everywhere. It's all over the internet. I talk about it all the time. I think it can be frustrating. At some point you start rolling your eyes and you think I know protein. I know, but do you do you know? So protein increase the amount of protein that you're eating every single day.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying you have to get out your kitchen scale and start weighing things, however. That would be a nice small adjustment that you could make. That would probably make things a little clearer. Let's just say, when you start to put a meal together breakfast, lunch, dinner you are going to figure out what it is you're having for protein. That's the number one thing. What's the protein portion of the meal? And then I want you to serve yourself what you would normally serve yourself as your protein portion. And then I want you to add half more, take another half portion beyond what you would consider your normal portion and, quite frankly, if you tend to feel hungry after you're done eating, I want you to add a second portion. So double up on the protein. I suspect that your protein portion is actually pretty small and with that portion plus another half, you're getting close to maybe having enough. But for a lot of women I think you probably are going to need to double your protein. If you did want to pull out your kitchen scale, I would like to see that protein around six ounces. Think about that. Maybe you don't have any idea how much protein you eat and that kitchen scale will help. So it'd be really interesting for you to take your normal portion of whatever that protein is, put it on the scale and see what you've got, and then you know, add more until you get to six ounces. So you can eyeball that and see what does six ounces look like. Maybe you even need more than six ounces, but shoot for six ounces.
Speaker 1:When I talk about protein, I'm talking about clean protein. I'm not talking about grass-fed, necessarily, or from the guy down the street who has the farm I mean, that's all great. What I'm talking about is nothing breaded, nothing swimming in some really fatty sauce. No bun, don't dress your protein up. I want you to have the protein. So that would be a pork chop, a steak, roasted chicken, chicken thighs, shrimp, salmon, white fish, tuna, whatever. But it's just the protein. Yes, go ahead and spice it up. Grab the herbs, spices, make marinades, whatever you want, but when it hits your plate, don't dress it with a bun or with breading. Let it be what it's supposed to be. You should be able to see it and go oh, that's grilled shrimp, oh, I'm having a steak, oh, this is roasted chicken. Sometimes, if it's breaded, you could look at it and go I don't know, is that fish, is that chicken? I don't know what it is. No breading, skip the breading. Okay, so you're going to have. We'll call it undressed protein. Yes, it can have spices and all that kind of stuff, but no breading, no bun, whatever. Okay, so that's number one. You're going to have your protein and you're going to shoot for those six ounces, and you're going to do it three times a day, perhaps two times a day with a small meal, and I'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 1:The next thing you're going to want to do is figure out what are the vegetables you're putting on your plate. Think about crunchy vegetables. That doesn't mean they have to be crunchy on your plate, but those are the vegetables. I want you to think about. Crunchy vegetables asparagus, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cauliflower, salad stuff, all the salad things. The red pepper, the cucumber, the green onions, the tomatoes, the lettuce those are the veggies.
Speaker 1:Green beans, yellow beans if you like them cooked, cook them. I prefer them cooked. If you like them cooked, cook them. I mean, take a whole mix of them and roast them with some olive oil and some salt. Uh, don't overdo the olive oil, just do enough. So they're coated and they're going to be yummy when they come out of the oven. Steam them. If you want to add a little bit of butter to your steamed vegetables. Do that.
Speaker 1:These are the healthy fats. Don't overdo them. Just add a little bit. Salt it up, make it tasty. You've got your plate. You've got your six ounces of protein. Now you have your veggies. You know, don't hold back on the veggies, have lots of veggies. But again, if you are still hungry after you finish your plate, I want you to go back for more protein, not more veggies. So I guess the third thing is those healthy fats. They're good for you, enjoy them. Just don't overdo it.
Speaker 1:If you're eating healthy protein sources, they come with built-in fat. Typically, chicken thighs have a lot of fat. Lots of different cuts of beef or steak have fat. Salmon has fat. There is fat mixed into a lot of these protein sources. Yes, use some olive oil, use some butter, use some avocado oil. Certainly make your food taste delicious. If you want some fat on the side, have some avocado. That's a perfect thing to add to any meal. Have a half an avocado or a quarter of an avocado. To me, that's like my favorite things to add to, say, a breakfast meal. So for breakfast, if I'm having eggs and I'm having some sliced tomato, maybe I'm having some chicken sausages, adding some of that avocado to that plate. It just takes it up a notch and it's very delicious. So think about fats in terms of healthy fats. These are real natural fats. So we have the protein, we have the vegetables and we have the natural fat.
Speaker 1:Now I want to get back to that idea of three or two meals with a mini meal, because the other thing that you want to be aware of is your appetite. You want to feel hungry when it's time to eat. There's nothing worse than getting excited about this big dinner meal that you have going on with your family or your friends, and then maybe you started nibbling before that, because perhaps you were cooking and so you were nibbling. Or maybe you're somewhere and there's hors d'oeuvres or little bowls of nuts around and so you were nibbling. Or maybe you're somewhere and there's hors d'oeuvres or little bowls of nuts around and so you're nibbling. Then you get to the table and you're not actually even hungry anymore. It's so disappointing. You were looking forward to this meal. And then you sit down and you think, oh my gosh, I'm not. I'm not even really that hungry. It's the worst appetite. Stay tuned into your appetite.
Speaker 1:For me, I definitely am hungry for my first meal of the day and that can vary. I always follow my appetite. So if I wake up hungry then I'm going to eat. But if I wake up and I'm not that hungry, I have my real meal, kind of more like between 10 and 11 in the morning. Then I'm going to have a small, what I call a mini meal around 2 or 2.30 in the afternoon and for me that's usually a bowl of cottage cheese with something mixed into it. If I'm doing a savory bowl then it would be some chopped tomatoes, a little green onion, some everything bagel spice. That would be my mini meal and I usually dish out enough of my low-fat cottage cheese so that I get 30 grams of protein at that mini meal. The next meal would be dinner. But because I had that mini meal at 2 or 2 30 in the afternoon, when we are ready to have dinner, which is typically early for us, so usually 5-ish, maybe 5 30 I'm actually hungry for dinner. If I had a big meal at 2 30 to 2 30 in the afternoon, I would not be ready for dinner by 5 or 5 30, so that would interfere with my last meal of the day. It would push be ready for dinner by 5 or 5 30. So that would interfere with my last meal of the day. It would push it out further.
Speaker 1:And actually, quite frankly, we go to bed really early, I am not kidding. Well, look at the time and if it's in the sevens, we are high-fiving, that is awesome. We are like, yes, we made it to the sevens. Typically, I would say we're in bed somewhere between 8 and 9, sometimes earlier. We'll go to bed and then read a little bit and go to sleep. Yeah, if we're in the 7s it's totally in our house anyway Absolutely can be bedtime. That 5 o'clock dinner is kind of perfect. So we have the protein, we have the vegetables, we have the healthy fat. And then we have this idea of tuning into your appetite you want to be hungry for your meals and of tuning into your appetite. You want to be hungry for your meals and you want to feel full and satisfied once you've finished your meal. If you're eating the right things those protein, the veggies you should feel full and satisfied for a good four hours, if not more. That's what you're shooting for Watch your appetite.
Speaker 1:The one big thing that I would ask you to do for the next two weeks is drop the grains. Just stop eating anything that is a grain or made from a grain. That's it Just for two weeks. I want you to see if you feel different and I will tell you. This is probably the single biggest thing that has my clients feeling really good. Really fast, just get rid of the grains and let your body calm down. I'm not suggesting that you never eat grains again. What I'd like you to do is is try it. I want you to see what it feels like without the grains.
Speaker 1:I think this is the thing that will surprise you the most, because you're filling your plate with protein and vegetables. It should be really easy to skip the rice, skip the pasta, skip the starchy vegetables like the potato, and even the butternut squash and things like that. Just stick with the crunchy, salad-y vegetables, the protein, the healthy fats. Skip the bread, skip the grains. Also, you're not snacking right. We're doing three meals a day, or two big meals and a mini meal. That should keep you so full and satisfied that you're not actually thinking about snacking, which is often where those kind of grains come in the most. Skip the grains, tune into your appetite, throw your plate with that protein, shoot for six ounces. Then add in those fun foods, the colorful foods, the vegetables. Put a little bit of that added fat on there. If you need it to kind of make things tasty, certainly use spices.
Speaker 1:The final thing I want you to tune into your body. I want you to think about how things feel having changed up the way that you're eating. Do that for two weeks and then let me know how you feel. You can absolutely reach out to me through email, but you can also click the link in the show notes that says you know, comment, ask me questions there's a link right there at the top of the show notes and send me a message. Thank you for listening. If you find the podcast helpful, if there's information that you're gleaning from these podcasts, please share them with your friends. Please spread the word. It really helps to grow the podcast and I appreciate that this episode is scheduled to drop.
Speaker 1:On Wednesday, october 10th, I will be at the Grand Canyon getting ready to do the Rim to Rim hike. So we are hiking down on the 11th and then hiking back up on the 12th. The 11th we go down I think it's only about seven miles and then we sleep over. So we're camping, then we're climbing up the next day, october 12th is a big day. So that is the hike out of the canyon and it's 14 miles and close to 6,000 feet of climbing. So it is going to be a long, slow day and I'm sure I'll have lots of things to tell you about after that adventure.
Speaker 1:If you follow me on Instagram, I'm the simplicity of wellness. On Instagram, as well as on TikTok, I am planning to do more frequent updates all during next week while we're preparing for the trip and on the trip, if I have signal, I'd like to do some lives. So if you're curious and you want to see what it's like and how it's going and the difference between, say, what I eat most of the time when I'm home and in my own environment versus what I eat some of the time when we're off somewhere else doing other things where we don't have access to our, most of the time, foods, you'll probably get a good idea of what that's like by tuning in and following us next week on Instagram or TikTok. Okay, I will be back in the next episode.
Speaker 1:Do you like the idea of eating for the body you want? Is there a piece of you that's eager to in the next episode and work with your body so that you can enjoy the body comfort and confidence you deserve, eating foods you love. Click the free consult link in the show notes. Let's talk about where you are, what you want and how you can get there.
