Hey everyone and welcome to a new episode of the Awaken Together podcast.
This is Kat and it's just me today.
I'm not joined by Jen today because we are talking all about holistic health and I'm
going to really miss all of her amazing tips and shares, but we felt that today since there's
so much content that I have to share being a holistic health coach, I would just kick
it all off.
So what I'm going to cover with you all today, we're going to talk about how to improve your
relationship with your body through non-diet conforming nutrition tips, healthy pantry
makeover and a lot of other goodness that I share with my one-on-one clients and health
coaching.
I hope you're excited.
I know I am.
I'm super passionate about it.
And just to kind of like lay some groundwork here, we're not going to be talking about
the ideal balance of carbohydrates versus fats.
Restriction is not in my wheelhouse ever.
I know how it feels to listen to someone preach to you about a golden prescribed diet that's
gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free.
It's like everything free.
What actually is it, right?
So today we're going to be exploring a space of expansion rather than contraction in restricted
energies as it relates to food.
No pre-treat diets here.
My style, my way of being as a health coach and just in life is eating disorder informed
because I come from that lived experience myself.
And it's really important to me that that's what I'm sharing.
And those are oftentimes the people that I work with, helping people move from all or
nothing mentality to a place of ease and flow.
That's what gets me really fired up.
And that's why I do what I do.
It's coming from this place of healing those negative relationships and body image and
really what we're taught as women from a young age of how to view our bodies and how to feed
ourselves.
So healing and bio-individuality is the undertones of what you can expect today.
If you've never heard this term, bio-individuality is something that I learned through the Institute
for Integrative Nutrition, which is the place that I received my holistic health coaching
certification from.
And just a little side note on that, if you have any questions about IIN or becoming a
health coach, I'm more than happy to share my experience both with them and with what I do.
Just reach out to me on Instagram at Katarina O'Erikson after this, and I'm always happy
to connect with you.
I also have a coupon code for a couple hundred dollars off.
So if you are curious to become a health coach yourself for either personal development or
to start the entrepreneurial lifestyle, definitely happy to share more with you on that.
So bio-individuality, it's this whole premise that no two people are the same, right?
And that's at a biological level and in our lives.
So no two bodies will be eating the same exact things, we will not be processing things the
same exact way.
So that's why everyone should be treated as an individual with no one size fits all plan.
I want to start by talking with you all about primary food versus secondary food.
This is one of the first concepts that I learned in my health coaching program, and I think
it's so practical and it makes so much sense, too much sense not to share, really.
So to start with primary food, it's more than just what's on your plate.
You might be thinking, I thought there was just one type of food, and you're not wrong.
But I think that thinking about things that feed you holistically just paint the picture
really, really well.
Your healthy relationships, physical practice, so whether it's like yoga, movement, running,
a fulfilling career that you actually like, a spiritual practice that can fill your soul
and satisfy your hunger for life.
That's what I'm talking about when I mentioned primary food.
And when primary food is balanced and satiating, your life feeds you, making what you actually
eat secondary.
So thinking about this in some forms of examples, think back to a time when you were super in
love.
I think about Buddy the elf and that movie, it's just my favorite Christmas movie, and
I can just hear him saying, I'm in love and I don't care who knows it.
That act of just like preaching at the top of your lungs because you don't care.
You're just acting a fool because you're so full of love.
You forget about food, you're high on life, colors are more vibrant.
You're thinking about this person, you're floating on air, gazing into each other's
eyes, that whole energy.
Now another time thinking back a little bit further back to when you're a kid, back to
when you're playing outside, maybe in the grass, having some fun with your friends and
your mom suddenly announces that dinner is ready.
But you're not really hungry because the passion of play takes all of your attention and you're
super focused and you just want to add one more Lego to the pile or finish the conversation
that you're having with your dolls or anything like that.
So it's basically talking about how we're fed, not just by food, but by the energy in
our lives.
And these moments and feelings demonstrate that everything in our life is in fact food.
And personally, speaking from experience, I've had experience in my life where I was
emotionally eating, where I would just like binge on something really yummy and I'd be
thinking about it all day.
And just that was my excitement of having the thing, eating it and just feeling like
satiated.
And then came feelings of guilt and it was like super toxic.
I know that I'm not the only one talking about this too.
So maybe you've experienced that as well.
I've also had the converse where I felt like I had no control in my life.
And so I turned to control the one thing that I felt like I could, which was my food.
And so we've all been there, whether it's one extreme to the next, I feel it's like
rare for me to come across somebody who's never had some form of disordered eating,
whether it was a full blown eating disorder or just like toxic feelings and thoughts towards
foods from time to time.
And it's really, thinking back on it, those were times of heightened stress, right?
Or times where our lives weren't meeting our emotional needs at a core level.
So I know that sometimes it can be difficult to understand which areas of life are feeling
out of balance because we're so zoomed in that zooming out can feel a little overwhelming.
So I have a resource to share that I love to come back to on a personal basis every
so often.
And it's something that I have my clients do in health coaching, like never fails, even
if we're in a three month program, six month program.
I bring this to my yoga teacher trainings, my holistic health coaching portion.
So it's a really great resource.
You can go to the website.
It's www.integrativenutrition.com slash circle dash of dash life.
Or if you literally just Google IIN circle of life, this will come up.
And basically it's an exercise for better understanding your unique needs and how to
find balance when you're feeling stuck.
Bring some self awareness to those areas where you could use some more nourishment and attention
so that you can continue to take care of yourself, mind, body, spirit.
Some of the categories on this circle of life are creativity, finances, career, education,
health, physical activity, home cooking, home environment, relationships, social life, joy,
and spirituality.
So there's a lot to it.
I think some things get really overseen or not even thought of.
Like creativity is one that with certain people like, oh, I hadn't even thought about my
creativity feeding me.
Whereas other people are like, oh my God, yeah, that's the most important thing to me
is my creativity.
And I think it's also one of those things that we kind of need to think outside the
box for because creativity is so much more than just painting, right?
Or drawing or coloring.
Creative problem solving is another way.
For me, I fuel my creativity box in my circle of life by my yoga practice and creating sequences
that are creative and fun and go outside the box.
And maybe it's something that I'd never experienced before in a class.
So that's where I fill that box.
So that's just one example of how you can think of this.
And the resource online kind of guides you how to complete this exercise yourself by
placing a dot on the line, you hit a button, and then it connects all the dots.
And so you can see like where is really lacking and where is really full and how you want
to allocate that energy because as amazing as it would be to fill every area of your
life, I think that's a little bit unrealistic of a goal for us to set for ourselves.
I think what's most important is to prioritize which areas of your life are most important
to you and how you can make incremental differences in those categories.
Knowing that we only have so much time in our lives.
One of my favorite quotes, you can do it all just not at the same time.
So if you're working on improving your finances, that might mean that you're going to be taking
away from your social life.
Let's say if you need to get a little side hustle to improve and meet some of your financial
goals, you might not be hanging out with friends going out to eat quite as much because those
goals would be conflicting each other.
So any questions on that that you have, just please let me know.
I love this.
And again, I come back to it quarterly.
So like three times a year.
Secondary foods.
Let's talk about food now.
The actual stuff that you do put on your plate, probably more aware of this right off the
bat.
This is your veggies, your fruits, protein, whole grains, fats, oils, and water.
The plates on which you place the food on, that's like the visual that you can imagine
as a primary food, secondary food is the actual nooks and crannies on the plate.
I like to introduce a concept pretty early on in health coaching called crowding out.
So again, it's going back to that idea of expansion rather than restriction.
If you're finding that when you're taking a look at your plate, you've made a delicious
meal and there's half of your plate is like grains, pasta, carbs, you know, we need that.
We need all of that.
And then the other half is veggies.
Basically, what we want is more than half of that plate to be veggies, fruits, whole
fresh produce that are unprocessed, ideally organic so that we're not getting the pesticides
and all of that fun stuff that just makes its way into our food.
And so it's rather than thinking of like, I need to cut down on the grains, the fats,
the proteins, it's thinking about amplifying.
So you have no limit on all the good stuff.
And ideally, when you're filling yourself up with, I like to say high vibe foods, then
the low vibe foods are going to be just becoming less and less and less.
And you're going to be kind of like tricking your mind in a way of just eating more, eating
more of the good stuff so that you're filling yourself up.
You're going to be feeling better and your skin's going to thank you all the good things.
Going back to that idea of like high vibe food versus low vibe food, this is something
that I've introduced to myself and my own healing journey with food because I don't
really like to think of things as healthy or unhealthy, because what that automatically
equates to is good versus bad.
And yeah, we've been taught from a really young age that there are bad foods that we
should not be eating.
I'm sure you're already imagining some foods coming to mind.
I remember reading a book that explicitly said sugar is the devil.
But that's problematic, right?
Because when we're saying that sugar is the devil, that's a blanket statement.
It's not saying like, oh, what about fruit?
Right?
That's a really common question that you might have come right away.
There's so many natural sugars and fruits, and I will never tell anybody not to eat fruit
because there's sugar in it.
I think if you're finding a diet that says that, I say run in the other direction because
that's total bullshit.
And any diet that says not to eat any sort of fruits or vegetables like bananas, I remember
hearing.
I'm like, no, I have a banana every freaking day and I feel great.
So just steer clear of any of that fruits and veggies, we should not be limiting ourselves
to at all.
The more that we eat, the better.
I don't care.
And that going back to bio individuality, you're going to know which fruits and veggies
do really well and which don't feel as good for you.
That's where the high vibe foods and the low vibe foods come in.
High vibe, you can think of as like, this is what makes you feel good.
This is what gives you energy in your body, in your mind.
The low vibe food are foods that cause some brain fog that make you feel a bit sluggish
that waking up in the morning, you feel just kind of like, ugh, you don't want to get out
of bed maybe because you had something really heavy the day before.
So rather than thinking about good and bad, let's expand our minds a little bit more and
think of it in any way that serves you.
Maybe it's not high vibe, low vibe, but just think about that.
I really encourage you to have those intentional check-ins with yourself.
Cool.
Next topic I want to cover with you all is food labels.
Now who when they hear food labels or looking at nutritional facts brings a wave of anxiety
or toxic feelings, right?
For me or anybody with a history of disordered eating, step one of healing was getting away
from that.
Now I want to introduce something that has been a game changer for me that I talk about
every single healthy pantry makeover that I do, and it's looking at just the ingredients.
So I'm going to go over a couple notes that I have here with a healthy pantry makeover
that has been really instrumental for my clients, for me, and I hope it's helpful for you too.
So think first, it's getting clear what you're hoping to take away.
What in your kitchen are you like questioning that, I don't know if this is good for me
or not, and like why?
So what are you hoping to take away?
Is it a sense of ease?
Is it new ideas for cooking, new ideas to have just on stock at home?
Taking a couple things out of your pantry and starting from there, I think is the best
way to do it.
I like to start with whole grains.
So taking a look at what whole grains you have.
A lot of people have like pastas, rices, all that good stuff, and with those, those are
great to have.
I always just like to think about ways that we can getting away from processed carbs.
So the ingredients on these labels are going to be pretty simple, at least we'd hope it
should just say something like whole wheat pasta, right?
Or brown rice.
If there's anything else, any fillers or additives, just pay attention to that and maybe next
time you go with something with fewer ingredients or just one.
Alternatives for pastas that are less processed.
They have great lentil process of lentil pastas now.
I think Bonza is one of my favorite brands.
They also have at Trader Joe's a quinoa brown rice pasta that's delicious.
Going for another option like quinoa, spelt, barley, bulgur, brown rice, amaranth, wheat
berries, all of these options, even like rolled oats.
These are great ideas of these fiber rich whole grains that you can stock in your pantry.
They're antioxidant rich vitamin E, always good to add to your daily routine.
Now rather than having flour for baking, maybe that is something you have, maybe you love
to bake and that's something that you have.
I'm not going to say there's anything wrong with that.
I think that if you're experiencing any discomfort in your belly after eating baked goods, then
that's when you might want to look into alternatives.
Some great alternatives are coconut flour, almond meal.
Those are gluten free options.
It might just have you feeling a little bit different.
I'm just a big proponent of balance.
So sometimes I'll cook with whole wheat flour.
Sometimes I'll switch it up just in the name of getting different nutrients from different
areas.
Next up are nuts and seeds.
Instead of some salty fried snacks with empty calories and tons of fat, I like to opt in
for really high vibe foods that are just straight to the source goodness.
So rye or raw or dry roasted nuts like almonds, peanuts, cashews, and walnuts make me feel
really, really good.
Even like a trail mix.
I in my morning breakfast to add hemp seeds and flax seeds on top of like a monkey bread,
I'll call it monkey toast actually.
So like a piece of whole grain bread with some peanut butter, some sliced banana, hemp
seeds, flax seeds, some cinnamon.
It's literally my favorite thing.
Sesame seeds are also great for Asian stir fries too.
And a little hint with your nut butters, make sure you're reading the label for just one
ingredient and that it's just like dry roasted peanuts or dry roasted almonds or something
like that.
If they're salt added, cool.
We want to be getting away from palm oils because that's a high anti, that's a high
inflammatory oil and it's also harvested in a way that's not sustainable for the environment.
The more you know, right?
So there are also other oils that I would recommend for different styles of cooking.
There are healthy oils like peanut, olive, sunflower, even canola and sesame.
They're high in heart healthy monounsaturated fats and those in sunflower, soybean, sesame
are high in healthy polyunsaturated fats.
I know a little bit of the nerdy stuff.
The reasons that you want to switch up your oils and have a couple different ones on hand.
I like to say that olive oil, it's like a cold pressed oil, this has a low burning point
and so you want to use this for like maybe a salad dressing where you're not cooking
it at all or cooking at low temps.
Now the higher burning temp oils, these are avocado oil, canola oil, sunflower oil and
coconut oil for example, even sesame oil.
These you don't have to really worry about the burning point quite as much.
You can fry in these if you want, you can saute.
Kyle makes an awesome stir fry with sesame oil.
So just to give you an idea, with the burning points, the reason that we care about this,
the reason that this matters is that when we burn oil it turns into a carcinogen and
we want to steer clear of those, right?
Okay, next up, beans.
I love beans personally, they're high in protein, high in fiber.
Canned is really just going to be the easiest and it's a time saver so that's why I use
them.
I mean, if you want to go with beans that are uncanned, good for you.
It just takes a little bit longer to cook.
Those are probably a heart healthier option in what my nutrition school would recommend,
but I love canned beans so I'm going to recommend those too.
They can be high in sodium, so reducing those are just like going for the reduced sodium
option or just giving your beans a little rinse is perfect.
Chickpeas, black beans, lentils, they're all super good for us and go really great in salads,
soups, stews, rices, or even just in like a bean salad with some seasonings.
So yum.
And to talk about seasonings, I think this is an area where we don't really think about
the health benefits, but there are so many.
Adding we all need salts, preferably ionized or sea salts to flavor our foods and we need
that in order to keep us hydrated.
When we sweat, we release a lot of that.
Pepper is really good for us too, it's delicious, adds a little bit more depth and flavoring
to foods.
Granulated garlic or even any kind of garlic, it's so good, it's an anti-fungal.
I remember learning that Tom Brady would eat so much garlic to prevent colds and I'm like
done, you know me, I'm a New England gal.
So anything Brady's doing, great.
I might not have some people who agree with that listening to this, but oh well.
Cinnamon I probably eat every day, I put a little bit in my coffee, it's a warming spice,
it's also anti-fungal and has antioxidant properties.
If you're a cheese lover and are looking to cut down on your dairy consumption, whether
it's because it's something that doesn't make you feel super good or you're just trying
to cut down on dairy for environmental reasons or whatever reason have you, nutritional
yeast is such a great substitute.
You can use it just as you would parm, like what's it called?
Yeah, just like Parmesan cheese and a shaker.
I put it on eggs, I put it on pasta.
Yeah, anything that you want like a cheesy flavor, you can also make a really delicious
vegan nacho cheese at home with the help of nutritional yeast and some veggies.
Cumin's great for chilies, great in crock pot.
Yeah, I could go on and on and on, but I'll start with that.
Okay, soda.
Soda I feel like everybody knows isn't good for us, but yeah, I'm just going to talk about
it here because it's worth mentioning.
Swapping out soda and other sugary sweetened beverages for sparkling water, seltzer, or
even just water with some lemon in it, you can save so much just like damage to your
teeth.
ADHD is really triggered by having extra sugar in your diet, so you can really feel a difference
in that too.
Dairy, you'd be shocked by how many low calorie yogurts use artificial sweeteners.
Just to keep the calories down, my vote is plain Greek yogurt because it doesn't have
any sweeteners, artificial or otherwise, and it's actually higher in protein.
You can sweeten this naturally by yourself at home with some fresh fruit or a drizzle
of honey.
One of my favorite Greek desserts or Greek breakfasts that I had when I was there whenever
I visit, plain good quality Greek yogurt, a drizzle of honey, and some roasted almonds.
Oh my god.
That's so freaking good.
That with like a little side of fruit, like some pineapple or blueberries, and oh, it's
so yummy.
So good.
Moving over to eggs.
If you're eating eggs, just look for free range.
That's ideal.
If that's too expensive or they don't have any organic, just on its own is good too.
I eat a lot of eggs, so I take the extra time and money to invest in my eggs because I don't
eat meat.
But talking about meat, buying produce in season, local.
I mean, meat isn't really in season or out, but local and organic, antibiotic free.
It's just going to ensure that you're putting the right, the best stuff in your body.
We want to be moving away from chemicals, anything that's linked with cancers or just
like any sort of like autoimmune disorders.
Like all of these things matter.
What we put into us, we become.
Eating with the seasons also helps us now thinking about like veggies and fruits, helps
us get in a wide variety of fruits and veggies throughout the year.
And a really easy, simple tip is to eat the rainbow.
And the reason I say this is because your red fruits and veggies are going to have different
nutrients and minerals and vitamins, then your greens, then your blues, then your purples.
So some ideas to get you started, raspberry, strawberries, tomatoes for your reds, orange,
obviously oranges, carrots, peppers, yellows.
I love bananas, onions, squash, apples.
Green is king when we're talking about fruits and veggies.
They just have like the healthiest, the most dynamic nutrition.
So kale, spinach, romaine lettuce.
There's really not many nutrients in iceberg lettuce.
We've heard that before.
Little nutritional value.
So that's why I said the other ones first.
Avocado, broccoli, leafy greens, dark leafy greens.
It's king.
Thinking about blue, obviously blueberries, blackberries, even blue corn has the nutrients
of the blues.
And violet, we think about beets, eggplants and plums.
So moving into your fridge a little bit, any condiments, they can add really just like
globs of fat and sodium into your day.
And there's really nothing wrong with a bit of mayo or like regular soy sauce, ketchup
on occasion.
But for daily use, get more nutrients.
You can spread some hummus on sandwiches.
You can get creative on even like a plant-based mayo.
Sometimes there's more nutrients in there, but sometimes not.
Being sure to check the ingredients.
Also thinking about like frozen entrees, just take a look at the sodium content.
Sometimes it's flooded with tons and tons of salt.
That's how the frozen meals stay tasting so good for a long period of time.
Yeah, so if you're concerned about sodium, check it out.
But honestly, I don't like obsessing over this sort of stuff.
So fresh is best.
Frozen, I do like to make it an act of self care to get a couple frozen entrees that I
can bring to work with me for lunch on the times where life has gotten crazy and I wasn't
able to meal prep like a couple fresh lunches.
So know that that's a good option for you too and don't feel any shame about that.
Looking out for yourself and planning in advance is an act of self care and self love.
So I'm going to wrap up the healthy pantry portion with six simple steps to give your
pantry a healthy makeover.
Aside from everything we talked about, ingredients are key.
They tell a story about your food.
And if your ingredient list is super long, filled with ingredients that you can't even
pronounce, that you don't even know what the heck they are, just give it some second thought,
right?
I'm not saying to toss it, I'm not saying to not buy it, but I'm saying to really compare
your options when you're food shopping and saying like, oh, well, this option has ingredients
that I actually understand and it looks just as yummy.
Like that extra set of intention, extra moment will have your body feeling so much better.
And it's just an act of, it sends your body the message that you care about what you're
putting into it.
So that you actually care about your body and it's just like, it just changes the whole
energetics behind it, right?
Next up, thinking about sugar.
If any of your ingredients listed contain artificial sweeteners from aspartame, like
an equal or sucralose, like in Splenda, I would recommend either tossing it or just
like using it in real, real small limits.
And then when it comes time to replace that, look into something else.
If sugar is the fifth ingredient or like fourth or third or first, and it's not something
that is supposed to be sweet, I would recommend looking into another option.
And that's simply because sugar has a sneaky way of getting into virtually most foods in
our pantries.
Even like, like tomato sauce, right?
That's a really common ingredient in that, but it's fine if it's in it, but we don't
want it to be like the second ingredient.
And let me back up a little bit.
The order in which the ingredients are listed in a food label matter.
The first ingredient listed is going to be what that food contains the most of.
And it just kind of decreases as you go down the line.
Some foods will say like, contains 2% or less of XYZ.
And those, you know, you don't necessarily need to worry about unless they're like red
number five.
We want to steer clear of any food dyes.
And that's tip number four.
Also just avoiding refined sugars like table sugar.
We don't really need that.
So in your coffee, if you can have like even like a dash of maple syrup, I would recommend
over a table sugar because the level of which it's been processed is less and it comes from
a treat.
And then honey.
Low fat.
I mentioned this in another episode a while ago, but this is a sneaky way that the diet
industry likes to label things and make you trick you into thinking that it's healthy
and that it's good for you.
Oftentimes, it just means that the fat has been replaced with sugar.
So stick to buying whole foods.
I would recommend buying a full fat Greek yogurt over a low fat one that has just been
replaced with fake sugar.
So bottom line with this healthy pantry makeover is that ingredients matter and sugar is sneaky
AF.
We don't want artificial dyes and it's an act of self love to look at what you're actually
eating and making sure that it feels good in your body.
So I know we talked about a lot today.
I covered a lot of topics, but want to leave you with a little underlying message and it's
that you know your body better than anyone better than any doctor.
Okay.
If when even thinking about a certain food makes you feel sick, that means a closer look
at that food is worth it.
It might be because you have an allergy or an intolerance to it.
Like that feeling that you get in your gut when thinking about something, it matters.
So don't just think it's my silly little mind playing tricks on me.
Like no, give yourself some more credit.
Your intuition knows it could also not necessarily be because you have an allergy or an intolerance,
but maybe you might be experiencing some sort of gut dysbiosis and your body is reacting
to certain foods or even food groups in a way that it might not normally, but it could
be a matter of getting your gut health in check.
Probiotics are your friend, unprocessed, getting our stress in order.
So I know that's a lot.
Once again, I'm here for you.
I want to hear how all of this is sitting with you.
You can send me a message again on my Instagram at Katarina O. Erickson or check out my website
at catalystliving.com.
That's catalyst with a K for more information.
Otherwise, happy eating, happy moving, happy living your life in a way that satiates you
and mind, body, spirit.
Love you all and I'll see you next time.