Episode 269: What I Eat in a Day (& Why)
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
Erin was approached by the Los Angeles Times to share her insights on navigating diet culture. With the overwhelming amount of conflicting advice we encounter daily, finding personal solutions can be quite a struggle. One of the questions raised during the interview was about the impact of "What I eat in a day" posts on social media, which sparked the idea for this insightful episode.
Tune in as Erin shares her thoughts on evaluating nutrition advice and what to look for in a trusted source. She also walks through exactly what she eats in a day, how she fuels her body to be the healthiest version of herself — and why. This episode will give you the confidence to pick and choose what best suits your own life. There are tons of specific recommendations that you don’t want to miss!
In this episode:
How to spot trustworthy nutrition advice [3:20]
“What I eat in a day” posts - Beneficial or superficial? [5:11]
Erin’s morning routine: Coffee, exercise & workout fuel [12:56]
Nutrient-dense smoothie formula [20:01]
Salads, salmon, & other simple lunch ideas [29:09]
Satisfy your sweet tooth with healthy desserts [38:56]
Resources mentioned:
Carb Compatibility Project™ (Available for free within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Recipes Mentioned
Salmon Salad (with Canned Salmon)
Your Hormone Revival™ (Only available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Organifi supplement powder (Save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
Kion Aminos (Get 20% off monthly orders and 10% off one time orders)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK get a free sample pack with any purchase)
Ned Natural Remedies (get 15% off your order with code FUNK)
Learn more about Diet Culture and Functional Nutrition
Related episodes:
237: Tips for Healthy Living with Team FN
205: The Shoulds & Shames Behind Weight Loss Goals
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Erin Holt [00:00:02]:
Welcome to the Funk'tional Nutrition podcast. I'm your host, Erin Holt. I'm an integrative and functional medicine nutritionist with a feisty attitude and well over a decade of clinical experience. I work with women all over the world through my online programs, and I'm also the founder of the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school and practitioner mentorship where we help other clinicians level up with functional medicine methodologies. I've got a bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional health model that are both systematically failing so many of us. Creating a new model is my life's work, and this is what this show is all about. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you like what you hear today, I would love for you to subscribe to the show, leave a review in iTunes, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more.
Erin Holt [00:00:55]:
Now give me the mic so I can take it away. Okay, we are live, and I have tested the audio to make sure to double and triple check that my mic is in fact hooked up for today's episode. So hooray. I am leaving my phone on, however, so you might hear some dings in the back because I can say this now because at the time that I release this, the party will have happened. But, we are planning, we're throwing my mom, this Sunday, a surprise 60th birthday party. Why? Because I'm the best daughter ever, obviously. And so my brother, one of my brothers right now, is doing the last minute stuff and he's texting me all of the things. So shout out to Michael and his girlfriend Erin, because they are holding it down.
Erin Holt [00:01:46]:
All the stuff that I forgot, they're getting it. So yay. I hope everybody out there is having a good summer. July has been a...I've been summering hard. Let's just say that I've been summering hard and still recording podcasts, so don't worry about that. Quick announcement before we get into today's show, the Carb Compatibility Project, the CCP, my four week signature nutrition plan where I help you eat to regulate your blood sugar, get your mood back, feeling good, get your energy back, support your liver, support your gut, all the good things. We are kicking things off September 10th, so put that on your calendar, mark it up, and we'll get started. If you've been summering hard, you're going to want to join me for September CCP.
Erin Holt [00:02:41]:
Trust on that. We're actually doing something that I haven't done before, and we're having a kickoff orientation meeting on Zoom the Sunday before we begin so you can get all your questions answered. We start together as a group. It's going to be a time. All right, so let's get into today's show. Last week, a reporter from the Los Angeles Times reached out to ask me some questions because I'm cool like that. I'm cool like that. I'm cool like that.
Erin Holt [00:03:08]:
She was writing a story about how to navigate diet culture. She wanted to create a framework for people to evaluate claims made on social media about diets and how to lose weight. I'm like, yeah, I'm down to have this conversation with you because all you need is an iPhone and a six pack and tada, you can be a social media wellness influencer. So we do have to have some level of discernment about who we are taking health advice from and this is not the point of the conversation. But the first place that I went with her is always looking at how much experience does somebody have? Does somebody have oodles of experience taking their methodologies and applying them to hundreds, if not thousands of other bodies? Or are they basing their recommendation on an n=1 experiment? Because a lot of people are saying, well hey, I did this for myself, therefore I can show you how to do that. And that mentality can really showcase a lack of experience working with human bodies. As a seasoned practitioner, I can tell you with conviction that just because something worked once for one person does not mean it's going to work or even that it's appropriate for everyone. So keep that in mind.
Erin Holt [00:04:28]:
There is a massive difference between what works in theory and what works in actual practice. And I totally get look, people are actively seeking out sound bite nutrition. They are looking for the quick fix. There will always be an eager audience for those two things. Just tell me what I need to do. Make it fast and easy. So there will always be someone who is promoting the easy answer and the quick fix as long as there's an audience for it. There's going to be an energetic match for somebody giving people what they want.
Erin Holt [00:05:02]:
But there should always be some level of suspicion around this because as we know, if you've been listening to the show for the past six years, as you know, health, food, nutrition and even weight loss is so nuanced and contextual. Now one of the questions that she asked me was about my thoughts on the 'what I eat in a day' posts and videos. And that's actually what we're doing here today. I'm going to share with you what I eat in day. I think my opinion on this really comes down to the intention behind the post or the video. And I mean that in two ways. The intention on the part of the creator and also the intention on the part of the consumer. When I posted something in my stories asking I'm like, where's everyone at with these 'what I eat in a day' posts like good, good?
Erin Holt [00:05:58]:
You like them? Are they inspiring? Like what's up? And most people were like, no, they're really helpful. And then somebody, Abby, one of my FNA grads who I love dearly, said as long as it doesn't start with someone's abs. And I'm like fair. Fair. Because there is almost like there's this embedded false promise. When somebody's showing you their aesthetics, they're like, hey, this is what I look like, and hey, this is what I eat. There's like this embedded false promise that if you eat exactly like this, you will look exactly like this, which is false. Hate to break it to you.
Erin Holt [00:06:33]:
Not true. There are just so many factors that feed into what somebody looks like, what their body composition is. Some of that is what they eat, but not all of it. So we cannot just make it as simple as like, oh, that's what she's eating every day. If I eat this way, every single day, I will look exactly like this. It just doesn't work like that. But we also have to think about the intentionality that the consumer or the viewer is bringing into it. Because if you're thinking they might not be promoting the video exactly like that, but you might be consuming it with that thought process or that intention.
Erin Holt [00:07:11]:
And this is where it can get really tricky. If you follow someone and you take advice from someone just because they have the body aesthetic that you want, that has the potential to create some problems for you. And not always, but a lot of the time. So I'm going to say something. I'm going to float this out there to you. I've been in this industry for a minute, and I have seen some shit. Lack of integrity in the health and wellness space is a real thing. Lack of integrity on social media apps is a real thing.
Erin Holt [00:07:46]:
What I mean by lack of integrity is where somebody says one thing and they do another. So they're fronting like they live a lifestyle that they don't actually live. Or they're fronting like they're eating in a way that they don't actually eat. Or, for example, they're talking about food freedom when in reality, they have anything but. So you can be taking health advice from someone with a bona fide, clinically diagnosed active eating disorder and have no idea. You can be taking health advice from a "hormone expert" who hasn't gotten their period in years due to their overtraining and undereating. I have literally seen both of these things play out before. So the truth is, we have no idea what extremes people are going to behind the scenes, behind closed doors, in order to get the aesthetic that they have.
Erin Holt [00:08:41]:
And that's why I say if you follow somebody and you take advice from somebody just because they have the body that you want, they look the way you want to look, this can sometimes create a little bit of a problem. So, anyway, I think that Ben Bruno did. He's a trainer. He's originally from New Hampshire, so I love him so much. Plus, he's wicked funny. So from New Hampshire. Funny.
Erin Holt [00:09:06]:
You're awesome. And he's like super, super nice. But he's a trainer out in LA. And he did an awesome Instagram video where he explained how just because you do someone's exact workout doesn't mean you're going to look exactly like him. And he used Jessica Biel as an example. He trains celebrities and he was like, I can give you their exact workout. That does not mean you're going to end up looking exactly like him, like them. And he says that strength training is the cheat code to unlocking your genetic potential and achieving your all caps your best body.
Erin Holt [00:09:42]:
But try not to compare yourself to other people because we're all built differently. The voice of reason. And that's to kind of round out this discussion on who do we listen to? Listen to the voices of reason. The people that are willing to say the less sexy, less glamorous, less clickbaity, less sellable stuff, because that's usually the more accurate stuff on the internet when it comes to health. So anyway, moving on, I think where the what I eat in a day posts and videos can be really helpful is for idea generation. Like, oh, I never thought to do that. I think it can be a great tool for education. Like, hey, this is the breakfast I eat and here's why.
Erin Holt [00:10:30]:
It's an entertaining way to educate people or to show hacks. Like, this is how I make things easier on myself. Like, I need to get this many grams of protein every day. This is what it looks like. So that's what I'm going to do today. I was originally planning to do an Instagram video, and I really wanted to pepper in all the commentary, all the riffs and the rants, the sidebars and the tangents, and it just wouldn't fit into a 90 second video, so it's a whole ass podcast. So today I'm going to walk you through the day, in a day in the life of my eating. And my intention is that it helps you generate some ideas for your own health and well-being and dietary tweaks and changes.
Erin Holt [00:11:13]:
I will say that one of my favorite parts about all of this is I don't really put a whole lot of thought into this anymore. It's a little bit like a set it and forget it. I definitely rotate a lot of foods and get a lot of variety. I've talked on the show before about why variety in your diet is so important from a health perspective, but there's not a lot of hemming and hawing about what I eat. These habits have been built and secured. I've cracked the code on what works for my body. I know how to feed myself and I trust myself, so I don't get really swayed by whatever I see on the Internet or what everybody else is doing. I can get inspiration and try new things, but I'm not fundamentally coming apart when I see somebody else eating a different way.
Erin Holt [00:11:58]:
Because, hey, maybe that works for them, but I know what works for me, and I'm going to stick with it so I don't have to second guess myself all of the time. And there is so much liberation in that now because I used to do a lot of the hemming and the hawing, and now I get to use my mental capacity for a lot of other things, and that feels awesome. So if that sounds like something you might be interested in, join the Carb Compatibility Project in September. Cool. All right. So my day typically starts around 6:30 or 7. That's just when I naturally wake up. Sometimes it's a little bit earlier.
Erin Holt [00:12:32]:
Honestly, if I'm consistently waking up a lot earlier than 6:30, that tells me that my body is stressed out. So I usually go to bed around 10. Sometimes if I'm reading a novel, I'll stay up a little later than that, but usually I'm going down around like 10:10-30 and I'm waking up like 6:30-7. So I'm getting like a solid eight and a half hours of sleep every night. When I wake up, I do not pass go. I do not collect $200. I go downstairs, I make coffee immediately. I chug water and then I make coffee.
Erin Holt [00:13:08]:
I'm not saying it's the best thing for you, but it's the best thing for me because I love it and the way I take my coffee. So we use organic coffee, fair trade, and I brew it with a pour over it's just the way that I like it, and then I blend in about a teaspoon of coconut oil. Honestly, not for really any specific health reasons, it's just the way I've been taking my coffee since I had my daughter nine years ago, and so I just keep doing it, you know, like you just get so like, this is the way I take my coffee. This is the way I take my coffee. It requires a blender, so it's not the most convenient, but I just love it, and that is what I do. And so you'll notice that I'm not eating breakfast while I drink my coffee. For a while, that was not the case, especially as I had to heal my body and health my adrenals and all that good stuff. Generally speaking, if you've got hormonal imbalance, I don't recommend drinking caffeine on an empty belly.
Erin Holt [00:14:11]:
I almost always recommend you pair it up with food. And when I'm more stressed out or if I'm in a period or a season of higher stress, I really can't get away with drinking a lot of caffeine without food as well. So I usually do about like a cup to half of a cup of coffee, and that's how I start my day. And then I move into some type of pre workout situation. So I typically exercise around 9:00 AM. When I'm going to I work out at Steam House, which is in Epping, New Hampshire. It's a heated yoga studio. It's not just a yoga studio, I'm just so used to calling it that.
Erin Holt [00:14:51]:
But it offers a lot of strength training, interval training, HIIT, booty yoga, vinyasa yoga. It's a wide variety, which works out really well for me for two different reasons. One is I get bored pretty easily with my workout, so there's never any excuse to not get bored or to get bored because things are always changing. But then two, it's heated, so I get a huge sweat, which is like a real time saver for me, so I don't feel like I have to do the sauna as a separate thing. So it's very important for me to sweat often. If I want to stay feeling good, I got to do that. I'm always careful about the ways that I'm talking about my body. In the past, I've really needed some extra detoxification support to clear stuff out of my system, and sweating is a way to do that.
Erin Holt [00:15:46]:
I think sweating is so important for health, and we really should be making sure that we're doing that. So it's kind of nice because I get my workout and my sweat all in one fell swoop. So before I exercise, I do almost always fuel myself with something. Bars are the best thing for me. I am prone to acid reflux. If I have a full belly and I work out on a full belly, I cannot I've never been able to do that. It's a bad vibe for me. I like to do a bar.
Erin Holt [00:16:20]:
So the two bars that I've been eating lately, neither of them are perfect. So if you're looking to punch holes in my diet, this would be one of the places to do so. Have at it, I don't care. But they're very convenient and this is what I've been doing. So the BHU bars, I don't know how to pronounce them. It's just BHU. Maybe it's just called BHU bars. They're a pea protein isolate and like MCT oil.
Erin Holt [00:16:46]:
They just sit really well with me, and I like those. And then the GoMacro bars, my husband buys those. He loves them. In the past, when I wore a continuous glucose monitor, the GoMacro bars did kind of crank up my blood sugar. So I really only eat these right before a workout because I do well with that. So those are the two that I tend to have. And then I always do Kion aminos. So I'll put them in my water bottle and drink them on the way to the gym.
Erin Holt [00:17:21]:
Or if I'm just lifting upstairs or working out upstairs in my house, then I will just put it in a water bottle and bring it upstairs. But I do try to get the Kion aminos in before I exercise. Sometimes I forget and I'll just do it either during or after the exercise. I love Kion aminos because they make me feel less sore. And as I've been talking about on the show over the past year or so, I've been able to, I have witnessed myself being able to put on muscle mass more easily by consistently taking them. Kion aminos are backed by over 20 years of clinical research. They have very high quality ingredients. There's no fillers, there's no junk.
Erin Holt [00:18:00]:
And that's why I use Kion aminos. And since they're a sponsor of the show, you can save 20% on monthly deliveries and 10% on one time purchases. If you go to getkion.com/funk so that's a little treat from me to you. And I'm going to be talking about the sponsors in my day to day stuff because the reason that they're my sponsors of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast is because I use their products. That's how that works. So I do my workout and then I come home during my workout. Speaking of which, how could I forget? I am taking LMNT electrolytes. I'm taking at least one packet of those a day. I am somebody who trends toward kind of like low adrenal output, low blood pressure, so I need more salt than the average person.
Erin Holt [00:18:56]:
And I sweat a lot. So that's why I say sometimes I do more than one packet a day. Sometimes I do two. But for a workout, I'm doing one packet just to replenish replete those electrolytes that I'm losing through my workout and through my sweating. Super important. I just feel way better doing that than drinking just regular old water. Because LMNT is a sponsor of the show, you can get a free sample pack with any purchase, and that way you can try all eight flavors that they have and you can determine which ones you like the best. So go to drinklmnt.com/funk that deal is only available through this link.
Erin Holt [00:19:37]:
So you have to go to drinklmnt.com/funk. So that's kind of like my morning routine, my morning stack. I do caffeinate. I get a little bit of food in the belly. I get my amino acids, I get my electrolytes, I work out, and then I come home and I eat breakfast. In my breakfast, more often than not, is a smoothie. It's just so easy.
Erin Holt [00:20:05]:
And I can cram so many good things in, get so many calories, and get everything I need packed in my go to right now. I'll talk you through it. So the base is frozen cauliflower rice. So I get it from Whole Foods. It's organic. There's nothing else in it. It's just frozen cauliflower rice. Now I'm going to pause here because recently I saw something on Instagram and it was somebody saying, I'm so glad that I healed my eating disorder,
Erin Holt [00:20:35]:
now I don't have to add cauliflower to my smoothies. That was kind of like the general gist of the video that I was watching and I audibly sighed because, yes, there are, I am sure, people who add a bunch of veggies to their smoothies from a place of disorder. There are also people like myself who add veggies to their smoothies because they like it. So here's why I like adding frozen cauliflower rice to my smoothies. I like the texture it creates. It thickens it up in a way that ice doesn't really do it. I love to support my liver, especially when I say I've been summering hard, I've been drinking more than I normally do. So it's really extra important for me to support my liver right now.
Erin Holt [00:21:36]:
But also, like always, I personally love Dr. Terry Wahl's dietary approach for mitochondrial health. She talks about getting in nine cups of produce a day, which is a shit ton. And so this is a way to bring me closer to that. What. I don't measure anything, honestly, but I just don't. But if I had to guess, I would say I'm using a cup and a half to two cups of cauliflower rice in my smoothies every day. So that's a significant amount of cruciferous veg to get in there. If you showcase any signs of estrogen dominance, like sensitive boobs, heavy periods, blood clots, big cramps during your period or before your period, working in more cruciferous veggies, like cauliflower can be really helpful.
Erin Holt [00:22:27]:
Compounds in cruciferous veggies help the body metabolize excess estrogen. So that's like one of our go to things that we recommend in our practice or in Your Hormone Revival. When we see people have signs, symptoms, or lab signs of high estrogen or estrogen dominance and just telling people, eat more cruciferous veggies, they're like, okay, I guess I'll buy more broccoli. This is a way, a very practical, tangible way to increase your cruciferous veggie load. I have seen people also do frozen broccoli rice. I don't know where to buy that. So I've never tried it before. But people have said it's no different than cauliflower.
Erin Holt [00:23:11]:
Obviously, the color is going to be a little bit different, but that's something to think about as well. So I like what it does for my body. I like the texture. And because I use sweetened protein powder, I'm not tasting it doesn't taste like I'm drinking cauliflower. So my approach to it, there's nothing disordered about it. When it comes to nutrition and health, we have to make space for multiple truths to coexist. And please feel free to quote me on that because it's a banger and it's super important, and I've been saying it for years, and I probably will say it for more years, but it's so important when it comes to nutrition and health, we have to we must make space for multiple truths to coexist. We can and we must be cool with the fact that one approach can be okay and helpful for one person, and the same approach can be not okay and not helpful for another.
Erin Holt [00:24:11]:
If the thought of that makes your mind melt, you shouldn't be in the field of nutrition and health. There, I said it. Now let's move on. But not before I say one more thing, which is we have to stop labeling every single attempt at healthy eating, every single attempt at tweaking our diet to better our health as disordered. It's not. Some people are out here living their best life and they just want to thicken up their smoothie. They just want to thicken up their smoothie with some cauliflower and clear out some estrogen on the way. Woo.
Erin Holt [00:24:50]:
Nothing disordered about that. Can it be disordered? Sure. Doesn't mean it's always disordered. Okay, so let's move on. The liquid that I use for my smoothies is so lately, I'm going to be honest with you here, that's the whole thing. I'm not trying to front like I do every single thing perfectly. There was a while where I had to be pretty hyper vigilant with what I put in my mouth while I was healing.
Erin Holt [00:25:15]:
Now that I feel good and I have robust health, there are some shortcuts that I take. So one of them is I've been buying, Scott, my husband does the grocery shopping, so I should say he's been buying Califia Farms new organic almond milk. So the only ingredients in this is organic almonds, water, and sea salt. So in the way of nut milks, it's definitely one of the better ones to purchase. It is in plastic. Demerit. That's why it's not perfect. And then also I could absolutely just make this by myself.
Erin Holt [00:25:51]:
I could absolutely just soak some almonds overnight, blend it up, and I think maybe in the fall I'm going to recommit to making my own nut milk just to reduce the waste, reduce the plastic, to be honest with you. But right now that's what I've been using. And then the other staple is protein powder. So a heaping scoop of protein powder. And then I will also throw in some collagen. I use Organifi's collagen. We talked about it last week on the show, so I'm sure you're familiar with it by now. It's ethically sourced.
Erin Holt [00:26:28]:
It has four different sources of collagen. So you get pasture raised bovine hide collagen peptides, eggshell membrane collagen, wild fish collagen peptides, and then chicken bone broth protein. You can save 20% off if you want to try that out. If you go to organifi.com/funk, use the code FUNK, you'll save 20% off of anything you buy. But if you want to try out that collagen, strong recommend. So I don't use that as my primary protein source, but I do add it to my smoothies. The protein powder that I use is Equip. It's beef isolate.
Erin Holt [00:27:08]:
I either get the vanilla or the chocolate. I kind of mix and match those two. I unfortunately don't have a discount code for you with that, but maybe we could look into setting something like that up. Anyway, so those are like the three mainstays. If you want to try a different type of frozen veggie, people really like frozen zucchini, so they'll steam or blanch the zucchini and then freeze it. When zucchini is, like, coming in hot during the summer, I will just chop it up and put it in without freezing it at all. So raw, raw dog it just right into the blender.
Erin Holt [00:27:46]:
And I've done that for years without a problem. So that's something else you can try. And then I will kind of mix and match different things. Usually I rotate out different frozen berries. Sometimes I'll throw in a handful of baby spinach, organic baby spinach, organic berries. Like, some variation of that. But lately what I've been doing is this. Especially on the heels of a workout, I try to get more carbohydrates in, so I'll throw a banana in.
Erin Holt [00:28:14]:
That seems pretty sufficient for me, by the way, if you're like, whoa, carbs what? The Carb Compatibility Project helps you figure out the carb thing, if that's a point of confusion for you. All right, so this has been my go to, cauliflower, Califia Farms organic almond milk. I'll throw in a banana, and then I'll add peanut butter, always organic peanut butter in a glass jar without any weird additives or oils. And then I do cacao nibs, and then either the vanilla or the chocolate Equip protein powder. Hattie has been so into this one, so she's always requesting it. So I've just been making that a lot. I'm actually going to make it right after I record this episode because now I'm thinking about it, and it sounds delicious. So that has been my go to.
Erin Holt [00:28:59]:
But I do try to really change things up. I'll go through phases where for a couple of weeks, I just want the same thing, and then I'll change it up. And then for lunch, however many hours later, just I kind of wait until I get hungry. I typically do what I call a kitchen sink salad, where it's just like, everything from the fridge gets chopped up and thrown in a big bowl. It's always some type of weird mixing bowl. That's why, first of all, I could never be a food blogger, but I don't really show my salads online because it's, like, gross. It's like grotesque. Everything's mixed up.
Erin Holt [00:29:34]:
It's like this huge bowl. It's like insanity, but I love it. So this is something you could absolutely do ahead of time, like make a really big salad and then just pull from it throughout the week. Since I work from home and I kind of, like, sit at a computer a lot, I like the break of going downstairs and making my lunch. I like that having that break built into my day just gives me a little bit of an exhale moment. I enjoy it. I don't know if my husband does, because I never clean up after myself after lunch. I just don't.
Erin Holt [00:30:10]:
I'm, like, got to get back to work. Bye. If it's nice outside, I'll take my salad outside and just sit for just, like, ten minutes and eat. I actually got that idea from watching somebody on Instagram talk about that somebody who worked in an office, took their lunch outside in the sun. I was like, that's a wonderful idea. Typically, the salad is some iteration of all of this. Shredded cabbage.
Erin Holt [00:30:36]:
Love cabbage, all different types of cabbage. I love them all, and I shred it up sometimes. Kale. I love bell peppers, scallions, and fresh herbs. Just really, like, elevate any salad in my estimation, I will shred carrots. I'll use a cheese grater and shred up the carrots. I used to do this with beets, and then a few years back when I eat raw beets, too many raw beets. My mouth feels funny.
Erin Holt [00:31:00]:
So now I only eat cooked beets. So boiled beets and then just chop them up in the fridge. That's like Scott's favorite veggie. So we tend to always have some type of boiled beet in the fridge. Weird thing to say, those Love Beets. I know they come in plastic, but that's a pretty convenient way to grab beets. And then chopped apples for, like, a little bit of sweet or like a pear or a peach or whatever fruit we have. But I tend to lean towards apples and then some type of seeds.
Erin Holt [00:31:29]:
So pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds, sunflower seeds. Sometimes I'll do chopped walnuts or almonds or cashews, and I just mix it all up. I always make my own salad dressings. I just don't like bottled salad dressings. Yucky, yucky, yucky. I have quite a few recipes on my website for different salad dressings. Sometimes it's just as simple as olive oil. I squeeze a lemon and put sea salt and just, like, call it a day.
Erin Holt [00:31:54]:
And then sometimes I get a little more pizzazzzy, and then I pan fry three, sometimes four eggs. I'll do it in ghee or coconut oil, and then I put that on top of my salad. If there's other leftover protein in the fridge, I'll use that. But I really crave eggs. Like, I like having three to four eggs a day. I crave them. My body loves them, and they just make me so happy. So I usually use eggs, and that's usually my lunch.
Erin Holt [00:32:26]:
Sometimes I'll do a tuna salad or canned salmon salad, especially if I don't have a tremendous amount of time. So the canned salmon salad is on my website. I will make the same version of this with tuna or with canned salmon, depending on what's in our closet. I love to add celery seed to it. Lemon juice, either fresh or dried dill, depending on what we have. Scallions, I'll chop up either pickles or cucumbers. I'll add celery and Chosen Foods mayo.
Erin Holt [00:32:56]:
When you're purchasing mayo, make sure you actually read the ingredient list, because there'll be just kind of standard brands. What's a standard brand? Hellmann's mayo that says made with olive oil or now made with olive oil. But when you look at the ingredients, there is some olive oil, but it's still made primarily with refined seed oils. So I like Chosen Foods. Another good one is Primal Kitchens because they're using avocado oil as the base for their mayo. Sometimes I don't use mayo at all. Your can use hummus as like the binder. Sometimes I've used tahini.
Erin Holt [00:33:32]:
I know people will mash up an avocado and use that instead. But I love tuna salad for like a quick and easy meal. Actually, I just had that for dinner two nights ago on Base Culture bread. So I made it into a sandwich. So that is another really easy, protein rich lunch where you can get a lot of different nutrients in and not have it be like a big spectacle. Another thing that I've been doing, and this is more of a higher carb, lower protein option. But this rice salad, I couldn't get enough of this last week. My body really must have been needing carbohydrates.
Erin Holt [00:34:10]:
So I'll make rice in the instant pot. And instead of water, I'll use bone broth to add protein and also to add flavor. And then I'll always throw in a little bit of ghee just because it's more flavorful, and I make it more than we need for supper. And then the next day we have cold leftover rice, which is a great source of resistant starch. I usually buy jasmine rice. That's just what my family likes. So I will use that rice as like the base of a salad. I won't heat it up.
Erin Holt [00:34:40]:
I'll eat it cold. And then I'll chop up cucumbers, scallions, bell peppers, cilantro, and sunflower seeds. And I just dressed it with olive oil, lemon juice, and sea salt. There's a pattern here. I keep things simple, but that holy smokes, that was really, really good. So that's lunch. Some type of salad situation, but it's not like icebergs and weird tomatoes. There's a lot of things happening in my salads.
Erin Holt [00:35:09]:
And then usually late afternoon, I'm in the mood for something like a little sweet. Want a little pep in my step, a little treaty treat. And so I'll make a matcha latte. I've really leaned away from doing a second coffee in the day. If I'm out and about and I want to get a nice ice cold brew, I'll do that. But when I'm home, I try not to do that. So I'll do matcha latte instead, and I just use matcha powder. I will add the Organifi collagen to this to get another little extra protein boost.
Erin Holt [00:35:40]:
Sometimes I will add some spirulina for more antioxidants and just detoxification support. And I'll do that iced or hot, kind of depending on the season. I'll usually add some honey to that as well because I like it sweet. So that's another way to just get more nutrients in and also just enjoy my life a little bit more. And then we do dinner of course, I'm not going to go into a crazy amount of detail here because there's a lot of variety with dinner. But I would recommend I have two highlights on Instagram that say Dinner Inspo. I had to start a second one because I ran out of room. And I'm just showing you what we're eating for dinner and what I'm making every single night as a way to give you inspiration.
Erin Holt [00:36:26]:
We really kind of rotate out grass fed beef. We do some chicken and then salmon and seafood. So we'll do a lot of ground beef. I got Scott a Green Egg for Christmas, and so he's been doing a lot of slow cooked beef. So we do like, shredded beef. He'll make pork for him and Hattie, I've just never liked pork. I don't like any type of pork. I don't like the taste of just it's not for me.
Erin Holt [00:36:55]:
So I don't do that. But, man, do I love some beef. And then we'll do chicken sausage from Vernon Family Farm. Or we'll get chicken thighs from them, chicken breast, a whole chicken, and then salmon and try to get as much locally sourced seafood as we can. So we always have some type of protein source, and then we have some type of veggie, and then we usually do some type of carbohydrate. We do a lot of potatoes. In my house, we love a roasted potato. The Holts love a roasted potato.
Erin Holt [00:37:24]:
Sweet potatoes, rice, like I said, cooked in bone broth. I definitely will say we do more potatoes and sweet potatoes than rice. And then sometimes where I'm like, I don't want to cook, I don't want to think, I don't want to do anything. Anything. I'll lean on Jovial pasta. They're definitely my favorite brand for gluten free pasta. Their egg noodles are lights out. Those are rice noodles, like, lights out.
Erin Holt [00:37:49]:
Probably the best gluten free pasta you'll ever have. Okay, maybe I shouldn't say that. I don't know you, I don't know what you've eaten. The best gluten free pasta I've ever had. And then I also will do those, or I'll buy their cassava. Cassava, cassava. Cassava pasta.
Erin Holt [00:38:06]:
Do that too. When I'm solo, like, when I don't know. Hattie has practice, like a sports practice or something, I'll just make my salmon cakes, and I say that because I used to make them all the time, and I think I burnt my family out on them, because now whenever I say salmon cakes, Scott makes a weird face. Hattie will still eat them, but, Scott is like, please, please, no. So I don't know. I just reserved them for me because I love them so much. That recipe is on my website. And then I'll whip up a little sauce with, like, dill and mayo and lemon juice and pickles, and I'll put them on the Siete cassava wraps, and they're so good.
Erin Holt [00:38:42]:
So those are some ideas. I've got lots of recipes coming your way in the Carb Compatibility Project. If you are joining that, you'll get more recipes. And then I will say that after supper there's usually some type of sweet treat involved. And it almost always looks like either a frozen treat, that's what Hattie calls it, where I just put frozen fruit, frozen mango or frozen bananas or usually frozen berries into the food processor. And I'll add coconut cream or avocado just for some fat. And I'll add some collagen and I just whazz that up and it's nice cream.
Erin Holt [00:39:19]:
It's just like a non dairy ice cream. So my family loves that. Or I'll do the chocolate pudding recipe that's on my website, some iteration of that. So it's avocados, it's cacao powder. I'll usually throw in a scoop of protein powder. I'll usually throw in a banana as well and that's really tasty. So I'm doing some type of dessert for the family at some point after supper because it's just on heavy request in my house, so it's getting made. And then before I go to bed and I stop eating, I would say quite a few hours before I go to bed.
Erin Holt [00:39:56]:
I really try to not eat right before I'm going to bed. I just feel better, I sleep better, digestively things are better. So I do try to do that. Now I will say back in the day when I was really struggling with my health and had significant adrenal issues, I actually had to eat right before I went to bed. So I do a bedtime snack right before bed. And so this is why what I do you might not just take the exact framework of what I do and lay it on top of your life because it really matters. Context really matters, what your going through really matters, what's going on in your life really matters. And that's why the Carb Compatibility Project doesn't just tell you, oh, this is exactly what you need to do.
Erin Holt [00:40:37]:
In fact, if you're following a nutrition plan like that, you probably want to run in the other direction. It really should be built out around what your individual unique context is because that matters so much. There's a reason that you've tried lots of different diets and lots of different meal plans and lots of different food plans and they haven't worked for you because they weren't developed for you. So we really need to take that into the equation and things can shift and change and rearrange too. So anyway, that's a very long winded way of saying I try not to eat before I go to bed and then I take my supplements right before I go to bed. I will say I have streamlined my supplements a lot, mostly because of the Manifest Your Health approach. I just don't rely on as many. But one that I will always take is magnesium.
Erin Holt [00:41:26]:
It is super duper important for our body. Like a lot of different functions depend on magnesium and a lot of us are deficient in this mineral because of monoculture mass agriculture overprocessing in our food supply chain. It has resulted in a lot of or not in a lot of the opposite of that, in a lack of magnesium in our day to day intake. And so I'm always recommending magnesium. I take it myself. The one that I love the most is Ned's Mellö. I just feel the best on that. It's probably because it also is paired with L Theanine and GABA.
Erin Holt [00:42:06]:
I love taking it before I go to bed. Some people will take it first thing in the morning for better focus and clarity. I like it before I go to bed. It also really helps I tend towards sluggish bowels, and it helps with that as well. So I would strongly recommend checking it out. It's also a powder. I don't love taking a bunch of pills before I go to sleep, so I like the powder, mix it with some water, shoot it back before I go to bed. And I also take Ned's sleep blend.
Erin Holt [00:42:36]:
If you want to check out either of these products, your can go to helloned.com/funk or enter code FUNK at checkout. You get 15% off. And we thank Ned because they sponsor our show and they make really great products that I happen to use and love. And then I usually take a probiotic at night. I've just been, like, really vibing with probiotics lately, right at bedtime. So funny.
Erin Holt [00:43:08]:
I don't know. I think I was, like, posting my evening supplement lineup on Instagram, and somebody was like, probiotics at night? Question mark, exclamation point, question mark, exclamation point. I'm like, I'm not even touching that with a ten foot pole. Why is this so crazy? Yeah, I take my probiotics at night. Did I just blow your mind. It's okay. It's all right. Who's telling you you can only take them in the morning? Who's saying it? Who's telling you? Send me their Instagram account.
Erin Holt [00:43:36]:
I'm just kidding. Don't. Please don't. But, yeah, you can take them at night. You can take them anytime during the day, in fact. But I really like to take them at night anyway, so that's it. That's a day in the life of my eating. I hope that it encourages you to make some shifts and changes to better your health to feel good.
Erin Holt [00:43:56]:
Maybe it will encourage you or inspire you to maybe loosen the reins on some things that you've been, like, vice gripping. Maybe you don't have to do that. I don't know if this was helpful for you. Send us a DM, let me know. I could do more of these too. And of course, if you need more help, if you need more guidance, if you need a framework to work within, join September's CCP, and I'll see you there. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. If you got something from today's show,
Erin Holt [00:44:31]:
don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.
