Could you benefit from just a little bit more energy in your life?
I don't know about you, but I could always use more energy.
And today I am continuing on with the deep level self-care series and I'm talking about how
to eat for energy. And on this episode, I'm going to share with you how you can set yourself up
and your kitchen up to eat this way. Let's get into it.
Welcome to the Soul Alive Self-Care Podcast.
I'm your host, Tina Stinson, and we will be talking all about deep level self-care practices
to help you have success in both your personal and professional life.
By reducing stress and anxiety and overwhelm, improving your mindset and creating a strong,
loving connection with yourself. I'll see you on the inside.
[Music]
Hey guys, welcome back to the Soul Alive Self-Care Podcast.
We are continuing on with the deep level self-care series this week.
I am a little bit tired today, but we're shifting gears. We're talking food.
So inside of the bootcamp, the Soul Alive Self-Care Bootcamp, which is my signature program,
which I've been talking about in this deep level self-care series. These are all the 11 practices
that I share with you inside of the bootcamp. And so I'm just giving you a little taste of what
we do in there. And we do a reset up the mind, the body, and the Soul. And so this is where we shift
to the body and I focus on fueling, fueling, fueling, I can't say that, fueling, fueling your body.
I don't know why I can't say that. For energy, right? Keeping yourself for health, you know? And so
this week's deep level self-care series is eating for energy, which is, I don't know about you guys,
but I am always down for more energy. I could always use more. Right now, I'm feeling super tired.
I think it's the weather. We have, it's really cold today. It's substantially colder than it was
yesterday. And there's snow on the ground. And I'm just not sure how I feel about it. Usually the first
snow, I'm like super excited because it's so pretty and it's like, oh, winter, wonderland. But it's like
not that fun kind of snow where it's like, you know, you can make a snowman because it's still like
slightly warmish in the 30s and the snow will stick together. It's like cold and it's just blowing
all over the place. It's like the non-fun kind of snow, if you know what I'm talking about. So
that's what we're experiencing up here on the mountain today. So I have my coffee for those of you
joining me on YouTube and hanging out with me, kind of in person, in person as we get.
You can see that I have my coffee, grab your coffee or your tea or whatever it is. And hang out
with me for a little bit. We're going to talk about, as I said, eating for energy. So originally when
I first started this, I was going to call this eat real food because that's kind of basically what I'm
going to be talking about. But it sounds so silly, you know, it sounds kind of ridiculous. And I have to
tell you the truth though, when you go to the grocery store, tell me, like really tell me how much
real food is there. Like take a look around the next time you go because when you go in, the only real
food is pretty much, you know how they always say shop around the edge of the grocery store,
which is pretty true. But even when you go into the sections where you have produce and stuff like
that, it's become even more difficult for us to shop today because you have organic, nano,
organic GMO, non-GMO. Like now you have this appeals crap that they're putting all over everything,
right? So it's just so confusing. So, but a lot of the stuff, just to just to get like super basic,
which is today's, today's podcast is really super basic to this would be like a whole series if I
was really going to go deep into it. But it's it really is simple. It's not easy to do, but it really
is simple. And I'm going to give you a takeaway exercise where you can start to set yourself up and
set your kitchen up to eat for energy. For some reason, my microphone keeps like dropping like,
I don't know if they think hold on a second. Let me see if I can get this. Okay. All right, so let's get
into it. So real food, let's define real food as something that comes from the earth or has five
ingredients or last, right? So, and real ingredients too. Like so when you look at if you're reading the
ingredient label, like let's use bread as an example because this is the most obscene, ridiculous
example that I could find today. And I think the bread that you get in the grocery store is so
horrible. Like it's just so bad. And but if you pick it up and read most the labels of most spreads,
not all breads, you will see like 30 ingredients and 85% of them, you're going to say, what is that?
I don't even know what that is. Now just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean that it's
necessarily bad, but you need to look these things up and learn about them more. Okay. And so really
what's in bread? I make my own bread. So what's in it? Flower, water, salt, sugar, yeast, right? And
there's not a lot of sugar in there. I'm not talking about the sugar that you see when you read the
label at the food stores where it's like three different places, you'll see different types of sugar
in there. They're adding way too much sugar to the point where when you toast that type of bread
at home, it burns really easy. There's just so much sugar in it. And another thing I noticed about
the bread from the food store, if I'm going to talk about and complain about the bread, I find the
bread at the food store absolutely disgusting. Most of it, there's a few bakeries that sell
sell bread at the food store that's delicious, but not not many. But it's super airy and super light.
It's like like, are they just pumping this full of air? Like, because then when I eat it, it's just not
there's no density to it. I don't know. Do you guys agree with me? I don't know. I feel like I'm
losing my mind a little bit sometimes when it comes to buying any type of food. So I started making my own
bread. I don't really want to make my own bread, but I started to make my own bread again because I
just think the stuff at the food store is horrible. And then when you want to get real good bread,
it's almost $9 a loaf. And I'm just like, that's a hard no for me. That's just going a little bit too far
as far as I'm concerned. So anyway, that's real food. So when you like, when you find bread at the
food store and you can find some bread at certain food stores, not every food store, where you read
the ingredients and there's just like usually five or under ingredients and they're ingredients that
you can recognize, right? But if you're reading the ingredients list and you don't recognize a lot of it,
you need to investigate a little bit. So when someone asks me, Tina, what do I do to get healthy,
maybe lose weight, feel better, get more energy? I just tell them to eat real food. And one of the reasons
why I became a life coach after I became after I was a health coach, I was a health coach first,
was because I realized that most of the time what we were dealing with had nothing to do with food
when it came to health and weight loss and stuff like that. And so I needed to
get certified as a life coach so that I could help these people in a deeper way. And then I kind of
transitioned over to self-care and out of the food health weight loss kind of realm. I never liked
working in weight loss. Okay, my hold on a second guys, my computer is warning me of something, I don't
know what. Okay. So anyway, I tell them to eat real whole food. I now I also eat plant-based, but that's
just like a whole other, whole another topic. I'm not going to get into that today. Right now I'm just
talking about eating real whole food. For now, I want you to just agree to focus on your health,
right? Most people think it can't be that simple when you say that to them. And we do have to put
aside like any serious health conditions that people are dealing with. If we put all that aside,
it really is that simple. It really is. It's just not easy to do. The food industry makes it hard
for us to figure out what we should and should not eat. And I think they want us to be confused so
that when they put some kind of processed crap in front of us that says all these health
exclamations on it, like this helps lower blood pressure. This is low fat. This helps. This is
heart healthy. Like anytime you see all those those health promises on a processed food, it's usually
a good, it's like those are like red flags to run away and not eat it, right? Because they they
want us to be confused so that then they're going to hand us this processed crap and say, here eat
this. This is healthy. And we're going to be like, Oh, thank God somebody's helping me. I'm going to
eat this. You know, I'm going to be eating my Cheerios that are heart healthy and full of glyphosate
that's going to kill me slowly over the next few years. But I'm not sarcastic at all. No, not at all.
So I so they do make it really hard, you know, and and I think that as I said, when you see those
those health claims, like you never go to the food store and see an apple and see like health
gait claims stickers of health claims all over the apple, get the apple, some apples are really
good for us, right? Same thing with a sweet potato and onion, a thing of garlic, celery, greens,
right? All those things that we get from the food store or actually better if you can get them
out of farmers market if that's possible for you. So we don't see the health claims with those,
but those are the things that really do keep us healthy that whole food. You don't see health claims
on a can of beans or a package of beans, right? So I want you to be wary when you're going to the
grocery store and you're buying food and think about these things that I'm telling you. It's very,
very basic. So it's so like I as I say, it's easy. This is something that's very easy, but I mean,
it's simple. I'm sorry, but it's not easy to do, especially not easy if you don't like to cook or
you don't think you don't like, you know, you don't think you're a good cook, right? Or you just don't
usually cook because to eat real food that requires planning, batching and cooking. It really does.
You can make it easier on yourself by meal planning and by batch cooking, but you do have to do some
preparation and that's what makes it hard. But I have to say like because I buy, I don't buy a lot of
processed food. I do buy like cookies, cookies and candies and stuff like that. I'm not perfect. I
don't eat perfect. Okay. So I do buy processed food sometimes, but I'm quite aware of what I'm
putting in my body. I'm quite aware it's not good for me. And mainly my main meals are all real
whole food. So the majority of the time I'm eating real whole food. Okay. So you might say, I don't
have time for that. I don't have time to be doing all this chopping and cooking. And that was like
the biggest argument that I used to get when I was health coaching. And I used to always say, well,
you might say that now, but you also might say that it's very expensive, right? And we can argue back
and forth about that. But the truth is that and the real truth is that if you don't make this
time for yourself and you don't put the effort into this now, you'll be forced to pay for it later
with your health and also with money at some point because most processed foods cause illness over time,
almost, almost always. Every once in a while, I get that one person like everybody knows someone
like this in their life. They're like 95 years old and they, they smoke and they drink and they
eat shit and they lay out in the sun with no sunscreen. And they have no, no disease in their
body. They take no medicine. And they're like 95 years old. Everybody knows someone like that, right?
I don't know why that is. But so I think the key to that when I look at people like that is
the key is not to take this stuff too serious and not to stress over it because if you're stressing
over what you're eating, the stress is kind of counterproductive to the healthy eating. You know what I'm
saying? So maybe the fact is is that those people just are so relaxed and happy and not stressed out.
I don't know. I'm not telling you to go eat, drink and smoke and eat crappy and drink and smoke and
just be and don't stress out, right? So some people aren't capable of not stressing out like myself.
I glued it. So as I said, I'm not perfect. I love my cookies and my cake and my candy and I like
drinking alcohol sometimes. And but I do everything kind of like a moderation. I don't really like
get out of hand with things. And as I said, my main meals, my my main focus meals and mainly the
the stuff that I have in the house is real whole food. And something really cool happens when you
eat real whole food all the time and your body gets used to it. Because what what happens is
the process food start to not taste good. It tastes so bad. And then when you eat it, you won't
feel good either. And I remember the first time I really, really noticed it, right? So back in the day,
I used to eat, I'm not going to say the name brand, but they were like those lime chips, you know, the
lime. Now a lot of companies make them now, but back in the day, there was only like really one company
and I'm not going to say it. But I used to eat those all the time and I loved them. It was like,
like I always had them in a house. It was like my go to salty snack. And and then I stopped eating them
because I knew they weren't good for me. And the ingredients weren't really kind of kosher with
what I was trying to do. And so I stopped eating them. And then one day, like years and years later,
I can't remember if it was one of my kids or a friend offered me those chips. And I was like, oh, I love
those those chips. I haven't had them in so long. And I tasted one and they tasted, it just tasted so
disgusting. It didn't even taste good. And I was like, so surprised. I thought there was like something
wrong with me. I kept, you know, when you keep eating something, expecting it to get better, like,
oh, this is got to get better at some point. It's the same thing with like those, I'm not going to say
those little cake snacks. There's, I'm not going to say any name brands on the podcast, but those,
they have processed little food cakes that everybody loves so much. I used to eat those. And there
was a certain one that A's for you all the time. It was like an oatmeal cookie with stuff in the
middle, like the scream in the middle on. I used to eat those all the time. I could put away like five
of those, right? And I love them. They don't taste good to me anymore either. And they certainly don't
make me feel good, right? So this is like a really cool thing that happens when you start to eat healthier
because then you, because after your body gets used to eating better, it expects nothing less from you.
And it's not going to tolerate that crap anymore. So I'm going to give you a tool so that you can
get started. Okay. And I'm just going to say right now it's not, it's not going to be easy, right? But I'm
giving you small little steps that you could use. Now I want to, I want to tell you that I do this work
inside of the boot camp. I've been talking about the boot camp, my signature program. And so I do, I call
it a pantry and fridge makeover. Okay. And I do this inside of the boot camp. And sometimes I even do
this in person for people. It's like a whole makeover. I find it to be so much freaking fun, especially
when I'm doing it in somebody else's house, which is really cool. I haven't done that in a while. But
I actually like doing that. So, and the boot camp registration is open this week. I want to let you
guys know I have a coupon code and I'm very excited about this because each week until we launch in
January, which is going to be like second week in January, we're going to get started with a live
launch. It's the first time I'm doing this. Usually this is like a self study program. And this, this,
this time I'm going to go through each lesson with you. I'm going to coach you and I'm going to
answer questions and I'm going to hold you accountable in person in real life. And I'm very excited
about it when I say in real life, I mean through Zoom calls. You know what I mean. But anyway,
this is the first time I'm doing like a live launch. And each week until that, I'm going to be giving you
a different surprise coupon. It's always going to be for a different mount. The discounts are going to
be very substantial. And each week also when you register whoever registers that week gets a certain
surprise bonus that you'll get after registration. And it'll be sent right to you in your inbox. Okay.
And so I'm really excited about this. So, if you've been thinking about joining the boot camp,
if you've been listening to this deep level self-care series and it sounds like something that you
want to do, this is the time to do it because the discount, the fun surprise discount coupons that
I'm giving out are really substantial. And I think you'll really love being inside of the boot camp
with me. Once you're in, you have lifetime access. So it's pretty cool. All right. So I'm just going to
move on. So the first step is to do the pantry and fridge makeover. And as I said, I do this
inside of the boot camp, but this is how you do it. Okay. So basically you're going to go through your
fridge. We're going to start with the fridge. And you're going to first look at everything that you
have in there. So a lot of times, a lot of the basic things that we have in the fridge are some of
the processed foods that we eat over and over again. Some real food, obviously people have some real
food in their fridge. And a lot of, you know, like salad dressins and, you know, catch up and,
you know, condiments and stuff like that. Okay. So you're going to look at that. Then you're going to read
the labels. Okay. So these are just really simple steps. These will be in the show notes too if you want
to, if you need a, like a reference. If you don't know what an ingredient is on the label, then you're
going to look it up. And if you, and then you're going to look it up and see what it does, what it's
for, right? And you're going to see if it's bad for you, you're going to find out what it does to you.
Okay. And if you wouldn't feed it to a small child, specifically your small child or a grandchild,
or whoever, then you shouldn't eat it either. Okay. So what you're going to do then is, like, some people
are like, oh, you want me to just like throw everything out and it's like, no, I'm not asking you to throw
everything out. When it's gone, you're going to replace it with something healthier, right? So you can
throw everything out and replace it as soon as possible, but I'm a type of person that doesn't like
to waste things, especially in today's day and age when, you know, our biggest investment is food
shopping right now. And so when it's gone, you replace it with something healthier, something that
has more real food ingredients in it. So you just keep getting better and better. Now you're going
to repeat the process until you go through the whole fridge. And then when you're done with your
fridge, you're going to move to your pantry, right? I always find that the pantry is a lot more work
because things that are in your pantry that don't need to be refrigerated, refrigerated,
turned. I feel like I'm talking really weird today. Things in your pantry that don't need to be
refrigerated. Okay, I said it right that time. They are usually more processed. Okay, so like usually
the pantry is a lot more work. Okay. So you're going to move to the pantry and you're going to repeat.
And that's it. That's it. Now it sounds like a lot of work, right? But it's not too bad because you're
just doing it slowly over time. You're going to take your time. You're going to make small changes
over time that make big transformations. And when you do it this way, it's less shocked to you. It's
less shocked to your family. Like sometimes it goes unnoticed. And then it's less shocked to your
body too because once you start cleaning out, like especially if you eat a lot of processed foods,
sometimes you feel a crappier before you feel better. It's usually like a two week period. Like if you
cut like all the sugar and all the processed foods out of your diet, like all of a sudden just like
that, like cold turkey, I would say for two weeks, you're going to feel like crap if you ate a lot of
that stuff, right? And so be aware of that when you're going through this. But if you're doing it so
gradually like this, you're not going to feel it as much. So this is a great place to start, right?
Then after that, and that's a lot right there, and that's going to make big changes in your life
right there. But then after that, you're going to start to focus on every time you go food shopping,
what you're buying, okay? And they're kind of connected off or obvious reasons, but you'll be
reading the labels as your food shopping from that point forward. And then when you then after that,
you're going to focus on the meals that you're cooking, like getting a few staple meals,
getting a few things that you could batch cook and keep in the freezer, like chilies and soups
and stuff like that, that freeze really well. I feel like I'm going to sneeze.
Okay, you know, I love doing that. So if I'm going to make soup or chili or something like that,
I make like a double batch, right? And then I freeze a bunch of it and put in the freezer. And then when
you don't feel like cooking, it's there for you to just take out and defrost and heat up for yourself.
And then you have a delicious home cooked whole food meal that's healthy instead of getting
take out instead of eating something that's processed. But as you can see that this is a process,
okay? It's a process that's well worth it. And the result of this process goes back to the title.
I know I haven't talked a lot about energy eating for energy, but this is what happens when you go
through this and you go through this process and you start eating, I hate using the term clean eating.
I hate it so much. It's been so overused. But basically you're just cleaning up your diet, okay?
When you clear out the junk and you add in a real whole food filled with fiber, vitamins,
mineral antioxidants, all that good stuff that your body needs, the body that your body needs for
the energy. This is how you fuel your body for energy. When we eat all the processed foods,
we're not getting all the nutrients we need. Not only that, we're putting a bunch of far-in
substances in our body and sometimes our body doesn't even know how to respond to that.
Your body doesn't know what to do with it, okay? When top of that when you're eating processed food,
you're eating like high sugar, high salt. When you're eating high sugar, you have these extreme
highs and then these extreme lows in your energy, okay? You get a high and then you crash,
you get a high and then you crash, right? It doesn't obviously not good for your energy.
And God knows what all the chemicals are doing to our body, right? So if you want to learn more about
this, a really good book that I read that I'm not going to lie to you guys. Once you read this book,
you can't like, you can't unread it. Once you know this stuff, it'll kind of haunt you a little bit.
And I have to say when my kids were little, I was not a health coach. I didn't do all this stuff.
And a lot of the bad things that they talk about in this book that I'm about to share with you were things I
did with my kids. These were things I fed my kids, right? I'm not going to mention any of them out loud
on the podcast, but so the name of the book is called Salt Sugar Fat and it's by Michael Moss.
And it was a great book and it really opened me up to the food industry and how
absolutely horrible it is, okay? And I think it's really good, especially if you're a mom and you're
responsible for feeding your family, your whole family, then this is a good book to read. It's a good
education for yourself. But I have to stress the point that not to let yourself get too overly
obsessed with being perfectly healthy, right? Because being that way is also unhealthy. You have to
have fun sometimes. There's a time and a place for those little tasty little cakes that I was talking
about earlier, but they really don't taste that good to me anymore. I'd rather, if I'm going to
ingest that many calories, I'd rather buy something absolutely scrumptiously delicious. Shout out to,
let's see, terms of endearment in Brooklyn, shout out to them. They're a vegan. I don't know if I
would call them a bakery, a little cafe. The most scrumptious, scrumptious desserts, whether you're
vegan or not, just like so delicious and really great food too. But anyway, I just got distracted.
I have to get more focused here. So when we eat, we eat a few our bodies, right? So that's what,
that's the main thing. Eating is fun though. Like I love eating, I don't think anybody loves eating
more than me. I love food. But we run on food. That's what, that's what fuels us. Just like a car
runs on like gas and you have to change the oil and you have to take care of the tires and stuff like
that. We have to take care of our bodies the same way. And what happens to the car when we don't take
care of the car? The car breaks down eventually. It takes time, right? But the car will break down,
right? But if you take care of the car and you take care of it over time, it lasts longer. It drives
better, right? It's the same thing with our bodies. Like if we take care of ourselves and we fuel it
well, we're going to feel good, right? And we're going to feel good over time as we, as we get older,
which is important. We don't want to feel like crap as we get older, right? So, so when you're making
these choices every day, fuel yourself well, right? Eat foods that are going to fuel your body.
Eat foods that are going to give you energy and don't, but don't get too serious about it. Okay?
Now, if you're interested in the bootcamp, registration will be in the show notes and there'll be
two links. There'll be one link that'll, you can click on to learn more about the bootcamp. And
then there'll be another link that'll give you this week's discount for the bootcamp if you want
to register for it. So there'll be two links on there for you. Okay, guys, this was fun. If you have
any questions about this, feel free to reach out to me. I love, I could talk about food all day long.
I just, I love talking about food. I'm also a certified culinary nutrition educator,
and I'm focused on plant-based nutrition. So I eat plant-based, something that I didn't really talk
about earlier, though, before I go, I want to emphasize this. It's not really about focusing on a
specific diet like, oh, I eat plant-based or I'm vegan or I eat keto or whatever it is, or it's not
about counting calories or counting all these different, you know, how much protein am I getting
and all that stuff? It's about tuning into your body and being mindful about the way the things
you eat make you feel and not following a specific diet unless you have health condition that forces you
to to follow a specific diet. It's about eating to for you to feel good. So like I eat a plant-based diet,
I was vegan at some point, but I create like I was craving eggs and stuff like that. So I eat eggs,
I eat honey, so I'm not vegan, right? And I'm just not very serious about it. Yes, I do care about
the animals and I do have this passionate, this passion for taking care of animals and eating food
that it comes from like a very ethical industry. Okay, so I'm very careful about where I buy my eggs
from. I buy my eggs from my neighbor who has like chickens, this young girl who's the sweetest
then, that's where I get eggs from, okay? I get honey from the local honey farm. I live in an area where
this is possible. I could drive to my neighbor's house and get eggs. Not everybody has that option,
okay? But it's really about making your own diet. I always say I'm on the Tina diet because I make up
my own diet. I don't answer to anybody. I don't care if anybody has any judgment of me. This is what I'm
doing for me. This is what makes me feel good and that's why I eat the way I eat. So I want you to
keep that in mind also when you're deciding how to fuel your body. Okay, guys, until next week,
I love you and I will talk to you later. Bye!
