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The Power of Veggies: How to Eat More and Make Them Taste Great

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A close up of a person washing carrots over a colliander in the sink.

Season 1, Episode 16 | April 29, 2020


Vegetables are always a critical component of a healthy diet, but their effect on the immune system makes them even more powerful at this time. Julie Brown, RD, the nutrition and assessments program manager at Life Time, joins us to discuss their many health benefits and to share her favorite cooking tips and best tricks for squeezing more veggies into your meals and snacks.


03:15

Our guest this episode is Julie Brown. Brown joined us earlier this season for our episodes on “Why Healthy Eating Doesn’t Need to Be Boring,” and “5 Nutrition Myths, Debunked.” She’s a registered dietitian, personal trainer, and the nutrition and assessments program manager at Life Time.

03:45

Grocery shopping is more challenging right now. Brown walks through the vegetables she picked up on her last trip to the store and how she’s planning to use them for meals and snacks.

06:00

Vegetables are always a critical component in our diets. However, at a time when we want to be doing anything we can to support our immune system, veggies become an even more powerful tool.

07:45

Brown details how many veggies we should aim to eat each day.

09:45

Brown is a firm believer that healthy eating doesn’t need to be difficult. She talks about different preparation methods, cooking techniques, and food combinations she uses to fit more veggies into her meals.

14:00

There’s a lot of interest in vitamin C right now and its ability to support the immune system. Colorful peppers are rich in vitamin C, as are leafy greens. Brown shares some of her favorite ways to eat bell peppers.

16:00

Steaming tends to be the cooking method where you retain the most nutrients, however, Brown advises focusing simply on getting vegetables in and preparing them in the way that makes them most palatable to you. Brown notes that it’s important not to get caught up in the best ways to prepare each veggie to get the most nutrients.

19:20

We’re not just what we eat, but what we’re able to digest and absorb from the food we’re consuming. In other words, what is bioavailable. Brown gives an overview of bioavailability and its importance.

22:18

Brown talks about her hierarchy of types of vegetables: First is fresh, then frozen, then canned.

27:15

Brown offers advice for having a healthy food mindset during this time when we may be prone to more frequent snacking or to reach for unhealthy choices.

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Transcript: The Power of Veggies: How to Eat More and Make Them Taste Great

Season 1, Episode 16  | April 29, 2020

Jamie Martin

Welcome to Life Time Talks, the healthy living podcast that’s aimed at helping you achieve your health, fitness, and life goals. I’m Jamie Martin, editor in chief of Experience Life, Life Time’s whole life health and fitness magazine.

David Freeman

And I’m David Freeman, the signature program lead for Life Time’s Alpha program. We’re all in different places along our health and fitness journey, but no matter what we are working toward, there are some essential things we can do to keep moving in the direction of a healthy, purpose-driven life.

Jamie Martin

In each episode we’ll cover the foundational elements of healthy living, including fitness and nutrition, health issues like sleep and stress management, and mindfulness and community.

David Freeman

And we’ll be talking to experts from Life Time and beyond who’ll share their insights and knowledge, so you’ll have the tools and information you need to take charge of your next steps. Here we go.

[Music]

Jamie Martin

Hey everyone, David and I are so glad to be back with you, even though it’s a little sooner than we were planning. In early March, we were just starting to finalize details of Season 2 for Life Time Talks, and then all of our lives were turned upside down by coronavirus.

David Freeman

So, we decided to extend Season 1 and bring you some additional episodes on coping with this new normal. With all the worries, the changes, the challenges, and the opportunities.

Jamie Martin

Like many of you, we’re in our respective homes. I’m in Minnesota . . .

David Freeman

And I’m in Texas . . .

Jamie Martin

And we’re recording in the quietest rooms we could find. I’m in my home office and there’s a good chance my daughters will come knocking sooner than later.

David Freeman

And I’m in my man cave. My kids are probably thinking I’m playing hide and seek, and they’re “it.”

Jamie Martin

We know that a lot of people are concerned and worried about coronavirus and its effects on our family and friends, our communities, our world. We are too. It’s impacting every aspect of our lives.

David Freeman

And while we’ll be leaving it to the local and state officials, along with public health experts and the CDC, to revive the latest information about the illness, we’re here with the intent of offering some ideas, information, and inspiration that we hope helps you navigate the days ahead.

[Music]

Jamie Martin

Before we start this episode of Life Time Talks, shout out to our new sponsor, HOKA ONE ONE®, a footwear and apparel brand with a mission to empower all athletes to feel like they can fly. I personally love my HOKA EVO REHI’s, they’re a super lightweight running shoe that offers just the right amount of support and cushion without feeling bulky, which is something I often struggle with when it comes to my running shoes.

As the official sponsor of the Life Time Run club, HOKA and Life Time are together empowering people to live healthier, happier lives. In uncertain times like these, HOKA knows finding movement can provide an outlet both mentally and physically, as well as a crucial perspective. If we follow safe-at-home and social distancing guidelines, we will be able to see each other at your local Life Time again soon.

Head on over to HOKAONEONE.com. That’s H-O-K-A-O-N-E-O-N-E dot com, and follow @hokaoneone on Instagram to see examples of how HOKA athletes everywhere are finding inspiration, motivation, and joy in daily movement. Learn more at HOKAONEONE.com

[Music]

Jamie Martin

Hi, everyone. We’re excited to bring Julie Brown back to the Life Time Talks podcast. You probably remember her from some earlier nutrition episodes that we did. Julie is a registered dietitian, personal trainer, and the nutrition and assessments program manager at Life Time. She is back today to talk about vegetables and why they are so important. So, Julie, let’s dive in. What vegetables are you eating right now in this kind of crazy time that we’re in?

Julie Brown

Jamie, just throwing out the hard-hitting questions to kick us off — I love it. Ironically, my husband just got back from the grocery store just a little bit ago, so we are freshly stocked. We were privileged to find a fair amount of things that were on the list that I sent with him so that was good.

To start with fresh, in the fridge I’ve got some English cucumbers that I love to chop up and have as side dishes with lunch and dinner. My daughter, who’s three-and-a-half, loves them too. They’re a nice alternative to crackers or chips. Then, I just had him get some baby bell peppers, which, love those, great to chop up and put in salads, or to have as a side as well. Also lovely to dip in hummus if you’ve got that at home. Got some fresh lettuce, butter lettuce is a favorite of mine, so have got a butter lettuce blend, a couple bags of those. Also have some avocados, I’m just loving avocados right now. I’m making avocado salads, which is kind of nice. I’ve got some red onion and garlic on the countertop, and some little baby tomatoes that are fresh, which is really nice.

In the freezer, I’ve noticed that frozen vegetables are like a hot commodity right now. Everybody wants all the frozen veggies. They’re hard to come by. But we grabbed a couple steam-in-the-microwave bags of some mixed vegetables — broccoli, squash, cauliflower, carrots, those types of things, more like an Italian blend, which are really nice to toss in the microwave to go with dinner. And then we also got some riced cauliflower which is really nice that you can do either by itself and just season it however you want, or if you’re a person who consumes dairy, you can melt some cheese in there, which is really nice. So, that kind of encompasses what’s in the freezer right now and in my fridge.

And really, the only thing that we have canned as far as veggies go right now, we picked up some canned beans, which, give or take, might not qualify as a veggie, depending on how you think about those. But we’ll use those to make some chili that we have on the plans for our menu this week.

Jamie Martin

Nice, I love it. Well, I think, you know, David and I have been talking a little bit back-and-forth about what we have in our pantry’s as well, but I think the big question right now is like, why veggies matter so much in this moment. And especially when all of our eating habits are probably getting tossed — are changing right now. So, what is that . . . why do these veggies really, are they important in this moment.

Julie Brown

Right now, more than ever, I think, we should all be focused on anything and everything that we can be doing to help boost our immune systems. And vegetables are so powerful to do that because, you know, not to use a bunch of buzzwords, but they’re packed with phytonutrients, phytochemicals, these very important components that don’t necessarily deliver calories, but they deliver important resources for our body to optimize cellular function. It helps us to kind of turn on and turn off certain pathways at the cellular level that allow us to function at a higher level, and allow us to really fight off things like free radicals, disease states, hopefully viruses, over time to keep us healthier in the long haul.

They’re also packed with fiber. So, we can’t negate the importance of fiber in keeping us regular. I know that sounds like such a strange thing to be bringing up right now, but if your body is not eliminating through all the various methods that it should be — going to the bathroom, sweating, all of those pieces — you’re more likely to become toxic and to not be able to filter through things when your body does encounter them. So, it is important as silly as it might sound to keep yourself regular at this time, too. So, fiber is important.

David Freeman

You’ve always heard like the six to eight servings is the suggested that we should get. In comparison, how much does the average individual probably get? During this time, would you say 6–8 is still the standard, or would you increase it being that you said it has a lot of benefits within boosting the immunity system.

Julie Brown

A good question, David. I think, I go back to something we talked about in the first nutrition podcast, which was to try to eat a portion of vegetables throughout any given day that’s roughly the size of your head. And we say produce, right, all of it, kind of lumping in fruits as well, trying to favor more veggies than fruits. I always tell my clients when I work with them, you should probably have a two-to-three to one ratio of veggies to fruit when it comes to how your day is composed.

So, I would say, the nice thing about the head model, if you will, is it’s a little bit relative to everybody. So, it makes sense for your kids, it makes sense for adults, it’s practical that way. And I think right now, if we can get close to that, man, you’re doing so much better than most. I think so many adults especially struggle to get their vegetables in. Number one, they’re not easy like fruit can be. They’re not easy like prepackaged items that we can walk over and grab at a vending machine if we had access to one, or even in our pantry. They take a little bit more effort. So, it takes some time to kind of plan through them and make sure we have a thought around what to do and when they’re going to be easily accessible for us. So, I think that’s something that is a prime tool for us, we have to have intention around it, and if we bring them home much to the point of my English cucumbers, I’ll take them out and I’ll slice them all up and put them into individual servings so that way all I have to do is grab them when the time comes, and I don’t have to go, “Oh, I don’t want to spend the extra three minutes washing and slicing that right now,” and then I grab something else instead. So, you want to cut out the barriers and make it as easy as possible.

Jamie Martin

Right, well, and you mentioned right at the top, you have this huge variety of veggies. You get those into your house, you have to prep them. I think the benefits of having all these different kinds, you’re getting different phytonutrients and all these things from what you’re getting, but there’s also the variety in how you eat them and how you prepare them. So, talk a little bit about that, because there’s eating them raw, there’s eating them cooked. Like, how do we mix things up so we want to eat more of these and make them more palatable at a time when they’re really, really important?

Julie Brown

Preparing vegetables is something I think that a lot of people think has to be really difficult. And again, you might remember, back to my previous appearance on the podcast, I’m a big believer that eating healthy does not have to be hard. If anything, I make it, I almost cheat at it just because it makes it easier to do. So, that’s where I try to find a fair balance between the fresh versus the frozen that I use and cook, and the cooking methods that are fun and creative and work to not only help me stay engaged in what I’m eating, but also my family. Because if I’m being transparent, not everybody in my family loves veggies. So, we’ve got to figure out ways to make it feel reasonable for everybody.

A lot of things that I’ll try, again, for myself personally, I love fresh veggies and I love taking them and making kind of unconventional salads. So, one of the things that I’ve been having a lot of lately because it’s super nutrient dense as well as has a fair amount of calories, is an avocado salad. I mentioned that earlier — I’ll just chop up half to a whole avocado, mix it with some chopped tomatoes, some red onion, maybe some fresh garlic, a little bit of salt and pepper, kind of mix that all together, and that will be my pile of veggies as a side dish to whatever protein we’re having for dinner. Or, I might do that with some easy meat that I’ve got ready to go at lunchtime and just put it all together, almost like a salad that you might see on a salad bar at Whole Foods or at your favorite local grocer.

Jamie Martin

I’m just going to totally jump in there, it sounds a little like guacamole, and that’s like my favorite food. So, can I just get more of that all day long?

Julie Brown

Chunky guacamole, nobody is going to be upset about that, I don’t think.

Jamie Martin

Right.

Julie Brown

It’s really yummy. Taking salads that I Iove, flavor profiles — I’m a big fan of, as silly as it sounds, a buffalo chicken salad. So, making a bed of lettuce, throwing some tomatoes and onions and different things on there, and then maybe just using some buffalo sauce as the dressing on whatever protein I put on there with it. I’m always making sure that if I’m featuring a veggie in a meal, that I’m trying to build my meal on top of or around that. I think so often the culture at which we live builds our meals on top of, around, or within carbohydrates — breads, pastas, rices, tortillas — and I think if we can kind of shift our mindset away from having that heavy, dense carbohydrate vessel to deliver our food, it makes a huge difference, especially if we can swap that out for a majority of vegetables.

So, that’s a lot of the fresh that I’ll do. I also am a big fan of a crudité. You know, a chopped, chopped cucumber, chopped broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, you know, fresh bell peppers — love, love to do that. A lot of times when I’m at work, maybe it’s a warmer climate, not quite wanting to steam my vegetables, I will bring what I like to call the “adult lunchable” to work: a protein, maybe some cheese, and then, instead of crackers, my crunchy is my veggies. So, I bring those veggies and then something to pair them with, either a hummus or a guac. And it’s really refreshing and it’s almost like an adult bento box, which is really nice, and it allows me to just have a refreshing break and get a really nutrient-dense lunch. So, those are some of the ways I like getting my fresh veggies in.

[Music]

Jamie Martin

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[Music]

David Freeman

I’m hearing a lot about vitamin C. What would you suggest which vegetables probably contain the most vitamin C and how we can obtain that within our diet.

Julie Brown

So, yes, vitamin C, obviously very important for immune system function. Also, you know, small little side note, if you are getting a fair amount of protein in, vitamin C can actually help increase your ability to absorb the iron that’s in a lot of your protein-rich foods, which is important for immune system function as well. So, little bonus if you’re getting those in in the same meal because they complement each other. As far as vitamin C-rich foods, a lot of times we go to citrus fruits because we hear about those so frequently, but one of the highest containing vitamin C foods out there, believe it or not, is some of our colorful peppers. So, those are great ones to have in, again, you can do those raw for a dip, or you can sauté them, think how you might serve them as a side with fajitas at home, which would be nice. I also love them roasted, almost like stuffed peppers, with whatever. Again, if you have a little bit of ground beef, maybe some rice or quinoa, and a little bit of tomato paste, you can make a killer stuffed pepper that tastes really great and most everybody in your family will be agreeable to.

Another one that’s a really fun hack is make-your-own sandwiches with bell peppers. So, slice it in half, take out all the seeds and stems inside, and then build your sandwich between your two halves of bell peppers. So, you’ve got some high-quality deli meat, or maybe you’ve got some ground meat that you’ve cooked ahead of time, and then some cheese and mustard or whatever your favorite condiment is on there, and you’ve got a makeshift healthier version of a sandwich that has a really great crunch, too. So, I love bell peppers for that.

And of course, a wide variety of your leafy greens are going to have a fair amount of your C in there as well, David.

David Freeman

I mean, that was perfect, I love the vitamin C piece. Going to when we are cooking it, how much, and I know this is probably a broad answer that you can give here, but how much of those vitamins and nutrients are we losing when we are cooking our vegetables?

Julie Brown

So, this is everybody’s favorite answer to all nutrition questions is, it depends. Because, it depends on the item, and your chosen method of cooking, the temperature at which you’re cooking, and how long you’re cooking for. So, again, one might liken it to exercise, with some of our time, intensity, frequency principles that change the impact on the body, right. So, when it comes to cooking your vegetables, it’s important to not get so caught up in the, “Oh my gosh, what’s the best way to prepare this vegetable to get the most nutrients out of it?” Because I think people can go down a rabbit hole pretty deep there and get a little lost and away from the general focus of why they’re eating the vegetables in the first place.

There are certainly some benefits, you know. Cooking tomatoes shows that it brings out the lycopene more. Or, in certain cases, sweet potatoes, if you boil those, which is a cooking method that oftentimes we’re discouraging people from doing because it often leaches out a lot of the nutrients into the water, right. But if you boil sweet potatoes, it actually decreases the glycemic load, which might in turn make it healthier for some people versus others. So, I think you’ve got, you could boil, you could roast, you can sauté, you can steam. Most often, you’re losing less nutrients by steaming than you are if you’re cooking in a lot of different ways, because steaming tends to happen relatively rapidly, especially if you like an al dente taste or texture to the food that you’re consuming. And then, of course, a lot of times when we’re talking about people wanting to eat it, we also have to prioritize flavor in addition to our cooking method, and that’s where I really love sautéing and roasting for that, because that allows you oftentimes to toss those veggies in some type of healthy fat. Depending upon your temperature of cooking it might be olive oil, you might use avocado oil, you might use coconut oil, or even butter or ghee, and then, really, just reason it to the liking that you have.

So, a couple favorites there would be sautéed green beans, which we do at my house quite a lot. So, we sauté some garlic and some bacon that we’ve chopped up together, and then we add green beans and we put a lid on it, and we just steam slash sauté those together. It takes about 20–25 minutes, but dang, is that a good concoction when they come down to it. So tasty with a little bit of sea salt.

And then, in the oven, we love to do asparagus tossed in a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and then if you finish it with a little Parmesan cheese if you’re a dairy consumer that’s really tasty as well with some toasted cheese on top of it. Or another favorite, if you will eat Brussels sprouts, I know a lot of people, it’s a polarizing vegetable choice, I know. But if you will eat Brussels sprouts, those are darn tasty when you toss them with a little bit of olive oil or coconut oil, some garlic, and some bacon as well.

David Freeman

Give me all the Brussels sprouts.

Julie Brown

All the Brussels.

Jamie Martin

I was going to say the same thing: Give me those. It’s funny you mention green beans, that was the veggie at dinner last night, and my husband squeezed a little bit of lemon juice over top of them and my youngest was like, “That’s too much! It’s too citrusy!” It was so funny. But she smooshed them down a little bit so they weren’t quite as citrusy but she ate her green beans. I was so excited about that.

I think, a lot of what you’re talking about here, Julie, with the cooking methods is bioavailability, right, and so we want to talk — do you want to speak to what that is? I know you recently wrote a column about this for Experience Life about bioavailability. Do you want to speak to that just briefly?

Julie Brown

Yeah. Bioavailability kind of, we need to reflect on. I think we’ve spoken about this before, is you’re not just what you eat, you are what you eat and what you’re able to digest and absorb from the food that you’re consuming. So, that begs to question your digestive health, how effectively you’re chewing your food, where that food came from, actually physically in the world, and what the nutrient capacity of that item was when you actually consumed it.

So, all of those things, and I’m paraphrasing and making this fairly simplistic, all come together to determine what you can actually absorb once you chew that food, take it into your digestive tract, and your body breaks it down into absorbable, tiny micronutrient particles to be able to be able to cross the lining of your intestines.

So, the important part about that is bioavailability will change, depending upon seasonality, depending upon your health, depending upon where you’re at in the lifecycle. Unfortunately, as we age, we tend to have less effective digestive enzymes. We tend to chew less effectively. There’s just some components of how our body changes through the lifecycle that, unfortunately, we can’t necessarily stop from happening — but we can combat with behaviors. It might mean intentionally chewing your food more thoughtfully and more thoroughly, slowing down your mealtimes, avoiding drinking much fluid when you eat your meals because that can actually have an impact on how your stomach acids and your bile acids impact and start to break down some of the bonds in your food. Potentially taking a digestive enzyme, that can help aid in breaking down some of those foods, and then of course, as you move through other components of that digestive tract, there are other supplements that may be helpful in enhancing digestion and overall gut health support, like L-glutamine or a probiotic to ensure that things are going there.

And again, it goes back to what we were talking about before, you do want to make sure you’re eliminating on a daily basis, because that’s a really important thing to showcase fundamentally if your GI tract is healthy. So, again, how your body is functioning, what your food is, all of those things mash up together to tell us the bioavailability of what that food is. And again, the nuances of that change from day-to-day, meal-to-meal, depending upon what food you have and where that came from.

Jamie Martin

Oh, man. There’s so many things. Well, the good news is, we have lots of tips about how to eat your veggies and more about bioavailability in a variety of resources we’ll add to the show notes for this.

Julie, what other, any other veggie tips? I know you talked at the top of this about fresh versus frozen or canned — I know you have a hierarchy, do you just want to speak to that briefly as well?

Julie Brown

Yeah. You hit on it right there. That’s it. The best place to be, whenever you can, is fresh. And I can’t reiterate enough: If fresh is difficult for you because it’s not part of your routine, you may have to actually take time to intentionally make fresh produce a part of your life. Meaning, I put it on my shopping list, I want to get my kids involved if I have them in picking what the item is, how can I tell if it looks good, if it’s ripe, do you want to try something new, and make the family a part of it.

Then, when you bring it home, you can’t just put it in that crisper drawer and forget about it. You have to know what you’re planning to use it for. You have to chop it up and make it readily accessible, whether it’s, hey, I’m just chopping it up so I can easily throw it into a recipe that I’m preparing tomorrow night, or, I’ve got to chop this up and put it into individual containers so that when your kids are going back to school, they can toss it in their lunch. Or, when you are going back to work and are actually having to take your meal with you again, you can toss it into your lunch bag again and keep yourself going. And even for right now while many of us are at home, having those fresh and accessible make it so much easier to make a healthy choice when you do wander into the refrigerator. Because if it’s there in the fridge and it’s on a shelf where you can see it, it’s really important. So, the fresh, while it’s the top priority on our hierarchy, I would say unless you can do some of those things and commit to doing them pretty consistently, you’re really going to do yourself a disservice by spending all of your veggie dollars in the fresh produce section because you won’t end up using it. So, you’ve got to kind of commit to that whole lifestyle approach or it’ll be difficult.

The other thing that you can do with your fresh stuff if you’re open to it — bring it home, wash it, dry it, and then you can freeze it if you choose to do that. If it’s something that you get home and you’re like, dang, I didn’t get everything else I need for that recipe, that doesn’t mean that that has to go to waste. You can freeze it and use it later. And again, frozen, when things are frozen quickly, as in most of our frozen vegetables that we see at the grocery store, they’re typically using a pretty strong flash-freezing process to seal in a lot of the nutrients. And the beautiful part about that is a lot of those vegetables are picked at the peak of what we would consider their ripeness or as close to fresh as possible, so they’re sealing in the best possible nutrients, and that links back to the bioavailability we were talking about before. If they’re at the peak of their freshness or ripeness, the likelihood is that they’re going to have better bioavailability when they are finally cooked. That’s just a really nice thing we can feel good about if we’re buying frozen vegetables to know these are still as high-quality as we can.

And I do want you to think about the importance of keeping your frozen veggies as unadulterated and simplistic as possible. So, if you turn the bag over, it should literally only list the veggies that you see pictured on the front of the bag — the broccoli, the cauliflower, the carrots, the squash — whatever it might be. As soon as you start getting into a bunch of preserving agents, or things that are involved in a sauce or a seasoning blend, even if it seems small, it really starts to change what you’re going to get out of those vegetables. So, I would encourage everybody, although those broccoli-cheese pouches are very tempting, I would say you’re better off to put some fresh shredded cheese on that at home rather than go with the sauce mixture that’s oftentimes contained in a lot of those frozen products.

And then canned. Keeping some canned, again, there’s nothing wrong with canned vegetables, I think, intentionally we always say, ah, they’re really bad for you, so much sodium, you don’t need these. Right now is a time where a lot of us is going, dang, I wish I had a few more canned vegetables in my pantry just to see what I could do with them. My big message is, if you’re looking at canned, look for things that you actually can envision your family using, and make sure that you’re looking for canned vegetables that are ideally in BPA-free can liners, organic whenever you can, and when you do use them, commit to double-rinsing them with water before you cook them, so that will take off a lot of the topical sodium that’s on those foods.

David Freeman

JB, every time, you always blow our mind. You’re like a walking nutrition book. We’re about to go into our power minute. And I’m going to end up throwing a question at you, we kind of ended our other season with some fast, quick questions. So, within this power minute, the one question I’m going to throw at you to help all of our listeners out during this time is, with the depression or the unknown and all these different things that people might be feeling emotionally, we spoke to Jen last podcast about this, what can you tell people to do during this time to ensure they’re not having like mindless eating, or what we would call comfort food eating, just to be doing it, just to because they’re trying to pass the time. What suggestions would you give our listeners right now to actually press the reset button and maybe set themselves up for success during this time.

Julie Brown

Such an important mindset question, David, because I’m truly a believer that a lot of what you just described has to do with our mindset and the choices that we make on a day-to-day basis. So, I think for some of us, given personalities and whatnot, it really helps to have a structured schedule. And I’m not saying that you should have the clock always be thee determinate of when you do or don’t eat, but that can be a big help in keeping people on track and keeping away from the kitchen or the pantry when they don’t necessarily need to be in there. Letting themselves know it’s OK, I don’t have to eat every three hours, or I don’t have to eat just because I feel bored, oh, it’s only been an hour-and-a-half since I last had some nutrition and I last fueled my body. And then of course, when they do get into that bind, making sure that what they have access to makes sense for them. Because I think, right now, it’s unfortunately fairly easy to find the things that we don’t necessarily need to keep in our houses that much — the chips, the crackers, the processed foods that are easy to grab and walk around our house and go sit and, you know, for lack of a better word, comfort eat. Because they are more soothing to us from a breakdown of carbohydrates and starches standpoint. So, making sure that in our mindset we’re preparing when we grocery shop with what we do have access to, have good quality foods, and then of course, being thoughtful around how frequently you’re allowing yourself to go into the kitchen itself, based around the daily schedule that you’re upholding.

Couple little tips that I would say, if you’re thinking you’re hungry but you’re not sure, drink some water. That’s always a fail-safe, check it out, and question, if I’m really hungry, I can wait 15 minutes and I’ll still be hungry. But if I’m not truly hungry and I wait 15 minutes, I’ll have moved onto something else and I’ll no longer be distracted by the fact that I wanted to eat because 15 minutes ago I was bored or not focused on what I need to have in front of me at the moment. So, I would say, some things that are easier said than done, but, if people are making intentional choices around those pieces, they can be super helpful, and I can’t say this enough: If you feel like you’re struggling, reach out. Reach out for support. There are so many of us out there that are eager to help be there for you, for your family, to keep you on track now and for the long haul. So, we would definitely invite you to engage with us on the Life Time Training Facebook page, make sure that you’re asking questions of anything that we can help support you on, and just make sure you let us know what you’re doing to keep yourself on track, because you never know when you might inspire somebody too.

Jamie Martin

Awesome. Thank you so much, Julie. We’re so glad to have you back.

Julie Brown

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I enjoy this so much. I hope you guys are both well.

[Music]

David Freeman

Thanks for joining us for this episode. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation today and how you approach this aspect of healthy living in your own life, what works for you, where do you run into challenges, where do you need help.

Jamie Martin

And if you have topics for future episodes, you can share those with us too. Email us at lttalks@lt.life or reach out to us on Instagram @lifetime.life, @jamiemartinel, or @freezy30 and use the hashtag #LifeTimeTalks. You can also learn more about the podcast at experiencelife.com/podcast.

David Freeman

And if you’re enjoying Life Time Talks, please subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. Feel free to write a review and also let others know about it, too. Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on social or share it with your friends, family, work buddies, life coach, you get the gist. 

Jamie Martin

Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on Life Time Talks.

[Music]

Jamie Martin

Life Time Talks is a production of Life Time — Healthy Way of Life. It is produced by Molly Schelper with audio engineering by Peter Perkins and sound consulting by Coy Larson. A big thank you to the team who pulls together each episode and everyone who provided feedback.

We’d Love to Hear From You

Have thoughts you’d like to share or topic ideas for future episodes? Email us at lttalks@lt.life.

The information in this podcast is intended to provide broad understanding and knowledge of healthcare topics. This information is for educational purposes only and should not be considered complete and should not be used in place of advice from your physician or healthcare provider. We recommend you consult your physician or healthcare professional before beginning or altering your personal exercise, diet or supplementation program.

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