Episode 344: What a Functional Nutritionist Eats in a Day for Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free Meals
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What does a day of eating look like for a 40-year-old functional nutritionist focused on hormones, health, and longevity? In this episode, Erin shares her gluten-free, dairy-free daily routine, blending over 15 years of experience with her personal journey managing autoimmune illness and disordered eating. With practical tips and insights tailored for women in their 40s, Erin highlights how intentional, nutrient-dense choices can support both health and happiness.
Looking for more support? Join The Funk’tional Nutrition Collective for proven nutrition programs, hormone testing, personalized lab analysis, and one-on-one appointments.
In this episode:
Erin’s health journey [0:00]
Grocery Staples: Essential ingredients for gluten-free, dairy-free meal prep [8:23]
Breakfast and Lunch Ideas: Easy, nutrient-dense recipes for busy days [24:15]
Dinner Strategies: Quick and healthy meals with protein, veggies, and starches [38:31]
Snacks and Desserts: High-protein snacks and indulgent yet healthy treats [44:57]
Nutrition Programs: How to join the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective for expert guidance [49:15]
Resources mentioned:
Funk’tional Nutrition Collective (Join the Waitlist)
Eat to Achieve™ (Available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Carb Compatibility Project™ (Available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
The Boundaries Course (Available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Body Intentions Breakthrough (Available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Your Hormone Revival™ (Only available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Kion Aminos (Get 20% off monthly orders and 10% off one time orders)
Qualia Life (Get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)
Bon Charge (Use code FUNK to save 15%)
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK get a free sample pack with any purchase!)
Lunchbots (compartmentalized lunch box)
Palleovalley (protein bars)
Recipes Mentioned:
Civilized Caveman Banana Bread
Learn more about Functional Nutrition
Related episodes:
324: Using NAD+ to Support Aging & Longevity with Dr. Gregory Kelly
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Erin Holt [00:00:00]:
I'm Erin Holt and this is the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience and because of that I've got a major bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional healthcare model. They're both failing so many of us. But functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect, so I founded the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school and mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same.
Erin Holt [00:00:45]:
This show is for you if you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review and share because you never know whose life you might change and of course keep coming back for more. Hello my friends. How you doing? Glad to have you back. Did you listen to last week's episode about cortisol? It was a banger. I listened to that while I was lifting at the gym. I don't always listen to my own podcast, but when I do I enjoy them, so I hope you enjoy it too.
Erin Holt [00:01:29]:
Okay, today I'm gonna share with you what I eat in a day as a 40 year old functional nutritionist who also happens to be gluten free and dairy free. This episode is actually coming in based on a request. Somebody had requested a day in the life of gluten free dairy free eating. Now don't let that scare you because you don't have to be gluten free or dairy free to learn some things from today's episode. I make the same meals for myself, my husband and our 10 year old daughter and I have since we started this whole family thing together, since we decided to join forces and do life together 13 years ago. Same meal. And my husband is not gluten free. He's not dairy free.
Erin Holt [00:02:16]:
My daughter is gluten free but she's not dairy free. So basically everything that I'm going to talk about today, you can play like Mix Master Mike and if you need your gluten and you need your dairy, throw it on there, you know? Do you, baby girl, do you. All right, so day in the life of a 40 year old nutritionist. I say 40 because my goals are different than they were at 18. Okay, how about you? Can you relate? There are things that I'm thinking about now. Hormones, for example. Anti aging. I know we're not supposed to say that, but listen, I feel like I advocate for a lot. Like let somebody else take on the anti aging, anti anti aging advocacy work.
Erin Holt [00:03:01]:
I just, I am 40. I'm looking in the mirror, I'm saying, oh, okay, things are happening, things are changing. And so I'm going to just level with you. I'm going to be honest with you. Anti aging is a thing. It's a thing on my mind. If there's a way that I can eat to prevent accelerated aging, I'm going to do that. I am that vein.
Erin Holt [00:03:24]:
Okay? These are things that I just wasn't thinking about when I was younger. So I did throw that context on here. 40 years old. If you're 32 and listening, you know what, this can all still apply to you. So don't despair. If you are 35 plus, definitely pay extra attention because this is how I am training for perimenopause. I am in training for perimenopause and menopause. I am trying to make my life easier during that time by taking exceptional care of myself right now. Some other context, because this isn't just your day in the life.
Erin Holt [00:04:03]:
I'm a nutritionist. Like I said, I've been doing this work for the past 15 years. So a lot of what I do for myself is based on research for women's health, which is slightly different than research for men's health. I'm not gonna get too into like research or into research at all in this episode. This is more like an easy, breezy, quick hit. But you know, there's seven years of research based episodes that you can tuck and roll into if you want that. Now, for more context, just in case you're new here, I struggled with eating disorders from age 13 through 25.
Erin Holt [00:04:41]:
Anorexia and then bulimia. And of course that informs my approach to food and eating. When I was 30, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune illness. And the way that I see it, my approach to food and nutrition has allowed me to keep both of these things in remission, which I am just so grateful for. This is a gift that I give myself every single day. And that's really how I think about food. My overall food philosophy is to eat in an intentional way that aligns with my goals and values, which I'll share with you in just a moment. I also really enjoy food.
Erin Holt [00:05:22]:
I like to eat. I have a good, hearty appetite. I enjoy eating. And that honestly does feel like a privilege to be able to say, since I struggled with those eating disorders and food was such a huge source of stress for me for a really, really long time. It didn't feel fun, it didn't feel enjoyable. So it's, it's a, a true blessing to be able to say that and actually mean it. I did sort of dip my toe back into food fear and almost restriction when I was diagnosed with the autoimmune condition. That was 10 years ago and at that time,
Erin Holt [00:05:57]:
there wasn't functional medicine and this whole space, it just wasn't what it was today or wasn't what it is today. And there wasn't as many resources available to us and tools available to us. So when I got the autoimmune diagnosis, the big thing that was going on at the time was something called AIP, Autoimmune Paleo Protocol. Because conventional medicine doesn't have a lot of resources and tools for autoimmunity other than immunosuppressants or other medications, which wasn't the route I was feeling that was appropriate for me to take at that time. So I looked to more alternative ways, and AIP was the big kid on the block. And AIP is a very, very, very restrictive way of eating because it removes anything that could potentially tripwire the immune system, which is a lot of food. And so that tripwired some restrictive patterns in me because I was so terrified that if I ate outside that plan, then I could exacerbate my autoimmune process. And there was just so much fear surrounding me at that time.
Erin Holt [00:07:05]:
I mean, it makes good sense. It felt like having this diet to lean on felt like a better alternative than being told, hey, there's nothing that you can do or diet doesn't matter. Knowing that I had something in my control that I could work on to support my health felt like, okay, I have some semblance of control here. But what happened was it reactivated those control issues of my eating disorder. And I started to see that I was going down that, that path. And I was like, I can't do this to myself. I didn't spend 13 years fighting like hell through an eating disorder to have it in remission, fully healed, only then to try to heal myself through restriction. It just doesn't make sense.
Erin Holt [00:07:52]:
So I, I, I stopped that. And now, like I said, we have a lot more testing and resources at our disposal, so we don't have to lean on those super, super restrictive diets for autoimmunity anymore. For some people, they are a lifesaver. For some people they are wonderful. And for a lot of people, they just trigger this orthorexic tendency, this restrictive food fear disordered pattern. And what's kind of funny is that I know that some people may see the way that I eat and view it as restrictive because I really do focus on whole food. There's a lot of foods that I don't eat, but it doesn't feel restrictive to me at all. And I say that with complete honesty. I feel so fortunate that I'm able to feel as good as I do and the way I eat allows me to do that.
Erin Holt [00:08:41]:
So I just, I really feel it's such a gift to be able to use food as a way to feel good. Okay, so I said that I eat in an intentional way that aligns with my goals. So let me narrow in on what those goals are. I, like I said, I am training for perimenopause. I eat in a way that supports my digestive, my microbiome, and my gut, health, because all of those things are helpful in supporting my overall immune system and keeping my immune system from overreacting and revving itself up. I eat in a way to balance my hormones. So that has a lot to do with how I build out my plates, eating balanced meals. That has to do with really avoiding fasting for me, especially fasted workouts.
Erin Holt [00:09:30]:
So I'll explain what that all looks like and eating in a very micronutrient rich way to support hormone health. I eat in a way that still feels enjoyable to me because I think that joy is a nutrient. And if it's possible, we should be bringing joy into our eating. I know that that's not available to everybody given your own health history and context. But if it is, seize it. So yes, I eat for health, but I also eat for enjoyment. So again, mostly whole foods. I am very plant forward.
Erin Holt [00:10:07]:
So I am not a vegetarian. I was for 20 years, I am no longer. But I eat a shit ton of plants and I aim for variety. And this is like a key takeaway. Try to get 30 to 40 species a week. That constitutes a high variety diet, which is really important for the health of your microbiome because the different plant species are what's going to feed the different beneficial bacteria in your gut. So 30 to 40 species a week might feel overwhelming. So let's kind of break some of that down.
Erin Holt [00:10:41]:
I think when we go to the grocery store, we kind of get into a rut with buying the same produce over and over and over again. My husband now does the grocery shopping, and so I have to sometimes, like, remind him to get more variety because he goes in and he's like, boom, boom, boom. This is the plan. This is what we do. This is what we eat. Done. And I'm like, hey, let's stretch our veggies this week. Let's try some new and different things.
Erin Holt [00:11:07]:
And that is because I want to keep a lot of variety in our diets. So you could do that through different leafy greens, different herbs. So I cook and have put a lot of fresh herbs into my salads. Dill, cilantro, parsley, scallions, thyme, rosemary, basil, mint. All of these things you can chop up and put into anything that you're eating. I think I just named, like, six things right there. Boom. Done.
Erin Holt [00:11:42]:
Onions, garlic, shallots, leeks. I cook a lot with those. That's four more right there. And you don't have to get them in every single day, but throughout the course of your week, try to get them in. And then leafy greens, roots and tubers. Things that grow in the ground. Think like, carrots, beets, squashes, potatoes. The different variety of potatoes.
Erin Holt [00:12:07]:
So if you're doing the Yukon Gold or, like, I don't know, Red Bliss. Is that a potato? Did I just make that up? You know, there's different varieties of potatoes. They all count for different varieties of food. The different colors, sweet potatoes. There's like four different types of sweet potatoes that I can think of off the top of my head. That would all constitute variety. So try to get in as much variety as possible. That is a pro tip from me to you.
Erin Holt [00:12:31]:
I also focus on high protein. I mean, unless you've been living under a rock for the past two years, we all know it's protein, protein, protein. Eat your protein. Eat your protein. Look at the baby. Eat the protein. High protein. Animal protein is what I use as my main protein source. I and I'm going to break this down like what this looks like in a typical day or a typical week.
Erin Holt [00:12:51]:
I do beans. Now, I did have to take a little bit of a break from beans, but now that my health is in a good, robust place, I will eat more beans. I love beans and black beans, chickpeas. I will use them more as carbs and fiber instead of using them as a huge protein source. So they do contribute some protein, but they also contribute a lot of carbs. So just keep that in mind. I really do avoid highly processed or highly antigenic foods. I've talked about what that means, antigenicity of foods in a lot of different episodes.
Erin Holt [00:13:27]:
But that's going to be the things that might trip wire and rev up your immune system and not in a favorable way. Again, I am dairy free and I am gluten free. Maybe like 15 years ago I had a gluten antibody test from a doctor and at that point he said, go gluten free. And it took me a while to really commit to that because, like, gluten free wasn't really a thing that many years ago. And so there wasn't a lot of information resources. So I just didn't do it. But when I did, I noticed a humongous difference and that is something that I screen for. We run the Wheat Zoomer in our practice through Vibrant Wellness.
Erin Holt [00:14:08]:
And I really, really like that to look at whether or not your body is reacting to any of the different proteins within wheat. So if you're like, how do I know if I need to be gluten free or dairy free? There's different options. One is an elimination style diet. You remove it for a period of time and then you add it back in and then you see how you feel. So dairy, I just feel so much better when I don't eat it. So I continue to not eat it. I can get away with some stuff like if I'm, I don't know, on vacation. And Scott loves cheese, my husband and Hattie, my daughter, love cheese.
Erin Holt [00:14:46]:
So if they get like a nice cheese plate, I'll have some nibbles of a hard cheese. And I seem to be pretty okay with that. For me, it's kind of like the dose makes the poison. So, like, how much I consume matters. Last year we were in Florida and my husband and I went out to dinner and I got like a little loose. I had a couple of pops, couple of cocktails, inhibitions were low. And they brought out this beautiful seafood dish that was in a cream sauce, totally gluten free. So it wasn't a flour based sauce, it wasn't a roux, but it was a cream sauce.
Erin Holt [00:15:20]:
And I was like, oh, all right, fuck it, let's go, let's try this. And I felt really, really bad afterwards. And for me, it's not digestive. It is like I feel stiff the next day. I feel stiff, I feel headachey. My joints will be swollen. And this can go on for a few days. Because maybe you're saying, aaron, how do you know that that's not a hangover? Because it went on for several days.
Erin Holt [00:15:47]:
So I pushed the limits with dairy and I had to come back a little bit. So. But if you want to really know, there's two options. You can do an elimination style diet. We do have that available. It's called Eat to Achieve. So Eat to Achieve is my foundational nutrition program where I teach you exactly how to eat, how to eat in the ways that I'm going to describe for you today. How to eat in a whole foods fashion in a way that is supportive of your hormone health, of your gut health, of your liver health, like tip to tail.
Erin Holt [00:16:18]:
This is the way to eat, to feel good for the most part. There is a part of this that you can use as an elimination style diet where you pull out the big trigger foods for 21 days and then you slowly reintroduce them to see how you feel. So that is one way to do it. By the way, we are kicking things off January 28th, so we are running this program live. We haven't done this in years. We are running Eat to Achieve live for everybody in the Collective. So the Collective is still open, The Funk'tional Nutrition Collective. You can join today and we will begin this nutrition journey together.
Erin Holt [00:16:53]:
I'm excited. All right, so that's one way. And then another way is food sensitivity testing. We don't really leverage those too, too much in our practice. You kind of have to use them with precision. I am not a fan. Food sensitivity test that you can just like buy offline. I won't get into the details why.
Erin Holt [00:17:08]:
We do have a podcast episode all on that if you want to listen to it. And then for gluten, I do really, that's the one exception, I do like to test for that just because we know that it can play such a significant role in the inflammatory process for people, especially folks with autoimmune, but really any type of inflammatory condition that's going on. And so we will run that Wheat Zoomer. I did talk about that in episode 142, if you want to check that out. So that's how I figured out I need to be gluten free and dairy free.
Erin Holt [00:17:38]:
Now let me break down my typical day for you. I usually wake up around 6:30, sometimes 7. I don't wake up with an alarm clock. I just wake up and then I make my daughter lunch. She has to leave before 8:00. So I wake up, I make her lunch I know some inquiring minds might want to know what I make for her for her lunch. First of all, I use a Lunchbots.
Erin Holt [00:18:01]:
It's a stainless steel, compartmentalized. Is that how I say it? It's a lunchbox that has compartments and it's stainless steel, so there's no plastic, and they last forever. I've had this one for years. We've been using that as her lunchbox. Strong recommend. I love it, by the way. I will mention some things that I use, and I'll mention my daily supplements, too. And if I have a coupon code for anything, I will share it with you.
Erin Holt [00:18:28]:
I don't have a coupon code for Lunchbots, but it's a great lunchbox. So what I usually make is a turkey wrap for her. I mean, this obviously changes from day to day, but here's, like, the consistent one. Turkey wrap. So I use a Siete cassava wrap. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Is it cassava? Is it cassava? Is it cassava? Where do I put the emphasis? Cassava. Cassava.
Erin Holt [00:18:52]:
But we use those from Siete. And I will throw it on a burner, so we have a gas range. And I will throw it on the burner, and then I will turn the burner on, and I will put a slice of cheese on it before I do. So I lay the wrap a slice of cheese, and I turn the burner on, and that softens the wrap. It melts the cheese a little bit. And then I put on turkey and mayo. Chosen Foods Mayo.
Erin Holt [00:19:21]:
And then I wrap that up and I cut it in half. So that is her turkey wrap that goes in the lunchbox. Okay. Because if you try to make a wrap without warming the wrap itself, it's a nightmare. So pro tip. And then we do veggies. Right now she's on a big mini cucumber and mini pepper kick, so she's getting a lot of those. She likes chickpeas, so I'll throw those in the lunchbox.
Erin Holt [00:19:44]:
Loves seaweed. We buy the big nori sheets with avocado oil and salt. And then I cut them down to size so they fit in the lunchbox. You can buy the individual containers there. To me, it's just so much waste, so much plastic waste, that I just have a very, very hard time emotionally with that. So we buy the big sheets, and then I use scissors to cut them to fit in her lunchbox. A lot of fruit. She's also big into the
Erin Holt [00:20:14]:
Go Raw Sprouted seeds. There's an everything bagel flavor. Scott got them at Whole Foods. The brand is go raw. So they are sprouted pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Loves those.
Erin Holt [00:20:25]:
Those go in there. And then if I have homemade muffins, like once every couple weeks, I'll make muffins and we'll pop one in there too. So that's her lunch, in case you were wondering. So I make that while the coffee is brewing, and then I drink my coffee right after that. And I'm gonna be super honest with you because right now I'm in a bit of a phase that is not really serving me. I am trying to interrupt the pattern and do something different because I'm aware of the pattern. I am aware that it is not serving me. And so I am making changes to change that pattern.
Erin Holt [00:20:59]:
Because my tendency, my go to, what I want to do, is grab the coffee and immediately pull out my laptop and get to work. That is a disaster for my stress response. I know this because a couple of months ago I purchased an Oura ring. And I can see in real time, that is a disaster for my stress response because what's happening, I'm drinking coffee and that caffeine is stimulating my cortisol production. There's no food in my belly at the time to essentially clear that cortisol. So we wake up about 30 minutes after eating. Our cortisol is going to be the highest.
Erin Holt [00:21:30]:
I'm putting caffeine on it. That's like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. And then I'm not eating and I'm going right into work, which is like getting me going, right? That's like immediate stress response. So if that is not working and I'm calling myself out here because I can easily slip slide into this tendency. And I know a lot of you can too. So if you're doing that, let's make a pact together for 2025 to interrupt that pattern. And let's stop doing that because we can't be like, I want to have balanced hormones and still be pulling this shit every single morning.
Erin Holt [00:22:04]:
The two cannot coexist. So what I am doing instead is making an attempt to sit down and journal. Because I can't really meditate first thing in the morning. I can't focus. I meditate every day. First thing in the morning usually doesn't go well, but I can sit down in journal. I can take a moment to create a ritual for myself that doesn't involve checking Asana or checking my inbox and immediately like somersaulting into work mode. I can do that.
Erin Holt [00:22:32]:
So that's what I'm doing now, practicing now. When I drink my coffee for like 10 years, I used to blend coconut oil into it. Now I'm using nutpods. Not because it's like super healthy, but it's very convenient. So I'm in like a real nutpods kick right now. That's what I drink my coffee with and I also take two supplements. First thing in the morning.
Erin Holt [00:22:50]:
I take NAD+ from Qualia and I take Qualia Mind also from Qualia. So they are sponsors of the show because I said, I love your products so much. I use them all of the time. Would you love to sponsor me? And they said yes, we would. And I said yes. What a great winning combination. And I take these things A because they give me more energy, B because they make my brain function better. I run a whole ass company.
Erin Holt [00:23:14]:
I need quick wits and sharp thinking and laser focused thoughts. Like all day long. I'm making 152 decisions a day. And even if you don't run a company, even if you're like, I don't know, a parent, you are doing this too. And so this stuff is so impactful for your brain. There's supplements that you take that you don't notice a difference. This is not that when I take Qualia Mind, I'm like, my brain is turned on. When I take NAD+ consistently, I feel like I have more energy, more resiliency, more recovery, more vitality. It's, it's, it's a move.
Erin Holt [00:23:48]:
So I really, really love these and I take them first thing in the morning. So if you want to try them out, go to qualialife.com/funk use code funk at checkout to save 15% off your purchase. If you want to learn more about NAD+, go to episode 324. Dr. Gregory Kelly gets into all the science of it. So if you want the science, go to that episode. The other thing I do at this time is I throw my red light mask on. So I told you like this is like a day in the life of my eating.
Erin Holt [00:24:17]:
But I'm also shar my little routines and rituals too. The red light mask is really supportive of my skin. I do notice a difference. What did I say at the beginning? I'm interested in anti aging. I am, I am, I admit it. But I also have rosacea and it's my skin, especially in the winter time, it just gets very ruddy and this helps to bring that down and just even out my skin tone a little bit more. So I use the red light mask from Bon Charge. It only takes 10 minutes, legit 10 minutes a day.
Erin Holt [00:24:48]:
So I do, after I drink my coffee, I do put this on for 10 minutes and get a lot of questions about this. I strong recommend. I've been using it for months and maybe like almost a year now and I really do love it. So if you want to try that out, go to boncharge.com use coupon code funk f u n k to save 15 percent. Make that part of your morning routine. Or you can make it a part of your evening routine too. It is so ridiculous. Like I'm just sitting at my lap wearing this black crazy mask.
Erin Holt [00:25:16]:
My family thinks it's so funny. So you will look like, like a, like a, something out of a movie. But it really does the job. It works very well. Okay, so I do work out in the morning. If I leave my exercise or my workouts to the end of the day, they're not going to happen. So I like to work out in the morning. And what I will say is that I have a hard time working out with a full stomach of food.
Erin Holt [00:25:41]:
So ideally, from a hormone perspective, when you drink your coffee, you should also eat your breakfast meal. Ideally in an ideal world. Because I work out in the morning and that's really crucial for my brain health as well. And just like my, my overall attitude and like approach to life and like so I'm not a bitch, you know. To be kind, I must work out in the morning. To not be sad, I must work out in the morning. So I really do. I have to kind of like prioritize. All right, this is the ideal way to set things up.
Erin Holt [00:26:15]:
How do I prioritize? And I cannot work out with a lot of food in my stomach. I was bulimic for I think like maybe 10 years, eight years, I don't know. So, I just think my digestive system has overcome so much. But she's still a bit of a sensitive Sally in those valves, that series of valves throughout my digestive tract, they're like a little weak. They've been through a lot. You know, I'm so grateful to them for recovering in the way that they have. But they've been through a lot. And so when I have a full stomach of food after a full meal, it's hard for me to move without getting severe acid reflux.
Erin Holt [00:26:56]:
It's extremely, extremely, extremely uncomfortable. So fasted workouts are a hard no for female physiology and female hormones. I'm going to say that again. Fasted workouts are absolute hard. No. Now, there's always an exception to every rule because h, we have human bodies and every human body is different. So if you're like, I actually do a fasted workout. I wake up first thing in the morning and I do a fasted workout.
Erin Holt [00:27:20]:
No problem. Everything is great. Then keep doing you. Of course. But for me, and for most women, fasted workouts are a disaster. So I put somethings. I put some gas in the tankaroonie before I work out. So for me, I will eat a bar.
Erin Holt [00:27:40]:
The ones that we're eating the most because they're super easy to find are the Aloha bars. They have 26 grams of carbs, 10 of that is fiber, and then 14 grams of protein. So that's like, kind of enough. If I'm just gonna drink my coffee, do some journaling, eat a bar, go out the door and work out that can that can get me through it. A GoMacro bar is another one that's easy to find. That one definitely spikes my blood sugar. I've. I've tracked that before, and so I really only do that around exercise.
Erin Holt [00:28:16]:
Paleovalley bars are my favorite. I believe we have a coupon code for those. Okay, I just paused and looked it up for you. I don't have a code, but I have a link. So I will put the link in the show notes to save 15 off. Paleovalley bars are my favorite. I'm just not great about reordering them, so I don't always have them on hand. So that's what I will do.
Erin Holt [00:28:36]:
If I'm like, pretty much working out first thing. If the workout is later in the morning, then I do need something more substantial because my blood sugar will crash and I will have a shitty workout. I just won't be able to get as much from my workout if I don't put something more substantial into my pie hole. But it's still not a full meal of food. I'm not going to sit down and eat four eggs before I go workout because I would barf everywhere. So this is when I would do maybe a smoothie with protein powder and a banana and some like, hemp seeds or something just to get more sustenance into me. Or muffins, I will do. I can do pretty good with muffins.
Erin Holt [00:29:14]:
The one that I love to use is Civilized Caveman Banana Bread. And I mean, I'm not a baker, so I, like, don't really follow recipes to the tea, but that's a good one that I've used. So it definitely has a lot of fat. I will throw a ton of collagen powder into it. I use Organifi collagen. I love their collagen and I we use that pretty regularly. You can go to organifi.com/funk and use code funk at checkout for 20 off of your purchase for anything Organifi. But that's the collagen that I do use and I will pump those muffins up with collagen.
Erin Holt [00:29:57]:
So basically the recipe is a ton of bananas, eggs. So we get protein. I add the collagen for more protein and then I'll use peanut butter or almond butter. The recipe calls for like a lot of butter or ghee. I usually leave that out because I don't need that much fat in there. And then I'll use either, usually coconut flour, sometimes almond flour, sometimes cassava flour depending on what I have, or some combination of the those things and I just put them in muffin tins and call it a day. And that usually works pretty well for a preworkout snack for me too if I need something more than a bar. So I don't consider any of that my breakfast.
Erin Holt [00:30:39]:
I consider that my preworkout fuel essentially. None of that is substantial enough for like a real meal of food. I cannot label that as breakfast. That's like a snickety snack. Before I go workout, I also will combine amino acids, creatine and LMNT electrolytes into a big water bottle. And I will use that on my way to the gym or during the workout. Usually during the workout I am drinking that.
Erin Holt [00:31:10]:
By the time the workout is done, it's all gone. And I've been doing this combination for the past year. And what I've noticed is I've put on a lot of muscle mass the past year, so whee. I mean part of that has to do with training. Obviously you can't just like house amino acid acids and be like, I'm bulked, jacked. But that in combination with training really does pay some dividends. And then the creatine as well. But I also noticed I just don't get sore like I used to before I do this.
Erin Holt [00:31:42]:
I have heard that combining creatine with electrolytes helps the body absorb creatine. So that's why I do this combination together. But I also just really like the taste of it because I use LMNT electrolytes and they are very tasty and flavorful. So a scoop of LMNT or I'm sorry, a packet of element A scoop of the Kion Aminos. A scoop of Kion Creatine. That's about 5 grams and that's what I drink while I am working out. No matter what the workout is, I try to be consistent with that. So if you want to check out the amino acids and the get creatine go to kion getkeon.com/funk for 20 off.
Erin Holt [00:32:27]:
If you guys are going to try these things, use the coupon code so you can save money, obviously. And then right now, LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase. So that's eight single serving packets, free with any element order. It's a great way to try all eight flavors. Or you can even share LMNT with a friend. That's what I do whenever people come to my house. I'm like, here's a box of LMNT everybody. Everybody leaves, salted up to the nines.
Erin Holt [00:32:53]:
You can get yours at drinklmnt.com/funk that's only available through the link. So go to drinklmnt.com/funk. I do a lot of hot yoga as my workouts and when I go to the gym and I lift, I also sit in an infrared sauna afterward. So I really make it a priority to sweat quite a bit. And I lean pretty heavily on LMNT electrolytes to replenish the stuff that is lost during sweat. So I'm a Sweaty Betty. I like to sweat. I feel better when I'm sweating and then I'm replenishing with LMNT and then I'm not always great about this, but I do try to be more diligent about this. On the days that I lift heavy, I get protein in.
Erin Holt [00:33:42]:
I try to get protein in within 45 minutes of training. So if I'm just gonna head home or if I'm lifting at home, no problem. But if I'm gonna lift and then sit in the sauna and then drive home, that's longer than 45 minutes. So I will bring protein powder mixed with water and just do a scoop of protein powder. The protein powder I use because we get this asked a lot is Equip and I don't, sadly don't have a coupon code for you. We've asked them for one, they just never gave it to us. I don't think so.
Erin Holt [00:34:12]:
But because I am dairy free, I don't do whey protein. So this is beef isolate protein. Does it sound disgusting? It like kind of is. It's like I don't mind it, but there's definitely like a beef essence to it. Like when I put it in Scott and Hattie's stuff, they're like, this is kind of beefy. I'm like, I know, but I can't do whey. If you can do whey. If you do fine with whey protein, I love that.
Erin Holt [00:34:39]:
Get yourself a nice grass fed whey and do that. For me, I cannot. So I use beef isolate equipment protein. Okay. And then after my workout, I have my full tilt shaboogie breakfast. So this changes. But right now, like, I go through hot streaks where I'm just like, this is what I'm eating. And right now it's three to four eggs. So if they're large eggs, I'll probably do three.
Erin Holt [00:35:06]:
If they're smaller eggs, I'll do four. And I put them on two cassava wraps. So the Siete wraps, and I like the cassava ones because they're more pliable. It offers up more carbohydrate than the almond flour ones too, which I do try to be mindful of getting more carbohydrate into my body after a heavy lift. So I will do those right on the stove like I told you about earlier, and I will fry up eggs. I will put avocado on and then so it goes wrap avocado, fried eggs and then basically put a whole ass salad on top of that. I love veggies like we talked about. I love variety.
Erin Holt [00:35:47]:
And so I'm really piling it on high and it's quite a mess. It's quite a disaster. But I can't like, I don't like an understuffed wrap. If it's not busting apart at the seams and falling out. I don't want it. It's not for me. So I will do a salad with arugula, sprouts or some type of slaw. That's my usual go to. If we've been to the farm and they have like a great, like greens mix, I'll use that too.
Erin Holt [00:36:14]:
So I like arugula because it does offer bitters. I do try to get bitters into my diet every single day. So bitters could be radishes, different types of radishes, arugula, radiccio, dandelion greens. That's why if you can get like farmer's market greens that are mixed variety, they usually have some bitters there. You'll know it's bitter because when you eat it, it tastes bitter. That's how you know it's a bitter. I will do sprouts because they're so micronutrient rich that I do try to work sprouts in on a regular basis. Broccoli sprouts are great.
Erin Holt [00:36:51]:
If you have high estrogen or estrogen clearance problems, the sulforaphane could help clear that estrogen out of your body pretty darn effectively. And I do a lot of different slaws and cabbage laws. So cabbage or radishes, like I said, will I'll shave them up into some type of slaw. I really work to get a lot of cruciferous veg into my diet. So cruciferous veggies would be cabbages, broccoli, broccolini, cauliflower. And that is also very supportive of overall liver health, detoxification, hormone clearance. Good stuff. So all of that is going into some type of salad.
Erin Holt [00:37:27]:
I really do make the best slaw. Whenever I make slaw, everybody loves it. My family especially. And so let me tell you how I do it. I will take some type of cabbage. Red cabbage. I was gonna say white cabbage. I don't.
Erin Holt [00:37:41]:
Red cabbage, green cabbage, napa cabbage, bok choy, whatever. And I will slice it right very fine. I think it's julienned that how we say it. But it's, like, super thin. And I'll shave some carrots in there as well. And then for the dressing, I do mayo. So I usually use Chosen Food. Sometimes I'll do Primal Kitchen, but you want mayo that's made with avocado oil, and I will use that.
Erin Holt [00:38:09]:
If I have coconut yogurt, I buy Culina coconut yogurt. If I have that, I will mix the two. You don't have to do this. The reason that I do it is I used to hate mayonnaise. And so I'm still, like, a little squeamish about it. If I can taste too much mayonnaise in something, I get like, a little like. Like, gag reflex, like a little bit. So I will mix these two together.
Erin Holt [00:38:31]:
But if you're normal, you don't have to do that step. So mayo, coconut yogurt, a little bit. And then lemon juice, fresh lemon juice. I will chop up fresh dill. And then I use garlic salt. So garlic salt is onion powder, garlic powder, and dried parsley combined with salt. And I will use that as the flavor. And then I pour all of that over the slaw, and it's so yummy.
Erin Holt [00:38:59]:
So I will throw that on, and sometimes I just eat that. I will just eat that plain with eggs on top. That's a lunch for me. Let's say I do a different breakfast. That would be a great lunch for me. A big salad or slaw with fried eggs on top. Another great option for lunch is a tuna salad. So I will take canned tuna and mix it with kind of like a similar thing, lots of lemon juice, Chosen Foods Mayo.
Erin Holt [00:39:30]:
I like a ton of stuff in my tuna salad so I will do scallions, chopped celery, fresh dill. I like to throw in pickles or cucumbers like really chopped, super, super fine, celery salt, I love in there. So my tuna salad is like a whole situation and I don't like eating tuna salad plain. So I'll do it on crackers or on toast. I use Base Culture bread as my main bread go to. So that would be another one. I make salmon cakes. So if we make them for dinner the night before, I'll talk about dinners in a sec here.
Erin Holt [00:40:05]:
But if we make them for dinner the night before, then I will use them on top of a salad for lunch. Salmon cakes recipe is on my website. Just a heads up, the funktionalnutritionist.com and then I also really love leftover soup for lunch. So if I make a soup the night before I always make sure that there's some saved for my lunch the next day because I so, so, so so so look forward to that. But lately what I've been doing, if I eat breakfast late then I will usually have a smoothie for a lunch because we eat dinner pretty early. We eat dinner around 5 o'clock at my house and we're just like all hungry by that time. Scott will have soccer some nights or Hattie will have sports and so it just works out better for us to eat earlier. It's usually better for the digestive system to not be eating right before bed anyway so that we do eat early.
Erin Holt [00:40:59]:
So if I eat a super late lunch or a super late breakfast and I know we're gonna have an early dinner, then I usually have a smoothie in between. But I pack a ton into the smoothie. So I use coconut milk as the base. I use frozen cauliflower rice as the base to thicken it up and then it gets that cruciferous veg in there. I will throw in a banana. This is the one that I'm hot to trot on right now and have been for a while. A banana. I'll use hemp seeds for more protein plus essential fatty acids and protein powder, the Equip vanilla protein powder and then cacao nibs, cacao nibs offer up magnesium and other minerals.
Erin Holt [00:41:37]:
So I like to use those as like a good micronutrient rich, tasty little treat. And that's my smoothie. To get variety, you can rotate out different frozen berries. So instead of the banana, I might do raspberries or blueberries or blackberries or another type of frozen fruit. Or I'll throw in cranberries as well. Cranberries are a nice bitter as well. So lunch is often a smoothie lately, especially if I'm having like a busy work day. But I am making sure that I'm putting a lot of nutrients in there and plenty of calories.
Erin Holt [00:42:13]:
So otherwise I would just be hungry like an hour later. So I really try to make my meals pretty substantial. And then dinner, basically dinner is some variation of animal protein plus veggies plus a starch. So the animal proteins that we use often, grass fed ground beef, we use this a lot just because it's so easy to defrost. And I'm not like a meal plan aheader. I'm not like, on Monday we will eat this. On Tuesday we will eat this. I am like, it's 4:30, we need to eat in 30 minutes.
Erin Holt [00:42:43]:
What am I doing? That's just being honest with you. I'm not, I don't plan ahead. I think it's a great strategy if your brain works that way. It's not for me. So I love the fact that you can defrost ground beef real fast. Chuck roast. Big into pot roast lately. Big into pot roast lately.
Erin Holt [00:43:03]:
Obviously this takes a long time. So we're doing this like on a Sunday. We're not doing this, you know, for like weekday meals. But I do love stew beef. And in the instant pot you can do like slow cooked pulled beef pretty, pretty well. So I love that. We do some chicken. A lot of all of our chicken comes from Vernon Family Farm, which is a farm local to us. I love their chicken sausage.
Erin Holt [00:43:25]:
So of course, if you're listening and you live in like Minnesota, this isn't going to apply to you. But if you have a local farm to get chicken from, I would highly suggest it. So I like their chicken sausage. Those are really easy to thaw, so I always try to have those in the freezer. Their chicken thighs. We got a Wonder Oven. So one Our Place is the name of the company and they sent us a Wonder Oven which was so kind. I have not used an air fryer before this.
Erin Holt [00:43:49]:
A lot of air fryers contain PFAs. I Just like am super sketched out about forever chemicals and cooking my food in forever chemicals. So I just have not used air fryers. It's just not for me. But because this one does not contain PFAs, we tried it and it also has a ceramic bake tray. So there's not a lot of like the non stick stuff in there. And Scott will do chicken thighs in there quite often and they're really, really, really good. They're really good.
Erin Holt [00:44:21]:
I believe we've roasted a whole ass chicken in there too. I love a full roasted chicken because you can get a lot of meals out of that. So I like roasted chicken. Shredded chicken in the instant pot is Hattie and my's favorite. She's like me, she's like a little weird with texture of meat. I was her age when I went vegetarian because I just like could not handle the texture of animal protein. But we do really well if we essentially boil chicken like chicken breast in the instant pot with some broth and then shred it like I love that. She just likes it with some mayo, almost like a chicken salad style.
Erin Holt [00:44:57]:
And then I will also put that into like a soup, a chicken soup as well. So love shredded chicken. Seafood. Huge fan of seafood. I love seafood. So we'll cook salmon, scallops. My family does not love white fish. I do, but they don't love it.
Erin Holt [00:45:13]:
So I don't really cook it that much unless it's in my seafood chowder which is linked or which is on my website. There is a recipe for seafood chowder on my website and it's so good. So they will eat whitefish in chowder form. And then we'll do two tofu as a protein sometimes it's pretty rare. We all love it but it's pretty rare that we cook it maybe like once a month. Last week I did tofu rice bowls so I cooked basmati rice in bone broth. I pan fried tofu and then we did shredded cabbage, carrots and pea sprouts on top. And I just did everything with sesame oil and some gluten free tamari and it was really quite tasty.
Erin Holt [00:45:59]:
So we have a protein just about every meal and then we have some type of starch. We do a lot of potatoes, a lot of different potato varieties. We'll do oven fries, a lot of sweet potatoes. Again different varieties of those. We'll do butternut squash pretty regularly so we'll use that as our starch. We'll do rice cooked in bone broth like I mentioned. Maybe like I don't know, once a week. And then I love the Jovial gluten free pasta, the egg noodles.
Erin Holt [00:46:28]:
So we'll do that as a starch. So I will do that plus like ground beef and make a meat sauce and cram in a ton of veggies and call it a day. That's a nice, nice dinner meal. And then of course we're including veggies. So that might be a chopped salad or slaw, roasted brussels, roasted beets, sauteed or stir fried cabbage, bok choy, broccolini, Swiss chard, steamed broccoli. I'm trying to think. We eat a lot of veggies, so I'm just kind of rotating those out all of the time. After dinner. I have dark chocolate literally every single night.
Erin Holt [00:47:02]:
Never. Not the darker the better for me. So like if it's below 85%, it might as well be milk chocolate. So like 90%, 100%. Love dark chocolate. And then depending if we eat a really early dinner, then I might be hungry later on in. And so I will do a nighttime snack for me that often looks like Culina yogurt. So it's again, it's that coconut yogurt I also like. Is it Cocojune? That's another one that I like.
Erin Holt [00:47:32]:
I'm trying to think of other brands. We just get whatever is available. But I will take plain coconut yogurt and I will mix in Organifi red juice powder. I saw this on Instagram and I was like, that looks super weird. And I was like, but I will try it. And I tried it and it's so good. Now if I feel like I need more protein, I will also add a scoop of protein powder. And then I will do some frozen berries as well.
Erin Holt [00:48:01]:
Raspberries or blueberries. I say frozen just because we always have them. So it's like an easy go to. But like, if you do like the little mini Maine blueberries, they're small. If you keep them frozen and you add them to the yogurt and you mix it all up, oh my gosh, it's so good. Throw in the red juice powder. It's amazing. And again, if you do want to try that red juice powder, you can, you can use code funk for 20% off because Organifi is a sponsor of ours.
Erin Holt [00:48:28]:
They're the longest standing podcast sponsor of this show. So we love them and we love their products. So that's what I do, you know, that's what I do on a day to day basis. I've been a nutritionist for 15 years, like I said, which is nutso. And I have had the privilege of helping thousands of other people heal through my methodologies, which is also pretty wild and a privilege to be able to say, you know, looking back. So if you want to access my methodologies, if you're like, okay, I wanna, I wanna figure this whole thing out because what I didn't say, and I probably should have led with this, but everything that I do, there's no thought that goes into this. This is not stress. This is like easy peasy.
Erin Holt [00:49:15]:
This is just like, it's like brushing your teeth. I don't think about it like, this is just, just the way that I live, this is the way that I eat. It hasn't always been this way, but it is now. And you can get to a point where food feels easy to you, eating well feels easy to you. It feels second nature. And that's really the goal of my work. And if you want to access all of my work and my methodologies, that's where the Collective is. You can go through these programs again.
Erin Holt [00:49:39]:
We're going to run the basic nutrition program together live as a group January 28th. So I would love for you to join us with that, that check the show notes for the link or you can head to the funktionalnutritionist.com/collective. We have seen people lose weight, inches and pounds without feeling restricted or under fueled. We just see people have so much more energy, better in tune with their body. This is their language. This is our, our members language, not mine. Better awareness of nutrition and how to approach their diet. Clear skin.
Erin Holt [00:50:15]:
So you change your diet, you change your whole life, man. All right, we'd love to have you join us. Hopefully this was helpful and I will check you next week. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.