Angie Gallagher, registered Clinical Exercise Physiologist and certified Functional Medicine Wellness Coach, talks about moderation, the dangers of extreme diets, and the benefits of intuitive eating.
Jeanne is joined by Angie Gallagher, registered Clinical Exercise Physiologist and certified Functional Medicine Wellness Coach. They explore the dogma around dieting, the influence of social media on our eating habits and the confusing messages about what we should be eating and what we should be avoiding.
Angie explains that intuitive eating is the most important concept we can incorporate into our diets. She also stresses the importance of consuming all our food groups and maintaining a healthy moderation in all things. Angie shares her takes on the Keto diet and cutting out food groups from our diets.
She explains what we should be avoiding in our diets and why, while still stressing that a balanced diets with different food sources remains key.
Links and Follows
Angie Gallagher: Coaching Programme | Website | Instagram | TikTok
Jeanne Retief: FIGGI Beauty Shop | My FIGGI Life Podcast | My FIGGI Life Blog | Instagram | Facebook
[00:00:00.090] - Speaker 1
I have been wanting to talk about this topic for the longest time. It's about diet what we eat, what we put in our bodies. So, stay tuned for this episode.
[00:00:10.770] - Speaker 2
Welcome, goddess, to your sacred space. This is my Figgi Life podcast, where we openly discuss life's wins and losses on our journeys to self-discovery. This is your best life. This is your figgi life. And now here is your host, Jean.
[00:00:29.870] - Speaker 1
So today I want to introduce our guest to you, Angie Gallagher, heart wellness coach. Angie is a registered clinical exercise physiologist and Certified Functional Medicine wellness coach. She worked in cardiac rehabilitation with diabetic and hard patients for more than 25 years. And despite best intentions, she realized they were simply helping patients manage their disease and not eliminate it. She's learned through her functional medicine education and training that the body wants and can heal given the right support. At the age of 50, after spending years dreading this number, Angie is happier and healthier than ever. She's learned what it takes to truly establish health on every level, what fills her cup, and how to cultivate everything she needs in life to be happy. Welcome, Angie.
[00:01:20.050] - Speaker 3
Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:21.640] - Speaker 1
So, I just want to jump right in and ask you about the different messages that we see on social media in society about diets. There's always so much talk about diets. It feels like every year there's a new fad diet you need to follow, then you need to eat this, but not that. And next year they tell you, oh, the thing we told you not to eat, you should eat it again. It's good choice.
[00:01:47.730] - Speaker 3
I know it's got to be so frustrating for people to hear so many conflicting messages.
[00:01:52.870] - Speaker 1
For me, especially, I think when you're going through maybe your early 20s, your late 20s, when you're still having a lot of issues with regards to who you are, where you fit into the world and your body image, this can be extremely challenging. Why do you think we still get so stuck on this idea of dieting and what diets we need to follow?
[00:02:16.570] - Speaker 3
Obviously, there's just so much more social media pressure to look a certain way, and we're just bombarded with this idea of what we need to look like. And it's not about what we feel like. It's like there's so much pressure of what we look like. And I really focus with my clients on what do you want to feel like, because you don't have to be looking like a bikini model to be strong and to be healthy and to feel just vital and full of energy and to love yourself.
[00:02:45.190] - Speaker 1
Thank you for saying that.
[00:02:46.680] - Speaker 3
Yes. And I think we're so hard on ourselves, too. We think that we need to exemplify this certain look to be loved, to feel worthy, to find a mate to whatever, and it's just like, no, we need to love ourselves first and when you love yourself, and that shows that's what magnetizes people to you. So, you love yourself for who you are first, and then you say, okay, I love myself, but what do I want to feel like? Do I want to feel better in my own skin? Yeah, maybe you do. Maybe you would feel better in your own skin because you dropped 50 pounds, and that also made you feel healthier and made you realize that you are less at risk for disease. But you love yourself first, and then you decide what you want to feel. And it's just all about what we feel. And most of the time when people feel good, they're also healthy. I mean, they also have a healthy body.
[00:03:41.720] - Speaker 1
I had the worst time after my pregnancy getting back to a good space and feeling good about my body. And I was so horrible to myself. The things I said to myself, I would not ever dream of voicing out loud to anybody else. And I remember standing in the mirror one day, and I had said something really ugly to myself about my body, and my little girl was standing next to me. I saw her kind of turning around in the mirror, and she said, back when they parrot what I had just said, and I thought, what am I doing? I need to look at this from a different angle. And it's weird how you then start to see yourself differently when you find that peaceful.
[00:04:22.610] - Speaker 3
Yes. When you start loving yourself, you look at yourself and your reflection differently. Instead of seeing the things that you don't like or the imperfections, you start to notice the things about yourself that are beautiful. And we all have those things. We're so wired to first notice the things we don't like. So, I love that. It's a great example.
[00:04:41.980] - Speaker 1
And also, look, that's the one part of it that's the one part of dieting is this idea that we need to look a certain way and we need to fit in this perfect box. But then the next is also we're all very concerned with being healthy, living longer. How do we do that? And that's another part where I feel like the diet conversation has just gone into a lot of unhealthy spaces.
[00:05:07.650] - Speaker 3
Why are we so much dogma?
[00:05:09.930] - Speaker 1
Exactly. Why are we persisting in depriving ourselves of vitamins and minerals and food sources when we're talking about balanced life?
[00:05:18.300] - Speaker 3
Yes. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I get so frustrated. Yeah. So much dogma out there. There's just so many people that are in these staunch camps of you have to be a vegan or you have to be a paleo or you have to be and in my program, part of the program is a cleanse. So part of it is, yeah, we're going to remove some things and cleanse the body, but we're not saying that other than processed foods, we're not saying anything's bad. The ideal diet is balanced. You are having carbs, you are eating fat, you are eating animal foods, you are eating plant foods, you are eating plenty of protein, and you know what's right for your body based, again, on how you feel. So, we bring things back in, and it's all very methodical. Like, you're going to bring these things in and you're going to do them one at a time, and you're going to feel how you feel in your body when you eat that food. Because we're all different. We all have our own ecosystem. We all evolve from different people, from different places in the world. Our bodies are equipped differently to handle different nutrients, and every person has to figure that out for themselves.
[00:06:17.960] - Speaker 3
We have all this science, but you can't do science on a bunch of different bodies and expect that all of that the outcomes are valid because who knows how much stomach acid this person has or how many enzymes that person has. What someone's microbiome is like when they're eating that diet. You can't make all those things equal. And so, everybody's going to process food differently depending on their own particular ecosystem. And so that's what I love about the way that I run my program, is, like, I learned that I don't do well with garbanzo beans, and I was eating hummus every day, multiple times a day. I had five kinds of hummus in my refrigerator at any given time. And now I don't eat them because I learned that they don't work in my body. So that's what I do with people, what works in your body. And then, of course, I really encourage whole foods and not eating processed foods. So, it is balanced. We don't demonize. We don't land in a certain specific camp. It's all about balance.
[00:07:16.730] - Speaker 1
I've seen so many examples in my own inner circle of people that are so committed to certain diets, and you can almost see the physical change in them. It's not healthy. It doesn't look healthy. It doesn't look like it's nice to do it. And what I'm always concerned about is exactly what you're just saying. Everybody's ecosystem is different. So, if you're not working with a nutritionist or a medical professional that's telling you need to be on this severe kind of diet, isn't there a real risk to you and to your health?
[00:07:49.670] - Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. People going to go in blindly into these kind of extreme approaches. And there are certain times where maybe for a brief period of time, a keto diet might be therapeutic because maybe your gut is so messed up that you need to really eliminate fiber for a little while just to give it a break. But that's not a long-term solution. Like, I would never say someone needs to have a keto lifestyle and completely eliminate the fiber from plant foods. It's just so extreme. And again, it's also back to where do we come from? So yeah, I mean, there are probably people who are Inuit. They don't probably eat a lot of plant foods, but that's how they've evolved.
[00:08:28.140] - Speaker 1
I mean, food is one of the most basic things in life. I mean, I love food. I love exploring food choices. I love eating.
[00:08:36.310] - Speaker 3
Me too.
[00:08:37.340] - Speaker 1
It's supposed to be one of the most natural things, I think. You eat what makes your body feels good. If your body doesn't feel good, then don't eat it.
[00:08:45.350] - Speaker 3
But you don't eat it. Yeah.
[00:08:46.950] - Speaker 1
Just don't deny yourself something if you don't even understand why you're doing it.
[00:08:51.520] - Speaker 3
Exactly. When you look at the whole idea of intuitive eating and the people who talk about intuitive eating, your body is so wise. Your body tells you what it means. I mean, if your body is saying, I want Doritos, then it's obviously been hijacked. Our brains have been hijacked a little bit by processed food industry. We've become very addicted. But if your body is craving salt, then you need salt. Make some potatoes and put some salt on them. If your body is craving carbs, then you probably need carbs. Eat some rice or whatever. Our bodies are really wise. I think we do need to pay attention and we need to eat intuitively for a lot of people. They aren't quite in touch with that. And so that's a lot of what I do in my program, is I help people understand what are the reasons that we are triggered or the desire to eat, even if we're not really hungry. So, there's all these other aspects of it that we address.
[00:09:38.780] - Speaker 1
There is a much more complicated conversation that one can have around this. And of course, there are certain diets that exist for a reason, because there are people that have chronic illnesses that really, really need to be on these specific diets. But if you're a healthy, normal, healthy adult, should you be cutting out certain food groups?
[00:09:58.370] - Speaker 3
I don't think so. I mean, I think if you're a normal, healthy adult, you don't have any health issues, you feel great other than processed foods. I don't think that there is a healthy place for a lot of processed foods in the diet.
[00:10:08.920] - Speaker 1
I can agree with that.
[00:10:11.010] - Speaker 3
But like food groups, I think if you're healthy, you don't have any issues going on, then yeah, you should be eating carbs, fats and proteins. You should absolutely be eating all the plant foods. I'm not a big fan of eating a lot of grain in my diet because I just feel better at 52. I'm strong, I'm lean, I feel good, and I don't eat a lot of grain. If I eat grain, it's a little bit of white rice, because there's fewer anti nutrients in white rice than brown rice, like lectins and so forth, or sometimes quinoa. But otherwise, my diet is pretty grain free. But everybody is going to have a different take on that, depending on what their body feels like. I'm a big proponent of checking blood sugar. Grains tend to elevate blood sugar more than other carbs. And so, I have a blood glucose monitor, and I check my blood sugar regularly and just make sure that I'm doing good with that. When I was in cardiac rehab, working in cardiac rehab, I would see people come in after a bowl of oatmeal with a blood sugar of 300.
[00:11:06.330] - Speaker 1
Wow.
[00:11:07.590] - Speaker 3
Yeah. And then I would say, well, let's try a different breakfast next time and see what happens. So I would say, why don't you try a couple of scrambled eggs with some avocado or some veggies? And they come in and their blood sugar would be like 150. So oatmeal is not always a great choice for people, especially if it elevates their blood sugar. So I think we need to know how things are affecting our body to some degree so that we can know how much to eat of those things.
[00:11:37.360] - Speaker 1
What I am hearing from you, right, is, of course, everything in moderation. That's what moderation, I think is all about. But you do not need to go into severe depression because you chose to eat that bowl of spaghetti Bolognese on a Friday date night with hubby.
[00:11:53.500] - Speaker 3
No, it's okay.
[00:11:55.640] - Speaker 1
You will survive.
[00:11:58.440] - Speaker 3
You'll survive. Absolutely. I think it's like we need to make deliberate decisions. Okay. I'm going to deliberately make a decision to eat this, whatever it is, this bowl of pasta, and I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm not going to feel guilty about it. I'm going to just enjoy the moment with my family and feel fine. However, I'm going to really pay attention to how this makes my body feel. And if I feel bloated, if I feel lethargic, if I have a skin reaction, if I have whatever, then I know that, yeah, it might have tasted good, it might have been pleasurable to eat, but my body didn't love it. So I'm going to be really measured about how often I might make that decision. When I do it, I'm going to give myself grace. I'm going to enjoy it, but I'm going to really feel in my body what that felt like so that my body can guide me to how often this kind of food should be eaten.
[00:12:49.460] - Speaker 1
I agree. And the thing that I really find that I can relate with and what you're saying is really listening to your body and what you can and can't do. I have panic disorder, and with anxiety disorders, you learn about your triggers and what usually sets you off. And one of my biggest triggers is not eating correctly, because I tend to be hypoglycaemic. So, I get really sick if I don't eat regularly. I always make sure I have some kind of protein snack with me, because the moment I start feeling bad from not eating, that kind of shaky feeling, it kind of triggers an anxiety attack. So I know that I always have to have snacks with me. I should really lay off the caffeine and the process sugars because that makes the crash even worse, for sure. But once again, that's listening to your body, right?
[00:13:39.070] - Speaker 3
Yes.
[00:13:39.580] - Speaker 1
Can you explain to us maybe when will it be okay to cut out certain food groups?
[00:13:44.420] - Speaker 3
I am a proponent of every so often for me, it's like once a year I'll do a cleanse, sort of detox reset, kind of just a gut healing reset. It's basically the same thing that I run my clients through when they join my three-month program. So I really just streamline my diet into mostly meats, vegetables and fruits and.
[00:14:04.410] - Speaker 1
Just, you know so you don't stop eating entirely.
[00:14:07.210] - Speaker 3
No, I have fasted for two to three days before that's about the extent that I can fast. But I do just really eat less. I, you know, really just, you know, stick to the sort of meat, vegetables, and fruits and just kind of do this sort of cleanse. So, I think that there's a place for that just to kind of give your body a chance to kind of take a break from, like, processing certain things and, you know, and dairy and legumes. And then I go back into those things again in a very methodical way so I can feel how I feel when I eat certain things. So it just has a good I think over time. Also, our bodies don't stay the same. As we get older, we may develop an intolerance for certain things.
[00:14:47.980] - Speaker 1
I developed an intolerance for lactose.
[00:14:50.860] - Speaker 3
You don't have it your whole life, and all of a sudden you do. And I think gluten is also one of those things where we can go a lot, many years, and it doesn't bother us, and then all of a sudden it does. And so, I like to do a cleanse and just get things, really take these things out and then bring them back and just evaluate, oh, yeah, that skin thing, that really bad. Itchy thing that I had on my skin that went away totally. And I just had whatever. I just had yogurt and it's back. So maybe dairy is an issue for me. That's where I like to take things out and just temporarily.
[00:15:22.850] - Speaker 1
The clients that you're talking about, you say you do about once a year. You mostly focus. I would get lean meats, right?
[00:15:29.950] - Speaker 3
Lean meat.
[00:15:31.400] - Speaker 1
No. Vegetables?
[00:15:32.590] - Speaker 3
No, I do vegetables. Yeah. I basically do lean proteins. And I really try to do a wide variety of proteins. All ideally, like sustainably raised, grass fed, wildcat, all of that, and then a wide variety of vegetables and keep the fruits in. But then I just try to not do a lot of the other inflammatory types of food groups and not that I'm demonizing them in any way. Just I'm just taking them out to cleanse my system and then bring things back and just see how I feel.
[00:16:02.130] - Speaker 1
How long do you do the cleanse for?
[00:16:03.700] - Speaker 3
Usually, four to six weeks. When people come into my program, it's a six week cleanse process, and then we do a six week of reintroduction. But when I do it myself, I don't always go the full six weeks.
[00:16:21.050] - Speaker 1
What is your opinion on the keto? I don't really know what's called a keto, Grace.
[00:16:26.050] - Speaker 3
Yeah, I've seen people in my life do it. I've seen people I truly care about, and they do it. And I see it as like this people who want the quick results and they don't want to give up their favorite fatty foods. They're like, oh, why not? I'll drop a bunch of weight and I'll still be able to eat cheese and butter and steak and all this fatty stuff. They're looking for a quick fix and they're looking for a way to do it with as minimal suffering as possible. And you still get to have all those fats, and it works in the short term. It's a terrible idea for any kind of long term health. And really you will lose weight. And if you have some gut issues that are related to fiber, then you might have some improvement in gut health temporarily. But I think it's the rare individual that can thrive on its long term. And again, there are people I mean, there are people who are staunch sort of carnivore keto people. And it may be that their gut is just maybe their ancestry is Inuit or someplace where they were eating just mostly animal foods.
[00:17:32.050] - Speaker 3
They didn't grow up in a place where there was lots of legumes and lots of fresh fruit. Their ancestry and so their bodies are designed more for that kind of a diet. I don't want to say it's like, across the board terrible because there are going to always be exceptions to.
[00:17:46.900] - Speaker 1
The rule, of course. So that leads us to, I think, the biggest question in food and diets. Are carbs bad for you? Should we avoid eating them?
[00:17:59.210] - Speaker 3
It's probably like the number one Google search question, right? We have these three basic food groups. We have evolved eating. We were meant to eat all three of these food groups. And so, I don't think carbs are bad. I think we have to just stay away from the refined carbs. I mean, it's pretty simple. If it's refined and processed, it's going to jack your blood sugar up. If it's coming in the form of a whole grain, then it's fine. And then it's also going to be in relation to how are you using those carbs? Are you having a bowl of oatmeal before you go out on a six-mile hike? Then great, that's probably going to work for you because you're going to need that extra glucose. If you're having a bowl of oatmeal and going to sit behind a desk for 8 hours, then that might not be so good. So I think it's all in context too. And it just again comes back to what are we going to do with that carbohydrate? Are we going to burn it? Are we going to sit there and let it just turn to fat on our body?
[00:18:51.880] - Speaker 3
What is it doing to our blood sugar? It's not quite as straightforward, but certainly carbohydrates have a place in our diet.
[00:18:58.790] - Speaker 1
I think we oftentimes forget because we have so much information at our fingertips. Google is not a doctor. You can go to nutritionists and doctors to ask about them and even specialists like yourself to guide you in the right direction for a healthy diet. So, it's worth just kind of mentioning that and remembering that, because I think we often forget.
[00:19:24.470] - Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, talk with somebody that can help guide you through the nuance of all of this because it is not so straightforward. And you need to have someone that knows you that can ask you the right questions about your body and what's going on in your own particular ecosystem.
[00:19:40.110] - Speaker 1
Again, keeping in mind that we are all different and we are intuitively eating, are there certain things within a balanced diet that we really should be limiting and that are really not so good for us? For example, you mentioned the Doritos. I'm so guilty. I love cheese Doritos.
[00:19:59.380] - Speaker 3
Oh my gosh.
[00:20:00.280] - Speaker 1
I don't buy them. I don't buy them because I cannot have them in the cupboard.
[00:20:04.870] - Speaker 3
Oh, I know. I mean, processed foods taste amazing. Who's going to deny that they're expertly designed to taste incredible?
[00:20:14.450] - Speaker 1
MSG, you evil, evil, evil thing.
[00:20:19.410] - Speaker 3
Peanut Eminem’s were like, always my guilty pleasure. And my son buys them. But I'm like, take them in your room, get them out of his sight. I cannot see them. I do think there are things that we should just really ultimately aim to never eat. And of course, we're not going to be perfect. None of us are. But when we basically have a mindset of these are things that I make a point not to eat. And I think industrialized seed oils are one of those things. They're in 90% of all processed food. So, I'm talking about there's basically the six basic ones, soybean, safflower, sunflower, corn, cottonseed, and canola. They're typically just heavily processed. They can have high metal toxicity. They're processed at very high heat. So, they oxidize really easily, and they just are really aging. They can cause aging, accelerated aging in your skin. More brown spots, and then whatever is showing up on your skin is happening inside your body. So I tell people you got to look for the one or 2% of the salad dressings on the shelf that are made with olive oil or avocado oil or coconut oil or make your own like I tell people, make your own dressing.
[00:21:24.500] - Speaker 3
I don't even buy salad dressing anymore. You won't find any store-bought salad dressing in my refrigerator because I usually just use balsamic vinegar on my salads anyway. Almost every processed food is going to have those oils. So, you really have to start reading labels. I was shocked how many hummus brands I'm like, oh, hummus surely is made with olive oil. No, there's like maybe one brand out of six that are made with olive oil. They have safflower, sunflower, canola. So, you have to really read labels and just beware I mean, they're using those oils because they're cheap. You don't notice the taste of them in what they're making. So it's like, why not use the cheap oil? For me, it's industrialized seed oils. And then because of what I have seen, anecdotally and myself and all of my clients, gluten, at least as it is grown in this country, wheat in this country, people can go to Europe and they seem to be able to eat pastries and stuff over there, and they don't have the reaction. But over here, when I had seen people stop eating gluten, they see a lot of people showing a lot of improvements in their health in various areas.
[00:22:26.610] - Speaker 1
I can attest to that because I lived in America for quite a while, and I did horribly with really?
[00:22:35.870] - Speaker 3
Okay.
[00:22:36.530] - Speaker 1
I also did horribly in South Africa, my native country. But when we emigrated to Portugal in Europe, it's not a problem at all. But then, of course, there is so little preservatives, I think, in those foods here. I mean, if you buy a bread roll in the morning, by the afternoon, it's so hard.
[00:22:56.070] - Speaker 3
It's such a great point. I think there's a lot of question about what is it, is it how the wheat is grown? Is it how it's processed? Is it how the bread is made? Is it preservatives or not preservative? There's so many questions about it that I don't think we necessarily have real clear answer. But I do know that people that give up gluten that's grown here feel better. So I just tend to they do better. Yeah. And I know for myself, my gut is a wreck if I have gluten. And last summer I let my guard down because I love a good IPA and I always enjoying I was doing a lot of paddling and after a warm, hot day on the river paddling, you just want a cold beer. And it just wrecked my gut. When I finally was like enough, Angie went to gluten free beer. My gut is completely recovered, and I do fine. So I think that for a lot of people, I guess, also sugar, refined sugar. Those are the kind of the three inflammatory no, no's that I tell people to try to abide by.
[00:24:01.710] - Speaker 1
We had a doctor on the podcast a couple of episodes ago and she was explaining to us that a lot or most cancers are caused by some kind of inflammation. Body inflammation is not good. To be avoiding all types of inflammation if you can.
[00:24:15.960] - Speaker 3
Yes, amen to that.
[00:24:21.900] - Speaker 1
You have some amazing recipes on your Instagram, and it's so nice for me to follow them. And we love Mexican style food, and you had a great Taco Bell that you put on there. So, can you share with us a little bit what you put in that bowl?
[00:24:40.070] - Speaker 3
Oh, yeah. Oh, I love doing those. So I typically will use Cauliflower rice as the base. Again, it all kind of comes down to what is my activity level for that day or around that time period. So if I'm doing a lot of running, then I might go ahead and make some white rice because I need the extra carbs. But if I haven't been doing a lot of running, then I'll go with Cauliflower rice, and I'll do some lime and cilantro in it while it's on the stove. So I'll just squeeze fresh lime and then chop up some cilantro and mix that in with the Cauliflower rice. So that'll be the base. And then I do either ground beef or ground turkey, and I just cook that up with some typical sort of taco seasonings. I do like the taco seasoning by Fresh Jacks. They're a company out of Florida, and they have a really great business model they give back to an organization that's helping to address human trafficking. So I'll use that and then maybe some extra oregano and garlic and onion. And then I chop up a lot of fresh chefs load fresh cabbage.
[00:25:36.960] - Speaker 3
I make my own salsa, avocado. I'll do green onions, tomatoes, bell peppers, and I just throw all that on top. So, it's like kind of a burrito bowl, because in the winter, salads sometimes just get old and you want the warm, but I'm trying to get away from the flour tortilla and the corn tortilla.
[00:25:56.450] - Speaker 1
So I actually showed my husband the recipe. I was like, you're going to have to make that.
[00:26:00.060] - Speaker 3
Yeah, it's delicious. I actually had two days in a row I'm trying to get my iron levels up, and so I've been eating more ground beef and like, well, I guess I'll have more taco bowls. And so I threw a scrambled egg on with the ground beef on the second day, and that was actually really good too. So it's just a good combination of the meat, the Cauliflower rice and the rice, and then all the fresh veggies on top. You can throw some olives on there too, and that'd be really good.
[00:26:23.650] - Speaker 1
Do you have any last tips that you would like to leave the figgi community on living a healthy lifestyle?
[00:26:30.380] - Speaker 3
Yeah, being asked that question, I definitely have to do a shout out to outdoor natural light nature therapy. I'm a big trail runner, and I think that we are solar powered individuals, and we need to be getting outside every day. We need to be getting outdoor therapy, especially if we can get out into natural environments and. There's different microbes in the air, and there's these compounds and things in the air that the trees give off, like terpenes. And we're getting fed by the sun. And we just need to have that outdoor nature time. I think that's missing in a lot of people's lives. So, get outside, get natural light, get fresh air, get into natural spaces. Also, as we're looking for variety in our surroundings, we also need that variety in our food. So the people that do the best in my program that seem to have the best benefits, see the most weight loss, the most health improvements, are the ones that have the widest diversity on their plates. Their plates have at least six or seven different plant foods. Ideally, we're looking for twelve to 15 different plant foods per day, like that much variety per day.
[00:27:41.180] - Speaker 3
And for a lot of people, that seems really overwhelming. It but it could even just be like two baby carrots would count as that and then using fresh herbs. Variety and diversity in your diet. And I think we don't have to be so obsessed about, well, where am I getting my potassium and where am I getting my magnesium and where am I getting this vitamin and that vitamin? If we eat a wide variety of foods and we're seeing a lot of color and texture on our plates, then we don't have to overthink it. It's back to that intuitive, am I getting all of these different colors? Then I know that I'm also getting all of those different nutrients. I don't have to be so scientific about it.
[00:28:18.360] - Speaker 1
If somebody in our figgi community would like to know more or join your coaching program, what do they do and how do they go about it?
[00:28:26.170] - Speaker 3
Well, they could go to Heart Wellnesscoaching.com, and that's just my basic website. And there's links on there to schedule a discovery call with me. So, there's multiple places and just click on the discovery call and they'll take them to my calendar and they can schedule a discovery call. They can also follow me on Facebook. I'm just heart wellness coaching on Facebook. And I'm heart wellness coach on Instagram. And I'm heart wellness coach on TikTok. So, they can find me on all those platforms and reach out to me on those platforms as well.
[00:28:57.380] - Speaker 1
And on your Instagram grid, they can also see some of those amazing recipes.
[00:29:00.860] - Speaker 3
Yes, absolutely. Yes.
[00:29:03.380] - Speaker 1
Okay, so don't worry, , if you're driving, all of the links, as always, will be in the episode description. So just go back, look at the episode description. I will take you directly to all of the links Angie just shared. Thank you so much for your time today.
[00:29:17.840] - Speaker 3
Oh, it has been my pleasure.
[00:29:19.680] - Speaker 1
I will see you again next time. But for now, remember, everyone deserves to celebrate.
[00:29:25.720] - Speaker 2
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