The key to a creating and living an amazing LIFE, actually begins in your kitchen… Allow me to explain why.
Would you not agree that your day/life just goes a lot better when you are felling pretty limitless, inside and out?
Yes, I sure can find a way to relate everything in life back to food.
But this is legit stuff… What you put inside of your mouth literally tells the rest of your body how to feel… So how are you feeling?
Every bite of food you take works like little chemical messengers that react with your body and can influence how you feel on a daily basis. All the preservatives, additives, sugar, wheat, dairy, alcohol and caffeine add up – some quicker than others – but every ingredient – no matter how small or ‘insignificant’, plays a role in your health and well being.
We live in a busy, fast paced world. There is lots on our mind, we have endless responsibilities and a never ending to-do list… We also all have dreams, goals and aspirations… But there is a huge secret to achieving those goals..
You need to start DOING what you say you are going to do.
When it comes to your health and wellness goals, whether you are looking to increase energy, lose weight, balance hormones, have radiant clear skin, improve digestion, decrease bad cholesterol and blood pressure, get rid of a foggy brain or improve your strength and endurance the same steps apply, you just have to do what you say you are going to do. We all tell ourselves what we would like to have but we need to commit to what we want.
Just simply saying “ok, this week I am going to eat healthy” does not necessarily mean you are planning for your success. This thought of “ok, this week I am going to eat healthy” probably goes through everyone’s head and yet many are still NOT doing it.
The following are dreams with deadlines:
“I am going to lose 20 lbs by the end of the year”
“I am going to drink 4 litres of water every day to increase my energy and feel the power of staying hydrated”
“I am going to commit to 4 days a week of 60-minute workouts so that I can tone up and maintain for my trip to Aruba”
Saying something and then doing something about it are obviously two completely different things.
We may have up to 50,000 thoughts per day, some of those may be million dollar ideas! But are we acting on all of those thoughts? Maybe not so much. However there is a difference between thinking about becoming a millionaire or losing 20 lbs and then doing it! You are actually capable of both (and by that I mean both thinking and doing, and also losing 20 lbs and becoming a millionaire).
An inspirational wellness coach once taught me through a Ted Talks video that the same ‘activation energy’ that is required for you to get out of your warm bed in the morning is the same amount of energy that it takes to get off the couch and make a healthy dinner, and is the same energy required to get in your car and go to the gym or lace up your runners and hit the pavement. Oh, and remember, once you start doing the thing you want/need to do, suddenly it is not so dreadful, because it feels good to workout (hello endorphin production), you feel good when you have a healthy meal because you don’t feel heavy and bloated after, and you feel super accomplished when you go to bed and the dinner mess is cleaned up.
The only thing standing between you and your goals is YOU and also what is known as the 5-second rule. If you do not ACT on a thought when it comes into your head, your brain will be over it in 5 seconds. If you have an impulse to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill the idea. This could be speaking up in a meeting, saying hello to someone you know, beginning a workout or picking up a book that you love but haven’t touched in 2 weeks. This applies to many areas of your life and once you start to do the thing you really want to do, like lose 10 lbs, suddenly you also begin doing things that you didn’t want to, or ‘have time’ to do before, because you are now acting on your thoughts because you are feeling LIMITLESS.
Guys, if you don’t start doing the things that you really want to do, right now – then you will wake up a year from today in exactly the same place.
When you have a goal in mind, and in this case – since you are on a health blog, lets assume your goals are health and wellness related. I want you to start writing things down. Journal, write post-it notes, make a dream board, put reminders in your phone and write goals in your day planner… When you actually write down your goals, studies show you are 42 percent more likely to achieve them. When you put these dreams on paper you are clarifying what you want, motivating yourself to take action and you are creating a new filter of opportunities.
When it comes to your health and wellness goals, planning out your meals is the biggest key to success. Whether you have a busy family to feed, lots going on at work, are working towards losing weight, or increasing strength – or all of the above, meal planning is for YOU, and it is something that can be added into your routine to not only save you money and time (from deciding at dinner time, what you should have for dinner) but this is goal mapping for those health and wellness goals!
These are my 4 Plan for Your Success Tips, followed by my two meal planning worksheets so that you can plan for your success.
Tip #1: Swap the Bad for the Good
Your first step is a kitchen clean-up. This is where my favourite saying “if you keep good food in your fridge, you will eat good food” comes in. If the white/brown sugar, wheat flour, ice cream, oreo’s, nutella and vegetable oil are in you cupboard, then they may end up getting consumed because #1 we are creatures of habit and #2 you know it is there.
Fill your fridge and cupboards with clean whole foods that are found in my recipes or in my 5-Day Meal Plan Online Program, when it comes to grocery shopping try and only purchase things with 5 ingredients or less (this means preparing things from scratch) and remember your top 7 Kitchen Nasty’s to kick out:
White/brown/cane sugar
- Substitute with coconut sugar, coconut nectar, honey, maple syrup and dates
white/whole wheat flour
- Substitute with sprouted spelt flour, kamut flour, ancient grain flours or whole grain gluten-free or grain-free varieties
“yellow oils” (canola, corn, soy, vegetable, safflower, sunflower, peanut)
- Substitute with coconut oil, sustainable red palm oil, avocado oil, grass-fed butter and ghee for cooking
- Use olive, hemp, flax, pumpkin seed and other cold-pressed nut oils for cold dishes only
iodized/table salt
- Substitute with himlayan pink salt and dulse/kelp granules for added natural iodine
grain-fed beef/conventionally raised animal products
- Use grass-fed beef, pasture raised poultry and other nitrate, antibiotic and hormone free meats
non-fermented soy products/byproducts
- Tempeh, soy miso and wheat free tamari can be used in moderation)
preservatives and chemical ingredients that you cannot pronounce
Tip #2: Create a Recipe Database
Use a program like Evernote to store recipes for easy kitchen access on a tablet, phone or computer. A large part of holisticole.com is also dedicated to creating and sharing whole food recipes. You can use this as your database as well to create and plan meals for you and your family. The old fashioned hard copy recipe book is also your perfect tool for inspiration. Get on pinterest and follow other health food social media accounts on instagram, facebook and twitter so that your social media feed is also filled with more yummy/healthy meal ideas! Your possibilities are endless. You can also check out my 5-Day Meal Plan Online Program to get you started on your meal planning journey.
Tip #3: Get Organized
Get a kitchen chalkboard, a dedicated meal planning journal, an app on your phone or use my Meal Planning Worksheet and Ingredient List Worksheet. You need to have something simple that you can use to plan out your meals/snacks for the week which keeps you on track and organized. Utilize dinner as leftovers for tomorrows lunch and avoid waste by using all of the ingredients in your fridge (before they go bad!). Get your family on board by giving you meal ideas that you can healthify (such as Butternut Macaroni or Rustic Spelt Crust Pizza)! This step of meal planning is the most important. If you can’t get your meal planning sh*t together then your good intentions for a super healthy week can easily fall apart.
Tip #4: Create the Time
None of us HAVE time. We have to CREATE the time. Just as we can spend 20 minutes, no problem, browsing social media or watching netflix, we can put aside some time to plan for our success. After you do it once, it gets easier and easier each time! My biggest tip is that you have to write it down. As I’ve already stated. Thinking about something is not the same thing as doing it!
Dedicate one day a week to planning meals for the week, and also block off the appropriate time to prep meals. Take into account your own schedule as your meal plan is customized for YOU and your life. Meals can still be super quick and super healthy for a fast paced life. They just need to be planned!
It takes some getting used to at first, especially if you are not a planner or have never done anything meal planned related before. If you need help with this process, give my 5-Day Meal Plan Online Program a try, use this for your first Monday to Friday of meal planning, and then utilize the worksheets provided, the recipes and your new recipe database to plan out your next week of meals.
I am here to inspire you, because I want to see YOU be successful. We all deserves to feel good and live our best life possible.
Let’s make this new healthy habit stick. Once you get meal planning under your belt it becomes a lot easier to take on and achieve new goals afterwards. Show yourself that you are worth it and also how easy it truly is.
