How to Know Which Foods Work for You and Against You
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Every person and every body is different, which means the foods that work best for me are not necessarily the foods that will work best for you. While beans and cauliflower make me feel bloated, and rice and pita chips give me energy, this may be the total opposite for you.
This is why you should never follow what other people are eating and instead figure out what works best for your body and your goals. In this episode of Embrace Your Real, I empower you on how to determine which foods are working for you and making you feel your best, and which ones are working against you and taking you further from your goals.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey hey, beautiful human. Can I steal five minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real, let's get it, let's go.
Every person and everybody is different, which means the foods that work best for me are not necessarily the foods that will work best for you. And just because I love eating baked pita chips as a snack, doesn't mean that that's going to be the best snack option for you, or just because I love to have cilantro lime rice in a lot of my meals doesn't mean that eating a lot of rice may be the best option for you. Foods like cauliflower and beans do not sit well in my stomach, so I don't eat them, but maybe those foods could be some of the best foods for you to eat. So in this bonus episode of Embrace Your Real, I want to teach you how to know whether or not foods are working for you or against you so that you can make better nutrition choices for your body and ensure that you feel your best.
Before I dive into the bonus episode, I want to share this super sweet review. It comes from The Cat Daddy, she says "A literal life changer. Julie is the girlfriend we may not all have, but we all need. She is upfront, but gentle and loving in all of her messages to her listeners. She uses facts and longterm solutions to change, not just your body, but your life. She reminds me to be thankful each day, strive for success and enjoy the little things. Thank you, Julie, for not only being someone to lean on when women need you, but being a light to girls who are just beginning to find their way." Thank you so much for the review. Seriously, you guys, I love you. My podcast listeners are my girls. You guys are my people and I just want to say, thank you for supporting me.
Thank you for sharing this out. I've said this before, this is one of my favorite ways to connect with you guys, just because I feel like I'm able to have a longer conversation with you instead of just 15 second clips or Instagram photos, and all of that's great, I love connecting with you guys through different mediums, but I just love that we can get down to it, and we can get down to the real and the raw and the facts and the stories and all the things on the podcast. So, for you guys sharing this out with your friends and your family and your people, just really does mean a lot to me, we have an audacious goal by the end of 2020 to reach a million women. With the Embrace Your Real podcast, we are over 111 countries strong, and we are only going up from there and I couldn't do it without you.
So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you haven't already rated and reviewed, it really does help the podcast in the world of podcasts land. So if you listen on Apple Podcasts all you got to do is press pause, scroll all the way down, rate and review. It takes less than 60 seconds. Okay, so let's dive into the bonus episode. How do you know which foods are the best for your body? When starting to become more aware of the correlation between how you feel and what you are eating, the best place to begin is to start observing how you feel directly after you eat something and a few hours after you eat it. So for example, after you eat, start to notice what you're feeling, things like, do you feel full and satisfied or do you feel bloated? Do you feel lethargic or do you feel energized?
Do you feel like your brain is foggy or does it feel sharp. If you're eating foods that are right for you, you will feel full. You will feel satisfied, energized, and will have basically zero digestive issues like bloating. If you're feeling bloated or lethargic or whatever you're feeling, remember the foods that you ate. If you've never done this before, a great way to do this is to just kind of keep a food log on your phone. I say your phone because typically you're always going to have your phone with you. I've tried pen to paper and for those who love pen to paper, and you feel like you can have this wherever you eat, then you can totally do this. But for me, I felt like the phone is the easiest and most convenient because I know I'm always going to have it.
And I would just leave little notes after I had a certain meal. And this was a few years ago, I realized that my body does not do well with beans. My body does not do well with cauliflower, kale or broccoli. And I didn't ever notice this before. I was actually just having this conversation with my mom a few days ago and I was like, "I just thought that you were supposed to feel crappy after eating." It wasn't even something that really went through my brain of like, "Maybe I should monitor how I feel after each food." It was like, I had this thought where I should automatically feel good after any food that I eat and when I would feel gross and lethargic and very bloated, I just thought that that was normal, and it wasn't until I actually broke it down and asked myself those questions.
After I started eating that, I started to realize there are certain foods that I just don't feel good. So for me, I made this correlation with cauliflower. So I was often feeling super bloated and after paying better attention to it, how I felt after I was eating it, I was able to determine, "Oh, cauliflower is actually the culprit to why I'm feeling the way that I'm feeling." And really this is all about trial and error. You may think it was one food that caused you bloating, and later it could have been a totally different reason like you're about to start your period or you didn't drink enough water or your sleep was not on point the last night. There's a lot of different factors, or it could even be a different food. So the more that you can really tune in, pay attention, and keep of the foods that you're eating and how you're feeling, you'll quickly be able to make the distinction between the foods that make you feel great and the foods that make you don't feel so good.
So here are some signs that the food you're eating are not right for you. Number one, you're constantly hungry. Number two, you have intense food cravings. Number three, you're regularly bloated or gassy. Four, you're tired all the time. Five, you have an irregular digestion or constipated. Six, you get sick a lot. Seven, you experience brain fog. Eight, you experience regular energy crashes. Nine, you have regular breakouts, or ten, you have regular mood swings. So really just ask yourself how you're feeling, and overall, just small food log of how you're feeling, what's kind of going on internally after you eat these things, and this also for me, I've talked about this before, no foods are off limits in my mind, but I know that there're certain foods that are just not going to make me feel satisfied for the nutritional value that they have.
An example of this is a pop-tart. I think it's like 30 to 40 grams of carbs or something like that. I know for me, it's not that I'm never going to eat a pop-tart again, but if I have the option for something else, I know that if I pick something like a Ezekiel bread or I pick rice, or I pick something of maybe the same nutritional value in terms of protein, carbs and fats, but the way it digests in my body differently will make me feel fuller longer. It won't make me feel like I then want to just have sugar for the rest of the day, and so just being super in tune with certain foods that may be just not allowing you to properly nourish your body and feel your best. And here are some signs that the foods you are eating are right for you.
You feel energized, you feel happy. You have a great digestion. You are at peace with the food and your body. You're sleeping well. Your mind is sharp. Your mood and hunger are stable. It's also important to keep in mind that what works for your body now may not be best for your body one month or one year from now, you as a person are constantly changing and so is your body. So, continue to evolve your daily food intake as your body and your life evolves. Don't be rigid with having to eat or having to avoid certain foods. What your body needs right now might be different from what your body needs in the future. So I want to challenge you to start paying attention to how you feel after eating a meal or a snack, and I want to even challenge you to keep that journal in your phone, jot down the foods you eat and how often you are eating them and what you're feeling.
And this will allow you to successfully notice the trends and how certain foods are making you feel in certain ways. If you love this episode, I also know you will love episode 52, Nine Nutrition Mistakes to Avoid. In this episode of Embrace Your Real, I share nine of the most common nutrition mistakes I see women make and what we need to do instead. It is my goal to better educate you on nutrition and empowering you to make the best decisions for yourself, your goals and your preferences.
So, whether you're working to lose weight or build muscle, or even maintain, these nine nutrition mistakes are applicable to you. You can easily listen by going over to the show notes or just typing in episode 52 or Nine Nutrition Mistakes to Avoid. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. If you have somebody in your life that you feel like, man, I feel like this would really benefit them, share it out, send it to them in a text message, share it out in a DM, post it up on your story. Tag me, Julie A Ledbetter, I love putting faces to names of the listeners, and I just appreciate you guys so much. Thank you again for tuning in and I'll talk to you guys in the next episode.
All right sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, Julie A. Ledbetter. Yes, it's with an A in the middle, for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts, to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world, and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves, remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface, so go out there and embrace her real because you're worth it.