Week 5: Finding foods you love
Welcome to Week 5. We’re halfway there.
We’re halfway through our journey together—exciting! But remember: these 10 weeks are a window into the rest of our lives. It’s an exploration of our best self, an introduction to who we want to become, and a roadmap to keep on the path toward living the lives we want to live.
You can, and should, revisit this journey when you feel you’ve stepped off that path. As complex beings, the elements of our lives are sure to change: externally, internally, things we can and can’t control. So, when you’ve evolved, it’s a signal to evolve your routine – and that starts with re-grounding yourself in the basics. That’s exactly what this framework is for.
Let’s move on to Week 5: finding foods you LOVE!
Step 1: Examining your relationship with food.
Food is so much more than just food: it’s fuel, it’s a cultural celebration, it’s an experience, it’s a comfort, a stressor…
A stressor. If you’ve experienced food as a stressor, it’s likely a result of viewing food as arbitrarily as:
Calories in vs calories out
Good and bad
Healthy and unhealthy
This was my relationship with food for YEARS. And the worst part of viewing food this way is not just that it’s incredibly restrictive, but it also grossly assumes how your body will react to certain foods.
Let me give you an example: when I was strictly eating “healthy” foods, I ate beans daily. Beans make me feel like shit. Literally *poop emoji*. They’re not a “healthy” choice for me, because they fuck with my digestion—but I thought that just came with the terriroty, so I went on adding chickpeas and blackbeans to everything.
TMI? Ok, another example: after I put my body weight and height into a calorie calculator, it concluded that I should only be eating 1,500 calories per day. I was doing daily HIIT training. I was always tired, always cold, super irritable, lost my period; my body was giving me so many loud signals that I was undereating, but hey – Google told me 1,500 was enough! And the lower the calories, the better, right?
BEYOND wrong.
This is such an easy mindset to fall into when we’re starting to venture into new territories with our eating habits. Why? Because it’s the messaging we’re constantly exposed to on social media, health and wellness websites, … pretty much anywhere and everywhere we look to for diet advice.
So if you find yourself eager to adjust—or just learn more about—your relationship with food, remember this: nutrition is an ever-evolving science, and it’s so incredibly individualized. The most important thing to bear in mind is this: tool yourself with the knowledge of your own eating habits and your own responses to balance in your diet.
Listening to your own body will give you everything you need. Now turn off that “What I Eat in a Day” video and let’s dive into this week’s exercise.
Step 2: Experimenting with macronutrient balance and micronutrient variety
This week, I’m going to give you a fool-proof formula to use at every meal that will make macronutrient balance and micronutrient variety easy to explore—but first…
What’s a macronutrient?
Put simply, macronutrients are nutrients our body needs in large quantities to produce the energy necessary to function. These nutrients include proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Macronutrient balance is highly individualized – which is part of the reason why some people respond well to things like low-carb diets, versus others who feel best consuming high-carb diets (like me!)
What’s a micronutrient?
Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals which, compared to macronutrients, are needed on a smaller scale – but still are critically important to your overall health and wellness. Most micronutrients can be unlocked via a variety of colorful foods, with the exception of vitamin D, which we produce through exposure to sunlight (or supplements).
Ok got it, what’s the formula?
To check all of the boxes in our macro- and micronutrient list, I want you to use this formula when you’re making your plate at every meal this week:
Carb + protein + fat + color
Notice that there’s no assigned value to how much of each element you should be consuming. That part is entirely yours to decide – and it should be well aligned with what foods make you feel your best.
A note on macronutrient balance: You may find that your preferred macronutrient balance fluctuates throughout the day. For example: I operate best with a high-carb breakfast and lunch, but a low-carb dinner.
Thus, my typical day of eating may look like…
Breakfast: overnight oats with fruit and peanut butter
Lunch: veggie sandwich
Dinner: protein (e.g. chicken), veggies, avocado
Another note on macronutrient balance: If you’ve ever heard of someone “tracking their macros,” it’s likely because they have a fitness goal that responds best to a specific macronutrient balance. For example, if you’re in a “bulk” (a phase of exercise that requires a higher calorie intake), you may increase your carbohydrate intake to support a higher volume of exercise and a greater intake of calories, while simultaneously increasing your protein intake to support muscle growth.
Thus, my typical day of eating in a bulk may look like…
Breakfast: overnight oats with fruit and peanut butter
Snack #1: protein shake
Lunch: veggie sandwich
Snack #2: greek yogurt with nuts
Dinner: protein (e.g. chicken), veggies, rice, avocado
Step 3: Plan it out
All of this sounds super overwhelming if you’re not attacking it with a plan, which is exactly why I meal prep (shoutout to everyone that follows along on IG on Meal Prep Sunday).
If you hate cooking, there are a few different angles you can attack meal prep from:
Purchase pre-cooked elements of a meal (like a rotisserie chicken or frozen veggies) to cut down prep time. The downside here is that you have less control over how good it tastes, and if there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to turn you off immediately when it comes to meal prep, it’s food that tastes like shit.
Use a meal prep service. I personally love this option, but it’s definitely an investment. There are TONS of meal prep services, especially in big cities like New York – find one with great reviews, that handles and stores food safely, and that preps meals you actually enjoy eating.
If you’re a frugal control freak like me (or just someone that likes to cook), here are my Golden Rules of Meal Prep:
Give yourself options. I prep one breakfast, two lunches, and two dinners. This gives me flexibility through the week to pick what I want to eat, instead of just having one option that sounded good at the beginning of the week, but gets super boring by the end of the week.
Don’t prep meals for every day. Let yourself go out for a meal one or two days a week. You can still hit the formula (Carb + protein + fat + color) with an order out, and it gives you the freedom to go with the flow and say “yes!” to that dinner invitation or office lunch more often.
Add more flavor. Don’t be afraid to ~*spice up your life*~ … marinate that chicken, cook your rice in ½ broth and ½ water, add butter, add olive oil, add SALT.
Don’t cook everything in advance. Some things taste best when they’re freshly prepped, like salmon or potatoes. Do as much prepwork as you can in advance, but if the final product doesn’t reheat well, cook it right before you sit down for your meal.
PREP DESSERT, especially if you have a sweet tooth. Keep something in the house that you can turn to to satisfy a craving. I’m obsessed with these Trader Joe’s mini cones, and I always have extra-dark chocolate nearby.
But before you make a change to your diet, ask yourself this:
Is this change something I can live with forever?
So many of us fall into fad diets to see quick results, and after we see those results, we fall right back into our old eating habits, only to end up where we started. It’s a viscous cycle that becomes cyclical because we aren’t making intentional, long-lasting changes.
The next time you see a new diet pop up that appears to be working for everyone, ask yourself if it’s a diet you could sustain for life. If the answer is no, it’s not for you; but that doesn’t mean you can’t explore elements of it…
Here’s how you can approach a new diet you’re eager to test out:
Follow the diet for a week and critically evaluate how you’re feeling.
If you feel better after participating in the diet, determine which underlying elements of the diet had the positive impact:
Did this diet lead you to eating more whole foods?
Did this diet require more meal prep at home and less eating out?
Did this diet limit your alcohol intake, or challenge you to drink more water?
Instead of continuing on with anything restrictive, incorporate that reaped benefit into your daily food intake. Eat more whole foods, prep more meals at home, or cut back a drink or two when you go out with friends.