Conquering Weekend Eating, Boosting Brain Health, and Muesli Secrets

than the weekends. And I think my first tip has to be around planning, because I think our weekdays are very structure, particularly for you know, I assume most of us we work, we've got kids and there's a lot of routine packed into those weekdays. The kids go to daycare, they go to school. Us adult, you know, we go to work. We have certain hours that we start work, we finish work. A lot of us have a dedicated lunch break within their work times as well. So it's

very routine focused during the week. And then what tends to happen on the weekend. For my clients that are lucky enough to have a sleep and if they don't have kids, they might sleep in, they might have a slow start in the morning, they might get up and do a bit of a gym session. Before they know it, they're like, oh, it's ten eleven o'clock.

where's the man. They're like, oh, sorry, we don't know where we're going yet. And then push comes to shop and they end up at some place and they're like, oh, sorry, I had to get the burger and fries because that's the only thing that was available. And that is honestly just due to poor planning, because they could have suggested somewhere, they could have booked somewhere, we could have looked up a menu in advance. If you want the burger and fries,

absolutely go for it if that's what you want. But if that wasn't in line with your goals, and that's going to be the thing, because typically a burger and fries is well over a thousand calories at most places, If that's going to be the thing that kind of prevents you from losing body fat after you work so hard with the deficit or wig, you know, most people would be quite annoyed with themselves for doing something like that.

So I think that planning and that routine and structure really is so critical on the weekends, and it's the biggest thing that I see as a big downfall when people tend to go a bit off track on the weekend. The other thing I wanted to mention is getting in our vegetables and salad, because again, a lot of us have a bit of a plan for the week. Most

of our dinners are pretty good. There's lots of veggie there, lunches, particularly, a lot of my clients meal prep luck I do myself, and we've got some great plan things, or we've pre made some things, some beautiful salads, some pastas packed with veggies. We're getting those veggies in. But again, with the weekend, we're kind of sporadically eating. We snack a bit more than we need to, We skip a few meals, and

then Saturday and Sunday goes bye. Sometimes I said in my clients, like when was the last time we had a really veggie focused meal, Because there might have slept in and skipped brecky on a Saturday and then gone out for a bigger brunch and it was like eggs bacon,

halloomi on toast. There might have been a couple of cherry tomatoes, but let's be honest, two or three cherry tomatoes isn't really going to make that much of a dent in your veggie intake when you're supposed to be aiming for five serves a day, and then dinner rolls around, you might have burger fries, couple of glasses of wine, maybe get some Gewelashey for dessert, and pretty much an entire days gone by where you haven't really had any veggies. And then a lot of us will just rinse and

repeat that on a Sunday as well. Some friends might come over, we'll make some morning tea snacks for the kids, the cheese board and the wine comes out around three or four o'clock, and again, nearly a whole day goes by and we haven't really got that veggie bulk in. So they're probably my biggest two tips for a weekend eating is the planning, keeping some form of structure, and really actively find some extra vegetable serves on the weekend.

Sunday to Thursday. And I think we're so exhausted physically mentally by the time it gets to Friday, it's just like we've run out of energy. And so I think the first thing I would suggest is mapping out the weekend well before the weekend, because I know, once it gets to Friday night, all bets are off, I am tired,

I don't want to think about it. Saturday is a whirlwind of kids, sport and parties, and the time it gets to Sunday, you know, if you don't have anything, you don't want to do anything anyway, and then you think, oh god, I should meal prep and I should meal plan,

and there's just all this guilt that comes. So what I suggest doing is really mapping out earlier in the week what the weekend is going to look like, because I think the key strategy, particularly if you're trying to keep your weight control, because let's be honest, three days of intense over eating Friday night, Saturday Sunday will cause weight gain over time. We just can't eat whatever we like.

It's more likely we can have a meal or two that's heavier, but we don't get to have the bacon and negro on Saturday morning, and then we don't get to have the lunch out or pick up something on the go, the snacks all afternoon, the bottom or two of wine, the take like, no one can really eat like that unless you're twenty with a great metabolism. So it does have to be a concerted effort to really map out and think when am I going to indulge

and not waste calories. So I spend a lot of time with my clients talking about whether it's worth it, because no one's saying you can't have the wine or you can't have the cheese plate. But you can't have it all, So where do you want to spend it? And often I see clients wasting calories on things like the bunning sausage sizzle or the crappy bacon and negroll at the kid's sport because it got to ten o'clock and you were starving because you rushed out the door

so early. So it's really about knowing where you want to spend them and thinking, right, well, I know I'm going for dinner Saturday night, or i know I've got a special celebration on Sunday. So they're my important things where I do want to sort of let go and not worry too much and enjoy what's on offer. But that means Friday night still has to be on track. That means that you know, if you do overdo things on Saturday night, don't get up Sunday morning at seven

o'clock and eat breakfast. Wait until you're genuinely hungry again, and practice what I call the art of compensation. So the first step, as I said, is mapping it out slightly earlier, even Thursday, when you've got a bit of energy. If friday's your day off, do it Friday morning early, because otherwise you're in the whirlwind and you'll never get

on top of it. So map it out really isolate the special occasions, which will lend itself to saying, well, I'm going to sport, I need to take a rap with me, or I'm going out to dinner, I'm having takeaway with the kids Friday night. I won't need much until mid morning Saturday. So you've got a rough idea in your mind and then practice that art of comps.

So if you have overdone things, if you have had a massive meal, you found yourself at your friend's house and it was a heavier meal that you didn't plan for. Or as I said to your client of mine the other week, she was going for drinks after work on a Friday, and she was a teacher, and she said, I'm going to have just two glasses. And I said, you know what, why don't you see how you go? Because that's a special weekend, that's a special event for you.

It's the end of the school term. You're going to have a celebration with your friends. No one's saying you have to have two glasses. That's cognitive restriction. I'm saying that, see what the event's like. And if it's a really great event and you do end up having more drinks or more indulgent eating, that's okay. You know you want

to enjoy those special times. But that then means on Saturday morning, compensate, get up and do a walk once you're feeling a bit better, make sure you have a light breakfast or you may not need breakfast, and then have a salad for lunch on Saturday. Compensate for that excess, but use it wisely. Now, I think that the area that we fall down in is when we don't have the healthy things on hand. So school sport's a classic example.

You rock up there and you think, oh, there might be a canteen, like come on, but of course it's going to be fried food. It's going to be a sausage, it's going to be a barbecue. So take something before you go, and you might grab a tea or you might grab a coffee, but at least you've got your baseline so you don't end up starving and in the Macs drive through at eleven o'clock. You know, it's that preemptive. Or I'll give you an example that even happened to me.

Friday night. We're at touch football and I thought, okay, I've got some salad at home for when we get home, some chicken pieces for the kids. And then because my house is close to touch football, families were like, oh, we'll come back to yours. And I was like, oh my god, I don't even hardly have any food. But I did have salad bags and I did have some frozen pizza. So even though we ate pizza, which wasn't what I was planning. At least I had salad to

put out with it. So it's just having a few of those healthier backups, which might be dumplings in the freezer, it might be some salad bags. So if you do end up with people over entertaining or like you describe, cut up veggies or healthier dips, which will do a segment on coming up because it is coming into summer party season. So if you do end up in that situation, you've got stuff with you, Or if you're going to someone's house, take something healthy because you don't know what

they're going to serve. They may just buy all the pizzas. They may be Domino, so they're not the best pizza, and there's no salad. Take a salad. Worst case you throw it out or you don't take it out, there's nothing lost. So there is a little bit of that preemptive work. But I think most importantly, if things do go off track and you end up having things you shouldn't or you don't want to, or you know you're

not ideal, don't stress. Just get back on track the next meal, the next day, and where you can compensate. What I see constantly is people who have a lot of extras on the weekends, but there's no lightness to match it. They just keep eating the heavy stuff. If you had a big weekend, have a soup Sunday night fast through till Monday morning. That art of compensation as a strategy to help you balance your eating will serve you well for your life. And it means you can

still indulge. We all overdo things at times, but it means that you're learning also to eat lightly, to buffer absolutely.

or something. She's like, I don't really like that, so I won't be tempted. And I said, why don't you do like a veggie platter with some dips and some fruit, and it was like she'd never thought of that, and she was like, what everybody always bakes?

morning tea nearly every week. Everybody bakes, and I either have to use all of my willpower to say no because I'm trying to be really good and you know, stick to my weight loss goals, or I'll make something which I don't like, so I'm not tempted. But I never thought that I could actually pastake and enjoy and have a little something but still actually stay on track with my goals as well. So, like you said, choose, we want to spend that budget and don't be afraid

to take healthy options with you. Like I will often regularly take salad to a friend's house or a barbecue or a dinner if I don't know what's on offer. And I've never once gone to a friend's house taken a beautiful salad and they've said, oh, that's weird or oh, nobody's got to eat that. And guess what, every time you take it, everybody eats it.

If you get the mini whole grain wraps or mountain bread and do them with a bit of light cream, cheese, smoke, salmon, cucumber, roll them, they come out so beautifully. Or even mini sandwiches with somesh bit of red salmon with a bit of light filly or you can do the egg curried kind of egg and cut them cut them into fingers.

Everyone loves that, and it's healthier, it's relatively cost effective, and it means you're having something that's also filling, because of course, the issue with a lot of those kind of snacks is that you can have twenty of them, especially pastry, and it doesn't even touch the sides. So ye don't forget your mini sandwiches and mini wraps and cut up vegetigree, especially with some of the dips we've

spoken about, which can be quite light. But moving on from healthier weekends, there was a really big research study that got a lot of media attention last week about cognitive decline. And I know for anyone who's seen or has a family member who suffered the effects of dementia or Alzheimer's, you'll know how distressing it is. It can

impact people quite young. Certainly there's a genetic predisposition, but also heavily lifestyle influenced, and I think all of us would agree ly, and if we live these long lives that we're proposed to, we want our marbles intact, and certainly as we move into our sixties and beyond, it's

something to be considering. So this was some big data coming out of the US published in a big scientific journal Neurology, and it tracked over fourteen thousand people over ten year period and the average age was sixty four, So it was really looking at older individuals and the effect of diet on cognitive performance and in specifically thinking

speed and recall a memory. So some very clear markers and they says lots of different things cholesterol and health, but this is specifically in regards to neurological aging, and they were looking at weather. The Mind diet which is a diet pattern that came out several years ago. It's a mix of basically the DASH diet, which is a diet developed to lower blood pressure, and Mediterranean and this is it's called dietary approaches to stop hypertension intervention for

neurodegenerative delay. So it's complicated and hence they call it the Mind diet. And I'll go through the specifics of

it in a minute because it's actually quite interesting. I think a lot of people would profess to eating or claim to eat well, but actually when you look at the specifics of this for brain health, a lot of the boxes wouldn't be by be being ticked by many of us, because it was found that those who were rated, and they rated the participants according to how close their diet was to the dietary patterns suggested in Mind, and it was found that the group who were most similar

had four percent were less likely to suffer from neurodegenerative delay over that ten year period, but more so for women six percent less likely, because twelve percent of all individuals in the studies suffered some form of dementia in

that period. So I think there's some learnings here for all of us, given that we would all want to keep our brain as healthy as possible, and unlike I guess regimes for weight control and fat loss, it's about what you should be eating as opposed to what you shouldn't. And there's ten core components of the mind diet approach. The first is leafy greens separated out from other vegetables.

Then there's vegetables as well, whole grains, legume, seafood, poultry, olive oil, nuts, berries, and wine, as well as five unhealthy foods which are rated so damaging to the brain that you lose points. If you're raiding your diet, and these include process fat like margarine and butter cheese, which is an interesting one, pastries and sweet food like biscuits and fried and fast food. So it's a balance of ratios, but it does give you specific recommendations about how many

of those foods each day you should be having. So basically it suggested that leafy greens like spinach, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts because of their extremely high antioxidant properties, are consumed at least six times a week, so at least to serve a day, and in addition one other vegetable, so that might be an orange vegetable, a carrot, sweet potato, potato, but you have to separate out your greens as one serve minimum as well as a second server veggies.

as well. We should be having four serves of legumes each week, so that is our chickpeas, lend tools, kidney beans, and I guarantee very few people listening would have lentils or chickpeas four times a week. Five serves of nuts each week, so nuts most days of thirty grams, which could be any nuts as long as it was on most days, which is where things like our nut bars and seeded snacks can come in quite handy. Fish. Definitely fish minimum once a week, but we would recommend at

least three times oily fish is the ideal option. Poultry a couple of times a week, and then red meat consumes sparingly at most three times a week, and it's certainly not a low carb regime. Three serves of whole grains per day, which is really high, so that's your

whole grain, cereal or breads. Olive oil is the primary oil for cooking, and wine is mentioned, but it is just a glass per day, not a large glass, just to standard poor and then looking to minimize intape basically of sweet foods because they basic sweet foods, red meat and fried and fast food because they increase inflammation compared to those super brain foods which reduce it. The only thing I disagree with Leanne is the cheese. Because they target cheese as a food to avoid and have it

most once a week. They're saying it's pro inflammatory. I disagree nutritionally, I think there's benefits of cheese. I think with cheese it's about portion control. But obviously I think Marjorie fried food, sweetfoods, absolutely the less we consume the better. So I'll ask you about your thoughts on cheese in

a second. But I guess the key point I wanted to make here was a lot of people listening will think that they eat well, but I guarantee they're not having a serve of leafy greens most days, they're not having a serve of nuts most days, and they are eating far more fried, fast food, processed food than they should be. Really, it's like once a week. I reckon people eat it multiple times a day, whether it's a snack, food,

a treat, more wine than we should be having. So I think it's not just about the good, but it's making sure that the bad is minimized, and we all need to eat a lot more leafy greens, legumes, foods like that to get the benefit. And cheese I'd be much more liberal on. I think cheese, in my mind, is not the issue. There's plenty more foods causing more drama than a bit of cheese if you use it in control portions. What do you think?

serving of cheese a week. Interesting, but that's what they recommend. Fewer than four portions of red meat a week, I think, particularly for males. I learn a lot of families as well would probably have more portions of that. And that's just red meat, that's not the process red meats like the sausages and the salamis and that sort of thing. So I think a lot of families are probably having

more than four portions of red meat a week. When we count the ham or salami that might go onto a sandwich, then we count the sausages or lamb chops that go into dinner. Then we back it up on the weekend we might have a bit of bacon or something as well. So I think that that's definitely a key area that a lot of people can target. Less than a serving of fried food a week is pretty crazy, because I agree with you. I think most people have more than one serving of fried food a week and

fewer than five serves of pastries or candies. So if you're somebody that enjoys a bit of chocolate every day, that's a more than the recommended amounts. And I would argue that something like seventy percent plus dark chocolate maybe wouldn't fall into that category. But the other things like the pastries and just candy lollies, you know, baked goods, that sort of thing, fewer than five servings a week.

All of that adds up really really quickly. So to give you a quick example of what a meal plan would be on a mind diet if you are really focusing on improving your cognitive function long term, an example of a mind diet breakfast might be a bowl of oatmeal or porridge. You might do some overnight oats it might be a hot bowl of porridge with some whole grains in it from the oats, and then of course topping that with your berries for the antioxidants, and some

nuts and seeds, particularly something like walnuts as well. Lunch could be something like a cold pasta salad that you've made ahead of time. You want to use whole wheat pasta or high fiber pasta. You want to use lots of veggies and salad, spinach, kale, tomato, cucumber, add some chickpeas in there, and then for addressing your drizzle it with extra version olive oil and maybe a little bit about something, maybe a bit of lemon juice, some salt

and pepper. If you're looking at snacks like Susie mentioned nuts, something like dried legumes, like you know, some dried chickpeas, or something serving of nuts, or even a piece of whole grain bread with a little bit of nut butter on it, such as peanut butter or almond butter. That

could do you as well. And then for dinner you want some lean protein, you want some chicken breast, you want a bit of baked fish or some chicken you know, serve it with some fresh herbs, some lemon, bake it in the oven, and then to serve you might do some brown rice or some kinoa, and then you might have a bit of kale or broccolini, or you know, a good serving of leafy greens on the side, plus a little extra such as, you know, some more colors. You might have a bit of onions, some carrots, and

a bit of beetroot as well. So that's sort of practically how a mind diet can look.

actually the link. The other thing I was going to say about cheese is an American study, and I wonder, because there's so many cheeseburgers and kind of cheese consumed is part of fast food if maybe that's one of the reasons, Like cheese in the US is often that real yellow block style monterey Jack, you know, the way they eat cheese, whereas I'd say, here, you know, we're using a lot more white cheeses, fetters, cottage cheese. So you know, we're not saying cheese is good. We're saying

used in moderation. It's not going to be negative if it's consumed part of a healthy diet as opposed to being on a cheeseburger in deep fried. So that might be the link there.

a heavily you know, us influence. All right, Lynne, I want to share a product that I found that I think is a great snack and it actually is a legga based snack, which is what we're talking about today. It's tricky to find though I did find it in holes, but it was like one of those modern coals is in the city, and I think sometimes they tend to stock newer products. The brand is the same brand that makes the cauliflower chips, the mushroom ships, the beechtreat chips.

It's in the health food section. I haven't seen it in mainstream supermarkets, but you can find it online and I think that they're trialing it perhaps at one of these more boutique supermarkets. But it's really strong nutritionally and you can buy it online. So it's made by the DJ and A company and it comes under the brand Nature's Protein and it's called Protein Mix. So there's lots of these different packets. There's an edamamee, one green peas.

We've seen a few of them before, but I particularly like this one because it had a mix of a range of different legumes including green peas, young soybeans, and chickpeas in sort of a snack sized packet. Now, I think I paid about five or six dollars for it. Like online now i'm looking, you can get twelve seventy grand packs for thirty dollars, which is actually really affordable. This is just on an online sort of health food store.

But the reason I liked Leanne is that it was just so clean, like it only basically contains the dry nuts, so it's thirty two percent green pea, young soy bean, thirty two percent chickpeas, thirty one percent vegetable oil malto sea salt used to extract in a bit of natural flavor. It's gluten free, dairy free, no preservatives. Ticks the box of vegans, and I find those crunchy kind of bean

snacks are quite palatable. People really like them. They're growing in popularity and per serve, so they're dividing the bag into three two point five serves of thirty grams and you get a massive eight point eight grams of I'm just going to lean in when I hang on.

really good. It's a well controlled amount of carbohydrate in the snack, one point four grams of sugar, three point six grams of dietary fiber, which is huge obviously because it's a legume based snack, and two hundred and thirty three milligrams of sodium a serve, which you know, honestly is fine. You have to add a bit of salt, a bit of flavor to these things to make them

taste good as well. So ingredient wise, there's thirty percent chickpeas, twenty nine percent young soybeans, twenty five percent green.

love them. I do have these in my coals. My Coals has been redone recently, so it's new issue in the last sort of year or so, so perhaps that's why I haven't seen this one that is the blend. But my Coals does have the straight at amamae ones and the straight chickpea ones as well, which is great.

But I have to keep an eye out for this new protein mix because I love I love that it's a mix of the green peas, the soybeans, and the chickpeas because from a diversity perspective for your gut health, this is absolutely a positive Like we want as much diversity in our diet as possible because that then positively influences our gut microbiome as well.

I would absolutely start with the ingredient list first. You know, we want to see some sort of whole grain something to start with on the ingredient list, whether that's whole grain oats, whether that's some brand flakes, or something like that, something high five or attle bit of carb to start with, and or some healthy fats being nuts or seeds. As the top priority for your ingredient list. There will be

some form of sugar in there. It might be you know, cane sugar, it might be honey, it might be sulkros, it might be glucose, it might be some sort of syrup. There will be sugar in there, generally multiple types, as well as what brands tend to use, but it's not so much an issue as long as the sugar is a little bit further down the ingredient list and per serving.

Look in an ideal world, we probably want less than five grams of sugar served, but I think for something like a muslei or granola under ten grams a serve, I'm generally pretty happy with for my clients. So there's sort of my top couple of criteria. Look at your

ingredient lists. We don't want obviously too many additives. We want as many whole foods in that ingredient list as possible, and right up the top, I want to see some sort of whole grain, plus some sort of good fats like nuts and seas, and then I also look at the fiber for a good music or granola. Ideally I would like about three or four grams a serving.

to that. A lot of people will got quite bloated, quite gassy, have you know, just have unpleasant sort of

gi symptoms later on. So I don't necessarily think more fiber is better when it's coming from that additive type fiber, like it might be they're adding in, you know, a ton of inulin into the cereal and that's what's boosting the overall fiber versus the fiber coming from something like whole graine oats, cheer seeds or you know, some nuts and some forpitas, So we really want the fiber to come from the whole food ingredient as much as possible.

A little bit of added fiber is fine, but I don't love seeing a ton of it in something like a museleer or granola, because I think a lot of people with a bit of a sensitive tummy do struggle to digest all of that.

have any carbohydrate. So, particularly if you're exercising an active you need to to twenty thirty grams and it's ideally a time to get some whole grains. So I'm looking on nutritionals for about twenty grams of car perserve. I'm with you three to five grams of dietary fiber. I would definitely want to clean ingredient list can recognize all the ingredients. The longer the ingredient list of the ranola,

probably the more processed it is. And I look for about less than five grands of sugars perserve, and I say generally I try and avoid the dried fruit ones and go for ones that have got say an oat base with some perhaps nuts and seeds, but definitely have some carbohydrate in there unless they're eating low carb for a particular reason. So just keep that in mind when you're looking at your labels. But the good news is there's loads of different varieties out there. Sun Soul have

got a great one. The Carmens range of original type musleys are really good with their macro nutrients, so there's plenty to choose from, And if you do prefer the low carb ones, they can be a great topper if you're doing, say a sweet yogurt in the afternoon, and

you can use them in a different way. But in most cases, if you do prefer the low carb granolas, you like the taste, I'd say have it with a banana, for example, to get a bit of extra carb in there if you're teaming it with particularly a plant based milk, which won't have a lot of carbohydrate in there either.

I actually prefer something with a bit of an oat base to a add in that carb like you say, particularly because a lot of my clients are exercising and b just adding in a bulk of you know, something like some oats or something will mean that it's a little bit more affordable for the budget and will also bring down that overall calorie load per serving as well.

So just some good points to think about if you are looking to choose a music a granola, but don't focus too much on what the front up pack is telling you. Flip it over, have a look at the ingredient list and the nutritional panel and then make more of an informed decision from there that brings us to the end of the nutrition catch for another week. If you know that your diet.