Ready to eat healthy (without giving up on your favorite foods)!? 3 Steps to creating healthy eating habits you can feel great about! 

Ready to finally start your fitness journey? Now that we’ve talked about the first step in achieving your health goals which is believing in yourself, we’re now diving into the fun stuff of preparing yourself to eat healthy. 

Getting started with eating healthy requires a few steps to accomplish and in this episode, I will share those steps with you. I have 3 important things to share that will get you started with a healthy eating habit. 

I know that eating healthy can be challenging which is why it’s important to understand how to do it the fun way. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be boring or a chore, friend.  

If you’re struggling with eating healthy then tune in because this episode will help you in achieving your fitness goals while having fun and getting results!

Let’s do this, friend!

Grab your meal planner here: learn.kelsey-bryant/mealplanner

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Hi, Friends, welcome in. I hope you’re having a beautiful day and today we’re going to continue our talk about getting started. 

So, in the last episode, (#6) I talked about how believing is one of the first steps to getting started. If you haven’t checked that out, go back and listen to that amazing episode.  Then tune back into this one because this one, we’re going to cover how to get started eating healthy and making healthy eating habits – so let’s jump right in. 

I’m going to walk you through step by step what you should do when you’re starting to eat healthy and want to create healthy eating habits. 

I think the first step is that you need to start cleaning out. So clean out those things that are trigger foods, clean out the processed foods, clean out the junk that’s been sitting in your pantry that you keep saying you’re going to eat and you never will get to. So the stuff that you don’t like. 

If you are thinking like well, I don’t know what trigger foods are, this is where you need to keep your journal and start recording, getting really clear on what you eat, when you eat it, and why. And then you’ll start to realize if some of your eating behaviors are surrounded by emotional stress, surrounded more by mental things, physical factors, and locations at different times of the day. You’ll start to begin to really notice if it’s a trigger food. 

If you just got done with a busy day at work, and you feel like you need to go home and have a bar of chocolate or a glass of wine, those are more trigger foods than they are foods that you’re eating for fuel and foods that you’re eating for consumption. Or if you hang up with your mom, from a phone call, and all of a sudden you realize that you’re searching for the cookies or something else, those would be trigger foods.  Those are more linked to emotional or physical ties, you know, you’re physically exhausted from work, you think you need a glass of wine.  So start keeping a journal if you’re not already doing that, if you believe you’re overeating, and you’re eating out of stress, if you’re eating to soothe yourself instead. 

The first thing you’re going to do is cleanout.

You’re going to clean out any of those trigger foods, because if they’re not there, you’re not going to eat them.  You’re also going to clean out some of the processed food because we know that “eating clean”, or eating more whole foods is best for us. So processed foods are things that are quick, they can be in the freezer, they’re here quick meals that you just pop in the oven, because they’re full of additives and preservatives, it’s not your fresh food. 

If you want to stock your food, or stock your fridge with whole foods, that’s going to be your fruits and your vegetables, the ones that need to be washed and prepared. 

Now canned foods are fine compared to frozen vegetables that are just vegetables. You know, think of a bag of frozen broccoli, the ingredients are only broccoli, those count as whole foods too, so it’s okay if you’re consuming your fruits and vegetables in these different forms, canned or frozen. 

The only thing is – when it comes to your fruits that are canned, just be sure that they’re not in a heavy syrup, and that they’re either in natural fruit juice, or in water, just to cut down on the sugar consumption.  Eating things out of a can or from frozen is just as good as eating fresh, you’ll still get the same nutrients, we just want to start looking at the ingredients so we know that they’re not processed and they’re what we call “whole foods”. 

So that’s step one, cleaning out the junk, cleaning up the trigger foods, cleaning out the processed food because when you are hungry, then your options are only going to be healthy. So this is step one in getting you set you up for success. 

Okay, and then from there we go into being prepared. 

So step one was cleanout, step two being prepared, and you’re going to make a meal plan.

So if you’re trying a new way of eating, and I know that it’s a little bit different if this is not what you’re used to. It is doable. This will set you up for success as you create your new healthy eating habits.

Let’s make it as doable as we can and let’s make it fun. So when you are making a meal plan, pick the food you like. Do you like enchiladas? Do you like chili? Do you like soup? Do you like sandwiches? It’s really whatever you want and if you do it right, you can fit all of these foods into your healthy lifestyle. So as you’re meal planning, your meals become shaped around your goals too and your time frame. 

When you’re meal planning, if you want to lose 30 pounds over a year, you get to be a little bit more liberal in your diet, you’ll have a little bit more room, ease, and because it’s such a long time period, but if you want to lose 30 pounds in three months, you’re going to need to be more strict, you’re going to not get that cheat meals and you’re not going to get the desserts and different things.

It depends on your goals.

And it depends on your timeframe. If you’re just trying to get into a healthy lifestyle, one that’s sustainable, I suggest giving yourself a lot of grace and doing it over a longer period of time. That way, you can know what serves you and you don’t feel so restricted. 

If you are a go-getter, and you said you’re ready to set the goal of this much weight in this much time, first of all, make sure it’s realistic, because losing 30 pounds or 60 pounds in a month is not realistic but make your goal realistic, make it in a timeframe. If you want a tighter timeframe, then that’s okay but your meal plan will reflect that there will be fewer liberties in it. And you will be more focused on your quantity and your quality of food. 

If you are thinking right now, Kelsey, I have so many specific questions just for me that I want to encourage you to join my weight loss challenge. It’s going to kick off February 15 through March 1, and there are some spots left but this is a great challenge, because you will have direct access to me to ask those specific questions, this is why I’m taking such a small number of people, because I want to help you specifically get to your goal and I want to help you specifically find your success. 

The cost for this is so minimal because I charge a lot of money for this one on one coaching and especially when it involves nutrition and meal planning, but I’m offering it such an amazing price that when you see it, it’ll be such a no brainer, of course you’ll join because you’ll have access to me, your specific questions will be answered, and you’ll finally feel supported and like you have the correct plan going forward in those two weeks to start losing weight. 

So let’s refocus. So after we’ve cleaned out the junk, we’re beginning our meal plan. 

Okay, and what this is, you are creating a meal plan for seven days, right? There are seven days in a week and I create mine like this. I think of the things I want to eat and I also think of the things I have in the house and make meals from things that are in the freezer and things that are in the pantry. 

So my meal plan is broken down into seven days, I write, you know, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then I have to break each day down into breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then one to two snacks- it kind of depends again on your goal. And if your workdays are really long, and it’s like a 12 to 12, you’re going to need the two snacks but if you come home and start prepping dinner, you know, by three in the afternoon, if you’re like a school teacher, you might not need that second snack. 

Again, it goes by the goals that you want and the timeframe you’re looking for.  So after you’ve named all the meals, because you want to be prepared, right, we don’t want to leave any spots blank.  The beautiful thing is, as you cook your own food and as you get better at cooking, you’ll know that you’ll have leftovers like you know that your family of four will eat just out of two pounds of chicken you only one pound. So now you have another meal prepared. 

So those things are perfect, because if you don’t want to cook too many times throughout the week, or if there’s one night that you’re all out of the house and you just need something to heat up, it’ll already be prepared for you. Leftovers are a-okay, they fit into the meal plan every week for me, they fit into there, because there’s just some days that it’s like I’m running on zero, I just need something to eat so I go to the fridge, there’s a leftover meal and that is perfect. 

I know it already fits into the meal plan and I’m ready to go. So while you are writing down what you’re going to eat every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you know what I mean? You’ll write down your meal.  So for breakfast, I’m going to have egg whites with spinach and toast then right next to it, kind of draw a line down and it’ll be a separate column and you’re going to write the ingredients that you need – so if you’re out of bread, you’re gonna write bread. If you’re out of eggs, you’re gonna write eggs. If you’re out of spinach, you’re gonna write spinach. Why? Because right now, this is helping you also make your grocery list. 

You’re sitting down one time, and you’re getting two things accomplished because we want to work smarter and not harder. 

So you’re getting your meal plan done, and you’re getting your grocery list accomplished. This way you don’t go to the store and think ‘oh, I think I have bread’ or ‘I think I have chili powder’, you already know because you’re taking the time right now to plan it out. And the better you get at this, the quicker it’ll be. And you’ll start to kind of find patterns. 

So you know, for breakfast oatmeal is great and eggs are great, and maybe a muffin here and there, so you’re able to kind of find out what works for you and what works for your time frame in these meal plans. So you are writing down every meal, every snack and the ingredients that you need all in this one setting and keeping it organized. So that way when you go to the store, you have your list of ingredients. 

If you’re thinking that it’s hard to come up with meal ideas, I want to just encourage you to use Google, Instagram, and Pinterest.  Keep a running list – sometimes I’ll see something new or like a fresh idea and I’ll just save it to Pinterest if that’s where I am or I’ll save it in my IG so I can go back and look at those ideas later.  

And remember, these things can be fun so if there’s something like a new Tiktok trend that looks delicious, and something that you want to try, bookmark it so that way that next week, you can do that, you can make sure you get the ingredients, and you can give it a try. 

It doesn’t have to all be boring ”diet food”, like can I put quotes around diet food because food is what we make it. It’s not that a chicken breast is not a diet food, it’s just a chicken breast – but if you think that diets are restrictive, and if you think that they’re bland, it’s only because you haven’t tried them in like a fun setting, or try them with a lot of flavor or you thought that maybe adding flavor meant adding fat and extra calories. 

While I’m going to show you that that’s not necessarily true. So you’re making your grocery list. I also want to encourage you if you order your groceries or whatnot, then you make a list and you’re ordering them on Instacart or whatnot, save it and label this list. 

If you label your meal plan, maybe like phase one, if you’re just starting out, or you know if it’s lunch with chicken enchiladas, label it something that you’ll remember.  Then, now that you’ve already put the work in, just kind of stash this away in a folder so you can come back and see it later, right and use it again. Maybe another month or maybe another six weeks, or something.  That way you’ve already put in this work, it just begins to compound on each other, your work just begins to compound so that was just the planning part. 

So you’re going to clean out and then you’re going to make a meal plan, you’re going to put down the names of what you’re going to eat when and then you’re going to have your ingredient list so that way when you go to the store, you’re already prepped and ready to go. 

Now we’re going to move into what to do with the food once you bring it home from the store. And that is called meal prepping. So we went from meal planning to meal prepping. 

My best practice is that I cook pretty much all my meals on Sunday. And this is just the day that I pick, you can pick yours. And it’s because my husband works late most days of the week. So those are kind of out. And this is really like the only day, Sunday is the only day that I can put full attention for an hour or so, maybe more if I need it in the kitchen where I’m not called the way to go wipe the butts of little ones or, I mean, come on moms, you know what I’m saying? 

I get to just get my hands dirty, be in there cooking, prepping all the vegetables, getting you know if I’m making breakfast muffins, getting things done, and just being able to focus. So for me, it’s Sunday, it could be Saturday afternoon, maybe Saturday evening, if you’re home, if that’s your lifestyle, too, or something or it’s maybe it’s Wednesday, it doesn’t matter, but I try to pick one day so I’m not having to do something every day that most of it’s done, other than maybe cooking one meal. 

I want you to think about trying to schedule out some time in your week for meal prepping as you begin regular meal prepping. 

I think that meal prepping really helps to keep me on track. One because it’s already done and I feel like it actually takes more effort to eat off-plan and to go out of my way than to just finish cooking whatever I started or to heat up what’s in there. And to me, meal prepping also gives me the motivation to get to the gym because dinner’s already done so I get to take that off my plate so I have some extra time. So I have some extra time for priorities, especially the priorities right now, which is my health. So working out is one of those priorities.

I feel like I have more energy to put into my workout because I don’t have to come home, think of dinner, slave over dinner, try to fight with the kids to eat it because I’ve already planned and I already know what we’re having. I know that the children will enjoy it, and it’s done. 

Okay, so then from there, I just want to encourage you okay, a lot of times is we’re beginning this process or the restart or meal plan and you leave, leave a day blank or you leave a meal blank and you’re like, oh, that’s my cheat meal, I really want to discourage you. And especially if you’re trying to lose a large amount of weight, from falling into this cheat meal, just for a little while, I’m talking at least like the first month. There’s a reason for this because a cheat meal, especially if you’ve done this before, or if you’ve done like a week of meal planning, and then you’ve had your cheat meal, think back. And if it’s been a stumbling block for you, I really want you to skip it, because a lot of times these cheat meals can turn into, well, I already ate off plan for lunch so it’s okay if we go out for dinner. And now instead of one meal, you’re two meals deep, and then maybe you let your hair down, and you want to have a drink  and then maybe you think, I’ve had a cocktail, let’s have another one. Because now you are calories and calories and calories above where you want it to be. 

I really try to discourage cheat meals for a while until you really feel that you have control over your diet over your eating over your triggers and that you’ve started to see progress because if you’ve started to see progress, you’re more motivated to stay on plan to and those cheat meals are a little less enticing because as you continue to watch the scale go down. 

It’s more like I don’t think I need that chocolate right now or I don’t think I need that cocktail, because I’m really focused on this goal. And I’m getting there, and I’m getting there, and I’m getting there, so that those things can wait. And that’s when you’re truly in control of your health when you get to decide on the things that serve you and don’t serve you. And they reflect your goals too. 

So it’s not to say that you can never have a cheat meal but what I just want to say is that, if Satan can use something to make you sin, He will. And if that right now is his if he has power over you in food, or over you and willpower, he’s going to continue to use that so if you want to stay strong, and you want to stay free, especially over anything physical, then I would skip the cheat meals for a while. And then maybe it becomes like a cheat item, where you still eat all your plans, you’re eating dinner, and then you decide, oh, I do want a little piece of chocolate. And then it’s a cheat item, or I want a scoop of ice cream so then it’s just one item. 

You’re already still on plan, you’re rocking it out. And then this is just a little bonus. And it’s not every day, it’s like once a week is how you introduce this. So that is just my advice, that’s how I plan every week, when I start eating healthy, or, you know, after the holidays, I re-go through my pantry and my fridge in my freezer, if it’s in there too. 

I clean out the triggers, I get rid of them because if they’re not here, I can’t eat them then I go into my meal planning, which is where I find the meals for the week, the snacks, the things I enjoy, the recipes I want to modify and tweak to meet my needs. And then I go to the grocery store, I’ve sat down, I’ve thought of everything, I go to the grocery store, and then I come home and I prepare meals. And then I’m all done for the week so those are the perfect ways to start getting healthy to follow that plan. 

If you’re kind of like, oh, I don’t know how I’d write this down or if you feel like you’re getting messy, I want to give you a free resource so if you go to my website, https://learn.kelsey-bryant.com/mealplanner, there’s a free downloadable there, so that’s https://learn.kelsey-bryant.com/mealplanner and this is going to be exactly what I walked you through, it’s going to have the days of the week, leaving you for breakfast, lunch, dinner and a few snacks for your meals. And then it will have your ingredients list. 

So you can easily fill out, you can print that out, you can take that to the store with you. So you have your grocery list too. So go and check that out. If you’re ready to join the two-week challenge, grab the meal planner printed out so you can already get started. I can start planning and preparing to eat healthy. 

Remember, this gets to be fun. So plan some fun meals or if you’ve been cooking certain things that you know your family loves, tweak them a little bit, see how you can make them healthier? And if you’re not really sure then join the two week challenge so you have direct access to me so you can say here’s my delicious recipe, how can I make this healthier? And I’ll give you a few ideas of swaps to make or things to cut out that won’t lose any flavor but will just give you healthier options so you guys can continue to eat the way that you’d like to and still reach your weight loss goals because there’s nothing worse than eating diet food and having it be bland no one wants that. 

I hope you guys will join me in the two-week challenge and grab your free meal planner and I will see you in the next episode. Hey ladies so I just want to clarify that the free meal planner download is at https://learn.kelsey-bryant.com/mealplanner