Build Your Plate, Not Your Stress

We lay out a simple plate method for family meals: half vegetables, a quarter protein, and a flexible quarter for starch or extra protein. We share protein options, fiber goals, healthy fats, snack hacks, and prep strategies that cut waste and stress.

• half plate vegetables for volume and micronutrients
• clear protein choices including poultry, buffalo, beans, tofu, and dairy
• fruit as a daily side for antioxidants and sweet satisfaction
• fat, fiber, protein as the anchor trio for satiety and energy
• oil swaps toward olive, avocado, butter, ghee and away from processed seed oils
• omega-3 sources and tuna frequency cautions
• protein at breakfast to stabilize kids’ energy
• snack setups: yogurt parfaits, trail mixes, higher-protein options
• batch-cooking grains and browning meats for fast dinners
• crockpot shredded chicken as a versatile base for multiple meals
• simple, repeatable prep that avoids 75-ingredient shopping lists

If this episode spoke to you, please follow the podcast and leave a quick review. It helps other moms like you find our community and feel supported too. And if you have a friend who could use a little encouragement, share this episode with her.

Transcript

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Welcome And Episode Focus

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello and welcome to Unapologetically Mom, a podcast for moms of all stages. I am Dr. Jenny, here is my co-host Dr. Tony. We will be sharing tips, tricks, and unfiltered stories that will inspire, normalize, and educate moms during every stage of motherhood. Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy this episode.

Keep Meals Simple, Not Gourmet

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Eldapologetically Mom. As promised, we're going to talk a little bit more about um food planning, but more like building your plate specifically and different like meals and our kind of go-tos to make your hopefully spark some interest or spark some ideas for you and what you can do and during your meal planning. So last week's episode, I talked about um kind of looking at your food that you guys like as a family and kind of going through their list of what you guys like and then kind of trying to make a meal into that and trying to keep it simple. Um, I feel like less ingredients are better than making something like all these like gourmet meals, um, less likely to continue with that. So I have Dr. Tanya here, and we're gonna talk about building a meal. So all of your wisdom when it comes to building, building your plate, and so on and so forth. So I think what you just said is spot on is like trying to keep everything simple so that we don't overcomplicate and then have to go to the grocery store for 75 items that we're only using once. Once and also probably only part of, and then they sit in your fridge, and then you and she throw them away. And now we're wasting them. And so I a lot of times my suggestions will be just like you said, come up with a list of things that you don't like so that we can stay away from those, and then come up with a list of proteins that you like, vegetables that you like, and then I don't want to necessarily say side dishes, but side items. So is it like your everybody in your family loves potatoes, everybody in your family loves rice, everybody hates quinoa? Like which of those types of grain carbohydrate options do you like and which ones are kind of off the table? Because that will also help us decide what types of meals we're having. Um, it's really hard to have, you know, meatloaf and quinoa, like that's maybe not our choice. Like we would have meatloaf and mashed potatoes or um like fried rice with veggies and chicken or something. Um, and that doesn't go as well with mashed potatoes. So trying to think of themed ideas is also part of like the thought process, and it doesn't have to be hard.

Build Your Plate: Half Veggies

SPEAKER_00 2:55

And so I think that's maybe like the first point is let's think of our plate as a big circle that we're gonna cut into spaces. And typically what I will say is we're gonna fill half of it with a vegetable of some kind. So maybe it's a salad and broccoli, like it doesn't have to all be wrongly, yeah. It doesn't all have to be cauliflower, right? Like that's nauseating and gross because my kids would not do that. So often, like we'll do a salad mix plus we'll do a cooked vegetable, and that's half of our plate. And then the next piece that I want you to think about is your protein source. So for us in our house, it's typically either buffalo or chicken or turkey or some sort of you know, like meat product. Um, I don't want you to shy away from other fermented sources of protein like tempeh or tofu, if that's something that you enjoy. You could also put beans in that space. Um, I have a few black bean burger recipes that I really enjoy that can help fill that protein space as well. I don't like to put quinoa there, even though there's nine grams of protein per serving. Um, it just doesn't really hit those same goals that a full, like a complete protein does. Yeah, right. Like we're you're gonna get so much more protein out of four ounces of chicken than you are out of four ounces of quinoa. Um it's great as a grain replacer because we're getting extra protein there, but typically I would suggest some sort of meat that everybody enjoys. So a question first, like for me who I can do meat mo kind of. I'm getting better. I'm working on it. But like, what about like cottage cheese or like those types of things? Is that an okay option for protein? Yeah, especially

Protein Choices That Satisfy

SPEAKER_00 4:49

some of the cottage cheeses, like the either the low fat or the full fat, have like 17 grams for three-quarters of a cup. And if cottage cheese is your jam, then absolutely like 17 grams is great. Um, just know that you're getting about double that though with a chicken breast. I'm aware of that. Sometimes it'll be like, I'll do a little bit of chicken and then I'll do cottage cheese, or like I'll mix it together because I anyway. Protein or you'll learn about me. Meat is hard for me. Um, okay. Then what about like fruit? Yeah, so fruit I usually put on the side. Um, and so I think fruit can be part of every meal because of the antioxidant capacity. So, like for breakfast, for example, we typically will just do fruit on the side with every meal, like for someone to grab. Then we just use it, it's never like part of our meal necessarily unless it's like cooked in for some reason, but it's usually available and on the table for the kids to pick from. Um, and it when we're meal planning, like fruit doesn't add a lot of like bad, right? Fruit isn't going to make or break your meal plan for the most part, unless you end up eating the whole watermelon. Um, or you know, unless you end up eating like my kids will eat like the whole bowl of cherries. Then I'm, you know, okay, now we're rationing them. But for the most part, people aren't gonna sit down and eat, you know, an entire bowl of fruit with their steak. Yeah. And that's fine. It's a great add-on. It's a great thing to end dinner with. It can satisfy that sweet craving and that kind of sweetness that people need. Um, but it should be part of your daily intake because of the antioxidants, because of the vitamins and minerals that they that fruit provides us. Um, and so I always say just have it around, have it in a bowl, have it like washed and ready and cut up. Um, and maybe it is part of your meal plan because that's the only way you're gonna get it. Great, then let's make it part of the meal plan. So, for example, we did meatloaf, mashed potatoes, uh, broccoli, and then sliced apples. We do that a lot because it's easy. Apples are easy, my kids love them. This time of the year, they always reach for oranges and cuties, and I think they intuitively know that the vitamin C is good for them. So they'll eat three or four of them. Um, and and that's fine. And so we've got half of our plate of veggies, and we've got a quarter of our plate with a protein source. And then the other quarter of our of our plate could be one of a couple of things. One, it could be some more protein, it could be a more starchy kind of side dish, like a potato, a rice, a quinoa, or something like maybe it maybe it's beans and rice because you're having tacos. Um, and so kind of save that last quarter for whatever else you feel like, but it doesn't have to be complicated. Um, and it doesn't have to, like you said, contain a ton of ingredients. Like one yeah, you want ingredient. It can just it can just be an ingredient. Um, and as we're building this, the other thing that I like people to think about is fat, fiber, and protein. So we need fat essentially to not only slow down our digestion to help us feel satiated longer and to make us so that we don't feel like we want to eat in six minutes again. It also allows us to absorb more fat-soluble nutrients. So that vitamin A, D, E, and K, if we don't have any fat with our meal, we're not gonna absorb those nutrients as well. And we need those here for cellular health, for immune health, for vitamin D absorption. And then but we're talking like good quality

Fruit As A Daily Sidekick

SPEAKER_00 8:24

fats. Yeah. So what like what kind of fat would you put on your plate, or what would we consider a fat? So my my sorry to interrupt my question would be like if we are cooking with um like avocado oil when I'm like browning my hamburger or whatever, like does that count? Yes. Okay, yeah. So that would be considered part of your fat content and intake, or if you have a fattier piece of meat, like say you have ribeye, or say you're having um a T-bone or something, you're we can't separate the fat and the protein from one another there. Now, if we're having a lean chicken breast, super low fat. We need to add fat to that. We probably need to or something. Yeah, or maybe we put butter on our vegetables, or we add um, you know, cheese to our broccoli or or something to kind of increase that fat content of that meal just a little bit. Usually, um, somewhere around 10 to 15 grams of fat per meal is going to be really hard to stick to. So most people, I think, were probably looking for somewhere around like 20 grams of fat. Um, that would get us about 30% of our daily calorie intake. And then the fiber. So, where is our fiber coming from? So, not from dairy, not from meat, um, mostly coming from our fruits, vegetables, and and whole grains. And so we want to make sure that we're trying to get closer to that 30 grams of fiber every day, which I would, if you wanted to do one goal this year, like one challenge, even if it's just for January, would be to start counting your fiber and seeing if you're getting 30 grams of fiber. And I would I would venture to guess that most people are getting less than 20. And so we really have to fill our plate with lots of really good whole grains and vegetables in order to get that fiber in. But fiber does a couple of things. Um, some of the heavy, like high, heavy hitters that fiber does is it's actually supporting our gut microbiome and our gut bugs. It's helping our our gut bugs like thrive and they eat that fiber and they poop out vitamins for us, which is really awesome. So our gut bugs need the fiber to live and thrive and survive. And it also helps bulk up our stool so that we're not constipated. And it also helps us feel fuller longer because it adds bulk to our meal. Uh, and so those three things together really help kind of with your like round out your meal. Um, so we talked about fat. So good fats, uh like Dr. Jenny said, avocado, a good olive oil source, um, maybe uh an organic, full-fat dairy, butter, ghee, coconut oil, um things that I want to stay away from are things like processed seed oils. So sunflower, safflower, rapeseed, canola oil, vegetable oil. Um, so vegetable oil is typically canola or rapeseed

The Power Trio: Fat, Fiber, Protein

SPEAKER_00 11:29

oil. Um, it's like typically your liquid crisco, right? Like you should you should ditch that. That shouldn't be in your cupboard anymore. Um, margarine, get rid of it. It's mostly plastic. Um I mean, right, the anti-inflammatory, right? The good oils are anti-inflammatory oils, the bad oils make more inflammation. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, we need to have a healthy balance of omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Um, and that's like a whole nother podcast topic, uh, because some of those even plant oils are actually more omega-6, which is actually more inflammatory than omega-3. But we, you know, we what we did is we said, well, coconut or uh canola oil is bad, but all of these other like plant oils are fine, like olive oil, avocado oil, etc. Like, oh, these are all fine. But actually, they still some of them still have more omega sixes in them than what we truly need. And so we really need to focus on some of these omega-3s that we're not getting traditionally in our diet anymore. So things like salmon, tuna, sardines, walnuts, flax, and chia, those are kind of our high sources of those. And most of us aren't getting a lot of that, and we're getting a lot more omega sixes. Um, and so anyway, that could be a whole other salmon and tuna. Well, that's great. Yeah. I was just like, oh my god, I'm sorry. All in one day. Sunset for the week. Um well, and public service announcement most people uh shouldn't be eating tuna more than once a month. Um maybe twice a month, uh, because of the mercury content at this point. So unless we can get smaller tuna, um, definitely not more than once a week. So just as a as a thing, we want to it's like looting my life. I'm so sorry. I like tuna like twice a week for lunch. So easy. I know. It's so easy. It's high protein. Yep. What if it's wild caught? It doesn't matter. Ugh, dang it. I know. Yeah, I mean prefer wild cot, prefer smaller tuna. Um, but also I actually like to do canned salmon and turn it into tuna salad, like uh the same as I would do like a tuna salad. Um, and I have the good. I think it tastes very similar. Yeah. Okay. Maybe I'll try it next week. Okay. Anyway, moving on from my dilemma. Um, okay. So you kind of touched on this a little bit already, but what are like the top three things that you're like, we have to make sure these are included in our dinner, lunch, breakfast? Like, what are three things that you really want to make sure you're getting each day? You said fiber, yes. Whatever two others. Um, for sure, protein. So I think as busy moms and women in general, like we need the protein to fuel our bodies. We need the protein to fuel our muscle gains. Um, and we need the protein to help us feel satiated longer. It's also really great for our hormones and our body composition. Okay. Um, and then we got to think about our kids too, right? So we're making meals for our children and they don't require as much protein to uh like actually stimulate their muscle growth, but it's gonna fuel their brains and it's gonna keep their moods and their little body's blood sugar much more stable. So if we can always get a protein in, I think that's a really good thing to do. Our biggest goal lately has been to try to get some sort of protein in and breakfast. Yeah. I feel like when they don't, I notice a correlation that when they get home from school, they're like starving. Because I don't know that they yeah, we send snacks and we try to do good things, right? Like beef sticks and and and trail mixes and things like that. But they also do the pirates booty and the yogis and all of that stuff too. And I just don't know that they love lunch, right? Like they may snack on it a little bit, but I don't think they're like eating eating, and then we could have a whole other podcast topic on lunch quality. But anyway, they get home

Good Fats Vs Problem Oils

SPEAKER_00 15:22

and they're starving, and like they'll eat like an entire meal at 2 30 because they're so hungry. Um, so I do notice it's I have a little bit more time when we get home before they freak out if they have a little bit better, if they have a protein-related breakfast versus just doing like cereal. Yes. Yeah, and uh, you know, we do yogurt pouches. I won't lie. Like they're healthier ones. Yeah, we do yogurt pouches. The Stonyfield organic pouches, organic yogurt pouches from Cyclo. We freeze them overnight and send them for snacks so they're cold when they want to eat them. The other thing, and you may not agree with this, but like the Chobani smoothies, they have a brand at Costco now that has like a decent amount of protein that and like almost 20 grams that Finley will, our oldest will drink majority of it. Our youngest, it's hit or miss, but I'm like, she's she eats as much as I do sometimes now at dinner. So anyway, we actually started doing um kind of pre-portioning out yogurt parfaits, so I think that's a good idea. All my kids play hockey, and at Sports Arena they have yogurt parfaits there. Well, I know that they use vanilla yogurt and it's quite sweetened, and then they put fruit on the bottom. And so I found these awesome like hacks on uh Amazon, and so it's essentially the exact same container that they use at the sports complex, which for some reason my son is like obsessed with. And we found the granola at Costco that's uh the seven, seven days or the it's it's really clean, um, but it's higher in protein and it's got some chia seeds in it, and it's got some like dried bananas and chocolate and peanut butter, whatever. So we put that in a little cup on the top so it doesn't get soggy. We use the organic frozen uh berry blend from Costco. We put that on the bottom and I mix uh I take the whole container of the organic Greek yogurt from Costco. I think it's the zero percent, which I don't love because I do like them to get some fat, but it's the only organic one that Costco has. And I take uh a quarter cup of maple syrup and I blend it into the entire container, into the entire container so that it's sweetened already. But a quarter cup of maple syrup essentially ends up being adding about four grams of sugar per serving. So we go from probably somewhere of like 25 to 30 grams in the already sweetened version to about four grams in the version that I made. Um, and honestly, my kids would never know the difference. It's already sweetened. Sometimes we add some cinnamon, which also brings out some of that sweetness, and then I just make seven to ten of them and I shove them in the fridge. And whenever they want them, they can just go grab them and you just send me your container because the girls would love that. The containers are awesome, they hold really well. Um, and yeah, then we just bring them with us and I assume they're reusable or they throw these ones are plastic, these ones are whey. Yep. Either way, I think the girls would love that. We just send them to me freeze. Yes, those ones we have found we love. Um, and so I like to do meal planning like that as well because, like you said, I am sure your children are just as hungry as mine when we get out of school and they're like, Mom, where's our snack? And I'm like, Oh, I forgot one. And then it's you know, World War III, and I can't believe you're not feeding us. And okay, fine. So we also love the power packs from Costco with the nuts and the trail mix and the thing in it. Um, there's a little more sugar

Omega Balance And Fish Picks

SPEAKER_00 18:45

than I love, but I know that they're getting like seven to ten grams of protein. Um, and then they're getting some dried fruit, some antioxidants, like they're not eating chocolate, right? Like they're not eating bristled corn or fruit snacks with like zero nutrition in them. And so I do really love, I do really love giving them those. I have started making my own. Um, I found some little bags, like little compostable bags that I've been making trail mix for them in. And then I can add fun things. And even just like actually it was Monday, I had I put like five marsh, like five mini marshmallows in there. And it wasn't a lot, like it really was negligible in the sugar and and calorie content. But my kids thought it was like the best snack on the planet because it had five marshmallows in it, but it had cashews and it had walnuts and it had pecans and it had dried cranberries and dried cherries. And they were just like, Mom, can we have this every day? I'm like, Yeah, if I can remember to make it every day. Um, so I try to portion those out and plan those out ahead of time and put them in. We have these clear containers in our pantry. That's a disaster. Um, but I try to put them in there so I can grab them out for them. And with all the nut and pro uh peanut allergies at school, they don't get to bring them to school with them. So I kind of have them for them right after. School. Yeah. Um, okay, so back to the plate thing. Um and kind of like preparing, I guess my one thought would just talking about like actually food prepping in advance. Like, what do you food prep? Like, we food prep kind of like our grain for the week. Like we kind of pick we're gonna have brown rice or wild rice or quima's not really my favorite, but we do occasionally do that. And we'll prep that, make it in the steamer so we have that in our glass bowl in the fridge for the week, and then it's just easy to do whatever, like, yep, we're not having to prep that part every single night. Um, what other things are easy or that you recommend prepping in advance? Like for me, protein is, like I said, challenging. So, like Jeremy can eat the protein on repeat all week. I maybe can do it two or three times, yeah, and then I'm kind of done, which is where like the cottage cheese for me comes into play and is helpful. Um, but is that something that like you guys like would recommend or are we looking at like we'll do tacos quite often too? Yep. Um, but for I think for people new to like the the food prepping part of it, what are what are good tips for that? So I like to brown our meat ahead of time if I'm doing uh and only a few of the things, right? Because very similarly to you, I I don't really have a texture issue, but I really hate when meat has been reheated in unless it's a certain type of protein. And I I'm might be, I thought I was unique in this, but I think there's probably more people that just don't like to reheat, like I don't like to reheat steak, I don't like to reheat chicken breasts because they're already dry and gross. So there's very few things that I really like to truly reheat. Um, however, a few of the things that we can

Protein For Moms And Kids

SPEAKER_00 21:45

that I think actually freeze and reheat really well is ground hamburger, buffalo, turkey, and chicken. So we will go, and actually, right now I need to do it this week because I got them from Costco, is I'll get the three-pack of the grass-fed beef and I will brown it all, and then I will partition it out into what I'm going to use it for. So, like we have slated tacos, we have slated sloppy joes, and then the other one I have is for chili and it's unspiced. So it's just regular ground beef that I'm putting in chili. But all of that then happened at one time in a big pot, and I only had to cook it once. And we might not be having all of that this week, but I'm also hopefully having a baby soon. Um, and so I have been putting that meat then in the freezer labeled that says taco meat with the date, and then I can just pull it out. I love doing that because it's easy. Yeah, yeah. I have done in the past, and we do on Sundays usually for dinner. We'll double whatever we're having on Sunday for dinner to then have Monday as well. Because Monday now we have sports in the evening, so we need it to be like we can warm this up and this is all we're having. Yes. Um, but I have done where I have like a pan of ground beef, a pan of ground jerby, and a pan of ground chicken because I can do ground meat and that seems okay for me. Um, so I'm making all of them at the same time. So then again, same point that it's just all of the meat is done for that week. Um, if we do like a chicken rest or whatever, we typically will do it in the crock pot during the day. So then we come home and just shred it, and then that's done. So then we have our protein and our grain done. And then all it is is if we're gonna like steam broccoli or whatever the vegetable might be. And sometimes, honestly, like for Mondays, we did we just got a uh vegetable tray from Costco, and that was our vegetable for the evening because it was easy. We literally just pulled it out. The girls are snacking on that while forming everything else up in the microwave, and then whatever fruit we had, our girls are obsessed with cherries right now, but just trying to keep it again simple. Um, another really great one that I've done that I really love is because chicken is hard, right? I think chicken is difficult um because it can get so dry and kind of chewy and and weird, right? Like the texture can get weird. However, crock pot chicken, crock pot shredded chicken has become one of my absolute

Smart Snack Hacks For Busy Days

SPEAKER_00 24:18

favorite things to cook. Um and it's very you can make a lot of things with it. Yes. So I actually use the um the organic chicken breasts from Costco. I will get the three-pack, I will put them all in my crock pot. I put them in there in the morning, I add a little bit of like salt, pepper, garlic, and I add um you do chicken stock or breast. Yep. Yep, and then like a little bit of like chicken stock, broth, whatever. I put it on low and I literally let it go all day long. I get home, I take, I I don't drain all of the liquid, but I actually put the chicken breast in my uh Kitchenade mixer on paddle setting, and I shred it in the with the paddle. And then I have not only shredded chicken that everybody likes, because now I can do buffalo chicken, I can do shredded chicken tacos, and I can add salsa to it, or I can do like chicken salad or whatever it is. Like I can save some of those chicken breasts, and instead of like shredding them with the Kitchenade, I can just cut them up and put them in something else. And so it becomes a really, really easy way to cook chicken all at one time. And then also the way that it was cooked really keeps a lot of like the moisture and the tenderness so you don't feel like you're eating rubber chicken. Also, if we don't have a KitchenAid, I always have a hand mixer. Yes, and that works as well because I don't have a KitchenAid, but I use my hand mixer and it also works really great. But I so wrapping it up because we're like way over normal time at this point. But our point really like right simple, not make it really complicated. You shared some things to kind of keep in your like ideas and what should you make sure you're getting again, Tanya last time fiber protein and fat to fat. So um working with that in your in your food prepping as you're going through the next week. Hopefully we sparked some interest for you and stay tuned for our next episode. Thanks so much for spending a little time with us today. If this episode spoke to you, please follow the podcast and leave a quick review. It helps other moms like you find our community and feel supported too. And if you have a friend who could use a little encouragement, share this episode with her. Thanks for listening and remember, you're doing an amazing job.