Do you find it tough to maintain healthy eating habits? Do you struggle with excess weight that seems to want to stay on no matter how much you exercise or change your diet? If so, you’re surely in solid company. I’ve found that many people struggle with diet and exercise issues and end up feeling like they are failures because they are broken or have no willpower. This destructive cycle often fosters or exacerbates mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. But what if it’s not a personal failure? What if science-backed tips and stepwise change could make every difference in your overall wellness? I’m joined by an empowering health and wellness coach, Jenn Trepeck, who strongly believes that YOU can change anything in your life for the better with a few healthy shifts. Topics discussed include weight loss, diet, menopause, perimenopause, habit change, support, mental health, physical health, dieting, exercise, movement, snacking, fat, weight gain, protein, estrogen, phytoestrogen, depression, birth control, healthy eating, fruits, vegetables, and muscle.

Please note that this episode may contain sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911” or “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline). Support/informational links are in the show notes.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert in this (or any episode) is offering medical or psychological direction; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

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Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

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Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:

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How to Cheat, How to Eat, and How to Change 5 Fat Factors! With Expert Jenn Trepeck

Boost Your Well-Being and Nutrition by Kicking 5 Fat Factors

Do you find it tough to maintain healthy eating habits? Do you struggle with excess weight that seems to want to stay on no matter how much you exercise or change your diet? If so, you’re surely in solid company. I found that many people struggle with diet and exercise issues and then end up feeling like they are failures because they are broken or have no willpower.

This destructive cycle often fosters or exacerbates mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. What if it’s not a personal failure? What if science back to tips and stepwise change could make every difference in your overall wellness? I’m joined by an empowering health and wellness coach who strongly believes that you can change anything in your life for the better with a few healthy changes.

In this episode, we’ll focus on this reader’s real-life question. “My partner is in menopause and she’s getting rounder, even though her exercise and eating habits are the same. She’s getting depressed about it because even when she eats less, there’s no change. I told her I’d write in to get suggestions because we both agree that it’s now a mental health issue, too.” With that issue is the focus of this episode.

I am joined by a tremendous special guest, Jenn Trepeck, a renowned health coach who has powerful insights on many issues, including the five fat factors. Jenn will guide us into understanding the science and the myths around healthy eating habits and the bullseye of change. Welcome to the show, Jenn. It’s such a delight to have you with us.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Thank you for joining us. Before we launch into the issue, could you tell our listeners a little bit about what makes you, you?

Fundamentally, I am an insatiable student. I can’t get enough. I just keep learning and growing. There’s a piece of that where I believe we are all always evolving and growing. Another piece of what makes me, me is integrity. Whether that’s a piece of recommendations that we make or being particular about word choices. There’s always a level of impeccable integrity.

The other piece is I’m on a mission to help people help themselves. A lot of times, my clients will say, “Thank you so much.” I’m like, “You did it.” I know what they’re saying and what they mean but it’s about empowering everybody to reclaim their own health and to be that person for themselves more than it is the coach in the relationship.

Thank you. That’s beautiful. Now, tell me a little bit about Salad with a Side of Fries please.

Salad with a Side of Fries is my show and my practice. We have become known as wellness without the weirdness. It’s certainly understanding health and understanding that part of health is also enjoying the things that we love having the fries with the salad and figuring out what health and balance looks like for you in your life because it’s not about being a recovering perfectionist. It’s not about perfectionism or only ever eating foods that are green.

I find it such a compelling tagline or title, Salad with a Side of Fries, because I’m a vegetarian and I try and eat healthy. What I’ve discovered over time is it truly is and a recovering perfectionist, always a work in progress, but I believe in that. That it’s okay to have french fries sometimes. It’s okay to have frozen yogurt every once in a while. Maybe not every night, but that’s the idea.

If we’re too tight on ourselves or too hard on ourselves, it’s a lot easier to go off the rails and go, “I’m going to binge,” because you’ve controlled yourself far too much. I like Salad with a Side of Fries. That’s giving yourself permission to be human. You have so many powerful concepts that I’d like to look at. One is the idea of the five fat factors. Please tell. I’m not certain that this is going to apply to the reader’s question but I’m curious about the five fat factors.

Introduction to the Five Fat Factors

I think it will and we’ll get there. The five fat factors are essentially how we’ve ended up in this place because if we are living our lives, focus on all the things that we typically focus on. We can make an effort to choose things that we think are healthy but at some point, we end up in this place of going, “I don’t recognize the person in the mirror.” Depending on what age that happens, it can range and whether it’s my 50- or 60-year-old male clients who are coming and going, “All of a sudden, my cholesterol is through the roof,” or the women who are in perimenopause going, “I don’t understand. The things that used to work don’t work anymore.” The five fat factors are essentially how we ended up here in this place.

Number one is, garbage in and garbage out. Theoretically, we know this. We know to eat a cucumber over a Twix, but what happened over time is that there are a lot of food products and I’m using that phrase intentionally that are marketed to us, either as food or as healthful choices that aren’t doing us any favorites. Garbage in and garbage out is the idea of like, at one time, it was calorie rich nutrient poor foods.

Now, sometimes those foods aren’t even calorie rich, which is how they’re marketed to us as healthful choices. There are not that many calories, but they’re also not offering us any nutrition and then we’re lacking energy. We can’t figure out why we can’t concentrate or have a hard time sleeping or feel cranky and moody all the time. It’s like putting paint in your gas tank.

That image. No pun intended, but that sticks. Paint in your gas tank.

We would never put paint in the car and go, “Why isn’t the car running?” We do that with our bodies.

Thank you for highlighting this first off, Jenn, because I agree. I know many people including my hubby. He’s like, “I want a new nutrition bar. I want one of those exercise bars. I’m going for a bike ride.” He calls the bike ride exercise bars. I’m like, “Honey, they’re not exercise bars.” I look at the label and it’s what he wants. I’m thinking, “I wouldn’t ingest this.” It’s a bunch of sugar and gunk and things that most of us can’t pronounce. If it’s unfamiliar and doesn’t sound like a word, it just might not be food.

The Impact of Calorie Restriction and Weight Cycling

Exactly. That’s number one. Number two, a lot of the things that we have done, whether we are cutting out whole food groups or following whatever diet out there or dramatically cutting calories. All of these plans that make the number on the scale go down for a finite period of time then we get frustrated because the scale stops moving. We go back to old eating habits and what happens? Over time, we’re losing weight as water, muscle and bone. I’ll explain why in a second and we’re gaining it back as fat.

Each time we have lost weight and gain weight and lived on that roller coaster, and I was there with you so I know. I say this with tons of compassion but over time, even if we end up at the same number on the scale that we word before, we can be by body composition fatter at that same number. What happens? When we dramatically cut calories, cut out whole food groups. Whatever it is. Whatever we’re doing to “lose weight.”

The number of the scale goes down but what the body is releasing is water, muscle and bone. Why is that? Water we understand. Bone is a function of malnutrition because when we aren’t getting what we need from our food, our body will pull it from our bones. We lose muscle because of malnutrition. Think about if you’re eating animal protein. What part of the animal do we eat? The muscle.

What ends up happening is when we’re not getting enough food, when we have that eat less and move more mentality. In order for the body to perform on the movement side when it’s getting less in, it says, “I need to be more efficient.” Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. Muscle requires a lot of fuel and energy to maintain. If I’m going to be more efficient as a body, I need less muscle. The body starts to use its own muscle as its fuel and we decrease our muscle mass.

The scale stops moving because the body starts to go, “You will not kill me.” The body’s job is to survive. It is always going to do everything it can to survive. The scale stops going down because now the body is trying to protect itself. We get frustrated. We want the scale to keep moving down, so we go back to old leading habits. Remember, that muscle was our metabolically active tissue. We have less muscle on our body to be burning the extra fuel that we’re now taking in. We gain that weight back as fat when the number is crawling back up on the scale. We lose it as water, muscle and bone and gain it back as fat every time we go through that cycle.

It’s astounding and I recall years ago somebody saying, “Remember the heart is also a muscle.” When we think about this process that your heart is not immune at all to this cycle of being eaten away so to speak. Your health certainly suffers in this process. Those are two points. Let’s go to third.

The Role of a Sedentary Lifestyle

The third fat factor is not news to anybody. It’s a sedentary lifestyle. We’ve all heard it, sitting is the new smoking because it’s the thing we’re doing that we don’t realize is slowly killing us. Here’s the thing, what do we do to combat that? Most people these days go to the gym or to a workout class. I got news for you, and again this comes out of all the love in the world because I did it, too.

As inhuman as it is to sit all day, it is inhuman to sit all day and go berserk for an hour. The objective in combating this third fat factor is understanding movement and activity as opposed to working out. Although, everything has a role but think about how we can get more active throughout the day and in our lives all the time rather than just saying, “It’s all right. I can sit here. I did it for an hour.”

I want to lean into that. I sit a lot. I walk every morning for five miles and love that but then I’m at my desk for most of the day with clients. What I have found is that, it’s a bit addictive to get up a lot because if I get up in between every client, even if for five minutes or even if that’s all I have. There’s a part of me, the part that goes back thousands of years, it says, “This feels good. Let’s keep going. Let’s go for another walk” It’s like, “I have to go back.” I believe that once we get into that habit, nature takes over and wants us to continue once we get into that flow. It’s not hard to get up. It’s harder to go and sit back down. Have you heard that before?

For sure and it goes back, an object in motion stays in motion. An object at rest stays at rest. There’s momentum in whatever our pattern is.

Inertia.

There’s a piece of understanding, too. It’s like the modern culture what we now call wellness. That is just diet culture in a new outfit. Your walk doesn’t count unless. The workout doesn’t count unless it’s not long enough or not intense enough or you’re sweaty enough or you felt like you were going to die at some point during the workout or you’re wearing a weighted vest. Unless, unless, and unless. All those things.

If we go back to this idea of thinking about movement and activity and more regular movement being more human. What we see is that in fact 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there and maybe a dedicated 20-30 minutes or maybe even an hour and getting some of that resistance training too. Those small bits of more frequent movement are much more human and deserve to not be discounted despite what our brains and everybody around us tends to tell us. It makes us want to think.

If we go back and think about our ancestors, they were likely moving a bit, sitting, weaving baskets, moving a bit, collecting berries, sitting and chatting, taking care of babies, nursing babies, or whatever they were doing and at that very natural flow. The more that people can get into doing that natural flow, the better.

The Critical Importance of Sleep

Yes, 1,000%. That’s number three. Number four is sleep. We are the only species the deprived ourselves of sleep for no good reason. I call sleep the ultimate bio hack. Fundamentally, everything we’re doing in our daily lives for our physical health, mental health, emotional health and for every piece of our lives. If we are not sleeping well, all of those efforts are like one step forward and two steps back. Sleep is memory, recovery, and detoxification. Sleep is all of the things that make our body function well.

It’s the beef I have with a lot of the personal development space. It’s when they say sleep when you’re dead or find more time in the day. I got news for you. The body needs sleep. We are becoming more and more sleep deprived. Even if we’re sleeping hours, it’s potentially not the quality sleep that our body needs or we’re sleeping at a time.

We’re going to bed later, so we’re not sleeping in a time that’s conducive to truly deep restorative sleep. We end up in this pattern of we’re trying to do a million things and overlooking this one massive piece. I call it stepping over $100 bills to pick up pennies. The sleep is that $100 bill. Your cold plunge is the penny.

I agree with you. I’m a 7 and a half or 8-hour person and I feel it immediately if I don’t get my sleep. We often hear how these high performers get by on 5 hours of sleep or 4 hours or 6 hours of sleep and that may work for them but it may not. For some people, it’s more into the public eye where they’re using substances to allow those habits to continue. Whether or not that 5 or 6 hour works for them, I believe 100% in tuning into what your body needs.

If its 8 hours or 9 hours or 10 hours or 7 hours. Whatever it is, lean into that and adjust your schedule as best you can. I know for me, it works best if I’m waking with the sun and being in bed by 10:00, but I’ve always been that way. We equate habits like that with being old or being not productive. Instead of seeing them as healthy habits that promote as your saying, mental health, physical health and everything. Let’s talk about the fat factor. If you’re not sleeping, how could that make you overweight? How can that make you fat?

A great question. Fundamentally, detoxification happens at night. If we are not detoxifying, we cannot age well and metabolize well. We don’t function, but specifically when it comes to our food choices and our eating habits. I’m going to use some technical words but you already know this happens because when you don’t sleep well, what happens the next day? You’re hungry. You are hungrier.

I was going to say I’m grumpy.

That too, but we’re hungrier. We might even feel insatiable. What are we hungrier for? We are hungrier for those higher glycemic sugary foods that give us fast fuel. When we don’t sleep well, we are less sensitive to a hormone called leptin. Leptin is a hormone that tells us when we’re satisfied. If we are less sensitive to leptin, if we’re not responding to the presence of leptin, we are hungrier. We are hungry more often.

When we are tired and we are looking for energy. The body craves fast fuel. What is fast fuel? Anything that’s going to turn into energy for the brain and the body very quickly. That’s sugar and higher glycemic carbohydrates. It’s not a coincidence that we want candy, bread, pasta, cookies, baked goods, chips or dessert when we haven’t slept. It’s not a coincidence that we feel like we have stopped eating all day when we don’t sleep well.

My brain is immediately going, “How would this have served our ancestors on an out of atavistic level?” It makes sense. If they were sleep deprived, that probably meant there were predators so they needed to be on the move and more alert. Therefore, “I’m going to need fuel because I’m working overtime to possibly run from whatever critters are after me.” That’s my fledgling theory.

The Pervasive Impact of Stress

That was four. Number five is stress. Caveman era, as you’re talking about. Our bodies physiology is the same as Millennia ago. At that time, as you were saying, the stressor is being chased by an animal. Your life is in danger. Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. We have these reactions to our life in danger. The challenge with our modern lives beyond just sitting is that our body responds to our phone buzzing and email coming in and your alarm clock going off. All of those things.

The same way that it responded to the saber-toothed tiger chasing you and with our modern lives. The stress response, that fight, flight, freeze and fawn pattern. We know cortisol, the stress hormone. Anybody remember those commercials where they were like, “Cortisol the stress hormone. Cortisol makes you fat.” Do you remember those commercials?

I don’t watch much TV so much. Mercifully, I’ve not heard that but I do know that cortisol definitely, especially belly fat, is a big factor, which takes us to our reader’s question. Keep going.

I’ll get there in a second. The body produces cortisol so that we can survive and that stress response is designed to be like twenty minutes. We run for a bit, hide, and watch the saber-toothed tiger pass us, we start to call him down. Our modern lives and because of what the stressors are, we’re never coming down the other side of that stress response. What we end up having is this constant hit of the beginning of that stress response over and over every time the phone buzzes or the alarm goes off or the phone rings or an email comes in.

Part of what happens in that stress response, the body produces cortisol. Now, cortisol is problematic. We need it. Cortisol is part of what helps us get out of bed in the morning but we want it to follow this pattern of coming up and coming down. When cortisol is high in that acute scenario, part of our survival is to say, “Any bodily function that is not critical to survival of the next twenty minutes turns off because your metabolism doesn’t matter if you don’t survive the next twenty minutes. Your immune system doesn’t matter if we aren’t alive in twenty minutes. Your reproductive system doesn’t matter if you’re not alive in twenty minutes. Growing hair and nails doesn’t matter.”

All of these other systems in the body essentially shut off so that everything can move to survival. If our physiology is constantly in this survival mode, we’re probably getting sick more often. Ever notice that you’re super stressed at work and you finally get past whatever the deadline was. You breathe and then you get a cold. It’s our body coming back. It’s systems turning back on. It’s energy going to other places and trying to figure out, “We are going to be okay. I can get sick now.” Our stressful lives are standing in the way of our health and our longevity.

You think about it when we’re in fight-flight mode, particularly the body. It’s not thinking about digesting food properly. It’s thinking about running. It’s like, “Let’s get this person mobilized.” It affects us on so many levels and they agree with you wholeheartedly that we don’t realize because we are now accustomed to the television here, the radio there, the incoming text messages here, work over here, latest podcast or social media here.

We think we can manage it all and we do manage it all but at a huge cost to the body, mind, and spirit. Thank you for highlighting that. Those are the five fat factors. Now, our dear reader, I so appreciate when somebody’s partner or sibling writes in because even though the questions are confidential, people are sometimes writing in thinking, “I’m not giving myself away. Somebody’s doing it for me or asking for someone.” Asking for a friend. What would you say about her increasing roundness as the partner so politely puts it?

It makes me laugh. I find it so cute, the way we describe it. The thing is, it’s never any one thing. To address it, we’re going to end up looking at a few things that are in combination creating this scenario. Before I say anything, I want to make sure that we’re not creating overwhelm. While we’re going to talk about a few things, we’re still going to start with one and then go from there.

In that process, we’ll have progressed along the way but the ultimate outcome that we ideally want comes from a host of things. Not from any one thing. As we start to embark on this, if you’re doing one thing and you’re like, “It’s not working.” Pause because we know it’s one thing and then the next thing so that we can ultimately get to this place. Without knowing this person’s age, it sounds to me from the way this was written that this person is over 40 or 45.

That sounds like somewhere right in there. Before we go deeper into it, Jenn. I want to thank you so much for bringing up the overwhelmed piece because, I’m sure you and I are aligned on this. Habit change. If you’re on the planet for two decades, you have two decades worth of habits that were modeled for you likely by your parent’s caregivers. If you’re 30, three decades and if you’re 50, five decades. These habits change.

If we try and get them all one and done quickly, not only will they not stick but the piece you set off overwhelms, then we feel overwhelmed and then we give up because it’s not happening. We’re not doing it right. It’s not fast enough and then we revert. Thank you for focusing on one step at a time. Give yourself grace and be patient one step at a time. Thank you for putting that.

To build on that, though, this process has also not flip a switch. Although, we expect that of ourselves. We expect to say, “This is what I’m going to do,” and every morning thereafter. You flip a switch and now that’s what we do, but that’s not how it works. It is also a process of behavior change. We evolve. Even in any one of these things, it’s a process to getting there.

The piece, though, on the age front. When we’re in the time of life where our sex hormones are changing. Maybe it’s taking a step back. Women’s hormones not only change at puberty and then perimenopause to menopause. In addition to that life cycle, we have a monthly cycle. Our bodies are working through an almost monthly cycle, which means that your hormones are physiologically different every single day than they were the day before.

Thank you for highlighting that.

Addressing Hormonal Changes and Eating Strategies

What that means is, it’s not in your head. You are busy physiologically differently now than you were yesterday. To your point on the grace and understanding, it’s also part of why all of this stuff is more challenging for women than it is for men because there’s layers of complexity in these incredible miracle machines of bodies that we have. One of the things that happens in that post-40 perimenopause phase is a shift in those hormones, our sex hormones. When our estrogen levels change, I describe it as like losing our wiggle room.

The increased estrogen that we have is that cushion. That’s the flexibility for enjoying a lot of the more indulgent choices early in life. When we lose that estrogen, when that estrogen decreases, we lose that wiggle room and so things start to impact the body differently. It can shift where we are carrying weight on our body. A lot of times, especially later in life, when we’re not producing estrogen. Fat cells are used for estrogen. We end up with more fat cells because they can provide some estrogen.

There’s all of this piece. A lot of complexity here to understanding why it’s now in the belly, why we’re feeling round and why maybe it’s in the back or the upper back and places where it didn’t used to look like that and why a lot of the things that we’ve tried to do before aren’t working for us anymore. There was something else in the email about eating less.

Yes, there was, where she had started to eat less and that didn’t change it either.

We talked about this in the fat factors. Eating less puts our body into a starvation response because the body’s job, as we said, is to survive at all costs. If the body’s job is to survive and we’re eating less, it doesn’t realize that there’s a refrigerator full of food that we’re choosing not to eat. The body says, “You’re not going to kill me.” Anything it gets, it’s holding on to for survival. How do we hold on to fuel to use later? Fat. Fat is fuel stored to be used later. The ultimate irony is that our body prefers different kinds of fuel because maintaining fat is very efficient. It doesn’t take energy to maintain fat. We end up in this place where eating less creates holding on to fat.

Thank you for highlighting this and also highlighting the estrogen piece. I know it was my second book, Aging Joyfully, where I was surprised when I was doing the research for it. That women start losing estrogen in their late twenties. It just snowballs and snowballs and that is why so many people, whether they’re fresh out of college are like, “My metabolism is changing. My skin is starting to shift already.” You may not notice it as much and then it just continues to decline more quickly.

Those are the external signs of what’s happening throughout the body. Could you talk a little bit more about that? We might be a bit off. I’m looking at the time. I’ll have you back to talk about that but just to snip it so that we can give our readers some tips. Although, you’ve given plenty of tips along the way.

First of all, when it comes to estrogen and what’s happening there. There’s a lot of misinformation about phytoestrogens and estrogenic compounds. One of the things is to recognize that, why is the human genome 99.9% the same? There are dramatic differences in that point 1%. Sometimes, it’s about how we hold on to estrogen or eliminate estrogen. For some people, having more phytoestrogens can be helpful in that process. It is a bit of starting to understand our own bodies and working with our own bodies and experimenting or testing and working with some health professionals.

I also wanted to go back to something you said about how early we can lose our estrogen. Admittedly, this is my own theory. I’ve seen zero research on this other than what I see in my clients and people I know and myself. I have a theory that our generations. and starting with Millennials, a little bit of like the younger side of Gen X and a little bit with Gen Z.

The role that birth control played in our lives, how long many of us were on birth control and how easily it was prescribed for all of us is contributing to people experiencing menopausal symptoms earlier and earlier or perimenopausal symptoms earlier than earlier. I don’t know that for a fact but I’m seeing it happen. In my never-ending insatiable learning, trying to put some logic and understanding to it, I have to think there’s a connection there.

That makes sense. I recall a few years ago, I stumbled across this huge study showing the connection and it wasn’t widely publicized in the US. The huge connection between depression and birth control pills. Readers, we are not telling you to get off birth control pills. We are not dispensing medical advice and psychological advice. We are just talking about research or possible research.

We are not here to diagnose or treat or cure or prevent any disease ever.

Thank you for that. Give a short description for readers who might not know what a phytoestrogen is.

They’re plant-based compounds that have estrogenic activity in the body. It’s a lot of what we think of with soy. Why soy? For a long time, soy got such a bad rap. Again, thinking about the quality of the soy product that you’re having and some of those things. There are some ingredients. I can’t remember if dong quai has phytoestrogens but there’s ingredients that you may find in some supplementation or natural pathic or Chinese medicine approaches to perimenopausal symptoms that have some of these ingredients. We could do a whole other episode to dive into some of those.

On eating edamame and soy in general. Now to our dear reader’s partner and the reader.

The Importance of Protein, Fiber, and Healthy Fats

First of all, I love that you’re in this together. I appreciate the question. We’ve addressed what we’ve tried as the approach of eating less and what we’re observing as increasing roundness. What do we want to do? All the note-takers grab a pen. Protein and fiber at every meal. Make sure moving fat. No big deal. Protein is clean lean protein. Again, I don’t care if you want that to be fish or organic grass-fed beef but clean lean protein or soy, as we talked about.

Fiber is vegetables and fruit. Emphasis on the vegetables, but vegetables and fruit. A meal is anytime we eat. The only difference between a meal or a snack is how much food we have at a time and therefore, how long it will last us until we need to fuel again. The other thing that you’re going to want a couple times a day and eventually, at some point, I’ll figure out how to put this in a cute little sentence but you also want quality fed every day. That’s olive oil, avocado, walnuts and almonds. By the way, a serving size of avocado is half of the avocado. Often people are like, “You’ll be proud. I had half of a sliver of a quarter of an avocado.” I’m like, “What?” Eat the avocado. You’re going to be fine.

They are so good.

They are. You’ll be amazed how satisfied you feel when you start to eat quality fat.

I call that avocado butter from a tree. It just tastes like butter.

Protein, fiber and quality fat. The serving size of protein for a biologically female body at a meal is the whole hand, 4 to 6 ounces. A biologically male body is 6 to 8 ounces. It’s their whole hand. A snack for everybody is 2 to 3 ounces. Think the palm or a little less. That whole idea of what we’ve been told of eat 3 ounces of protein, that is old diet culture, eat less, and move more information that is not serving you. A meal is 4 to 6 ounces or 6 to 8 ounces of protein. A snack is 2 to 3 ounces.

Now, for everybody and your husband who loves the bars and the shakes and all the things. Those labels talk about protein in terms of grams and I just talked about it in terms of ounces. Seven grams is like one ounce of Tofu or an egg or chicken. If we use that 7 grams as our conversion, then we can start to say, “This Greek yogurt is giving me, however, many ounces. I can start to build my meals.” It doesn’t mean that every bit of protein in our meal has to come from the same source. It allows us to think about how we’re putting this together.

We’re going to eat protein meals and snacks. Over the course of the day, hold on to yourselves. We’re looking for 8 to 12 servings of vegetables. How much is a serving of vegetables? A handful. If it’s greens like spinach or romaine lettuce or whatever. It’s going to be two handfuls. That’s one serving. You don’t have to live with measuring cups in your handbag. We’re going to live our lives. We’re going to enjoy incredible food. By the way, it’s going to feel like a lot of food and it is.

It’s food that provides nutrients. You’ll start to see how some of the cravings that you had go away, how your mood starts to improve, how much more energy you have, and how much better your sleep is. We can also think about that movement piece. We can think about that stress piece and start to put all of these pieces together to move the needle and feel more like ourselves again.

I love how you were talking about how you realize how much you’re moving, what’s your gender, what’s your natural set point and making it easy when you’re thinking about, “I can’t eat this because it’s too big or too much.” Listen to your body, but also realize, “If that protein or that piece of fish can fit in your hand. That’s probably a good size.” If not and let’s say you’re out to dinner, take it home and you have it for part of your next day’s food. Listen to your body and this process. As you eat intuitively listening to your body in healthy ways, as you say, you won’t be craving five chocolate chip cookies at night. You’ll likely be filled and you won’t want it. It’s the starvation that so many people do during the day.

Relearning Intuitive Eating and Seeking Support

Night time eating is directly connected to under-eating in the first half of the day, full stop. Not entirely or only, but it’s always one piece of it. We want to start to think about that, too. In addition to that, there’s a lot of things. I have a little bit of a love-hate with the idea of the intuitive eating piece because we will get there. What often we’ve done over time because of everything we’ve been told, all five of those five fat factors. All of the things that we’ve been told over 20, 40, or 60 years of our lives, we have learned to stop paying attention to our body to pay attention to the rules.

We heard, eat less and move more. Now our body is sending us hunger signals and we’re like the toddler throwing a temper tantrum with our fingers in our ears and it’s like, “Lalala. I can’t hear you. I was told not to eat.” We will not flip a switch from that to understanding how our body feels, to understanding what our body is communicating with us. It takes time for us to relearn how to pay attention to our bodies because we’ve taught ourselves out of it. Eventually, we can get to this point but there is a middle ground and there is a process of getting there from where we are now.

Jenn, thank you for highlighting that because I take it for granted because I’m pretty good at it now but there was a time in my life. I’m thinking back to college where I had to learn intuitive eating. You’re right, it wasn’t overnight. Sometimes it’s decades before the new habits truly becoming engrain so that you can listen to what your body truly wants and needs. We could keep it going. Jenn, any final tips for our readers?

There’s so much to this and as I said, with the overwhelming and the whole thing. Find the resources and the tools. If what you read resonates with you, keep digging deeper. I have so many options out there but find the piece that works for you and just take a step and then take the next step and you’ll start to figure it out.

This reader has a partnership supporting. If you don’t have a partner, link arms with a best friend, a support group, a habit change group, your neighbor or sibling. Anyone else who wants to change some habits. It tends to work better when we have at least one person supporting us.

For a variety of reasons.

If you have somebody who’s not supporting you, that can work against your progress. Be aware of that, too. Jenn, where can our readers find you and your amazing work? You’re so intelligent and well versed in what you’re talking about. I’m truly grateful that you’ve shared so much with us. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate being here. Wherever you go to podcasts, find Salad with a Side of Fries. My website is ASaladWithASideOfFries.com. Go to the website. I’m there. There are two resources I want to tell you about. One is a free download called, It’s not what to eat. It’s how to eat. As we said, we know to eat a cucumber over Twix.

The question is, number one, how do we make the cucumber an appealing choice? Two, how do we eat the Twix and have it not impact us the same way it does now? That is a free download for you there. On the contact form you can book a fifteen-minute what we call curiosity call. Let’s chat about you. I love talking to you and hearing from you. Please reach out. In all social media, I am @JennTrepeck.

Thanks again, Jenn. I’m so grateful. I appreciate you and the wellness that you’re spreading with such wisdom.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

I appreciate you. Readers, I appreciate you, the time and energy you put into the following one step at a time. This is Imperfect Love.

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About Jenn Trepeck

Jenn Trepeck has been described as a “force of nature” in the wellness space. She’s been recognized as one of Podcast Magazine’s 40 under 40, nominated for the 2022 International Women’s Podcast Award for Visionary Leadership, and won Ear Worthy’s first Independent Podcast Award for Best Health Podcast and Best Independent Podcast in 2024.

She is an Optimal Health Coach, Podcaster and Business Consultant. After graduating from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Jenn founded Better Life Now LLC while working full time in hedge funds. After over a decade of coaching clients, Jenn started Salad with a Side of Fries Podcast to help pay it forward and reach a larger audience to teach the nutrition education we are all supposed to know but no one ever taught us.

In addition to coaching clients individually or in small groups, Jenn implements revenue generating wellness programs in doctors’ offices, salons and spas to further expand impact and help change the state of healthcare as a Certified GoTrim Lifestyle Coach and Consultant with nutraMetrix Custom Health Solutions. Jenn is typically working out at Physique57, discovering hidden gem restaurants in NYC or traveling to spend time with friends and family.