Guest Blogger!!

*The following post is written by the great Natalie Brainerd. Resident CFME ninja, and blogger extraordinaire! Always fantastic information over at Real Women Squat* 

The beginning of anything marks an appropriate time to make some realistic commitments to your self.  It's not necessarily just a list of dos and don'ts, but opportunities to be great, and a series of choices that will ultimately determine success- whatever that looks like to you.

And so here we find ourselves at that genesis of something new and great. The Whole Life Challenge.  I started a new ‘journal’ 2 days ago, and broke it in with the above exercise.  It starts with, ‘Be Better: In the Next 60 days I will:…’  It is now my Whole Life diary, minus the ‘Dear’s’ and ‘Love’s,’.  This along with my training log(the hard copy of BeyondTheWhiteboard) are going to be where I input my data from this grand experiment.  

So why might you consider doing this too?

 Information.

 The more information you can collect-from measurements, bodyfat, circumference, pictures, to the emotions that arise when you wake up tomorrow morning and remember you can’t put heavy cream in your coffee- the more empowered you are to make the right decisions for you. It’s called body intelligence.

One of the commitments you have probably already considered making, if you haven’t already begun, is the one that will ultimately make or break your success in this challenge, food prep.

The Achilles heel of all things ‘diet’ and health and wellness. Yes, each one of you knows how important it is, and some may even lose a little sleep over the stress it can produce. ‘Ugh, I don’t have time to cut vegetables.’ Or ‘Didn’t I just do this yesterday??!’ So. Much. Food. Prep.  However it doesn’t have to be like that, if you just change your perspective about what it means.  

This shift happened for me when I stopped looking at food as being just something I put it in my mouth, and started appreciating it for what it was going toward creating. Everything I eat is broken down by the incredible systems inside of me, and used to build, repair, and nourish, the house ONLY I am responsible for taking care of.  So I stopped eating sour patch kids, processed meats, and the deranged assortment of ‘Nutrition’ bars and powders littering the aisles of any supplement store, and started relying on real, healthy, powerful, high quality food.  Why?

Because I wanted a REAL, HEALTHY, POWERFUL, HIGH QUALITY body.

Period. End of Story. This became more important to me than the excuses I was making. It trumped my fatigue every time, and shut up that voice inside that said, ‘It’s ok, you don’t have to be great.’

So if I really wanted this life for myself, things needed to change and I needed to get uncomfortable.

And so began my healthy relationship with the food that I eat. *and it wasn’t always healthy…

This is where the fun begins. When I look in my refrigerator there are all sorts of meats and vegetables, fats, and fruits, but I don’t see food, I see nutrients, and possibilities, and the question, ‘What do I want to create?’

There is no short cut to food prep. Vegetables do not cut themselves. This doesn’t mean that you need to make it complicated though.

So here are some steps to get you started.

1: You need these things

   

2: And a healthy assortment of these things (timer there to prove point-keep reading)

    

3: And approx this much time-

    

4: Perhaps a calendar to plan when you will accomplish this- and a jar of pickle erasers if it doesn’t work out, obviously.

    

5: Don’t buy the whole grocery store if you are just getting started. Pick 2-3 proteins you will cook in bulk, and 3-5 vegetables you will chop up. Then next time you go to the grocery store pick out 2-3 different proteins and 3-5 different vegetables!  Same with your fruit. This is a great opportunity to try new foods, and remember looking at food as nutrients? Each one has unique qualities all their own-diff types but also different colors will yield certain vitamins and minerals.

6: Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. You don’t have to become Gordon Ramsay over night and prepare a 5 star meal every time you cook. Shit. Nobody got time for that.  You know the salad bar at Whole Foods? This is sort of what you are creating in your refrigerator.

     

7: And lastly, you find already chopped up vegetables etc at the grocery store for a reasonable price- BUY IT!! Someone already did the work for you!! I will usually do this with squashes-because honestly I have no idea how to crack into one of those successfully.

Alright so this should be a good start for you. Think stirfry(where you put random things in a pan and cook them), salads(same thing but cold), scrambles, ‘tacos,’and snacks-cut up carrots, celery, grapes, sweet peas- ready for you to just grab and eat. In one of the Tupperware containers I combined cilantro and celery.   So each night I will grab some containers, pull out the veggies and start combining, throw some of the buffalo or chicken I cooked in there, slice an avocado on top and there’s my food prep for the next day.  37 minutes today, 2 minutes tomorrow :)