Podcast Episode 28 – Healthy Food Habits

[00:00:56] Patryce: Can you believe we are coming up on Easter 2021?
[00:01:00] I thought we'd talk about habits. It's springtime. And this is just a good time to think about new beginnings. And with that said about habits and how important developing good habits are to facilitating living a healthy lifestyle. And, we can start with what are habits?
[00:01:25] Shonda: Well, they're things done repeatedly and or regularly. Things that you know are just kind of a part of us. They just become a natural thing for us to do.
[00:01:36] Patryce: Exactly. We get to the point where we don't even remember doing them sometimes. It's just a habit to brush our teeth, hopefully, for example. So, with that said it's important to also have good habits when it comes to what we eat and drink.
[00:01:51] Shonda: Yeah. Some habits and routines I think will be very helpful.
[00:01:58] Very helpful habits, routines, something that becomes routine. And how can we start doing that? Well, we could start with a question. What are some of my biggest challenges or what is my biggest challenge related to eating and drinking healthily right now? So what, what is the biggest challenge in the way of forming good habits and then deciding what some goals are for forming good habits or replacing some bad habits.
[00:02:28] And then just prioritizing, uh, these habits that we want to create or replace by starting with what we consider most important.
[00:02:37] Yeah. I think that's really good. We can make a full list right now, but we can decide to just focus on one thing at a time.
[00:02:44] Patryce: One thing at a time sounds good to me. And I came across this quote by John Dryder, I believe. He said we first make our habits and then our habits make us. In other words, habits can make or break us.
[00:03:00] Shonda: Wow. Yeah. I liked that. I like that.
[00:03:05] Patryce: I thought it was really cool and so true. So maybe we can talk about just, just a few habits that many of us might have ourselves or our audience and talk about what type of habits we could replace these habits with.
[00:03:22] Shonda: Yeah, what's your first idea?
[00:03:25] Patryce: Regularly eating out, maybe we have a habit of doing that. Eating out more than we eat home cooked meals or prepared at home meals. So if we're eating out a lot or eating out regularly, that might be a habit that we want to change and form a better habit of planning meals that we prepare at home, because that way we're able to eat more real foods.
[00:03:55] Shonda: Right. Yeah. The focus is real food for sure. And so, I would say that regularly eating out is something that many do because they have not planned, right? Yeah. So it just becomes a habit because we have not planned.
[00:04:12] Patryce: Exactly on some level, just start, start simple. Decide that I'm not going to eat breakfast out anymore, or I'm not just going to have a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop. Instead, I will plan for maybe oatmeal or smoothie and, and see how that works.
[00:04:30] Shonda: Yeah. Those are really great ideas. Yeah. So what about those who do regularly eat out, but may need to change some habits about what they're eating at home also?
[00:04:43] Patryce: Wow. That's a good point too. Yeah, if you're eating at home and not eating out, that's a good start, but be encouraged that there are so many resources, including our past podcasts for ideas on how to change what it is that you're eating at home to something healthier.
[00:05:05] Shonda: Yeah, because I call it the Standard American diet. So if you're not sure the Standard American diet is mostly heavy on animal foods. Various meats, you know, let's just think about the typical burger. The burger has cheese some people may like bacon on top of the burger and, and usually the bun is a refined bun. It's not a whole wheat type of bread. So we're we're talking refined foods, fatty foods and foods void of vegetables in many cases.
[00:05:40] Patryce: Wow. That's a good point. So the habit of eating at home even, but eating a mainly Standard American diet, it's a good idea to instead look at eating a more plant based diet.
[00:05:54] Shonda: And you know, sometimes the step is, well I'm going to make my own bread. I'm not going to buy that bun filled with preservatives and that's refined. I'm going to make a whole wheat bread to go with that burger if you're still not ready to let go of that. Or I'm gonna make air fries instead of deep-fried fries. Or placing a nicely steamed vegetable on the side with that burger. You know, there's always some place to start.
[00:06:24] Patryce: Yes. I was just thinking, even just going without the bun at all. And a lot of people do that. Yeah.
[00:06:30] Shonda: On some lettuce. Exactly. And I even enjoy a plant-based burger on lettuce. So we've moved from eating out to moving it home. And so now we can incorporate more plant-based foods. More whole foods, more real foods. And it does take some time and some planning, but it will become a habit.
[00:06:53] Patryce: It will, it will. Yeah, that's encouraging. And we do have podcasts in the past to help you out. For example, the G-bomb series is another one to go back to. . Yeah.
[00:07:04] Shonda: Yeah. Yeah. Those are great habits to form around the GBOMBS, right. Get great nutrition in there.
[00:07:13] Patryce: True. And then what about the habit? Many of us have of drinking sugary or caffeinated drinks. I know there are some of these energy drinks are very popular and of course coffee, and I think people still drink soda water, soda drinks. And all of these are loaded with additives or artificial colors, just things that are not so good for you. So instead, make sure you start your day off with water and drinking more water throughout the day instead of these other drinks.
[00:07:54] Shonda: Yeah. And if water is not your favorite, you can always add some lemon to your water. And if that still isn't your favorite, you can add lemon and maybe some Stevia drops and that won't affect your blood sugar. But, yeah, we want to get that sugar out. We don't want to become dependent upon caffeine and all these things to give us energy.
[00:08:18] You know, we want natural energy from our food. We want water to hydrate us. That will give us energy. Like I was just telling you today, I felt tired I just went and drank about eight ounces of water and I felt much better. So, water is such a good thing.
[00:08:35] Patryce: Yeah. Great, great tip.
[00:08:37] Shonda: Yeah. And then we're talking about more things that we could drink in place of these, we could drink. Um, what is it? Sparkling water. Carbonated water. I know my husband loves that and he has a machine to do that. But, um, if you just like that fizziness in whatever you're drinking, you can just fizzy your own water or buy it fizzy.
[00:09:01] So after I've had my morning water and lemon, later on, I love a good smoothie or juice, and those are my favorites and they're hydrating too. But you know, I call them energy drinks. On the website they're called energy drinks because they definitely give me energy. So I invite you all to go and look at that energy drink category that's out there on the website. I'll put a link below the show notes for sure.
[00:09:29] Patryce: Great stuff. Wow.
[00:09:31] Shonda: So, another habit that we were talking about that may be something that you want to consider changing up a bit is cooking with heavy oils, meaning a lot of oils and maybe eating too many unhealthy sauces. Because sauces can be full of fat. They could be full of sugar, they can be full of salt . So you can just have all around not good things. But as far as sauces go, again there's a link below that you can take a look at some of the sauces and dressings that you may want to try out.
[00:10:10] But, I like to cook with the least amount of oils as possible. So, if I'm saut├®ing something, it is so easy to saute with water instead of oil. And oil, really, in that case, you're doing it so your food won't burn, but you can get caramelized onions just as easily with water alone.
[00:10:36] So, by using water instead of oils, you're avoiding added calories. And we're definitely going to talk about oils possibly next week. So, we'll go more in depth with oils, but just a little hint here that, you know, you may want to limit some of the oils that you're using your foods and unhealthy sauces.
[00:10:56] Patryce: I love that you shared that because I just recently had begun doing that more intentionally. And just with the mushrooms, I used to make my mushroom soup and so forth. I've been doing that where I'm just doing it with water and I'm surprised at how wonderful it is.
[00:11:12] And then you can. Be intentional about adding the spices and even if you choose to add oil it's different because you're adding just what you need or want.
[00:11:24] Shonda: Yeah. That's a good idea. And then also many oils you don't want to cook with because it changes the structure of the oils, which make it something that's not good for your body anyway.
[00:11:34] So yeah, like maybe add a little at the end or so. And then you can see exactly how much you're adding to that food. Definitely let's try to no longer deep fry. Air fry that's the way to go.
[00:11:48] Super, super good tip. Yeah. All great stuff, Shonda. And it seems like all these habits that we may already have, and we're looking to replace or change it really boils down to just being more intentional.
[00:12:05] Exactly. So, I invite you all to let us know what habits you will be making soon. If any of these or anything additional, please let us know.
[00:12:17] Patryce: Finally, with the celebration of Easter coming up this Sunday, what a great time to just begin considering what beneficial habits you want to develop. And it's like embracing a new start and embracing hope. Like the resurrection of our savior Jesus Christ which gives us eternal hope. So I hope everyone's encouraged during this Easter season to build better habits for a healthier and happier fulfilled life.
[00:12:50] Sounds great. Happy Easter!