In this episode Jackie and Kristen Noriega, a registered dietician/nutritionist, discuss diet culture, in particular the pros and cons of whole 30. There is just so much involved in “feeling good” in your body. If you are tired of feeling blah this episode has amazing tips to get you on track to feeling good…
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Tag me on @whole9family so I can thank you!
Connect with Kristen on IG:
This episode discusses:
Jackie & Kristen’s differing views on Whole30
Diet culture
Mindfulness
What to do when you don’t feel well but are overwhelmed about it.
DON’T HAVE TIME TO LISTEN? HERE’S THE EPISODE ALL TYPED OUT:
Lets face it…Being a homeschooling mom who also works from home can be pure chaos! As you’ve probably already noticed, despite the occasional laugh track, life isn’t a sitcom and everyday struggles are rarely resolved in 30 minutes with commercial breaks to keep your sanity in check so the right strategies and mindset are vital for becoming more productive and less overwhelmed with all the things life throws at us. Enter the Simply Freeing Podcast…Episodes for the highly passionate, busy work at home, homeschooling mama ready to break away from cultural norms and raise life long learners. So let kick stress to the curb, throw chaos out the door and order in some peace and simplicity…with a cup of coffee, or 3.
Hello friends! Today on the podcast, I’m going to be sharing an IGTV that I did with Kristen Noriega. I'll add her information so that you can connect with her in the show notes. We talked about the Whole 30. We had differing opinions when we first started discussing it offline and we felt that it would be a really good conversation to discuss here. I hope that you enjoy this episode.
Kristen: I’m Kristen Noriega. I’m a registered dietician/nutritionist. And I typically help moms lose stubborn baby weight in a realistic real mom life fashion so yeah that's what I do in a nutshell
Jackie: Right now, my heart and my passion is to help moms that want to homeschool but they're kind of feeling super overwhelmed with all the things that come with it and a lot of the moms that that I talk with are working from home…surprise, surprise! Everyone’s working from home now. A lot of us are homeschooling and we weren't doing that before. I like to help people find that balance. It's hard to find that balance when you're being pulled in many different directions. But I believe that being healthy and feeling really good is a huge factor.
When we were talking before about Whole30, we kind had differing opinions on it so I'm going to start and just share my journey and why I think it helped me. You helped me see the other side of that. I think it's important for people to avoid jumping on the diet culture bandwagon. Just because something works for someone else, it doesn't mean it's going to work for you. I started doing the Whole30 because it was kind of a trend. Maybe a little less than 10 years ago everyone was doing the diet. It was a big thing. If you don't know what it is head to whole30.com to read all the details about it.
Kristen: Yeah. It’s an elimination diet. If you guys wanted to go look it up, that would be like what you would find is like get rid of everything and then and do it for 30 days and then go from there.
Jackie: Here is why I chose to try it. Often, I would just wake up and feel very blah. I would have random headaches. It just was something that always plagued me but I wasn't sure what it was so I started doing the whole30 with the hopes of feeling better. I did want to lose weight. I had babies and gained some baby weight and it did help me do that so that was my biggest takeaway from doing whole 30. Yes, it was hard but I'm very goal oriented so I knew I could do this for 30 days. It was a challenge for me.
On it, I learned how to read labels which was huge. Changing everything in my pantry and really getting back to basics and learn exactly what's in each pantry item. I had a chance to learn about every ingredient that I was putting into a recipe. Side note…it actually was harder to do whole30 a couple of years ago because there was no cauliflower rice in the store at the time. You're not supposed to eat chips but now chips actually have whole 30 ingredients. It was definitely more challenging in years past. I had to cook more things from scratch but it helped me to see that a lot of the ingredients I was using weren’t good. I ending up feeling better and I did lose weight. After it was over, I kept up a lot of the lifestyle. For me, it was transformational.
Kristen: It sounds like you had a good experience. You learned a lot. You got to a point where you were feeling better. Did you get rid of your headaches?
Jackie: Not fully. It's always a journey. I've no idea why that happens randomly.
Kristen: But it worked for you and it worked for the weight loss aspect too but what you just described at the very end is typically the response that most women, most clients that I work with, who have tried it… that's what they experience. They go through this really restrictive process. It is restrictive. I mean you get rid of everything. I haven't done it personally, I just looked it up in my research and talked to people. You reduce everything and you're down to the bare minimum. So that's kind of cool. You can learn something from it. You can learn to read labels very well but then once you reintroduce those foods, because it's only designed for 30 days, after you get through it…than what? That “than what?” is where most people get hung up because then they return to eating their other foods…eating the things that they're used to, that their family likes, that work better for you. (What little kids and husbands like. All these people that you have to care for that just might kind of not really like to be an only eating so few foods so that's kind of where that “than what?” catches some people off guard and for a lot of people, they lose the weight because they end up eating less and taking in less calories. They are taking in less so they start to lose weight and what I have heard from some people is that they don't like it because it is so restrictive and just felt like they couldn't eat anything, which I mean that can kind of be like a situational personal type deal but it's the rebound that just catches everybody. They don't feel like they learned something that lasts. They completed the project then and then they get back to real life and they don't feel like they have the tools to really continue living a healthy long sustaining lifestyle.
So that's not your experience but we asked each other, what do you think about whole30? Instantly I was negative about it but maybe I should have been a little softer.
Jackie: That’s a huge problem with people that try a diet and get so excited about it. They share it with somebody else and they're frustrated because they wonder why others didn’t get the same results. We have to be really careful when we're interacting with other people. Something that I've learned is that it is easier for me to do something like this because it makes me feel good. That's my motivation but I know a lot of people who literally can eat pizza all the time and they feel fine. That person is not going to have the same results as me. My body just doesn't like certain things that I eat. I have to be really careful and it’s funny because now, I’m actually eating a more vegan diet with some fish. That’s not included in whole30 at all. I eat this way because of blood work I’ve gotten and the way my genetics are. It really is a personal choice and it all depends on your genetics and how your body responds to certain foods.
Kristen: Yeah for sure! Actually a lot of the clients that I work with, start to apply mindfulness. It’s a really powerful tool when you start to look at what you're eating, how it affects your body, how it interacts, how it makes you feel, how your gut feels… So when my clients when I start to do this, we start to get down to this point where they're like I really just feel like crap after I eat (insert food) and it's like okay, so what are you going to do about that? My approach is like much more fluid. I'm looking at the whole30 website and it says things like, you're an adult, you can do this, cut it out and all this and I'm like, Oh my gosh that makes me feel so stressed.
Jackie: I love that! I want the exercise class where they are like, let's go! Let's do this! That's just my personality. I did the whole30 more than once. I even did it during pregnancy. A lot of people would say, how could you do that? That's not good for your baby but it is really eating protein, veggies, and healthy fats. It's not a bad thing but I think it's hard for us to wrap our brain around how to feel full with a diet that is so limited like that. It's really not very limited when you really think about it.
Kristen: For sure. So definitely the difference between like let's use a different diet for example… I'm not going to drop a name but one where you might have to buy a protein powder and you have to buy the supplements. You have to buy all of these things and they're really selling you a product that's going to be something that takes away your power. That places the power on that item and you start to feel like you can't succeed if you're not buying that thing. You can't succeed if you're not drinking their protein powder twice a day or whatever it is but whenever you can do it in a way that's focused on whole foods, then you're going to have a lot more success because you can see how it works for the whole family. I'm definitely speaking to moms here because, you know, as moms we have these people that we have to feed everyday! We can't just get rid of them! Focusing on whole foods might be the take home here. In whatever way you go about this, focusing on the whole foods that you know where they came from. Whether that means something that's like a tomato or has five ingredients listed on the package…something where you can identify it, you're going to have a lot more success on that end as opposed to the supplements and protein.
Jackie: That true. I think a lot of moms are so used to feeling like crap. They don't even realize that they feel like crap they think it's just normal. Lack of sleep depending on how old your kids are have an impact on what you eat and how you feel. Brain fog has become normal. But I've seen people say that once they start cutting out processed foods and not just a little bit but like really changing their diet, they start feeling amazing! That changes everything! It gives them more energy for their kids to be able to do things, like homeschooling.
I used to like wake up in the morning and just not feel like doing anything so I wouldn't really do anything and then I'd feel guilty and it was like this whole spiral. That’s not the way that I want to live. I don't want to live that way. I want to be excellent in what I'm doing with my kids and this is such a huge part of that for me. I didn't realize that what I’ve been doing was called mindfulness but the other day, I posted about my journaling in my stories. I started a journal to keep track of the little things that that I feel. (like the slight headaches that come on occasionally) and I've just started writing everything down because I'm trying to see like if there is a certain time in my cycle that those symptoms are popping up that might be related to a hormone imbalance. I'm just kind of taking notice of how I feel and how I eat and I think over time I should be able to see if there's a pattern.
Kristen: Yeah. I like that. And I like what you said about our cycles too 'cause I've been doing this private practice online stuff for a year. Before that, I was in the hospital and all sorts of other situations. Moms are always like, well I'm on my period. I feel like crap. I don't know what's going on. I’m super bloated and then their period starts the next day and so we really look those cycles and how to deal with that because it's always coming back just like your kids are not going anywhere for the next however many years… you're going to have your period so if you're prone to emotional eating or your coping with chocolate to get through the first few days…the first few terrible days of your period… you know you can work through that because you know it's gonna come. Journaling is one of the best ways to look at that and you can journal through the struggle. You can journal to identify your symptoms. You can journal too as an outlet instead of eating. journaling is so powerful so I love that you're doing that now.
Jackie: Thank you! I hope that this was helpful to those listening. I think the thing that always stopped me from starting something new or trying something knew was that I was afraid to fail. I was already believing that I wasn’t going to keep up with something long term so I would end up not starting something. But doing something different to try to create change starts the momentum going. There's a lot of internal work that has to happen to be able to be consistent with anything but that’s been my journey. I'm really thankful that I feel like I'm at a point where I'm not like constantly upset with myself and frustrated because of the way I feel.
There's just so much to feeling good.
Kristen: It's a lot more than the food that's on our plate but moral of this story is do what you can to feel good in your body, however you're gonna get there. Apply some mindfulness. Do whatever program you want. Trust whoever you choose to and keep moving forward. Always make the next best choice. It's not all black and white. It's like what can you do next with the next thing you can do to eat a little better, to feel a little better just keep moving forward in whatever fashion.
Jackie: Yes! Thank you for joining and I hope that this was helpful for those listening.
Kristen: Thanks for having me!
This has been an episode of the Simply Freeing Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to be notified when new episodes drop. If this episode was helpful for you, feel free to share it and tag @whole9family on Instagram so we can thank you!