Where Nutrition Meets Habits!

It’s Expert Insights Day here at 10almonds, and the main course is professional nutritionist-turned-lifecoach with her insights to meaningfully change the way we eat, for the better! Inside today’s edition:

• 2023 productivity trends (that’s the year, not the number of trends!)

• Claudia Canu, MSc. INESEM

  • Her mission

  • Her experience

  • Her guidelines

  • Her (free!) resources

• The To-Do List Formula—A Stress-Free Guide To Creating To-Do Lists That Work!

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Don’t Let These 5 Trends For 2023 Pass You By…

Healthy productivity specialist Aya Aiste Jokub (of Internet Ideas and VivoWOW) speaks from the experience of her fascinating career in, well, health and productivity (ranging from yoga to project management) to make sure we’re not letting these 5 trends in 2023 slip by us:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

We’re not going to make you guess, though, so feel free to hop directly to what interests you the most…

1. 00:53 Deep Work (periods of focus punctuated by rest)

2. 01:10 New Technologies (and how we can offload some of our work)

3. 01:35 Well-being & Digital Wellness (balancing things offline and on)

4. 02:01 To-Do Lists (and the various strategies around such)

5. 02:32 Autonomy & Flexibility (esp. re: remote work et al.)

🍽 MAIN FEATURE

🥗 Where Nutrition Meets Habits…

This is Claudia Canu, MSc., INESEM. She’s on a mission to change the way we eat:

Often, diet is a case of…

• Healthy

• Easy

• Cheap

(choose two)

She wants to make it all three, and tasty too. She has her work cut out for her, but she’s already blazed quite a trail personally:

In Her Own Words: My Journey To My Healthy 40s

And it really was quite a journey:

• September: Changes That Destabilize

• October: Looking for Focus

• November: New Habits

• December: Analyzing The First Results

• January: Traveling & Perfectionism

• February: Habits & Goals

• March: Connection, Cravings, & Organization

• April: Physical & Emotional Changes After 7 Months

• May: Reflections & Considerations

• June: Challenge Is Over

For those of us who’d like the short-cut rather than a nine-month quasi-spiritual journey… based on both her experience, and her academic and professional background in nutrition, her main priorities that she settled on were:

• Making meals actually nutritionally balanced, which meant re-thinking what she thought a meal “should” be

• Making nutritionally balanced meals that didn’t require a lot of skill and/or resources

• That’s it!

But, easier said than done… Where to begin?

She shares an extensive list of recipes, from meals to snacks (I thought I was the only one who made coffee overnight oats!), but the most important thing from her is:

Claudia’s 10 Guiding Principles:

1. Buy only fresh ingredients that you are going to cook yourself. If you decide to buy pre-cooked ones, make sure they do not have added ingredients, especially sugar (in all its forms).

2. Use easy and simple cooking methods.

3. Change ingredients every time you prepare your meals.

4. Prepare large quantities for three or four days.

5. Store the food separately in tightly closed Tupperware.

6. Organize yourself to always have ready-to-eat food in the fridge.

7. When hungry, mix the ingredients in the ideal amounts to cover the needs of your body.

8. Chew well and take the time to taste your food.

9. Eat foods that you like and enjoy.

10. Do not overeat but don’t undereat either.

We have only two quibbles with this fine list, which are:

About Ingredients!

Depending on what’s available around you, frozen and/or tinned “one-ingredient” foods can be as nutritional as (if not more nutritional than) fresh ones. By “one-ingredient” foods here we mean that if you buy a frozen pack of chopped onions, the ingredients list will be: “chopped onions”. If you buy a tin of tomatoes, the ingredients will say “Tomatoes” or at most “Tomatoes, Tomato Juice”, for example.

She does list the ingredients she keeps in; the idea that with these in the kitchen, you’ll never be in the position of “oh, we don’t have much in, I guess it’s a pizza delivery night” or “well there are some chicken nuggets at the back of the freezer”.

Check Out And Plan: 10 Types Of Ingredients You Should Always Keep In Your Kitchen

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Preparing large quantities for three or four days can result in food for one or two days if the food is unduly delicious 😋

But! Claudia has a remedy for that:

Read: How To Eliminate Food Cravings And What To Do When They Win

Anyway, there’s a wealth of resources in the above-linked pages, so do check them out!

Perhaps the biggest take-away is to ask yourself:

“What are my guiding principles when it comes to food?”

If you don’t have a ready answer, maybe it’s time to tackle that—whether Claudia’s way or your own!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

To-Do List Formula - by Damon Zahariades

The first part of this book is given to reviewing popular to-do list methods that are already widely "out there". This treatment is practical and exploratory, looking at the pros and cons of each.

The second part of the book is more Zahariades' own method, taking what he sees as the best of each, plus some tricks and practices of his own. With these, he builds (and shares!) his optimized system.

You may be wondering what you, dear reader, can expect to get out of this book. Well, that depends on where you're coming from:

Are you new to approaching your general to-dos with a system more organized than post-it notes on your fridge? If so, this will be a great initial introduction to many systems.

Or are you, perhaps, a veteran of GTD, ToDoist, assorted Pomodoro-based systems, and more? Do you do/delegate/defer/ditch tasks more deftly and dextrously than Serena Williams despatches tennis balls?

If so, what you're more likely to gain here is a fresh perspective on old ideas, and maybe a trick or two you didn't know before. At the very least, a boost to your motivation, getting you fired up for doing what you know best again.

All in all, a very respectable book for anyone's to-read list!

Pick Up Your Copy of Zahariades’ To-Do List Formula on Amazon Today!

Wishing you a happy and healthy appetite for life,

The 10almonds Team