Inside Out Eating Well to Feel Good

In the kitchen of her home on a balmy winter afternoon, Monier gave a quick lesson for GIM like she would one of her customers. She helps walk people through the process of not creating a diet but being comfortable with a diet. You try as hard as you like, she says, but trying to force yourself to stick to a diet you hate won’t net you the results you want.

“You can have all the fancy foods, but if you are miserable in your job or unhappy with your body, you will not get anything out of it,” she says.

She was there once herself. Monier is a graduate of the Cordon Bleu School of Cooking in Paris, and her career from France back to the U.S. was accompanied by the typical lifestyle one falls into when one works high-stress jobs, especially in food service.

“Yeah, I could cook, but I wasn’t eating well at all,” Monier recalls.

Unfortunately — or perhaps, fortunately — there’s no real secret behind it. Everyone is different and what works for one doesn’t work for all. The operative words in Monier’s world are “comfortable” and “confident.” If you’re comfortable and confident in the kitchen and with your diet, you will naturally stick to it.

If you have all these other stressors, she says, it’s taking away from your willpower — willpower you won’t have when it comes time to make a decision on what to eat. There’s no shame in it, we all default to what’s comfortable when we’re in a stressed-out mindset. That’s why, in Monier’s experience, making a healthy diet one you’re comfortable with is the only way to achieve longterm health benefits.

That’s probably the crux of all her efforts with her clients. It’s true that a good diet is essential to good health, but a good diet is also only a fraction of a good life. Part of living a good life is knowing when to take care of yourself first, and “this is the most fundamental self-care, how you feed yourself,” Monier says.

Changing people’s behavior, especially around food, can seem like an impossible task sometimes. She’s made a career out of figuring it out, and it often comes down to what works for each individual. An easy way to change behaviors is to offer an alternative that’s even easier, she says. Recipes that are quick, easy, and make plenty of leftovers work well for most.

Sheet pan dinners are good example. They’re ideal for making lunch for a few days ahead or for a family dinner. Take a bunch of foods you like and that cook well together and mix them together in a sheet pan. Spread some olive oil on there first, or some cooking spray. You can find good, organic and olive oil-based nonstick spray online. Drizzle a little more olive oil on top.

Monier prepared two for this article, one incorporating bell peppers, onions, potatoes, and chicken sausage. Monier always goes for peppers with four sides, which makes it easy to cut them into the right size. Julienne cut the peppers to make sure they all get cooked properly. Dice the onions and cut the potatoes to bite-sized pieces. The vegetables will take longer to cook than the sausage, if left whole, so they need to be sized accordingly. You can make up your own sheet pan recipes, just make sure all the ingredients will cook at about the same rate.

Preheat the oven to 375 and once everything is arranged on the sheet pan — spread out so it all cooks evenly — pop it into the oven. She recommends 375 degrees over the more standard 350 degrees because it helps with browning the vegetables.