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1:09

This is one of the most important things you need to do

1:11

in order to eat healthier, burn more fat,

1:13

build muscle or whatever your goals might be.

1:15

Starting with the most important

1:17

things and getting them in place. Like

1:20

what is it that baseline? This is where

1:22

you need to focus. That's

1:24

Monica Reinegel. She's a licensed nutritionist

1:26

whose podcast, The Nutrition Diva, was just

1:28

named by New York Times as one of 12 health

1:31

podcasts worth listening to. She also

1:33

hosts another podcast called Change Academy,

1:35

which she was gracious enough to have me on as

1:37

a guest. So link to that in the description. But

1:40

I had the very wonderful opportunity

1:42

to ask her a bunch of questions about how

1:45

to eat healthier consistently. Here's what she

1:47

had to say. The conversation around how we eat

1:49

and

1:49

how we live and our relationship

1:52

to food is so incredibly

1:54

messy. It can be complicated and

1:56

made complicated, but then other people

1:58

tell you it's actually really simple.

1:59

just these three things. And truthfully,

2:02

there's so much tied up in it, especially

2:04

with the larger messaging that,

2:06

at

2:07

least in the US is very

2:09

prevalent. Talk to us very quickly about

2:12

what we should unlearn about

2:14

our relationship to food and what we should what

2:16

we should try to ignore as we navigate

2:20

of finding the right balance for

2:22

ourselves.

2:23

Well, of course, that does depend on where

2:25

you're coming from. But

2:28

I think that you said, some

2:30

people will just say, Oh, it's very simple, we just need to boil

2:32

it down to these three things. And I do

2:35

feel like making things simpler

2:37

is a good idea. Because in the media

2:41

landscape, for anybody who is

2:43

out there looking for guidance or looking

2:46

for information about how

2:48

to eat healthier, they can quickly become overwhelmed

2:51

with

2:52

a,

2:54

you know, a huge list of things to

2:56

worry about all kinds of

2:59

toxins that need to be avoided, and

3:01

then an equally long list of all the things

3:03

that you must do in order to be healthy,

3:07

not you have to eat all the right foods, you have to

3:09

cook them all the right the correct way, you have

3:11

to eat them in the right timing and the right combinations.

3:14

And it can get so overwhelming

3:17

that people just kind of shut down and feel like,

3:19

well, either they they get obsessive

3:22

about trying to get it all right, which

3:24

can quickly become a full time job. Or they

3:26

kind of give up before they start

3:29

because it just feels like an insurmountable

3:31

challenge. So while I want to acknowledge

3:33

that there are a lot of details

3:36

involved in our relationship to

3:39

food and the choices that we make as we

3:41

go through the day every day.

3:42

There is

3:44

a place for starting with

3:47

the most important things and

3:49

getting them in place. And then maybe

3:51

if you still have the bandwidth, we

3:53

could back up the lens and look at some some

3:56

other things and take a look at some of the special

3:58

considerations.

4:00

Too

4:01

often, I think we get stuck in teeny

4:03

tiny little details that ultimately have

4:05

not that big an impact on

4:07

our wellbeing and we're overlooking the really

4:10

big, yes, simple things that we could

4:13

do

4:13

to be upgrading our diets.

4:16

So what are the fundamentals? Like,

4:18

what is it that baseline, this is where

4:20

you need to focus? Well,

4:21

I've thought a lot about this

4:23

because I set myself a challenge about

4:27

eight years ago and

4:29

that was to narrow

4:31

it down to a very

4:33

short list of questions that

4:35

people could consider about their diet that

4:38

would give them the fundamentals. And

4:41

it was a really interesting project. We could talk a little bit more

4:44

and it ended up being turned into an

4:46

app that I developed called the Nutrition GPA. But

4:49

in order to develop that app, I really had to think, okay,

4:51

if I can only ask

4:53

a handful

4:55

of questions, what questions would they be? And

4:58

the one that really jumped to the top

5:00

of the list is focusing

5:02

on getting five servings of vegetables a day.

5:06

A lot of things flow from that.

5:08

But I just also want to acknowledge what's not

5:10

included in that and that is eating only the

5:13

right vegetables or eating these vegetables,

5:15

but not those vegetables or only eating them raw

5:18

or only eating them steamed or that

5:21

kind of thing. It's like, can we just start with eating

5:23

more vegetables? Because

5:25

the average American citizen

5:27

adult eats one

5:29

and a half servings of vegetables per

5:31

day.

5:33

We could be doing so much better.

5:35

And if I really, if my back were against the wall

5:37

and I had to pick just one thing that

5:40

people could do to improve their nutrition and

5:42

improve their diets, I think I'd start there.

5:43

So just increasing total number of

5:46

vegetables consumed in a day with the goal of

5:48

getting to five. With the goal of getting

5:50

to five, exactly. And any step

5:53

toward that is worth taking.

5:56

But yeah, that would be the ultimate goal. How

5:58

do I know what constitutes. a

6:00

serving? Like do I then start

6:02

to freak out about the details of like is

6:04

this a serving or is this not a serving? Like

6:07

how do I navigate that? Right

6:08

so I can tell you're a tracker

6:10

right? You have a history of doing

6:12

some tracking or some logging? I

6:15

do not like it. I don't

6:17

either. So that's a very good question and I think

6:19

we can we can do

6:21

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8:06

For me, the rule of thumb is if it's

8:08

a cooked vegetable, so basically broccoli,

8:10

carrots, whatever, then

8:13

about a half a cup. And that is, you

8:15

can visualize as being like what

8:17

would fit in a small handful or,

8:21

yeah, I mean, just a small ice

8:23

cream scoop, that size, that's

8:25

a half a cup. And if it's a raw leafy

8:27

green, like salad greens, because

8:30

they're so fluffy, we make the

8:32

serving size a little bit bigger, a cup, which

8:34

is about the size of a baseball,

8:37

and

8:38

it doesn't really need to be any more exact than

8:40

that. We do not need to be getting out an atomic scale

8:43

to decide if this is 1.1 serving or 0.9 serving.

8:46

That's close enough, but

8:49

even just, but the good

8:51

news there is, Greg, that a lot of times what

8:53

we might look at on our plate and think, oh, that's a

8:55

serving of broccoli,

8:56

is actually two servings of broccoli, because

8:59

it's a cup's worth.

9:00

I didn't make up those serving sizes. Those are the

9:02

standard serving sizes that we use in

9:05

the sort of nutrition and dietetics world. So

9:07

I thought, well, let's stick with those because

9:09

they are sort of a standard reference. And

9:12

when we hear those dietary guidelines encouraging

9:15

us to eat five servings of vegetables, those

9:17

are the serving sizes that they're talking about.

9:19

So let's

9:20

start with those, yeah. Okay,

9:23

so I guess something I'm curious about,

9:25

because you mentioned like, we don't need to break

9:27

out of scale. Like,

9:29

I agree. Like, this doesn't seem

9:31

like it needs to be something that is

9:33

so complicated and intimidating. So

9:36

how did it get there?

9:43

I wonder if it was that we

9:46

fell in love with the sort of quantification

9:49

of diet and nutrition.

9:52

We had tools available to us. I

9:54

mean, honestly, I remember growing

9:56

up

9:57

and my mom was a lifelong dieter

9:59

and we had. paperback books that

10:01

listed thousands

10:03

of foods and you could look up

10:05

and see how many calories were in those foods.

10:08

That goes back you know 50 years or something

10:10

that we started to publish those lists

10:13

of foods and it gave everybody this idea

10:15

that we could count that

10:17

exactly how many calories

10:20

we were eating and that we could set a goal

10:22

you know I should only be eating 1200, 1600, 2000 whatever

10:25

it is and I just look it up in my book I tally

10:27

it all up and this can be a very scientific

10:30

enterprise. There are so many false

10:32

assumptions baked into that scenario

10:36

but

10:37

but yeah as we cottoned

10:39

to this idea of quantifying

10:41

our nutrition it

10:44

then begs the question well if

10:46

I want to make sure it's a hundred calories not 90 calories

10:48

that means I need to know whether it's four ounces or 3.5 ounces

10:51

and from there flows this kind

10:54

of obsessive need to nail

10:56

down the details

10:58

but as I said just a minute ago Greg

11:01

the average American

11:03

adult is eating 1.5 servings

11:05

of vegetables a day we don't

11:08

need to know whether it's 1.4 or 1.6 to

11:11

know which direction that needs to head in in

11:14

order to be more aligned with something that

11:16

would

11:16

support optimal health.

11:18

So if you want to hear more from Monica she has two podcasts

11:21

the Nutrition Diva and Change Academy.

11:23

Change Academy I actually had the honor of being

11:25

a guest on so I've got the link to that episode

11:27

in the description of this episode if you're interested but

11:30

before we head out Monica actually had one

11:32

last thing that she wanted to share as

11:34

a way to help you eat a little bit healthier.

11:36

I do a 30-day challenge where we

11:39

start together on the same day and over

11:41

the next 30 days that gives me much more opportunity

11:44

to give more nuance give more education

11:47

about the the individual things

11:49

that we're focused on and why they matter

11:51

and also a chance to do sort of implementation

11:54

support. Okay now you've convinced me

11:57

that eating more vegetables is in my best interest

11:59

but how do I

11:59

do that and then just the support

12:02

of a community it's always more fun to do things

12:04

in groups so we do it together

12:06

i do it once or twice a year i really enjoy

12:08

doing this and seeing how they are

12:10

able in such a short period of time

12:12

make substantive shifts that

12:15

the that feel sustainable to the

12:17

hello to my website nutrition over

12:19

easy dot com slash

12:22

upgrade and we kick it off on november eighth

12:24

so that's just a little time frame and it'll go

12:27

to the very beginning of december and i found

12:29

that this is a really tricky time of year for

12:31

a lot of people because they start to see

12:33

or the holidays are coming in there's travel

12:35

and there's a family and

12:38

i'm so often people just

12:40

the guy obviously i can't maintain any kind

12:42

of healthy habits and this i'm just gonna put it

12:44

on the shelf nominee get it back touch hit you where

12:46

he first and i feel like that's a missed

12:48

opportunity so we time to this specifically

12:50

to give people a little extra

12:52

support and structure

12:54

as we head into the holidays

12:56

to navigate those in ways

12:58

that

12:59

don't feel like punishing where

13:01

we can real still enjoy the holidays but they're

13:03

not feel like we have a big i'm

13:05

bill to pay at the end of the year in

13:07

terms of the impact on her health

13:09

if you're interested the link to that is in the description

13:11

of this episode and i couldn't recommend working with

13:13

her more i mean you've heard how great

13:15

she actually is and how much she knows

13:18

so thank you so much for being here my name is greg clueless

13:20

be sure to click follow or subscribe

13:23

wherever you're tuned into this today and let

13:25

me know what you thought about the episode leave a comment or

13:27

a message wherever you are consuming

13:29

this thank you and remember that all big

13:31

changes come from the tiny leaps

13:34

you take

13:35

every day