Jenn trepeck podcast AUDIO RAW
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast. I'm excited for our guest today. We're gonna be talking all about food and mood. So welcome Jen Tropic. Will you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about you and what you do and your expertise. Yeah, so thanks for having me. I'm excited. Um, so my, my background's business and marketing.
I came to all the wellness stuff through my own, I call it a saga of weight management and trying to figure all this stuff out. You know, I feel like the word journey doesn't give it justice, you know? Um. So I started with all this health stuff, honestly, my entire life. You know, I joke that I was the skinny one and a family of dieters, and then that went away.
You know, I was a dancer growing up. So when I started to gain weight, I was really aware of my body. Yeah. And um, you know, I was like, okay, I know what to do because I watched [00:01:00] my family do this, right? And I tried every diet under the sun, gaining and losing. I remember at times feeling like I would just breathe and gain weight, you know, I was like, I don't understand.
And ultimately. What I learned is what I call to be the nutrition education we're all supposed to know and no one ever taught us. And so in learning this information, it shifted all of these food decisions from being emotional. Like, why do I suck? Why can't I just walk in the kitchen at work and not have an entire debate about the free croissant that's sitting there, you know?
Um. You know, it shifted all those decisions from being that emotional thing of like, why can't I just do this to an intellectual piece of, oh, I understand why that croissant has a voice. What I need to do is this, and the voice will disappear. [00:02:00] And so with all of this information, you know, I. I became a health coach on the side of my full-time job.
This was back in 2007, so it was before health coaching was a thing. It was before side hustles were really a thing. Um. And, you know, I built my practice on the side for about 12 years. I left my full-time job July of 2019. That's when I launched my podcast salad with a side of fries. And now I'm sitting here with you like six years later.
Yay. And I think there's a lot of women that can relate to what you just said about like, why can't I just avoid it? Right. So what shifted for you? Or like how, how did you get to that place of like being able to do that? Yeah, it was really understanding what creates cravings, what creates the desire for certain foods or the situations, and so understanding [00:03:00] biochemically what was happening, I realized that it, you know, a craving wasn't a moral failing.
It wasn't that there's something wrong with me. It's that. You know, that's my body communicating with me. And so I really am learning the way our body processes food and what different foods do inside the body and how all of that works and like in an approachable way, I teach this with my clients, right?
Like, not in this overwhelming way, you know, you don't need to become a doctor or a biologist, right? To really understand it. It, but in a way that allowed me to just understand what was going on and then I could make an empowered and informed choice rather than, you know, this choice based on how I was feeling in the moment.
That then left me feeling like something was wrong with me, that I couldn't just not eat the croissant. Yeah. You know, and. [00:04:00] In all of this, right? As I was working with clients and digging deeper, like I'm an insatiable student, I can't stop learning. And so as I dig into all of this and as things start to come up, it's like frankly, everything is biochemical.
You know, we are taught or led to believe that it's willpower. Or that there's something with us. And the reality is that it is very much physiological. Even willpower is physiological actually, right? Much more than it is this, this, um, need to white knuckle it and survive any situation. Yeah. I love what you brought in this idea of like understanding these things, help us make those choices and so that's what I'm hopeful that this episode is gonna do today.
Let's go deeper on this idea of like biochemical. Is there food that makes you feel certain ways, [00:05:00] like grouchy and happy and tired? Like, tell us more about this. Absolutely. So, and it's not quite as simple. Yes. And when it comes to the more challenging or uncomfortable emotions, it's not quite as simple as eat this, feel that.
Yeah. Right. It does start to work that way when we're working sort of on the remediation side, but fundamentally, if we start to understand our mood as a function of blood sugar and neurotransmitters. Then we can start to understand this connection, right? So neurotransmitters, we remember them like, you know, there's like endorphins and oxytocin or you know, dopamine, right?
Like these are all neurotransmitters that we're familiar with. And so really what we want is neurotransmitter balance, [00:06:00] right? What causes neurotransmitter imbalance? A lot of the stuff that we're all dealing with every single day. So it's processed foods, right? It's foods that are, you know, whether or not they're calorically dense.
There are calories, right? There's food there, but it's not nutrient dense, right? It's alcohol. Toxins that we're consuming, it's toxins in our environment. So whether that's the air we're breathing outside or our couch, offgassing, or the toxins in our personal care products, right? Like there are toxins in the body that we have to respond to and deal with.
Um, stress is a big piece of neurotransmitter imbalance as is. [00:07:00] Our bowels are, so our whole GI tract, right? Many of us have heard serotonin is mostly made in the gut. Well, so what's happening in our digestive tract has a big impact on what's happening in our brain. Um, another one, sensory overload. Like, and I, I say this with compassion and humility because I am also the one who sits there with the TV on and the phone in my hand.
You know it, we are sensory overload all the time, and so we put all of these things together and we end up with this neurotransmitter imbalance where we think something's wrong with us, and really it's our body fighting to figure out how to do what it knows it's supposed to do. You know? I think blood flow is another piece of all of this where whether it's, you know, sedentary lifestyle or insufficient [00:08:00] nutrients, right?
We end up with diminished or poor blood flow. One of the really interesting sort of chain of events is so decreased omega threes. Increased refined foods and ultra processed foods, increase in saturated fats, which we're finding in those refined and ultra processed foods decreases brain derived neurotrophic factor.
So BDNF is involved in all of our front of the brain thinking, so learning memory. Executive function of do this then that. Right? Organizing our day that decreased BDNF is connected to an increase in anxiety and depression, cognitive decline, and metabolic disorder, right? So we have [00:09:00] this sort of chemical soup in our bodies that our modern life is pushing us toward a scenario.
Where of course we're gonna end up feeling volatile, of course we're gonna end up feeling, you know, not so happy all the time. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that other hormones play into this, especially, you know, if you're like me and you know, in your forties, you know, all of our hormones are adjusting and that also increases our, uh, volatility in terms of what's happening in the brain and our mood and all these things.
So it's. It's this chemical soup where of course we ended up here. It doesn't mean that there's something actually wrong. It means that we wanna make some choices to sort of support the other side of that equation to support increased BDNF to support increased neurotransmitter balance. Um, yeah, so it's almost as you're talking, it's almost like this [00:10:00] like.
We get caught. It's almost, I, I don't even know what I was trying to picture it as like a, a swirling, you know, rip tight or whatever, where it's like the choices that I'm making are causing this, but also this is causing me to make the choices that I'm making. Right, right, right. For sure. And so it becomes this thing of like chicken and egg.
Yes. That's the word I was going up with. Yeah. Yeah. Like, which came first and what do we do? Yeah. You know, and so to think through this. I go back to the vagus nerve as the literal connection between the gut and the brain is really interesting. And one of the things that I find particularly interesting about it is think of it like a five lane highway.
Three of those lanes go gut to brain. Two lanes go brain to gut. So we're never [00:11:00] going to outthink the biochemistry of what we're giving ourselves of the nutrients or lack of nutrients that we're giving ourselves. So what I like to recommend, and there's a lot of coaches out there who will say, start with the thinking piece, right?
I'm a big fan of starting with the nutrition piece. The thinking gets a lot easier because of how that works. Yeah. So if we start to look at nutritionally, what can we do, right? Number one, protein and amino acids. So amino acids are the building blocks of neurotransmitters. So we wanna make sure that we are eating enough protein, that our body is breaking that down into those amino acids that we're getting all nine of the essential amino acids.
So that our body can make those neurotransmitters, does that come from all sources of protein? [00:12:00] So animal protein, okay, gives you all of your essential amino acids. If we're going for, um, plant-based protein options, we need to have a greater commitment to understanding those amino acid profiles so that we can make sure we're getting everything we need in a day.
So. It's why you've probably heard beans and rice, those amino acid profiles compliment each other to give you all nine of the essential amino acids. Um, I personally, and I encourage my clients to eat high quality animal protein because I find it to be number one, more efficient and number two, less overwhelming.
Right. Wellness is complicated enough. Yeah. To start having to dig into understanding what amino acids are coming from, what plants is another level that most of us don't have the capacity or don't wanna dedicate the [00:13:00] capacity to. So I'm a big fan of plants, don't get me wrong. Right. We all can benefit from being more plant forward.
But especially if we're in this place of saying, I need to have a greater level of commitment because I'm working on this neurotransmitter balance because I'm working on supporting my cognitive function, my mood, my energy, all of those pieces, it might be a simpler path to eat some of those animal sources provided they are clean.
Okay. Yeah. So I kind of wanna go down two paths here. Okay. Um, and I don't know which one to start again, but I think it would be really good to talk about like, what is the. Nutrition base to help improve mood, right? To help, yep. Help, um, prevent some of this, like grou, this anger, stress overwhelm. Okay. So that's one angle.
Um, and we can pause [00:14:00] between, but I also want to go to like, okay, well what do I do to also help? Neurally, right? Like, what am I doing um, in my life that can, like my behavior, let's say the behavior that I can change to then make my mood better. So start where you feel like you wanna start. So there's a lot of pieces on the behavior side.
We wanna focus on movement, managing stress, sleep, right? Frankly, all the things that you've heard about a million times. Right, and I think that's actually the beauty of it, is that even when we have these things going on, it's not like all of a sudden we have to do 800 extra different things. Yeah. It's actually all connected and all the things that are supporting, you know, our metabolic health are also supporting this neurological cognitive health too.
Right. [00:15:00] Obviously minimizing those toxins, right? We're not gonna smoke. We can limit our alcohol. Some of these pieces, right? That, again, you've heard a lot about and so we can go through some of those in more detail On the nutrition front, um, we talked about amino acids, so protein, um, B vitamins. Also super powerful coming from animal protein, but also from other places.
I'm actually a big fan of supplementing with a high quality B complex. Um, stress depletes B vitamins real quick, as does aging, as does living our lives and so often. Healthy, you know, maintaining healthy levels of B vitamins, increase serotonin, increase energy, improve our mood, and decrease stress. [00:16:00] So B vitamins, we talked about, you know, animal protein, eggs, some dairy.
Um. Beans and lentils, nuts and seeds. A lot of the foods we know about, um, dark leafy green vegetables have B vitamins, so like broccoli, kale, spinach, um, citrus fruits, avocado, bananas. Like we could get B vitamins from a lot and we might want to supplement with a high quality B complex. So think about B vitamins.
A lot of times people will say, oh, well I'm taking B12. Right, or I'm taking one. So there's a few things with B vitamins. Number one, we wanna make sure that any supplement we take is designed for bioavailability and bioactivity for bioavailability, meaning that your body can absorb them. [00:17:00] We wanna make sure that they are in the methylated or activated form.
Of the vitamin of, so it'll say like methyl cobalamine on the label. The other thing is bioactivity is their ability to do their job in the body. So I think of B vitamins like a family, right? If you were planning a party, you know, a wedding or a barbecue or something, and you only invited some of the family.
It would be drama, right? It would cause a problem. So B vitamins are kind of the same way. They all have to be there for them to function well and do their job. So hyper-focusing on one B vitamin doesn't necessarily create the situation for bioactivity that it can do what it needs to do in the body and that we can use it.
So, um. B vitamins. Omega threes are huge. [00:18:00] So your brain is actually made up mostly of omega threes we talked about before. Decreased omega threes is part of one of those big contributors to decreased BDNF. So increasing our omega threes. So sardines, anchovies, yes. Salmon, right. And some other fatty fish, but just kidding.
Right. Um. But so lower on the food chain decreases the likelihood of mer of Mercury, right? So that's why we wanna go more for the sardines and anchovies than we are for the salmon. Um, make sure you're doing wild caught, not farm raised in order to get, you know, the quality fat in there. Um,
EPA specifically. For mood and cognitive support. So [00:19:00] EPA also, if you notice attention and behavior or challenges, EPA, um, DHA has a lot to do with sort of cellular aging and cognitive function. So there's, you know, they're both critical for the brain. But we can sort of think about that if you are getting, you know, omega threes, if you're taking an Omega-3 supplement, take a look at how much DHA and EPA is actually in there.
What are we aiming for? A minimum of three grams or 3000 milligrams of DHA and EP. If we're looking to treat something, like when I work with a physician and they're looking at omega threes, they will often double that dose if they're looking for sort of a therapeutic effect. So again, in those [00:20:00] kinds of doses, it's important that we're looking at the quality of those ingredients, right?
Um, but take a look, I have a lot of people who come to me with their Omega-3 from a store. And if we actually look at the amount of DHA and EPA, it's maybe, you know, 300 milligrams or 500 milligrams. So that bottle that you felt like was really cost effective, right? When we start to look at a proper dose, the bottle that was supposed to last 30 days is now lasting 10, and maybe it's not quite so.
You know, cost effective. I can also send you links if we wanna include that, that, you know, I can send you some links to some of these that I work with and take myself, um, you know, minimizing those processed foods, the more we can focus on foods that come from the ground or eat what came from the ground, we're going to be [00:21:00] better off.
Not only is that gonna help on the refined fats, the saturated fat, and those sugars, it's also going to help with the other nutrients that we're looking for. It's also going to help minimize those toxins that we talked about and support our body's ability to detoxify, to eliminate these things. So if we think about, you know, we talked about environmental toxins and toxins in our skincare products and all of these things, right?
Our body has ways to detoxify, right? We have detoxification pathways that are always working. It's just that our biologic, like our biochemistry, our biology, you know, is still sort of caveman esque. And we live in this very modern world where we sort of can't keep up and then we think something's wrong with us, right?
So one of the things that I always remind people is like. [00:22:00] The body is always doing exactly what it's supposed to do. So our job is to figure out why does the body think this is what it's supposed to do, right? So if we're cranky, if we're really irritable, if we have a very short fuse, why is the body responding that way?
Is it low blood sugar? Is it low estrogen? Is it, you know, we're low on B vitamins, right? There are a lot of pieces at play in all of here. And so we can start to look at what's happening and pull on those different levers to help us, help ourselves to give the body what it needs to help us do the things that we wanna do.
Yeah. Um, one thing that we talk a lot about around here is like reconnecting with your body, right? Because a lot [00:23:00] of women have gone through a lot of diet programs and plans and you're disconnect with your body 'cause you follow what they say to do. And it's about this reconnection. And so what I'm loving here is this idea of.
Y like your grou is an indicator of something. And I don't know if we always make that connection, right? Like we, maybe we make the connection of tired or whatever, but, but some of those moods, like even I just think about, um, like happy. Let me give you a good example. I'm gonna just show a little story.
So I went to do a little workation with a friend this weekend, and. You know, when I have three little kids, and when you're a mom, you don't always get your needs met all the time. In fact, very rarely am I getting my needs met these days. Um, and, and my nutrition is as good as it can be, but I've got kids that like.
Are all over. I try to offer lots of options, but at the end of the day we're, it's still a struggle and I don't always get what I personally need 'cause I'm not making 14 different meals. That's just, I can't do that. But it was [00:24:00] so interesting because, you know, I was with this friend and we were able to just like.
Eat what we wanted and we went out to these healthy restaurants and it was crazy because we worked almost 24 hours straight. Like we worked so hard and I felt so good. And I know these things, you know, but sometimes I think it's so valuable to be aware of some of those times that you feel good and, and track it back to like, oh, I was taking really good care of my body.
Um, and. I don't know. I just, I guess I just wanted to like, make note of that, that, that what you're really saying is if you feel like there is some mood issues or struggles in your life, let's not forget about food. Let's not take that off the table. And I might be, I might be going somewhere I shouldn't, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
Um, let's say someone suffers from depression. Um. And I know it's a sensitive subject, [00:25:00] but what, how might food play a role here to help with the other resources that they may be utilizing? Yeah, and one of the things, so I'll preface this by saying we are not here to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
You are always going to work with your healthcare provider. Yes. This is what I call the Yes. And in healthcare, this is where I teach people and I coach my clients on how to integrate wellness within Western medicine. Right. So it's about, it might mean taking the meds that your doctor is recommending. It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be on them forever, and I think it's really helpful and important to do the things that help us get over the hump [00:26:00] to be able to take some action.
So it kind of depends where you are on the spectrum of your daily life and daily activities in terms of what those first steps look like. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. And then we wanna talk to our healthcare provider and say, would you be opposed to me adding more omega threes, me adding more nutrient dense foods, some B vitamins.
You know, but omega threes we work with, um, mental health physicians, um, all the time who are starting to prescribe omega threes because of their powerful impact provided it is, you know, a quality product at a proper dose, you know, [00:27:00] clean formulation so that it's not having some other sort of side effect.
Um. Removing the processed foods. What happens with processed foods is that our body is getting calories, right, but it's more chemicals. It's not nutrients. Even if there's some flour in there and some things that the body, right. What ends up happening is that our body says, I don't know what to do with this.
Like none of this is giving me. The building blocks, I need to do what I gotta do. And so to do that right, it either or a multitude of things can continue to send you hunger signals because it's going, I need food and what I just got isn't anything I know what to do with right? Or, and it can start to pull [00:28:00] nutrients that it needs from other places in the body.
So we actually see it a lot, and I'm sort of on a tangent, but it's a, a simple way to explain this. We see it a lot with malnutrition and bone health and bone density. So when our body is repl, like deficient in minerals, the body will pull them from the bones to use them later in life after 30, 40 years of dieting.
We end up going to the doctor and they say, oh, you have low bone density. And we go, well, that happened overnight. Right? But it's not right. It's a long time of, you know, basically malnutrition and our body pulling those minerals from our bones to get what we need. So. A high quality multivitamin, a high quality multi mineral, the Omega threes, the B vitamins, especially when we're in this [00:29:00] place of needing to get over the hump and using some of these tools as a treatment option, or, I can't say that legally, so you know, don't come at me.
You know what I mean? Right. But we're using them for a purpose beyond foundational function. We might need to up the ante to have a greater commitment to those things to get more of them. It's like if you have a house fire and you pour a thimble of water on it, you're gonna say to me, water doesn't put out fires.
I, but if we have a house fire and we have a fire hose of water, that's enough water and enough pressure, then we can do something about the flames. Right. So we can sort of think about it that way, like how big are the flames? What do we need to do to sort of come at this, depending on sort of what's built up.
And then we can start to chip away at all of those things, but minimizing those processed [00:30:00] foods. Um, and then on the act, movement, movement, movement, movement, walking, blood flow, even squats. Right. Obviously, I'm sure you talk a lot about building muscle, right? You can use your own body weight. Even three squats will get the blood flowing.
You know, I teach people to do what I call 30 30, 30. So it's 30 repetitions of three different exercises, and you can choose them based on your mobility, right? If you are, um, rehabbing an injury, right? You could do 30 different things still sitting in a chair. You know, maybe it's leg extensions and side bends.
And arm circles, right? Um, maybe it's 30 crunches, 30 squats, you know, 30 pushups, right? Three different moves, 30 of each. I tried a ton of different variations. [00:31:00] They all take less than two minutes. You're not gonna get sweaty. You don't have to change your clothes. And it is the most amazing thing when you're like.
You know those two minutes before the next Zoom meeting, or two minutes before you have to leave to go do something, and you're like, what can I get done in these two minutes? This, right, this is what I want you to do. 30, 30, 30. Because I don't, I mentioned before, right? Smoking. We're gonna minimize sort of those added toxins, and you've probably heard that.
Now they say sitting is the new smoking. Because it's the thing we're doing that we don't realize is slowly killing us, and it's because like sitting all day is really not human, right? The human body was meant to move well. I also like to remind everybody that that's sitting all day and then going berserk for an hour is also not human.[00:32:00]
So if we can find a couple minutes here and a couple minutes there to get some extra movement or steps throughout the day, that's really powerful. Right? If we could do something like that, gives us some blood flow, especially. Before we have to go pick up our kids before we know that we're gonna need a little bit of extra patience or you know, some of those things, especially if we're not feeling it right.
Pump up that blood flow right before you're walking into those situations and then, you know, so that's sort of the movement piece also, you know, I know we wanted to talk about some of the other, we can do, you know, sleep stress. I know you've covered these, you know, so tell me where you wanna focus. Yeah.
Um, yeah. Or what follow up questions. 'cause I've been going for a while. This is great. Um, well, I was kind of thinking as you were talking, you know, I, I like to tell people that three 10 minute bouts of exercises physiologically equivalent is one 30 minute bout of exercise. But [00:33:00] here's the difference, is it is shifts your mindset to movement because you're thinking about it regularly, right.
I'm a woman of wellness who moves her body regularly. And and when you Yes. When you kind of break it up in that way where it's like I move throughout the day, it, it becomes a lifestyle rather than like, I go to the gym and then I sit at the desk the rest of the day. Right. Um, so I mean, I think, I think we have a good idea of like.
I, you know, I think it's pretty common knowledge, like stress pulls from things. If you're not sleeping, we don't, these things don't work, but speak to the woman who's like, holy moly, this feels like a full-time job. Like, I'm busy, I have a lot going on. Or you know, you're saying add these supplements and. I know like how do I even know where to start?
But also how do I like come to peace with the fact that like this is, this is kind of a a lot of effort so [00:34:00] we have a choice of deciding it's a lot of effort or not. And that's a little bit of tough love in so far as saying like, yeah, I get it. I know there's a lot and we can simplify, but. I think it's a lot more effort trying to drag ourselves around every single day.
Like that's real exhausting. Yeah. So part of it is just thinking about how are we thinking about effort and then. What's the bang for the buck? Right? Where are we getting the most bang for the buck? The most payout for the effort. And so if you are dragging yourself around every day, [00:35:00] if you are pulling yourself out of bed in the morning,
is it actually more effort to make sure that we have a breakfast? Within an hour to 90 minutes of waking up, that's 30 to 40 grams of protein, right? Like we get to choose what we think is harder. So what does that look like? Right? Maybe that's, you know, a veggie omelet with some cheese, right? With enjoy it, right?
Maybe we're having, um. You know, some like you can do also so that it's super easy, um, in a muffin tin, right? Do an egg or two eggs or an egg and extra egg white in each of the muffin tins and know how much you have in each. So [00:36:00] if each one is about the equivalent of like two eggs, right? Two of those is gonna be your breakfast.
And then we can add in there. So you can, and you can literally do this right in the muffin tin, put the eggs in, then go back around, do some that are sun dried, tomato and feta with some oregano. Maybe do some that are, um, you know, maybe it's green pepper and onion. Right? And pack those veggies in right.
Put a ton of them in there. Um. Come up with a few different variations so that even if you're eating them every day, you're not bored, like there's different flavors. And then bake 'em in the oven till, you know, a toothpick or whatever is coming out clean. And then you can just heat 'em up in the morning.
And again, if we make sure that each one is sort of the equivalent of like two eggs, two of those is gonna [00:37:00] be breakfast, and then we can add to that some additional fruits or veggies. And what I love about that is that it can be portable, right? We can, I have one client who cuts up veggies and makes like a dip.
So sometimes she'll just do like store-bought hummus. Sometimes she'll do, uh, she'll make her own. That's, um, Greek yogurt or cottage cheese and with the cottage cheese, put it in a blender till it's smooth and then you can put whatever sort of herbs or seasoning, blend or whatever she'll do. Um. Like the Italian seasoning packets or the ranch dressing packets.
It's about, she said she used, it's about half the packet in there and puts the dip in the center of a lazy Susan with all these cut up vegetables right in the fridge. So it's already done and ready. So like whether it's she's hungry and has to make dinner, [00:38:00] she can pull that out. And that's sitting around and her husband even started eating the veggies, right?
Her kids started eating the veggies. 'cause it's there, you know, so, and by the way, I see it all the time where my clients start to have cutup veggies and a dip, and the kids start to eat it. They wanna have what mom's having. And I think we sometimes underestimate what other people are willing to eat. You know, I mean, we could do a whole other conversation about kids and how we have them trying foods and all that kind of stuff, but that doesn't have to be super complicated.
Buy the veggies that are already cut up, right? You don't have to make your own dip. Although I did one the other day, plain Greek yogurt and just a ton of everything, bagel seasoning mixed it up, and I just did it with a spoon. You know? I made myself like a single serving. It doesn't have to be complicated.
It can be super easy. And so if we have a [00:39:00] couple of these kinds of tools in our tool belt, then we can say, wait a minute, this is actually easier. And when are you gonna make those egg bite things in the oven when you're making dinner? So you're already in the kitchen, you're already doing the things.
Just throw that on there too, right? So it can feel like a lot of effort. And as I said, when we started start with the food piece. If you're not sure where to start, because the more we're getting some of the, you know, the protein, the amino acids in those building blocks, it can help us start to feed the brain and feed the mind with the nutrients for those neurotransmitters.
For other people, supplementation is a lot easier than the food. If there's something that you can do to get you over the hump and into movement in the forward direction, I'm all for it with the understanding that we cannot supplement our way out of poor nutrition. [00:40:00] So it's why I am going back to if there's somewhere to start.
It's a high protein breakfast with fiber within an hour and 90 minutes of waking up, right? If you are a coffee person, no coffee before food. We can have coffee with our food, but especially as we're looking to help our mood, to help us have energy, it's really important. Start there. I love that. Um, and I, I think the message that you're really sharing here is like, sometimes the answer is just, you're not used to this, you're not used to this lifestyle shift.
And so it might feel really big because there's a lot of things, but there's a, you know, take that gentle approach and. And it's just, it's just like a, a glimmer of hope. I, I think that's kind of the message that I wanna leave everyone on is, you know, if you're experiencing stress, if you're grouchy all the time or [00:41:00] you're struggling with like, feeling down, um.
Let's look to nutrition. Let's look at our lifestyle too. Um, we can, like you mentioned, there's always an, and we can get, you know, we, we, we can and should always get that professional level help that we may need, and we can do things to support it that we're capable of. We don't need the expert to, you know, we know that fruits and vegetables are good and, and we can work on that as well.
And so when you, when you realize like, okay, this actually. Is a priority. And I have a lot of women come to me and they're like, I, I just want, I want, like, I don't have to think about food and I want dinners that are as fast as possible. And, you know, I say, okay, let's slow down for a minute. Maybe we need to slow down in real life, you know?
Yeah. Um, but let's slow down for a minute and, and talk about, you know. Like the experience of food, I mean the experience of cooking food and preparing food and eating food. [00:42:00] We've lost that as a culture especially. Um, what Wouldn't it be nice if we were spending more time with food actually and on food?
Yeah. You know? Yeah. And I think a lot of that feeling of like, I don't wanna have to think about this is because we have followed stuff. That's a lot of rules. And so the thought process is, can I have this? Is this on the list? Right? A lot of our overthinking about food is a response to a restriction, and so is it that we don't wanna think about food at all, or that we don't wanna think about food in the way that we've been thinking about it, where it's good, bad on, off.
You know, it's, there's a lot of stuff to this that we conflate because of how we have learned this massive [00:43:00] information that isn't necessarily based in biology or how the body works. Yeah. I love that. I appreciate that. Well, this has been a really good conversation. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us.
It's just like a little different angle than we've taken before, and I love that just bringing in this idea of like, let's, let's take a look at what mood plays here and what role it plays. So Jen, will you tell us a little bit more about where everyone can find you and, you know, enjoy what you have to offer?
Absolutely. Well first of all, thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure. Um, all social media. I am at Gen Tpic, J-E-N-N-T-R-E-P-E-C-K. Website is a salad with a side of fries.com. My podcast is salad with a side of fries, so come hang out. I'm mostly on Instagram, but I'm in all the places. So send a message.
It'll take me a minute, but I promise I'll get back to you. Um, you know, and wherever you're listening now, tune into salad with a side of fries. Awesome, and we'll make sure to [00:44:00] include some of that supplement recommendation. I think people would like that. So I'll get that from you for sure. But thank you so much.
Awesome. Thank you.
