Low Carb Love 28 Day Program
Quick Start Mindset Bonus!

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t,
you’re right either way.”
Henry Ford

Welcome! This bonus training is designed to get your mindset ready for making some exciting AND lasting changes to your blood sugar and your health!

I wanted to start this training with the quote from Henry Ford because it’s one of my all time favourites. It highlights the key message I wanted to convey… The biggest factor influencing whether you will get results is your mindset.

The actual lessons you’ll be learning around eating Low Carb are important but no matter how good the material is, if you don’t approach it with the right state of mind, you aren’t going to see real, lasting changes in your life.

11 Mindset Management Strategies

1. You Must Believe You Can Change.
Here’s the thing. If you don’t believe you can make changes to your cooking and eating then it’s not going to happen.

But there is good news!

Everyone can get to a healthy place.

The key is to manage your thoughts and beliefs. Remember our Henry Ford quote… ‘If you think you can or can’t you’re right either way.’

If you have thoughts like “I’ll be miserable if I can’t eat bread”, you won’t stick to a Low Carb lifestyle.

So how do you overcome negative thoughts?

I have two techniques:

i. Turn the negative thought into a question.
So instead of ‘I’ll be miserable if…’, ask ‘How can I make Low Carb work for me?’

ii. Connect with your compelling reasons for achieving your goals.
Todays activity below is an exercise to walk you through this.

2. You and Only You Can Find What’s Best for Your Life.
You are a unique snowflake! Only you have your particular blend of taste preferences, genes and biochemistry.

These subtle differences are the reason why nutrition can be so confusing. It’s why there isn’t an easy one-size-fits-all solution.

The best part of this is only you can determine what is going to work best for you at this stage of your life.

It can be a little scary. But it’s also empowering. You just need to keep ‘experimenting’ until you find the approach that works for you.

3. Carbs Are NOT The Enemy.
Blood sugar spikes every now and then aren’t going to cause problems. It’s long term exposure to high blood sugar that damages your health.

There’s no need to swear off carbs for the rest of your life. And certainly no need to have a carb binge before we start the program.

What I am going to show you is how to make Low Carb a sustainable lifestyle choice. Not some strict diet that’s impossible to stick to.

If you love bread, or pasta. Or if you’re like my Irishman and can’t live without potatoes, it’s OK. In the program we’re going to find the balance between enjoying your favourite foods AND achieving your health goals.

I know this may sound ‘too good to be true’, but trust me, I’ve found the balance for myself. It IS possible!

4. No Forbidden Foods!
Food moralizing, or labeling specific foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is very destructive. And thinking of yourself as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for eating these foods even more unhelpful.

Eating broccoli doesn’t make you a ‘good’ person just as eating a brownie doesn’t make you ‘bad’.

With the Low Carb Love program there are NO forbidden foods.

If you really want to eat honey straight off a spoon, we’ll find a way for you to enjoy your indulgence AND still meet your health goals.

For me there aren’t any foods I ‘never’ eat, except maybe tripe. There are plenty of things I save for ‘special occasions’ like mangoes and pasta and sourdough bread and salted caramel ice cream. But nothing is ever completely ‘off limits’.

5. No Guilt or Shame.
The other part of not buying into food moralizing is refusing to feel guilt or shame around what you eat.

This has taken me a while to internalize. I find it’s so much more helpful to be kind to myself. I explore what happened as a ‘gentle detective’, trying to find out what went wrong rather than using over-indulgence as an excuse to beat myself up.

6. Quantity counts.
When researchers at the Australian research group CSIRO looked at dieters who had lost weight, they found the group who regained the weight had an ‘all or nothing’ diet mentality. So they were either 100% compliant or they completely ‘fell off the wagon’.

The group who kept the weight off for 12 months or longer saw healthy eating as a range of different options. They didn’t fall prey to the ‘what the hell effect’ which is when dieters binge after ‘screwing up’ their diet for the day.

The thing to remember is the amount you eat is just as important as what you eat. Having one slice of chocolate cake probably isn’t going to do much damage, whereas eating the whole cake in one sitting isn’t going to help.

7. Cooking is Fun!
Part of embracing a Low Carb lifestyle, focusing on eating real food, is that you’re going to need to cook. Or at least ‘assemble’ some food at home.

If you’re like me and love cooking, skip on to the next strategy.

If, on the other hand, you’re not into cooking, we need to talk. If you’re going to meet your health goals, home cooked meals makes it much much easier to get there.

So here’s my challenge to you…

Could you ‘reframe’ how you think about cooking?

Rather than seeing it as another chore, could it mean something else? For me cooking is a chance to relax and unwind after a long day. It’s an opportunity to indulge in some fun and creativity. Plus I get something tangible (and delicious!) to show for my efforts. So much better than an empty email inbox.

The more you cook, the easier and more fun it’s going to be. You can do it!

8. Real Healthy Food, (especially vegetables) Taste Amazing if Prepared Properly.
Healthy food has a bad reputation. Rice cakes and carrot sticks anyone?

Let me let you in on a secret… Much of the packaged crap that has been marketed as ‘health food’ isn’t actually good for us. And it usually tastes terrible.

Want to know what IS good for you?

Real food. Especially veggies. And as I’ve discovered over the years, some of the most delicious food is fresh ingredients prepared simply.

I want you to start thinking about vegetables in a different light. If there’s something you don’t enjoy, there’s no point in forcing yourself to eat it. Healthy eating is as much about pleasure as it is about nutrition.

If you haven’t liked a particular veg in the past, it doesn’t mean you won’t ever like it. It just means you didn’t like it prepared that way.

Keep an open mind.

When I was a child I HATED Brussels sprouts with a passion. But in the last few years I’ve grown to love them so much I’d have to include them in my top 10 favourite veg.

So what happened?

First, I grew up.

As we grow our taste buds become less sensitive and more sophisticated so we appreciate different things. But the biggest game changer was trying a different cooking technique. My Mum (who was an amazing cook apart from her sprouts) used to boil her sprouts which retains a lot of the disgusting sulfur flavours.

But if you pan fry or roast them, you get rid of the icky sulfur flavours. Plus you get lovely crispy bits around the edges to enjoy. It’s like a completely different food!

9. It’s never too late to change.
I love the Chinese proverb that the best time to plant a walnut tree was 40 years ago. And the second best time is now.

Don’t beat yourself up for not getting on top of your food habits before. It was your past that led you to be right where you need to be… Joining this program!

10. Your Health is a Journey Not a Destination.
One of the biggest problems with diets is that they focus your attention on getting to a particular weight or fitting into those jeans. So all your attention is focused on the outcome rather than the everyday changes that you need to make to get there.

But it’s way more complex than that.

Your health is the accumulation of your food and other lifestyle choices over the weeks and months. Not one point in time.

The good news about this is that there’s room for all the delicious and decadent foods you love in your (mostly) Low Carb lifestyle. That’s where the (mostly) part comes in.

You can have your cake and have healthy blood sugar too.

It’s all about taking a long term approach to find a sustainable balance and build your habits around this. It can take time but by taking small steps you’ll not only get where you want to go. You’ll be able to stay there!

11. You only ‘fail’ at something when you stop trying.
Making changes is hard. There will be setbacks along the way. That’s a given no matter how dedicated you are.

The key thing to remember is that you only ‘fail’ when you give up or quit trying. So the answer is to treat ‘failures’ as learning experiences or experiments and keep trying!

When you find yourself eating more carbs than you should, that’s not the time to quit. Use it as a chance to ‘double down’ on your commitment to achieving your health goals. It’s easier than you think.

Program Outline

We’re going to have a lot of fun over the next 28-days and beyond. Here’s a map of what we’re going to cover week-by-week.

WEEK 1.
WHY LOW CARB + GETTING STARTED
Food Theme: Breakfasts + Snacks
* Why Low Carb is key to achieving your health goals.
* What to expect as you transition to Low Carb.
* 20 easy, delicious, breakfast recipes including many egg-free and on-the-go options.
* 25 super satisfying snack ideas.
* How to read food labels and avoid the marketing traps.
* Mastering the shopping habit.

WEEK 2.
ORGANIZATION + PLANNING
Food Theme: Lunches
* 25 healthy lunch recipes to make ahead or prep at work.
* How to use habits to avoid the ‘willpower mistake’ and reach your goals without all the struggle.
* The art of organizing your pantry.
* Meal Planning 101 (including 10 weekly done-for-you plans).
* How to harness the power of intuitive eating to reconnect to your inner hunger and satiety cues (this huge!)

WEEK 3.
LOW CARB COOKING BASICS
Food Theme: Dinners
* 100 Easy, satisfying diabetic-friendly dinner recipes.
* The art of cooking without recipes.
* Catering for different diets without cooking extra meals.
* How to make your favourite recipes Low Carb so you’ll never feel like you’re missing out.
* Managing fresh produce and avoiding waste.
* Discover easy ways to make Low Carb meals satisfying.

WEEK 4.
PROBLEM SOLVING
Food Theme: Desserts
* 20 super satisfying Low Carb dessert recipes.
* The secret to discovering new treats and comfort foods.
* Navigating social situations and travel with ease.
* Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
* Problem solving for when you’re not meeting your goals.
* Making Carb cravings a thing of the past.

GRADUATION BONUSES
Weekly lessons to keep you on track including:
* Mindless Eating and how to avoid it.
* The Power of Fasting
* The truth about exercise.
* Plus MORE!

SUMMARY

In this training we covered the 11 Mindset Management Strategies to set you up for success:

1. You Must Believe You Can Change.
2. You and Only You Can Find What’s Best for Your Life.
3. Carbs Are NOT The Enemy.
4. No Forbidden Foods!
5. No Guilt or Shame
6. Quantity counts.
7. Cooking is Fun!
8. Real, Healthy Food Tastes Amazing if Prepared Properly.
9. It’s never too late to change.
10. Your Health is a Journey Not a Destination.
11. You only ‘fail’ at something when you stop trying.

ACTIVITY

Perfect Food Day Exercise
The best way to set your self up for success is to know exactly where you want to get to AND why.

To do this I want you to take 5-10 minutes and imagine your perfect day. Write it down and really visualise what a day of ‘perfect’ eating would look like for you.

Start when you wake up in the morning and include as much detail as you can. What would you do when you wake up. How would you feel? What would your ideal bedroom look like? What would you do next? Walk through your day in your imagination and write down everything. How your body feels. What would you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Where would you be eating? Would you have snacks?

What would you think about? How would you feel?

I’ve done this exercise myself whenever I want to make big changes in my life and it’s truly amazing how this simple exercise can guide you and help you achieve your goals.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: The Low Carb Love 28-Day Program is where I share my personal journey of managing my blood sugar eating (mostly) Low Carb. I am not a doctor and this information is not intended as specific advice. Please discuss with your doctor or dietician before changing your food intake. Especially if you’re on medication or have any special medical concerns.