In The Kitchen With Dan

Hello. There you are in the kitchen with Dan. And welcome. If you've been here before, say hello. If you're new around Cadre, say hello. If it's your first time. Here I am, Dan. I am a coach here on Cadre, and I am a life organization culinary coach. And last week on my live, I shared with. Well, I shared that there's an area of health and wellness that I have been ignoring, and that is my physical health. As somebody who is a lover of everything culinary, this is something that I've struggled with for a long time.

And in that struggle, I've come up with tons of great ways to focus on health as it relates to food and what we put in our bodies. But the problem is, I've fallen off track over and over and over. So it's like, I know what to do. It's. The problem is, how do I keep doing it? How do I stay on track? How do I take all of this information that I've gathered from over the years? I don't think there's one program that I haven't looked into, one diet that I haven't tried. I've tried so many different things over the years, and this is a struggle that I've had since, well, actually, since my adolescence, but the struggles just became more and more difficult.

So what I want to do is start focusing on my health, wellness as it relates to my physical body. I am extremely overweight. I quit smoking in my forties. I just turned 60. I had two surgeries that limited my mobility for quite a while. And in all of that, here I am, I've arrived at 60, and my physical health is out of control. I'm so good at helping other people organize their lives, organize their homes, organize their kitchens. But one thing that I have really let go is things that are related to my body and my overall physical health.

So, all right, so what I wanted to do is share with you some of the things that I have done in the past, some that I have done over the past week, and welcome you to share anything that you have, any system you've used, or trick or tips that you have for maintaining healthy weight and a healthy diet. So I'm going to share with you. Like I said, a couple things today. I welcome you to leave your tips in the comments. What I'm looking for is help from you, you people here at Cadre, we are a team here, and so I am going to rely heavily on my team, and I have already throughout the week.

So here's one of the first things that was shared with me that I implemented this past week. I am not good when it comes to drinking water. And so one of my friends suggested filling a two liter, which is what I normally drink, diet Coke, tons. To fill this with water. And there's something about holding the bottle, pouring it into a glass, and drinking the glass. It's. My mind thinks that it's diethyl. I mean, I know I'm drinking water, but there's something about just the physical movement, the way this bottle feels.

Also, it's a real clear indicator for me of how much water I have had and how much I still need. This can go anywhere in the car, in a bag. You don't have to carry this around. The whole point is we're going to get more water into our body all the time. And this has really helped me. So if you're somebody that drinks a lot out of a two liter, this is a great system. But overall, figure out a system that works for you. If you're not a big water drinker, try to make it a game. Try to flavor your water with lemon or lime.

You can flavor it with fruit. So there's a bunch of different ways that you can. That you can. There's a bunch of different things that you can implement to help you keep your body hydrated. And so I challenge you to look into those ways. If you're struggling with getting enough water, start thinking about how you can go about that and make it easier for you. Okay, so another thing, this is a great tip. When you're trying to eliminate carbohydrates, I'm sorry? To reduce your intake of carbohydrates, you never want to eliminate carbohydrates because we need those, right?

We need carbs, we need fat, and we need protein in our diet. And so anyway, to reduce carbs, this is a great trick for eating out. Most, any place you eat has a small salad, tossed salad, side salad. You can order a side salad and then any sandwich on the menu, order it with no bread. When the salad and the sandwich have them come at the same time, you take the contents of the sandwich. It can be a tuna melt. It could be a cold cut sandwich. It could be philly cheesesteak. I mean, it could be literally any sandwich, a burger on their menu, take it, no bun, and move it over to the side salad.

And then you've got a salad. You're getting your veggies, your grains, getting protein from your sandwich with no bread. So that is something that I really enjoy, actually. And I still order that even if I'm not focused or not doing well on my eating. So that's a great tip. Sandwich, no bread, side salad. Put them together, and there you go. A friend of mine told me, back to the water how important it is to drink a big, full glass of water when we get up throughout the night, our body's working away.

We're already dehydrated when we open our eyes. And so a big glass of water is really important to get everything going. If you put a little lemon in it, that's even better. If you want to drink it hot, you can do hot lemon water. So get a little water into your system as soon as you wake up, and you're better off. Now, this one thing that I want to show you today is the spiralizer. It's something that I have used and will continue to use. I'm going to be using it a lot more to spiralize. Veggies, zucchini, summer squash.

And another thing that you can spiralize sweet potatoes. If you are going for this potato and you want to cut down on your carb intake, sweet potato is a very great potato to go to. It's one that you want in your diet, and it's absolutely delicious. You don't need much on it. All right, so this spiralizer I like because it anchors to the counter, you just push that little button, and it'll suction cup to the counter. So now it won't move. It's got a bunch of different blades. The one we're going to use today is spaghetti.

It comes with tons of different options. You can do spaghetti. You can do wavy ribbons, you can do angel hair. But today we're going to do spaghetti. So the first thing we do is we want to take a cut off each end so they're flat. And I like to start with the small end first. And you want to mount this? Maybe I should do it sideways. Let's do it sideways. Yeah, for now. Then I'll move it over. All right, so we put this right here. Push that in, and then you get all the prongs here. You just push that in there and get it nice and sturdy.

Now move it around again so you guys can see. This is fun. This is actually really fun. All right, get our suction here. Okay. And then we start. Look at that. Wee. Right? You guys get the point, right? But look at this. These are so healthy. And if you replace your pasta with these, even your whole wheat pasta, you're better off with the veggie noodles. These are so fantastic in a lot of dishes. And here's a tip for cooking with these. Take your sauce, your favorite pasta sauce, and you can even indulge a little bit.

If you want to use a little bit of Alfredo mixed with your tomato sauce to richen it up, you can do that and not feel too bad because you're getting all your veggies instead of your, your carbohydrate, your pasta. So here's the tip. Add this at the end so you've got your sauce, maybe meat sauce or whatever, and you're cooking that in a pot. Drop this in at the end. Give it about two minutes in the sauce, not long because it'll get really mushy. If you want it that way, you can leave it in, but pull, pull this out of the spiralizer and drop it into your pasta, and it is absolutely delicious.

Try this a bunch of different ways and see what you can come up with. All right. So there are a couple tips, tricks that you can put into play. If you're looking into your physical health, you're looking into dropping some weight. I encourage you to follow me along. I'm going to be sharing my whole journey with you. And I started last week. I weighed in at 260 pounds. I am obese, and it's hard to say that sometimes, but I say it out loud because I need to hear it and I need to. I need to focus, and I need to be held accountable.

And that's where, where you guys come into play. So please leave a comment. Thank you, Brian. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed some of the tips and that you can use them again if you have any. And I'm sure there's people out there that have tons. Leave them in the comments for me and for everybody else. And if you're struggling with your physical health, if you need a little support, don't hesitate to reach out. There's always somebody here focused on health and wellness right here at codre. That's it.

We'll see you again next week and have a fantastic week and work some health into your plan for the week. Focus on your physical health and think about what you can do to make things better. Thanks again. Have a good week, you guys.