Hey there and welcome to the Rebuilding Trust With Your Body podcast. I’m Katy Harvey, and you’re going to come inside my kitchen with me today as I literally do my weekly meal planning for myself and my family, as an intuitive eater. 

I know that it’s one thing to hear someone walk you through the steps to doing something, but to actually be able to see it in action is so helpful. So that’s exactly what we’re going to do today. I needed to plan my meals and order my groceries anyway, so I figured I might as long take my podcast friends along with me. 

And if you want to grab a pen and paper or the notes app on your phone and follow along and plan your own menus too, go right ahead! We can do a little co-working here on the pod.

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: Stop Sugar Crave spray – s/o to Penny for submitting this one!

This is a product that comes in a little 60mL spray bottle, which you can buy for $50 Canadian dollars on their website, where they only have 1 review on the product, so I’m curious how many customers they actually have. One of the quotes they use proudly on their website from someone who apparently tried this product said, “Tastes bad but it works” which made me giggle.

Their website is a mess in terms of formatting and punctuation, so it feels very sketchy just at first glance.. As far as the health claims they’re making about this product, they are saying it can:

• Stop sugar cravings
• Lose weight
• Manage your diabetes
• Detoxify you from sugar
• And anti-aging – they say it will make you more youthful

It appears they have a whole bunch of locations where it’s sold in Canada, so I’m curious if my Canadian listeners have ever seen or heard of this product. I hadn’t heard of it before Penny suggested it as Wellness Woo. I looked it up on Amazon and it’s not available there. You can buy a similar product on amazon for about $30 American. Of note, there isn’t even a full page of search results for this type of product on Amazon, which already tells us how ineffective it is otherwise it would be all over the market. I also wonder if part of the reason this product isn’t listed on Amazon is because the health claims they’re making go against FDA regulations (talk about how poorly supplements are regulated  – so this says a lot).

So what’s actually in Stop Sugar Crave spray? It’s active ingredient is a plant that has historically been used in Ayurvedic practices called gymnema sylvestre (jim-neem-ah silvestra)

Is there any evidence to support the use of this plant for stopping sugar cravings?

I did a PubMed literature search, and there have been some studies done on this, and the results are not impressive. 

If you look it up on WebMD (which sometimes has kind of diet culture-y stuff on it), even they say “we currently have no information for jim-neem-ah uses.”

They also note that it can interfere with the effectiveness of diabetes medication. It’s scary to me to think that this is being marketed to people with diabetes as a “natural” way to manage their health, when it could very well be interfering with the actual medication that IS proven to be manage health. 

So there you have it – Stop Sugar Crave spray = Wellness Woo. Don’t waste your money.

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…Planning a week’s worth of menus with me as an intuitive eater.

If you’re going to follow along and plan your menus too, grab your pen and paper or your notes app on your phone. You’re going to need access to your calendar too. 

I also have a menu plan template that I created for you that’s totally free, so all you have to do is fill in the blanks for your meals that week, so if you want to grab that to use for your planning it’s at nondietacademy.com/menuplan.

This is one of those things that people often assume can’t work with IE, but it totally does and here’s why (explain)

So let’s dive in:

• Look at your calendar to determine how many dinners you need at home that week, and plug in any meals you’re going to plan to have out. You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going to go or what you’re going to order, just that you’re going out that night. If you DO know where you’ll be going, great – because then you know what type of food it is and you can plan around that. (e.g. you wouldn’t want homemade pizza the night after you go out for pizza, or tacos the night after you eat at Chipotle or a Mexican restaurant)
  • Looking at my calendar, I am needing to plan these menus for Sunday through the following Saturday. I already know that Trevor is going to be out of town for work Monday through Wednesday, so the meals on those nights need to be SUPER easy because it’s a scramble for me to pick up both kids and get them home and dinner on the table. Plus Wednesday we have a special event at our church at 6pm, so I need to have the boys and myself fed in time to leave our house around 5:40, so that needs to be quick and minimal cleanup. 
  • Looking ahead I also see that next Saturday we’re going to a birthday party for one of our friend’s kids from 4-5:30 that afternoon and it’s about 30-40 minutes away from our house. We usually eat between 5:30-6pm, so planning to drive home and cook isn’t going to work. Based on the timing of the party, I’m guessing they might have food such as pizza or sandwiches for the kids, but I don’t know that for sure. So we’re going to leave that open and flexible that we’ll either eat at the party or grab food on the way home. 
  • So you can see that I’m identifying which meals I need. And the dinner part of the planning is what takes the longest. Once we get to breakfast and lunch it’s going to be so easy you’ll be shocked. 
  • So next Saturday night will be out. And knowing that Trevor is gone for dinner 3 nights, I’m going to make my life easier and take the boys out for food one of those nights so I don’t have to cook. That will work well on Monday, so I’m going to take them to their favorite McDonald’s that’s near Lucas’s school because it has a Play Place and pro parenting tip – you can eat your food or scroll your phone in peace while the kids play. The boys love getting Happy Meals, and I don’t mind the food, it’s not my favorite, but it’s fine, so we’ll do that. I already mentioned that Wednesday needs to be quick before the church thing, so we’re going to do turkey sandwiches, chips and baby carrots (this is my go-to fast meal) and we’re going to eat it on paper plates so there’s no dishes to do. Boom.
  • One other thing that works well when Trevor travels is if we eat something for dinner the night before he leaves that generates leftovers that I can use one of the nights he’s gone. So we’re going to do tacos on Sunday, and then I can do tacos again on Tuesday. I’ll space them apart by a day so it’s not back-to-back taco night. 
  • If you’re tracking with me, we’ve now got Sunday tacos, which I’m going to serve with black beans and corn and chips and salsa (that’s a standard meal for us). 
  • Monday is McDonald’s with the kids.
  • Tuesday is leftover tacos, black beans, corn and chips and salsa.
  • Wednesday is turkey sandwiches, chips and baby carrots with dip.
  • Saturday is eating out or at the party. So now I just need something for Thursday and Friday.
  • Thursday Lucas has kindergarten kickoff after dinner, so I also want that to be pretty quick and easy. Honestly, I hate weeks like this that are so busy, so I’m cringing a bit as I think through this. All the more reason to make food simple this week. I think we’ll do ravioli. We all love it at my house, and it actually cooks faster than spaghetti noodles which take about 10 minutes. Ravioli only takes about 5 minutes in boiling water, so that’s a win. And I can whip up a quick meat sauce using ground beef and a can of marinara sauce. Then we’ll have that with frozen broccoli that I throw in the microwave with some olive oil and salt and pepper. Easy peasy. (one other reason I’m picking tacos and ravioli this week is that I got some ground beef on sale a couple weeks ago at the store, and i have it in my freezer waiting to be used so this is the perfect chance to do that.)
  • Now we just need Friday night dinner. Fridays I hate cooking more than any other night of the week. I am just ready to be done and relax, so I like to do either leftovers or something I can pop into the oven. Since we won’t really have leftovers available at that point unless there was ravioli which isn’t a guarantee, I’m going to have us just plan on doing a frozen pizza. I’ve got a couple of frozen pizzas on hand that I’ve been wanting to use, and that will lower my grocery bill to just do that. I’ll serve it with some cut up veggies and hummus, and I know this is weird but it’s one of those quirky things that we always did in my family growing up but I like to have popcorn with frozen pizza. It was what my parents always did, so in my brain those foods go together. So I’ll probably make up some microwave popcorn and we can either eat that with our dinner or as a snack after dinner. 
• Ok, dinners are done – whew!
  • A few other examples of dinners we’ve had recently to give you some more ideas for your own menus – and to normalize what family dinners can look like. I pulled back out my menus from last week and here’s what was on it:
  • Sun – grilled chicken, asparagus, flavored rice packet
  • Mon – Enchiladas, salad
  • Tues – meatloaf, baked potatoes, green beans
  • Wed – Ranch pork chops, roasted potatoes, steamed carrots
  • Thurs – bowtie pasta lasagna bake, broccoli
  • Fri – leftovers
  • Sat – crock pot white chicken chili, crackers, cheese

You might be listening to some of these menus and thinking, “Woah, that’s so unhealthy” or you might be pleasantly surprised to hear that a dietitian would eat and feed things like frozen pizza and McDonald’s to her family. Perhaps you’re wondering how to get to a place of comfort and ease with these foods, where you can embrace the need for convenience at times, and to where you can intentionally work in all the food groups at your meals, and plan in balanced nutrition over the course of an entire day or week. These truly ARE the skills of IE, beyond just eating what sounds good, and honoring hunger and fullness. 

If you’re wanting to learn how to put these types of skills into action, so that you don’t end up stuck in a cycle of impulsive eating, or constantly running to the grocery store or grabbing takeout because you don’t have food you want at home, then I have the perfect offer for you. 

It’s my IE & Body Kindness 5-Day UnChallenge, and it’s happening May 13-17. So if you’re listening to this before then, you can go sign up asap before enrollment closes May 10. If you’re listening in the future you can DM me to find out when I’ll be running it next. The UnChallenge is basically my clap back at diet culture (explain)… URL

Back to our menu planning…

Now that we’re done with dinners, we can move on to breakfast and lunch. You might be thinking, “Holy moly, we have to do all that for breakfast and lunch too?!” Nope. I have a hack that’s going to make this part WAY faster.

First go back to your calendar to see if there are any meals out or known meals that you’ll be having. Like if you have a lunch meeting, or you’re going to be out and about one day for breakfast or lunch, go ahead and write that in.

For the breakfasts and lunches you’re going to have at home (or take with you to work) I want you to pick 1-2 options that you can rotate between. (explain)

Breakfast:

1. Oatmeal, nuts, berries
2. Frozen waffles topped with PB and banana (or english muffin)
3. Scrambled eggs (or egg bites) with toast or bagel
4. Pancakes with sausage

Lunch:

1. Leftovers if you think you’ll have them (and don’t need for dinner)
2. Salad w/ fixings (could use a kit), make sure you add carbs
3. Charcuterie plate, homemade lunchable 
4. Frozen burritos or any frozen meal if you like them
5. Sandwich or wrap w/ sides

Ok, one last step – snacks! 

• Keep several options on hand
• Think about different tastes, textures, temperatures
• Carbs, proteins
• Portable vs at home
• Ask others in family what they want

I’ll add one more category here – beverages! 

• What do you want to drink throughout the week? Coffee, water, juice, milk, soda, tea
• Do you need any pre-made smoothies or protein shakes?
• What do others in the house like to drink? 

From here, what I’m going to do is order the groceries using the app on my phone. I purchase a lot of these ingredients on a regular basis so I’m going to start by going through the “order again” section and clicking away as well as getting my staples from there that I get every week. And then I’ll go down my list of menus and order the items I need for each meal. 

This whole process, start to finish takes me about 30 minutes most weeks, sometimes more if I’m feeling uninspired and I have to look for ideas or recipes, but when I’m in a good groove I can crank it out pretty efficiently. 

What I’ve done for you is put all these steps together in guide, which comes with the menu planning templates and a grocery list template to make all of this super quick and easy for you. CTA.

Don’t forget to go check out the UnChallenge (elaborate) URL or DM me if you want to chat a little more about it to ask questions or make sure it’s the right fit for you. 

That’s all for today. Thanks for listening and we’ll talk again soon!

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Search for Episode 129: How to Increase Your Odds of Binge Eating and Gaining Weight

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