— Tokie Williams

So I'm a chef not a nutritionist or a doctor. So, you know, everybody's body is completely different. I always say your diet's like a fingerprint. It's completely different from anybody else on the planet including your siblings, right you all grew up in different environments with different things that were going on in your lives at different times and your food that you had early in your life really reflects the way that your body adapts to food later in life. So everybody's diet's gonna be completely different. Do you need fats proteins and carbohydrates? Yes. Those are three essential things. You need to have every single day. I was laughing people that are like, oh doing a no-carbohydrate diet. That's like yeah, you're doing carbohydrates. Otherwise you wouldn't be here talking to me because your brain needs carbohydrates to survive. Well, they're talking about is, you know, processed carbohydrates and a completely different thing. So protein fats carbs, you definitely want all those things on your plate. Is it necessary to do it for every meal? Not really, but you'd be surprised that where you find those three things in every single, you know, when you're doing different, you know snacking or things like that as well, too. now when it comes to craving and overeating this is an area where you want to look at things a little bit differently, right? So you can make your whatever plate whatever recipes you want for dinner and for your lunch and stuff when you're looking at Cravings or overeating. Look at ways to be able to react to that a little bit. So like I said earlier with making your knees and plus and having things in the refrigerator. That's a great thing because I can go in there and get that like red pepper out and snack and a red pepper. Because there's barely any calories to it. Right just the raw red pepper as I just take it out and I'm snacking on it. I'm getting a crunchy Sensation from it. So it's appeasing some of the other senses. Right? So if you're looking for something like a snack. That's a great way to be able to do that. Now that works on Cravings too. So if you're craving something and you're like, okay really want that's something from an old diet right say it's like I'm creating chips. That crunchy Sensation from that red pepper actually helps with that when I worked with schools, you know getting kids to eat better things was always a tough thing to be able to do and now I had a teacher that I met one time as I was training them on different cooking techniques and nutrition and she said that she got kids to stay away from Takis which is like a little spicy sour chip. And their Hot Takis, which they're really into by getting them to eat slices of cucumber which had a little crunch to it, but then putting hot sauce on the Cucumber to be able to have that and then squeeze lime juice on it. So that was the way that she got them to really get this sensation of the really hotness that they really liked to be able to kind of challenge each other with and then they're really sour come from the line. Now what that's doing is it's helping with that craving at the same time too. So not saying you're you know, loving talkies or anything like that but looking at that flavor profile and then it's getting the crunch the acid and the heat out of those things. Those are great things to be able to replace a craving for that select set of kids. Now. I definitely challenge you to be able to do some of the same things in your own diet. If there's something that you're really craving you're like, you know what I just really, you know, you still like this dish and I don't have it anymore. Look for a plant-based version of that or a plant-based whole, you know, Whole Food plant-based version of it. You know, I just missed recently moved back to the Midwest after being gone for Wow about 25 years and there's certain dishes here that I totally forgot about one of them was it's like an Italian sausage with, you know, red and green peppers cut up and then sautéed with onions and put into like a big hoagie bun and I was like, wow, I totally forgot about that because I've been plant-based so long and even thought about it and being away from the West there's an exposed to it as much but being around family members, they're like, oh what would you do to be able to do that? And so I made it for them. What I did was I made a Satan sausage. With you know a little bit of red pepper flake and some of the heat in the Satan sausage and sliced it on the bias and then did my red peppers green peppers and onions and sauteed all those up and then put it into a whole wheat bun and then put like, it's like a I think it's called Jardine which is like a kind of an olive kind of mixture over the top and then put a little pasta kind of marinara thing over everybody's like this is exactly what we're looking for. And what I was doing was just replacing a beloved dish of theirs giving the same flavor profile that they're used to but it wasn't didn't have any meat in it and instead of using the white bun. I was using a whole wheat bun. I wasn't using oil in it the Satan, you know arguably it does have a whole week gluten. So it is processed in there, but it's not as bad as eating, you know, the original version just coated with all the oil and I think that the Jardine typically is like really oil heavy one right just chopped up different oils or different. Of in them and kept the oil out of it as well too. So looking to be able to appease those Cravings just look for an alternative version to be able to make those work. That was a little bit of a long answer Tookie, but I hope that helps.