Listen to this Podcast
What 3 questions should you ask yourself before starting a diet?
I remember one of our clients at the gym that I own, had recently spoken to me about what type of diet would be best for her.
She was switching between intermittent fasting, the keto diet, and carb cycling. [side note] Intermittent fasting is not a diet; rather, it is a meal scheduling strategy. One can eat various types of food and still practice intermittent fasting. It just clarifies when you’re eating and when you’re not eating.
I told her there are only three questions that you have to ask yourself when deciding what type of meal plan, diet, or nutrition program [whatever word you wish to use which describes your nutritional habits] will be best for you.
1. What is your energy level with any particular type of meal plan? How are you feeling physically and emotionally?
2. How healthy is your digestive system? Are you able to process food efficiently without any additional gas, bloating or gastrointestinal upset? Are you eliminating waste on a regular and consistent basis?
3. And the most important question of all: Is this a way of eating which you could maintain for the unforeseen future while perfecting and adjusting it along the way or is it merely a quick 30-60 day fix so you can fall apart again and need another fix soon. An essential aspect of this question would be; is this way of eating conducive to your social life?
And if the answer is no, if this is some short term fix, why are you doing it? Why are you wasting your time? Why don’t you spend your time figuring it out? Figuring it out what works for you both energetically and digestively because we all need to figure it out for ourselves as individuals.
I hope this message serves you, time to get thinking, shopping, preparing and eating the food that is going to work for our bodies, our tastebuds, and our social life!
Inspire to aspire,
KJ Simpson
Get a FREE copy of my new book the All Inclusive Diet HERE
Like this episode? Please subscribe and share it! My blog, videos, and podcast are ad-free ONLY because you share my work!
Full Transcript
Transcript is as follows [undedited]
Welcome to the all inclusive lifestyle show where you will learn the secrets for cultivating energy and restoring balance and living in all inclusive lifestyle. And here’s your host, author of the bestseller, the all inclusive diet, Chris j Simpson.
Hey y’all, KJ Simpson here, and welcome to the all inclusive lifestyle show. How powerful are you feeling today? How powerful do you feel physically? First of all, take the time to think of a number between one and five, five being the highest, one being the least amount of power that you feel physically. So if I asked you to run up the stairs right now, what kind of power levels would you physically feel in order to complete that feet of running up a flight of stairs right now? Once you got that number, I want you to let me know what number from one to five you think you would be on an emotional level. So do you have a lot of feelings of gratitude, of, of joy, of happiness, of peace, of serenity right now, which would be a five or do you have more of the fear based feelings perhaps of a jealousy, envy, resentment, uh, anger, frustration, uh, all of the like.
So where would you be on that spectrum then combine those two numbers, five and five. It would be a 10. If it was a three and three would be a six out of 10. That is your power level. So again, how powerful do you feel today out of 10 on the power level meter as I call it? That’s a cool exercise that I start a lot of my days off and the inquiry leads me to looking at the way I am living my lifestyle. So I look at things like, okay, how much sleep did I get the night before? Um, how relaxed am I? How, how stressed am I about certain things and what are those things that I’m stressing or I’m fearful about? I also ask, you know, how have I eaten so far that day? Or how did I eat the day before?
Uh, am I eating clean food or junk food? Am I eating enough or too little? I also ask myself, you know, how am I treating myself on an emotional level? How am I treating others and my important relationships? I, I ask all of those questions based on the feedback I get in the form of a number or what my, my power levels are for that day. It’s a really great morning exercise, uh, and it can really give you some clarity of where you need to work in. Sometimes it’s really simple. Sometimes all I need to do realize that, hey Chris, you know, it’s time for another meal. Maybe my blood sugar is dropping for example. Or Hey Chris, you’re just going to have to bite the bullet today and maybe you can squeeze in an afternoon nap because dude, you only had six hours of sleep last night and then you know how you are when you don’t sleep, you are just one crabby s o B. So wherever your inquiry leads you, it will be advantageous just to know of where it’s coming from.
And also in some cases, what you can do about it and to change it and to basically become empowered and out of that disempowered state. If that’s the case or maybe you are feeling a 10 out of 10 which if you are today, by the way, that is amazing. You got to stay there. You cannot dip. The power dip is something that’s inevitable as we go on through the day and we encounter different people and different stresses from work to family, et cetera. So we really need to know, okay, what do we need to do in order to make sure that we can deal with people to, to the best of our abilities, to do our job, to the best of our ability. It’s going to take a lot of energy. It’s going to take a lot of power and how are we going to do that for me?
Well, obviously I got to keep that blood sugar regulated because otherwise I’m going to become very hangry as has been coined and we don’t like that. Nobody likes that, especially the people around me. Um, that’s just a little exercise. That’s not going to be what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about the three things I want you to ask yourself. If you are considering changing the way you eat, we could call that a diet. A lot of people have a hangup with that word. Hey, it actually has d I e spelled word, so I don’t blame you for not liking that word. Um, meal scheduling, meal planning, whatever you want to call it, just what, whatever you’re going to put in your mouth in, in such a, a planned or strategic way. I want you to ask yourself these three questions because they’re, they’re very, very important.
As you can imagine as a health coach. I get these questions all the time about different types of ways of eating. I remember one of our clients at the gym actually that I own, had recently spoke to me about, okay, Chris. Well, I’m, I’m really considering three different ways of eating. The first way would be intermittent fasting and intermittent fasting right now is become very, very popular. Uh, it’s, it’s sort of, um, it’s not a diet. First of all, it is just, uh, a meal plan or scheduling a way to timeout your meals. Essentially. It’s all intermittent fasting. It is, uh, because of course you could eat any types of food with intermittent fasting. It doesn’t clarify that. It just clarifies when you’re eating and when you’re not eating. So that was one question she had. She was also doing some research on carbs cycling, another way of eating.
she also was focused on a Keto, dieting. I think that that’s something that she was already currently, uh, trying to, um, to do as far as a way of eating the, uh, the Keto Diet. So she said, Chris, you know, where do you think I should go? And I gave her the same answer. It’s a, it’s a canned response because I get this question so much. I told her there’s really only three questions that you have to ask yourself. These aren’t questions that I’m going to ask you as a health coach. You really need to know the answers to these questions. You need to ask. First and foremost, how are you feeling energetically? So again, you know from one to five for example, physically and emotionally because we know the way that we eat also affects our emotions. Hangry as I’d already mentioned. So with that said, where are you from an energy level and do we have a comparable to we have, you know, the way you reading now compared to the way you were eating before.
For example, if you’re eating a typical Canadian or American diet before and now you’re on the a kito type of diet, then how is your your energy from, as I said, just like on the power level scale physically and also emotionally. How are your energy levels in the gym being on a Keto Diet and also how are they on an emotional level with your patients, with dealing with other people. For example, maybe your customers or your family members, your loved ones. So that’s the first question that I ask everyone to ask themselves whenever they’re considering changing the way that they eat in a second question, really, really important from a health perspective is this, how are you feeling? Digestively. Okay, let’s just say that you are feeling great as far as energy, both physically and emotionally. But what about elimination? Your digestive system, you know, one of its primary functions is not just to, to absorb all the nutrients that we’re bringing in through food sources, but also to make sure that it’s eliminated because if it’s not eliminated, it’s toxic.
And that is a really, and sometimes overlooked part of health is getting rid of our waste. It’s what our digestive system is so good at. If it’s in a healthy state and if it’s not unhealthy state, then we’re going to have digestive problems and they are going to be things like bloating or gas or just you know, upset in general but also in our ear regularity, not being regular with bowel movements for example. And uh, I get into that question with clients. I really ask them, you know, what is regularity for you? Because we know from health professionals that we should be eliminating everyday, each and every day and for not eliminating every day. Then that’s signs of a problem and we need to address that problem because it’s a serious problem as far as not getting rid of waste obviously. So I get them to tell me, you know, how is that going digestively for you?
And the third and final question, and I think that this really is going to seal the deal and it’s rarely ever looked at. It drives me crazy as a health coach that we’re not looking at this and it is this question, okay, maybe it is working today and that is fantastic, but more importantly, will it work tomorrow? What am I talking about? If it’s Tuesday, my talking about Wednesday? No, I ain’t talking about Wednesday. I’m talking about every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday from here on end 365 days a year onto the next year in the next decade. So on and so forth. Is this really a diet that you can evolve with that will work today and two more that this is not some silly 30 day gimmick that you’re going to sell yourself on because someone else sold it to you. Can you really take this on as being yours and develop it and evolve with it?
And if the answer is no, that this is some type of short term fix, why are you doing it? Why are you wasting your time? Why don’t you spend your time figuring it out? Like really figuring it out what works for you both energetically and digestively today and tomorrow because we need to get there. We can’t be jumping from different ways of eating to different ways of eating over and over again and an endless cycle as as you know, the diets from the past come back and now they’re popular again too. You know, new diets we haven’t even heard of and you just keep jumping to the next best thing is not going to work. It’s not going to work energetically for you because you’re going to suffer obviously from, from the state of shock that we put ourselves through our bodies three every time that we jumped from one way of eating to the next, we put a lot of hardships on ourselves as far as our, our mindset in our, our emotional health when we turn our lives upside down and try to, to uh, you know, basically shop a different way, cook a different way, eat a different way, um, socially going out and having to eat certain foods that, uh, those other people.
Maybe your friends, uh, are not interested in eating. Quick, quick side story here. I have a friend that’s on the Keto Diet and I’ll never forget it. We were in one of the best restaurants here in Toronto, absolutely amazing food. Um, incredible. And while we were eating, they did eat some of the foods that came out a sort of on on platters that we were sharing and he took out this bottle of, of MCT oil, which you know, I familiar with this and I used to use this back in bodybuilding for certain purposes, but it was just the strangest thing to see this, the supplement bottle of what we call a multi chain triglycerides or coconut fractionated coconut oil in a bottle and throw that on this absolutely well prepared food from a, from a, an incredible chef. And Anyway, you get my point. So these are the questions that we have to ask ourself when, whenever we’re really considering taking a new way or a new approach of eating.
I commend you for taking a look at that. I think it needs to be looked at, but I really think it needs to be looked at with a long vision with, with foresight, with, with sight into the future of what is going to work for you next year. Let’s start figuring this out. Okay. Figuring what out. Well, what type of of eating, what types of foods, what type of schedule, et cetera will give us the energy that we need and also give us a digestive system that is in balance, that eliminates toxic waste, that’s absorbing all the nutrients that we have to give it. These are really the critical factors in the really the only questions that I can think of that you ever have to ask yourself when you’re ever considering a new way of VNA. I hope this helped you out. I hope you’re really looking at your reading and your nutrition.
It has a lot to do with how we’re going to feel physically and emotionally. We got to put some time into this. We’ve got to put some research and we’ve got to put the trial and tribulation and faced the errors until we can get something on paper. A plan, a meal plan of sort that is going to work for us personally in our lifestyles are busy lifestyles. You know where we are, the convenience factors, the foods that we like, all of those things need to be in consideration when we are coming up with this master plan. Again, folks, I really hope that this inspired you.
The two aspiring hello friend. Did you like this episode? If you did, please subscribe and tell a friend about us and if you want a free copy of Chris’s new book, the all inclusive diet, along with three training in downloads on health, lifestyle and fitness, go to www.chrisjsimpson.com that’s Kris with a K K R I s j simpson.com and enter your name and email address to subscribe today to tell the next time my friends inspire to aspire.