Hello, I'm Kate Freeman, and this is The Daily Dollar. Transform your eating habits and achieve long-term wellbeing with ALA Health. ALA Health is a mobile app that combines micro-learning with meal planning into a seamless user experience that teaches you how to eat well for the rest of your life, one habit at a time. Download it now from the App Store.
It's free! On this episode of The Daily Dollar, we're chatting about key ways that you can create a healthy work environment through the routines, habits and behaviours you create throughout your day. Today, we're chatting about how to manage when things don't go to plan. It's dollop time!
Hey, hey, my name's Kate. I'm a registered nutritionist, and after 20 years, in the field of nutrition, I'm tired of seeing people stressed about eating and confused about where to start. And so, I'm changing the conversation. You deserve to feel confident in your food choices and empower to maximize your health.
Every weekday will dollop an episode into your feed, covering everything from busting nutrition myths, practical food ideas, my thoughts on trending topics, and habits for a healthy life. My promise to you, it will always be sustainable, realistic, restriction-free, and strictly no-woo. Only good science translated into easy, everyday advice. Let's do this.
Welcome back to The Daily Dollar Podcast, everyone. We are chatting about nutrition in the workplace, and today I would like to talk about the power of Plan B. And you know what? Plan A just gets so much glory.
But how many times does Plan A actually pan out? I feel that Plan B is really the true winner in the majority of situations, certainly for me. I don't know about you, but I frequently make plans that absolutely 100% do not go the way I want them to go. Plan A never happens as I've articulated or thought about to be.
We are always on Plan B. We are always adapting. We are always doing something different. Sometimes we're on Plan C and Plan D.
And I just think that culturally we have this idea that if we make the plan and then execute and follow that first plan, Plan A perfectly, then that is amazing. Gold standard, gold start, killing it life. But really, you know what? You know who's killing it life?
The ones where Plan A falls apart and they're like, come back with Plan B. And then Plan B falls apart and they come back with Plan C. They're the non-quitters, the ones that don't give up, the ones that troubleshoot, the ones that stand back up when they fall over. Right?
Here's to Plan B and C and D. And I just want to really reinforce this when it comes to making healthy food choices, consistently improving your diet quality over time. Plan B, my friends, is where it's at. Because it is absolutely unrealistic for you to expect yourself to just wake up one day and change everything about the way that you eat, or create a perfect plan of food and for it to go perfectly every single day.
There's just so many factors in your day that are completely out of your control that will derail your day. And so having a Plan B and having fallback options and having things that you can do when Plan A doesn't work is actually more intelligent and more practical than having Plan A, and then having Plan A falling apart and then you being like screw it and throwing out the window and just doing whatever and just winging it. And I can say this because I am the queen of winging it. My natural personality tendency is to wing things and not have a plan.
I'm 100% jump off the cliff and build a plane as I go. That is how I roll. And that has served me well in a bunch of different circumstances. I'm very intuitively led.
I'd say I've got pretty strong intuition, good gut feel. But it is not helpful to be like that all the time. And thinking things through is really, really important. But it's utterly impossible to predict what's going to happen.
And so what I would do is I'd have this epic plan because I'd really understand how important it was to have this plan. But if it didn't go to plan, I used to just throw it out the window and then just go straight back to gut feel and just wing it. Which would actually nowhere near be as good as if I actually was flexible, readjusted the plan, had some thoughts already to go for Plan B if Plan A didn't work out. So I think Plan B is the true winner in life.
It's the fall back. It's the trial and error. It's the try again. It's the I'll do something, you know, not quite as epic as Plan A, but it'll actually get me through to the end goal.
So anyway, just some food for thought. That's what I think about these things. And so when it comes to your nutrition, I also think Plan B is the winner here, right? Because it can really help you maintain a level of dietary quality consistency when life doesn't go your way.
So here's a bunch of things that might happen to you that might mean that you might need a Plan B. And that is maybe you have some days where you forget your lunch. You might not be a forgetful person. I am.
My brain is a sieve. And I'm not sure if it's just because it's a bit forgetful, or if because I just have a lot of things in my head. And I do. I think I have more things in my head compared to the regular person.
And not to be all like, I'm amazing. I carry things in my head. Sometimes I wish I didn't. I just do think I have a lot in my head, which does mean I forget things a lot.
I frequently, when I went into work, would forget my lunch. Sometimes you have a sick kid, right? And you can't go to work. Sometimes you're at work and you get called away from work to pick up your kid from school.
Sometimes your partner has something wrong and you have to go and help them. Sometimes a family member gets sick and you end up in hospital or caring. Sometimes the fire alarm goes off at work and locks you out of your building. Stuff happens and you just have to be cool with it and flexible enough in your plan to be able to adapt.
And that's where Plan B can really, really shine because we all have the days. And I think that when you are thinking about your food and you're planning your meals, that part of the process of building skills around meal planning and food organizations should incorporate a Plan B. And I don't know how I'm going to do it yet. But the ALA Health app that I created has a meal planner in there because I want to create the greatest meal planning app of all time, guys.
So stick with me, jump on, download, sign up, support that because that helps me develop it better. But I want to work out a way that I can build Plan B into the app. I don't know yet, but stay tuned for that. I'm going to do it.
Anyway, so I think you should be planning Plan B. You really should be thinking about a backup. You might be like, oh, but this might happen to me. I'm going to be super motivated this week and it's going to be perfect and my meals are going to be great.
Think about a backup plan, right? Be kind to your future self. Your future self could get frustrated, tired, worn out, be epically busy, have a curve ball thrown at them at work, right? Think about future you and anything that could come up for future you and see if you can provide a backup for future you.
And I promise future you will be very grateful to pass to you. So here are some great fallback meals and snacks that you can keep stocked around your workplace or your home. That can be really nice fallback actions when you can't follow Plan A, the Plan A meal plan. So the cool thing about these food options is that they have a longer shelf life.
So they are what we would call processed foods. And if you do the ailer health app nourish your body program, we go into detail on food processing whole foods versus processed foods. We can really understand this because it's actually not black and white and food sits on a spectrum of processing and how that processing impacts its nutrition. It's also only one aspect of a food that we can use to make a food choice.
So a lot of the foods for Plan B have had some processing done to them so that they can have an extended shelf life. They are easy for you to access and grab, but they still provide the body with a good amount of nutrition and can be part of a healthy diet. So don't let this idea of like, well these are packaged foods Kate, like get into here because the whole notion of like you shouldn't eat food in a packet is a very over simplistic, very poor, ignorant way of making a food choice. So here are some fallbacks to keep stocked in your food and pantry or your workplace.
Flavoured tins of tuna and cups of instant rice. These can make fantastic little mini meals that provide you with a source of complex carbohydrate and protein that are very easy for you to throw together. Is that the most exciting thing that you could eat? 100% no, but if Plan A doesn't go to Plan and you find yourself with no food or you find yourself working overtime late at night and you're hungry, hey, there's some food there that you can have that you know is going to provide you with some nutrition, tide you through to the next time you can have the meal that you really want to have.
Other ideas are sachets or cans of tuna and beans. So there's some really lovely like flavoured like tuna bean mixes, which again have that complex carbohydrate plus some protein and it just really really easy to have great shelf life. And both tuna and beans are very nutritious foods and the processing and the cooking and the packaging of those does not impact their nutrition. Cans of soup that have veggies in them, chunks of chicken or meat in them that protein are really great options that have great shelf life that can be very easy, tasty, satiating meals for when you just need something to fall back on.
From a snack perspective, packets of roasted father beans or roasted chickpeas are excellent tasty snacks, whole grain muesli bars. I really like the Carmen's range of muesli bars. They have really lovely whole food ingredients lists, individual packets of trail mix or those little boxes of nuts that come in like a little six pack of boxes. You can keep them at your desk and in your cupboard at work or at home so that you've got easy snack ideas for when you start to feel hungry.
There are also some really great like shelf stable meals that might be kept in your freezer like butter chicken or musselman curry or saute chicken or lasagna that can be ready to go. And you can check the ingredients list and try and find ones that have been made with more whole foods and they can be fantastic options. Cheese and crackers, packets of popcorn, fruit will have a reasonably long time on the shelf like you could buy a bowl of apples, a bunch of bananas that will last you the week and you've got them there at work to grab when you feel hungry. I mean, it might feel a little strange having like a mini pantry at your desk, you know, in your desk drawer, but seriously, you'll thank yourself later for stocking up.
The other thing you can do is thinking about what you have around you from a food purchasing option. Is there a supermarket? Is there a cafe? What food outlets are there?
Do some research and see if you can find menu items or food items. If there's a supermarket around that will be nice and balanced. We like to teach how to create a balanced meal as part of the nourish your body program and that a lot of health up. And it's such a fantastic model that you can apply it to food that you buy at restaurants and cafes and things like that.
Doing that kind of research can be great because if you got limited time, but you've got some money and you want to go and buy something, that can be an absolutely fine plan B. So have a go these week guys are planning some plan B under your plan A's and just have that back up there ready to go and tell me what it's like. We'll catch you next time. The Daily Dollar Podcast is proudly brought to you by Ayla Health.
Build food confidence and learn how to choose foods that are right for you and your body. Download the app today and build habits that last. As always, you can find out more about our chat in the show notes. You can also join the conversation over in the Ayla Health community group on Facebook.
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