Intro:
Welcome to The Healthy Catholic Moms Podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority, so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make foods that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.
Main Episode:
Hello, beautiful ladies, thank you so much for joining me. I’m so happy you’re here. And I’m happy to accompany you on whatever you’re doing right now. It’s driving, working out folding laundry, doing dishes, whatever. I’m so glad I’m here for the ride. And I’m excited to hop into today’s topic. Another kind of summer reminded episode last week or last episode rather, we talked about having your healthiest summer ever and going into the season. Excited to be lighter and leaner and feeling your best. It’s truly about feeling your best. So that you can rock your days you’re enjoying your life, you’re feeling like you’re living it to the fullest out like you’re surviving and sludging through the days and not in a place where you want to be. I talked several weeks ago, and I’ll talk about a little bit today in the podcast too, but about the episode about changing your habits and changing your life. That, you know, it’s what we do every day that makes a big difference. So summer is no exception to that. Right. There’s, I don’t want you to be scared going into the season. I know from working with plenty of one on one clients that this can truly be an intimidating time, especially for those of you who are pursuing fat loss thinking, oh man, like I really want to do well. But there’s so many social events and there’s like, it’s just macaroni salad and potato salad up to my eyeballs. And there’s no way that I can advance on my goals or maintain what I like the progress I’ve made throughout this year, or whatever the case is, in this season. And I want to be here to tell you, I do think it’s actually a great season for Lean living in advancing in your goals and maintaining them. It truly, I think personally, I think the weather and the vibe of summer I know it’s different in every region. But speaking from where I am in upstate New York, I think it’s just easier and doesn’t feel like as much of an uphill battle than trying to lose weight or make healthy changes in the dead of winter when your body is working against you. Right we want to be biologically like gaining some fat and hunkering down and being cozy and being more sedentary. So let’s go with it go with the season. It’s it can be a very healthy time. But then, you know, we do have social events, lots of barbecues, birthdays, first communions, just different part graduation parties, huge graduation party time. And it gets to be a lot in social situations, in general, tend to be a time of temptation, or different foods that we’re just not used to or wouldn’t choose to eat and whatnot. So we’re gonna go through some really like tangible tactical tips that you can apply all summer long that I do apply. And I am here to tell you, if you’re a newer listener, I practice everything I preach. So I am not the person who’s like not eating anything in a barbecue and I’m just telling you a bunch of stuff. I’m the person who’s having a beer, having a burger, but maybe saying no to the dessert or having a little bit of a dessert like everything I’m gonna share with you today is what I do, I do not do anything different to than what is on this list. So I will say one thing I mentioned and I would start out with this before I get into the tips.
What are your current goals? This does play into how you’re going to approach the season and how you’re going to navigate these parties because I’m going to speak pretty much to these tips to the general population of those of us who are maybe pursuing fat loss, maybe want to maintain our current physiques, but are not training for any wild goal right now, okay, because if you are in that season, here’s the big ol disclaimer first, if you are trying to do your very best at a race, or you’re trying to compete in a Spartan Race, you need to be able to lift yourself over a wall, or you’re going to do an iron woman or whatever it looks like, you might then want to kind of dial us up and be the stricter version of yourself during this time, because you’re training for something right? You really need to it’s like, think about an athlete training for a big performance training for the Olympics, whatever, they’re clearly not going to be knocking back beers at a barbecue. Okay. So that aside, that’s fine. And there’s a time and place for that. And I’ve done that as well. Okay, but if that’s not you, and you’re the other 95% of the population over here, just trying to Be Fit, Be healthy, but live your life and have balance, these tips are for you.
So number one, dial in your non social days. So overall, I promote 80/20 Eating 80% whole clean foods, 20% treats and indulgences all still fitting in what your body needs. Calorie wise. Okay, so maybe that’s 1600 calories, maybe that’s 1800 2200 2500 Everybody has different needs, according to a lot of different factors, how active you are, how much muscle you have on your body, lots of different things, compose what your body’s overall caloric needs are. Now within that within whatever calorie range you have, I would love for your 80% to be whole clean foods and 20% treats. Now that can look like within a single day that you eat mostly really well but then you have some little indulgence every day. Or what I like to do more in this more highly social season is save up that 20% For my social days, which tends to be for most of us the weekends. I know those summer weekends fill up and a lot of times we’ll look in like festival fair grad party this that like that’s how our summer looks okay, so I get it. So that means my Monday through Friday, I’m going to be really dialed in. And I am going to have lots of whole clean fresh foods, omelets, maybe some protein shakes if I need to supplement with a little bit of protein but you don’t always have to
beautiful salads, so packed with micronutrients, vegetables, lots of protein, maybe I’m throwing some grilled chicken in there, some seeds, some olive oil for good healthy fats, all that great stuff. Then for dinner, maybe you know again, another lean source of protein or burgers are great on a nice whole grain Bong or lettuce wrap with sweet potato fries, whatever like my I’m like over here. My stomach is growling. I’m like well, let’s do it right now. But it can be delicious. First of all, I hope you just got back from my little expos a on a day meeting. You do not have to have cold hard boiled eggs, and beef jerky all day long in order to meet your goals. So know that I hope you’re exploring the wonderful world of food and taking advantage of the millions of beautiful healthy recipes that are out there. Okay, but that’s what maybe your Monday through Friday is looking like so that Saturday looks a little more like some grand party cake and a beer two or more with maybe some of that potato salad but not a ton of it. We’ll talk more about that. But I think it’s important to try like when it all starts blurring is when we see progress go backwards, or like just a plateau happen if you were having progress, when there’s no difference anymore when we can’t tell where your 80% your 20% are and it’s all just kind of looking a little bit like well I also had pizza last night and tomorrow I’m gonna have you know that baked casserole thing and whatever and it just kind of all blurs so really dial in your nonsocial days this is my advice for during that holiday season to have like November to January where it just gets crazy is you know to be able to enjoy the holidays a little more fully and it not affect our goals. That means the other times we need to be on the ball
Okay, so still keep planning your days prepping your meals. Make it easy on yourself if summers really busy for you grab rotisserie chickens and easy grab and go foods like just grab veggie trays and fruit trays like that’s what your body wants. Anyway, again, that lighter leaner kind of thing. But make it accessible, make it easy on yourself to make good choices so that the social days it can be a little more indulgent.
Okay, next up, pick and choose. This is like the crux of 80/20 eating in general and eating according to your macros, which is something I also promote, if you’ve no idea what that is and actually was not planning to plug that here but if you need help in this area I’m going to run the eight week simple, sustainable fat loss program. This is where I teach you all about what eating in a macro balanced way looks like. So I don’t expect you to have any prior knowledge, you can come in absolutely no idea what that even means what a macro is, I will hold your hand and walk you through that. So if you want more info on that, check it out at healthy Catholic moms.com. But for those of you who have been around or have done my challenges and know what that is, eating in a macrobiotic way means eating according to your body’s again caloric needs, but then the proper amount of carbs, fat and protein for your body, which means you have to pick and choose all the time, it means if you’re only allotted 60 calories, it’s no 60 grams of fat per day, or 80 grams of fat per day, or whatever it looks like it means you might have to pick between having the guacamole or having the fondue or having What’s another thing high fat, the cheesecake or whatever it means that you’ve got to pick and choose. So this is what I do. And this is what I you know, teach the ladies my programs and my clients to do all the time, not being all or nothing. It’s not you go camping, and you just eat bags of chips every day, or all junk food and hot dogs, whatever it’s picking and choosing. Now this is the difference between like going off the rails super clean off the rails super clean deprivation and binge eating tend to go hand in hand when we’ve deprived ourselves than we usually binge, and etc. So pick and choose what really matters to you. Do you enjoy having dessert at a social event? Or would you rather have a drink? Would you rather have the burger bun? Or would you rather have potato chips like it does not have to be the healthiest of healthy choices. But a lot of times just the same foods fall in the same category. So rather than loading up a plate full of carbs, you take the potato salad, and the macaroni salad, and a burger with a bun and fries. And cake like that was all carbs. So you got to pick and choose what carb you’re going to have, what carbs you’re going to have. And then pepper in your fats and protein and your micronutrients to your greens or your vegetables.
Well, number three, remember that you are ultimately in control. And no one is forcing your hand. Okay, this is really big. I think a lot of this piece is mental. We think, oh my gosh, it’s a social situation, people are going to be watching me like I’m going to feel guilted into it. And I know I’ve been there where it’s like your grandma trying to force you to have her Jello mold, whatever that she always makes for Fourth of July and she’ll be offended if you don’t eat it. Okay, aside from that scenario, which benefited is that scenario, I’m going to take the jello mold, and I’m gonna have two bites of it and be like, Oh my gosh, this is so good. Whatever, give Grandma her Jello mold. All right, I’m not telling you not to. However, in general, you’re in a general grid party in general Bailey barbecue, whatever, friend party, most people are not eyeballing what you’re taking in, they’re not counting your drinks, they’re not looking at what you are consuming. Most people are honestly thinking about themselves and worried about themselves, and then hopefully enjoying the other parts of the party. Okay, and focusing on other things other than what other people are eating. I know there can be an aspect to this where people usually want to indulge with others. So a lot of times, it’s like, Oh, come on, will you come to the dessert table with me? Like I’m gonna go to the dessert table, you see that? Like at weddings, people are? Like, do you want to come up with me, come on, come up with me, let’s go to the bar, do that, let’s go to the buffet line together, whatever. So there’s that aspect. But you know, you are ultimately in control. And even so even if you’re going up to the buffet line, because someone really wants you to, you’re still in control of what lands on your plate, you’re still in control of how much lands in your mouth. Okay, so it’s all good, like, tried to just remember that. And really, I think we hyper analyze, oh my gosh, everyone’s gonna be focused on like, well, if I’m drinking, if I’m this, if I’m that most people do not care. So don’t, you know, make yourself uncomfortable with your own food choices to please other people. Okay.
Number four, this is a really big one that I see done all the time that people would think is a healthy move, don’t have low calorie days before or after these events on purpose. So
listen, and things do kind of shake out in the wash. If you look at your whole week, there can be an element to like, having slightly lower calories the day before than having more calories that day, having slightly lower the next day. That’s kind of kind of an example of carb cycling, which is like you’re kind of doing it not very regimented, or you know, to a tee, but that’s kind of like carb cycling. However, what most of us do is way under Qatar calories, usually the day after social events like this. And what ends up happening is we set ourselves up for a yo yo pattern and we send the signals to our body that we’re not giving you food right now. And then our body starts cleaning the fat. And then we have the social event like say you do that the day before. Okay, I’m not gonna eat that much today because we’re gonna kind of save it up for tomorrow. And then your body is kind of going into starvation mode thinking I don’t know what my next meal is, I don’t know where my next calories are coming from. And then it starts clinging to things, then you overfeed it a little bit or indulge a little more at the party. And you all of a sudden are clinging to fat because your body is super excited to just be getting calories. So the next day you cut back again, it just sets up this yo yo pattern. So this is not what I’m talking about when I say be really dialed in on like your Monday through Friday or on your non social days, so that you can have indulge a little more, I’m talking about keeping your calorie range similar day to day. So whether that’s 8200 calories, 2500 calories, like I said, it’s different for everybody. It’s keeping that calorie range the same, but just the quality of the foods in it keeping that quality of food really dialed in on the non social event days, but then letting that quality of food slide a little bit more for the social days. I hope that makes sense. And again, your body just likes similar. Okay, so it does not like to not know what’s coming. I’ve talked about this a lot. This is a big difference between what I promote that at 20 hole clean foods meats indulgences versus yo yo diets of I’m on keto I’m off this, I’m on paleo, I’m off this like this is how you can do this over a period of time and maintain a healthy weight.
Lastly, be the one that brings the healthy dish. Okay, I’m sure I’ve shared this tip before this is not earth shattering. It’s probably been in like Women’s Health magazine since I was eight years old. But truly, if you want to know that something is going to be healthy and an event be the one who brings it. So you know, often we are offering to bring something not all the time and no sometimes parties, you’re just bringing a gift or something not always a dish to pass. But if you are going to be bringing something don’t be afraid to make it healthy. Now I think that also our mind just goes to Okay, veggie tray, I’m going to be the person that brings a veggie tray doesn’t have to be a veggie tray, there’s tons of other healthy things that would give you a great option that are not a veggie tray, shrimp would be a great option. I know it’s kind of a weird one probably for an outdoor party, but people do cold things as well actually like something else I really like to do as an appetizer or have this recipe somewhere. I know I sent it out to my email list. So if you’ve been on my email list a while you can look back through. But if not, it’s in one of my challenge programs. So it’s in the Jason greenness group in the archives. But buffalo chicken pinwheels I’ll just make a buffalo chicken salad really lightened up with like olive oil, mayo and hot sauce and garlic and all these beautiful things paprika and mix that up a shredded chicken, let it chill and come together onion I put in there as well in the fridge and then put it over whole wheat tortillas, roll them up and then slice them really thin is little pinwheels. Super great, fun little appetizer, and it’s not overtly like in your face. This is healthy. It’s not a veggie tray. So you could bring a fruit tray or veggie tray or watermelon or whatever. But you also can get creative. I’ve also done like bacon wrapped pork ends or whatever, like great protein and fat right there. Big crowd pleaser. I’ve done bacon wrapped. So you just wrap anything in bacon and people lose their minds. I’ve done bacon wrap stuff peppers, and just made them lightened up version you can swap you know, Greek yogurt for cream cheese or sour cream and things like that. So another one this is a random one I just thought of I guess it’s like healthy ish. But it’s literally funfetti cake mix. This is also a few dozen even something really fast to bring funfetti cake mix. Cool Whip, so I get like light Cool Whip and Greek yogurt. I think I just use plain to not even vanilla. And you mix all three of those together, put it in the fridge, let it chill. It tastes like you’re eating cake batter. Now obviously, this is not the cleanest thing I’ve ever talked about, like um, that whole 8020 That’s in your 20% but it’s not too bad calorie wise and actually gives you protein. Because yes, you have cake mix them in there, but you added protein with the Greek yogurt. And you’re using like cola, which again, chemicals, not the best quality foods, but also very low calorie. And then you serve it with some pretzels or whatever, something Teddy Grahams I also server with which, again, not the highest quality foods, but your hidden protein at least that’s always a I forgot about that. I haven’t done that in a million years. I used to do that for Super Bowl parties back in college even and I was shocked that everybody was like everybody went wild over it. I thought it was a really female dessert kind of thing. Like oh, this will be like, I don’t know, most of us women like chocolate like sweets and I remember my guy friends losing their minds over it and me thinking it was so funny. That was like wow, that is not who I thought was gonna really love this. So there it is. There are some ideas for you. I hope this encouraged you made you excited for summer social events, confident to navigate them not be paralyzed by the idea that you’re going to just be doomed to gain weight because you have social events on the calendar. Get that get rid of that mentality, because I cannot stand that when I’m working with somebody and it’s just all always negative and it’s just I know it takes I’m, of course compassionate and patient all those things. I know that it’s not overnight to like, boom, now I’m comfortable with food. But when it’s repeated, the things you tell yourself is going to be the way that you act. And if it’s like, oh, man, this thing’s coming up. I’m just doomed to make bad choices. Guess what, you’re gonna make bad choices. So, change that perspective. Flip it to some optimism and you can have absolutely a very healthy summer while navigating social situations. All right, and if you would love to work with me this summer, we’ve got the eight week challenge happening June 5. Also have the ongoing cheesy greenness group for my season ladies, or just for those who may be the a week Fat Loss Challenge is not the best fit. Email me we can talk about it. So chasing greenness group is great for you. There’s even a free trial you can access also on the website. So all this and more pretty and healthy Catholic moms.com you could email me or just head to healthy Catholic moms.com Alright ladies, I hope you have a great rest of your day. I will talk to you next time.
