Friday Q&A: Planning Healthy Meals and How to Stay on Track Even If Your Family Isn’t

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How do you commit and stay on track when your family isn't following the same plan? Here's what I will tell you is do not turn this into a battlefield because you might win the battle, but you will lose the war.

Here's JJ Virgin triple board certified nutrition and fitness expert and four time New York Times best selling author. It's time to reignite wellness.

All right. Oh, I love this question. Oh, Suzanne, I love this question so much. So Suzanne Pastrano From Facebook @JJ Virgin official says she asks, how do you commit and stay on track when your family isn't following the same plan you are planning? I see to go to start the Virgin diet soon. I am so glad you asked this. And here's what I will tell you is do not turn this into a battlefield because you will might win the battle, but you will lose the war. Now here's how you do this is you let them know what you're going to do. You ask them if they want to be involved. If they say yes, great, involve them. If they say heck no, mom, blah blah blah, then just say, okay, fine, no issues then. What I found is we have amazing recipes in all of our programs in Virgin Diet, Breakthrough Carb Intolerance, Breakthrough Food Intolerance, Sugar Impact Diet, and the cookbooks too. And so grab the recipes and start making them. Just don't say anything. They often are like, why are we getting such great food? You know, it's like if you don't make a big issue out of it, they won't. And if they want you to stock stuff in the house that's like not good for them, first off, I didn't do that with my kids. What I did with my kids was I taught them to eat the good stuff first. If we were going to do something like cookies, I made homemade cookies, but. Or I'd bring in so delicious 1 gram of sugar coconut ice cream. But if we were going to have something like that, we often went out for it. And so I don't think it's, you don't need to get an A plus on the diet. So if they want to have stuff, you know, I'm not going to keep things like Chips and garbage in my house. But we would have occasionally what I would consider treats in the house. But keep the good stuff around for them and don't make a big battle over it. If they choose to eat other stuff, they choose to eat other stuff. I'll tell you what's happened, as I've done this, is that they all come around. They start to see how I'm doing, how I'm feeling. They start to ask about it. They start to see if they can get some, you know, hey, could I start doing that? And next thing you know, they're eating that exact way. And this has happened with a bunch of my different friends over the years, with my family over the years. And so what I've just done is let them know what I'm doing and show them, you know, made it available to them, but did not force them into it. And, you know, they may or may not come around, but quite often I find they do. And I remember I had a family of four, and one of the sons was over was like, I think 100, 200 pounds overweight. It was. It was pretty extreme. And the rest of them were somewhere, you know, were in the obese category. And the mom and the son went on the program. The other two, the other son and the dad didn't want to do it. But they just started. They finally were like, okay, they're doing so well. And this. This actually looks pretty delicious. We'll just do it, too. And the next thing you know, everybody had lost. They lost collectively, like, over 300 pounds. It was, like, crazy, or maybe even 400. So involve them as much as possible. Give them the opportunity, and then just do your thing and have great results and see what happens, because you'll be amazed how well that works. All right, let's see what else is going on. I'm checking on Facebook, and then I'm gonna jump on over there to Insta. So Insta, if you've got some questions, let me know what you have. And Mary Dahl says, I've lost 40 pounds, but really need help and encourage it, please and thank you. Hey, Mary, are you in our JJ Virgin Lifestyle community? So if you are a member of any of our programs and soon, our membership that we're launching soon, I'm super exciting, excited about you, will get all of you will get all the encouragement, support that you possibly could need in our Facebook group. We've got my coaches in there, and it is fantastic. So if you've joined any of the programs, the detox, the breakthrough carbon tolerance Online program, Breakthrough Food intolerance. Online program, fast fitness. You're in there. Or you can join any of those, and the community is invaluable. Robin. Hi, Robin. How are you? So Robin dollar says, I'm starting to take lunches to work. Need lots of ideas. And actually, this question says, having to start to take lunches to work. I would say, whether you have to or not, this is something that you want to do so that you can control what you're eating and save money. And this gets super easy, by the way. And we have a promo. I'm not sure when you're listening to this Q and a, but we have a promo coming up. We're actually giving away a lunchbox because we here at JJ Virgin Team jj are big fans of you taking your meals to work so that you can control what you're putting into your chemistry lab. Here's the easiest way to do this. The easiest way to pack things for lunch is to make more of the dinner the night before. That's the most simple way to do this, is just to make more. And here's the easier one is always make extra protein. So whenever you're making a meal, make extra protein. And then I always have all these salad fixings. I personally love salads for lunch, and so I keep a bunch of stuff in the fridge that are easy to put into salads. Avocado, cucumber. I rotate between sunflower seeds and walnuts, carrots, onion, tomatoes. So have a bunch of different stuff in the fridge that you can easily chop up for a couple days and then make extra protein from the night before. Put the protein on the salad. Put your dressing in a little thing on the side, and it's. There it is. It's simple. And in that salad, you want to make sure you have a lot of deep green leafies, right? And then you want to get some starchy carbs in there. So that could be something like some chickpeas and then some healthy fat. So that could be things like the garbanzo or the nuts and then some of the protein from the night before. To me, that's the easiest, peasiest way to do this, because depends on how you're gonna be able to reheat something at work. May not be so easy. This is an easy one to do. Now here's another easy one. Same thing. You can use the leftovers for those siete tortillas, those cassava tortillas. Oh, my gosh. Shout out to that siete family for just nailing it on that. So Those siete tortillas are another easy thing that you can take to work to make some really yummy little burrito roll ups on. So that's another easy one to do as well. But again, I want you to think of leftovers because I like to maximize my cooking experiences so, so that I minimize my time in the kitchen. So if I'm making something for one night, it's just as easy to make it for two nights or for the next day. Just make it simple on yourself and think about your week. And we do this in all in the breakthrough carbon tolerance and breakthrough food intolerance online programs. You'll see in our meal plan. Same with the detox program that if we're meal it's used for multiple meals. And that's why just to make it easy. Also, it's about setting up your pantry for success. So making sure that in your pantry you have beans in there, wild rice in there, nuts and seeds in there, and then in your an olive oil, right? And then you always have some fresh lemons, some avocados, some little potatoes. Little potatoes are a great thing to bring to the office after they're cooked because the resistant starch when they get cold is so good for you. Oh, and tomato sauce, especially tomatoes, in jars, not cans. Keep all that in your in black beans. Keep that in your pantry and then your fridge, all the vegetables and your freezer, frozen vegetables, and then your protein sources. And it's just about being well stocked and then doubling up whatever you made the night before.

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