Ep. 88: 5 Healthy Swaps to Make This Year

On today’s episode, I’m sharing 5 healthy swaps you can make for a healthier, happier you this year!

We’re back with our 88th episode of the Fed+Fit Podcast! Remember to check back every Monday for a new episode and be sure to subscribe on iTunes!

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Episode 88 Transcription

On today’s episode, I’m talking about 5 easy swaps we can make in 2017 that will have huge pay out with regard to your long-term healthy lifestyle.

Cassy Joy: Welcome back to another episode of the Fed and Fit podcast. And Happy, Happy New Year! I hope this finds you well and having started off on the right foot in this New Year. And if you feel like you haven’t started off on the right foot; no sweat! Look at all the days ahead of us we have to start on the right foot {laughs}. So the important thing is that we are just putting one foot in front of the other and we are just doing our best. So don’t worry. I know there’s a lot of expectations and hopes going into the New Year. And there’s nothing wrong with those. There’s nothing wrong with New Years’ resolutions, and harnessing all this brand new start momentum and jazz around January 1st. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you feel like the first few days don’t live up to your expectations, just remember that they were just that; they were just expectations. So; I wanted to start off today’s episode with just a quick reminder about that. Maybe a little perspective, as we remember that every day is a new day to get started.

So, today’s episode is really aimed at those of you maybe you didn’t necessarily come up with a new years’ resolution; or maybe if you did, maybe it was just to be a little bit healthier. You know it could really be anything across the gamut. What I wanted to cover today are five easy swaps that we can all make in the new year to make a healthier, happier version of ourselves. And they’re really simple. And to be honest, if you’ve been following my work for a long time, you probably already do a lot of this stuff. And if you have not been following my work for a long time, then I hope that you’re able to get something significant from today. And even if you are a seasoned veteran, maybe you’ll get something out of it, as well. I hope I have got a surprise or two in here for you.

Five easy swaps. I tend to; if you have followed my work for a long time, you probably know and understand really well now that I don’t really like to create or foster an environment of constructing unrealistic expectations of ourselves. Because what do we do when we make unrealistic expectations of ourselves? If we don’t follow through on those, then we tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Right? So if your New Year’s resolution was to, say, never eat another piece of bread again, and then come January 2nd someone offers you up; I don’t know, a cupcake, and it’s your favorite cupcake in the world and they pressure you into eating it, and you buckle and you have a bite of the cupcake. If you had these huge unrealistic expectations that you would never have another bite of bread or breaded good again, you might feel like you failed it. And if you failed it with one bite of a cupcake, then you might as well go home and have pasta for dinner and cereal for breakfast the next morning, because we’re officially off the bandwagon. That’s what they mean by throw the baby out with the bathwater.

So what I like to do is foster an environment of; maybe let’s start thinking of goals; really, goals are really good, healthy activity to work through, and we do work through those very strategically within the Fed and Fit Project online; but I think it’s important to set goals as far as our mindset and our perspective with footnotes that make exceptions for real life. Right?

Let’s think realistically about what we can accomplish in this New Year. Let’s think realistically about the changes we can make that will have a huge impact on our overall health and well being, but do not necessarily set us up for some unrealistic expectations, and therefore failure, and then if we’re feeling like we failed, and therefore giving up. So that’s kind of the thought that went into today’s episode.

So the 5 things I want to cover are very simple, and I hope that you feel empowered because they’re all very, very doable. I’ve been through all of them. I’ve done all of these! And I would say that I’m a very slow learner. I’ll be the first to admit that. Of the steps that I took to turn my life around, and to really get control and to stay positive and to stay empowered. These were some of the things that were just really easy fits. You could think of them as low hanging fruit. Right? The easy things we can cross off of our list that had a huge impact on getting us closer to our goals and to living that healthy balance lifestyle effortlessly that we so want and so, so desire.

Ok, number one swap for the New Year. And this one is probably the most likely to be a review for the majority of listeners. But if it’s not, then tune in. and if it is a review, hang in here with me because I’ve got something for you too. Alright, number one. We’re going to swap potatoes for bread, pasta, and cereal. Pretty simple! We’re just going to think of all the places where you have bread, pasta, and cereal, and instead of eating those, let’s go ahead and eat some potatoes! Whether they’re white potatoes, sweet potatoes, Japanese purple sweet potatoes; or no, purple sweet potatoes, Japanese white sweet potatoes; fingerling potatoes, russet, Yukon gold, baby gold; you name it. All of the potatoes; I just love them all. I eat them all, I try to get a good variety in there, and I think they’re wonderfully healthy foods. So on your plates, just try to swap as many potatoes as you can for bread, pasta, and cereal.

So what does that look like? In the morning, instead of cereal, let’s have some smashed 10 minute breakfast potatoes. I’ve a recipe for those on my blog. Let’s have hash browns. Let’s have crispy baked breakfast potatoes; those little cubed ones. You can find that recipe in my Fed and Fit book. Plenty of yummy potato options for the morning. Sweet potato hash; those are really, really wonderful. So wherever you would have that carb, insert a potato.

And then for lunch time, instead of bread have a small baked sweet potato. That’s easy. And then for dinner, roast up some fingerling potatoes instead of the pasta. If you still want something creamy, and some sort of a sauce, serve that over some sort of maybe a shredded potato or something like that. If you really want to take it to the next level; I’m trying to keep this as simple as possible, but of course other options for healthy based starches would be any of the squashes; winter squashes especially. So acorn squash, butternut squash, pumpkin could fall into this category, kabocha squash; oh my goodness. The list could go on and on and on. Spaghetti squash; so have fun with it. Just try to replace those breads with veggie based potatoes and squash, beets, parsnips as often as possible. That’s a little swap that will have a huge impact. Huge. So give it some thought. If that’s new to you, seriously think about that. It could have a huge impact.

Number two swap you can make for the New Year. Swap out your current face wash for a safer one. Our skin is our largest organ on our bodies; right? Of our person, our skin is our largest organ. And we try so hard to make sure that we’re nourishing our body with healthy healing ingredients; we drink lots of water; we get good rest; we go out and do some exercise, and then we kind of tend; and I’m saying we, because it’s been me in the past. But what I’m putting on my skin is sort of a blind spot. It took me a long time to realize or to understand that what goes on my skin winds up in my body, just like the other things that I’m doing. And it’s important then, if I really want to create the healthiest body possible, within reason, of course, that I need to start paying attention to the chemicals that I’m putting on my skin. So I started really small, and the first thing that I swapped was face wash.

We all kind of have that; for the ladies listening, we’ve got that moisturizer that’s our absolutely favorite moisturizer. Or we just spent a fortune on makeup at Sephora; and we’re not ready to give that up. Or we really, really love our shampoo. Or we really, really love our deodorant and we’re just so afraid of being stinky, or whatever. I’m not asking you to switch out that stuff; yet {laughs} baby steps. What I’m asking you to do is switch out your face wash; because there are some really good, good, good ones available now that will have a huge impact; it will probably help make your skin feel and look even better. In fact, I would almost bet on it that it would make your skin look and feel better. But you can keep using the other moisturizers that you were using; keep using your makeup. Just make this one swap; swap out your face wash.

So a couple of my recommendations; two of them are at Beautycounter, who is a safer beauty skincare company that I really, really love. And then another one is by a safer skincare company that I love called Primally Pure. And Beautycounter I would say would be the option if you’re somebody listening and you’re not in a hurry to go out and make your own shampoo. {laughs} Does that make any sense? You want something a little bit more conventional. You want it to look and act just like something you might buy at the store; you just want it to have safer ingredients. So Beautycounter would be the option for you, whereas Primally Pure offers up beautiful products that are wonderfully effective, but they lean more on the crunchy side of the scale. If you really want something that is even more natural than Beautycounter.

Beautycounter has, of course; they use chemicals in their products, but none of the toxic chemicals. But it is a conventional product. It’s one that I stand by all of their ingredients; whereas Primally Pure does not use any of those ingredients at all. So choose wisely. Beautycounter, the two products I would recommend there; one would be the charcoal cleansing bar. It’s just a bar soap; and I kid you not, I never thought that I would use bar soap on my face. But that’s actually what I use as my primary face wash, and I love it. It foams really nicely, the activated charcoal helps clean out your pores. It also soothes your skin; I tend to have a lot of redness, and it really helps with that. I love it so much. I will use it in the morning sometimes if I’ve got my act together and I’m washing my face in the morning, but definitely at night time. It takes off my makeup; it’s just a lovely product.

Beautycounter also has two different kinds of liquid face washes; both of them are great, I love them both. They have different benefits. One is a cream cleanser, so it does not foam, so it is very, very gentle. If that’s something that you currently have, that’s an easy swap! Just swap it right in. Swap in that Beautycounter cream cleanser. They also have one that foams a little bit, so you can swap that in if you prefer something a little foamy. So those are some options there.

And then Primally Pure has a cleansing oil. They have a couple of different options for dry skin, or normal skin, or oily skin. But the cleansing oil, the way it works, is you’re using the oil cleansing method, if you’ve never heard of it before, where you put; let’s say you’ve got a face full of makeup at the end of the day, and you put the oil on your face, and you rub it in. Then you take a hot towel that you’ve gotten wet and damp with water. You wring it out, and you put it on your face, and you kind of create sort of a steam bath so that the good healing oils in the cleansing oil can then get into your pores, clean everything out. The idea is we’re not stripping anything, we’re just cleansing. So that’s a really lovely product as well.

And that’s a really easy swap you can make. Go to the one that you gravitate towards; I’ll include links to all of these products in the show notes so you’ve got a quick reference, but those are the ones that I would recommend. An easy swap. I’m not asking you to change out anything else; just you face wash.

Ok, number three easy swap we can make. Swap your soda, regular or diet, for sparkling water. Bada-bing! Easy breezy. You still get your bubbles, you still get the satisfying click of opening a can, but you don’t have all of the other stuff that comes with sodas; diet or regular. I’m not a fan of either one, except on; you know, again, with the unrealistic expectations. I’m not saying never ever have one again, but if you tend to be that person that gravitates towards that diet Dr. Pepper or that Coca-Cola at the end of the day or every weekend or whatever it is, try swapping in some sparkling water.

My favorite is the natural, so the one that’s not flavored at all. I think it’s really great. I love soda, so I drink a lot of sparkling water as a really easy switch for me. And then if that’s boring, add in some natural flavors. Add in some lime juice or some lemon juice. There are some flavors out there on the shelves; you’re welcome to tinker in those. So do whatever you feel great about.

Ok moving on to swap number four; this one might be a little new information; this might be new to some long-term listeners. What I’m going to encourage that you do is let’s swap our calorie trackers for a reflective feel good journal. Ok; what do I mean by that? I mean instead of tracking our calories; our calorie intake at the end of the day, at the end of the meal, at the end of the week, or the month; whatever it is. Instead of chasing this arbitrary magical caloric intake number that we think we need to be chasing in order to lose weight, let’s start tracking how we actually feel after we eat our meals. And let me tell you why.

So, what we’re trying to do instead of taking a quantitative look at the foods that are on our plate; quantitative meaning the caloric representation of the foods on our plate; we’re looking at it from a qualitative perspective. The potatoes, for example, versus the pasta, is a qualitative differentiator. So what we’re looking at is we’re saying those potatoes are going to do more for my health than the pasta. But, maybe they could have the same caloric impact. So what I want us to wrap our minds around is the possibility that we can do more for our health by thinking about how these foods are making us feel than by the caloric representation.

So let’s say 2 weeks down the road, your pants are starting to fit a little bit better. You might be thinking; well hot dang! These foods that I’ve been eating every day for breakfast and all this stuff; this is working. These are the kinds of foods that I need, and these are the kinds of portions that really work for me. Instead of thinking; “Oh my goodness, well I guess 1800 calories every day is my magic number!” That’s not your magic number. Right? The calories have less to do with your progress and your success than the quality of the foods and the types of foods. Portions do matter; but the types of food matters most.

Ok, and then moving on to our very last swap, we’re going to talk about swapping a punishing workout for one that you love. This is one of my favorite topics, and you’ve probably heard me say it before; but if you hate to run, then don’t run. {laughs} Just stop. Put to rest your running shoes if you really, really hate it. I do not think it’s a good thing for us to go out and punish ourselves via our workouts. Our workouts can be a really fun activity, and your perfect workout soul mate is out there, you’ve just got to get out there and try some stuff and see what’s available to you.

I, for example, love Crossfit, and I love yoga. I do! I love deadlifts and I love working on my headstands. So I look forward to going and doing those things. I do not necessarily look forward to going and swimming a bunch of laps. That’s just not my jam. That might be somebody else’s perfect fitness soul mate, but it’s not mine. So do the things that you love, because I believe what we get out of a workout mentally, how we emotionally feel about it, could be just as important as maybe the sweat that we get and the muscular benefit. So do a workout that you love.

So those are my 5 swaps. I hope you found them helpful; let’s quickly review before I let you go. Number one, we’re going to swap instead of bread, pasta, and cereal, we’re going to have potatoes as an easy pick. Or you could also do squash {laughs}. Swap your face wash for a safer option; either Beautycounter or Primally Pure are my two favorite brands. Swap your soda; regular or diet; for sparkling water. Swap your calorie tracker for a more reflective and empowering and effective {laughs} and long-term goal oriented feel good journal. You could journal wherever you like. And then lastly, swap your punishing workout for one that you truly love.

I hope you guys found today’s episode helpful. And if all 5 of these apply, there’s something you could do, then go do them! Or pick the one that resonates with you the most. If only one or two of them really struck you as something that you can tackle, then go ahead and tackle those. These are ones that I keep focused when I’m working with folks one-on-one. These are the ones that I like to recommend they peruse. It keeps things manageable, and they will have huge, huge payouts when you stick to them without unrealistic expectations. Know that you can do these the majority of the time and still reap the benefits.

Thank you so much; I’m so excited about this year with you guys. We’re going to have podcasts every week! It will be so much fun, so be sure to check back every Monday. And if you like the show; as always, please give us a review in iTunes. Go leave a note there, and I will be sure to read all of them. Thanks so much, we’ll be back again next week.