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Introduction and Episode Overview
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the UFFDA! Podcast, I'm Jordan Rudolph.
And I'm Emily Morris.
We're on Season 4, Episode 26, and today we're talking the Ultimate Reset Tool, and we are intentionally launching this episode The week after [00:01:00] Thanksgiving.
Absolutely.
Holiday Season Challenges
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I, we are recording this the day before Thanksgiving, and if you've been on the coaching floor with me or follow me on Instagram or any of the stories, uh, I have already been high on the Thanksgiving is not an excuse and we have more control than we maybe think we do already.
Um, and I think this episode just kind of blends. on into that in terms of establishing and assessing where we're at with our nutrition because the holidays can be a time when we really just kind of chalk it up to Just what I just said, the holidays, when there is really only a couple of them over the course of a couple of months.
But it really turns into holiday months. Which, yes, is a more challenging time, but doesn't have to be as [00:02:00] offsetting of our normalcy as I think we often give it credit for.
It's, it's funny you bring that up too, because typically, like this year in particular, it's once every seven years, six years, whatever it is.
Thanksgiving's like almost on the last day of November, which makes it a little bit closer to Christmas. Where like last year we had it a week before. So it was five weeks in between there. So the holiday season, quote unquote, was longer, right? This year it's 30 days, if that. So, that part of it. And the other part of it is, we tend to make it, as humans, tend to make this into the season.
Which we understand and get. Most of the time it's crunched and busy. But typically there's less school for most people. So that's, that's one thing, right? So students are more available, so is that easier or harder on parents because they still have to work? I don't know how everybody in the world gets away with this, but it seems like a majority of people have off, and they take a ton of vacation, but they stress over it.
Uh, and it's easier than ever to order something within a couple clicks on your phone, yet [00:03:00] people stress over shopping more than ever.
Mm hmm.
So things are easier and more convenient for us than ever before, right? But we're more and more stressed over the holiday season. So I bring all that up just for light of the listener and to bring that up because that's what I do.
Ultimate Reset Tool Introduction
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But also to acknowledge that this ultimate reset tool that we're going to uncover here in a second Is maybe the perfect time to do that is, is during this holiday season, but if you are overwhelmed and frustrated and this feels like another thing adding to your naughty list, don't do it right now. Wait for the new year and use it as part of that when motivation is high for your health, wellness, wellness and fitness journeys.
It's just the way it is.
For sure. Well, it's a tool. It can Again, staying kind of vague before we fully unveil here, but it can help you, but it can also work against you. So if it's tool, we want that tool to be helpful towards whatever the overarching goal is. So if it's not going to be as [00:04:00] helpful, okay, maybe this isn't the time.
At the same point, If it's going to be helpful in opening our eyes and taking a peek at what we do actually have control over and where we can actually take action even though we perceive that things are more challenging when they're really easy to speak to what Jordan was just talking about, then it might be the perfect time to add it in if we have the capacity and the ability to do so.
So we really can go either way as we approach nutrition over a quote unquote abnormal time where things might feel out of the ordinary, but it doesn't have to completely be a month of out of the ordinary. We really have a lot of anchor points and a lot more contact points, a lot more meals in which we will consume or have the opportunity to consume normal quote unquote foods versus Sorry, quote unquote normal foods, not [00:05:00] quote unquote foods, but normal foods versus the holiday foods and the exception to that.
And if you're listening to Emily just say all that right now and you're already overwhelmed, you're like, I don't even know how I'm going to survive to this, stop listening and go back and listen to our holiday episode. It was episode 25 from last week again, or for the first time and slow mo it if you need to.
But then pick one thing from that that you're going to do right now to help you. Uh, because it's, it's, it's not meant to be a time, uh, that is, uh, like looking for you to be stressed and, and, and, and overwhelmed in this. It's, it's obviously starts with Black Friday, but now Black Friday deals are starting at the beginning of November.
So again, everything's becoming more accessible and easier. They're not trying to do it because they're worried about your health, by the way. They're doing it because they know that you'll spend more money. So. These marketing tactics are all out there. Again, everything is a couple of clicks away from getting [00:06:00] everything that you want.
So, it's taking a step back. And as we reveal this tool, this ultimate reset tool, the main purpose of this, I think, I think it's, I've always described it as to help a person be a little more present and mindful and aware and it brings out more than just what we're going to talk about specifically of what the reset tool is, but it's a whole, it's a, it's a holistic whole body, whole mind and soul reset.
Can we just get into the tool? Perfect. I was like, I'm going to try and be vague, but I don't know where I'm going with being vague.
Food Tracking and Journaling
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So, as we talk about this ultimate reset tool, which really is, food tracking or food journaling to some capacity. This can be in form of writing a pen and paper, this can be form of pictures, this can be form of an app, there's all sorts of resources out there to do this.
But some sort of food tracking and food journaling can be [00:07:00] that ultimate reset tool for you. Like Jordan was saying, it brings attention, it brings awareness, it brings presence to our actions and presence to our nutrition, which can then have implications and translate to our everyday life as well, which is kind of cool.
And all of that gives you power and control. When ultimately, when this season comes around, most people get more stress because of the overall And the frantic nature of the holiday season, all the things that get on their list, but it's mostly because they don't have the control that they are used to having.
Like, that's the root cause of probably 99 percent of the people. If we sit and get you in an office and ask you about enough of these things, it almost always comes down to that. You lose a little bit of your routine, your rituals. your sense, whatever it is, and it comes down to control. The food diary is the one thing, the food log, the food tracking is one thing that you can always have control of and in your attitude along, along with that.
So [00:08:00] when you're more present and you're focused on just what is right now in front of you being where your feet are, it brings a lot of this other unnecessary, unwanted, and um, I don't know if we want to use the word overwhelm again, but Uh, you know, emotions and engagement that you're experiencing down because you just need to focus on that.
And yes, it's for food. You can log emotions and feelings and what you're thinking during the times, you know, before, during and after eating. If you're, if you're using a journal, you can, you can compliment your food log with a journal or vice versa. But ultimately every person that goes through this is usually somebody, uh, ultimately like We know that the task can be tedious.
And typically, we're not asking you to measure everything out right away. We're just trying to have you log your food. What happens is most people end up measuring. And what the long term part of this is, is it gives you an eye opening awareness, like we were [00:09:00] talking about, and it leads you down towards a path of understanding.
And when you, and clarity. And when you have more of that, You can be more confident in what you're doing and get more control of what you have already. control over. Which is what everybody wants.
Benefits of Food Tracking
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Well, and you said it there, like clarity, it brings that awareness to oftentimes a habit that we have that we don't even realize that we have around food, right?
If we're noticing that, oh, we just happen to, every time we walk by the break room and it's the holiday season, so someone brings in treats and we just grab one, we might not even recognize how frequently we do that or what we're grabbing. or the implications of that, where we think that like, oh yeah, my day was so good because I had my, you know, pre prep breakfast and pre prep lunch and I did my meals and, you know, all the things, but we forget about the other part and then we can get frustrated by the outcome of [00:10:00] that, of the scale not moving the way we want to, us not feeling the way we want to, feeling like our energy's low because our blood sugar is coming up and down throughout the day, but we're just unaware.
So as we bring that awareness to it, we then can control and change our behaviors, which then influence our emotions and our actions. And it then just becomes a positive cycle moving forward. Instead of being one of frustration and overwhelm that we've used previously, where we can be frustrated and feel stuck that we're not making progress during the season.
When we can bring awareness to why that's the case, we have the ability to change that that's the case as well.
I think if more people just looked at it. Probably like you and I look at it, the initial part of it is just, it's just data. We're just gathering data and looking for patterns, looking for anything that we've seen before to ask more questions on.
Like it's nothing more than, if we were, if [00:11:00] we were matheticians, it's just nothing more than numbers to us at the initial stage. And, yes, it can be time consuming.
Practical Tips for Food Tracking
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A pro tip is to plan ahead, so if you can write in your food blog, track, diary, whatever it is, you know, proactively, the day before, it usually works out a lot better because you're not all of a sudden at night and realizing that you're a thousand calories over based on what you ate that day, or a hundred grams still under your protein, etc.
You can go ahead and see what's next so you can make your changes accordingly. Um, the other part of this then is, It can feel like a daunting task. It can feel like another thing to add on your list. But if it's always that feeling, it's not the food journal that we need to work on. That's not the reset we're referring to.
It's whatever's going on in your day to day life. And as health and fitness coaches, are we the ones to tackle that every once in a while? Are we, are we supposed to be doing that? No. However, From doing this long enough, we know that if we [00:12:00] can, and if the person's ready, willing, and able, and feels like they're safe and trustworthy in us, and they allow us to open up and, uh, allows themselves to open up and trust us with that, with that space, we can make some serious damage towards the results in helping this person get there.
Helping them manage a schedule, figure out what's stressing them, helping them say no to things, say yes to things, become happier, more confident. Like, we didn't sign up for that when we were learning about this when we first went to school and got our certifications. But we know how impactful and how important that is.
I am not a person that likes to log or track. I hate it. But every time I do it, I learn something else and I feel a lot better going forward. Every single time there's a positive outcome towards it. So I know when I do it, I have to do it. I think the last time I did it was probably a year ago, maybe a year and a half.
And it was with one of our, it was with one of our clients, our members, but it was, it was a, uh, a client's son. And he was, he was, we were trying to see actually who gained, who could gain the most muscle in like a six week span or something. [00:13:00] So I tracked with him and we sent pictures to each other every day.
Um, I think that was the last time I did it diligently. Uh, learned something from that too. I'm like, oh, like, wow, I'm not eating as many carbs as I thought I was. Uh, my protein's actually well over, blah, blah, blah. Again, positive outcomes, and I know it can seem like a task, but at the end of it, there's a reset, there's a calmness, there's a clarity, there's a sense of at peace, there's a presence that comes to light to that, and that's ultimately what we're looking for, and then we can just move forward with whatever the data says.
Well, it's the we also spend a lot of time as you were just talking about that. We can spend a lot of time worrying about the holidays and worrying about parties and worrying about the food and all of that takes up mental space as well. But if we take that mental space and we get proactive and we're able to control it.
We might just be able to assign that mental space of worry towards actually taking action in the form of tracking, in the form of planning ahead. [00:14:00] So it becomes easier then, the outcome is then more guaranteed in terms of, hey we're not worried about it, we're actually doing something about it. So mentally it can be this similar load and a similar feeling, and yes, a task to take on, but personally I would rather have the task that takes on, the task I take on.
Lead me to where I want to be versus just worrying about something and hoping that the outcome is is the one that I want instead of directing and driving the outcome to where I want to go. So I think that that can play a huge role as well in control. I think everybody. I think, yeah, I use the word I, but I think everybody could probably resonate with that.
Everybody
would jump on that ship, Em.
Right, yeah, I did say I there, but I do think that it's more of a universal thing, um, Not only from a nutrition side, but from just in general, I think we would all agree that we'd like to control where we go.
For sure. [00:15:00] No doubt about it. We feel like this food, we've seen it time and time again, every single person that's gone through this with us for us, we do it for ourselves.
We, we know the power that what comes after it, it's just getting that work done prior to, and I'll reference that beginning of the episode. piece just a little bit again. If you don't want to do it during the holiday season, we get it. Like, we understand it. But the average person gains almost 10 pounds during the holiday season in American culture.
That's, that's quite a bit. If you want to see some surprising stuff and some alarming stuff, plug in and log everything and maybe use more of an official tracker if you want to, from like measurement side of things or like a Fitbit or a lose it app or a sorry, uh, my fitness pal or lose it app. Um, because those things will show you more stuff.
Just make sure you're doing appropriate volumes, measurements, grams, whatever, but you'd be amazed at how quickly things can stack up and maybe not for some of you, but. [00:16:00] When you plug this stuff in, it can add up very quickly, especially with different holiday parties, multiple during the week, different events during the week.
And they just keep stacking up and you look back at your week. You're like, Oh yeah, that's, I guess that's how it's done. And then the tricky part is you can realize if you do this at any time of the year. Oh, that happens to me more often than not. It's not just the holidays. You just give it an excuse.
You give it power right now. So keep that in mind too. We understand it. We've been doing this for over 10 years of peace. We've been through this rodeo with thousands of people. We'll go through it again. We're happy to, we're grateful to, but we're trying to get this message out to the masses and also helping you maybe prepare more for this holiday season, obviously with what we just did last week and what we're doing now, but also what's ahead and what you can do right after.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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I think that about wraps it up. As always, thank you very much for tuning into this week's episode of the OOFDA podcast. Share this with someone who you think will find it valuable. Leave us a rating, a review, subscribe, [00:17:00] download all the things that help us to grow organically, and we'll catch you in the next episode.
Bye, everybody.
