New podcast episode is LIVE my friend! Let’s chat a bit about a foundational perspective I’d like to give you as you embark on not only your Eat to Live journey…but on your mindset ninja journey as well. (that’s what I’m doing to you, btw, turning you into a mindset ninja🙂)
Listen now, or check it out on Apple Music etc.
And get a free 5-Day Eat to Live Challenge here! https://www.nourishyourlifestyle.com/challenge
YouTube auto-generated transcript:
so when i was a kid of around 10 11
years old something like that my family
took vacation to chicago
it was only a few hours away from where
we lived in grand rapids michigan and we
went to chicago we stayed in a hotel we
got to see all these really cool museums
we went to the natural history museum
science museums all that good stuff we
went to the imax theater as well as i
recall now imax theaters
are really interesting very cool they’re
not always like this but this particular
theater was really special in that the screen
went all the way from the top of your
head in front of you in like a sort of
like you were inside of a sphere kind of
a thing so you’re kind of surrounded a
hundred percent almost you know all the
way from your peripheral vision in front
of you and above you by the screen so
instead of just being in a regular movie
theater with a flat screen in front of
you this really created sort of an
immersive experience i’d never been to a
theater like this before it was really
cool especially to see a nature program
so we saw i don’t even know what it was about but
we saw some type of a movie there and we
had this really cool immersive
experience but there was this moment where
it wasn’t even the movie there was just
probably maybe it was the production
company or something like that had their little you know
their little graphic or something
and so at the very beginning of the
movie there’s this moment where
the screen was totally black and you’re
just starting the movie and then all of
a sudden you see this little speck on
the screen and the spec
starts to get bigger and bigger and bigger
and you’re watching and you’re like what
is this thing coming towards me and
because this is so immersive and because
you have so much screen surrounding you
you kind of can’t get away from it it
looks like it’s going to hit you it gets
bigger and bigger and bigger and then
you notice it’s the earth and it’s
getting bigger and bigger and bigger and
it basically because the screen is so
huge it feels like it overtook me when i was
young like this watching this this movie
i just felt completely overtaken by this
image and to be honest it scared the
crap out of me and i didn’t like i
didn’t expect it and i didn’t expect it to be so
just overtaking right
so i have this very powerful memory of
this you know this
huge earth coming towards me and it
created this kind of
silly fear for the rest of my life i remember
at one point i was looking at my science
textbook at the planets we were we were
having a lesson about the planets and i
was looking at the moon the little
picture of a moon and then i looked at a
little picture of saint mars or
something and then i looked at a picture
of the earth and i looked at a picture
of you know saturn jupiter and then you
see the sun and the sun can’t even fit
on the page because it’s so large
comparatively to say the moon for instance
and i started crying because i was also
just overtaken with sort of the vastness of
you know the universe kind of a thing
and there are these moments that we have
in our lives where we can start to
really see the interplay between you
know large and small and our brain can
sort of grasp this vastness and it
doesn’t always do this but when we do it
gets really overwhelming you know it’s
like when you see those little videos
you ever seen a video like that where
you see a little speck like i was
talking about with the earth kind of a
thing and you see and it sort of gets
bigger and bigger bigger um but you go
the other direction now so like say you see a picture of
you know maybe the cosmos you see like
maybe the milky way and then it kind of
goes in further and you see
maybe kind of a little speck which ends
up being the sun and then it goes in
further and you see a little speck which
ends up being the earth and you keep
going in and in you know smaller and
smaller and smaller in scale so
these kinds of moments that we have
where we can sort of visually start to imagine
big and small in our worlds
is a really powerful thing right
so so powerful that it it traumatized me
to look at a science textbook
a couple years later right
that’s what i want to talk about today
is this kind of interplay between big
and small macro and micro and how that
relates to not only our healthy eating
journey but our consistency with healthy
eating in weight loss specifically and
then just having this amazing eat to
live food on a regular basis for the
rest of our life how can we use this
interplay to create that stick around
this is going to be a fun one
hi i’m cheri alberts and this is the
watering mouth podcast and i’m going to
teach you to eat to live lose the weight
and love the process for good episode 7
hello so on today’s podcast we are talking
about an interesting concept i’m sure
you’ve heard this before when you hear
about macro versus micro on a nutrient
level so well i’m going to give you a
little bit of explanation about that if
you haven’t heard about that before if
you’re a beginner on the eat to live
lifestyle or if you just like a
refresher we’ll go through that first so
you can understand that but i’m going to
actually take this in a whole different
route that i don’t think you’ve thought
of before because i think that this
interplay like i was talking about
earlier this interplay between macro and micro
on a sort of you know general level is
really important for you to understand
when you’re getting started or when
you’re trying to learn how to be
consistent on the eat to live or any
other healthy eating lifestyle or just
weight loss it’s really important to
understand that interplay so let me tell you first
about how this works just nutritionally
so you’ve if you’ve read the book eat to
live or eat for life by dr freman which is the basis of my
channel my youtube channel this podcast
and everything is about this high
nutrient healthy whole foods plant-based
lifestyle that we’re following
if you’ve read the book you’ve heard
about this concept before
which is the difference between
macronutrients and micronutrients so the
idea being macronutrients are what
everyone else always talks about right
that’s what they always talk about in
the diet world in the you know exercise
world the bodybuilding world etc
everyone always talk about
macronutrients meaning the four
macronutrients there’s only four of them
there’s fat protein carbohydrates and
also water water is a macronutrient as
well we usually just hear about fat
protein and carbohydrates and people are
talking about oh well how much protein
are you getting how much fat does that
food have you know how many calories are
in it that kind of a thing
we call this macronutrients because
they’re the bigger nutrients they
contain calories of course water doesn’t
contain calories even even though it is
in macronutrient but these bigger things
that we are always talking about it’s
sort of what people focus on as if that
was the only way like by focusing on
that that’s the only way that you can
lose weight this is what everything is
based on weight watchers right like
weight watchers is based on a point
system which is sort of based on calories too
you know when we’re talking about um
caloric density we’re talking about any
of these other like atkins is you know
very like low carb we’ve we’ve got just
the the keto kind of low carb thing we
have all these different diets that are
based on the macronutrients
whereas you have a diet lifestyle like
eat to live which is based on the
micronutrients in a food so we know what
protein fat and carbohydrates are
and we also hear about the
micronutrients but we don’t really
understand the difference between the two
necessarily when we’re coming to eat to
live so micronutrients being all the
things in food that actually don’t
contain any calories it’s all the good
stuff all these tiny little wonderful
things that are inside of our plant
foods our whole plant-based foods
that don’t have any calories so things
like antioxidants right there’s a lot of
different kinds of antioxidants there’s
vitamins there’s minerals there’s all
these wonderful things that we know are
really useful for us and important
but we don’t necessarily focus on those
and what dr freeman is saying we should
do is do exactly that it’s shifting our
thinking from the macronutrients of
caring about the protein fat and
carbohydrate content of our food
and you know it’s to some extent even
the water content but
caring more and shifting that caring
towards the micronutrients so having as
many micronutrients in a food per
calorie as possible right so he talks
about that health equation
that our the greater health that we want to have
is because of greater micronutrient load
that’s how we will create better health
in our life greater micronutrient load
per calorie meaning
less calories in a food more
micronutrients more things like vitamins
minerals antioxidants all the you know
the flavonoids all this stuff these big
words that nobody really exactly knows
what they do but they know that they’re useful
all of the more that we have of
those in our foods and the lea the less
amount of calories we have we’re going
to create better health meaning we will
have lower weight we will have more
nutrition in our foods we’ll have more
fiber we’ll have more of this awesome
stuff that helps to
support our health and you know we will
get all those benefits from those
micronutrients the idea being that you
know you can have you can have a certain
ratio of macronutrients which is what
most people think about when they when
they try to diet they think all about
the protein fat and carbohydrates and
the percentages the ratios and all that
as if that really mattered whereas in
the eat to live nutritarian diet we
don’t care so much about that we just
care about having a low amount of
calories lots of roughage right lots of
fiber and lots of nutrients per calorie all right
and interestingly
you know when we’re not considering
micronutrients we’re just kind of not
seeing the forest for the trees we’re
not seeing actual nutrition we’re just
seeing we’re just counting numbers right
it’s like counting calories or it’s like
counting weight watchers points we’re
making a game out of something which you
know can be helpful in in certain cases
but we’re not not actually creating any
real health benefit now i’ve actually
heard weight watchers has changed their
point system in the recent years to
say that vegetables for instance or at
least non-starchy vegetables are zero
points which is actually kind of cool
that’s a cool thing they cut you know
they kind of catch on a little bit to
what we’re doing that these foods are
now unlimited right you can have
unlimited romaine unlimited all that
kind of stuff this is kind of taking in
that you know the micronutrient
amount in a food into consideration
which which is actually very helpful
but what we’re trying to do is we’re
trying to throw all of those point
systems out completely because if we
just focus on this idea of more
micronutrients less calories just and
we’re not even counting the calories let
me make that clear we are not counting
calories here we’re just you know if you
look if you kind of rate foods based on
these things having more fiber more
antioxidants more minerals more vitamins
and a little bit less calories that
means you’re automatically having plant
foods you’re automatically having these
high nutrient plant foods like kale and
collard greens and watercress and
arugula and you’re having lots of just
greens in general any kind of greens
romaine you know red leaf lettuce green
leaf lettuce you’re having cabbage
you’re having all these very
micro nutrient dense
non-starchy vegetables because those are
the ones that have the least amount of
calories similarly you’re having you
know just non-stretchy vegetables in
general so mushrooms onions eggplants
even you know zucchinis peppers things
like this so when you have these types
of foods as the bulk of your diet you’re
already automatically getting a ton of
fiber you’re getting you know just in
general a ton of bulk
when we’re getting a lot of bulk for our buck
so to speak right we’re getting a lot of
bulk we’re getting
a ton of micronutrients at the same time
but a little amount of calories that’s
what naturally
creates that weight loss for us okay so
this equation this idea of using
micronutrients instead of macronutrients
just not even caring about the
macronutrients you know having the
micronutrients be spot on per calorie
kind of a thing having those lower
calorie higher nutrient foods as the
bulk of what we eat automatically
creates weight loss so that’s kind of
how we think of this nutritionally right
but what i really wanted to talk about
today so that’s all i given okay and
that’s all stuff that you can read and
eat to live if you want to know that but
what really interests me what i want to
talk about is this interplay between macro and micro um
how would you say this maybe like
intellectually or emotionally or
psychologically is kind of what i’m
talking about today okay so this
interplay between
the way that we think about this now you
know it’s a good example to see that we
use macro meaning the sort of big view
of everything and we use micro nutritionally
but i also want you to start to think
about the interplay between macro and
micro on how we look at everything
in our journey like how is our journey
going how are we doing
what happened yesterday what could i
change about yesterday what
is happening in general so that’s kind
of what i want to talk about on this podcast
what this is is basically
seeing a perspective of what’s happening
to you so i’m going to give you an example
let’s say you got invited to go out with
some friends for some drinks or some
appetizers something like that okay
now let’s say you also had a stressful
week at work and you were feeling very
tired and you were feeling you you
wanted a break you wanted to celebrate
you wanted to kind of de-stress and so
you decide to go out with your friends
and you know maybe the whole time you’re
kind of wrestling with yourself about
what you should order how much of this
you should have should you have another
drink or not that kind of a thing you
end up eating maybe a bunch of
appetizers and you come home you know
you’re kind of bloated with salt the
next morning you wake up you’ve got you
know you’ve got a lot of like salt going
on there you don’t feel so good you’re
kind of upset with yourself for the
decision that you made you wish you made
a different decision
perhaps right like does this sound
familiar to any of you i know it sounds
familiar from my past for sure
so how does the macro and micro come
into play here well this is actually
where it is the most important for us to
figure out and start to use in our lives
seeing the difference between the macro and micro here
because my guess is
that many of you who are new to my work
new to the life coaching stuff that i
do this interplay between macro and
micro maybe you haven’t even considered
before so that’s why this i think is
going to be a really fun podcast okay
now consider this
that person who was deciding whether or
not to go out for appetizers that person
who was deciding whether or not to get
the appetizer that person who was
deciding whether or not to have another drink
and then that person who came home went
to sleep woke up the next morning not
feeling so good about themselves having
some thoughts about themselves right
maybe regretting a little bit feeling
guilty maybe upset with yourself that person
who made those decisions is not you what
all right hold on hear me out and then
i’m going to explain how this relates to
macro and micro in a second
that person who did those things
who actually decided to do those things
is not you you are actually
the person who thinks about what you’re doing
you get the difference there let me try
to explain that a little bit more
you are not the person who made the
decisions you’re not the person who just
ordered the drinks and the appetizers
and things like that you
are the person who can think about that
now this is where the macro and the micro comes in
because i want you to start thinking about micro
and you know the smaller littler perspective
of having been the person who got the
drinks right the one who was inside your head
making the decisions doing what you do
just you know having fun with friends
talking you know what i was maybe
flirting like you know ordering the
appetizers having the drinks that was
that was the part of you who makes who made the decisions
but there is another part of you who
thinks about the decisions you made
do you see that do you buy that
can you understand that
that’s crazy first of all when you start
to think of it in this way but what this
means is that you are actually not your
decisions you the the person that you
are is the one who can think about what
you’re thinking about okay
You are the person who is able to
decide afterwards whether or not that
was a good idea what you want to do
about it you are the person so so let me
give you this little idea that could
have happened while you were at the bar so let’s say
it’s kind of like this idea when people say
i don’t even know how it happened i just
ended up having you know some app you
know before you knew it i had already
eaten a bunch of the appetizer i already
had a drink or two and then i was like
oh man i should stop right
that person who says oh man i should
stop or that person who realizes what’s happening that is you
that is who you actually are you are not
the person eating the food you are
actually the person who can think about
what’s happening so what i want you to
have like a little visual here of you at the bar
sitting with your friends
and now i want you to imagine you know
you see those things in the movies when
someone has a near-death experience and
they sort of float above their body and
they see themselves doing things
that’s you okay it’s the person who can
become aware of all the things that are
happening including what you yourself
are actually doing in that moment
you are the one who can see all that
you’re the one who can think about what
you’re thinking about going like
what should i be thinking right now like
what what should i actually decide what should i
what should i do in this situation
that’s who you actually are you’re not
the one that’s like just you know kind
of like going unconscious and deciding
to eat the things or whatever like
that’s just that’s your sort of lower
consciousness right but you are actually
so want to think about the difference in
our in our the parts of our brain here
there’s a part of our brain that is what
we maybe call the like you might have
heard it before when people refer to it
as sort of the lizard brain or whatever
but you can kind of think it as like the
primal brain it’s in the back kind of on
the inside it’s the the sort of
the part of the brain that we’ve had the
longest you know um that has sort of
been around the longest it’s the one
that tries to keep us out of trouble is
what its job is actually supposed to do
keep us alive keep us from certain
sudden death and and issues right but
then we have this other part of our
brain the top part of our brain that
kind of covers everything
it’s called the prefrontal cortex or
it’s the neocortex it’s the part of our brain
that can do rational decision making
now imagine you have these two different
parts of your brain and you’re getting
signals from both and you can utilize
both for different things
one of them you can’t control right like
you you can’t so much control the primal
brain and the thoughts that it’s gonna
serve you like oh you should totally
have the appetizer right you should
totally have another drink that’s the
primal brain going like you totally need
to enjoy because we really like when
those dopamine and serotonin chemicals
come out and make us feel better and
that always makes you feel better and in
the moment that’s the best option for
you you should totally do that so it
screams really really loud at you
because it is the part of our brain that
we’ve had the longest so it is the most
developed and the most able to get you to act right
whereas we have this other part of our
brain the neocortex the prefrontal
cortex which is the decision-making
rational side of our brain which is not as
dialed in as our automatic primal brain
is it doesn’t automatically make
rational decisions it’s not as easy to
make those decisions so it takes some
actual work to do that
when these two sides of our brains are
warring with each other the one that’s
the loudest and the one that we’re the
most used to letting wind which is
typically the primal brain is gonna win out
that is the one that we’re gonna listen
to so that’s why we end up getting the
appetizers because what we’re trying to
do is we’re trying to maintain
homeostasis we’re trying to just like
keep doing what we always do that’s what
the brain that’s what the primal side of
the brain likes it just likes for us to
be even keel doing what we do we don’t
want to wreck the boat we don’t want to
be losing weight because that must mean
food is scarce like oh my gosh watch out
where are the calories we must eat or we
will die right the primal brain starts
to freak out a little bit when we’re
actually in diet mode and so it gets a little bit
louder especially before we’ve really
made solid decisions on what we want to do
but we can take that prefrontal cortex
of ours and start to train it towards
these rational better decisions for long
term right the one thing the primal
brain doesn’t understand is the
craziness that we’re up against with the
amount of salt sugar and oil and massive
calorie load that we get from other
foods you know that that are maybe newer
like we’ve only had maybe the past 50 70 years
in the food supply these are not normal
foods for us to be eating these very
high you know calorically dense foods
with lots of salt oil and sugar that are
created to create profit they’re not
created to create health
they’re created to create profit from a
company which you know in itself that’s
just um that’s just capitalism right but
for a human it actually decreases our
lifespan as we know so we want to figure
out how to change that situation well
that is by training our prefrontal
cortex that newer part of our brain to be really good
at shutting down the primal brain and
going like nah let’s just chill out we
don’t have to do all the appetizers we
don’t have to do all the drinks let’s
have less or maybe we stay in this week right now
that is the difference between macro and
micro in this case so i want you to imagine
the micro is you going to the bar
and just being there right but the macro is as if
you were watching a movie of yourself at the bar
right and you’re going like oh i hope
she makes the right choice right now i
hope she does right when we get our
prefrontal cortex to start making
decisions for us rationally and we
choose things that are actually helpful
for us that is when we start becoming sort of
macro and so i want you to think of this
out of body experience like as if you’re
floating above yourself or watching
yourself on a movie screen and you can
see everything’s happening and then you
can make rational decisions about it now
i don’t know if you’ve ever thought of
the difference between these two if
you’re if you’re into like
meditation or you’ve done a lot of
therapy cognitive behavioral therapy
anything like this this is all these
kinds of concepts but maybe you are not
very familiar with that so that’s why i
wanted to bring this up in our first podcast
what i want you to be doing is just
seeing that interplay between micro the
you who just quickly chooses the junk
food and eats it without even thinking
about it and the you who can come out of
your body and become aware of what’s
happening and what you’re struggling
with and then you can make rational
decisions that are good for your
long-term health instead of your short-term health okay
and interestingly in the way that i was
giving you this story in the beginning
of when i went to chicago and i was at
the imax theater and i got really
freaked out by the earth
there is a vastness that is contained in
both the micro and the macro and this is
what is so fascinating there is a vastness of
learning potential and activity that you
can create in your own life
in order to start using these two
sides of the coin very efficiently to
create the the results that you’re
looking for and what i mean by this is
the micro for instance the
micronutrients how to get all these
micronutrients how to learn more about
the actual nutrition get real you know
get real granular about nutrition
learning this micro stuff so that you
can understand it on a much broader
level a much broader macro kind of level right
we can use that interplay between the
two to become a scholar become
you know really really good at eat to
live really really good at healthful
eating whatever version of that is that you want to follow
but then we can use that macro to start to look at
just our thoughts and our feelings and
how we react to situations and and what
were we thinking and so we’ve talked
about this in previous podcasts about
the idea of the model that we use
which is that our thoughts create our
feelings okay and if our thoughts are
creating our feelings and you know in order to
in our feelings then create our actions
if we want to have different actions we get to learn then
how to change the feelings and in order
to change the feelings we learn how to
change those thoughts so how do we
work on our thought systems in our
brains right we’ve got the automatic
thoughts sure which are not controllable
necessarily in the beginning but then we
have this beautiful tool of the
prefrontal cortex we’ve got this amazing
brain who has the capability and the
potential to reign in that automatic side of our
brain like for example in the example of
going out to the restaurant with the
friends we have the capability of
reigning in that really loud voice
that’s like oh you need a break you need
rest you need all that we can question
that we can start to look at those
stories and look at those thought
patterns and those beliefs and start to
question them and and
learning which ones are actually very
limiting beliefs that we currently hold
and how could we shift those thoughts
how could we shift out of that
that is all the macro work that’s all
the macro kind of psychological looking
at everything from the top down of
what’s actually going on here
instead of just being stuck in our
little micro pod of oh i’m just gonna
have the drinks because i don’t care i
just really need a break right now right
that’s saying i’m not i don’t want to do
the work right i don’t want to put any
effort in and that’s okay sometimes
that’s just what we do
but one we can start to practice coming
up on a macro level going what’s really
going on what could i change about these
situations what can i change about what
i do and my constant patterns because
the fun part is that when our when our
rational side of our brain starts to get
really good at this process of you know
coming becoming aware coming out of
ourselves and seeing what’s really going
on for for what’s happening when our
brain gets really good at that that’s
when our automatic brain stops to signal
as much you know it um
actually technically what it does is it
weakens those synapses it weakens those
signals in the brain so you might have
these automatic signals that were very
loud but once you start to get into
different habits and patterns it
automatically reduces the
the loud voice of that automatic brain
and helps you to create new patterns
that’s how we create new habits it’s how
we create new patterns in the brain of
learning a language or practicing piano
or getting good at something new we do
that because we repeat and you know that
repetition and we create repetition by
changing what we do and changing what we
think about what we’re doing okay so
this is an introduction to sort of the
thought work that we’re going to be
talking about a lot more here and how
this interplay between macro and micro
we’re going to be talking about this so
much this awareness of just what’s
happening around you is everything it is
everything to creating the consistency
that you’re looking for with healthy
eating because consistency looks crazy when you
when you’re not very good at it because
when you start on this journey just imagine it like
most of your activity comes from that
primal brain and so it looks crazy
because like it’s like oh i you know i
messed up again and i ate this again and
i did really poorly and i’m not very
good at this and whatever you’re not
supposed to be a perfect tennis player
when you first start playing right
you’re not supposed to be a perfect
pianist when you first you know start
tickling the ivories right like you’re
not supposed to be good when you start
so it’s going to look messy in the
beginning but as we practice and as we get better
the more we try and the more we work on
harnessing this part of our this part of
our brain that allows us to be more
aware of what’s happening
that is when we start to create true
change and true habit building that is
going to take us for the rest of our
lives creating consistency in not only
our healthy eating but certainly in our
weight loss you know if we want to lose
weight and we want to keep it off it’s
all the same concept coming out of
ourselves becoming aware seeing what’s
happening and just practicing and
practicing and practicing that interplay
between macro and micro and utilizing
our brain for the amazing powerful
beautiful strength that it is that all of our brains have
that’s the last point that i want to
make every single one of our brains if
you are listening to this podcast has the potential
to harness this power and this energy it has the
potential this is a feature right this
is a feature like like your
your you know your your cell phone has
call waiting your brain has the the
ability the potential to harness this
you have the ability to harness this and
create any kind of change that you’re looking for and
this is the basis that we’re going to be
kind of working from so i wanted to give
you this this this thing to think about
just this idea to think about that you
can think about your own thinking and
you can create the change that you’re
looking for so stick with me i’m going
to give you lots more information about
this as we go thank you so much for
being here today i’ll talk to you next time
are you following me on social media yet
make sure you do so you never miss a
beat search for Nourish Your Lifestyle on
instagram facebook and youtube and join
my free and totally private facebook
group just search for eat to live high
nutrient lifestyle we can’t wait to see you there
and hey guess what there’s another free
really soon recipes meal plans grocery
lists and a ton of other people doing it
at the same time as you and don’t miss
the free included staying on track
workshop included with the five day
challenges sign up for more information
at nourishyourlifestyle.com challenge oh and
did i mention it’s all free?
