I won't let my body out out well everything that I'm made do. Won't spend my life trying to change. I'm learning to love who I am. I get I'm strong, I feel free, I know who every part of me. It's beautiful and then will always out way if you feel it. With joys in the air, she's love to the mood. I am there. Let's say good day and did you and die out? Happy Saturday. Outweigh fam Amy here and back for a second week with Michelle Pellapitch.
She is doing a residency here on out Wagh with me and Lisa's on a little bit of a break, so bringing in another registered dietitian as our experts and thankful to have Michelle join us for four weeks total. And she's even been on the podcast before, so you
can go back and listen to or episodes. And last Saturday you're on and we were talking about diet culture versus intuitive eating, and today we're going to dive in a little bit more into intuitive eating and balancing your needs and meal planning and Michelle, I'm gonna hand you the mic and um, you lead us in this conversation. Yeah, so this is something that comes up often in my work with clients. Something that I do in my personal
life is balance planning and intuitive eating. And you know, like we were talking about last time, there's this myth that intuitive eating is kind of doing whatever you want all the time, and that is hard practically and logistically because everyone's got a job in the schedule and we're busy, and so some amount of planning and meal prepping actually can be so helpful for just living an easier life, being set up for your week or even the next few days. But I think it's something that a lot
of people don't see as coexisting. So I like to tach, I in coach clients on how to prep how to be prepared and ready and like really be efficient with your time in terms of cooking and eating while still
having the flexibility so that it's not feeling like a diet. Okay, So I have busy days, and I know when I don't plan ahead, I do have this weird thing of like not wanting to fall back into older patterns, like, oh, I feel like if I'm planning too much, then I am on some sort of a plan, and I don't want to be on a plan, Like I just want to be breezy. But then I get stuck at work and I'm hungry, and it's fine. If they're all that there is as a cookie and I end up eating
the cookie, it's fine. I'm not gonna it. Used to be where if I had a cookie would derail my entire day and I would just eat cookies all day. But now I'm in a place where I have that cookie. Fine, it gave my body a little something that it needed, but it's not ideally what I would want to my body if I had planned ahead. So I think there is this there's a space for this conversation right now of like, you're not doing anything wrong by meal prepping.
It can still fit into the intuitive eating lifestyle. So you're speaking to me right now, what do I need to be doing because I'm sort of a rebel. I'm sort of a rebel where I'm like, I still don't want to prep too much, and I need to write I I get it. A lot of it is a matter of redefining just that phrase meal prep because I think it conjures this image of like seven tupperwares of steamed broccoli and chicken, and like, no, that's not what
we're talking about. I will say I have I have a meal prepped like chicken that I have blended in like a vitamin, because I read that my body would digest the chicken better if it was blended. Okay, so not too, don't. I don't. I don't like doing anything
that like. People might get any ideas on here for that, but I'm just saying I when you say meal prep, and that's probably maybe why I rebel against it so much, is because yes, I ordered all these special tupperware things and I had them laid out and I was portioning out blended chicken. So that is now what we're talking about. Yeah, it can be way more fun than that. Part of it can be simply changing the timing and the day
and just the routine of it. So if the idea of spending like three hours on a Sunday afternoon in the kitchen sounds like torture, then just don't do it.
Then maybe you have a low key Tuesday morning and that's when you do a little bit of prep, and then you also have a low key Sunday afternoon or Friday afternoon, and you do a little bit of prep then, and you can do days at a time rather than the whole week, and just that reframe can be enough where it doesn't feel so overwhelming that you're like diving into diet mode. So that's one more mindset shift, I think.
And then practically with the food, what's important and what's helpful is to think of ways you can still maintain variety while being prepared. So if I'm making pass staff, I will cook the pasta and put it in the tupperware plane, and then I have let's say, like a marinara sauce as well as a salad dressing. In one day, I maybe grab some frozen meatballs from the freezer and the marinara sauce and some cheese, and I do like, uh,
spaghetti and meatballs. And then the next day for lunch, I take some of the pasta and add a whole bunch of salad ingredients plus my salad dressing, and it's a pasta salad. And so you still have like the bulk of the meal prepared. Because maybe cooking pasta is the hardest task, it's not that time consuming. But let's say like you've prepared one big component of a meal and you can use it in different ways. Yeah, I
would say it can be time consuming. So it's just the thing that takes like, you know, at least fifteen minutes from start to finish. And then you've got to make sure you get the pasta just right, which sometimes is difficult itself. Like an example might be grilling chicken for the week or something, but keeping the chicken like grilled with some nice seasoning and you could either throw it on salad, you could throw it in the pasta.
You could use the chicken different ways instead of just the chicken the veggie the way we used to portion it in those those meal prepper like may if grilling is something you enjoy doing that that can be a little bit time consuming, then grill it all up for
the family. We'll see. I think family because I've got husbands, two kids, and sometimes that's if my husband's grilling on Sunday, I'll get a bunch of meat and I'm like, grill all of this up and then we eat it differently throughout the week, right right, And then with repurposing, you could even if you had the time and brain space, like let's say you have a whole package of chicken, you could do two separate seasoning blends, like maybe one is a lemon pepper and the other one's a text
max and then that makes it totally different. But even if you keep it kind of simple and versatile, thinking of those flavor profiles is another way to repurpose in a creative way. So rather than Okay, I'm putting my chicken on a salad one day and in a wrap the next day, like I'm going to make this a taco salad and add the black beans and the shaded cheese that you know, those are easy to just grab and throw on and some salsa or whatever, and like
really go all out with a certain cuisine. And then when I put it in my wrap, maybe I do a Greek style rap and I add hummus and olives and roasted red pepper, and again, those are all premate ingredients that you can just toss in, and that's a
totally different flavor profile. Is there something in our brains or is there any research that shows that if we can spice it up that helps us in a way from an eating disordered disordered eating perspective, I think it's really important to give yourself permission for all of those flavors and sauces and things because it's something that's typically avoided because of fear of calories and sugar and whatever else.
So I see a lot of people if they are restricting their food only use like herbs and season names or cooking things in water and stuff like that, so
or like vinegar on the salad. But having the other flavor agents is important, and a lot of them, especially for talking about sauces and things, a lot of them have some source of fat and olive oil in the salad, dressing or whatever it is, and including those fat sources is extremely important because when you're eating it with other foods, they're going to contain most likely some of the fat
soluble vitamins. So you want to pare any food that has a fat soluble vitamin Vitamin A, D E K with a fat source so that it gets absorbed and you're not just eating these foods that would be beneficial
without the kind of co factor to absorb them. Everybody is different probably in times of day that they eat, but when it comes to intuitive eating, or if you've got a client coming to or I'm just thinking, like there's so many things we've been told online, is like wake up and now this is intermittent fasting, and we don't talk about that, but some people might just be like,
eat until you feel hunger. But I have to leave before I have time to get hungry, and then when I start work, it's very difficult on work mornings to like stop and eat. So I've had to know for myself it's better for me to just go ahead and eat before I leave the house, whether I'm hungry or not. And it's interesting the thoughts I have around food in
the morning. Now it's not like me stressing well, oh, I can't believe I'm eating before my quote fasting time is up, because that used to be me, or oh, I can't believe I'm eating right now, and I don't have hunger signals. But I know my body well enough to know that I'm going to end up getting hungry while I'm working and then I won't get to eat.
I'll use this morning as an example. I wasn't that hungry, but I went ahead and made two pieces of toast and I smeared avocado all over it with some sea salt, which I thought was a great brain breakfast, right right, I mean, I'm so glady you brought this up and and I am one of those people who if I have like a six a flight and we're getting up at four in the morning to leave, I will be hungry and like I will eat as soon as I get to the airport. I am like hungry in the mornings.
But everyone is different, and so I think it's amazing what you're doing eating because you know yourself and you know you need the energy, and that's so true for everyone. So I actually recently was reading reading up on intermitt and fasting to figure out, you know, what, what are people saying? Is it really true? What's the truth here?
And the benefits that do come from it? The benefits people talk about like oh better metabolic health, blood sugar control, blah blah blah, It doesn't come from the fasted window. What's more important than the amount of hours you're eating is actually eating in accordance with your circadian rhythm, So having enough energy early and often in the day, because when your body wakes up with the sun, it wants to be awake and moving and like alive and doing things.
And so how being a consistent like breakfast, lunch, snack throughout those first two thirds of the day is what's really best for you to feel energized and alert and awake and like be healthier. Do you have some helpful snack ideas? I will give you ideas and then linked on my Instagram, I have a link to a downloadable hand out that is like an exhaustive list of snack ideas, so people can go download that, which is very very long.
Since you mentioned that your we'll mention it again at the end and it's it'll be linked in the show notes as well. But Michelle Pillo Pitch Nutrition is your Instagram and then the link in my bio. I have a few different like freebee downloads in that big list of snacks is one of them, so definitely get that. And yeah, easy snacks that I like to go to. Our trail Mix is a big one because it's so
shelf stable. I will carry around like a jar, like an empty peanut butter jar or something that's washed out, any glass jar, fill it with trail Mix and just like always have it with me and then when it gets empty, I refill it. So trail mix any kind of like sandwich I love doing, like a poebean j or a half a pebian j as a snack half a bagel with cream cheese. Like those things that are
super simple tend to be really good. Bars are easy if someone wants to grab a bar any kind of like fruit, if you're bringing fruit, yes, things like apples are super portable and probably won't make you that full, so bringing it with like the trail mix or some nuts or some like a couple of string cheeses or something like that, those like peanut butter crackers, sandwiches baked good. You know, I love homemade muffins, and I'll bring muffins places.
I just want to speak for the apple and cheese combo because they're so good together, and sometimes I don't feel like they get the love that they should as like a perfect little snack couple because the taps, in my opinion, like yes, either string cheese or any cheese, like a sharp cheddar cheese with apple is so good. Well have you ever seen I've seen recipes for apple pie with cheddar cheese. You know that's like a thing I've never had it. Okay, I'm writing the stats. Make
your next apple pie with cheddar cheese. It's okay. I have to lift this up because I feel like I would love that would sandwiches were a big thing that we're on my no list, and I agree. Now I find myself making more and more sandwiches, and they really are just so easy to keep in a like a little bag, and they're my purse and I busted out. My kids have to take their lunch and they don't like sandwiches. I guess my daughter buys her it at school now, but my son has to take a lunch
every day. And my kids, they lived most of their life in an orphanage and then they came to America older and they never had had sandwiches, so they don't like them, and it's very difficult to try to find, Like I can't. They don't. He doesn't have a way to heat up his food, and I'm like, we can't take, you know, chicken legs and rice and beans every like that his jam, Like that's what he wants to take,
which is amazing. But I see all these moms sometimes packing their kids lunches on Instagram, these cute little sandwiches and putting a note inside, and I'm like, I want to do for lunch, like I It's very difficult, but I just want to say your inner child, if you grew up like I grew up in the eighties and nineties, and sandwiches where our thing, and for me, I wrote them off for so long, And then a couple of years ago I had a sandwich after I met Lisa
and was doing some of her programs, and it was like the biggest deal for some of you listening, a sandwich might be scary. Another big fear for people if they're going to have a sandwich is okay, then I can't have another carb with it, So I can't have the chips or the crackers or anything on the side. And so that's something really great to challenge, and it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Like today I
had a sandwich for lunch. I had to tune a salad sandwich and wanted hummus on the side, and I was like, okay, bell peppers. I can do bell peppers in my hummus, but I also want something crunchy or than a bell pepper. So did half the bell pepper and half everything bagel seasoned crackers, and like, I still have the bread. All the carves are fine, and like you can have both the like awareness of the nutrition and taste, like Yeah, I love the taste of the vegetables.
Plus something else like no rules about the carbs. Is there anything else you want to touch on before we wrap today's talk on just scheduling your your food or you're eating with Intuitive Eating? Yeah, I mean I think something else that you brought up and is important to reiterate is that paying attention to your schedule might mean eating before you feel hungry, and that will be uncomfortable at times, and it is the intuitive thing to do. Like this whole kind of troupe of like listen to
your body. Yes, it's true most of the time, and sometimes listening to your body includes listening to your brain and like knowing those logistics so you're not to be like banned from Intuitive Eating for having a sack when you're not hungry. There is a time and a place for that too. Awesome. In the meantime, Michelle, they can find you on Instagram, yes, at Michelle Pillopitch Nutrition and my website Michelle pillopitc dot com. Thank you, Michelle, Thank you