When we take on a new eating venture, it sometimes seem overwhelming. And no where is this more evident than with every new batch of 10-Week Best Shape Challengers. It happens around Week 4 of the program (like clockwork!).

“I’m running out of food ideas! Tell me what to eat!” 

“Can you send us menu plans to make it easy for us?”

“Are we eating Paleo / clean eating / Mediterranean or what?”

And especially, “What do you mean we shouldn’t eat sandwiches? Then what do we eat?”

I always say ‘there is life after sandwiches’, metaphorically speaking (it could be anything inserted here, that is our ‘traditionally accepted’ foods like pasta, meat and potatoes, burgers and fries….).

See, our North American culture eats a certain way, which has become the accepted way. But many of us learned to break free of that years ago and eat another way. Today, I eat whole foods, close to the earth, with yes, the occasional glass of wine or treat thrown in. (Why not? I earned it, and eating too clean in my view is counter-productive to good health! Really! The body needs a certain amount of sway factor to stay healthy in body and spirit!).

See, when you first learn to adopt a different way of eating (or training or living),  it’s tough because your community that you live in, your ‘tribe’, all eat the same way, likely, and now you are stepping outside the boundaries of tradition (how dare you!), and you will be met with resistance. Much of that resistance often comes from your own brain, too. that’s because it’s  new territory. But we keep pushing through. We experiment.

In our Warrior Woman World of weight training and healthy eating, we don’t eat sandwiches, because we have learned to eat differently, outside convention, on the periphery. Do I miss sandwiches, or big plates of pasta, or mashed potatoes and gravy, or nachos, or salty fries? Actually no, because I am in a new eating place now, and I shudder to think about putting that stuff in my body, how it will make me feel, and how it will erase all my efforts in the gym. I have grown away from conventional eating patterns, accepted ways. Just because something is ruled by the majority, or is the ‘traditional’ way certainly doesn’t make it right (or better).

Keep plugging at this thing called healthy eating. Keep experimenting. Step outside convention. You really can eat chicken and broccoli for breakfast, and eggs and sautéed veggies for dinner. You really can just eat snacks for dinner. And in time, you will move from your world of sandwiches and fast food and burgers to our way, the Warrior Woman Way, where we eat and train more intuitively, we tread outside the lines. And frankly, we like it out here. No, we love it out here!

See, in our ‘tribe’, we’ve come to look at a sandwich and think, “That’s weird. I would never think to eat a sandwich!”. But at one time I sure did. I was brought up on them, like the rest of the world. But you can break free! And there is a whole community out there of freedom eaters! It’s simply about wearing a different pair of glasses in which you view the world, your eating, and your lifestyle as a whole.

If I had to ‘label’ how me and my clients eat, it would be a bit of everything, really. We eat with our intuition and honouring our body’s individual DNA structure. We eat Paleo, kind of….Mediterranean, ok, sure…clean eating…in a sense, low carb…in a way….ketosis…on some days…. (Do we really have to label how we eat? Do we have to define ourselves as a Paleo / Vegan  / Med gal / Zone aficionada / Low carb-er… (?)) 

So throw out convention, and labels, along with that sandwich. There’s freedom – and good eats – outside the box! Promise!

karen