What Is Healthy Eating?
In this episode of the Simple Nourished Living podcast, Martha and Peter explore the concept of healthy eating, discussing its complexities and the personal journeys involved. They share personal anecdotes about food choices, the emotional aspects of eating, and the importance of understanding that healthy eating varies for each individual. The conversation emphasizes the need for self-compassion in the journey towards better nutrition and the idea that cooking and food choices are a continuous learning process.
Key Takeaways
- Healthy eating is a personal journey with ups and downs.
- It’s important to lighten up on ourselves regarding food choices.
- What is considered healthy can vary greatly from person to person.
- Cooking is a skill that can be developed over time.
- A little indulgence is okay, but moderation is key.
- Feedback from our food choices helps us learn and grow.
- Healthy eating doesn’t have to be perfect; it’s about progress.
- Convenience foods can be part of a healthy diet.
- Understanding your own food preferences is crucial.
- Enjoying food is an important aspect of healthy eating.
What Is Healthy Eating? Podcast
Video Transcript
Martha McKinnon (00:00)
welcome to the Simple Nourish Living podcast. I’m Martha McKinnon and this is my brother and partner, Peter Morrison.
Peter Morrison (00:08)
Hi.
Martha McKinnon (00:09)
Hi, how you doing?
Peter Morrison (00:11)
I’m doing good, how are you doing?
Martha McKinnon (00:13)
Good. So our topic today is going to be what exactly is healthy eating? I know that sounds like a big one, but we’re going to talk a little bit about that because it’s a big one, but it’s sort of fun to think about and to take a look at. But before we do that, what’s new and good in your world? What’s going well?
Peter Morrison (00:33)
Well, we’re still recording ourselves. We’re still doing the podcast, which I believe we’re on number eight now.
Martha McKinnon (00:42)
Mm-hmm.
Go us, right?
Peter Morrison (00:47)
Right? Right?
We’re sticking with it and we’re giving it our best.
Martha McKinnon (00:53)
right? Even though it’s uncomfortable.
Peter Morrison (00:58)
Yes, getting more comfortable, but
Martha McKinnon (00:59)
Yeah, and I mean, right, right. And I think this is like so analogous to what we’re talking about with when you’re learning like any new skill, right, anything you’re trying to, to change in your life, there’s a there’s a learning curve, and there’s there’s ups and downs. So so we’re sticking with it. So that’s new and good. And I want to share what’s new and good in my world. We’re going to a potluck tomorrow. And I decided I wanted to make hard boiled eggs.
And then
Peter Morrison (01:27)
Eh.
Martha McKinnon (01:27)
And then I thought, hard boiled eggs, you know, because they’re so hard to peel. But I pulled out my Instant Pot (affiliate link) and I cooked my eggs in the Instant Pot (affiliate link) and it is just such a dream. I mean, I know it sounds like a sales promotion for Instant Pot and they’re not sponsoring this podcast, but they’re all it’s done. It’s they’re cooked, they’re peeled. And now I just have to, you know, slice them open and quickly turn them into deviled eggs. But
And I don’t use my, it was just a reminder, I don’t use my Instant Pot enough. I need to keep it on the counter because that just feels like, it’s just the little things in life that make you happy, you know?
Peter Morrison (02:03)
And I have had success and it’s on the website with air fryer hard boiled eggs as well.
Martha McKinnon (02:10)
Was it easy to peel
too?
Peter Morrison (02:14)
for me, they were, I tend to peel them under a little running water. I feel like it helps get under the shell and that little layer of whatever’s between the egg and the shell. Yeah.
Martha McKinnon (02:16)
Okay. Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
good. Okay, so we’ve got options and we do have an instant pot. I think it was Brenda who did that post for us, our sister, who did that really nice instant pot hard boiled egg post for us. we’ve got I think I’m going to just keep them simple. Do you have a favorite? Do you have something you like?
Peter Morrison (02:40)
Do you know how you’re gonna flavor them yet?
No, I like hard-boiled eggs or deviled eggs I should say. just, know, variety is good but simple is good too.
Martha McKinnon (02:53)
Yeah. yeah.
Yeah. So I think I might just keep them simple because I feel like there’ll be a lot of different flavors and stuff going on at a potluck. So I don’t know. Probably just keep it simple. Try not to overthink it. Just a challenge for me
Peter Morrison (03:12)
can’t really go wrong.
Martha McKinnon (03:16)
to not
it. So all right. So this topic of like healthy eating.
sort of comes up in my mind because you know we’re on this journey we’re trying to eat healthy you know we’re often trying to wanting to manage our weight you know and and healthy like healthy eating can be a real point like of conflict in our world have you noticed that?
Peter Morrison (03:38)
Absolutely. Even in your own brain it can be conflicting at times.
Martha McKinnon (03:39)
Yeah, that’s it.
Yeah,
so what kind of things happen in your brain to confuse you around? Is this healthy, right?
Peter Morrison (03:49)
Well, interestingly enough, yesterday we were out, visited a new place. It had several restaurants and we ended up at just a of a cafe with a varied menu, but it pretty much soup, salads, sandwiches, special, just kind of regular food. And nothing was really, I eat a lot.
Martha McKinnon (04:07)
you
Peter Morrison (04:17)
I eat a lot of salads at home, so I wanted something different, but nothing else was sort of jumping out at me. And they had a quesadilla you could get with either chicken or beef on the, I think it was on the appetizer menu. And I’m like, well, it just wasn’t really, nothing was really exciting me on the menu. So I ordered that and it was, felt, I picked the best choice.
I felt I could outside of the salad. And it just, it was kind of bland. was a disappointing meal, to be honest. And in part because it was loaded with cheese and it just, fell, was just, I think it was cut into four pieces and I ate like one and a half and just kind of tried to pick the chicken out of the remaining.
Martha McKinnon (05:01)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Peter Morrison (05:15)
But even in my brain, it’s like, you’re trying to eat healthy. And then, you know, we finished the meal and I just all afternoon, I felt like I had this lead ball sitting in my stomach and it was just not a pleasant experience.
Martha McKinnon (05:32)
So
emotionally disappointing because like I feel that like our calories are limited right and we want to enjoy our food and you’re paying for it and then if you’re that’s another thing you like you pay for something you’re not totally happy about and then you don’t
Peter Morrison (05:49)
And I’ve had quesadillas
in other restaurants that have been really flavorful and relatively light and very enjoyable. And this was just not that. And it was very disappointing.
Martha McKinnon (05:56)
Yeah
Not that.
Yeah. In a perfect world, think in a perfect world, we could take a bite and say, I’m thinking about that like, like I think a childhood, right? I don’t like this. I’m not eating this. I’ve only done that a couple of times in my whole life where it’s like, I don’t like this. I’m not eating it. I’m ordering something else, which I mean, can be very princess like to write. mean, and it’s like, it’s an economic consideration. I’m as well, but I
Peter Morrison (06:24)
Right.
Martha McKinnon (06:33)
I in a perfect world. Yeah, it’s hard to know what they perfect. There is no perfect solution. You just do the best you can. yeah, so this. So do you feel like it weighed on your mind too, like in terms of that wasn’t healthy, were you sort of with that running through your mind to like questioning your
Peter Morrison (06:49)
Only after I saw
the dish after it was put down in front of me and I saw how cheesy it actually was. Because it seemed like a lighter, healthier option. But once I saw it, I’m, yeah.
Martha McKinnon (06:57)
Yeah. And that’s like, yeah.
Yeah,
and it’s so funny because I mean a little of anything is good but a lot is not. I mean that’s one of my ongoing mantras and I think in America we kind of miss that a lot, like more is better. You know it’s always like if a little cheese is good then a lot of cheese is good and double cheese and I found
Peter Morrison (07:14)
Exactly.
Martha McKinnon (07:28)
I was reading something down here. I was reading about Deferri’s Pizza Suggestions around here and everybody gives their suggestion on how to order the pizza but with less cheese, like light on the cheese. So you kind of learn, you have to learn how to, like if you go back there you could ask for the quesadilla right? Less cheese or something to, but you don’t know that the first time out. So you kind of perfect it over time. So yeah, while a little cheese is good, you know, a pound of cheese.
Peter Morrison (07:49)
Right, right.
Martha McKinnon (07:57)
And it’s hard for you to digest, right? I mean, it sits on your stomach, like really heavy. Yeah. So, so healthy, you know, what is healthy? And we see it on our blog a lot too, because we try to share a wide variety of recipes, right? Because we’re all at different aspects of our, of our journey, you know, and, um, and so we’ll get comments like, well, sure, recipe, that’s not healthy. And we’ve been doing this long enough now. I mean, in the beginning, I was,
Peter Morrison (07:59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (08:27)
hurt and questioning myself and maybe guilty and feeling all these things and now I know there we go again. I’ve done it myself too, been a little judgy around what’s healthy and what’s not depending on what you’re thinking on any given day. I want to just talk about the fact that I think we have to just lighten up on ourselves and each other and let everybody decide for themselves what’s
healthy and what’s not healthy and I think a better question or a better way to better word is healthier versus healthy because like what is healthy? I mean it depends you know I’ve had we’ve had comments from a couple people who are trying to help people who have cancer like who are like totally underweight gain weight you know and try to feel better so what might be healthy for you know a cancer patient trying to gain weight might be very different from
you know, somebody who’s inactive, trying to lose weight, you know, so I think we just got to give each other grace and again, let everybody decide and decide for yourself like what is healthier or what’s the best choice I can make in this moment and then just like move on. It’s, you know, it’s just food. It’s not the enemy. It’s not your best friend. It’s, you know, it’s not the path to heaven or hell. It’s just, it’s just
food. It’s and keep it in perspective. Because, again, you could have somebody who’s very new maybe on their journey towards understanding like healthy eating. They may grew up in a family that didn’t provide any real guidance where a lot of fast food was eaten and convenience food and they have really not a lot of nutritional understanding, you know, versus people who have gone
have gotten to the place like we have friends that we know people in Northern like rural Northern Wisconsin who have organic gardens and they they can and they freeze and they’re they’re concerned about everything they’re putting in their body and they’re you know, they’re fishing for themselves and they’re raising chickens for eggs and they’re also butchering chickens and they’re they’re hunting deer and so that’s you know
They’re living a very, very different life than sort of the average person who’s just out shopping at the local grocery store, eating at local restaurants. And so there’s extremes. It’s a continuum. I think everything in life is a continuum. And you have to think about just where you are and where you’re trying to go and then just incrementally move in the direction you’re trying to move in.
don’t worry about people judging you. I mean the recipe that comes to my mind on our site is our slow cooker recipe. I’m a fan of the slow cooker and I like to cook. We have recipes on the site that are much more involved that require chopping and pre-browning onions or browning chicken and then putting it in the skillet and that’s good.
you know, and energy and you want to have more time in the kitchen and then we also have, I would call just the fix it and forget it, the sort of dump and go recipes. And one thing that I love that Rod really loves is, you know, chicken thighs, boneless skinless chicken thighs in the crock pot with like a can of cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup. I try to choose one of the healthier, you know, versions in the chicken for a few hours and it makes this nice gravy.
and it’s totally enjoyable. now a lot of people say, well, that’s not healthy. And my answer would be, doesn’t that depend on what the alternative would have been? Like if the alternative would have been to drive through the fast food fried chicken joint and get a bucket of chicken and the biscuits and the French fries and the coleslaw and chow down on it in front of the television.
Peter Morrison (12:46)
French fries.
Martha McKinnon (12:53)
versus sitting at the table with a candle, with a little music going, enjoying conversation, eating this simple but not perfect meal, I guess. What’s healthier?
So what do you think about that? Have you had that similar thought about the…
Peter Morrison (13:22)
I agree,
but we tend to skew more salads, more…
Martha McKinnon (13:31)
has a lot to do with it. You live in, you’ve typically lived for a long time now in warmer climates, right? Where the salad season is much longer in Southern California than it is in Northern Wisconsin. So those are other variables. when you’re in Northern Wisconsin right now, you’re going to eat differently.
Peter Morrison (13:34)
Yeah.
Right.
Martha McKinnon (13:54)
You you’re going to want, I think I tend to crave in a colder climate, I tend to crave more soups and stews and like more comforty warm foods versus when I was living in Phoenix, I like living in Phoenix all year, the salad season’s long, you know, and so, that’s, those are other considerations like where, you know, where do you live? What’s the climate like?
Peter Morrison (14:02)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Wow.
And in the salad, the salad does get tiring,
much to my disappointment the other day when I ordered the quesadilla, but I would have been much better off having the salad,
Martha McKinnon (14:34)
did you see salads? Maybe they would have been just as disappointing. I don’t know. Maybe. You don’t know. We always want to… That’s the other thing I think we do to ourselves as second-guests. So, you know.
Peter Morrison (14:38)
Yeah, that’s true.
But I do definitely agree that just because you open a box or a can and add it to your dinner doesn’t automatically mean it’s not healthy.
Martha McKinnon (14:58)
Yeah, I think we’ve got to be realistic. You know, I think and I think that that’s sometimes where we we get hung up. I think that like so many things in life, you know, you’re spending time maybe looking out at, I don’t know, these food experts, you’re looking, you’re watching food television, you’re looking at these glossy magazines. You’re getting the sense of what other people are doing, and then you’re comparing yourself to that. And you’ve just got to look at your situation and your reality and, know,
Cooking again is a skill in and of itself, right? And it’s not if you didn’t grow up cooking, it makes sense that you’re going to start with foods that are easier, right? And that I, again, I’m a big fan of Nigella Lawson and I loved one of her answers to this one time because there can be like this kind of food snobbery, right? And she’s a successful British cookbook writer, but she said, you know, I don’t like
Peter Morrison (15:40)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (15:57)
Just because I didn’t make it doesn’t mean it’s not good or acceptable or delicious, right? I mean, just because it’s not homemade, said, I don’t make my clothes, right? I go to the store to buy my clothes. I go out and gather and shop. So what’s wrong with finding foods that are easy? Because we live in a world where we…
Peter Morrison (16:09)
Mm.
Martha McKinnon (16:23)
If you choose to do everything from scratch, it’s funny. Sometimes we can get in these moments where we think we’re going to do those things. I can share with myself. Brenda and I were at this expo one time in Phoenix. You can get sucked into these demonstrations. Suddenly you see yourself living this whole different life. We totally got sucked into one day to this countertop wheat grinder, like grain grinder.
this fancy mixer that could make bread and made it seem so easy and I could totally, you know, a person who doesn’t really even make that much bread suddenly was the owner of a grinder. mean, so because in my moment, I’m, you know, I saw that that’s helped, you know, because they were selling health, they were selling that, of course, I mean, if you’re making freshly baked bread for yourself, right, that’s going to be healthier probably than anything you might be able to buy in the store. But is it
realistic and is it practical and are you really going to do it? And the answer for me was no. You know, so I had all this expensive equipment that just didn’t get used. Now in my little bit of a food snob and might I be shopping at a, you know, I have have our fountain now that I can make bread using the no need dough, right? Where you take flour and yeast and salt and water and you stir it together and you let it sit for a bunch of hours and then, you know,
you can form it into and then you bake it in the cast iron Dutch oven. So I’ve had fun with that. So that’s like me. That’s practical, but I don’t, I’m not, it’s just not practical. And so we can get lost in these and we can compare ourselves and we can, we can start beating ourselves up because we’re not, you know, growing our own wheat and, and grinding it, you know, and making bread. And if you want to do that, I mean, that’s wonderful. I mean, if you’re, if you’re, if you, if that’s really a passion for you, if that’s
Peter Morrison (17:54)
of them.
Martha McKinnon (18:18)
a priority that’s wonderful but you shouldn’t be comparing yourself or beaming yourself up because you are choosing convenience foods because the variety of convenience foods that are really sort of healthy is getting bigger and bigger, I think, as you go out shopping.
Peter Morrison (18:37)
Yeah, we’ve talked about that in the past,
more of a, what do we call it? Like meal assembly versus in heating up ingredients, combining ingredients versus from scratch.
Martha McKinnon (18:44)
Right. Right. So it’s.
right?
So in a knife forever have been, I mean, like the first meal like that that I really embraced was the rotisserie chicken, you know, from the store with the bag of salad and then maybe a baked potato in the microwave (affiliate link). Maybe it’s just the salad, the bag of salad that’s all contained with the chicken and then maybe some, you know, a little bread or something. And again,
is it healthy? it seems a lot healthier than you know, what I might have done again, which was call for pizza delivery, you know, so and it’s so yeah, so I just want to just make people open to the fact that they shouldn’t be so hard on themselves, that moving in this direction, you know, just think about and sort of think back on
Peter Morrison (19:24)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (19:44)
Is this a better choice? Is this a healthier choice than what I might have done a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, two years ago? And if I’m moving forward and I’m feeling good about myself, I’m moving in the right direction.
Peter Morrison (19:57)
Mm-hmm. And if it’s not, you don’t feel good after that meal, well, maybe try to make a better choice next time.
Martha McKinnon (20:05)
Right,
because it’s all learning, right? I I love that whole concept too of it’s like, because we’re totally we’re always learning and nothing’s ever going to be perfect. And we’re going to have bad meals and we’re going to make choices that in retrospect, we say, well, I wish I had chosen differently. And it’s like, oh, cool. The good thing is next time you can. Right. There’s no failure. There’s only feedback and there’s there’s learning. We’re continuously learning. And
Peter Morrison (20:25)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (20:34)
And if we can see it that way, think we get more resilient about the journey. We don’t get so hung up on the little missteps. And that’s ultimately we want to get to where we’re sort of happy and healthy and resilient.
Peter Morrison (20:52)
Very good.
Martha McKinnon (20:53)
Alright, well, thank you for tuning in everybody. If you enjoyed this, we’d love to have you like or subscribe to our channel and or let your friends, let your family know about this new endeavor of ours. And if you have ideas for topics that you would like covered, we’d love to have you leave them again in the comments. So thanks for tuning in. We’ll be back soon.
Peter Morrison (21:15)
See you next time.