Hey there, it’s Robin and you’re listening to Healthy Habits for a Healthier Home.

I’m here to help you create a healthier life one simple shift at a time.

If you’re a mama ready to ditch toxins, clean up your family’s nutrition, and build daily habits that support your well being, you’re definitely in the right place.

Each episode is packed not only with education, but practical tips and tools to help you transform your health in your home without that feeling of overwhelm.

So let’s take this journey together to create a thriving low tox home for you and your family.

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Now let’s get into this episode.

Hey y’ all.

Welcome back to today’s episode.

We’re going to be chatting with Megan who is the creator and founder of Partake Meal Planning.

She is an educator turned coach from Staten Island, New York.

Ever since, she has worked hard to build and maintain strong boundaries to keep out diet industry jargon and fear based tactics.

She forged a unique way to her healthier lifestyle and food freedom was an important part of that path.

She now coaches others who have a weight loss goal but who want to pursue it authentically with self compassion.

Y’ all.

We Talked about the 1% shifts, we talked about how she got where she was and part of that was a career that was not fulfilling for her.

Such a great episode and so much that I think will resonate with so many different people.

Wherever you are on your journey, I know that you’ll be able to take away little bits and pieces and I’m super excited because none of this talk today was about restricting.

It wasn’t about dieting, it wasn’t about feeling like, you know, you have to jump on and off diets in order to create not only the lifestyle but also get to a healthy weight if that is one of your goals.

So I am super excited to introduce you guys to Megan.

So let’s dive in.

Hey y’ all.

Welcome back to the show.

Today.

I am excited to have on Megan.

We were chatting a little bit before and we are so aligned in the way that we think.

So I’m excited to have this conversation and kind of unravel a few things that she can bring to the table.

So welcome.

Megan, how are you?

I’m good.

Thank you so much for having me.

Robin, I appreciate this chance to talk to you because I get the sense that we have so Much, so much in common and how the difference we want to see for people trying to become healthier right now.

Absolutely.

For those of you listening while we were chatting before, she lives in New York.

I was born in New York.

I was a teacher, she was a teacher.

So, you know, we’re just super aligned in a lot of ways.

But I just want to invite you to kind of tell the audience a little bit about who you are and, you know, how you went from being a teacher to where you are today.

Because I think it’s an amazing story of what I’ve heard so far.

Thank you.

Yeah, I.

I think my goal in becoming a teacher was one.

It was like this feels.

It feels normal to me to want to help people, to want to, like, share my knowledge and bring people up to become stronger, more capable than they are now.

But I took so many turns in there, and I think.

I think a lot of people can relate to that.

But I think as I was trying to become a teacher, I noticed so much stress that I was bringing to the job and so much of myself I was pouring into student teaching.

When I was managing a tutoring center.

Every bit of my day was just eaten up by me hoping that I was doing a good enough job, me hoping that I was succeeding, not making people think I was incompetent.

There was so much fear that went into that, and basically that fed into a lot of, you know, of background noise of how I grew up and created this interesting monster kind of way that I was coping with that stress, that.

That overwhelming energy that I was giving to every day of work.

I was just not thinking ahead about my food and then getting into a cycle of using my food as this total relaxation at the end of the day, getting the most delicious thing I could think of, whether that was like ordering pizza, ordering Chinese, going out, you know, for the Mac and cheese that I was really craving.

And I wasn’t thinking ahead about it.

It was just almost.

I was driven to it because it was something I defined about myself.

I love food.

It’s awesome.

It’s delicious.

And it just became my only coping mechanism without me realizing for that stress that I was putting myself in every single day.

And the only time I realized that I should be, the only time I let myself realize that I should be looking at it was when I started seeing that happen in the middle of the day, not just at the end of the day.

So I started seeing myself using my 2 hour break between shifts to go to a fast food place and just get enough food for two hours while I was decompressing from the morning of work and preparing for the evening of work.

So it was just this constant back and forth between constant stress to work and then trying to totally numb out from that.

And I’m sure a lot of people can relate, but that feeling of, like, there’s only one or two things that are relaxing to me, it just created this.

This person who only had that one way to calm down from stress.

And that really brought me up to my highest weight of 230, 240 pounds.

And it just created such a.

I don’t know, such a place where I.

I needed new knowledge, I needed a new way to.

To look at that situation.

That’s.

First of all, thank you so much for sharing all that, because it’s raw, it’s real, it’s authentic, and so many people live that.

And so, first of all, I want to say it’s not anybody’s fault, because we were never taught how to actually have tools to deal with stress.

And so I think when we haven’t been given tools, when we haven’t been given even the wherewithal to think about it, our body does what our body does.

And so when we’re emotionally eating, when we’re using it as a vice to decompress, to get out of something, to try to relax, you know, numb out, which is the words that you use.

It’s like our body needed to do that so much that it had to find something to help it.

And so because there were no other tools, it seems like at that point available to you, that was what your body knew it could get a hold of.

Yeah.

And it was easy.

I think that’s the other piece, too, because that food is very available to us in a moment’s notice, those of us who are lucky enough to live in a place very close to grocery stores, very close to restaurants, that food is just.

And us growing up in New York, there’s bodegas down the street all the time.

Exactly.

But that food is so available that there’s almost.

If you’re in the habit of doing it, it feels very hard to do what looks like extra work for more fulfilling ways to restore yourself when you get to that stressed point.

So, like, right now, me looking back, I would want to tell my past self.

Like, you have friends.

You can go out to see your friends.

You have family who live close by that you can connect with and.

And get that social time in and get that love and.

And relationship building.

You have this amazing city nearby.

You can go see a show, you can go see a concert, you can get a pet, a pedicure, a manicure, like thinking ahead.

Walk in Central Park.

Yeah, you can go walking.

We don’t think of them as taking work, but they do take effort to set up for yourself.

And they take.

When you’re in a place where you’re not super confident about yourself, it involves you getting dressed and going out into the world.

So those are all hurdles.

They feel like friction between you and those more healthy ways to reduce stress.

And so we go to the default, the easiest thing.

And that kind of cycles into a bigger and bigger problem sometimes, because the easier it is, the more we do it, and then the harder it is to stop doing it.

Oh, 100%.

And I.

For people that are listening, you know, if you have ever been in this, if you are living in this now, and maybe you’ve never been in it, you know, I think it is really good knowledge to understand that, because if you have children, if you have family members, you know, if you have other relationships, other people could potentially be going through something like this.

And so whether it’s you or someone else, this knowledge is really key to understand, to be able to take a step forward, to be able to create those 1% shifts.

Because we, we come from a society that, that we’ve been taught just like the whole, like, food is really easy to get quick, we want things very quick.

We want it on our doorstep, we want to drive through somewhere as fast as we can.

Like, everything’s at such a quick pace that there’s not a lot of really good intentional thinking behind it.

It is just a go fashion that we’ve been conditioned to.

And so, you know, one of the things is you have to give yourself grace and you have to understand it’s not going to all flip overnight.

So first you’ve got to learn the tools.

But most of us are a little bit older now, and so those tools take practice.

That’s why they’re called practices.

Nobody goes out and hits a home run the first time that they go out and play baseball.

Why?

Because they don’t have the tools and all of the skills necessary.

So you have to work at it.

Everything is a work in progress.

Even, Even if you don’t see it.

You do things that you’ve practiced brushing your teeth, you’ve practiced driving the drive through, you’ve practiced.

People say a lot, I don’t have time for a routine.

Like, I don’t have time to create a routine.

And so what I often Say is, we already have a routine.

Everybody has a routine.

I mean, we get up, we have a routine.

It’s just, what does your routine look like?

How is it serving you?

How is it feeding your soul?

How is it preparing you for the day?

If your routine is, get up, look at your phone, jump in the shower, text somebody, you know, maybe send two emails, grab something to eat, eye alert, running out the door, kids, trying to get the kids packed, you know, all the things, dropping them at daycare, whatever your life looks like, that’s all a routine.

You just don’t really look at it as a routine.

So it’s just zooming out and then asking the questions.

And I think it sounds like you got to a point.

And so what was that pivotal point for you where you were able to sort of like, take a step back and say, this is no longer working.

Something has to give, because ultimately that’s either a frustration point or rock bottom.

Yeah.

And I love what you said about the routine, because I think looking at myself then in that moment, I would have said, I don’t have a routine.

I’m just living day to day.

I’m just surviving, reacting to whatever’s happening around me.

There was no intention.

It was just kind of, oh, this is life, this is the situation.

I guess I’ll.

I’ll do this, you know.

But me looking back now, I can rattle off the routine.

Like, I can say at that age, I was.

I was getting up, I was.

You know, I don’t think I had a smartphone or it was a very early smartphone at the time, but I would be kind of getting up just in time to get ready for work.

So no intention there.

Just, like, rolled out of bed, whatever.

Clothes didn’t feel crappy that day on the way to work, like, oh, I’m gonna need food.

I can’t face this without something in me.

So going to the drive thru, regret, getting a bagel from the bodega and then rolling into work, giving my all at work all day, stressing the whole time and then coming back.

And my routine was, there’s nothing in the fridge, better order something or better get the easiest thing onto my plate that I can.

That’s gonna feel delicious.

And then watching TV until it was time to go to bed, ignoring texts if people ask me to go out, that kind of thing.

So I think the piece though, that, to your question, the piece of, like, what made me realize there’s a change that needs to happen was when I started to see that middle of the day, a behavior that felt like it couldn’t shift.

So I felt like I was.

I was getting what looked like to me an insane amount of food, you know, even objectively.

Even though I was in it, I could look objectively at it and say, this is more food than most people would have, you know, for two or three meals, but I’m getting it at one meal.

And this sense of, like, resistance when I thought about stopping, that made me really have a disconnect between this behavior I was seeing and what I felt about myself, which was I thought I was, you know, giving my all at life.

And, you know, I respected myself.

I was like, I’m a.

I’m a smart person trying to get my career going, have a good circle of friends and family.

But I saw this piece of myself that just felt so incongruent to how I want it to be.

And I got the sense.

And also the sense of hiding it.

To your point of.

Sometimes people outside don’t see this behavior.

It’s kind of like the person who.

Who drinks when they get home, and they don’t necessarily show other people that they’re drinking.

It’s kind of like that.

And it’s a sign that it’s.

It’s a coping rather than a decision for fun or.

Yeah, a social thing.

Exactly.

And so I didn’t see other people going through this, and I didn’t know anyone who was handling their stress that way.

And that caused me to take the action of reaching out for help.

So for me, it was emailing a few CBT therapists in my area, because I had the.

I didn’t even have the goal of weight loss at that time.

I had the goal of I need to eat in a way that doesn’t make me feel this guilty way every day.

It’s an exhausting cycle.

CBT is cognitive behavior therapy just for those who might not know.

Yes.

So.

And you know what?

Good for you.

And congratulations on.

Obviously, you are very wise, and, you know, you knew who to reach out to.

And I think oftentimes, even if it’s not the right person to be reaching out to, the fact that you were courageous enough to reach out is where a lot of people get stuck.

You know, a lot of people get really stuck because then that makes them feel less than lack of failure.

I’m not able to.

Why can’t I control that?

You know, it’s like all of those things, those stories that we start to, like, conjure up in our head.

So yay for you for taking that first step and recognizing And I think again, our bodies are pretty wise and they will continue to show signs until you see the sign, you know, and that looks very different for everybody.

But I’m glad that you were able to see what your body was trying to communicate to you and then took it seriously.

So yeah, I like what you say about the body trying to reach out to you.

And I think I was ignoring it in the moment and I had to wait till my brain was like catching up.

Look at this.

I didn’t start to like, probably people can relate who are listening.

But I didn’t really understand hunger and fullness at that time because I was so shut off from feeling that in my body.

I was just so used to using food as the fun, the relaxation, the comfort.

There was never, one, a break where I gave myself the ability to notice hunger.

And two, there was no desire on my part, like I didn’t really want to.

I was either all in work mode and I ignored every part of my body.

The stress, the pain in the joints, the exhaustion.

I’m so, I can so clearly tune into that now.

It’s after six years of, of making changes, I can feel my body much easier.

But looking back then, you might be in a place where you’re kind of shutting that off on purpose because it is uncomfortable.

Oh sure.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so I think my body was telling me things, but my, I had to listen.

I was in the habit of listening to my brain, not my.

Exactly.

So a couple of things that I wanted to mention just because it keeps coming back to my brain, is job.

The job seemed to not be a great fit for you.

And I think so often we think we have this great job that’s going to provide for us, that’s going to make me look like I have a great job, you know, that’s going to advance me, that’s going to make, you know, help me to support myself and, and my.

Whatever my goals, I think they are, you know, it’s like, especially when you’re younger, I think it’s just a lot of survival of just learning.

You got to figure it all out basically.

But I find so often that people stay in jobs that they.

That are like soul sucking that really does play into an unhealthy situation.

And so in the schooling that I went to, you know, they provided us with whole person philosophies.

And your career is part of your health.

And so it is a primary food that it’s something that feeds you that is not on your plate.

And if you’re in something that is not serving you is, is soul sucking is causing you so much stress that then your whole body’s out of whack.

Well, of course you’re not going to really care what’s on your plate, right?

And even if you did, let’s just say you were like, I’m going to eat salad every day, blah, blah, blah, you know, your body wouldn’t respond to that because the stress is going to keep your body unwell because you’re not responding to the actual root of the problem.

You’re just kind of going to the side submasking other things.

I think that the job piece, if I were to look back, like the fact that you said your job is a primary food, I’ve never heard that before, but that is fascinating and it just caused my brain to go in all kinds of directions.

But I think the food might have been fine for some people at that time, but for me it was, it was feeding into this.

Like, I think a lot of us go into education because we want, want to serve, we want to comfort, we want to help.

And that was just drawn out of me at this job.

I wanted to make sure all the customers were pleased, my boss was pleased, the kids were pleased like that my fellow workers.

And that just.

It was my approach to that job coupled with not, not super supportive management or anything.

But my approach was what was we.

We working against me there and again, I think that’s very natural because we’re conditioned as children to be the good girl.

We’re conditioned that we have to do X, Y and Z to be considered good.

And I think that’s a unfortunate and a real thing that a lot of us in these older years have to learn to undo.

Because what makes you a quote unquote good girl is none of that.

It is the value you see in yourself.

It is the worth.

And knowing that about yourself allows you to show up in your best energy.

And when you show up in your best energy, you’re not worried about your, your people because you know that you are serving them in a way that’s.

Anybody that has a teaching heart or a serving heart, I feel like we put a lot of expectation.

We have to do X, Y and Z in order to see this X, Y and Z.

But honestly, we have to flip that.

And what do the people need, right?

What do they actually need in their life that’s going to.

It’s not what I think they need, it’s what do they think they need in order to do X, Y and Z?

And I think you know, self doubt creeps in.

You know, these are all real things that most women go through at some point in their life.

And as I’ve grown and now I’m in my.

When I look back, I do believe a lot of it stems from perfection.

Stems from the story we were told that we had to be a certain way in order to get the star on the board, in order to all these conditions to be seen as something.

Yeah, the, the next, like the next thing I had to do, I started going to therapy and I started changing my, some of my habits, very small habits at a time, one or two things at a time.

But what I noticed during that time was I got a new job.

Having this therapy really helped me kind of figure out how to pivot myself.

It was fantastic.

But at that next job, it was at a nonprofit surrounded by people who were super passionate about what they were doing.

But I realized the disconnect between what I thought a good job was and what a good job actually was.

And it was so fascinating.

The perfectionism, the getting the gold star, all that was useless to doing a good job for the mission that we wanted to accomplish was making me.

The perfectionism was making me self conscious self doubt.

I couldn’t think creatively.

I didn’t feel confident enough to solve the problems that were on my plate and I didn’t feel confident enough to communicate with people who could help me or could partner with me to solve those problems.

And so I saw very quickly this is not working this way, that I’m going about being a good student, trying to make sure the boss thinks I’m on top of it all the time.

If I get up to get a coffee, I’m bringing a piece of paper with me so it looks like I’m doing something important.

All of that did not work at this next job.

And it was such a helpful realization, trial by fire of if I sit and take care of myself first, if I make sure I’m well watered, well fed and meditating before I go to work so that I bring that stress level down just a little bit.

I’m going to be able to think creatively.

I’m going to be able to partner with my boss to solve problems that he wants to solve.

I’m going to bring my best self to this job and I do better when I draw the boundaries and get that good food on the plate, get the solid sleep, take aside the time for meditation.

And it’s not like the pressure to always be doing something went away.

Like I still at 6 o’ clock was like, there’s still a ton I should be doing.

But I learned to.

To draw that boundary, to not answer emails after that time.

And that created an.

A measurable increase in what I was able to help with and accomplish at that job because I was better.

My body was better suited to think that way and to work that way.

You’re probably half my age.

Ish.

But I’m so happy that you went through that experience so early on because you’re.

You’ve been able to step into your power a lot sooner.

A lot of us who did not have those tools and those services and just the wherewithal to even go there stepped into momming, right?

We.

We went through life.

We had the job, had the child, had a couple children, whatever.

Whether you work or you don’t work, when you have children, you step into this new role that they come first.

Somebody told us along the way they must come first.

And at least that’s how it was for me, you know, in my mind.

I’m not saying that was truth, but that was just how I thought, like, well, my kids come first.

My kids, they’re my precious pride, you know, I mean, they’re my humans.

And so I see it from both sides now, from both lenses.

It’s like, yes, of course, these are your special people, you know, but at the same time, by not pouring into yourself as a mom and take the mom label off sometimes and be the Robin label or the whoever you are label, you know, like the person, there’s a huge disconnect.

And so you stop pouring into yourself.

And then therefore, you lose sort of like your identity, right?

And I don’t even know if it’s losing your identity, but you just.

Things become very gray and very fuzzy and you keep marching through life.

And a lot of times you are working.

So it’s just about survival, right?

Like, you were surviving.

It’s.

It’s a lot about survival.

So the thought of taking an extra 10 minutes for yourself in the morning seems impossible.

But then we come screeching into this stage of life, you know, midlife, where your hormones are like, hey, girl, like, what’s up?

Like, I’m coming for you.

And all these things that, you know, maybe you haven’t dealt with, they’re coming, they’re coming back because you must deal with them in one way or another or it’s going to come through.

In, in my eyes, comes through as disease, sickness, whatever.

So I want to encourage people that might be.

Might not have done the work early on.

And maybe are in this chapter and kids are starting to fly the nest.

And you know, it’s, it’s a different breed, if you will, but it’s the same.

And so I hope that you’re hearing from Megan that it’s not all about flipping everything overnight.

It is about taking those very small shifts and working at it, reframing and getting the different job and getting the tools.

Whether it’s therapy, whether it’s body work, what, whatever works for you.

And I think that’s another thing, and I’d like for you to speak on this is we’ve been conditioned that there certain things you must do in order to be healthy.

And I call BS on that because everybody’s so different and no one diet and no diets truly actually work for, for a long period of time.

If you’re, you know, removing a whole food group or if you are never allowing yourself for anything, eventually it just bombs backwards.

And so I would love to hear your kind of journey on how did you figure out, were you a dieter?

Were you not?

Did you, you know, what was that like for you?

This is a great question because it does, it speaks to that.

The noise that we were talking about before, just the, the, there’s this never ending buzz of what healthy means and the never ending list of things that you’re supposed to do in order to be healthy.

And let’s just add seed oils to that.

Exactly.

It just never ends.

And I think I had dieted once before.

So in college I had noticed a picture of myself.

I said, that doesn’t look like me.

Let’s get this handled.

I got a great book called the Dorm Room Diet.

And I, which looking back, it was pretty good.

It was pretty, pretty even keeled and everything.

You know, let’s be balanced about this.

And so I had dieted once before and I think my, my approach then was not, I wasn’t thinking about the rest of my life.

I was just thinking about getting to a healthier weight.

And then the big question mark after that.

I don’t know what that looks like.

I’m not going to think about that.

I’m just going to get to the healthier weight.

So I think that did lead me to not address the root problems which really were I’m, I’m using food to cope.

I define myself through, I love good food.

Those were kind of the big root things under the iceberg that this first attempt at dieting did not address at all.

So that is ultimately why the weight came back with friends and the reason I think that the second time stuck is because it did not.

I didn’t approach it needing to lose weight.

I had detached from that was not.

I was like this, if I don’t lose a pound, it doesn’t really matter because it’s the relationship with food that is highest in my difficulty.

It’s impacting my life much more than the weight.

And so that was what I went for in order to change at that time.

And I think what it allowed me to do, and this is the piece that I hope everyone takes from it, I think what that allowed me to do is instead of using someone else as a baseline or using a cookie cutter program as your level of success, like Weight Watchers Noom, like, you know, keto, intermittent fasting, instead of using those as barometers, I was looking for what I was doing now and making an improvement on that.

So I was not comparing to a fitness person on Instagram.

I was not comparing to how this person eats.

I was looking at very clearly at what I was doing now.

And what I was doing was having a lot of fast food, never thinking ahead about my food, not really having a good pantry at home, not meal planning, not understanding what would fuel my body nicely and feel good, and using food to cope.

So those were the baselines that I was improving on.

I didn’t jump to a ton of requirements for myself.

I just said my requirements for myself are food journaling and drinking a little more water.

Those are the things that I’m going to start with.

And the food journaling was really powerful because it took five to ten minutes a day.

But it let me see very clearly what were the easiest places, the low hanging fruit that I could improve.

And when I say improve, that’s another thing that brings up a ton of diet noise as well.

Because we’re like, well, what’s improving?

Is it cutting out the carbs?

Is it not having desserts?

Is it, you know, having more vegetables?

Is it stopping eating at 7pm?

So that’s the piece where the food journaling I think is an awesome tool to get going with because you can, like you said, everyone is so different, their bio individuality is so intense that it really makes sense to observe yourself like a scientist and say, like detective, if I make this change for two weeks, do I indeed feel better?

Does it create a noticeable difference in how I’m approaching life?

The scale?

I also think, you know, because I’m an advocate for journaling also, but I also feel like when you journal and you and you eat something and 90 minutes later you can ask yourself just a few questions.

How do I feel?

Am I energized?

Am I dragging?

Do I my hungry still?

Am I so stuffed still?

Like, I think again, we, we just eat and run, eat and run, and there’s no, no intention or thought behind how is it fueling my body?

And I think that journaling is, is super important because it does allow you to start to see how you as an individual reacts to whatever it is that you’re choosing to ingest.

Yeah.

And I think the other piece that is really helpful is when you journal, you can get into the, the habit of kind of pre journaling.

So instead of going about your day and just having what’s available, you now have a rough roadmap.

It doesn’t have to be exact, but you have a rough roadmap of this is how I, I wish to fuel myself today.

This feels realistic because this is in the fridge and I’ll be at work at this time and I can order this.

And getting that pre planned down, it is so powerful because one, you have, you know, a strategy for the day and two, if it doesn’t work out, you can see really clearly what, what wasn’t realistic about your plan.

And it really helps you kind of plan better the next day.

And all of those changes mean that you’re eating intentionally rather than reactively.

And the more you have this habit of eating intentionally, the easier.

Any change you want to pile on top of that is.

So if you find in two weeks now, I would love to include more whole grains and reduce the, you know, processed grains and see if that makes a difference.

Now that you have this habit of getting your day down, getting the right foods in the house, it’s going to be so much easier to make that change and make it 13 out of 14 days rather than maybe like 6 out of 14 days like it would have been before.

Right.

My daughter, when you said the whole having in the house, my daughter, who was 17 at the time, she said this statement and it just really stuck with me.

It’s like she said, it’s really not hard to eat clean and fuel your body when your pantry and refrigerator are stock.

She’s like, when I come home, I don’t have to read labels.

I don’t have to worry about if this is going to upset my stomach or not.

You know, she’s like, I just know I can go in and have whatever’s in the house because I know that you provide.

She’s going off to college, so I’m like, You’ve got to learn how to do this for yourself now type of thing.

But when she said that, I was like, you’re so right.

Like, it is.

It’s.

It’s not about like, oh, I’m never going to have this in the house.

But I have been doing this long enough that I know what fuels our body.

I know what makes us feel our best.

And I’m also like, an advocate for swaps.

So I’m always looking for new things to bring in the house to swap to see, you know, is it good?

Is it yucky?

Because you gotta still be able to love food, enjoy it.

Because I keep hearing you, I think it’s a New York thing.

I don’t know why.

It’s what keeps resonating, but it’s like food is food.

Like, my whole family growing up, everything was food.

And it wasn’t eat to live, it was live to eat.

And so the way you relax and.

Celebrate and everything, and it’s like you’re eating breakfast, talking about what you’re gonna have for lunch, talk about where you’re going for dinner, you know, it was just.

And nothing against any of that, but it’s just, where’s the walk?

Where’s the movement?

What are other things that feed your soul?

What are other things you can do in conjunction?

I still enjoy food.

I think some people think if you eat healthier, there’s a lack of it’s not tasty, it’s yuck, it’s boring.

It’s grilled chicken, broccoli.

That’s it.

And I would say that’s so untrue because our food is super flavorful and it’s really good.

And I do experiment, but we also like certain things, so we make those certain things each week.

And I think again, you come into that once you’ve been doing it long enough.

And when you’re first getting started, find one or two things that you really love and just keep rotating them each week as to make comfort and ease as you’re building.

So I get a lot of pushback about I don’t have time to food prep.

It’s just another step.

And just like the routine, you are prepping at some point, you’re either prepping right before you make the dinner you’re prepping.

If you’re opening a box and throwing it in the oven, you are prepping already.

You’re just not seeing, not aware of it.

Yeah, the type of prepping you’re doing.

Percent and I think.

And it makes total sense because it reminds Me of, of work in a way.

When I came across the idea of time blocking my calendar, I was like, that I can’t do that.

Like, I can’t.

I can’t spend time rearranging my calendar.

I have too much to do.

But it was amazing how spending 15 minutes putting in my ideal, like how I would like to spend next week.

The two hours on this project.

Two hours on.

And it was insane how much more focused I was and how I was doing that work anyway.

But I was feeling all over the place and just stressed to the max because I didn’t know.

I didn’t know left from right.

I didn’t know I was doing.

I felt like I was switching constantly.

And the feeling was just, I’m failing at this.

But when I put down the intention and when I pre thought out those things, actually doing that work became so much easier.

And that’s how I think about food prep as well.

We’re doing it anyway, but we’re doing it in this haphazard, stressful way that feels last minute.

It feels like the kids need something else.

Like I gotta make butter noodles for them and I gotta make a vegetable for me.

But that work, that 45 minutes is on your.

If you were to put that down on your calendar, that’s.

It would be there.

And then you’d spend 20 minutes cleaning the kitchen afterwards or more.

All of that time is already happening.

You’re using it up.

So if you decide to put one hour or one and a half hours on a Sunday or on a Monday night and get that ready and get the plan down, it creates this calmness and this space later in the week when things are really busy.

Like there is a reduction.

You are saving time and saving energy by real allocating it and getting intentional with it.

And it is easier on some weeks than others.

Right.

It’s easier when, when your summer weekends are not filled with barbecue.

So.

And like getting the kids to their graduation and their dance recitals.

But it is, it’s takes a shift of, I’m doing this work anyway, so let me do it on my terms and let me put it, stick to it like a dentist appointment and get it done every week and see how it lightens my week ahead.

It takes that willingness and courageousness to like try it and prove to yourself that it is in fact better.

If it’s not better, you don’t have to do it.

But almost the proving of it gives you evidence that makes it easier to continue.

Yeah.

What I, what I love that you just said is we are doing it.

We’re just doing it in a haphazard way and we’re doing it full of stress, which is so spot on because I, I was, I’m just thinking of like the nights when everybody is busy, right?

When this kid’s going here, this kid’s going here, or they’re driving somewhere, you know, and you want to make sure they have food before they leave.

If you’re not setting yourself up in a way that allows for you to have those available, it definitely creates stress.

And then it’s stress that actually can be avoided because I.

There are lots of stress that we cannot avoid, but we can always reduce the amount of stress that we put on ourselves.

And I do think by having a plan.

And I think again, what’s happened as of late with all this technology and all of this easy access to getting in touch with people is, you know, we don’t spend the time blocking out the time to serve ourselves, serve our family, because somebody else needs us, but all the time.

All the time.

And one of the things I really, I call it calendar blocking, which is making those appointments on your calendar.

And that includes time for yourself.

It includes prep time, it includes those times.

Right.

And, and really getting anything that is new is uncomfortable.

Anything that is new can seem challenging, but once you do it for a couple of weeks, right.

Once in small doses, you’re not going to like jam pack your week, 7am to 7pm every 45 minutes, doing something different.

It is about, what are the top five things that I can do this week to reduce some of the stress that I’m going to feel if I don’t otherwise do it.

Yes.

And I think the other piece with this, with the food prep is there is.

Even if you don’t prepare anything in advance, there’s a calmness that comes from having a menu of things that you make during the week.

So, for example, like, you always have X snacks for your daughter, who likes those, and X snacks, like stocked in the pantry for your son, who likes these.

Do you have the ones that work for you also stocked that are super fast when you’re out on the door, out, you know, heading out the door.

And I think the practice of taking 20 to 30 minutes and getting a menu down, not even creating anything, just having.

These are the two breakfasts I’m having, the three lunches I’m having, the four snacks that I’ll have available.

And we don’t have to do it perfectly.

Like, cut out the diet noise and say, like, if I have no time this week, this is what I can eat.

Like it’s going to be oatmeal packets and you know, Greek yogurt that already comes in a cup.

It’s going to be tuna for in a packet on a salad kit.

Like the ways that we can simplify the menu without having to do it perfectly, but just having the options there is, I don’t know, it’s a different, it’s a way to do it non haphazardly and it’s a way to just bring that stress level down for the week and treat yourself with just as much importance as you do treat the other people you’re trying to care for.

Whether you’re caring for parents or kids or your partner.

Sometimes I think it’s, it’s a hard thing to get in the habit of.

But I think doing the menu is a nice 1% way to get towards food prep.

If that is your goal.

Preparing more food in advance.

Yeah, and I love that.

And again, it’s bio individual.

Right.

For some people they need to actually physically prep the meals.

For other people they just need to know like sort of what’s on the menu for the week just so that they’re not thinking about.

If I tell you how many times over the course of the last 20 years of having kids, you know, what are we having for dinner?

It’s like, I don’t know, you know, and then I had to switch that.

It’s like, okay, it’s Tuesday, we’re having tacos, you know, and it’s this day and we’re having.

So we had, especially when they were younger and we were much more busy, you know, we, we had certain things that we had on certain nights and we had breakfast every Thursday night.

Like they knew that there were like certain things that we just did.

And then the other days, you know, I was a little bit more wiggle, you know, if we needed to go out to eat because we were on or like if I already knew, it’s like.

But I think just thinking about it is a good first step and what feels good to you.

And maybe you only plan one meal, you know, if you’re just really, really first just dipping your toe in, have one meal that every week you do just because it will bring you ease for that day.

And once you see that it brings you ease for that day, you will want to do it another time during the week.

I don’t really love meal prepping the meals.

For me what works is I like to have all my vegetables chopped, all my fruits chopped I have an idea of what I’m going to be making maybe just for two, two or three nights, you know, because again, I live in a different frame of mind now because my kids are older and whatever, but I do care for my mom, so I have to think forward, making sure I have soft stuff for her in the house, you know, making sure that we’re not going to eat that.

So, you know, it’s like.

So it is.

It’s just thought, it’s putting thought into it.

But I think wherever you are right now, if you could come up with one thing that you could do to shift yourself forward to providing yourself with one more nourishing meal this next week, that’s what I would hope that you could walk away with today.

Because I think it’s that simple and that important to tailor back that far, to just do one thing.

Yeah.

And that’s where it’s so nice to be able to cut out the expectations of diet noise and the expectations of you’ve got to have seven beautiful days of every single menu completely planned out.

That’s not an expectation that’s reasonable for most of us like that.

That feels unusual to me, not useful.

So it’s nice to be able to cut out that expectation of the diet industry and say, this is an improvement that I can make on myself.

It’s in the direction I want to go and it’s possible.

And if I’m going to be keeping it up for, you know, until I’m 80, I might as well make it possible and easy for myself as much as possible.

Yeah.

And I totally agree.

And from there, you know, once that becomes a habit, right.

Once you have more of a, of a boundary and a control over what it is that, you know, works for you.

For me, I think the next best thing is knowing how to read, becoming a detective for how to read your ingredients, because you, you don’t know what you don’t know until you know.

And so it’s not about wiping out your entire pantry.

It’s about being aware of what you’re actually ingesting.

Because I really don’t think that people go and shop with the intention of, well, I’m just going and buying all processed food because, well, that’s just life.

You know, they’re going and they’re thinking, oh, well, they say it’s healthy, it’s organic, or maybe it’s not, or maybe it’s all natural, or, you know, it’s keto, or it’s gluten, gluten free, or, you know, it’s got all these fancy things on the front and I’m always of the belief.

Yes, that’s called marketing.

Yes.

Let’s not the information, let’s see what those ingredients, not the label that says how many calories, how much fat, how much sodium, but what are the actual ingredients that come with that particular thing.

Because when I go to produce section and I pick up a bag of carrots, it doesn’t say carrots and 50 other things it says carrots.

And so as close to whole as possible is best, but you’re not going to know where it is if you never look at the ingredients.

Yeah, and I think the, there’s also a huge.

When you say close to whole is best, like, I love that.

And there’s a huge block about people getting pre cut vegetables in the aim of ease and the 1% instead of the 5% improvement.

Like pre cut vegetables are a fantastic way to get that 1% improvement and not overwhelm yourself.

And like, for example, you’re in a great habit of always processing your vegetables when you come home from the store.

We might not all be in that like habit yet.

So getting the, the box of fresh butternut squash that’s already cubed just as good as getting.

It’s just people don’t, you know, there’s a lot of blocks about it like that costs more money that, you know, it means I’m not really cooking from scratch.

It’s not healthy enough.

But those are, that’s the noise that we need to cut out in order to take power of that like 1% improvement and actually use it.

Frozen stuff too.

Like frozen pre chopped vegetables.

It’s fantastic.

Great.

And again, those are the things that you can implement when you’re starting out, you know, and even when you’re seasoned, you know, if you’re in a rush, I have no shame in going buying something that’s cut up.

I actually enjoy now.

I mean, I’ve been doing this a really long time, but I enjoy the process of chopping and cooking.

It’s very therapeutic to me.

It’s meditative.

Right.

It’s very calming.

And you know, it’s.

And I, I feel like, I don’t know, it’s just, I didn’t start there.

I was like, what can I get cut up?

And how can I throw that all in a sheet pan really quick?

You know, you know when I say sheet pan, because I do feel like that’s a real simple way to cook, cook vegetables and just have them available.

But no, you don’t have to cut it all up.

There are bags of broccoli, cauliflower, squash, sweet potato.

They’re all cut up already now.

So go throw some carrots on there.

Put it in 20 minutes.

I mean, and then you have vegetables available all week long, depending on.

You want to mix them all up.

If you’re an individual, if you like things individual, then trade them out during the, you know, week.

So again, I think it’s just being in community and in company with people who can provide ideas and then you have the power to pick what works for you.

And I think we forget that we feel like we.

We have given our power away to so many things and so many ideas and so many ways that we’re very disconnected from what our self actually needs.

Yeah, yeah.

I feel like we always have this sense of being time poor constantly.

And there’s, there’s never.

I love that.

And, and this 1% improvement, it challenges that.

It says there are some wiggle room areas in your day.

Where do you want to put them?

Like, where do we want to challenge that idea of I have no time.

Here’s a great place.

Like, let me get that venue down or let me get that sheet pan of roasted carrots in the oven.

I think that’s, it’s wonderful.

And I want to reassure folks that like, yeah, so many of us do not start there.

Like, I don’t think I got good at vegetables for like years after I started, you know, becoming healthier.

I really, I started very much with all the slow cooker meals.

Easy.

I still got takeout dinner all the time.

It was just smaller portions and different choices.

But by proving to myself for a few months at a time that this was a change I was willing to stick to, it gave me the confidence to then take the next step.

Like, maybe I will make, you know, this vegetable dish and add that to my go to meals.

Maybe I will build my skills.

There does not have to happen all at once.

Yeah, for sure.

I just forgot what you just said.

That just really what did I choose?

The starting where you are.

Yeah.

And not depriving yourself of everything.

You know, we do have to learn how to eat out.

That’s reality of the life that we live in.

Maybe instead of doing it seven days a week, you do it four days a week.

You know, or maybe you do it six days a week to get started.

You know, it’s like just that very small shift is where you have to start.

You know, I’m so passionate about that.

Because you go from seven to zero.

You will never stick because it’s not reality.

Reality is we are on the go a lot.

We do have things we have to get to.

We’re not going to always be successful at getting to the grocery store every Saturday, Sunday, whatever you have.

Normally things pop up, you know, I mean, just life happens.

Life is lifey.

And so we have to give grace when we still allow ourselves to learn.

How do I eat out, how do I travel, how do I make this lifestyle work for me when I am on the go?

And news to everybody, if you want to have a piece of cake for someone’s birthday, you have it, you enjoy it, no guilt, and you move on again.

We’ve been so conditioned.

If you go there, you’ve really just undone everything you did.

So don’t worry about it.

Don’t do it anymore.

Yeah, the guilt is pervasive.

It is constant.

And I think the skill I learned of going to a restaurant and not having every restaurant trip be a blowout.

Like having most restaurant trips echo my meals from home.

Like, I will make use of the side dishes, the soups, the salads.

I don’t need the appetizers and the drinks and the dessert and the bread.

I can have just this.

It took a long time to develop, but it was so worth it because then when I do have a really lovely evening planned and I do want to have the appetizer and the dessert, that feels better and it feels more special and it’s.

It doesn’t have the guilt attached to it because I’ve got the.

The skill to most of the times make that restaurant meal echo what I do from home.

Yeah, I love that.

I love echoing from home.

It’s a good.

A good one.

So, I mean, obviously you and I could probably go on a week’s long vacation and talk the whole time.

Where can people find you?

What do you actually do?

I know you do the meal plan, the partake meal planning.

So just tell people a little bit about actually what you do to help people now that you’ve kind of gone through this transformation and not only have you gotten yourself to a healthier weight and a healthier mindset, you now live that lifestyle.

And so it is possible.

And I love that you give that to other people.

So tell people what you do and how you do it and then how they could get in touch with you.

It’s something that resonates with them.

Yeah.

So my.

So I have a one on one coaching service and I also have this great free meal planning class that I do weekly on Instagram Live.

So all of the information about both of those things you can find on my Instagram, which is Partakefoodie, you can find links to my coaching page, my website, and where to sign up for the free meal planning class.

Because that 30 minutes to get that menu down has been so key for me to just keeping this life realistic.

Putting those restaurant meals on the menu, it’s kind of a mindset shift, but it, it really does work.

So you can find me and learn kind of more about my health journey, what I, how I approach things with my clients.

All that can be found on the Instagram and the website.

Okay, and I’ll drop all that in the show notes so that everybody, and for those of you listening, why not take a free meal meal planning class?

I mean, what do you have to lose, right?

It’s free and you might get a 1% shift.

You know, you might, something might spark you just as an experimentation, you know.

So as you’re walking away today, I mean there was thousands of takeaways from this episode.

But the one thing that I, I really hope that you walk away with is health is possible.

You know, wellness comes in all shapes, is, you know, tools, all the things.

There’s not one way for everyone and just that you need to start tuning into what feels right for you.

Because a lot of times when we are looking to create a goal, we feel like the win is going to be at the end.

And I like for people to back that up.

And whatever you think you might feel at the end by accomplishing that goal, let’s try to feel that every day.

If we can feel that feeling every day, we’re winning every day.

There’s no reason to wait till we get to the finish line to feel like we’re a winner.

And winning looks different for everybody.

So be kind to yourself, love yourself.

And remember in this midlife chapter, things are very wonky within our bodies.

So loving ourselves just a little bit extra and pouring into ourselves daily really does go a long way.

So I hope you guys have a great rest of your week and I will talk to you soon and thank you so much for coming on.

Megan.

Thank you Robin.

Thanks for having me.

That episode had so many great takeaways.

I hope you feel inspired, inspired and more empowered to make small 1% shifts on your wellness journey this week.

I’d love to hear what resonated with you.

If you want to leave a review, share your thoughts and let me know how you’re going to be implementing these 1% shifts into your life.

And don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode with another mama who could use a little wellness love.

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Until next time, I hope you find peace, love and light by breathing, being present and allowing for all possibilities to come your way.

See y’ all next week.

Love to y’ all.