Your Biggest Nutrition Struggles Solved!

Today we’re going to do things a little differently. Last week after my interview with Philip all about fat loss where we talked a lot about nutrition, I realized it’s been a little while since I’ve done a full episode dedicated just to nutrition… and specifically to the struggles that you might have with it. Without a doubt the most common questions I get asked aren’t about “what” to eat necessarily - it’s how to get a handle on everything else: all the snacking and splurging that can sneak in and sabotage your efforts.

So today, I went back into the archives and pulled out three short clips from our Ask Megan episodes on Fridays. In these clips, I’m giving you clear strategies on:

1. How to Stop the Mood Eating or emotional/stress eating
2. Splurging, and specifically how many cheats or splurges is too many
3. How to Stop Mindlessly Snacking Between Meals.

My hope is that this compilation gives you the exact strategies that you can use today to get control of your eating habits.

1) Mood eating (or emotional/stress eating)

If this is something that’s really crippling you and getting you super frustrated, then I need you to do that work.

• Identify your triggers
• Create a list of other go-to mood boosters
• Commit to turning to those other mood boosters FIRST.
• Instead of trying to always say “NO”, practice saying “Not yet”.
• If you still want the chocolate, then fine. Make sure it’s your absolute favorite and savor it slowly.

2) Splurges - How man splurges is too many?

“When do you incorporate how many splurges you have? I either get too extreme and focus too much on it, or I just splurge the entire day. I need to figure out how many splurges I can have in a day or a week. Help me figure out a good balance and going so extreme that I end up getting burnt out.”

Let’s start with the hard answer and then back up from there:

• If body composition change is your goal, the best progress is seen when you’re eating 90/10.
• To put this into perspective, if you’re eating 4 meals a day for 7 days a week, that’s 28 meals total. So 10% of that would be about 3 out of 28 meals are splurge meals.
• That’s not very many, which is why I like to really mention being mindful here - make sure that when you choose to splurge, it’s your absolute favorite thing, eat it slowly, enjoy and savor every bite. Then make sure all your other meals are full and satisfying, so you’re not craving the splurges!!

Now, this does not mean that you need to go from being someone that splurges all day every day to a 3x/week person:

• Spend one week and journal.
• Don’t change your eating habits, just eat normal, and tally up how many times you splurge (and even write down what it is… you might find that some things you’re splurging on aren’t even worth it)
• If you find that you’re splurging 17 times in one week, then all we want to do is aim for progress.
• The next week, aim for just 15 splurges. Then 10. And eventually 7 - or about one splurge a day.
• A lot of people can see significant progress if they’re splurging mindfully once a day.

3) How to stop mindlessly snacking between meals

So the challenge here is taking back your self-control without completely eliminating these foods from your life. And the key is to be MORE MINDFUL. Because if mindlessness is the issue, the solution is going to be some form of more mindfulness or awareness.

Step One: Identify when this is usually happening to you.

• Mid-morning? Mid-afternoon or late afternoon? Late in the evening?
• Let’s really get clear on when your mindless eating is happening, and that alone will heighten your awareness.
• So now, you can go into that time of day no longer caught of guard, but aware that this might happen to you.

Step Two: Make sure real, tangible hunger is NOT a factor.

• You’re more likely to mindlessly grab something if you have a low buzz of hunger happening.
• Roll the clock back and examine the meal that’s happening before you munchy. Chances are it wasn’t big enough. You walked away feeling 50% full not 80% full, and now you’re hungry and looking around for other food to eat.
• Eat these full, protein and produce filled meals every 2-4 hours. This will really help to regulate your hunger throughout the day.
• And then take that one step further and intentionally position a meal 30 minutes before you get munchy.

Step Three: Heighten your awareness in the moment.

• Let’s say you did all those things, but your hand is still going into that bag of chips. That’s ok…
• Do the opposite of shutting your brain off in that moment. Instead, go ahead and eat the chips but turn your antenna way up, and become a detective.
• Ask yourself, What do I like about these chips? What do I not like? How do they make me feel right now? How will this make me feel later?
• When you ask yourself probing questions, your answers about how you feel will start to dictate your choice in that moment and in future moments.

Alright, there you have it! I hope this really helped you! And keep in mind if you still have questions about anything, that’s what I’m here for. You can send me a voice message by just going to vigeofit.com/ask and I’ll be sure to spend some time answering it on an upcoming Friday episode.

More Resources & Links

FREE! - Download my free report on the Three Eating Dangers to Avoid to Reset Your Eating Habits

The Jumpstart 30 Program for Beginners

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