Episode Transcript

Brittany Williams

McKenna: [00:00:00] Hi, everyone, and welcome to Health, it's personal. We are in our wonderful financial series and bringing you the best advice from some of the most incredible people on how to move forward in the start of this new year with some financial, practical wisdom. Today, we have an incredible interview with our new friend, Brittney Williams, the author of Instant Loss and creator of the instant loss brand, where she takes us on her journey, losing 125 pounds and doing it all on a budget. And so she has a lot of practical tips for us as we start to think about having healthier habits that don't hurt our wallet so much. [00:00:41][40.7]

Sean: [00:00:42] I loved everything about the conversation because it's also all about avoiding those fad diets. And just it's so useful for everyone trying to eat healthier on a budget no matter what your goals are, especially avoiding the counting of calories and just eating what feels good. [00:00:56][14.7]

Karen: [00:00:57] Yeah, she's a mom and a real person who's who started out maybe with some different experiences in her life and she was able to decide what she wanted for herself and just go after it, which I love. [00:01:12][14.9]

McKenna: [00:01:12] Yeah, we've talked many times on the podcast about how, you know, Mom, for example, grew up with the frozen food fad. [00:01:20][7.3]

Karen: [00:01:20] TV dinners. [00:01:21][0.8]

[00:01:22] Yeah. And I had similar experiences when I was really young. Luckily, we all got on board with the healthy eating when I was young enough to really have it make a difference in my life. But not everybody is so lucky and you have to really make that decision for yourself. And sometimes it can be really challenging. [00:01:37][15.8]

Sean: [00:01:38] And like we talked about with Britney, sometimes frozen is still OK as long as it's like vegetables and fruits, because oftentimes research shows that frozen fruits and vegetables can be even, you know, at least as good as fresh. So you can save a little bit of money that way. And it lasts longer, too, which is always my go to for a lot of fruits and vegetables. [00:01:57][19.0]

Karen: [00:01:58] Yes, Sean, I agree. And it's the frozen TV dinners from my childhood that we needed to shake. [00:02:05][6.4]

Sean: [00:02:06] They're also not good. [00:02:06][0.6]

Karen: [00:02:07] Yeah,. [00:02:07][0.0]

Sean: [00:02:09] They don't taste good. Know for the brownie, the brownie. [00:02:11][2.6]

Karen: [00:02:11] And the corn. [00:02:12][0.2]

Sean: [00:02:13] The corn. [00:02:13][0.1]

Karen: [00:02:15] Oh my gosh, my mom was a single mom and she was on a budget but also lacking in time. And I kind of adopted some of those habits and I never really had the confidence to cook. And so on my journey, it was much slower. But as I started making some changes in my own life and even McKenna, with all of her amazing cooking skills and experience, has taught me a lot as well. But one thing I haven't really mastered is eating healthy on a budget. I spend way, way, way too much money on food. And I just feel so thankful that she shared some really great strategies with us. Yeah, another thing she mentioned that I really resonated with is in our family, we celebrate with food a lot. [00:03:00][44.1]

Sean: [00:03:00] Yeah. And it's still OK as long as you acknowledge it. You're aware. [00:03:04][4.3]

Karen: [00:03:05] Except we have a lot of celebrations. [00:03:07][2.2]

Sean: [00:03:08] Yeah, well, especially these days. You have to celebrate. Yeah. Every little thing. Yeah. [00:03:13][5.5]

McKenna: [00:03:14] I mean there is a difference between an unhealthy level of comforting yourself with food and using food as a way to gather people and have more of a connection. So for celebrating and we're bringing people together, having a really beautiful meal that we've made and sharing something, there is such immense value in that, like we spoke about in our nutrition series. But if right now, when we can't gather together and we're coping by eating, that's not necessarily good for ourselves or for our budget. [00:03:48][34.2]

Sean: [00:03:49] So one of our great friends of the podcast, Robbie, as we always talk about, he's actually been doing something really fun with, you know, on that note, with comfort food. And they love going to Disneyland and Disney World. And since we can't do those things right now or we shouldn't, probably he's been making a meal from, you know, Epcot, where you tour around the world, every country. So he's doing a dish from the restaurants in each country. So he's kind of touring the world and Disney World all at the same time. [00:04:16][27.1]

Karen: [00:04:16] Oh, my gosh,. [00:04:16][0.4]

Sean: [00:04:17] Wish I thought was really fun. [00:04:17][0.3]

Karen: [00:04:18] I hope he made churros. [00:04:18][0.0]

McKenna: [00:04:20] Dole whip. [00:04:21][0.1]

Sean: [00:04:21] Yeah. Yeah. [00:04:21][0.1]

Sean: [00:04:24] Or the more wholesome, you know. [00:04:25][1.1]

McKenna: [00:04:26] Yeah, no I know what you mean. [00:04:27][1.1]

Sean: [00:04:30] Enriching meals. [00:04:30][0.0]

McKenna: [00:04:30] This concept of cooking for yourself is making things from scratch that you normally wouldn't. I think broths, you know, things like that, that you think oh I have to buy it, but we can totally make it ourselves. And in Britney's book, she explains that to and it's something that I've adapted to over the years that's really helped me and also something that I love that she said is that cooking is a learned skill. It's not something that you're necessarily born with like we all grew up with, but we acquire it if we want to, and we want to make those changes and I always think of this story how I was living in Australia three years ago and my boyfriend's mom at the time, I was in her kitchen and I was trying to be nice and cook something for the family because they had me over and there was like flour everywhere and like an egg on the floor. And it was all messy and crazy and nothing made sense or tasted good at all. And she turned to him and said, she's not a very domesticated young woman, is she? [00:05:38][68.2]

Karen: [00:05:40] Sorry, McKenna that's my bad. [00:05:41][1.2]

McKenna: [00:05:43] But then just last year, I was trusted to cook something in the Food Network test kitchen. [00:05:48][4.7]

Sean: [00:05:49] Yeah. [00:05:49][0.0]

McKenna: [00:05:49] So that's that was something that I had to choose for myself to be better at. And I and I learned. And you can too. [00:05:56][7.4]

Karen: [00:05:57] Yeah. And she makes really special things for holidays and we,she's our go to person now for everything food which I'm sure she loves. [00:06:05][8.2]

Sean: [00:06:06] Absolutely. It's been really helpful for the podcast as well. Really exciting. I loved this idea for the cookbook as well because I think it's so useful. Like Karen, you had pointed out that there's even the shopping lists because that is a huge source of anxiety or effort that a lot of people don't have the time or energy for- in that stops them right there. The shopping list. [00:06:29][22.9]

Karen: [00:06:30] Yeah, and not just the shopping lists, but also the price per four adults for each meal. So you know that you have the shopping list and you're not going to get to the store and it's going to be a hundred and eighty four dollars. She's like, this cost seventy six dollars the end. [00:06:45][15.1]

Sean: [00:06:46] Yeha, The end. And it will be so helpful growing up. My mom actually just reminded me the other day that we had a budget, you know, beyond living expenses. So for groceries, eating out anything extra like that of two hundred dollars a month, that was our entire budget. And so I think and this is, you know, the before before time. So things were a little less expensive, but still. [00:07:06][20.3]

Karen: [00:07:06] The days of your. [00:07:07][0.6]

Sean: [00:07:08] Not that long ago. So I was just kind of thinking about that would fit very nicely in. Even if you already have a specific budget, you can easily fit that in. Like you said, you can look at that shopping list and see exactly how much that thing will probably cost. [00:07:20][12.4]

Karen: [00:07:21] Before you walk out the door. [00:07:22][1.1]

Sean: [00:07:22] Before or before you walk into the door. [00:07:24][1.7]

Karen: [00:07:24] One thing I really liked about our conversation with her is the education process. And I think the things that I've learned along the way, I've shared with McKenna and she's gathered more and now she knows and understands things. And it's really exciting to think about how her kids will think about food. When I was a kid, we had to clean our whole entire plate or, you know, we didn't know and understand what ingredients were in different labels. So I thought that was so cool that Britney's kids do. And then also my grandkids will. And I love that. Yeah, I think we're really educating our young people to know how food makes them feel and to understand where it comes from and to know how it impacts our planet. [00:08:08][43.8]

Sean: [00:08:08] I loved that conversation so much. And like you said, teaching the kids and how she has her kids involved in that whole process. They love going grocery shopping. I remember going with my mom on the base and we would go through all the she had the whole folio with all the coupons that she had clipped throughout the week. And we had organized and kind of match things. And then we'd find any of the extra coupons on the store and we'd kind of talk about that side. [00:08:33][24.1]

Karen: [00:08:33] That's a great way to teach kids about money, too. [00:08:36][2.2]

Sean: [00:08:36] Yeah. And then also, like you said, the health related things to you reading the label and just educating yourself. How does this food make me feel? Why do I want this food? [00:08:46][9.5]

Karen: [00:08:46] Yeah. [00:08:46][0.0]

Sean: [00:08:48] Put that in the cart. [00:08:48][0.2]

Karen: [00:08:49] Yeah. Am I using this as a Band-Aid for something? [00:08:51][2.4]

McKenna: [00:08:52] Yeah. And help break the cycle. She has some really great practical wisdom on how we can help break the cycle of our generations and educate our young children and ourselves and really kick this year off in a great, healthy, financially savvy way. So please everyone grab a cup of tea and enjoy. [00:09:10][18.6]

Podcast Intro: [00:09:11] Health is harmony. When you're aligned to everything you believe in is when you feel that harmony, you feel peace trying to get to the root cause of things. There is just so much to learn. Can you be present in those moments in your life that need the most . Because, Health: it's personal? [00:09:29][18.7]

Sean: [00:09:31] Welcome, Britney. We're so happy to have you. You are a best selling author and have three amazing cookbooks. The latest is Instant Loss on a budget, you have shared your recipes on Today, Good Morning America, Woman's World and so much more. These delicious and healthy recipes were developed from your own personal health journey. Would you mind sharing a little bit about your story and how it led you to a different relationship with food? [00:09:54][23.3]

Brittany: [00:09:56] Of course, my relationship with food was kind of this carfoogled (sic?) mess from a very, very early age, I lived in a household where there was like a lot of turmoil and abuse and trauma. And one of the ways that we would kind of get over things or work through things instead of talking about it is that we resort to food. So there would be a huge blow out with my parents. And then the next day, the way they made everything better was, hey, we're going to have a carpet picnic and we're going to watch movies all day long. And it's from a very early age. I began to learn how to deal with my emotions and my feelings through food. [00:10:33][36.8]

Sean: [00:10:33] Right. [00:10:33][0.0]

Brittany: [00:10:34] I carried that with me and I really never understood why I was bigger than other people or why I had gained weight or why I couldn't fit into the clothes that my friends were wearing. I never really understood it because I never really associated food with wellness or body wellbeing. It was always kind of this comfort thing for me. Any kind of emotion, happiness, sadness. It was just the way that I was taught. And when I became an adult, I married a man who was raised by a really crunchy mama. She was very like granola, hippy-esque. Yes, she used a lot of essential oils and they ate organic and she had her own garden. And so he grew up very, very differently than I did. I grew up very mainstream. And my mom was a nurse and he didn't have any vaccines. I got all the vaccines like we were just radically different people from very, very different worlds. And the very first time we went grocery shopping together, he threw a loaf of bread into the cart. And I was like, well, why not this one? The ninety seven cent white bread on the shelf because I was one of seven kids. I'm like, you buy the cheapest thing. That's what you get. He's like well actually white bread, flour that's been heavily processed and it's bleached and stripped of all the nutrients and then they try to advisements back in. But your body can't really process those the same way. And I'm like, what? What what are you talking about? I never I never heard any of these concepts. I never heard it was like he was speaking a totally foreign language. I was just like, it's just bread. [00:12:07][93.3]

Karen: [00:12:08] Why are you trying to mess up my grilled cheese? [00:12:10][1.7]

Brittany: [00:12:10] Exactly. And that's when I really started to learn. And he was very, very kind. He never seen me. He never told me that you need to lose weight or nothing, even though he was very fit and and he would work out and he would drink smoothies for breakfast in the morning. And I was kind of one of those people that would like withhold all day. I wouldn't eat all day long. And then at night I would be completely ravenous. And so I would binge on everything, that was kind of my habit. So when we got married, a lot of things started to change. But the big catalyst was when I started having children of my own and I started to think about do I really want them to be raised the same way that I was raised where we really did grow up on like a fast, frozen, processed food diet. And because of that, I mean, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when I was 15 years old. And and did I want my kids to have these same things? And the answer was, no, I didn't. So I began to kind of change our diets for them. But I was still eating the same way. And it wasn't until my daughter was like four years old when she found fast food wrappers in the trash and she said, Mom, why do you eat this way? But we eat this way. And I was like, oh, no, I called out by the four year old. It was absolutely time for, like a huge reality check. And and I really did have to sit down and ask myself the question, which, again, I'm used to dealing with any hard emotions through food. I would I really just tried to bury everything down because I, I was taught never to feel anything unpleasant like this doesn't feel good. Well, you can just fix it this way. And that's what I've done my whole life. And when she asked me that question, I really had to sit back and go, wait a second, why am I willing to do this for you? Why am I know these are the best things? Like I know this I have the knowledge to do all this. I think all of us really do, but we just can't actually get to the point where we're putting it into practice. And that was the hard thing for me. But it was very easy for me to do with my children. It was very easy for me to make them have self control and make them be disciplined and make them, you know, like all of that was so that that was the hardest thing for me. And what it what it boiled down to was I didn't love myself in the same way that I loved them. I didn't care for myself in the same way that I cared for them, you know, like we won't let our kids play in the street because it's bad for them and they could get hurt in the same way. I'm very careful with my kids diet because the choices that I make now, I'm building a foundation for the rest of their lives and the choices I'm making now could affect things in their body that affect the rest of their lives. However, I'm willing to let myself play in the street and potentially get, you know, wrecked. So why is that? And I really had to do some soul searching and like, I had to dig really, really deep and start to, like, deconstruct everything that I knew about myself and this person that I had built throughout the years and realize I don't really think that this is the person that I want to continue to be anymore. I want to be a person who feels my feelings and processes things through healthy channels and not just relies on food to comfort me for for at all or to bury it all. And I really began the process of, like, unearthing myself. [00:15:36][205.7]

Sean: [00:15:37] That's amazing. [00:15:37][0.2]

Karen: [00:15:38] Yeah. And a lot of hard habits to break. [00:15:40][2.3]

Brittany: [00:15:42] Absolutely. [00:15:42][0.0]

Sean: [00:15:43] I was thinking for the kids is kind of like a fresh start for them, the clean slate. So maybe that's a little easier for you to kind of come to terms with as well, because you're thinking, OK, we could just start here from the beginning. Whereas for an adult you're like, I have to dig through all of that past stuff like you just talked about. We have to go through all of that emotional, you know, everything you've been through in life. And it's really amazing. But like you said, you have to get to that point where you have to, you know, get into that habit. You know, you have the knowledge, but how do I get to that step of taking care of myself and loving myself as much as I love others? And that's a recurring theme, you know, for whether it's nutrition, whether it's are emotional and mental health. And then I was thinking, too, because we've also talked in our nutrition series about, like you said, working through, you know, growing up with the processed food, the frozen food, the fast food. [00:16:30][47.6]

Karen: [00:16:31] Yeah. I mean, I think that we're all kind of trying to undo those habits that we had starting early on. And the busier our lives get, the easier it is to grab all of that process stuff or prepackaged things. And when you have a busy life or if you started with that foundation, it's hard to know even how to cook that type of food, cook or food shop for that type of food. So I admire you so much for having kind of the revelation and then being able to untangle all that and then make different choices for yourself. I think that's so cool. [00:17:06][34.8]

Brittany: [00:17:06] I think a lot of people look at it and they they assume that, oh, well, this is really easy for you because you you already liked these things because a lot of people come and they look at where I am now and they think that that was my starting point, but it absolutely wasn't. You know, sure I lost one hundred and twenty five pounds in one year through nutrition changes. But I had been doing work on myself, learning about nutrition, starting to cook food at home. I had been doing that for seven years before I was able to put it all into practice and finally make the change. So yes, even though it seems like it all happened overnight, didn't happen overnight, and it was continuously, like I always say, well, this is cumulative. [00:17:48][41.6]

Sean: [00:17:48] Yes. [00:17:48][0.0]

Brittany: [00:17:49] You're continuously living on something else. You know, really, you have to give yourself all the time and the patience and the grace in the world, because this really is I hate I used to hate when people say that I like it didn't it really, really bothered me because I wanted the magic pill. But it really is a lifestyle change you really have to dedicate, OK, for the rest of my life, I'm going to make this a priority because I know that it might not be what's most convenient, but it is what's best. [00:18:15][26.8]

[00:18:16] And so prioritizing what's best over what's easiest. That was like a perspective check for me. And it's crazy because then when you do that, you discover you get into the habit of things and it doesn't stay hard forever. It actually becomes really easy. So, you know, it used to take me in the beginning. It would take me like thirty minutes. Forty five minutes in the kitchen figuring out how to make breakfast because it would take me forever to chop the onions. I didn't really know how to chop them. It would take me forever to prepare a tomato and it would squish out all over the place like what am I doing wrong? You know, googling those things over time, like how do you properly chop an onion or how can I chop onions to save time and starting to incorporate those things and little by little incorporating all these things. Now I can go into the kitchen, I can whip up breakfast in ten minutes, and that's faster than going through a drive thru line. [00:19:06][49.8]

Sean: [00:19:06] Absolutely. And on that note, because you brought up all these amazing things already and we were talking about the organic natural, you know, all those wonderful types of foods. We've also talked a lot about the financial aspect of that. So as we know, like you said, buy the cheapest bread, you get the cheapest one. Right now, we've had the best time going through your latest book. You had such beautiful photos of your family, of the food, all these amazing recipes that are so varied and delicious and of course, all that healthy, lovely stuff thrown in there as well. What led you to considering the financial aspects of healthy eating? [00:19:41][34.4]

Brittany: [00:19:42] Financials has always been something I've been really, really passionate about. I again, I grew up one of seven. I was in a household of nine and we also used to foster. So we had three different foster kids and we had a whole host of dogs and animals. And and my dad was also disabled and so we were working, we were a single income family working off my mom's income alone and it just wasn't working. We live in Southern California and by the time I was a teenager, my parents had already filed bankruptcy two times. We always struggled with financials. So I had really dedicated myself to not ever putting myself in a situation where I would go into debt. Even as I was working my way through college, I literally worked my way through college. I was going to school full time. I was also working two full time jobs so that I could pay for school as I went because I was one hundred percent determined I wasn't going to get into student loan debt. I was just like, I don't care if I don't sleep, I will work. I will do that. I don't have to do this. So when I met my husband, he had a bunch of student loans. He went to school and he's a he's an engineer. And so that is like a four and a half year degree. And he had all the the loans that came with it. And so right away we started when we got married, we started trying to pay down debt. We had two cars. We had to pay off. We had a student loans and we were living in an apartment. But how do you do this? And what we really began to purpose ourselves to do was live below our means. Everybody says live within your means. And we thought we don't want to live within our means because we want to get ahead. And in order to get a you have to live below it. So we we didn't have TV, we didn't have TV channels. We didn't have streaming services. We had a thirty dollars a month phone plan that didn't have Internet access. We just had regular flip phones and all you could do was text and talk. We couldn't even send pictures, but we were like, you know, we just buckle down and if we just do this for a few years, we're going to be able to save so much money and snowball that into into debt. And that's where we really came up with our food budget to at the time, we were only two people. So we were like we could really survive on like seventy dollars a week. If we if we tried really hard, we could do like seventy dollars a week. And what I found was that we did and we were still able to buy like some junky stuff because we were only two people. But then you add in children and we started having children, we started having babies. And we were still concerned about paying all of these things off. And then by that time, we were also trying to, like, find investment properties that we could invest in and then maybe flip and sell or like rent out and be landlords. Brady read rich dad, poor dad when he was in college. And it had such an effect on him. And I read all the Dave Ramsey stuff. And so we were just like dedicated to finances. [00:22:27][165.3]

Karen: [00:22:30] That's awesome. [00:22:31][0.3]

[00:22:30] But by the time we had kids, I really found that I could really stretch seventy five dollars a week and make that work. But I still had this old mentality in my head that if you're eating healthy that that won't work. Yeah. What I really discovered was and a lot of times I found that to be true because I tried diets like keto that used to be called Atkins. And then I tried to whole thirty and I tried a lot of these diets that are really heavily like meat based. And they want you, of course, to buy like really premium quality stuff or stuff that's like ethically sourced and doesn't have antibiotics, which can double the price of what you're getting. You know, and what I found was, of course, that's an extremely pricey way to eat because you're consuming some of the most expensive things in the grocery store and you cut out all of the most cost effective, healthy foods in the grocery store, like beans and legumes and a lot of nuts. And so this time when making over our diet, as I got a little bit further along in life, I decided I'm going to leave all of those things in. I'm choosing not to be afraid of carbohydrates anymore. And I'm just going to go with if it was put here on the Earth, I feel like we're meant to eat it. So it's here. And it wasn't made in the lab, but it's not super heavily processed. I'm just going to go for it and, you know, we'll see what happens. It has to be better than eating McDonald's you know five times a week. [00:23:57][86.4]

Sean: [00:23:58] Yep. [00:23:58][0.0]

[00:23:58] Right? So I did. And that and that's how I started. And what I found was I was actually saving more money than I was when we were eating a processed food or more processed food diet. And a lot of that was because I started to cut out a lot of the more expensive things like cheeses, a lot of the meats that we were eating because we were eating meats like two or three times a day when I cut it down to we're just going to eat meat once a day. And then one day we're going to go completely meatless and we'll just see how it goes, which totally scared my husband. He's from Oklahoma. He's a down home country boy. And he's like, I have to have my meat and potatoes, you know? But I kind of, like, brought him over little by little and he adjusted. And now, I mean, we probably eat vegetarian three days out of the four days of the week now. And of course, it saves so much on your budget. [00:24:47][49.6]

McKenna: [00:24:49] Yeah, I think we're all seeing kind of a shift to Meatless Mondays and kind of cutting back a little bit. And I think that's such a great point because I think people who are kind of considering it or seeing their friends or family members are trying to make that change and feeling some resistance. I think if they heard the financial argument for that, that would kind of put them over the edge too. [00:25:13][24.0]

Sean: [00:25:14] That helps. And like you said, with everything else is gradual, right? You just do it a little bit at a time. Some people think you just have to dove right in and do it every day for. [00:25:21][7.2]

Brittany: [00:25:24] No. no, we we definitely didn't dive right in, we started with going meatless one meal a day and then two meals a day. And then it was like, okay, now we're going to try Meatless Mondays. And we started incorporating that. And little by little, I mean, I've been on this lifestyle change now for four years. So my life now and the way that I eat now looks very, very different than it did in the beginning. And that's what I always tell people about. Like, don't look at me now and don't don't compare your page one to my chapter 20. You no, that's not going to work. And your'e just going to get discouraged. And I don't want you to do that. So go back and look back. And I have a blog instantloss.com, and I actually started writing as I was losing. I started journaling and I started blogging about all of this stuff. So you go way back through the archives. You can see what I was cooking up in the beginning and what I was making at first compared to like how I'm eating now. But I just think it's so exciting to see the change because it's like there were so many foods that I didn't eat because I didn't grow up eating them and they were foreign to me and they were weird. And I just thought that I didn't like them. And when I realized what I, I didn't not like those foods. I just didn't enjoy them in the ways that I had had them prepared previously. I can pretty much find a way to prepare anything and make it edible for myself, which is really encouraging. And your taste buds do change. I mean, you crave what you eat. So you if all you're eating is a very like processed food or like mac and cheese and chicken nuggets and French fries all the time, those are things that your body is going to going to crave. But if you're eating a more whole foods diet, those are the things that your body's going to want. [00:27:05][101.6]

Sean: [00:27:06] Mm hmm. [00:27:06][0.1]

Karen: [00:27:06] Absolutely. I saw one of your post on Instagram that you said. I almost deleted this photo and it was the first time I held my nephew, I think. And I'm so glad that I did it, because you at the time, maybe as you started your journey, you didn't want to see the evidence of that and now you just feel so proud about it. So I love that. [00:27:25][18.7]

Brittany: [00:27:27] Thanks, I think that a lot of us are guilty of that going through our phones and deleting all of the angles that we we don't like, even if it means deleting the memories. And I really encourage people take the photos because you're not going to be where you're at right now. Today, in this headspace and in this moment for the rest of time, you know, you're going to grow and you're going to change and you're going to evolve. And there's going to be a point where you look back and that you wish you had the photos. And I've talked to so many people that say, look, it's not that I that I just wish that I had the photos of myself during my kids younger years. It's that I wish I had photos of my mom. And she's passed away now. And I don't have those memories with her because she wouldn't allow herself to be photographed because she was never happy with where she was at with her body. [00:28:11][44.9]

Sean: [00:28:12] Wow. [00:28:12][0.0]

Brittany: [00:28:13] We're constantly evolving and changing. And if you're not going to do it for yourself, do it for your loved ones, because there might come a point in time where those are the only memories that somebody has of you. [00:28:23][10.0]

McKenna: [00:28:24] Yeah, that's really nice. And I think, too, when we do have those thoughts about ourselves that, oh, that wasn't a good photo and I should get rid of that. We're probably not seeing ourselves very clearly and for who we really are. And then a few years, usually you look back and it wasn't as bad as you thought it was. So, you know, we don't have that clear head space all the time. And it's good just to kind of set it aside and come back to it. So you mentioned some misconceptions about healthy cooking and the finances required. Do you have any more? Have you heard any other misconceptions that you'd like to kind of debunk? [00:28:59][35.0]

Brittany: [00:29:00] I mean, I know that I a question that I get a lot of times is how do you find the time? Because there's there's the time aspect that comes in with this, too, that it is a time investment to begin to make and cook a lot of your own meals at home, especially if you're not used to doing that or if you haven't been taught how to do that. I think there's an assumption that people are just innately good at cooking and it's not true. It's a learned skill. And the reason why not so good at it is because I did it breakfast, lunch and dinner all the time for an entire year consistently. And you begin to learn like how ingredients go together and you begin to like, recognize trends and recipe writing, like, OK, all of your dry ingredients are getting it mixed first and then your wet ingredients and then you put them together. And these are like the trends in the way that you do things because it works out best that way. You know, like you begin to notice these things that you that you don't. Realize the threat because you just don't have the experience, and I really like to encourage people with that because I think it's a really big misconception that you have to, like, come into it being great at it already. But just like anything else, like I'm a songwriter, I'm a musician. And that's what I did before all of this. And when people used to ask me, how do you write songs? It's like, well, I practice every single day. I write something every single day, even on the days that I don't feel inspired. And then I don't feel like writing because just by doing it and putting it into practice, you're getting better and you're building on something else. And I tell people recipe writing and creating things in the kitchen, it's the same exact way. You just have to keep doing it because you're building. It gets faster, you know, like everybody, because it takes so much time, though. But you get so much faster at it when you're doing it consistently because that's how it is for everything. And I also utilize the pressure cooker, which helps a lot, because instead of having to have like forethought, the forethought out of, like, a crockpot where, OK, I have to take something out to thaw and then I have to put it in the crock pot and now it's going to take four to six hours to cook. And who has that much forthought? I definitely don't. I'm I'm a serial procrastinator and I procrastinate with everything in my life, meals included. So the pressure cooker is great because you can just throw everything in frozen and that's going to save you to having to buy fresh ingredients all the time. You can buy frozen inredients from in or make little freezer meal bags. Dumb them in If you don't feel like cooking pre-prep them, whatever is going to make you most successful, whatever is going to work best for you, that's what you need to do. It doesn't matter what the meal plan says. It doesn't matter how I- you need to adapt this to work for your lifestyle. [00:31:47][167.1]

Karen: [00:33:44] Some of the things that I love so much about your cookbook are that you have a meal plan and you put how much each meal costs, and that's for four people, is that right? [00:33:54][10.4]

Brittany: [00:33:55] Yeah, four adults. [00:33:55][0.6]

Karen: [00:33:56] And then you have a grocery list, and that's such a time saver right there. That's so brilliant. And I love that on each page rather than all of the calorie counting you have, how much it costs to prepare that meal. [00:34:09][12.7]

Brittany: [00:34:10] I tried to count for so long. I mean, I was a serial dieter for 15 years, off and on the wagon and every different fad and none of it ever worked for me. I tried counting calories and points and macros one hundred different times and it just wasn't really sustainable. And what I found is that those things matter less than what you're actually eating. I used to try to fit the crummiest food that I could into my calorie count and I was justified because like, look, it's within my calories, you know, like-. [00:34:41][31.5]

Karen: [00:34:42] Yeah, you're like, I can have eighty-nine olives. [00:34:42][0.4]

Brittany: [00:34:43] Yeah. You know, like you're you're not getting nutrients that you need. Instead, what I'm focusing now on is like simple things, like getting enough vegetables, eating the rainbow to make sure that I have a variety in the foods that I'm eating, making sure that I'm getting nutrient dense whole grains and and delicious protein and making sure I'm getting enough of all of those things. And I'm not so focused on any of the numbers. I don't count numbers ever. And people think that's amazing because they're like, well, how did you ever lose weight if you weren't counting your numbers? And I say, well, just look back a hundred years ago before they even knew what a calorie was, we didn't have the obesity epidemic that we have now. And people were in a much healthier weight range in general. How did they do it? Why? How? Well it was because the foods that they had access to were much different than the foods that we have access to now. And so we can kind of just take ourselves back to the beginning and and keep it simple and just say if it's real, if it comes from I'll eat it. If it's processed in a factory, maybe leave it out. And, you know, I, I think we tend to overcomplicate a very simple process. And the most complicated thing of it is, of course, when you add the human element and that's all the the past things that we've that we have within ourselves, the strongholds that we've created with food and the addictions. And those are the things that we have to break down when it when it comes to like the science of how we can continue to be healthy. I feel like that part is actually very simple. [00:36:18][95.1]

McKenna: [00:36:20] I love that idea because I think people do get caught up in fad diets. Of course, this is something we've been trying to overcome a lot over the last several years, and it can be just as simple as having a meal plan and making a grocery list and not getting so consumed with being perfect and getting things just right in the numbers just right. And as far as kind of the finances associated with that, how do you see meal plans and grocery lists and kind of small steps away from prepackaged foods help to stretch a tight budget? [00:36:54][34.0]

Brittany: [00:36:55] I think what we have to do when we're first going into it is we have to be prepared for a big jump, but then realize that it's going to be a small increase overall or we're going to see our budget go down overall. But at first it's going to be really scary because you're going to be restocking your fridge and your pantry and your freezer. And this is why I tell everybody you need to pick a way of eating that you can stick with the rest of your life, because if you're going to make the initial investment, which is the most expensive investment that you're going to make throughout this whole period, if you're going to do that, you need to make sure it's really going to be something that you stick with, because if you're just constantly hopping from one thing to another, you're making that initial investment over and over and over again in your cost of so much money. And I think that's how a lot of people shop. And that's where a lot of the misconception with, like, healthy eating is so expensive because that's what most people are doing. [00:37:50][54.2]

Brittany: [00:37:50] But if you just say, look, this seems like a really sustainable way for me and my family to eat, we're not cutting out any major foods. We're eating everything in moderation. We get to eat pizza and chicken nuggets and all of our fast food favorites, but we also get to eat other things that we're not really used to like brussel sprouts and kale. And like this lady says, she makes them delicious and her kids eat 'em. Maybe we'll try it like, yeah, you're starting to incorporate those things, too, but you really do. You have to realize that this is this is an investment and our bodies are a worthwhile investment. So we need to kind of give it a shot. So I tell everybody, be prepared for a shock on your first trip because it's going to be like three hundred dollars. Four hundred dollars. And you're going to be like, I can't I can't continue to do this every week. But what you're really paying for is you're paying for all the spices that you don't have in your spice cabinet already. You're paying the maybe some of the obscure flours that you don't already have on hand. These things that you're going to be buying consistently week in and week out, which are like your fresh produce, those are some of the cheapest things in the grocery store. I mean, like just look at bananas per pound. They're so, so cost effective and everybody can afford bananas. But it's these these things that we're going to be using little bits here and there that people get freaked out over because they're like, this is a twenty bag of almond flour. Well, you're not going to be buying a 20 bag of almond flour every week. You're going to be buying at once, maybe every six to eight months. Yeah. And then it's going to strike for a very, very long time. So we kind of have to, like, have long term vision instead of being so stuck on the short term. [00:39:27][97.3]

McKenna: [00:39:28] Yeah. And then do you have any tips or suggestions or things that you would urge people to do immediately or stop doing immediately to alleviate unnecessary costs? [00:39:38][9.6]

Brittany: [00:39:39] So some of my recommendations where where we can see the biggest change in some of these budget is to stop buying in small increments and start buying more in bulk. That's going to save you a huge amount of money instead of just buying, like even though the price is smaller, again, we have to have that long term vision because divide it out over time. You know, you're going to be saving five dollars, maybe ten dollars a month or every couple of months by by purchasing it in bulk. So it seems scary at first, but I swear to you like it, it works out well in the long run. And something that I that I'm very passionate about it too, is is trying to cut down on waste because a lot of the things that we're paying for in the grocery store packaging. And so if you can maybe go and find like bulk store like bins and fill your own containers, you're going to save there. Or if you can buy in bulk, like in Costco and then you have like this massive, huge, gigantic bag and you can divvy it out into, like, smaller containers yourself. [00:40:46][67.1]

Brittany: [00:40:47] I mean, you're going to be saving a lot on packaging there alone. I also like to let people know that you can you can buy the freezer stuff over the fresh stuff just with berries. I mean, take berries, for instance. Strawberries at the grocery store fresh are going to cost you two times as much as they cost you frozen in a bag like a big box store like Costco. I tell everybody, buy the frozen berries. They're still just as good, you know, and you can use those in smoothies. And my kids love to eat frozen berries. They just had frozen blueberries for breakfast this morning. We don't ever buy fresh berries ever in my in my household. If I need fresh or something for a specific recipe, then I'll just leave them out to thaw on the counter and then I'll... they're like a little bit soggier, but like, hey, I'm saving a ton of money here and I think a lot of people don't think that you can deviate from the recipe, but you can. [00:41:45][58.4]

[00:41:46] And I like to empower people with that, like use what you have on hand. Just because the recipe says that you have to use a certain ingredient, it doesn't mean that you have to use that ingredient, like if it calls for pinto beans, but all you have are navy beans. Use your navy beans! It's going to be okay, like start to empower yourself by, like starting to make these choices for yourself or like Googling and saying, like, can I sub this for this? Or like I coconut aminos in a lot of my recipes because I don't like to use processed soy, but a lot of people have soy sauce on hand. And so I tell them, look, use up the soy sauce until it's gone. Don't throw it away and then switch to the coconut aminos. If you want to, if that makes sense for your family and if it doesn't keep using soy sauce, it's really not going to be that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. You know,. [00:42:36][50.4]

Sean: [00:42:37] Absolutely. [00:42:37][0.0]

Brittany: [00:42:38] So. I mean, a lot of people have this all or nothing mentality that I have to do it exactly the way that she did it or this person did it, or I'm not going to have the same level or amount of success. And that's just not true. I color outside the lines all the time. Like I put out recipes and I tell you to make them this way. But the fact is, is that I rarely make them this way. I usually make them this way and this way and this way and depending on what I have on hand. So go with the flow, be flexible and start to empower yourself by beginning to make some of those choices, because that's how we learn. And even if you make a misstep or even if the recipe doesn't come out exactly perfect or yummy in the way that you think it should, or maybe I substituted too many things, that's OK, too. It's a learning process. And now you have that experience and go, OK, so maybe I can't solve this in this recipe, but now I know for next time. [00:43:33][55.0]

Karen: [00:43:34] Yeah, education's such a big part of it and also such a big part of any lifestyle change. How do you get your kids involved or do you get them involved in the process and have you educated them differently, obviously, than you were? [00:43:47][12.9]

Brittany: [00:43:48] Yeah, oh, absolutely. That's one of my my favorite favorite parts about this whole lifestyle change is seeing the difference in my kids then and the contrast at where I was at that age and where they are at this age. And it's it's actually very, very neat. And being able to teach them like, OK, you're feeling this way today and you also had an ice cream sandwich. Do you think maybe that's affecting the way that you're feeling or your mood? Do you think that maybe you're a little bit more hyperactive or you're bouncing off the walls a little because you've had a little bit more sugar than you're used to? It's it's amazing because my nine year old can actually articulate now she can say I really don't feel good or I'm feeling I'm having these feelings. But you know what? I ate this earlier today, and I really feel like it's affecting my mood and it's affecting the way that I'm feeling. And I can tell that that might be like feeling a little bit more inflamed because she has she has an inflammation disease. So she's like, I can tell my fingers feel a little bit more inflamed because I had some grains that I don't normally eat. And maybe that's not the best choice. I think I'm going to stay away and not eat those things for for maybe a week or two and then we'll come back to it maybe later and try again. And I'm like, that's so neat that you're able to articulate things these things that it took me 30 years of my life to start to articulate. [00:45:09][81.6]

Brittany: [00:45:10] And it's so encouraging. But we talk about it all and we repackages together. My kids know, know how to label read. They know what to look for in a recipe. They know they're trigger foods. And and again, this is not something that happened overnight. We started with a couple of things in the grocery store where we would we would like, OK, we're not going to eat this recipe if it has MSG. And so can we find a MSG on this box? OK, why is MSG maybe an ingredient that we don't want to eat? And they can articulate that back to me now. Same thing with like aspartame, artificial sweeteners and sugars. And we talk about high fructose corn syrup and, you know, like all the biggies and and just one by one, we would have like a new definition every couple of weeks. [00:45:56][46.1]

Brittany: [00:45:57] And now my kids go through and they love to go to the grocery store with us. It's like such a hobby now and they'll ask us for something on the shelf. But before we even say yes or no, they'll pull it off and go, OK, let me read the label. Oh, no, that has high fructose corn syrup. We don't want to eat that and the like. I can I think I'm like, that's so cool. Kids understand so much more than we give them credit for and they're so much smarter than they than we think that they are and they can really put these things together. And what's also really encouraging for me is being able to see how my children moderate their food intake. Kids come look like this kind of built-in thing where they just know how much to eat and when to stop. [00:46:38][41.6]

Karen: [00:46:39] Yeah, they don't even eat when they're not hungry. [00:46:41][2.5]

Brittany: [00:46:42] No, they don't eat when they're not hungry. And that's so revolutionary to me because I was just used to eating constantly all the time. But again, I really feel like I had a disordered relationship with food because I was using it to fix all of these other elements. Well, kids, if they're not taught that from a young age, if they're not, like, handed, "oh, you did so good. So we're going to get you cookies." "Oh, you did like this. The sad thing is happening. So let's order pizza. And we're going to binge out on ice cream and we're going to watch movies and be sad together." Like, I don't always think that it's bad to comfort yourself with food, but I think that we do need to articulate that that's what we're doing. I say that to my husband all the time. I'm like, you know what? I really feel like I need comfort right now. And I know that there's other ways that I can get it. But I really just wanted out of this soup. So we're just going to make this soup and it's going to come from my soul and ways that, like nothing else can right now and I'm going to be OK with using food in that way, you know. But but it really is. It's getting to the point of articulation. [00:47:45][62.7]

Karen: [00:47:46] Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of eating, you know, comforting ourselves and having fun and using food as a way to celebrate or all these other things, you know, pre pandemic. Of course, we use eating out as such a way to connect with people and have a good time. And it's hard to do on a budget, especially healthy food, eating healthy restaurants. I love it so much. But you leave there in your bills way too much. So do you eat out or do you mostly cook at home? [00:48:14][27.9]

Brittany: [00:48:15] I mostly cook at home. We do very little eating out for the same exact reasons that you said it. Also eating out really confuses me because they say you're just going to go through a drive thru line. Let's not even talk about a fancy restaurant. Let's just say McDonald's, because that's one that everybody likes to pick on. Well, we'll go to McDonald's and we can get like a ninety nine cent hamburger or we can get a seven dollar salad. But the thing is, is at home if I make myself a hamburger from scratch? It's so much more expensive than making myself a salad. It's so backwards. But what I have to remind people is that a lot of this fresh food, because these restaurants in these places are constantly having to bring new stuff in, whereas like the hamburgers, all of this stuff is frozen. So it keeps and it lasts forever and it never dies, which should be very scary to you. But this fresh stuff like the salad stuff that's they're having to truck in day in and day out because they have to keep it fresh. So you're you're also paying for that that's built into the cost. That's another reason why I like to eat at home, because I can throw a salad together. It's going to take me less time than it does sitting in a drive thru line, and it's going to cost me much, much less. [00:49:34][79.0]

Brittany: [00:49:35] However, we still do. I mean, like when when we go on trips or when we go, we still do have to eat out from time to time and then we just make the best decisions. I have a saying that I like to tell people all the time and I do the best you can when you can and not it's really become my life's motto. So when we don't eat perfect all the time, we just try to make the best choices that we can when we can. And if it doesn't make sense for that situation, then we adjust and we adapt. And we know that we're always going to go back to home base and we can get back to our level of normal when we when we get back there. But it really is it's very difficult to eat out and to eat well, eating out on a budget, it's very, very expensive or it's the same amount. And again, that frustrate that always frustrated me when I was trying to lose weight before somebody would say, well, if you want to eat a healthier version, just have a lettuce, wrap the burger. And I'm like, yeah, but then they don't discount the burger and give me the money back for the bun. I want the money back for that. [00:50:34][59.7]

Karen: [00:50:37] Yeah, for that bun that I don't even get. [00:50:37][0.6]

Brittany: [00:50:39] Like, lettuce is so cheap. It's like iceberg costs you nothing to wrap my my patty in so I should get a discount and if I'm not going to get a discount then I want my bun because I want what I paid for, but also but also realizing that sometimes it's better, like would we pay, would I pay five dollars if, if somebody could just like snap their fingers and I would magically lose ten pounds right now. Absolutely. Sure I would hand you my money but then we're not willing to like just have them leave the bun off. We have to eat that because it comes with the meal for free. It doesn't make sense. And when you're looking at it in that way, I always say it's better in the trash than it is in my belly if it's going to make me upset or angry, you know. [00:51:26][46.4]

Sean: [00:51:26] And for only 12 cents more, you can get... [00:51:28][1.6]

Karen: [00:51:30] You can get a stomach ache and be really, really mad. [00:51:32][1.9]

Sean: [00:51:34] The olden days of fast food. Sorry. [00:51:36][2.1]

Brittany: [00:51:39] Oh the good old days. My parents used to buy thirty nine cent cheeseburgers, double cheeseburgers for us, from McDonald's every Sunday, we would all get four thirty nine cent double cheeseburgers each. And then McDonald's, remember when they used to have those huge massive fries, like they were... It was a large, huge cup full of French fries. Those were the goold old days. [00:52:01][21.7]

Karen: [00:52:01] Those were the days. Yeah. Arby's used to have five, for five, for five, you know, five sandwiches for five dollars. So gross. [00:52:09][8.5]

Brittany: [00:52:09] Brittany, this has been so lovely. You have shared so much wonderful practical wisdom for us. [00:52:16][6.6]

Karen: [00:52:16] We love meeting new people and we love sharing stories. And yours is such a great one and we're so thankful for your book. So I'm really glad we connected. [00:52:24][7.9]

Brittany: [00:52:25] Thank you. Me too. This has been awesome. [00:52:27][1.9]

Karen: [00:52:28] Everything that you shared today is going to be so useful. So we really, really appreciate your story. [00:52:32][3.9]

Brittany: [00:52:33] Thank you. Thanks for allowing me to share with you and share with everybody else. This was so great. [00:52:37][4.2]

Karen: [00:52:37] Yeah, I have an amazing day and we'll be in touch soon. [00:52:40][2.2]

Sean: [00:52:40] Thank you. [00:52:41][0.3]

McKenna: [00:52:41] Thanks. Bye! [00:52:41][0.0]

Brittany: [00:52:42] Thank you. Bye! [00:52:42][0.4]

Sean: [00:52:42] Bye. [00:52:42][0.0]