Latest / Doctor Turned Health Coach / Stop Food Chaos: A Simple Meal Plan That Works

Transcript

Stop Food Chaos: A Simple Meal Plan That Works · Doctor Turned Health Coach

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Doctor Turned Health Coach podcast. My name is Dr. Ashuri.
• 0:04
  I'm a family medicine doctor turned health coach, here to give you guys the
• 0:09
  expertise of a physician with the support of a health coach to help you age
• 0:16
  healthily and, most important,
• 0:19
  prevent all the common chronic diseases that we see in the U.S.
• 0:24
  Now, meal planning is an important part of this entire journey.
• 0:30
  And the reason is, in our society, food is very abundant. You can go anywhere,
• 0:35
  even a convenience store, hotel, lobby, anywhere.
• 0:40
  You can go to a sports game and there's going to be something available that
• 0:44
  resembles food, though it often doesn't qualify as food because it doesn't have enough nutrient.
• 0:50
  It only has a lot of calories. so we
• 0:53
  food plan we plan our meals so
• 0:57
  that number one we can avoid temptation number two
• 1:01
  so that we don't go hungry for a long time which often drives
• 1:04
  us to want to eat something maybe less helpful for us and number three so that
• 1:10
  we can sort of manage the portions and the quality of the food so that our body
• 1:18
  can do what it's what it does really well which is healing itself that's one
• 1:21
  of the most important functions of the human body,
• 1:24
  its ability to heal and restore.
• 1:27
  And by giving it the right nutrition, we allow it to do that.
• 1:30
  So meal planning comes in many different ways.
• 1:35
  Oftentimes, I start my health coaching clients with just one meal.
• 1:40
  So one single meal, we try to master that.
• 1:44
  Sometimes we'll start with one day a week. So we'll say, look,
• 1:47
  let's have all of your Monday foods done.
• 1:51
  So we'll have your oatmeal for breakfast or if you like your eggs and sausage
• 1:55
  for breakfast, then we'll have your lunch done. So it might be steamed vegetables
• 1:59
  or it could be like a curry.
• 2:01
  And then we'll have your dinner, which could be a soup with a salad or it could be a light sandwich.
• 2:07
  And so we have that Monday done, which is great because then you know that every
• 2:12
  Monday you'll have your meals planned at least the other days of the week.
• 2:16
  It's okay, you'll figure it out.
• 2:18
  That's a good place to start because if you start meal planning very quickly,
• 2:24
  kind of like take it all at once, it's very overwhelming.
• 2:28
  The purpose of meal planning is to get you to also see your food in a different light.
• 2:34
  Meaning food is not something that comes in front of me and then I go for it.
• 2:40
  Food is something that I think about purposefully, I plan, and it's something
• 2:45
  that I think about in terms of my own health,
• 2:49
  Not just taste, not just flavor, not just color, not just accessibility or,
• 2:54
  yeah, the fun that we have with it with our friends, but a little bit more,
• 2:59
  a little bit more about my own health.
• 3:02
  What is this going to mean to
• 3:04
  me? So for me, for example, I need to always have a healthy bread at home,
• 3:08
  some sort of a spread, usually hummus, and some sort of a grain that I can turn
• 3:15
  into some sort of like oatmeal or some sort.
• 3:19
  If I have those things, I'm pretty good. Like, at least I know that,
• 3:22
  okay, I can always make a good, healthy meal pretty quickly.
• 3:26
  Last night I got home from a long trip. It was a great trip.
• 3:31
  And we just needed to make something. Fortunately, I had some quinoa.
• 3:34
  So I made some quinoa with frozen cilantro that I had in the freezer.
• 3:39
  And then we had a can of beans. So I made like a tomato bean paste of some sort.
• 3:44
  That was going to be part of the bowl that I was going to make.
• 3:47
  Like I put in some steamed frozen broccoli and it was great.
• 3:52
  That was a really, really good dish overall.
• 3:54
  And that's a great way to throw something together. But it is meal planning, right?
• 3:59
  There was something there in the house that was available that I knew I could
• 4:03
  turn into something else.
• 4:04
  Enough spices, enough canned stuff to make it a successful meal plan.
• 4:10
  So the purpose of meal planning is
• 4:13
  so that you feel more in control
• 4:16
  of what you eat as opposed to feeling controlled
• 4:21
  by every food option that's available
• 4:23
  to you because that guys over time can become so overwhelming when you let the
• 4:28
  world dictate what you should like what you should eat when you should eat it
• 4:33
  actually is not fun a lot of studies that show that when a human being is given
• 4:40
  too many options, they actually shut down.
• 4:42
  They actually don't like it. They actually develop stress response.
• 4:45
  But when you're given maybe two or three options, it's good.
• 4:49
  And some people actually don't like that at all. They just want one option.
• 4:52
  Even three options, it creates too much of a stress response.
• 4:57
  And once they get the food, once they pick that food item in those three choices,
• 5:02
  they still don't enjoy it.
• 5:04
  So this was a little bit about the purpose of meal planning.
• 5:07
  In the next episode, I'm going to talk about how to successfully start a meal plan.
• 5:13
  So remember, we meal plan so that we can have a little bit of control over what
• 5:18
  we eat so that we can avoid going hungry and so that we can actually get the
• 5:25
  right nutrients in our body,
• 5:26
  both the portion amount and the right nutrient to calorie ratio.
• 5:31
  So I hope this is of value to you guys.
• 5:34
  Check out the show descriptions if you want to check out the information on
• 5:38
  my website and thank you for listening.