Trim Healthy Mama Plan (11 page)

N
ow that you have a basic understanding of the different THM meals, you'll probably be either eager or terrified to put your new knowledge into action. Both reactions are okay. There is no right or wrong way to get started on your Trim Healthy journey. Whether you jump right in or just dip your toes in the water for a while before you slowly immerse, it will click at some point. But first, fair warning: There is a learning curve.

Not gonna lie, it takes a few weeks of practice living this out before you feel like you know the ropes. At first you'll second-guess yourself and worry about whether you're truly eating S or E or crossing over. Some days you'll wish you could throw the book at us! Hang in there. After some time this will just be like breathing in and breathing out; you really won't have to think much about it. It's like riding a bike or driving a car. It takes some focus and lots of practice at first but becomes second nature after time passes.

During the learning period you'll have lots of questions that relate to your unique THM journey. How many of each meal type should you eat? When and how will you change from S to E? Should you begin by jumping in or baby-stepping your way in slowly? How much should you eat? Must you throw out every bit of junk food from your cupboards in a frenzy? All these questions (and more) will be answered.

You're da boss! There is no one set way that you must change up your THM meals. We can't dictate how you should do it because that would be us shoving our own diet
approach on you. Do it your way and you are going to create your own success. You'll do this by freestyling, which means you'll be changing up your own meals without a bunch of stringent rules from us. Everybody learns to freestyle differently. You don't have to switch your THM
meal types in any synchronized order, such as S then E, then S. How boring!

What does your body feel like each day? Are you tired? Prepare an E meal and enjoy those energizing carbs. Are you craving comfort food, heartiness? Go with an
S meal and enjoy those satisfying fats. Freestyling your meals like this gels perfectly with our Food Freedom approach. As long as you are incorporating a good mixup of each meal type each week, you are fine. You will receive all the nutrients you need.

Most of us in the Trim Healthy community like to include both meal types every day (with occasional Fuel Pull meals or Crossovers depending on individual needs). We might do an S breakfast, an E lunch, an FP or E afternoon snack, then a hearty S dinner followed by an FP dessert. Others of us are more structured and like to allot certain days for one meal style. Mondays might be E. Tuesday and Wednesday would be S. Thursday would be E, and so forth. Do what suits you best. That might take some trial and error. No biggie.

What sort of diet were you eating? Asking yourself this question can help you figure out which meal to start with. If you are coming from a standard American high-carb diet, our first meal of choice for you will be an S. You might even want to do a full day or two of these Satisfying meals to help get your blood sugar more under control and get a feel for how to build this type of meal. After that, don't hesitate to add our safely designed E meals so you can keep your metabolism revved by juggling your fuels.

If you are coming to Trim Healthy Mama from any sort of low-carb diet, your body is begging you for a different fuel; so please include E meals from the get-go.

A good way to start the plan without needless anxiety is to simply begin with breakfasts. Don't worry about all the other meals in your day just yet. Try some different S and E breakfasts for a few days before moving on to lunches and dinners. Enjoy a cheesy omelet or a Raspberry Cheesecake Smoothie (found in the “Shakes, Smoothies, Frappas, and Thin Thicks” chapter in the
Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook
) for S or something as simple as oatmeal, berries, and Greek yogurt. Trim Healthy Pancakes (found in the “Good
Morning Grains” chapter in the
Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook
) are another simple yet delicious E option. This “toe-dip” approach can help you gain confidence without a lot of frustration. Once you have a better grasp on breakfasts, slowly work your way to Trim Healthy lunches, then on to dinners. Pretty soon you'll be owning this thing!

If you'd rather jump into the plan all at once on a Monday morning with two weeks' worth of perfectly planned menus and our food lists and seesaw pictures printed out and magneted to your fridge–that's okay, too. But don't get upset if you make mistakes along the way; we're sure you will! Just be aware that you'll probably mess up. Nobody does this perfectly in their first week and if that is going to make you feel like a big ol' failure after all the energy and hype you put into preparing, we'd rather you take it slower. Ditch the all-or-nothing, do-or-die approach. Passionate personalities are wonderful; Serene has one of those dive-in-without-looking-back approaches, while Pearl is more slow and cautious about change. No matter which type you are, forgive yourself when you mess up and keep up the mantra that this is a lifelong journey, not a race to shed fifty pounds.

When desiring weight loss, you need to remember to keep at least two and a half hours, three being more optimum, when switching from S to E meals or from E to S meals. This ensures that higher glycemic loads in E meals will not be digested along with the higher fats in S meals, which causes
tandem fueling.

Don't get all uptight about this meal spacing. It will tend to happen quite naturally. Most meals and snacks (with the exception of desserts) are usually at least two and a half to three hours apart anyway. Eat your lunch at twelve? An afternoon snack sounds about perfect at three or three thirty. Evening meal at six or six thirty? That's a natural space that means you're right on time to eat again! We remind you of this three-hour window not only to help you avoid tandem fueling, but also because we don't want you to be grazing all day. Shoving little bites of food into your mouth every half hour or so is not
a wise habit. We will cover that subject in more detail in
Chapter 9
, “Snacking Mama.”

One of the
key principles of the Trim Healthy Mama Plan is to never let your body become famished between meals. You may not feel famished, and some of you may not even feel very hungry (especially if your
metabolism has been lowered); but going longer than four hours without fueling can cause a
catabolic state. This is when your body will start to break itself down (not your fat but your muscle), release
cortisol, and lower metabolism. Remember to refuel the gas tank of your body every three to four hours.

This does not mean you have to dive into the kitchen at every twinge of
hunger. Hunger pangs that occur less than a couple of hours after a meal (for non-nursing or pregnant women) are not true hunger pangs. They're usually only mind hunger pangs or entwined with emotional responses to life events. You are going to be “smart fed,” not “feeling fed,” as a Trim Healthy Mama. True hunger starts for most of us at the three- to four-hour mark (this can be sooner for pregnant or nursing women; see
Chapter 23
, “Heads Up: Pregnant and Nursing Mamas!”

Allowing yourself to experience some of this true hunger is a healthy, natural state for the body and enables you to better enjoy your next meal or snack. Don't be scared of it, you won't have to be in that hungry state long and it sure won't be a constant like you've experienced with other diets. But if you are one who does not feel these normal hunger cues, practice eating at these wise three- to four-hour intervals whether you feel like it or not.

There are two hormones that are in charge of your hunger and full signals:
ghrelin and
leptin. We can easily remember ghrelin's role because the word itself sounds like a hungry growl: It lets you know when you're hungry. That leaves leptin as the hormone that signals when you are full.

A signaling problem occurs with these two hormones when we become insulin resistant and, sadly, insulin resistance happens in varying degrees to most of us as we age. Those who have had more extreme high-carb lifestyles will often have more severe cases of insulin resistance. In this state of resistance, insulin levels are continually elevated and
our cells become desensitized to the hormone. High insulin levels also create high leptin levels. You'd think that would be a good thing, right? Lots of “I'm full” signals? Sadly, no. When too much leptin is excreted we become desensitized to it as well. Picture it yelling red-faced to your brain that you are full. No response. The frequency is so high your brain can't hear it. (Only a bat can. Well, we just made up that part about the bat; but you get it.) Not until your insulin levels begin to settle will these two “hunger” and “full” hormones stabilize, at which point you'll hear their gentle nudge better than their roar.

If we dictated every portion of your food, you'd never be able to tune in to the signals of these hunger and full hormones. If here and there we suggest serving sizes in a recipe in the companion cookbook, they are only guidelines not rules. Our ultimate goal for you is to learn to tune in and trust your own body: That is a part of the journey. Balancing these hunger and full hormones doesn't happen overnight.

In the real world this means you may very well overeat or undereat when you first start on the plan. Hey, give yourself a break. It's more than likely that you are either coming off the high-sugar roller coaster that we call “The Goliath” or some sort of extreme diet in which you were not able to make your own food decisions. You had to deny your own hunger and full signals so often that you finally got good at it. Give yourself time to learn to tune back in.

If you are coming from a high-carb lifestyle, insulin levels are going to take a while to stabilize. For some, that is a few weeks; for others a few months. In some cases it can take as long as a year to learn what being full truly feels like.

Don't worry, this doesn't mean you won't see any results during this time of healing. You'll be making strides in a better direction whether you can tell you are full or not—and we will not limit you to a half-inch slice of plan-approved cake during this time. Doing that would just be placing a Band-Aid on a wound that needs to breathe to heal. On the other hand, it is good to be mindful that if you feel like having a third piece of cake early in your journey, it is likely because you cannot hear leptin's signals telling you you've had enough. In this case you need to consciously tell yourself one generous piece is enough. That sort of mind talk is simply healthy practice—not self-starvation.

If you're coming from another rigid diet, such as a low-calorie or constant low-carb plan, your leptin levels may be too low rather than too high. That is just as big of a problem. Low leptin levels mean low energy, slow metabolism, and, in some cases, reproductive issues. Refueling your leptin levels through plenty of healthy E carb meals will help amp up the volume of this hormone to better balance.

Time will help as these bodily functions slowly come into balance again. We've had people beg us for harder portion sizes. Nope. If you are going to do this for life, you have to learn to tune in to you, not to us. We will have some portion suggestions to help you at the beginning while you are in your THM infancy, but we want you to grow and become independent. In the end, you'll be the expert on your own body and that is the way it should be.

Don't get bogged down in dangerous fuel ruts. This is when you take one type of meal (usually S, because Mamas love their fats) and repeat it over and over and over again. Abusing S meals that way turns our wonderful THM fuel juggle into another low-carb diet, and that is NOT the Trim Healthy Mama Plan. Have a piece of fruit, for goodness sake! Sorry, getting a bit feisty here; but please, PLEASE do not think you are doing Trim Healthy Mama if basically all you are
eating are S meals. They are an important but not complete part of the picture. This type of fuel rut will eventually stall your weight loss, stress your adrenals, and be a meanie to your thyroid. We get it, S meals with their rich fats are extremely appealing. We love them, too. But E meals have their own special satisfaction. Get creative with E meals; they have so much to offer. You'll find your favorites and your body will delight in the changeup.

This doesn't mean you have to eat just as many E meals per week as you do S meals. Thankfully, S meals are not completely carb-free, either. They do have those extremely gentle carbs in the form of non-starchy veggies, berries, nuts, and even some dairy, so having more of this type of meal than E meals won't be dangerous for your body. We personally tend to have more S suppers than we do E suppers, as Satisfying evening meals are such hearty, family-friendly supper fare. But there is “more” and then there is “way more.” The latter is a problem.

We don't like to put hard numbers on things because freestyling is at the heart of the
Trim Healthy Mama Plan, but if you have to push us into a corner, the
minimum amount of E meals we recommend per week would be five—okay, maybe four; but you'd better be having some E snacks, then! This is minimum, not necessarily optimum. You may have a physically active life and need more Energizing
fuels than someone who is sitting in an office all day. Many Trim Healthy Mamas find they do extremely well including one E meal per day and often choose to make it a breakfast or lunch. Think about it: Including one E meal per day means you have two other meals that you can make S meals if you prefer. Never overdo a good thing, though.

Remember, the key to Trim Healthy Mama weight loss is juggling fuels. So if you're an E lover, sure, have a few more of those than S meals; but don't stay in E land constantly, either.