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Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 48 12 Things You Are Doing Wrong When You Diet with Lauren Ott, RD

April 1, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

Hi!  My name is Lauren and I am a Registered Dietitian in Denver, Colorado.  I love what I do, and I love sharing my knowledge about wellness and nutrition!  What makes me different than the MILLIONS of other wellness bloggers?  Well… first things first… I have a degree in this stuff.  It’s one thing to have a passion for it (really, it’s great), but I’ve had 5 years of schooling, passed a registration test (woof), practiced as a registered dietitian since 2008, and I get re-certified every 5 years by completing continuing education for this stuff.  So if you’ve ever wondered what the difference between a “nutritionist” and a “dietitian” is, just see above.  Anyone can deem themselves a “nutritionist,” but not just anyone can call them self a registered dietitian.  Stepping off my soap box now…

So now that I’ve differentiated myself as a dietitian, what makes me a unique dietitian?  I LOVE DESSERT.  Yep, LOVE it.  Eat it every. single. day.  Don’t get me wrong, I eat healthy.  But I’m not unrealistic about it.  So if you’re looking for a quirky, realistic wellness blog to follow, you’ve found the right place.  Great to meet you!

-Lauren Ott, RD

Education, Career, and Media Presence:

  • Lauren Ott, RD has been a dietitian for over 7 years. Lauren graduated from the University of Oklahoma with her BS in nutritional sciences. She has her certificate of training in adult weight management from the Commission on Dietetic Registration.
  • Lauren has experience in weight loss, eating disorders, corporate wellness, cardiovascular disease, public speaking, classroom management, curriculum development, media relations, and overall wellness.
  • She has worked for corporations such as the University of Colorado Anschutz Health and Wellness Center, The Cooper Clinic, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
  • Watch Lauren on her bi-weekly 9 News Denver segment, as she is the 9 News nutrition expert. Lauren has written for or appeared on media outlets such as LiveStrong, NPR, The Denver Post, Thrillist, Women’s Running Magazine, and Today’s Dietitian.
  • Although Lauren is passionate about health and wellness, she is a true believer that everything is ok in moderation (especially DESSERT).

Mathea Ford: [00:00:27] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Lauren Ott on the show today. Lauren, welcome to Nutrition Experts.

Lauren Ott: [00:00:43] Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:46] I’m excited to have you on the show and share expertise with my tribe. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about weight loss and things around that topic but I’d like you to start by telling my listeners a little more about you and what you do.

Lauren Ott: [00:00:59] All right. So, I’m a private practice registered dietitian. I do private practice but I also do a little bit of food and health blogging on the side as well. I’m based out of Denver, Colorado. So, I’ve been practicing as a registered dietitian since two thousand and eight and I graduated from the University of Oklahoma. I also have my Certificate of Training in Adult Weight Management. Although I’m passionate about health and wellness, the biggest thing I believe in is moderation especially with dessert. You’ll find that all of my blogging and social media sites are called The Dessert Dietitian because I love dessert.

Mathea Ford: [00:01:39] Yeah! I notice that you’re the Dessert Dietitian. What is the Certificate in Adult Weight Management for those who don’t know what is that certification?y.

Lauren Ott: [00:01:48] Yeah! So, it’s through the CDR and basically you learn all of the latest and greatest of weight loss studies and recommendations and really separating evidence based research on how to lose weight versus just what’s trendy today would be my way of something about.

Mathea Ford: [00:02:07] I wanted to pull out of you. What are your biggest weight loss mistakes? I think we talked so much about different types of eating and stuff but I’m thinking about the mistakes that people make when they’re trying to lose weight. So, do you have some of those that you can talk to us about?

Lauren Ott: [00:02:27] I do. I was just as I was kind of coming up with this list I realized these are things I could talk about all day just as things I’ve picked up over the years from my clients and my trainings and things like that but I’ve kind of narrowed it down to what I think are the big ones that I see the most often. And I’d say the first one and these are in no particular order by the way but the first one I think of is only focusing on the number on the scale. There are just too many things that go into the weight that we see on the scale. It’s affected by fluid intake, by salt, by carbohydrates, even traveling such as flying can lead to fluid retention which can affect the scale, hormones, humidity, bowel regularity, muscle gain and loss. There are just so many things that go into that number on the scale that if that is the only thing you’re focused on during weight loss you’re going to see to be disappointed at some point.

Mathea Ford: [00:03:23] It’s not even a differentiated number. It doesn’t tell you like how much fat and how much lean mass. It’s just a number.

Lauren Ott: [00:03:30] Exactly! Exactly. So, my recommendation when it comes to that. You know what else should I focus on would be measuring waist circumference would be one thing and then if it’s available to you finding somewhere that offers something like a Dexa scan or a Bpd Pod that is actually going to measure lean body composition like you just mentioned that’s as opposed to just a number on the scale. And that way you can have that rechecked every three to six months or so and you can see real changes in body composition and fat loss versus just a number on the scale.

Mathea Ford: [00:04:05] I think that’s a great tip because it really is a long, it’s more of a marathon it’s not a race.

Lauren Ott: [00:04:10] Exactly!

Mathea Ford: [00:04:12] Okay. What’s your number two?

Lauren Ott: [00:04:13] Number two is eating too many calories. Which may seem obvious but the studies show that we underestimate our calorie intake by 50 percent. That’s 5 0 percent. And we overestimate our calorie expenditure by 50 percent. So, my recommendation is if you’re keeping a food diary always err on the side of overestimating calories and food and underestimating calories burned from exercise. Because more often than not you’re probably correct in that over estimating calories in food. And I really don’t recommend when it comes to calories from exercise. I don’t recommend eating more to accommodate for calories from exercise. Obviously with the exception of something like a marathon or triathlon. We just don’t burn as many calories as people think we do from exercise. So, I recommend thinking of exercise more of a bonus not a green light to eat whatever you want.

Mathea Ford: [00:05:11] So, is that one of the tips that you usually tell people or have your clients do is to keep a food log, food diary?

Lauren Ott: [00:05:17] I do and that’s actually another thing on my list is keeping a food diary. So, thanks for leading me into that one.

Mathea Ford: [00:05:24] Okay. So, number three?

Lauren Ott: [00:05:26] Yeah. Number three: food diary. So, studies show that writing down our food and exercise leads to twice the weight loss versus those that don’t keep a food diary. So, you know they’re going to help us track calories, protein, fat and carbs all of which matter for weight loss. They also just help keep us accountable and we know accountability is such a huge part of weight loss as well. My only caveat to this recommendation is I’ve found that in some clients writing down their intake can actually increase their food obsessions and lead to overeating. So, my advice there is that you know yourself better than anyone else. If you start keeping a food diary and you notice that it is just increase your food obsessions and therefore has led to over eating stop keeping that diary. There’s no one size fits all for weight loss. So, just because keeping a food diary does help a lot of people it doesn’t mean that it helps everyone. So, really make sure that you are just aware of what’s helping and what’s hurting when it comes to weight loss.

Mathea Ford: [00:06:29] So, when you encourage people to keep a food diary what do you have them write down? Just the foods or do you write calories?

Lauren Ott: [00:06:36] At a minimum, writing food and portions you know having a three ounce chicken breast versus a 10 ounce chicken breast. Obviously, there’s a huge difference there in terms of calories and macro nutrients. I really like. I mean there’s so many resources these days in terms of online tracking devices. The one I might go to is My Fitness Pal. I just think it’s really easy to use and it does all the work for you. It’s going to track if you know if you can tell it the food and the portion it’s going to tell you the calories and all the macro and micro nutrients in there. That would be my recommendation is to use an app or an online food diary like that. But I’ve got some clients that still just prefer pen and paper and there’s nothing wrong with that either.

Mathea Ford: [00:07:19] I love My Fitness Pal because you can scan UPC codes.

Lauren Ott: [00:07:22] Yeah! I because some foods don’t even have the nutrition facts label right on the individual portion and so that makes it really easy for clients and it’s got millions of different brands in there so you can get pretty specific as to what you’re tracking.

Mathea Ford: [00:07:36] This great tip. So, what’s number four?

Lauren Ott: [00:07:39] Number four is eating too few calories. Just like it’s important not to eat too many. You also don’t want to eat too few. This can lead to muscle loss which in turn leads to slowed metabolism. And it’s also just not feasible or realistic to stick to this for a lifetime because you know weight loss after all should be a lifetime change not a quick fix. And eating too few calories is just not sustainable. And you know to take it a step further I have a background in eating disorders. So, I think it’s worth mentioning that eating too few calories can also lead to both binge eating or on the opposite end of the spectrum disordered eating or you know orthorexia, eating disorders that type thing. So, aside from just not helping with weight loss, it can also lead to a lot of other bad issues.

Mathea Ford: [00:08:31] So, how do people know if they’re eating too few calories?

Lauren Ott: [00:08:36] My biggest recommendation here would be to go see a Registered Dietitian. It’s probably cliche but they’re the ones that are going to really be able to tell you based on your height, weight, gender, activity level, body composition, how many calories you need and help you to figure out what is too few and what is too many based on your body type. Because all too often, I hear especially with women for some reason this twelve hundred calories has been thrown around so much over the years it seems like so many of my female clients think “oh! Well, twelve hundred! That’s the magic number for weight loss” and it’s just not I don’t have any clients that I have on twelve hundred calories for weight loss men or women. And so I think my biggest tip would just go see someone credentialed. Ideally a Registered Dietitian and they’re going to help you figure out what’s too few versus too many.

Mathea Ford: [00:09:28] Obviously, I agree with that because I’m a dietitian too.

Lauren Ott: [00:09:31] Oh yeah.

Mathea Ford: [00:09:31] All right. So number five?

Lauren Ott: [00:09:33] Okay. Not eating the right type of calories. You can lose weight on a fifteen hundred calorie a day diet of all doughnuts. But the issue there is that you’d be hungry all the time. You’d lose lean muscle mass and it would make sticking to this diet almost impossible with the fact that you’re hungry all the time. Instead, if you eat those same fifteen hundred calories but make sure to focus on wholegrain, healthy fats, lean protein, things that are actually going to lead to satiety and feelings of fullness and they’re also going to lead to more energy throughout the day which in turn is going to lead to less binges and therefore that ability to maintain lean body mass and weight loss. So, it’s not all about calories when it comes to weight loss, macro nutrients such as carbs, protein and fat do play a big factor in that as well.

Mathea Ford: [00:10:24] So, that’s interesting because when I became a dietitian in ’97, I believe that we kind of saw all calories as equal. So, sugar and starch both have four grams calories per carb. It’s the same thing. So, what has changed? And obviously I don’t still agree with that. But what’s the deal with how the calories how you do this intake affect you?

Lauren Ott: [00:10:54] It’s interesting I’ve gotten that question a lot from clients you know is the calorie just a calorie. And I compare it to some extent, I mean if I’m just going for an easy answer then yeah, you to some extent a calorie is a calorie but if we’re looking into things like how to affect insulin which in turn can affect fat loss and fat storage and also just how they affect our satiety because ultimately we’re humans and if it were just about calories we would never feel hunger or fullness. But but we do feel hunger and fullness and if you’re hungry all the time you’re not going to be able to sustain a certain diet which is why eating a diet full of something like sugar that does not induce satiety hormones versus something like fat or protein which do affect satiety or increase satiety hormones those are going to make a big difference. And we also have to think about lean muscle. If you’re not eating enough protein you’re going to ultimately over time start to lose lean muscle and losing lean muscle is what’s going to over time also slow our metabolic rate. So, yes calories matter but there are so many other things you have to think about satiety, lean muscle mass, hormones such as insulin and those hunger and fullness hormones that go into weight loss as well.

Mathea Ford: [00:12:14] Number six?

Lauren Ott: [00:12:15] People that have that all or nothing mentality. I could arguably say this might be the number one mistake I see in my clients. They come in and it’s just this black or white all or nothing type of thinking that’s just not sustainable for anyone because inevitably we’re human and we’re going to make a mistake at some point and these mistakes lead people to give up and fall off their plan and over time leading to this kind of yoyo dieting cycle of dieting, doing the all or nothing is sticking with it for you know a week, two weeks, a month falling off, getting upset and therefore saying “Oh! Well, I fell off so I may as well go binge on icecream tonight” and then a week later getting back on and it’s just this vicious cycle which is going to overtime lead to just distrust in yourself with food which again is overtime going to lead to no success in weight loss. Its just kind of that yoyo vicious cycle. So, instead of all or nothing thinking, give yourself permission to eat all foods and I know that’s probably crazy for some people to hear but there really should be no food. Obviously, food allergies to the side.

Mathea Ford: [00:13:28] Right.

Lauren Ott: [00:13:30] There should be no food that you cannot eat. And it’s also when it comes to exercise it’s okay to have days that you don’t exercise just like you don’t want to have all or nothing thinking with food, you don’t want to have that with exercise either. And so you want this to be sustainable. It’s probably cliche to say but moderation really is key to long term success. And also to building trust in yourself around food because ultimately if you don’t trust yourself around food you’re never going to be successful at weight loss.

Mathea Ford: [00:14:01] People sometimes say they have trigger foods or that cause them to kind of go off and then they’ll be like “No, I don’t have any willpower. I’m going to stop for today or whatever.” And that is a mindset thing like eating a doughnut might cause you to eat five but that doesn’t mean you have to stop first. You know you can choose to not eat the doughnuts but it doesn’t mean you’re ruined for the day either. You don’t get some sort of calorie reset at midnight.

Lauren Ott: [00:14:30] If and when you do fall off. I hate doing call it a plan because really it’s a way of eating. But if you do end up eating something or doing something that you didn’t want to do you haven’t ruined it. There’s no one day or even one week that’s going to throw you so far off that it’s worth just throw your hands up and say “I can’t do this.” And so realizing that you’re human realizing that we all make mistakes and being able to make those mistakes but then jump right back on that bandwagon and or plan and being resilient. I think resiliency is such a key to weight loss that you know you make a great point there too in terms of mistakes that I see people make.

Mathea Ford: [00:15:11] All right. Number seven.

Lauren Ott: [00:15:13] All right. And this can kind of tie into that all or nothing mentality. But it’s the good food, bad food mentality. In my mind, you shouldn’t have to cut out doughnuts. The reason that one donut leads you eating five donuts is probably because you have doughnuts on your bad food list. And any time you put a food on the bad food list you’re automatically putting it on this pedestal. And anytime you have something on a pedestal you’re going to obsess over it. It’s going to be all you think about. And so if you can get yourself out of that mindset of good food, bad food or yes food, no food whatever you’re calling them you’re taking the power away from that food. So, ultimately you don’t feel the need to eat five doughnuts. You can stop at one and still feel really satisfied after that one. So, I think you know self-control only goes so far when you’re obsessing about certain foods all the time. So, try to make it an even playing field for all foods and you’ll really see that you can take the power away from certain foods.

Mathea Ford: [00:16:20] You’re always going to have an event that you want to go to or something that is possibly going to have that opportunity to eat that food and if you have it like you said kind of on this bad food list, I can’t ever eat it. And you feel like you give that food more control, the food is neither good nor bad. The food’s not trying to rob you or anything like that it’s just food but we forget this sometimes but food is such an emotional experience.

Lauren Ott: [00:16:49] It is and I think you know ultimately so much of weight loss is not knowledge. I mean most people know “okay. I need to eat less and exercise more to lose weight. Right?” It doesn’t come down to knowledge as much as it does about really changing your mindset about food.

Mathea Ford: [00:17:09] Yeah, that’s great! Okay, so number eight.

Lauren Ott: [00:17:12] All right. This one is I put not listening to your body here. So, I think that so many of my clients love rules and I’m the same way we all to some extent we love rules because it makes things more black and white to us. But I think over time if you’re just following this set of rules versus actually listening to your body you can actually start to lose your hunger and fullness cues over time which can lead to a lifetime of just disordered eating and food rules versus intuitive eating which is always the ultimate goal right? Eating when we’re hungry and stopping when we’re full. One way that I really seen this in some clients is a lot of people subscribe to this whole small frequent meals mentality which is fine but if you’re eating if that small frequent meal mentality leads to eating when you’re not hungry that again you does your body and mind to not eat based off of hunger but instead eat off of this list of rules which in this case is time. And you know on the other end of that spectrum I’ve got some clients that try to restrict to two to three meals a day which causes them to be ravenous between meals and therefore they’re bingeing by the time they do get those two to three meals a day. So, there is no right or wrong number of times a day to eat. You know again there is no one size fits all for every person but it just depends on you, your metabolism, your activity level, how you feel. But my biggest advice is you know if your body tells you to eat twice a day, eat twice a day. If your body tells you to eat 10 times a day, eat 10 times a day but don’t force an eating schedule onto yourself that doesn’t fit with your hunger schedule really try to listen to your hunger and fullness cues and that again is just going to help further build up that trust in yourself around food.

Mathea Ford: [00:19:10] Well, that reminds me back to the not eating the right type of calories. You’re going to be hungry or have cravings or whatever if you’re not eating those healthy foods that are nourishing you and providing that fiber and fullness satiety feeling.

Lauren Ott: [00:19:26] All of these rules really can kind of play into each other or I shouldn’t say rules all these mistakes that I see here trying to get away from rules here.

Mathea Ford: [00:19:35] All right. So, number nine.

Lauren Ott: [00:19:37] Not exercising. This one probably seems obvious but so many of my clients think “Well, I’ve lost weight before by just dieting. So, why would I need to exercise when I know I can do it without?” But studies show that diet is important for weight loss. Well, exercise is important for weight loss maintenance and so “sure! You can 100 percent you can lose weight without exercising but what you probably can’t do is keep that weight loss off.” And in my mind weight loss maintenance is almost more important than weight loss itself because losing, gaining, losing, gaining that whole yoyo effect is so bad for not only your metabolism but also your mindset and again your trust in yourself. And so if you’re not incorporating exercise into your routine while you lose weight it can not only lead to muscle loss which can in turn decrease your resting metabolic rate but it can also make it nearly impossible to keep that weight loss off. So, exercise allows your body to lose more fat versus more muscle. We’re inevitably going to lose some fat and muscle during weight loss regardless of how much we exercise. But you can really kind of tilt the percentages by exercising and you’ll inevitably lose a little bit. But we want to maximize obviously the fat versus the muscle loss. So, exercising is huge both during weight loss and weight loss maintenance.

Mathea Ford: [00:21:04] I think exercise gives you benefits obviously outside of the calories that you burn as far as like more alertness, sleeping better, you know better able to complete your tasks so exercise just good for us all around. But you know I always hear sometimes that people are like “I’m so hungry all the time I don’t feel like I have the energy to exercise.” And that’s kind of leading into that you know you’re not eating the right foods or you’re not eating too many calories you’re not eating enough calories or the right kind. So.

Lauren Ott: [00:21:35] Yeah! And exercise can actually help with hunger levels as well. It seems counterintuitive but studies show that exercise can actually decrease hunger as we start to do it more consistently and it also helps with stress which in turn helps with weight loss. So, like you said there’s there’s a million different reasons to exercise. Don’t fixate too much on the calorie burn side of that.

Mathea Ford: [00:22:00] Okay. Number 10.

Lauren Ott: [00:22:02] This one kind of like with calories. There’s also such thing as over exercising or doing the wrong exercises. So, over exercising a few things there. First of all, it’s just not sustainable. Just like cutting, eating too few calories is not neither is over exercising but overexercising can also lead to muscle loss that can lead to injury. It can also lead to impaired adrenal hormones that can regulate that stress response that I just mentioned is so important for for weight loss as well. And then in terms of doing the wrong exercises, I see so many clients focusing on cardio for that calorie burn reason and really skimping on strength training but lifting weights although the calorie burn in that moment might be lower. It really is the most effective way to build lean muscle and lose fat which in turn is going to help keep that metabolism high. So, you don’t want to over exercise and you don’t want to just focus on the cardio either. Ideally, you want a mix of both cardio and strength training.

Mathea Ford: [00:23:07] What about people who don’t want to have you know a lot of bulky muscles or adding they don’t want to add weight because they weight trained and now all of a sudden they weigh another pound instead of lost?

Lauren Ott: [00:23:17] I would tell them that’s not going to happen. I mean if you’re if you’re a woman we just don’t have the testosterone to bulk up as much as people think we are. Unless you’re just you know in the gym for four hours a day which like I just mentioned you shouldn’t be doing anyways. You’re not going to bulk up as a woman and gaining weight from exercise. Sure, it can happen from muscle gain but you’re losing fat at the same time so if anything you might see a week or two plateau but you’re not going to see a weight gain just from strength training.

Mathea Ford: [00:23:50] Yeah and go back to number one the scale is not the only right?

Lauren Ott: [00:23:54] Very true. Yep.

Mathea Ford: [00:23:55] All right. Eleven?

Lauren Ott: [00:23:57] All right. This one I’m talking about the halo effect and here’s what I mean by that. I’ll have clients who eat well and exercise for a week and they thought this quote unquote halo effect that they’re like “you know what? I’ve done so well. I deserve something really great.” So, they’ll go and they’ll order a large pizza and they’ll binge on the whole thing and it may not even happen just after a week. I’ve seen this happen after one meal of eating right of “Oh well, I had such a healthy life. So, for dinner I’m going to get Chinese takeout and I’m going to order the large size and eat the whole thing.” You absolutely want to reward yourself with weight loss. Not rewarding yourself is actually another mistake I see people make on occasion but you shouldn’t be rewarding yourself with food. So, start to notice when you’re getting that halo effect when you’re feeling like “oh! I’ve done so well that I deserve to eat X Y Z.” If you want to eat whatever it is then great! But if you’re eating it just because you feel like you deserve it reward yourself with something else. Get a massage, you know take a bubble bath, have a Netflix binge night whatever it is that floats your boat but try not to reward yourself with food.

Mathea Ford: [00:25:05] Binge on Netflix not cake. Right?

Lauren Ott: [00:25:07] Yeah! There you go.

Mathea Ford: [00:25:09] Yes. All right. Last one 12th?

Lauren Ott: [00:25:12] Unrealistic expectations. This is such a big one. I’ll have clients come in and they’ll say “I want to lose 50 pounds by the time I’m 50” and they turn 50 in two months and that’s just not realistic. Most people can expect to lose anywhere from a half a pound to maximum two pounds a week and that all depends on how much weight you need to lose. The less you need to lose unfortunately the less you probably will lose each week and expecting to lose more than this can lead to disappointment and therefore giving up. So, and also keeping in mind that weight loss is not linear. You’re not going to lose the same amount of weight every single week because again there are so many things that influence the scale. And then they’re going to be weeks that you might even gain. So, having unrealistic expectations and inevitably not meeting these goals can again wear down confidence over time, leading people to fall off their plan and thus begin this whole yoyo effect of dieting. So, I think again this is just a really good reason to actually go see a Registered Dietitian and see what’s realistic for your body because 50 pounds might not even be realistic for you. There are so many things to take into account such as “when’s the last time I weighed 50 pounds less than this?” If it was in high school that’s probably not realistic for you anymore. You also have to look at genetics. If you come from a family of bigger built people or people that have a little bit more weight in their midsection than their thighs. That’s probably how you’re going to be built to so. Not to say you can’t lose weight but it’s not realistic to think that “Yeah I want to be 50 pounds thinner when no one in my family weighs that I haven’t weigh that since high school and eat when I was in high school I was on the track team running 10 miles a day or whatever it might be.” So, someone like a Registered Dietitian can really talk you through those things and figure out what an overall realistic weight loss would be and how quickly to expect to see that weight loss.

Mathea Ford: [00:27:24] How can people change their behavior related to food?

Lauren Ott: [00:27:27] So, I think kind of to touch on something we talked about earlier but so much of it is mindset or mental and I think people know these basics of weight loss. For the most part I think there’s always things that people can learn but the hard part is actually doing those things that you learn and sticking to it. And if you feel restricted you’re inevitably going to go off plan at some point. So, making sure that you know this is a lifestyle change and that you’re still incorporating your favorite foods there should be none of those No foods but I think really getting to the bottom of one thing I will have a lot of my clients do is most of the time when someone comes to see me for weight loss. It’s not their first rodeo right? They’ve tried before and so I think that looking back at those previous attempts and really kind of figuring out what went wrong that time. “Was it was it self sabotage? Was it all or nothing thinking? Did something in my life change that maybe I need to make a change in terms of diet and exercise? Maybe I was able to exercise five days a week but now I have a newborn baby and that’s not feasible anymore. So what can I do now to make life easier, weight loss easier this time around?” So, I think that looking back at previous attempts and learning from those is really important. I think figuring out what your road blocks are whether it’s distrust in yourself with food or self sabotage or maybe just actually name it sit down and look at your schedule and figuring out your priorities if time you know time for so many people is a roadblock. And if that’s the case for you really looking at your priorities and figuring out how to get your health and wellness at the top of that list. It’s amazing what you can find when you actually start looking at your day hour per hour. We’re all busy but I think we all have things we can cut out such as social media and TV and you know whatever it might be to make time for ourselves and our health. So, that would be probably my the first things I would do.

Mathea Ford: [00:29:35] So, when you’re thinking about weight loss is long term like you mentioned weight maintenance is important and it seems like everything I read says that that’s the hardest part. You know once you get over the hurdle of losing the 50 or 20 or whatever pounds keeping that off is really the next challenge. So, any any advice related to that for people?

Lauren Ott: [00:30:02] Yeah! I mean I think that first of all thinking about maintenance, your entire weight loss journey is important. I think in today’s culture weight maintenance is just not for lack of a better word it’s just not sexy right. Like you’re not reading in Cosmo Magazine, you’re not reading about “oh! This person has kept off 50 pounds for the last 10 years.” You’re reading about how they lost the weight in the first place so nobody really talks about the maintenance. So, I think that keeping maintenance top of mind in your journey from day one is so important because it doesn’t make sense to lose weight if you’re not focused on keeping it off. You’re better off just staying where you are than losing it only to gain it back. And so you know thinking about it from day one. Making sure your changes are sustainable so you’re not doing things like cutting, overcutting calories or overexercising. Making sure you are exercising because we know that that’s one of the number one predictors of weight loss maintenance. And I think having accountability is such a big thing too. So, having a support group whether it be friends, family whoever that know what your goals are both during weight loss and during weight loss maintenance because doing it alone is just not possible so make sure that you’ve got a really solid support group that’s going to be there for you. You know again not just in your time of weight loss but also in maintenance as well. And maybe that’s an online community too. People that are going through the same thing as you.

Mathea Ford: [00:31:31] That’s a great great tip. I think that accountability, that connection with other people. Thinking about our listeners, they may be practitioners working with people who are losing weight or they may be people who are thinking about eating healthier or whatever. How can they use the information we talked about today in their day to day life?

Lauren Ott: [00:31:51] You know I think that just setting up your environment to make these things feasible to you. So, kind of back to the weight loss maintenance thing, if you lose the weight and then all of a sudden you know these types of ice cream start creeping back into your house or you cancel your gym membership the day that you know you reach your goals or whatever it might be making sure that your environment is setup for weight loss and weight loss maintenance. You know not driving past your favorite fast food restaurants every day, not keeping kind of those binge foods in the house until you feel like you can keep them in the house. And then you know just making sure again that you’ve got the right mentality that you’ve got, someone to talk to to make sure if you have the right mentality whether that’s a Registered Dietitian or a friend. And then I think another thing is just to make sure what you’re reading because there’s so much misinformation out there from magazines to newspapers to whatever it might be. Just make sure you’re not filling your brain with misinformation that’s just going to further confuse you and discourage you. I always tell my clients if it’s not you know if it if it truly is a weight loss article if it’s not written by an M.D. or preferably an RD something like that don’t read it, don’t even let those things get into your brain.

Mathea Ford: [00:33:11] All right, Lauren, one of the things I always ask my podcast guests is their favorite food?

Lauren Ott: [00:33:18] This is like the hardest question you’ve asked me all day.

Mathea Ford: [00:33:22] Get that a lot!

Lauren Ott: [00:33:23] You know I built a career like you did around food. So, I love all food. But if I really really had to narrow it down I mean aside from dessert which I’ve already said I love I had to think of a non dessert food I’d probably see some sort of Asian food maybe like a curry or something like that. I could probably eat curry for every single meal.

Mathea Ford: [00:33:48] Wow. Okay. I love curry too. I’m so upset when Pei Wei stopped making a curry dish.

Lauren Ott: [00:33:53] Oh my gosh! Long story. I actually got sick off of their curry one time so I can’t eat it anymore. I didn’t even know they stopped making it.

Mathea Ford: [00:34:01] Oh! It’s been a bit several years but yeah!

Lauren Ott: [00:34:05] Yeah.

Mathea Ford: [00:34:05] Yeah.

Lauren Ott: [00:34:07] It was good though.

Mathea Ford: [00:34:08] Lauren thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners enjoyed listening to your twelve weight loss mistakes and kind of the way to correct those. So, if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?

Lauren Ott: [00:34:22] Yeah. So, I’d say two ways. I have an Instagram. It’s @theDesertDietitian. Dietitian with two T’s. There’s no C dietitian. Get that a lot. And I also have a website. So www.thedessertdietitian.com. Either of those are great ways to get a hold of me or follow along with what I’m doing.

Mathea Ford: [00:34:47] Well, guys this has been another great episode of the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast is all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life.

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Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 47 Meditation is the Tiny Space Between Thoughts with Lola Scarborough

March 25, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

Lola is an IKYTA and Yoga Alliance E-RYT certified yoga teacher and a co-owner and Managing Director of Yoga Lola Studios.  Lola is also a certified life coach, a certified Wellness & Health Restoration Natural Foods Consultant, a certified tonic herbalist, a certified Ayurvedic Practitioner, a certified aerobics teacher, a certified Level III Reiki master, and a novice astrologer.  She teaches Kundalini Yoga classes (as taught by Yogi Bhajan) along with many other types of yoga.  She has a long history as a writer, teacher, and project manager in the business world.  She authors/has authored articles, and films videos related to yoga, health, and healing. She has produced over 25 videos on health and fitness through the online platform e-How.  Lola also develops and oversees the 200-Hour Yoga Mastery Course/Yoga Teacher Training Yoga at Yoga.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:27] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Lola Scarborough on the show today. Lola, welcome to Nutrition Experts.

Lola Scarborough: [00:00:44] Hi! Thank you Mathea. I’m really glad to be here with you and your listeners.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:49] I’m excited to have you on the show and share your expertise with my tribe. Can you start with telling my listeners a little more about you and what you do?

Lola Scarborough: [00:00:57] Sure. I’ve been practicing yoga for about 22 years – a long time. My particular love is Kundalini yoga. Although I do all different kinds. And I own a yoga/wellness studio in Lake City, Texas where my husband and I have been helping people get fit, stay fit and feel great for the last 11 years. I have a background in Ayurveda which is a medical system used largely in India. Maybe some of your listeners have heard of it maybe not but it’s really about lifestyle choices and choosing the right kinds of food and activities for your particular body constitution, teach a lot of meditation to people. I work with a lot of clients who have different issues ranging from fertility issues to going through cancer treatments and everything in between. I have a couple of different certifications in Chinese herbals and I also have a bachelor. I think it’s yeah it’s a B.A. A Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. So, that’s kind of a little bit about me.

Mathea Ford: [00:02:09] Wow! That’s a lot. I see how you’ve put together because I know yoga is all about the whole body and health. And then you’ve added that Ayurveda and the Chinese medicine. So, let’s talk about yoga for a minute. What do you think are the benefits that your customers have when they do yoga?

Lola Scarborough: [00:02:28] Well, the ones that get mentioned to me the most often is they get calmed down. The Yoga practice can be very strenuous or it can be very gentle. But what it does is it takes you out of your head and into your body giving that mind a chance to rest and giving the body a chance to move, to express itself. We spend so much of our time sitting in the car or at computers that we kind of lose contact with the tactile senses of our own body. So, it gives people a chance to re-remember the body as a sensation machine rather than as a tool that you push through the day that you make it do what it has to do to bring the groceries home and get the kids to school and all of the other tasks that we have.

Mathea Ford: [00:03:19] I always notice when I do yoga that is a wonderful stretching sensation even though I know it’s exercise, I know I’m building muscle but it also is just the idea that I’m holding poses for a long period time and stretching those muscles to have like you said I sit here in one spot and hunch over my computer or whatever. So, it’s a chance to get those opened up. How do you get those extra benefits of calming down and getting in to your body?

Lola Scarborough: [00:03:47] I do the particular type of yoga that I teach is that Kundalini yoga. I also teach in yoga. But my love, my passion what I’ve kind of dedicated my years of study and yoga to has been the Kundalini Yoga tradition as taught by yogi Bhajan and it is a yoga that incorporates all the different aspects of yoga. So, Ashtanga which is that exercise, Pranayama which is breathing techniques that work with the nervous system, that work with the constitution of the blood, that work with your ability to uptake oxygen and energy and meditation of course. Most of our meditations in the Kundalini tradition are active which means you’ll may be doing some chanting. You may be doing some breath work with it. You’re probably holding a mudra which are hand positions and there’s also a level of devotion and one of the things that I encourage my students to do is to go in connect with their heart center and listen for the small still voice of their soul. Our mind takes up so much of our living space that our poor little heart, soul thing never gets the chance to express itself. So, we do a lot of meditation and Kundalini yoga and then in some of the other types of yoga we practice at the studio, we do meditation as well but it’s probably a much smaller portion of the yoga practice itself. A lot of people when they come to yoga they’re not really looking for meditation or breath work. They’re just looking for a workout using yoga postures. So, we have all different kinds of students that come in with all different kinds of needs. You know yoga has turned into like a Baskin Robbins right? There are 50 flavors. A flavor for everybody you know so.

Mathea Ford: [00:05:41] So, when you’re looking at a yoga studio, how do you know what kind of yoga they practice? Do they usually tell you or does it matter that much?

Lola Scarborough: [00:05:51] Oh it matters it matters a whole lot. It’s everything. And so yes, usually they’ll tell you like a lot of the venue as it flows you know you’re going to work through yoga postures catching a breath in between each of the Asanas and there may be a slight amount of meditation to it but there may not be any meditation at all. Your meditation becomes your movement in your practice. So, it’s very physically based. Then you get into some of the more esoteric types of yoga like the Kundalini yoga where you’re actually doing a mantra practice I teach I mean Kundalini Yoga teachers do a lot of teaching as the part of leading a class. So, you actually begin to learn some about the philosophy, you begin to learn the different benefits to the different organs to the blood to the nervous system. How the particular things you’re doing affect the body. So, there’s a lot of teaching in that tradition and other studios you go in and you know you just hit it. You walk in and man you hit it and you’re just doing postures the whole time. And then you come out you feel like you’ve had a great workout and you have. But the essential components of yoga that make it yoga have a lot to do with meditation with breath work with a sense of devotion. Like I said which for us is going into our own hearts kind of devoting our practice to our higher selves. So, it really depends on the studio. But most studios are fairly transparent about what they’re offering.

Mathea Ford: [00:07:27] Well, I got to be honest with you I didn’t even know you know there was more than a couple types of yoga. And what I’ve heard is you know hot yoga or you know regular yoga. So, what’s what is hot yoga? Is that a different type of yoga completely or is it just the temperature of the room?

Lola Scarborough: [00:07:44] It’s the temperature of the room and different hot yogas used different types of practices. My husband who really loves Hatha, loves the physical component of yoga. Heads up our hot yoga division. Hot yoga if it’s done properly can be beneficial if it’s done in a room that’s too hot where they push you too hard is probably contraindicated for a lot of people because it’s hard on the adrenals. And people will go into heat exhaustion and they’ll feel great when they leave but that’s because they’re delirious. So, it’s really good to before you go into a hot yoga studio to understand what the temperature is, what the humidity is, what a safe heat index is. But it is basically a workout yoga and that’s its primary focus is to do a workout only the temperature is elevated.

Mathea Ford: [00:08:38] So, you’ve mentioned meditation multiple times. And I would just really like to hear more about kind of meditation outside of yoga. What are the benefits? What are some ways that people can do meditation that can be healthy for them?

Lola Scarborough: [00:08:55] A beautiful practice if you’re brand new to meditation, a beautiful practice is defined a safe and quiet space and always do it at the same time every day whenever possible. And you can light a candle and you can have a picture of Jesus or Buddha or one of your favorite teachers or just even someone you love. Keep it really simple, sit down and then take your right hand and wrap it around the wrist of the left arm and just close your eyes and count your pulse and just breathe in and breathe out and just focus all of your attention on your pulse. It is extremely calming and you can start with three minutes a day. Meditation doesn’t have to be done for an extended amount of time to bring extended benefits. Working your way up to a nine or 11 minute a day practice is absolutely optimum and no more than that is needed for you to get centered, to be calm down, to have the chance to listen to that small still voice that comes from the heart. What people find is that when they sit in meditation and they finally begin to get to a place where they can relax people will say “Well, Lola, you know I can’t meditate” and I’m like “well, you can.” And they say “But I keep having all these thoughts” and I’m like “everybody does that.” And meditation is that tiny tiny space in between thoughts. If you can just grab even those little tiny spaces. You’ll find that your intuition starts talking to you. You’ll find that you’re calmer, you’ll find that you handle stress so much better. It does not have to be complicated. You don’t have to listen to any type of a recording or anything else. You can just sit down wrap those fingers around that left wrist and just listen to the beat of your own pulse, connect with your heart, slow your breathing down and every time your thoughts wander just come back to the beating of the pulse. It’s that simple.

Mathea Ford: [00:11:07] And then from that like you said you get the calming you get the centered and you start to what else starts to happen?

Lola Scarborough: [00:11:16] While the nervous system begins to I call it refurbish itself. Most of us are pretty high strung because we live with so much stress and we stay so high strung we don’t even realize how high strung we actually are until we start calming down and then you’re like “Oh my God! I didn’t realize how stressed out I’d been. I didn’t realize I’m walking around holding my breath. I didn’t realize how fast I get irritable or sad or depressed” or whatever it is for you. And that’s another thing that people tell me when they come to the studio and they start doing yoga. They say “I didn’t realize really where I was at.” And so it begins to refurbish or rebuild the nervous system. Even if you’re sitting there and your thoughts veer off and you bring it back, your thoughts veer off you bring them back, your thoughts veer off you bring them back. That’s meditation and the nervous system actually has a chance to begin to rest and to renew itself.

Mathea Ford: [00:12:15] That’s amazing. I love that you said meditation is the tiny space between your thoughts that is probably very true. So, you mentioned you’ve been trained in Ayurveda. Can you talk about what that is and where it comes from?

Lola Scarborough: [00:12:33] Yes. Ayurveda is a system of health that comes from India. It’s estimated to be over five thousand years old. There are all kinds of medical treatises that kind of govern and outline the different treatments that Ayurveda uses for different diseases including diabetes, all kinds of cancer, epilepsy, you name it. All of these things that we know about in terms of disease in the West. Well, they’ve been going on in the bodies of human beings for a really long time. And so Ayurveda has its own methodology and its own approach and system for maintaining health which is the focus of Ayurveda. But then working with disease if disease happens. It’s a herbal system although now in India, Ayurvedic practitioners also go through western medical training as well as the more traditional Ayurvedic training. So, in Ayurveda, one of the things that stands out and it’s a lot like Chinese medicine in this way is that when you come in part of figuring out what is going on for you is the person, the doctor sits across from you and will often take detailed notes on what you eat, how you sleep, the state of your relationships with your family, family is considered to be very important in Ayurveda, what kind of job you do, the sorts of stress that you’re under. And then they look at the tongue. Same thing happens in traditional Chinese medicine, the tongue is the diagnostic tool. They take your pulse. Same thing in Chinese medicine the pulse is a diagnostic tool and they take all of these factors and they put them together so when they look at you they’re looking at you from the perspective of a whole person. A complete system and then the recommendations they make for you are based on these things. So, even though you may have diabetes, the types of herbals that the doctor the Ayurvedic practitioner would prescribe for you might be very different from the herbals that they would prescribe for someone else who had quote diabetes because they have different layers of treatments for diabetes based on different symptoms and different body types.

Mathea Ford: [00:15:09] So, can you talk a little more about the body types or whatever they’re called in Ayurveda?

Lola Scarborough: [00:15:16] They’re called doshas and what a dosha is is it’s a conglomeration of traits. So, I’m a Pitta, Kapha dosha and so my dosha is about 50/50 on each side. So, I’m a really go getter kind of person but I’m also pretty laid back. So, the doshas kind of describe your mental attributes and then those are called Gunas and then your physical attributes are called doshas. So, you can be someone who is one dosha in your body type and a different have a whole different mindset. Is that making sense?

Mathea Ford: [00:15:59] Yeah. It makes sense to me that it’s two different things. Mentally and physically your body.

Lola Scarborough: [00:16:07] So, when you’re working with someone in Ayurveda, someone’s dosha might be Kapha but then their Guna or they’re mental attributes might be Vata. There are three body types. There’s Vata, there’s Kapha and there’s Pitta. Most people will have two doshas that dominate the strongest. Some people are primarily one dosha and on rare occasions there’s someone who’s actually what’s called tri-doshic where the doshas are equally one third, one third, one third and so in Ayurveda, the doshas drive treatment. If you become unbalanced and the dosha it gives rise to disease and so the first level of management is to change lifestyle factors. So, let’s say for example I’m a very high strung nervous person. And then my movements are rapid. I talk a lot, I’m very quicksilver in my movements that would be considered someone who was Vata in nature and let’s say my mental attributes match my physical attributes. I had my nervous system would be the type of nervous system that would be more prone to things like Parkinson’s and those sorts of diseases because the dosha that you have is often indicator of the types of diseases that you’re going to develop in the event the dosha just go out of balance. So, I would go in, I’d see my practitioner and I’d say “oh! I have terrible insomnia which is a Vata condition. I can’t sleep at night. I’m nervous all the time. My husband says I drive him crazy because I never stop talking. Can you help me? I’m a wreck!” And so the Ayurvedic practitioner, doctor would do the interview, talk to you, take your pulse, look at your tongue and then would probably recommend you know “Okay, you need to do slow deep breathing.” The sorts of yogic exercises that you do should be very slow, very deliberate things that calm the nervous system down. These are the types of foods that you should eat. They’d be called Vata reducing foods so that you kind of calm the nervous system down, calm the nervousness of the personality down. So, the first line of defense in Ayurveda is changing lifestyle factors. Going to bed based on your dosha, eating the sorts of foods based on your dosha or bringing your dosha back into balance and then herbal prescriptions or herbal remedies are usually used only if lifestyle factors don’t bring what’s happening under control or if there is a disease that is already manifest. And of course I can’t do that. I’m not a doctor in the United States I’m just an Ayurvedic practitioner. I work with people on foods and sometimes I’ll recommend herbals and things like that but I never try to work with disease because I am not a doctor.

Mathea Ford: [00:19:14] How did the doshas and the foods kind of go together? I guess to eat the correct foods for your body type?

Lola Scarborough: [00:19:22] Different foods will increase the doshas so let’s go back to Vata. So I have my Vata clients and she’s sitting over there and she’s just so high strung and then she tells me only I only eat a little bit of food, I don’t like to eat because Vatas unlike me Pitta, they’re very a lot of times they just don’t like to eat. They eat very small amounts of food, they eat on the run and they tend to like foods that do what’s known as increasing they say in Ayurveda that a doshas likes to increase itself. When a doshas increases it goes out of control. So, she’s going to like all of the foods that increase her dosha. They’re going to be salty. They’re going to be dry. And what she needs to bring her dosha in the balance is exactly the opposite. She needs foods that are heavier, that are calming. She needs regular meal times. She needs to eat big enough portions that she can actually calm the nervous system down. She needs to avoid anything that’s cold, travel increases Vata and a lot of Vata people like nothing better than to travel. Going into cold climates increases Vata but people love to climb mountains. So, when you begin to get the big picture of how a dosha loves to increase itself and you see how people are living, you’ll see how they’re increasing the dosha which sends them further and further out of balance. You begin to bring foods and lifestyle factors in that bring that dosha back down into a state of balance so that she is a balance Vata. So, she’s bright, she’s light, she’s intelligent, she’s fun to be around but she sleeps at night. And she’s calm enough that she knows when to stop talking and she’s hungry enough that she actually stops to eat.

Mathea Ford: [00:21:16] Is there research now that has shown any… What are the benefits of that type of medicine?

Lola Scarborough: [00:21:21] The are Ayurvedic protocols have not really hit the western scene for clinical testing. There’s very there’s been very little clinical testing. However, in terms of herbals themselves, as you know there’s been a renewed interest in natural products for treating different kinds of health conditions. So, a lot of the herbals have been found to have efficacy for the different types of diseases and conditions as indicated in the eye you’re vetting Ayurvedic medical text. With Ayurveda, in terms of working with the doshas and eating towards the doshas, I would say that you know the proof is in the pudding. So, when I have worked with people. I’ve worked with people who have been infertile and they’ve been going through IVF treatment. I’ve changed what they’re eating and given them some good herbal protocols and they’ve gotten pregnant after years of trying to and you know you can see it. The sperm measures that moves faster and stronger, the eggs are stronger because you know when they do IVF they look at the health of the eggs. So, I feel pretty certain that when I use these protocols I am helping people because when people go in and they get their blood pressure measured it’s down. They sleep better they eat better they live better. But in terms of rigorous Western testing and clinical trials, Ayurveda has not in terms of lifestyle management it has not been subjected to that.

Mathea Ford: [00:22:59] Yes! I know what you’re saying about the herbs because I know even in Europe, a lot of medical practitioners use herbal supplements and compositions or whatever you would call them to help even in just regular hospitals. You have a book that’s a little bit that’s about breast cancer and preventing and improving your health with breast cancer. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lola Scarborough: [00:23:24] Sure. The name of the book is Fighting For Our Tits and what I know. I’ve got some really interesting reactions to that title but what it’s about is it’s about not breast cancer or what it’s about is I’m a research rat and I’m very research based. So, the book is heavily researched based and it covers studies done on fluoride and how fluoride in our water can cause cancer. It talks about foods and diets and all. You know there’s there’s a lot of connection between diet and cancer in general and breast cancer in particular. Alcohol as well. I also have a section where I talk about all different kinds of things you can do just to boost your health and you know just keeping your immune system strong, keeping your emotions balanced, finding the happiness in your life, learning to relax, dancing. I have a whole section where I talk about a fellow by the name of Kohli who came over to the states. He was a doctor here and he got really interested in disease and he learned that it’s called Kohli’s toxins. He learned that by creating a cocktail and inserting it into a tumor that he could kill the cancer tumor and again it was called Kohli’s toxins. His vaccine cocktail was used for a long long time in cancer treatment and it would completely get rid of the tumor and it never came back. So there’s a lot of different ways to look at what we’re doing in terms of staying healthy enough and looking at some of the environmental toxins that we’re subjected to every day. I talk about perfume and synthetic perfume as a serious endocrine disrupter. It does all kinds of things to your endocrine system. I talk about antiperspirants and there has been no proof that antiperspirants or deodorants caused breast cancer but I kind of talk about letting go of some of the things that we use in our modern life that could possibly contribute to disease and finding more natural things to put in their place.

Mathea Ford: [00:25:47] So, you also mentioned that you are qualified in Chinese medicine. Can you talk about how that’s different from Ayurveda and what you do in that? You mentioned the tongue thing but…

Lola Scarborough: [00:25:59] Right. Well, I’ve studied Chinese medicine and really I’m a lot more versed in the Ayurveda than I am in the Chinese medicine but they have a lot of similarities. They both use tongue diagnosis, they use Pulse Diagnosis, they do the same thing with having a client sit down and they talk about different lifestyle factors and things like that. Like Ayurveda they believe the seasons have an impact on disease and the doshas. They believe in food as a treatment for different diseases. I think it may be one of the main differences that I have observed between Chinese medicine and Ayurveda is the use of acupuncture which is in Ayurveda, you will not find needles there. There’s acupuncture there are called Marma points where a practitioner can push on the points to help clear energy blockages but they don’t use the needles. I’ve done a lot of acupuncture personally on myself with a qualified acupuncturist and I have found it to be absolutely amazing in terms of helping with long term problems. I had eczema so bad that I thought it was going to eat me alive and this is when I first really got interested in Chinese medicine and it took me a year but after a year I’m eczema free for the last ten years and I had tried all kinds of Western medicines to help me with that problem without any success whatsoever. So, to me one of the biggest differences is the use of acupuncture and in Chinese medicine they use Qigong and other types Taichi, other types of energy movement rather than yoga as another way as another avenue to wholeness. But the focus and intent is a little different than the focus and intent of yoga.

Mathea Ford: [00:28:06] So with acupuncture, what do you think it is about acupuncture that helps? Because I’ve heard of what you’re trying out like the acupressure where there’s certain points in your body but what is the acupuncture actually doing?

Lola Scarborough: [00:28:19] What the acupuncture does is it goes to places in the system they’re called meridians in yoga they’re called Nadis but their energy we’d look like if you’ve ever seen a tree branch our nervous system looks kind of like a network of tree branches. So, energy, electromagnetic energy runs along those lines called meridians in Chinese medicine. The idea is just like if you have water flowing through a creek and a bunch of twigs and logs begin to block up the flow of the water then the water backs up and becomes stagnant. So, if you clear that away then the water flows again and so the use of acupuncture and also acupressure to a degree. The idea is to remove the blockage in that point of the energy system so that the energy can flow again and re-establish harmony in the body.

Mathea Ford: [00:29:20] So, they determine what’s blocked based on your symptoms?

Lola Scarborough: [00:29:23] Based on your symptoms and based on your pulse. They can tell a lot about you based on your pulse.

Mathea Ford: [00:29:30] So, are all acupuncturist trained in Chinese medicine or is it that Chinese medicine people are trained in acupuncture and there’s also regular people who just do acupuncture?

Lola Scarborough: [00:29:43] Yes, but yes people can do acupuncture without having any training whatsoever in Chinese herbals or through the traditional Chinese medicine called TCM. So there are practitioners. I went for a longtime to a chiropractor. Around here I just loved him to death and he’d been trained in acupuncture and so he would do acupuncture but he didn’t know anything about Chinese herbal or pulse diagnosis or even looking at the tongue. But I would tell him what was going on and he would break out his trusty needles then really good things would happen.

Mathea Ford: [00:30:19] And it’s not painful?

Lola Scarborough: [00:30:20] There can be times if it has an energy block where you’re going to notice a discomfort but a lot of times the first time I had acupuncture I had something like eleven needles and that’s when I first started my treatment for the eczema. And I thought almost like I was high. I just felt like it went woooshhh. I mean that’s the only way I can describe it. It was like woosh and I felt this instant sense of deep relief of… I mean I it’s hard to explain what it feels like but I knew something really awesome had just happened to me.

Mathea Ford: [00:30:59] Yeah! That would be my only thought is that hurt to have someone but they’re probably not really big needles they’re little bitty needles?

Lola Scarborough: [00:31:06] Yeah, they’re fine needles. And you know again unless it hits the point where there is a severe blockage you’re not even going to feel much of a little sting. And when they come out you almost never bleed but it’s just an incredible practice.

Mathea Ford: [00:31:23] So, we’ve talked about a lot today and I want to kind of distill it down and have you kind of talk about how this information that we’ve talked about can be used by the listeners in their day to day life.

Lola Scarborough: [00:31:38] One of the quickest ways to begin to use Ayurveda itself and the system of Ayurveda is to go online and start reading. There is a wonderful website Banyan Botanicals and that’s B A N Y A N and B O T A N I C A L S.com. Banyan Botanicals. They have the Dosha test. They go through and they have a little book about Ayurveda that you can download for free. They also have people that you can talk to and consult with if you have a question about using herbals for some of the conditions that you have. Deepak Chopra a lot of people have heard of him. He also on his website has a lot of different information about Ayurveda. So just getting out there and getting to poke around in it a little bit, figuring out kind of what your Dosha is is a great place to start. And Ayurveda is like yoga. I’ve studied Ayurveda now for going on eleven years and what I know wouldn’t even fill a thimble in the larger context of what’s out there to learn about it. The same is true of yoga and I’ve been doing it for 22 years. So there is a lot of information but you don’t have to have all of that to learn how to bring it into your life and use it to benefit yourself. You can stay at a very high level with it and still see incredible results.

Mathea Ford: [00:33:11] What are some of the biggest changes that you commonly give people to make about their diet stop drinking ice water or anything with ice. Ice or anything cold, ice cream, cold drinks harm the digestion so when in Ayurveda there’s a belief just like in Chinese medicine that there’s heat in the stomach it’s called Agni in Ayurveda so there’s a fire that burns. So, let’s say you’re eating your yummy yummy lunch and you’re chasing it down with a cold Coke or a cold glass of water well so you eat and the food goes in that fire in your stomach which burns the food to turn it into nutrition it’s nice and high and then you take a couple of drinks off your big gulp and you completely put the fire out. So, it makes it very hard for the body to take that food that you’ve just eaten and transform it into nutrients that then go into the bloodstream to build tissue, to build blood, to build your brain power. You put your fire out so in Ayurveda and in Chinese medicine they recommend consuming soup or like my husband and I we drink hot water with our meals and every now and again having something a little cold is is okay but ice cream anything that’s really cold harms the stomach, it harms the fire and harms your ability to digest your food and have it assimilate in the system. So, people say “but I can’t. I can’t give up my ice. I can’t give up my cold water.” So, you can take it one step at a time you know that’s a really good way to make changes but that’s one of the first things that I recommend. The second thing I recommend is to always eat your largest meal at lunch because our bodies are like the rest of nature. So, in the morning it’s kind of cool our Agni or stomach fires kind of low we’re just waking up our sun is just coming up in our stomach. So, eating something warm but light and then at noon our fire is like this blazing just like you know the noon sun and then in the evening the sun is going down so we’re cooling down again. So, the second piece of advice I give people right off the bat is to eat your largest meal at anywhere between eleven thirty and two o’clock in the afternoon.

Mathea Ford: [00:35:39] Okay, so I like to ask all my guests. We always talk about food. What’s your favorite food?

Lola Scarborough: [00:35:46] My favorite food is spinach. I love spinach. Anyway you any way you slice it, dice it, cook it raw in everything, cooked soups. I just love spinach.

Mathea Ford: [00:36:00] I can’t say that I agree but. I love that you’re passionate about it. I do. Yeah. No, I like to eat spinach. I do like to mix it with the lettuce and then sometimes like in a dish on the stove like if I’m making some chicken and I’ll put some spinach in there and wilted and add it to the sauce. That’s always good. Well, Lola, thank you for so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners learned a lot about different types of medicine, Ayurveda, the Chinese medicine and yoga. So, if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?

Lola Scarborough: [00:36:41] They can check me out on my website at yogaLola.com Y O G.A. L O L.A. yogaLola.com. Or they can email me at Lola@yogalola.com and if they’re interested in my book they can check out my website LolaScarborough.com. I know you transcribe, would you like for me to spell it out or do you intend drill it out. Okay, so as L O L.A. S C A R B O R O U G H. Dot com.

Mathea Ford: [00:37:16] Great. So guys this has been another great episode of the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast that is all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life.

https://media.blubrry.com/renaldiethq/p/app.pippa.io/public/streams/5aba77b58bdf7ba53cccc618/episodes/5c92f7781c90eaff1ae35348.mp3

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Filed Under: Blog, Podcast Tagged With: Acupuncture, Ayurveda, Breast Cancer Awareness, Chinese Herbal Medicine, Fighting for our Tits, Hot Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Lola Scarborough, Meditation, Yoga

Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 46 Wait For That Beyonce Phase with Amanda Laird, Holistic Nutritionist

March 18, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

Amanda Laird is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and host of the Heavy Flow Podcast – a weekly podcast dedicated to periods, reproductive health and other taboo health and wellness topics. Amanda is the author of Heavy Flow: Breaking the Curse of Menstruation, available wherever books are sold. She lives in Toronto.

Website + social media:

www.amandalaird.ca
www.instagram.com/amandalaird
www.facebook.com/amandalairdrhn
www.twitter.com/amandalaird

Mathea Ford: [00:00:29] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Amanda Laird on the show today. Amanda welcome to Nutrition Experts.

Amanda Laird: [00:00:44] Thanks for having me. I’m excited.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:46] I’m excited to have you on this show and share expertise with my tribe. Because it’s a little different topic than we have ever talked about. So, today we’re not talking about being vegetarian or gut health or how often you poop. We’re going to talk about something a little more interesting. So, Amanda tell my listeners a little more about you and what you do.

Amanda Laird: [00:01:06] Yeah absolutely! And I will also set this up to say that actually all those things that you just mentioned do have a link to our topic today so we can bring you back full circle but I’m a Holistic Nutritionist. I specialize in hormonal and menstrual health and I’m the author of a new book that just came out. It’s called the Heavy Flow: Breaking The Curse of Menstruation. And I also host the Heavy Flow podcast which is a weekly show about periods, body literacy and reproductive wellness.

Mathea Ford: [00:01:43] What is the term Holistic Nutritionist. I think we all know nutritionist, you work with food and but how does holistic come into that?

Amanda Laird: [00:01:52] Yeah that’s a great question. So, the holistic perspective is that we’re not just talking about food. We’re really looking at the whole body, the whole person, body mind and spirit. So, when I work with clients you know 60% of the time we’re talking about food and then the rest that 40% is also looking at lifestyles, exercise, spirit and I use spirit in a very general sense. So, whatever that means to you. But looking at stress and meditation and all that great stuff that can can help you heal.

Mathea Ford: [00:02:29] We’re going to talk about periods, menstrual cycles. Let’s talk about a little bit about what is normal and how do you know if it’s broken or abnormal or whatever that would be. Can you give us a little bit of that?

Amanda Laird: [00:02:42] What most of us learned in middle school health class if we were even lucky to learn the basics at all. Was that your menstrual cycle is 28 days right? That 28 day number has really been accepted as what is standard, what’s normal, what we should be aiming for but in reality, what is considered to be normal and healthy is a much bigger windo. Your menstrual cycle and your menstrual cycle is the first day of the year period until the first day of your next period. So, all the days in between not just the days that you have your bleed and that can fall anywhere from twenty one to thirty five days. So, that’s a two week window of what is considered normal and that 28 day number is actually just the average that sits in the middle of that 21 – 35 days. So, that’s the length of your menstrual cycle, your period, your actual period should really be between three to maybe seven days depending on how long your overall menstrual cycle is will depend on how long your actual period is. And we don’t want to be seeing a lot of symptoms or a lot of side effects in the PMS window. So, if you’re getting a lot of pain or cramping or mood swings or very very very low energy you know that’s all a red flag that some hormones may be out of balance. And we want to be looking into that because our periods should be coming up regularly and without a lot of fanfare.

Mathea Ford: [00:04:25] Do you recommend using any sort of apps or anything like to track your period to kind of see what your cycle is?

Amanda Laird: [00:04:31] Yes, I love that you brought that up because even though we do have guidelines as to what is normal and healthy, I always coach my clients and always talking about on my podcast and in my book that it’s most important that you know what is normal for you because there’s a lot of factors that go into what is normal right? Age, whether you’ve been pregnant before, you know lifestyle stuff all has an effect. So, I absolutely recommend getting to know your cycle and tracking that however you wish. So, you know you can do it in your paper journal. You can use an app. I love apps like Clue are great for tracking your period. There’s lots of apps. You know periods are becoming more mainstream and cooler. There’s lots of journals that I’m seeing coming out that are specifically for tracking your menstrual cycle as well. So, how you do it doesn’t actually really matter all that much to me but tracking the first day of your period. Any signs of ovulation that you might be seeing like cervical mucus or you could take your temperature every day and then also of course symptoms in that PMS window like pain, cramping, headaches all that kind of stuff will help you come to know your menstrual cycle.

Mathea Ford: [00:06:01] So, is it typical like a young girl you know 12, 13, 14 when they start their period. Does it take about a year for it to kind of even out or does it take longer?

Amanda Laird: [00:06:12] It would take about much longer than a year I would say. And really your hormones don’t really balance out and regulate. And so what I mean by that is that you’re actually ovulating. So, every cycle until you’re about 20, 21 years old. So, it takes a long time for your body to really ramp up and to be ovulating regularly and have those hormones balance out.

Mathea Ford: [00:06:41] Can you talk a little bit about the messages or taboo around menstruation? Because I think that’s one of the things that struck me immediately was like “wow! We’re going to talk about periods.” I’ve taught my daughter. I’m like “you should not be ashamed that you have a period.” And my husband does not do this with any sort of malice but he’ll act like it’s like “uhh! Don’t talk about that.” I’m like “it’s normal. That’s how children come to be.” You know that how we have that. So, can you talk about some of those common thoughts and messages that women have about menstruation and then maybe help us to identify those things so we don’t feel shame about it?

Amanda Laird: [00:07:25] We definitely have been taught that periods are something to be ashamed of, that they’re gross, that we’re dirty while we’re menstruating. It’s something that we are supposed to keep secret. You know I can think of a dozen or more times in my life when I was you know slipping a tampon into the sleeve of my sweater or like trying to keep it secret while you’re going to the bathroom right? And these are messages that have been passed down from generation to generation and lots of different ways. But in the 20th century and of course modern day age we see this a lot coming up in marketing right? The marketing messages that we see on television or in print ads and magazines or even online. You know the overarching message is that you know your period is something that has to be managed. It’s something that’s supposed to keep secret. You know the worst thing that could ever happen is a leak or a stain or somebody finding out that you are on your period. Right?

Amanda Laird: [00:08:34] And how convenient that these large companies that are manufacturing menstrual products have this solution that will keep your period under wraps. Right? They make pods that come with crinkle free wrappers. So, nobody’s going to hear that that’s what you’re up to in the bathroom stall and they come with odor protection so that the smell is covered up. And you know when you’re using products that are like tampons it’s even keeping it hidden away. Right? You never have to see or interact with your period at all. If you’re using tampons with an applicator, you don’t even have to touch your own body to insert a tampon with an applicator. Right? And so they’re really reinforcing these cultural norms that we have come to accept. Right? The reality is you know menstruation is just a bodily function. There’s no shame in that. As you said yourself, we’re all here because our mothers had periods right? And it should be treated as such. And in fact our menstrual cycles are a sign of good health. Right? If we’re menstruating regularly without a lot of side effects. You know that’s an indication that our body is healthy. Right? The hormones that are implicated in our menstrual cycles like estrogen and progesterone these are essential hormones to our bodily functions. Right? And they help promote good health. So, progesterone is key in promoting our brain health, breast health, bone health, heart health. Right? We should be thankful that we have menstrual cycles because they’re keeping us healthy.

Mathea Ford: [00:10:22] You know that is something I hadn’t thought about the whole marketing messages because but you’re right exactly that kind of the underlying tone there is that it’s something to kind of be ashamed of. So, yeah I’ve strongly talked to my daughter and said “don’t be ashamed that you have a period. It’s a girl’s you know that just happens and it doesn’t mean it’s not a bad thing. You know.” But it’s something that you kind of have to push in to the brain because like you mentioned the health class stuff in the US. Anyway I know you’re in Canada but in the US boys and girls are put into different rooms. They watch the films they talk about it and then it’s kind of hush hush. And they come out of the room and nobody talks about it you know.

Amanda Laird: [00:11:06] Absolutely!! And I should also say that a lot of these programs these you know puberty education programs or sex ed programs are actually sponsored by the big companies that are making menstrual products. Right? You know when I was researching my book, I looked at some of the materials that these big companies are making available to schools at no charge of course for them to administer puberty education. And I found it very interesting that some of the things that was covered in little pamphlets and booklets that are being distributed is you know they’re talking about “Okay. How do you manage your period?” They’re talking about you know removing body hair. They’re talking about managing the magical discharge which is something that really gets my engine going because vaginal discharge is a normal healthy thing that isn’t even discharged it’s just your cervical fluid right? Again it’s an indication of fertility and health yet they’re selling this solution to this. And they talk about you know body odor and what are the products that these companies sell? They sell pods and tampons and panty liners and they sell razors and shaving cream and they sell deodorant and douches and these products that are designed and not to say that we don’t need health like there is we do need to be keeping ourselves clean for healthy reasons but it’s just very interesting that these messages that young people are getting when they’re learning about puberty for the first time are really centered around the solutions that you can buy. Right? Like at the end of the day who cares about body odor? It’s not actually a problem generally. But we have constructed it as something that is gross and something that we’re supposed to be ashamed of. And isn’t it convenient that we have these products that we can buy to cover that up. Right? It’s the same messages that we’re getting around menstruation to and body hair and countless things.

Mathea Ford: [00:13:21] Thinking about your period and you may have some problems, is there ways to make your period easier using nutrition or other things or limit the negative effects? You know like you mentioned was some mass or cramping that type of thing?

Amanda Laird: [00:13:40] So, going back to what’s normal, I should say that you know a little bit of fatigue some like cramping is kind of falls into the normal category. Right? As our hormones fluctuate they have an influence on our energy levels. They influence our appetites, our sex drive. So, there’s a lot of influence that hormones have on our body. So, it’s normal that as we get closer to our period or when on our period we might be a little less energy, more fatigue our bodies working hard to menstruate. Right? We’re losing a lot of nutrients through the blood. Really the threshold though is your period interrupting your daily life. Do you feel like you have to call in sick to work? Are you canceling plans? Are you staying home from school? Are you staying close to home because the pain is so severe or because you know you’re having to change your pad every hour and so you feel like you can’t leave the house. Right? That’s really the threshold that we want to be looking at. And I think that starting with food you know I’m a Holistic Nutritionist so of course I believe of the power of food. That was a leading question there. And starting with some simple changes to our diet and also to stress. How we approach and manage our stress levels can have a significant effect on our menstrual experience. I’ll share a few tips in a second with the caveat though that it’s not a silver bullet. And so if you have made some changes to your diet and you’ve given it a couple of cycles and things aren’t getting better. That’s really a red flag that something else is going on that should be looked at by a doctor. Maybe something like endometriosis says are fibroids or PCOS and that kind of warrants further investigation through medical treatment. So, what can we do? Unfortunately, I don’t think that I have any real surprising news for what we should be eating to make our hormones a little bit more balanced and our periods better but you know really looking focusing on whole unprocessed healthy foods. So, all those things that we know are really good for us. Right? Fresh fruits and veggies, leafy greens, whole grains, complex carbohydrates and really focusing the majority of our meals and snacks and what we’re eating on those whole foods and eating less of the processed package. You know high sodium, high sugar foods that we know don’t make us feel great. Right? A few things in particular that I think are really great are green, leafy greens. I literally feel like you cannot eat too much of them. And so my one and only food rule and even so I break it all the time in my own life is you know take a look at what you’re eating. Is there something green? Can you add something green? Right? And that’s going to help to crowd out some of those less nutritious foods and also making sure that we’re getting a lot of fiber so eating the complex carbs like the starchy vegetables, sweet potatoes, squashes, whole grains, nuts and seeds right? Fox seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, all these things are really fantastic for hormonal balance and then to talk about some specific nutrients especially for pain if you’re getting a lot of headaches or you’re getting a lot of pain and cramping, magnesium is so great it works as a muscle relaxer and can even sometimes give you instant relief. And so I like taking magnesium as a supplement. You can get a powdered supplement and make a little tea for yourself which is nice to drink and zinc is another one that is great for painful periods and also fish oil. Fish oil if you are looking for a vegetarian source then things like evening primrose oil, flax oil depending on where you are in your cycle can be really helpful for that too. So, yes eating well, eating well that’s the short answer.

Mathea Ford: [00:18:33] So are there certain like I always think are you going to be low in iron? Is there any sort of B vitamins that you need to supplement with? Is there any of that sort of stuff that you need to supplement with to help keep your energy make you feel better during your period?

Amanda Laird: [00:18:49] I am always a little bit wary of just making a blanket recommendation for any type of supplements. And so I would recommend you know anybody who is listening you first want to start with getting bloodwork and getting your levels checked because you know iron is important right? And so if you are having especially if you have heavy periods or very long periods or even if you have very short cycles and so your periods are coming close together and your body’s not having the opportunity to kind of like recover your blood stores you are at risk for low iron and of course anemia but you never want to supplement with iron until you know for sure that you have low iron, eating iron rich foods, cooking with an iron cast iron pan is a great way to keep that up too. So, definitely get your levels checked. And then I also love a B vitamin. If I was going to recommend a supplement across the board I think almost all of us are deficient in B vitamins. If stress is an issue B5 is really great for helping to support our stress and B6 is great for estrogen imbalance. So, if we are seeing some of the symptoms of high estrogen unopposed by progesterone which is stuff like long cycles, heavy periods, painful periods, a B6 can can be helpful for that but I always recommend get your blood levels checked first and speak to a like a naturopathic doctor or somebody who is an expert in supplements before you take anything because there’s a lot of ifs ands or buts with supplements.

Mathea Ford: [00:20:48] Yeah! I love that you mentioned magnesium as a relief. I use magnesium to prevent my migraines. So, my doctor suggested that a long time ago that I take magnesium and it really does seem to help lower the number of migraines that I get so to speak.

Amanda Laird: [00:21:06] Yeah absolutely! And actually you know when we’re talking about periods we often talk a lot about like cramps but even more than cramps more people get menstrual headaches right or hormonal headaches and magnesium is great for that too.

Mathea Ford: [00:21:21] So, back to kind of thinking about the messages that women are getting now, that young girls are getting now that from their parents, from the TV, from school. What is the message that we should be giving women about their period? If you had to kind of distill it down to what is it that women should know about their period?

Amanda Laird: [00:21:42] You know the one thing I think anybody listening to this or passing information on to a young person in their life who might be meeting menstruation for the first time would be that your menstrual cycle is a vital sign right? It’s an important physiological function. That’s not just for making babies. You know we have this idea thanks to hormonal birth control which is amazing. It’s great that we can choose when and if we want to conceive a child but it has also given us this false idea that our reproductive system is just something that we can turn on and off which I think is a pretty short sighted attitude to have. Right? You know oh you’re 17 years old. You have irregular painful periods take hormonal birth control until you want to get pregnant when you’re 30 then you can come off it which you know some people have no problems with that but we are seeing you know a lot of people being challenged with a return of their menstrual cycles after a long term hormonal contraception use. So, I’m getting off track here but that’s all to say that like we need those hormones. Those hormones are good for us, they’re important they’re not just for making babies like I said earlier. So, embrace it. Learn to embrace your cycle and if it’s painful, if it irregular, if it’s interrupting your life, that’s not normal and it warrants medical attention.

Mathea Ford: [00:23:17] I was telling my daughter the other day that from now on for the rest of her life until she goes into menopause at every doctor’s appointment they’re going to ask you when was the first day of your last period that your doctor even considers it a vital sign. Because if you do have some interruptions or issues but how do we change that message? How do we talk to people about it? What what do we say differently?

Amanda Laird: [00:23:43] Well, you know that’s just the thing is that we don’t talk about it. Right? Maybe you would talk about it with a daughter or a sister or a very close friend of yours. But if you have menstrual cramps that are so bad that you’re calling in sick to work. Are you calling in sick to work because you have menstrual cramps or are you saying that you ate some bad sushi last night and you think you have food poisoning right? So, I think that you know opening up that conversation to actually you know talk about our experience and pushing back and saying that you know this isn’t right and therefore seeing a medical professional that you you see them and you have very painful periods or something’s not right with your period and they just kind of shrug and say that “oh, well that’s what periods are” you know. I think that we should not be accepting that as an answer and you know my vision for a menstrotopia right? Is that we can talk about our periods like we talked about any other bodily function. Right? “Oh! I’m just I’m feeling a little bloody old today. I feel a little off center. I’m going to get my period soon. You know I just don’t feel that great.” Right? Like why can’t we say that in when we go meet a friend for lunch. Right? If I showed up and I had a runny nose and felt like I was getting a cold or flu I would tell them that. So, why is our period any different? I do like to kind of put a caveat around this conversation too that you know I’ve talked a lot about periods being kept secret. If you feel like your menstrual cycle or your period is something that you want to keep private. I totally respect that and I don’t think we need to be talking about our periods all the time everywhere. And if you’re not comfortable talking about your period then I respect that. But keeping something private and feeling like something has to be kept secret and you’re ashamed of it is a different thing. And if you are feeling like you’re really just uncomfortable talking about your period I would really challenge you to also think about where did that message come from. Because it’s likely that it’s a marketing message that was designed to keep you ashamed and designed to make you feel like you have to buy products.

Mathea Ford: [00:26:10] It’s also really valuable which you mentioned a little bit about knowing what your personal period time is because then you can stand up and say to your doctor if they’re like “Oh you really shouldn’t be having a period of thirty five days” you can say for the last five years “my period has been every thirty five days so that’s normal.” So, then when it comes to fertility, how is that affected with your knowing kind of what your period is and when you’re ready to become pregnant?

Amanda Laird: [00:26:39] Well, the wonderful thing about her period is that it can actually never be late. Right? So, we think about oh your period is late and that’s not true because our period will always show up right on time which is about two weeks after ovulation. Right. So there can be some variation in our cycle length. So, it’s not uncommon for somebody to have a 30 day cycle, a 28 day cycle, a 32 day cycle but that’s not your period that’s moving around it’s all ovulation and that first half of our cycle leading up to ovulation which we call our follicular phase is very very sensitive to stuff like stress, illness, travel, sleep. Right? If your body doesn’t feel like you know this is a safe optimal time for ovulation it’s not going to do it. So, you might feel like you know if you feel like your period is late, I always recommend thinking back two weeks ago. Right? What was going on two weeks ago that would have made your period late and oftentimes people are like “oh that was the weekend we moved or you know that I had a huge deadline at work or I was traveling” and it’s like “right! So, there’s your answer. Your ovulation was delayed and so now your period hasn’t shown up. So, that two week window. Right? I mean certainly if we have some issue like it’s possible for that window to be shorter if there are issues around progesterone or hormonal imbalance but it will never be longer than about 14 days because we just don’t make progesterone that long unless we have been become pregnant. So, learning your cycle and then learning to identify what your signs of fertility are because that vaginal discharge that we have been taught is gross and dirty is actually liquid gold. Right? It is telling us that we are fertile right? And that we are coming into our fertile phase. And I think it comes as a shock to anybody who’s tried to get pregnant that you actually can’t get pregnant any time of day, any time of your cycle and the window for when you actually can achieve pregnancy is quite small. It’s really about five or six days around that ovulation time. So, getting to know your cervical fluid which changes throughout your menstrual cycles so sometimes it’s you know thick and creamy and it looks like hand lotion. Other times it’s stretchy and clear and it looks like egg whites. That’s when it’s very fertile. That’s the good stuff or you know sometimes it can be very watery. So, I really recommend a book to anybody who’s listening. It’s called Taking Charge of Your Fertility. It is two and a half inches thick. It is the Bible on fertility awareness. Will teach you everything you need to know about cervical mucus. So, really learning to interpret that you can also get to know your cervix. It’s actually not that far away. Just about a finger’s length. Getting to know your cervix where it is because it moves around in our vaginal canal. So, when we’re closer to when we’re closer to ovulation it’s up high in the vaginal canal and it’s open and it’s soft like feels kind of like the inside of your cheek. Right? And when we’re not around in that fertile window it’s much lower in the vaginal canal and it’s harder and feels more like the tip of your nose. And it’s also very tightly closed. So, nothing is going to pass through it. Right? And so getting to know your cervix and then you can also take a daily basal body temperature reading which can help you identify where you are in your cycle and while ovulation can only be confirmed by ultrasound it’s the only way to know for sure that you have ovulated. When we do ovulate we can oftentimes see a slight shift in temperature. And so we’re tracking our temperature every day. We’re tracking our signs of fertility like the cervical mucus and positioning. Then we can also take our temperature and maybe see when we may have ovulated. That can happen on day 7, it can happen on day 21. You know I have polycystic ovarian syndrome which means that my cycles are long and they are irregular. However, I was still able to get to know my body do some things like eating well, taking supplements, working with a natural path, take herbs and homeopathic medicine to help promote ovulation. And I was able to achieve pregnancy when I wanted to even though my cycles were forty five days long because I knew when I was ovulating right? I mean so I knew when the optimal time for conceiving was and I was able to achieve pregnancy. Meanwhile, my doctor took one look at me said “you have PCOS, you have irregular cycles I think before you even try conceiving let’s sign you up for the fertility clinic.” I think when you know yourself it can be easier. That’s not to say that simply tracking your cycle is going to solve every fertility issue. But you know if you feel like ovulation is day 14. I had this conversation with a client. She was really struggling with conceiving and she was having sex on day 14 because that’s what she had learned is that you ovulate on day 14. Her cycle was 22 days. So, day 14 that window is closed my friend right? It is you know she was obviously having day seven or day eight. That’s the reason why she wasn’t conceiving because she simply wasn’t having sex on the right day. Right? Sometimes it is some like oftentimes it’s more complex but sometimes timing intercourse is it’s really that simple.

Mathea Ford: [00:33:06] Okay. So, thinking about everything we’ve talked about related to this topic how can the information be used by the listeners in their day to day life?

Amanda Laird: [00:33:15] I love this concept of body literacy which was a term that was coined by a woman named Laura Weschler. And she’s a sexual and reproductive health educator and advocate. And what body literacy means is that you are able to read and interpret the signs and signals that your body is giving you. Understanding the cervical mucus, understanding the shifts in your hormones and just getting to know your menstrual cycle and getting to know how different phases of your menstrual cycle might make you feel different ways. Right. You know we live in this society that really values sameness. Right. And feeling the same every single day. And we’re supposed to be bright and cheery and ready to go to work every single day when in reality especially for female bodies. Right. That’s not always the case because as I said earlier when we’re menstruating our energy levels might be lower. We might be a little bit more fatigued. And then after a period is done we reach that window which I always like to call the beyond say phase and our estrogen is rising. And studies have shown that in that phase we tend to be chatty or we tend to be more ambitious. We tend to be more willing to take risks. We want to be out in the world experiencing life. Right. And then after we obviously those energy levels tend to drop down a little bit more we might want to stay closer to home. We will be craving higher calorie higher fat foods right because our body is smart. If we ovulate and we did happen to conceive. Right? Your body is going into that safe protective mode right? You’re craving that higher calorie higher fat foods because if you are pregnant you need to sustain yourself and a pregnant right. So if you feel like you can’t stop eating you know butter or avocados or you know these fatty foods in the second half of your cycle.

Amanda Laird: [00:33:15] I love this concept of body literacy which was a term that was coined by a woman named Laura Weschler. And she’s a sexual and reproductive health educator and advocate. And what body literacy means is that you are able to read and interpret the signs and signals that your body is giving you. Understanding the cervical mucus, understanding the shifts in your hormones and just getting to know your menstrual cycle and getting to know how different phases of your menstrual cycle might make you feel different ways. Right. You know we live in this society that really values sameness. Right. And feeling the same every single day. And we’re supposed to be bright and cheery and ready to go to work every single day when in reality especially for female bodies. Right. That’s not always the case because as I said earlier when we’re menstruating our energy levels might be lower. We might be a little bit more fatigued. And then after a period is done we reach that window which I always like to call the beyond say phase and our estrogen is rising. And studies have shown that in that phase we tend to be chatty or we tend to be more ambitious. We tend to be more willing to take risks. We want to be out in the world experiencing life. Right. And then after we obviously those energy levels tend to drop down a little bit more we might want to stay closer to home. We will be craving higher calorie higher fat foods right because our body is smart. If we ovulate and we did happen to conceive. Right? Your body is going into that safe protective mode right? You’re craving that higher calorie, higher fat foods because if you are pregnant you need to sustain yourself and the pregnancy right? So, if you feel like you can’t stop eating you know butter or avocados or you know these fatty foods in the second half of your cycle. It’s not that you’re weak and you have no willpower it’s your body is trying to protect you. And doing the best thing. So, if we can start to understand how our hormones affect our day to day in life and we start to understand that we do live in a cycling body and so we’re going to go through periods where we feel more energetic, periods when we feel less energetic. Get to know that and start to cultivate compassion and kindness and self-care routines that are going to help us. You know I think we’ll just be happier, healthier individuals as a whole. Because then you know like “I’m going to be in my PMS window, going to be getting closer to my period. Generally I find them a little bit lower energy. I turn inward feel a little more introverted during that time.” That’s not the weekend to plan your best friend’s bachelorette. Right? Wait for that Beyoncé Phase right? Wait for that Beyoncé Phase and you’ll have a much better time right? You’re not canceling plans all the time.

Mathea Ford: [00:36:45] I always ask my guests what is your favorite food? Since we usually talk a lot about food. So, what’s your favorite food Amanda?

Amanda Laird: [00:36:54] This is so cliché for somebody who talks about periods as much as I do but I really love chocolate. I would eat chocolate more if I could. If it wouldn’t make me feel sick I would eat chocolate seven times a day. I love it. I love it. Yes.

Mathea Ford: [00:37:13] Any particular chocolate?

Amanda Laird: [00:37:14] You know as a nutritionist I’m supposed to like you know high quality dark chocolate. But just I want a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bar. That’s my favorite.

Mathea Ford: [00:37:26] I can’t say I blame you. Those are pretty good. Yeah. All right well, Amanda thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners learned a lot about menstrual cycles and just kind of the messages we as women tell to ourselves and hear in the media. So, if listeners want to contact you or connect with you what’s the best way to do that?

Amanda Laird: [00:37:52] Yes, please. They can go to my website which is AmandaLaird.ca. So that’s Amanda Laird from Canada. Keep that in your mind because it’s .ca. and I’m also on Instagram @AmandaLaird and my book Heavy Flow: Breaking The Curse of Menstruation is available wherever books are sold.

Mathea Ford: [00:38:14] Great! Well, guys this has been another great episode of the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast is all about learning more so you could do more with nutrition in your life.

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Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 45 Never Binge Again with Dr. Glenn Livingston, Ph.D

March 11, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

Dr. Glenn Livingston, PhD is a long time Bestselling Author and Chief Executive Officer of Never Ever Again, Inc., a company which specializes in helping people with eating problems to stop being eating and overeating, lose weight, and learn how to think like a permanently thin person on the diet of their choice. Previous CEO of two companies, presiding over more than $30,000,000 in consulting services in the marketing and advertising industry.

He is a strong human resources professional with a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Yeshiva University (1991). Also skilled in digital marketing.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:28] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Dr. Glenn Livingston on the show today. Welcome to Nutrition Experts.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:00:44] Well thank you for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this Mathea.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:48] Yeah. So, today we’re going to talk about binge eating which is something I haven’t talked a whole lot about on this show. But I want to start with telling my listeners letting you tell my listeners a little more about you and what you do.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:01:00] Well I guess what you should know about me is that I’m not just a doctor who decided to work with people that were struggling with their eating. I am someone that had a very difficult struggle of my own eating for a good deal of my life. All the way back to I was a weird kid with food. My mother used to give me a whole box of pop tarts for breakfast every morning and a whole box of Sugar Pops for lunch every afternoon. So, that was the way that I was brought up. I don’t think I saw vegetable until I was 16 or 17 years old. But I figured out that if I worked out a lot it didn’t matter at least it didn’t matter to my weight. When I was 17 or 18 I would work out two or three hours a day and I’d have six, seven, eight thousand calories every single day. Boxes of pop tarts, boxes of chocolate bars, boxes of pizza, boxes of muffins, boxes of donuts. I guess you could say like boxes and I was fine with it except for all the time that I was wasting. But I was spending a lot of time eating a one time recovering from food and a lot of time exercising. That lifestyle didn’t work for me when I was a little older and I got married and I had responsibilities and I was commuting two hours each way. I just couldn’t work out like that my metabolism was slowing down a little bit. I couldn’t stop eating the same way that I was. I found that I just got used to it and these foods had a life of their own. And I started gaining weight. And you know my top weight was probably around 280. I’m guessing I was telling you beforehand the number on the scale was 257 the last time I weighed myself because I got fed up with it after that. And worse yet my triglycerides were going through the roof. I know I had a test already a hundred and twenty six. I remember them being over 1100 in the doctor just flipping out saying look you’re going to die if you don’t do something before you’re before you’re 35 so you really just kind of figure this out. But I couldn’t I just kept on I’d be sitting with suicidal patients and I would be thinking when I kind of get my next pizza or a couple who just never recovered from an affair and it was really hard to be a home a hundred percent present to that. That bothered me a lot because I was from a family of psychologists and being a great psychologist was first and foremost what was in my soul. So, I tried to solve it in what you might expect the way a psychologist would try to solve it. I tried to solve it by loving myself. And I said “it’s not what I’m eating I must have a hole in my heart. And if I could fill the hole in my heart then I’ll be okay.” And so I went to workshops and eating disorder specialists and all the best psychologists and psychiatrists around Manhattan. I take medication. I went over just never miss. Everything you could imagine which was a very soulful journey which I don’t regret. But in terms of the results I get a little better and then I get a lot worse, a little better and a lot worse. Finally, there were three things that changed the paradigm.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:03:57] It made me think that rather than trying to love myself fend, what I really needed to do was act like an alpha wolf in a pack who was being challenged for leadership by one of the pack members. I need to come to think of the urges is coming from a bodily organ and later I learned that it actually comes from the reptilian brain that in a minute but when you think about how an alpha wolf deals with a challenger for leadership it doesn’t say “oh my goodness! Someone needs a hug.” It says you know “get back in line or I’ll kill you.” Snarls and growls and “get back in line or I’ll kill you.” And I thought “well, that’s it’s not all that different than the urges that are generated by my bladder or my testicles” like these are very strong biological urges but I’m not in the middle of a conference where I just decide I’m going to pee. I’ll get up and go to the bathroom and express it in a particular way at a particular time. I don’t just run into attractive women on the street and kiss them. You know you have to approach them in a very particular way or not at all and restrain those urges because of the person you want to be in society right? So, I said “What’s the difference? Why can’t I just define what restraint actually means and take control?”

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:05:11] Two other things happened that made it really clear to me that that was a better paradigm than loving myself in. The first one was I read a book called The Rational Recovery by Jack Trimpey and he works largely with drug and alcohol addicts and he helps them to we called them black and white addictions are the things that you can give up entirely. It’s supposed to food where you have to take the full line out of the cage and walk around the block a couple of times a day. What he basically pointed out was that addiction comes from their reptilian brain and what I knew about neurology was that the reptilian brain doesn’t know love. The reptilian brain whether you want to believe it evolve this way or God put it there it doesn’t really matter. What it knows when it sees something in the environment is “do I eat it? Do I meet with it or do I kill it eat meat or kill. There’s no love there. There’s the sense of love that came later with the higher portions of the brain the mammalian brain that says “hey! Before you eat meat or kill that thing what impact does it have on your tribe or your family or those that you love? Or the neocortex. What we think of is a more human brain which says “we can really delay gratification to think about our long term goals and plans and what does this mean for the kind of person that we want to be for love and spirituality and music and art and who we want to be in the world, how we want to cooperate with society and fit in.” And so I realized that I had to think of my human identity as sitting in my neocortex and above the reptilian brain. And then that’s what I was in control. That the urges might be part of me but they really weren’t me. Just like my bladder is part of me and my testicles a part of me. But they’re not really made to everything that happened. I wouldn’t think a lot of consulting for the food industry.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:06:58] I never had kids and I never commuted so I had a lot of time to do two careers and I consulted for big food and big pharma. I kind of wish I didn’t but I did and I knew that they were engineering, putting billions of dollars into engineering hyper palatable concentrations of starch and salt and sugar and oil and excitotoxins and basically these food like substances which are designed to hit our bliss points in the reptilian brain and not give us the nutrition we need to feel satisfied. Beyond that, they were putting billions into advertising and most people think advertising doesn’t affect them. But believe me it does. It affects you more when you think it doesn’t affect you because then yourselves resistance is down. And they’re depending on what study you look at between five and seven thousand messages beamed at us over the airwaves about food every day. The airwaves and the Internet every year about food and how many of them do you think are about eating more raw fruits and vegetables? They’re not mostly about eating more of these bags and boxes and containers and mechanisms of industrial profit. And I remember talking to a food bar manufacturer V.P. who explained to me that their biggest insight was to remove the vitamins from the bar and make the packaging look good instead because the vitamins were expensive and they made the bar taste not as good whereas the packaging could make people believe that it was healthier ever vibrance of colors and a diversity of colors and like a bright shiny packaging which in nature a bright shiny salad with green lettuce and red tomatoes and yellow carrots and purple cabbage that would signal a diversity of nutrients. So, I said “you mean you’re most profitable insight was to fake people out?” Can you kind of get a little sheepishly said “Yeah.” I don’t mean to single out the food bar industry because this happens all over the place. So, I said there are these very powerful forces the line against us. Addiction treatment industry is telling us that we can’t resist even if we wanted to. That these urges are irresistible and that you were actually powerless over them and the only hope you had was to admit that you were powerless over them and abstain one day at a time. And there is no evidence for that. There’s no evidence that that’s true. The evidence is more on the side that people can choose to abstain if they want to abstain. That addicts can restrain themselves if they want to. And the only scientific studies that were quasi scientific studies ever conducted about this addiction treatment suggests that it’s either at parity or worse than doing nothing at all. So, I said “Okay. So, there’s these immense forces aligned against us. Everybody’s telling me to love myself then I’ve been trying that for 30 years it didn’t work. If anybody would know how to love himself then it would be a psychologist from a family of 17 psychologists, you’ve seen all these psychologists right?” I said “here’s what I’m going to do. This is the embarrassing part. I decided that I was going to never going to publish this. This was this is just a private journal.” I said “my reptilian brain I’m going to call that my inner pig. I’m going to make a really clear line that delineates what’s healthy food and what’s not healthy food for me. What does eating with restraint really mean to me?” And so “I said something like I will never have chocolate Monday to Friday again I only ever have it on the weekend.” That’s just an example I did all kinds of things. That I said if there’s a voice in my head that suggests that I should have the chocolate because “energy. You worked out hard enough today, Glenn. You can afford. It doesn’t matter. Or you could start tomorrow or chocolate comes from a cocoa being with frozen plants and therefore it’s a vegetable.” All of that was pig squeal. I would say “I pick a squealing for it slop. I don’t want that, my pig does and I don’t listen to farm animals tell me what to do.” I’m so embarrassed that that’s what worked. I wish it was one of the deep psychological insight I thought I had or soulful journeys or meditation. It’s not, it was “I don’t need pig’s laugh, I don’t want the farm animals tell me what to do.” It wasn’t a miracle. I wish I could tell you it got better right away. It didn’t. What it would do is it would give me those extra microseconds at the moment of impulse to remember who I was and why I made them on in the first place. And that way I could make a conscious choice. Sometimes I didn’t make the right choice but I stopped feeling overrun by this mysterious force inside. I stopped feeling helpless and hopeless and powerless and I started to feel hopeful right away. And over time I experimented with different rules. I kept a journal about what the pig would say and why it was wrong, how the pig would lie to me. For example, when it says “you can start again tomorrow it doesn’t matter.” Well, neurologically speaking that’s not true.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:11:42] If you reinforce the urge today, you’re going to be in a deeper hole tomorrow. Those grooves are going to have been worn even deeper it’s going to be harder to dig yourself out if you’re in a hole, stop digging. That’s the first thing you want to do or you know if the pig would say “go ahead and try this. I can’t get you now if I don’t get you later. You’re going to forget later.” I would say “well, the only time you can eat is now. So, if I was use the present moment to be healthy then you can never get me. And besides you don’t have a time machine anymore than I do you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or any more than I do.” So, I had all these interesting dialogues which would expose the logical fallacies in my pigs attacks. The reasons that it wanted me to take a break and I fully recognized that I couldn’t totally get rid of the pig. There was always going to be this voice in my head that would say those things but I also realized that I could recognize it. I got a lot of those rejection. We also just had to modify things tremendously to make it work. The food I could recognize and ignore it because it didn’t matter if by definition, my pig’s voice was any thought feeling or impulse which suggested that I would either now or in the future have one bite, taste or swallow off of my carefully constructed plan. Then by definition, anything the pig said was wrong. What was malintended and so like Jodie Foster arguing with Hannibal Lecter. There was no purpose arguing even if it seemed that he had a PhD from Harvard and starting analytical and all excited at the top here. But like some like arguing with Hannibal Lecter there’s no real point because it’s malintended. The whole point you start to throw you off balance and get you to try to break your rule. So, slowly but surely I recovered. I lost the weight, I hovered between 200 to 10 these days. I used to be as much as 280 I think I said at the beginning. I used to have high triglycerides those came down. I used to have eczema and psoriasis and rosacea. I don’t think you can see that in me anymore. Maybe a dermatologist can make the diagnosis but it doesn’t bother me and it doesn’t affect my appearance that much. That’s what happened but I wasn’t going to publish it. That’s a whole series of events happened including getting divorced and I decided through a minor publishing company that I was a part of to publish it as a test and it just took off. We’ve got 600,000 readers and almost 2,000 reviews including people who hate us because you were telling me before the interview there’s probably 10 percent of the people that think this is horrible and they call me to call me Dr. Sensitivity. I think sarcastically I’m just not being sensitive to people’s struggles and that’s my story. That’s who I am and what I do and now I focus on that.

Mathea Ford: [00:14:29] You know that’s very interesting because I had a podcast a couple of weeks ago that we talked about this like neuroplasticity and basically how you change and how your brain works with creating new pathways and how hard it is to change that. And so it sounds to me like you kind of used that information and obviously the things that help us to have better brains are things that are like whole grains, whole fruits, whole vegetables that are full of antioxidants to help your brain. So…

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:15:01] It’s not the bags and boxes and containers. I’ll tell you that much.

Mathea Ford: [00:15:06] No it is not. So, going back a little bit to what we were talking about this over eating cycle you mentioned kind of it it started in your childhood. What starts people in that overeating cycle most of the time?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:15:23] I’m not sure it matters because I think when say they do start that they have a life for their own. I’ll tell you a story. I did this 40,000 person study over the course of about five years when Internet clicks were cheap and I asked people what foods they struggled with like if they started eating them they couldn’t stop and what was troubling them in their life. And I found three interesting things. People who started their binges with chocolate like me they tended to be lonely or broken hearted. I was in a bad marriage for that kind of made sense. People who struggled with salty crunchy things like pretzels and chips tended to be stressed at work and people who struggled with soft chewy things like bread and bagels. They tended to be stressed at home. That this is really interesting I bet there’s something to this. So, let me go investigate my own history. Basically, I have a mother who is a psychotherapist while she passed away a year and a half ago and I called her and I said “Mom, what is it in my history that could have set up? I mean I know I’m got some struggles in my love life and whatever but what does it in my history that would have set up this pattern?” And she gets this horrible look on her face and this horrible standard of where she goes. “I’m so sorry. I am so sorry.” “Mom what is it?” I said “I forgive you. Whatever it is it’s okay I forgive you. You know it’s 40 years later now.” And she said “well, when you were about one in 1965 your father was a captain in the army and they were really talking about sending him to Vietnam. And we were working really hard to have another baby. Hopefully they weren’t going to do that but I was terrified we’re going to send them anyway. And I thought I could wind up as a single mom with two kids. And what am I going to do? And I was really terrified. At the same time my father your grandfather, he just got out of prison and he was guilty. And I had idolized him my whole life. He was the one and only saving grace in my upbringing and he was guilty. And I was just falling apart and half the time I was sitting and staring at the wall and I didn’t have a good therapist and didn’t have anybody to talk to. And I didn’t have the wherewithal to hold you and love you and feed you when you came running to me. So, half the time at least I would say ‘Glenn go get your Bosco and there would be a refrigerator in the floor with a big bottle of chocolate Bosco syrup and you go running over to the refrigerator you take it out you go crawling over the refrigerator you take it out. You’d suck on the bottle and you go into a chocolate sugar coma.” And I thought “Eureka! This is it. This is what this is why I go to chocolate when I’m upset.” And you would think if this were the movies that mom and I would have a big hug and a big cry and I would never struggle with chocolate again right? Would you believe me if I told you my chocolate eating got worse.

Mathea Ford: [00:18:02] Yes.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:18:03] You want to guess why?

Mathea Ford: [00:18:04] Probably because now you’re upset about that. You felt like you had less control over it.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:18:10] That’s true. The reason it got worse was there was this crazy voice in my head which I now know was my inner pig and it said something like this. “Hey, Glenn, you know what you’re right. Our mama didn’t love us enough. She left a great big chocolate sized hole in our heart and until we can find the love of her life we’re going have to go riding bingeing and get you let’s go get some right now. So there is this voice of justification that seized on the opportunity to use the emotional conflict and the emotional release to as a cause for bingeing more. And this is right around the time I was having the insights about having to switch my paradigm and I realized that emotions aren’t really a problem. It doesn’t necessarily matter why I have this raging fire inside. A raging fire in a well constructed fireplace in the center of a home can become the center of hearth and home. That’s where people tell stories, that’s where we gather, that’s where they find their peace. The problem is when the fireplace can’t contain it and the pig, this voice of justification is busy poking holes in the fireplace so the fire can escape and burn down the house so you can actually have a pinch. And I realize it was going to be a lot quicker to recognize and disempower that voice of justification than to fix the emotional issues. I mean do you know how long it takes in psychotherapy for someone with this particular problem to solve it? Like how long does it take to find the love of your life? Some people never do. How long does it take to come to terms with the fact that you know your mother was really traumatized and couldn’t love you in the way that you needed to and so therefore she left this hole in your heart. That that could take a very long time five to ten years. I’ve certainly come to a place where I can forgive her and love her for everything she went through. I don’t have a love of my life. I can’t say that I’m you know that I’m solving it. If I had to fix that before I stop bingeing I would be 400 pounds now. So, what causes it? You can investigate the foods that you eat. You can go back and look at your history. It’s a soulful journey to take. There were good things that came out of it. My mom and I forgave each other. I was softer on myself about the mistakes that I did make. It was easier for me to forgive myself after bingeing and get back on track a little quicker. So, it helped a little bit but would help the whole lot more. Was recognizing that crazy voice and disempowering it and most people don’t want to spend five or 10 years in psychotherapy to figure it all out. Most people just want to stop bingeing.

Mathea Ford: [00:20:32] You’re talking about not necessarily positive thinking but maybe more along the lines of changing the way you think about things. So, instead of feeling that victim and powerless and like you know like you said you’re reptilian brain just kind of got you to eat. You start telling yourself a different story which is what you were doing telling yourself this different story about who you were. You’re not that person that binge eat.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:20:57] Right! Really rather than making a Nazi rule which is how a lot of people look at what I’m trying to do. You’re changing your identity and character trumps willpower. So, what if I say I will never eat chocolate again? For me chocolate just doesn’t belong in my life. For some people it really does but for me it doesn’t. If I say “I’ll never eat chocolate again” people say “that’s crazy! How can you never see chocolate again?” And I’d say “well, what’s the difference between saying ‘I will never be chocolate again’ or saying ‘I’ve decided to become the kind of person who doesn’t eat chocolate.'” The second one is much more palatable and recognizable and easy for people to accomplish because they’re used to developing character traits and all sorts of different ways. We have all sorts of unwritten rules that we follow that we don’t know like if you walk into a diner and there’s a ten dollar bill on the counter because the waitress didn’t see your tip and she says “I’ll be right back. I have to get your menu” and there’s no video camera. The owner is not up front. There are no windows. Nobody would see you take it. Virtually everybody I ask in that situation says “I would never take it.” And I’d say “why? You’d be ten dollars richer. Nobody would know.” They’ll say “well, I’m not a thief!” And I say “What do you mean by that? She said “well, that woman worked hard for her money and I’m not a thief.” And I say “well, so as a matter of character you have an unwritten rule that says ‘I never steal. I will never steal again’ that you’ll follow regardless of temptation which doesn’t require any willpower because it’s not even an option. Willpower is required when you have to make decisions. But when decisions are ruled out because you’ve decided you’re not that kind of person, it’s not even an option and you don’t require willpower anymore. So, what I was doing which actually does result in very positive thinking was I was purging my negative thoughts from my identity. I was saying I’m just not the kind of person who track it’s chocolate. Therefore I’m not the kind of person that gets out of control with chocolate. Therefore, I am the kind of person who can’t control myself. I’m not a slave to my impulses. I am a master of my impulses and I have self esteem and self control. It tends to build up people’s self-esteem rather than tear it down. I know it sounds really weird in theory in the abstract. Another people listening to the call saying “you’ve got this psychologist on your call who’s got a peek inside and what do you thinking?” So, I’m actually at the end of the call I’ll tell you where you can download a bunch of free recorded coaching sessions so you can hear how it actually works in practice because it takes people from feeling despairing and powerless and hopeless to feeling hopeful, enthusiastic and possible. It actually is transforming and thus so far positive thinking. It just does it in a really weird way by purging your negative thinking into this artificial entity that you can call your food monster or your food demon or your pig or whatever you want to call it as long as it’s not a cuddly part.

Mathea Ford: [00:23:41] Is overeating we know that like 60% of the country is overweight and 30% or so I don’t remember the exact statistics are obese. Obviously it’s a common problem but what makes it so common is that related to the way the food manufacturers because not everybody had a bad mother are not necessarily a bad mother but a disconnect when they were young. What makes it so common?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:24:08] And just as a side point to what you’re saying adversity in childhood can lead to a strong character as opposed to a weak one. So, sometimes you’re looking for all of these faults in your parents but it’s those faults to give you your strength. What makes it such a big problem in my great big not so humble opinion is the evolution of the food substances to push our evolutionary buttons. We didn’t have all these bags and boxes and the containers on the Savannah or in the tropics when we’re growing up and we were evolving. There were no pizzas or pastas or pretzels or chips or chocolate bars you know on on the trees as we were. And it’s only the last few hundred years that these types of things are available. So, we really don’t have a defense for them and they’re getting stronger and stronger and stronger. So that’s part of it. But then the messaging we get that says that we’re powerless and we can’t resist. The messaging that says that you really can’t control yourself. You just have to eat everything in moderation. Well 90% of the time indulge, 10% of the time. That messaging conflicts with what we know about willpower because willpower is a fatigue of all muscle which is fatigued by decision making so if you say I’m going to eat well 90% of the time and eat bad 10%vof the time. Every time you’re in front of temptation you have to make the decision about is this the 10% or this is a 90%? If I say I want every chocolate on the last calendar weekend of the month then 90% of the time my chocolate decisions have all ready been made. I don’t have to constantly wear down my willpower. So, I think people are getting the wrong message. They’re also giving the wrong message about the psychology of winning the game. They’re told to strive for progress and not perfection which is a kindhearted way and the appropriate way to look at the mistakes that you’ve made in hindsight. But when you’re striving for a goal you actually need to commit it with perfection. If an archer is trying to hit the bull’s eye they need to pull back the arrow and see the arrow going into the bull’s eye before they let go of it. They can’t be thinking maybe I’ll make it maybe I won’t. They have to be perfectly committed to that fight of the arrow as if it’s a foregone conclusion that it’s going into the bull’s eye. If they miss the bull’s eye, they’re not supposed to say “Oh my God! I’m a pathetic Archer I’ll just shoot the rest of the hours into the audience or up into the air or whatever.” They’re supposed to get up and figure out what went wrong. Take it seriously. Adjust for wind resistance. Pull a little further back on the arrow whatever they need to do and do it again. If you touch a hot stove you want to feel that pain for a second because if you don’t you’re never gonna know where the hot stove is so you don’t touch it again. But you’re not supposed to say “I’m a pathetic hot stove toucher. Let me just put my whole hand down on it.” You’re supposed to take it seriously. Make an analysis make adjustments if you need to but then let go of the guilt. The pre-severation on guilt and shame, the round and round in your head that doesn’t go away. That turns out to be pig motivated when it’s trying to do is wear you down enough that you feel too weak to resist the next bench. “Oh! You’re pathetic. You might as well just give up and be a happy fat person.” That’s what it’s saying. That makes sense. So, the attitude that I recommend is that you commit with perfection but forgive yourself with dignity. What people are stuck in is pursuing things kind of wishy washy in a wishy washy way like “oh you know gee honey, I know we’re going to get married and I’m pretty sure I can promise to be faithful for the rest of my life but they sure are a lot of attractive people out there and you know progress not perfection.” So, they’re committing to these goals and a wishy washy way which we would never accept in certain situations. And then they’re analyzing themselves with too much self-criticism and flagellation. And so the whole thing is a setup for a loss. So you combine that with the food industry and the advertising industry and the messaging about powerlessness. And it’s a wonder that anybody can eat well today. But the solution is just a little bit of thought to distinguish exactly what healthy eating means for you. Think about the single worst trigger for the behavior for example and make one rule about it and then listen for yourself. Try to break it and either disempower or ignore that irrational voice while you make sure that you are getting adequate nutrition and calories in your day to day life.

Mathea Ford: [00:28:39] When you think about some different kind of the counter movement to what you’re talking about is this Health at Every Size movement where it’s okay whatever weight you are as long as you’re eating healthy and you’re doing healthy things. It’s not necessarily about the weight. It’s about being healthy. So, is what you’re doing kind of or what you’re your suggest book suggests is kind of that fat shaming yourself in your brain instead of being happy with how you are and healthy if you’re eating healthy?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:29:14] Fat shaming is a problem in our society. People do come in all different sizes and I’m thoroughly against people feeling criticized and shamed for their weight. On the other hand making an objective assessment of what weight is actually healthy. I think the data are pretty clear that it’s thinner than the people at Health at Any Size are necessarily suggesting. And so I don’t want to support people to be unhealthy. I want to support them to feel loved. I want to support them to love themselves. I want them to embrace a slow journey to where they need to be. But I think when you take a really hard look at the empirical evidence about where the incidence of disease and disorder is with regards to our weight and set the target accordingly. I mean our society is way too body obsessed in and of itself. I think women can be very beautiful at all different sizes but healthy is a different story. The same thing with what tends to go along with that is this philosophy of intuitive eating and the idea that you can’t distinguish between healthy and unhealthy foods that we have to be eat anything at any time and just listen to our insights about it. The industry is so strong and they’ve perverted and hijacked our intuition such a high level that we can’t really trust it. If we live in the tropics, we didn’t have all these bags and boxes and containers. Then I think we could trust our intuitions to tell us what to eat but when it’s legal to put flavored cardboard into the food system and it is I could show you instances where it’s happening then I think you have to stand up and say “there are some things I will and I won’t eat. There are some things that are over line and unhealthy or some things that are healthy and I can eat intuitively within those guidelines. But I have to draw some boundaries somewhere somehow.” So, those are my thoughts about the Health at Any Size movement.

Mathea Ford: [00:31:11] So kind of what you’re basically the intuitive eating, feeling good about what you’re eating. Feeling like taking the time to eat slower and enjoy the food that you have as long as you can distinguish that trickster whatever you want to call it in your brain that’s trying to tell you that “yeah! This is really good for you or this is really” or you can like you said “start your diet tomorrow” type thing.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:31:37] Eating mindfully is really important and you can make rules that support that. I always put my fork on between bites. I never eat in the car. I never eat with the screen in front of me. You can make rules that support that. For me personally as long as they don’t have industrial food being thoroughly present while I’m eating is exceptionally important. Letting my food nourish me. Experiencing every bite you wind up eating a little less of it when you when you do that but I think that we eat mindfully between the lines just like we can drive mindfully between the traffic lights. I think that the discipline actually enhances our freedom. You could not get around Manhattan in a car if it didn’t have traffic lights and stop signs. There were eleven million people in that place and just a few square miles and it wouldn’t be safe to drive around it would be too dangerous. And because we have traffic lights and stop signs people can move without that they’d be stuck. So I actually think that freedom sits on top of discipline. I don’t think that the discipline I’m suggesting restricts our freedom. I think it enhances it.

Mathea Ford: [00:32:41] What kind of guidelines do you encourage people to follow?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:32:43] It’s important to make up your own rules. I find that a big part of the problem in food disorders, addiction, even just simple overeating is a sense of rebellion. There’s this part of people inside that says “you can’t tell me what to eat” and they go from diet to diet saying “this diet is no good. This diet is no good. I lost weight but I couldn’t stand and I lost weight but I couldn’t stand it. This one’s no good at all.” And it’s just their pig playing the “grass is greener” squeal “oh! That diet is better, this diet is better and it’s really just trying to keep a state of anarchy. So, it’s very important to take a breath and figure out what rules you want to follow. I suggest people start with one rule “What’s your single worst trigger food behavior” and teach yourself that you’re able to follow it. Learn how this game is played. Show yourself that it’s possible to structure your mind in that way and when you hear a craving inside that says “I want to break the rule you say. I don’t want that my pig does or I don’t want that. My reptilian brain does. Its just squealing for its slop and I don’t eat slop.” As crazy as that sounds, it’s a commitment it’s a lingual commitment to forming a more constructive identity that’s in charge around food. Once you get that and I would suggest that people don’t worry about losing weight in those first few weeks. Once you get that, I suggest that people start to add rules which would help them accomplish the health and fitness goals. I’m not a dietitian/nutritionist or medical doctor so I’m not qualified to tell you what to eat. So, I always suggest that people consult with them to figure out what the right goal would be or you know read books or whatever but embrace it yourself and then start to add rules that would help you to lose weight at half a pound, a pound at the most two pounds a week. I really don’t like when people lose more than two pounds a week because I find it virtually always bounces in the other direction. The reason I think that is is because the problem with overeating and binge eating is not just in the overeating-binge eating part of the cycle. It’s an addiction to feast and famine and the most people who are struggling with overeating also are really good dieters. So, they can lose weight but then they gain back more and they get really high during the weight loss period. They get all excited and manic about it. They’re building up this caloric deficit, they’re building up the nutritional deficit and there’s some biological mechanism in the brain I think that would make sense from an evolutionary perspective that if calories in nutrition are unavailable for long periods of time then as soon as they are all we have to hoard them and that’s why people feel like someone’s pointing a gun at their head and saying “you will eat.” That’s why people feel like getting too full is a trigger to overeat even more because it must be a signal to the brain that says “oh! Finally! Finally, calories and nutrition are available I better are take in as much as we can.” So to combat that you went to a regular reliable steady source of calories and nutritions. You need to eat breakfast the day after a binge. You don’t you do not want to make up for a day of bingeing with two or three days of fasting or reduce only. You want to make up with a binge with a couple of weeks of extremely normal reliable eating and that takes you out of this feast and famine cycle. But you went to a more even keeled regular cycle with a slight deficit so that you can lose weight you know pound, two pounds a week at most. That’s what I recommend.

Mathea Ford: [00:36:15] So when you talk about a trigger food how do people identify their trigger food?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:36:20] What triggers food is the food that you find yourself eating beyond your own best judgment and feel guilty about afterwards. One of the things that I’ll give you when you go to my site at the end is a little workbook with a list of all possible trigger foods or all the ones that we identified. And you can kind of go through one by one and give them a rating and figure out if it’s a trigger for you. If you’re eating. So, people ask me how do you define binge eating? Or how do you define you know overeating? And I’ll say I don’t like to talk about the DSM 5 definition you can look that up if you want to but I don’t like people thinking in black and white terms because if you’re eating beyond your own best judgment then wouldn’t it behoove you to try this mental trick and see if you can take more control. So, I think that the question of “Is it a binge or not?” in and of itself is a bit of a squeal because it’s almost like a pig thing. “Can I get away with it? Can I get away with a little more?” You know what I’m saying? So, if you’re not happy and you’re losing control in any way wouldn’t you like to take more control? I’m not going to tell you I’m not going to take anything away from you. You can eat anything you want to. If you want your food plan to say “eat donuts all day long and that’s it.” I don’t think it’s going to last very long because you’re not going to be nutrified and I wouldn’t recommend it but I’m not going to take that away from you. Nobody is going to tell you what to eat. So, there’s no reason not to make a rule. You can change them if you want to. We will say “I’ll never have chocolate again.” But we say that in the same way we presented to the pig as if it’s set in stone in the same way we talked to a 2 year old. Little Sarah, you can’t never ever cross the street without holding my hand. Never ever ever again. The reason I tell her that even though I know that I’m lying because in five or six years I will teach her to look both ways and cross by herself. I tell her when she’s two years old that she can’t ever do that because it’s too dangerous. I don’t want her even thinking about crossing the street. I don’t want those images in her head. All I want her to do is raise her focus on my hand while we’re crossing the street so she gets her car safely. Our pigs are like that. They are too dangerous in the context of these trigger foods so we present these rules of them as if they are set in stone but if there’s a study that comes out that says you know “if you don’t eat chocolate you’re going to die of penile cancer” (I just made that up.) You’re going to die of some type of horrible cancer. Of course I’m going to consider eating chocolate at that point and I’ll change my rules. And once again, I will tell my pig never again because it has to be set in stone from a pig’s perspective. You don’t want to thinking “maybe? How about now? Is a time yet?” You can’t do that it’s going to be “shut up.”

Mathea Ford: [00:38:57] You talked a little bit about making your own food plan. How do you help people to make their own food plan you said you’re not going to tell me what to eat but how do you assemble a good food plan.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:39:07] There are four categories of rules I suggest the things you’ll never do again. There are things you’ll do under certain conditions call those conditionals. The things that you’ll always do and the things that you can do in an unrestricted way. Things you’ll never do again are really substances that you want out of your life. “I will never eat castor sugar again. I’ll never be chocolate again.” Things that you’ll do under certain conditions might be “only ever have chocolate added a social event but no more than once per calendar month or only pretzels at a major league baseball park or I don’t eat flour during the week. But if I go out to dinner on the weekend I can have a plate of pasta or two pieces of bread” something like that. Those are conditional rules and always rules something you always want to do. I always make a hypothetical food plan for the next day before I go to bed. “I always drink two pure glasses of spring water when I wake up in the morning. I always eat five servings of fruit and vegetables every day.” Those are always rules and the unrestricted rules are things that I include so that your pig can’t tell you that you’re starving. There are things that you can eat in unlimited quantities. “I can have all the berries that I want to during the day. I can eat unsauced vegetables in unlimited quantities. Can drink all of the coffee and tea that I want.” Whatever it is for you you do that to remind yourself that you won’t be starving. I have a whole set of examples that I’ll give people too so it’s not so confusing but that’s how it works. The main thing is whatever rule you create you want it to be externally verifiable not because you’re going to have people check up on you but because you don’t want there to be any wiggle room for your food monster. A rule that people try to make which isn’t really a rule that meets these criteria is “I will never eat when I’m not hungry and I’ll always stop when I’m full.” That’s a guideline. Guidelines are good to have but they’re not enforceable never been again rules. The reason is that they’re too subjective and internal. Your food master can always say “oh! We’re hungry baby. Believe me we’re hungry or we’re not full yet.” It’s not verifiable. If you really wanted the volume control rule then you need to say something like “I’ll never go back for seconds or I’ll never have more than one plate of food or I will have three meals a day with nothing in between with a meal being 45 minutes in the first calories and last.” Something like that you have some type of externally variable, verifiable external control. Let’s think anybody has to do any of those things. I’m just pointing out for illustration that if 10 people follows you around they should all agree whether you were on the rule or off the rule. That’s how you know that you have a really good rule.

Mathea Ford: [00:41:45] Okay that’s great! So, thinking about the listeners who maybe dietitians, other health professionals or even just everyday people interested in nutrition. How would you want them to use this information we’ve talked about in their day to day life?  

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:42:01] Well you’re talking about with their clients?

Mathea Ford: [00:42:03] Either with their clients or with themselves but probably with their clients. Maybe somebody who doesn’t necessarily struggle with bingeing but they have clients who come in who may have some issues with weight.   

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:42:14] I mean we do have a training and certification program where we teach and supervise people how to work with their own clients. That’s something we really like to do actually because helping the helper really furthers our mission we’re trying to help a million people stop bingeing every year and they have the clients right in front of them so that makes us really happy to do that. But in terms of implementing in their own life, I would make the same recommendation that I make to everybody else which is to start with one rule. Everything that’s really important to do is to be sure that the rules that you create don’t put you in a box where you can’t get enough nutrition and calories. And I would suggest that people check that with a nutritionist or a dietitian or with one of the online systems like cronometer.com or My Fitness Pal just to be sure that they’re not making your rule if it’s inconsistent with your body’s needs. There are some rules you can’t make. I can’t make a rule that says I will never pee again because nobody is going to tell me otherwise. If you make a rule which puts you in too much of a caloric and nutritional deficit, your body is going to want to force you to be less discriminating. You can override that. I mean people can go on hunger strikes until they die but it’s extraordinarily uncomfortable and it takes an extraordinary person to do that. So, why put yourself in that situation? So, go and have your remaining diet checked out by a dietitian or a nutritionist or at least at the very least one of these online calculators to make sure that it’s efficient. When you’re dealing with a craving, there are a couple of important things to recognize when dealing with a craving. First of all, you have to think of the craving as an opportunity. You can’t get rid of a craving without having a craving so a craving is an opportunity to extinguish the craving. If you have a craving and you don’t feed it then the craving will be weaker tomorrow. But underneath the craving is an authentic biological need. Almost all the time. So, it’s not just a craving for a chocolate bar but maybe you genuinely do need some energy. So what I found over time by experimenting with different things was that when I crave chocolate I would teach my brain “no, we’re going to have a kale banana smoothie instead.” And I wouldn’t get high the same way that chocolate makes you high. I think chocolate is a drug but I would feel satisfied and the craving would go away and I would have the energy that I needed. And I think that what I was doing was correcting the biological drive that got hijacked.  

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:44:45] There’s a whole series of animal studies where electrodes were put into the pleasure center thereby short cutting or bypassing the natural evolutionary means by which we’re meant to experience pleasure. And those animals were allowed to self stimulate by pressing a lever so that the electrode was wired to a lever. Those animals pressed the lever thousands of times a day to the exclusion of their survival needs. A starving rat for example would press the lever thousands of times a day and ignore its food. A nursing mother rat pressed the lever thousands of times a day and ignore her pups. So, what’s happening there is hijacking up the survival drive. It’s unnatural stimulation of parts of the brain and chemical neurological stimulation that causes the body to make a biological error. I don’t think anybody’s inserting electrodes in our brain but the chemicals we’re putting into our body it’s not that far away. And can you say we’re not being given these shortcuts to biological pleasure when you could walk out of McDonald’s and see a Burger King across the street at just about every city in the country or the world these days? So, I think you need to recognize that your body is making a biological error. It feels like you need chocolate to survive. It feels like you need chips to survive. At the moment you have the craving it feels like nothing else matters no matter how much work you did to think about what you wanted to do. No matter how committed you were to the diet. No matter how much motivational work you figured out. Why you wanted to commit to this? At the moment of impulse every bone in your body says “just hand over the chocolate and nobody gets hurt.” What you have to do at that moment is say “it’s a feeling and feelings aren’t facts and thank goodness I’m having this feeling now. Thank goodness I’m having this craving now” because I can feed myself what my body really needs. I’m not going to let it go for that chemical electrode in my brain. I’m not going to push the lever thousands of times to be like a stupid rat. Excuse me language I don’t think rats are stupid I think you’re really sweet but you know what I mean. I am going to forcefully and consciously redirect this drive I am feeling towards what I think might be my authentic need. Some other examples are when I struggle with pizza or wanting pasta with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese. What I would do instead was make myself some brown rice with tomato sauce and nutritional yeast. So, I started like shifting for its healthier alternatives and I would find the same thing wasn’t the most delicious thing I ever ate but it killed the craving and I was fine. And before I knew it my nervous system was adjusting and I was getting more pleasure out of the brown rice with tomato sauce and nutritional yeast than I was getting out of what I used to remember going to the pasta. Now, if I went back to the pasta that would revert back to where it was in my body would make the biological error again. So. So, feelings aren’t facts. Thank goodness I’m having this craving. What do I really need? That’s how you do it.  

Mathea Ford: [00:47:50] That’s great. I love that idea of basically trying to restimulate, rewire what your brain wants so to speak by just concentrating on it and doing it for a period of time.  

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:48:03] Yeah.  

Mathea Ford: [00:48:04] So, I always asked my guess what is your favorite food? Obviously it’s not chocolate, not dark chocolate.  

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:48:11] Well, chocolate was my favorite. Chocolate and Cheetos was amazing. When people know what to eat they want to run away screaming. Took me a lot of years to get to this point but my favorite thing to do is to make cucumber noodles with a sauce that has tomatoes and lemons and dates and some dills in it for a little saltiness. Absolute favorite thing and sometimes up with some leafy greens into the sauce and in fact I have to go make that after we talk now because I’m hungry. I make a big friggin bowl of it also.  

Mathea Ford: [00:48:48] So cucumber noodles or just slices really thin slices of cucumbers?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:48:52] I got a spiralizer. You can get them on Amazon for about 30 bucks and I spiralize in so it’s actually like a noodle so I can actually twirl it gives me the same experience of eating pasta. If you’re stuck on pasta it’s not going to feel like awesome.  

Mathea Ford: [00:49:06] Okay Dr. Glenn thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners learned a lot about the psychology thoughts behind binge eating and how to make some changes positive changes. If listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: [00:49:23] Well if you could ineverbingeagain.com and you click on the big red button. Sign up for the Reader Bonus List. There are a few things that I can get you. Can get your free copy of the book in digital format either Kindle, Nook or PDF. I can get you a free copy of the Food Plan Starter Templates we talked about. So, regardless of your dietary philosophy. High carb, low carb, ketogenic, vegan, point counting, calorie counting it doesn’t matter. We have a sample set of food rules that you might want to start with and modify for your own benefit. And I recorded a whole bunch of coaching sessions to show you that this isn’t really such a weird or harsh thing in practice as it sounds like in theory so. So, ineverbingeagain.com. Click the big red button.  

Mathea Ford: [00:50:09] Right! So, guys this has been another great episode of the Nutrition Expert Podcast. The podcast is all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life.  

 

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Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 44 Meal Planning for Busy Moms with Jennifer Hunt, RDN, LD

March 4, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

Jennifer is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, lover of delicious food, wife and mom to 2 young girls.  She doesn’t love cooking but she does love creating tasty, nourishing and easy recipes for her family and yours.  Her joy and passion is to empower women with nutrition knowledge, tasty recipes and simple strategies to live the healthy, active lives they envision, even while caring for a family.  On a mission to help every mom love the woman in the mirror, she helps them break free from food guilt, end body shaming and figure out what’s for dinner tonight. As a Nutrition Coach, Jennifer helps clients cut through the diet noise and create healthful rhythms that allows them to feel and perform their best.

After becoming a mom in 2015, she realized how utterly difficult it was for moms to take care of their emotional and physical health among the unending demands of motherhood.  It was then, in those moments of tears and frustration, running on coffee and cuddles, that she decided to create a business to help busy, stressed and exhausted women make healthy living simple and delicious.

Jennifer uses years of experience in outpatient and private practice work to help her clients get past ‘idealistic nutrition’ and instead find real life strategies that actually work.  Her nutrition science education from Texas Christian University laid a solid foundation but motherhood has expanded her empathy, creative ideas and ability to connect with women. Not only does she work with amazing women, coaching them on their health journey but she has the privilege of writing the Good Health column for an online faith-based magazine. In need of some healthy inspiration? You can find that, yummy recipes and a huge dose of encourage on her website and in her weekly newsletter. On any given day, you may find her dancing with her girls in the living room, exploring food with her 3 year old (ie. making a mess) or escaping to go on a walk or jog listening to her favorite podcast.

LINKS

Website www.healthy-inspiration.com
Facebook @jenniferhuntnutrition
Instagram @jennifer.hunt.nutrition

Mathea Ford: [00:00:28] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Jennifer Hunt on the show today. Jennifer, welcome to Nutrition Experts.

Jennifer Hunt: [00:00:45] Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:49] I’m excited to have you on the show and share your expertise with my tribe because I think we’re going to talk about some really great exciting fun stuff today. So, tell my listeners a little more about you and what you do.

Jennifer Hunt: [00:01:03] Great! So I am a mommy to two very vibrant and active little girls and I am married to my handsome, sweet husband who we’ve been married for about 13 years. And actually he has given me the opportunity to learn very early on about meal planning and meal prep for selective eaters. So, even before kids I got to begin learning how to do this. So I used to work in an outpatient office and loved what I was doing but after having children decided to stay at home and really start working with women that were a part of kind of where my passion was. And so one of the things that I really hope to do and with every person that I work with is to make healthy living really simple and delicious. So, I love creating new recipes I’m giving talks doing food demos writing and doing nutrition coaching really to help my clients in making some simple but really effective changes and make it really yummy and delicious.

Mathea Ford: [00:02:21] Great! I think that perfectly explains kind of who we’re talking about a busy moms which there’s plenty of those around I myself included. So let’s talk about meal planning for a family. Do you have any quick ideas or quick thoughts that people can use to kind of get started?

Jennifer Hunt: [00:02:41] Yes. So, I think that one of the things that tends to be one of the biggest challenges when we’re meal planning is trying to please everyone and some of us might also have some food allergies in the family. So, one of the things that is just a really quick tip is to make a list. And I did this many years ago when I was feeling really stuck. I felt like we were just eating the same foods over and over and over again. And that was really frustrating me. And so what I did was I just sat down and I started thinking up what does my family actually like to eat. And at first you start with probably some of the maybe basics that you might think of like tacos or spaghetti or hamburgers. And then as I kept thinking I was actually writing down more and more. And so when I originally was kind of feeling like we were eating the same things every week, I found there was probably a list of about 20ish meals that we actually enjoyed together as a family. And that was really enlightening and encouraging because I was feeling so stuck. And so instead of having a week’s worth of meals that we were eating feeling like we’re eating every week we actually had probably several weeks of meals and I was just not remembering some of those other options that we actually liked. So that’s one idea I think maybe another idea is to think about if when we’re making meals that we really don’t have to please everyone with every single food that’s on the plate.

Jennifer Hunt: [00:04:30] One other thought is that if we’re sitting down to kind of create a meal plan, try to get at least two or three items at that meal that everyone is going to probably eat and instead of trying to make sure that everything at the meal is appealing to everyone. I know that when as a mom I want to create or I want to raise adventurous eaters and in order to do that I have to continue to expose them to different foods and unfamiliar foods and ones that maybe they declined months for you know for the last few months. But I have to continue to keep exposing them to them those foods or they probably aren’t going to actually eat those foods. So, when I think about kind of like making sure there’s a couple of things on the plate that pleases everyone but it doesn’t have to be that the entire meal pleases everyone every single week. And sometimes that also is as simple as making sure there’s maybe a fruit at the table if they like certain kinds of fruit and even milk because milk is such a nutrient dense food could even be considered one of those items on the tray. Another thing that I’ve also discovered is that kids seems like to kind of build their own types of meals when we maybe decompose certain meals and instead of let them kind of build it themselves they may not put everything into their on their plate or in their bowl that we would ideally want them to but it gives them a little sense of power and being able to kind of control and because otherwise they may have just said “No, I’m not into eating that meal at all.”

Jennifer Hunt: [00:06:23] I found that with little ones sometimes chili or soups or things that just have a lot of ingredients in them can feel kind of scary or overwhelming for them. And so when we start to think about making noodles that maybe are a little bit more have separate items or that they can build and create themselves. It can make the meal a little bit more appealing to everyone in the family.

Mathea Ford: [00:06:50] Well, I love that idea. My kids love going to Genghis Grill which I don’t know if you have that in South Carolina but basically you go down online and you pick your meat and you pick your vegetables and they love going to that because they get to pick and they get to assemble their own meal and they usually pick two or three vegetables and I’m happy that they get a little bit of variety but they like going there because they don’t have to pick off the menu. They know what they’re going to get. So that’s a great point.

Jennifer Hunt: [00:07:20] And you can do that you know with tacos or if you’re making quesadillas. You can even do that with things like spaghetti where you just keep it like the meat or the meatballs or the chicken separate from the sauce and the noodles and maybe you have broccoli that you could put into the bowl or spinach or something like that. And so there are a lot of meals with just a little bit of thought. We could probably keep some of those items separate so that they can then kind of build their own and kind of create their own little masterpiece instead of just being something that’s kind of served to them.

Mathea Ford: [00:07:53] That’s great! So, I understand you have like a quick walkthrough or a five minute meal plan. So will you tell us a little bit about that?

Jennifer Hunt: [00:08:00] Yes definitely! So, I think that meal planning does not have to be difficult or overwhelming. And I know that there are a lot of different ways that you can meal plan and there’s a lot of apps and programs but it really as is as simple as sitting down and writing down on a piece of paper a few different things. And I do have a handout on my website that I can share with your audience and can kind of guide them through this process. So, I believe that you can create a great healthy meal plan for your week and only about five minutes. The first thing that is really important and that I think that sometimes we skip is we need to look at our week or our calendar. What I was finding when I was working with a lot of individuals is that they were creating these idealistic meal plans but they weren’t necessarily in line in complimenting their week. And so if they had a crazy day but they were trying to make a new recipe or something or something that took just more than 20 minutes it was just not working. And then they were feeling like they just kind of failed. And so we don’t want to create meal plans that make us feel like we can’t do this. So, it’s really important to just spend one minute to review your calendar and certainly if you have a spouse to look at their calendar as well so that way you can anticipate you know if you’ve got kids that are in soccer or dance or if you know that you’ve got a work meeting that could potentially go late or if there’s anything that is going on during the week that you need to be aware of. Maybe you have some guests coming in at the end of the week. And so that way you can make sure that you’re creating a plan that revolves around what’s going on in your life.

Jennifer Hunt: [00:09:49] So, that is the first thing you want to do and just spend one minute. Take out your phone or your calendar however you do that and look at your calendar. A second minute you’re going to actually spend looking through your pantry and fridge. So you just want to get up, glance through what’s in your refrigerator maybe what’s in your freezer, what’s in your pantry. Certainly, if you have any produce or any meat that you’re wanting to use up and you don’t want to go bad that is what you’re kind of looking for. Also maybe pick things that you can throw together that you’ve just already got staples in your pantry. A couple of weeks ago we were going to be going out of town and we had bought some Brussel sprouts that were actually on the stock because my 3 year old thought that was so cool and I was going with it and we were going to you know cook those up and so that was something where I needed to use that up so that we didn’t go out of town and leave that. So just look for things like that. So, that’s a second minute. You just want to glance through your pantry fridge. From the third and fourth minute, you want to go ahead and choose your recipes. And this is where you can go back to that list that you’ve maybe already created that are some of the family favorites. And look at what are some of those recipes that you want to insert into your week. And so now that you know what’s going on with your calendar you can kind of look at how many days a week do we want to have leftovers. Is there a night or two that we’re going to be eating out? Is there a day that would be a better day for us to do a slow cooker meal? Or is there a day that we want to do a quick stir fry or use the things that are in our freezer? Or maybe you’ve already got something in your freezer that you just need to take out and defrost. So that allows you to kind of insert those recipes in. One thing that I do find is that most of us cannot commit to doing more than about one new recipe a week. And for some of us that still might be too much depending on your week. I encourage moms and whoever is doing the meal planning not to get too excited about adding new recipes and it is great to add some variety into our meal plan. And even if you just add one a week and over the course of a year that’s about 50 new recipes. And that is a whole lot of variety. But I do find that because new recipes take more time just are not we can’t go into autopilot and create those recipes easily. And then for the last minute what I think is really important is that we post it and for many years this was something that I just did not do consistently. And I found that our meal plan would kind of just fall apart and I’d be like “Oh yeah! What are we making?” And then when I don’t have that kind of already locked in my brain we would just look for another easy alternative and we all know it some easy alternatives can be. So, just literally posting it can also remind us if we’re needing to take something out of the freezer the night before or defrost something. And also if you do take a little bit of time on a day whether it’s a weekend or even an evening where we do a little extra meal prep, we can just glance at what’s coming up in the next week and determine “Oh! Hey! I’m ready in the kitchen. I’m making dinner tonight. I’m going to go ahead and make quinoa for two nights in the future” you know or “I’ll go ahead and chop that extra onion and just put it in a container so that it’s ready to go on Thursday” so it can really kind of help us also in looking ahead and kind of doing a little extra prep for ourselves if we have that time available.

Mathea Ford: [00:13:47] Like we have activities a couple of nights a week. And I know okay, if we’re going to end up having to eat out that night or know okay, if I make this type of thing we can take it with us. Somebody can eat it when they get home from school that type of thing and hosting it. Absolutely. Because my husband loves to ask someone for dinner and see that “say yes” like look on my face. Yeah, it avoids that a little bit. What are some of the struggles that you encounter or that your patients encounter that they might want to be aware of to prepare for?

Jennifer Hunt: [00:14:24] Yes. So one of the struggles that I hear a lot from some of the clients that I work with is just that they are wanting to make some healthful decisions for themselves and their bodies but they are finding that maybe not everyone in the family or maybe they have children and they’re just finding that not everyone is either on board with that. Maybe they’re used to doing it a different way. And so mom is maybe trying to make some some changes and it might produce a little bit of some tension or challenges. So, I think that that’s sometimes when I talk with individuals and they’re talking about how they’re making something different for their kids or they talk about how it’s their food and their kids food. And I think that’s one of the biggest challenges is trying to make it all meld together so that our family can eat together and eat some nourishing foods and not feel like mom is trying to do different things because we want our kids to be healthy too and they have growing bodies as well. And so making all of that kind of meld is I think one of the biggest challenges that I hear from moms. And I think one of the things that’s really important is to really have good communication. If you do if you are married and in kind of talking with your spouse about you know “what is some of our family’s health values? What do we value? What is important to us?” And that does not mean that we need to overhaul our families meals but it might mean that we can make some really small and simple changes to help direct all of us in in a past that is moving towards the health that we want, the energy that we want, you know feeling good and feeling really confident in our bodies. It could be as simple as in the rice. I will do this if I’m making maybe like brown rice. We can just add in some cauliflower rice and we can pretty much do half and half and it pretty much just kind of blends in. And most people probably wouldn’t even know that it’s in there you know. And so it’s just one simple little change that kind of helps get more veggies into our diets. So, it could be as simple as some of those small changes. It could be that we are making meat sauce for spaghetti and so maybe we use like half the amount of meat that we typically would. And we add in some cooked lentils and we’re you know just once again trying to boost some of the plant protein and get some still a good source of iron but get some beans in our diet if that’s something that maybe we struggle with. I also found when it comes to communicating with a spouse especially if they have some different preferences that’s sometimes what I found. So, my husband was not a huge fan of most fruits and vegetables when we got married and I was getting really frustrated.

Jennifer Hunt: [00:17:48] I was actually still finishing school and so here I am wanting to make all of these different kinds of foods and meals. And he was not necessarily onboard with all of this new stuff and this variety. And so when I was feeling really stuck I started printing off a couple of recipes that I was really interested in trying and that I thought that maybe he might possibly go for. And so I presented like two or three of them to him and said “Which of these would you be most likely willing to try if I were to make it this week?” And so he would choose the one that appealed to him the most. And then of that we would go through the recipe and he would kind of communicate like “Yeah! Do you think you could do this a little differently or could you leave out the onion or could we shred the onion so it’s not in big chunks or something like that?” And so as we were able to talk about that it really opened up some better dialogue and helped me learn a little bit more about why he did or did not like certain foods and what it was whether it was a taste or maybe a texture thing. And that was a very helpful strategy for me since he was not necessarily into doing to eating all of the things that I was excited about eating. So, those are a few of the quick things that we can do to kind of open up some of that dialogue and help whether it’s with our kids or a spouse to kind of keep the communication flowing and really learn about why they may not be on board with some of the things we want to do and then when we have that knowledge really helps us in kind of guiding us into “hmm. Maybe I could do this a little differently and they would like it or they would at least try it or consider it.”

Mathea Ford: [00:19:44] That makes a lot of sense. It’s the consensus kind of you know family thing instead of like my father for example lives with us and he’ll eat anything I set in front of him because that’s how he grew up. You eat what your mom sets in front of you but like for example but mom’s busy moms you don’t want to end up as a short order cook. So, having to do three different meals or three different things to make everybody happy doesn’t help you want to do more meal planning. So those are great. Yeah.

Mathea Ford: [00:20:17] So, can you talk a little bit more about how families you’ve talked about some examples of how to make the meals healthier. Any other examples of how families can use meal time to make healthier meals to be healthier?

Jennifer Hunt: [00:20:29] Especially when it comes to kids, I think that also depending on their ages inviting them to maybe be a little part of helping to make some decisions in the meal can also help in terms of some buy in when it comes to eating foods. So, it might be that you ask your four year old “hey! We have broccoli and we have carrots and we have salad this week. Which one of those would you like tonight?” And in maybe kind of giving them a few choices maybe not too many but a couple of options and seeing if they would say “hey! Okay. How about make the broccoli but I want some cheese on it or something like that?” And so it might be also that in giving them a few options. Not a lot again but a few that they will be a little bit more interested and that little bit can kind of helped in them potentially eating or enjoying even that meal more. I think it’s also just you know thinking about like the rainbow you know you might think about how can we make our plate a little bit more colorful and maybe talking about that with your kids you know just kind of we don’t have to get into details but the idea that we want to eat different colors because there are different nutrients in those variety of foods and kind of saying “Hey! How could we get a more colorful plate tonight? We’re having chicken and brown rice. But what are some other colors we could add to make this plate look this meal look more appealing?” And see if they can you know they might say blueberries or whatever. And so I started this fall teaching this preschool cooking class and it just started as something that I was doing for some of my mommy friends and for their kids. And so one of the meals that we made when they came over were these rainbow pizzas. And so you know we have kids that might traditionally just want a cheese pizza or pepperoni. But the goal here was to make them super colorful so we had chopped up orange and yellow bell pepper,, we had some black olives we had the white cheese, we had spinach, we had the red sauce and so the idea was is we wanted to make these colorful rainbow pizzas. And so there was a lot more excitement about adding some of these different foods onto their pizza just because it was this idea of making you know creating a rainbow. So, I think that can also be just a helpful strategy to kind of think about and once again asking them if they would be interested in choosing for the family what we’re having tonight. And of course older kids might even be interested in helping do more planning. But when it’s younger kids it can be helpful just to let them choose like one type of food.

Mathea Ford: [00:23:29] So, I love that you talked about the preschool cooking class because one of my other questions I wanted to ask you is how can we get our children to learn more about nutrition as they grow up? What are some good tasks to start with in the kitchen?

Jennifer Hunt: [00:23:43] Sometimes we think they need to be older but they can start super young because there are just little things that they can do. When my little girl was just even two, she loved to like put the muffin wrappers in the muffin tin and then I could help her maybe mash the banana if we were making some banana walnut muffins. Another idea is like decorating the salads. Young kids are very good at like taking the items and then decorating our salads, putting different vegetables and avocado and whatever we want to put on those salads and that can be once again there a little piece of kind of helping out with that. As they get a little bit older, measuring ingredients can be something that they can do whether they’re measuring wholegrain flour so that we could make some muffins, learning to crack an egg and kind of do that and you know stirring things up. I think it’s also important for parents to realize that getting them in the kitchen does not mean they need to make the entire recipe or an entire meal. So, depending on their age, young kids might just want to come in and shake up the salad dressing in the mason jar that we made. Right? Or they might want to just decorate the salad and they’re good. They’ve had their little hand in helping. And then as they are getting older whether 5, 6, 7 and older they may have more interest in helping and obviously their attention span will grow and they’re able to participate a little bit more. So, those are a few things and then I do believe that you know depending on your child when you feel like they’re ready. Teaching them really good knife skills is helpful. And it might even be finding a class that is like a mommy in kid class or parent-kid class to go to so that they can learn some of those skills and like how to actually properly chop and use a knife. It can be incredibly empowering. And it’s one skill that I think that a lot of us maybe did not learn early on and we’ve either had to learn or we’re just struggling through some of the chopping. And that actually can slow things down in the kitchen. But I encourage every parent to get their kids in the kitchen and it maybe just once a week. Don’t don’t overwhelm yourself. But even when I do bring my 3 year old into the kitchen, my 1 year old she might be in the kitchen too and I might give her just a few measuring spoons to kind of play with. So, we’re all still kind of in there and we’re doing things and kind of just a part of the process.

Mathea Ford: [00:26:31] I think that’s great because it leads to them being more comfortable in the kitchen and not being afraid to cook. Like not being afraid to try.

Jennifer Hunt: [00:26:40] I also I would add one other thing is that when they’re cooking or helping you bake or do something in the kitchen it’s a very non-threatening environment. We were at the dinner table and they see you know peas on their plate and they have not been like in some peas. They can have a little bit more angst or anxiety about having to eat something that maybe is not appealing to them but when they’re in the kitchen just helping us do things there’s no expectation that they have to eat this at this time. And so that means that they’re going to be involved with all of their senses, they might be touching the food smelling of food, they might want to taste something but they’re able to kind of get in there and do something and get involved and become more familiar with certain foods without there being any expectation of having to put it in their mouth. And that can be a very helpful thing.

Mathea Ford: [00:27:38] That makes a lot of sense. So, I know you mentioned you work with busy moms and we’ve talked a lot about meal planning. What are some of the other big issues that you help patients deal with as busy moms?

Jennifer Hunt: [00:27:50] I think that one of the other obstacles that I’ve heard from a lot of moms is that sometimes it feels like every meal we’re still on and it is hard to be able just to sit down and be mindful and to eat our food and eat until we’re satisfied. A lot of times we find that we are… Even if we’re at the dinner table we’re taking a few bites, we’re trying to help a child or teaching table manners or maybe getting more milk for a child and it can be very busy. It can be very kind of scattered and chaotic. And in this especially for those that are stay at home moms this might happen for breakfast, lunch and dinner and it can feel very frustrating for them because they are trying to make sure that they’re nourishing their bodies and in eating until they’re satisfied and being mindful of their bodies signals. But there’s a lot else going on in that particular environments. And actually what I have found in working with women is that that bedtime kind of snacking and eating is is very common. And that’s partly because it’s finally our time to sit down and enjoy something that we actually want to eat you know and into actually kind of feel like you know we’ve worked hard and we’ve done a good job for the day and it’s finally kind of our time to sit down but if we’re not careful then that’s also a time when we’re not being as mindful because we’re wanting to maybe zone out and that is just something that I have found that is a common obstacle for a lot of women is kind of that late evening snacking maybe after we’ve put kids to bed and such. And that is something that I have found personally is that I get frustrated that I can’t always sit down and just enjoy a meal and then eat until I’m satisfied and that I’m going in a lot of different directions reconnecting with our bodies and learning to be more mindful, it is a process but I do find that that is something that I work a lot with individuals in kind of understanding what that looks like. What does it really look like and feel like when I’m satisfied and how do I go about doing that. So, yes. So, I think that that is a big obstacle but learning to kind of stop and take a few deep breaths and ask ourselves some questions and just also get curious. A lot of us have maybe a habit or behavior that we’re not thrilled about. And it’s easy to feel guilt or shame about that particular habit. But if we kind of take a step back and just get a little bit curious about maybe why something keeps happening or why we find that we’re going to the same thing over and over again. It can be really helpful and enlightening and help us identify if there’s maybe an emotion that’s tied to that or some anger or resentment that’s tied to that because I think a lot of times we use restriction and diets to help transform those habits that we do not like a lot or that we’re not thrilled about but if we have not really identified the why.

Jennifer Hunt: [00:31:30] We haven’t really gotten curious and understood maybe why we’re doing this again and again then we really can’t transform that habit. We might be able to restrict ourselves for a time but that’s really not an effective method for really getting free and and feeling good about our health.

Mathea Ford: [00:31:51] That’s something that I didn’t even think of but that’s a perfect example. Speaking of eating mindfully and eating food what is your favorite food?

Jennifer Hunt: [00:32:02] Oh! That is a hard question and I think probably depending on when you ask I might say something different but something that I am loving right now is I have a recipe for these chocolate chip Blondie bars on my website and they are delicious. I did a talk and a cooking demo at a local gym the other day and so I shared and made the recipe to share with them and then I demoed how to make the recipe, came home and cooked it in my own oven again. And so I got to enjoy it and it was so good. And the great thing is that they’re actually fairly low in sugar and added sugar because we use dates. We puree dates and use that as the primary sweetener. And then of course there’s some chocolate chips that have some sugar in them and the base of them is actually made from chickpeas or garbanzo beans. But I guarantee you would never know if I did not tell you. And so they are gluten free for those that need to follow gluten free diet but they are absolutely delicious and they are great warm out of the oven and it’s amazing. Also cold because it tastes like cookie dough. So, that is probably a recipe that I am loving right now. But if you ask me on another day I might have told you salmon because that is probably one of my favorite foods and recently I was really craving beets. So, we got some of those at the store recently as well to roast up. Those are a few of my favorites.

Mathea Ford: [00:33:40] I think we’ll all be heading over to your website shortly after this podcast to get that recipe for those chocolate chip cookies. So, Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners learned a lot about meal planning and especially with a busy family and activities. So, if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?

Jennifer Hunt: [00:34:02] Yes. So thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, Mathea and I love sharing with your audience. If they want to find me they can find me at my website which is healthy-inspiration.com. They’re welcome to e-mail me at JHunt.nutrition@gmail.com. And then of course they can find me on Instagram and Facebook and that’s @JenniferHuntNutrition. So, I would love to connect with them and hear more about some of their challenges and continue to just encourage and inspire them on their health journey.

Mathea Ford: [00:34:40] Well guys this has been another great episode of the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast is all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life.

 

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Filed Under: Blog, Podcast Tagged With: 5 minute Meal Plan, Jennifer Hunt, Meal Planning for Busy Moms, Meal Planning for Family, Meal Planning for Selective Eaters, Meal Prepping for Selective Eaters, Mindful Eating

Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 43 Eat More On Exercise Days with Ryan Bagett, RD, CSSD

February 25, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

Ryan is a sports dietitian at a local Oklahoma City running store called Red Coyote, and she have been working there a little over 6 year now. Once a week she’s a regular sales employee helping people get their running gear, and the rest of the time she’s working as a private practice sports dietitian doing one on one consults with people who seek out her services. She works with several different types of people. Some clients are training for half and full marathons and need specific help with fueling for those events and day to day nutrition. She also have a lot of clients who are just getting into running or exercise in general, and are coming to her to get healthier and lose weight or gain muscle.  She is also available for all of their running groups that train through Red Coyote: 5k, 10k, and half and full marathon.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:29] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome Back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Ryan Baggett on the show today. Ryan welcome to Nutrition Experts.

Ryan Baggett: [00:00:45] Thank you Mathea.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:47] How are you doing today?

Ryan Baggett: [00:00:49] I’m doing great. I’m really looking forward to talking with you about Sports Nutrition.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:54] Yeah! I’m excited to have you on the show and talk a little bit more about Sports Nutrition kind of in depth what you do with your people you work with. So, tell my listeners a little more about you and what you do.

Ryan Baggett: [00:01:06] I’m a local sports dietitian here in Oklahoma City. I’ve been working with a store called Red Coyote Running and Fitness. Ever since I finished school six years ago I’ve been with this company. We’ve got two locations here around the Oklahoma City area and the great thing about this is as a local business they’ve been really flexible with me about letting you kind of start my own private practice as a sports dietitian and really encouraging me and helping me market myself to get different clients from the wide range of customers that we get at our store. So, at Red Coyote we get people who are walking trying to run the first 5k, people who thought they could never run at all and are trying to get into it, to people who are running half full marathons. So, that type of people I see really varies from people looking to get healthy, lose weight, just get into exercise in general to the people who are training for the Boston Marathon, the New York City Marathon who are really fast runners and once a week I actually just work as a regular sales employee on Sundays at the location helping people get into their running gear and give me a nice little discount to supplement my own running. And it just tend to be my private practice I do through their store.

Mathea Ford: [00:02:20] So, you also mentioned before we got on the podcast that you work somewhat the running groups?

Ryan Baggett: [00:02:25] Yeah. So at Red Coyote we have a newbie running group which is kind of like a couch to 5K getting people trained for that first 3.1 mile race that a lot of you see a lot of especially in the summertime. We also have a 5k to 10k program. So getting up to 6.2 miles and then you know in Oklahoma City though the City Marathon is huge you know over 20,000 people run that every year. So, we have our own half and full marathon training program. I usually show up to some of the training runs. I like to bring snacks you know that I have from my nutrition blog to kind of getting over to talk to me. They can answer, ask questions and answer and I can answer them for anything they have about running nutrition overall healthy food. You know especially for training or if they’re looking to get with a dietitian and do some one on one time then I have my cards available and we can set the time to do more individualized nutrition appointments.

Mathea Ford: [00:03:19] So, as someone who works with both athletes you know like you mentioned running the Boston or the New York Marathon and Weekend Warriors, people who are just getting started or maybe just not really big time runners. What is your main advice about how to eat for working out?

Ryan Baggett: [00:03:35] I mean I would say my biggest advice to people is don’t skip the carbs which you know no one ever should be disappointed when I tell you to eat carbs. You know I love carbs and their ability to get you through a workout. Fad diets aside there’s always going to be something protein and fat will never provide you that quick energy source that carbs do. Not to say that on a two hour, three hour, four hour run going to you’re not going to be using more fasting carbs for fuel. So, ultimately you have to have glucose to continue to oxidize that fat for energy. If you don’t want to avoid them you’re training because your body is different that in any sort of intense exercise required carbohydrates. So it’s one of those things you know starting in some intense exercise program is not the time to cut out carbs but I feel like a lot of times that goes hand-in-hand when people are trying to get healthier like “oh I’m not gonna eat carbs anymore! I’m going to go get to the gym” and you know you’re not going to last very long doing that before you just start to feel really drained when you’re exercising.

Mathea Ford: [00:04:39] But you’re not really talking about carbs like a Hershey bar you’re talking about a different kind of carb right?

Ryan Baggett: [00:04:44] Yes. So I feel a lot of times typically those not as healthy carbs are things like candy, chips, white rice, lots of breads and desserts and things, sodas. You know the foods that don’t really offer a lot of nutrients, people tend to lump in the healthy carbs things like sweet potatoes and regular potatoes, peas and whole grains, whole grain bread, oatmeal, oats, things like that. A lot of times people want some fruit especially fruit. People tend to lump them all together at all carbs are bad when in fact you know the healthier carbs. So those are the fruits, the starch, vegetables, whole grains those are really what you should be focusing on for starting when you’re working out and especially as your exercise progresses. I mean those are the fuel the foods that are going to provide fiber, they’re going to provide the antioxidants and nutrients that your body needs to be able to heal and recover from the damage that you exercising. And I mean the good damage it makes you stronger but it still requires energy and nutrients to heal.

Mathea Ford: [00:05:46] Usually you have kind of different days where you do different activities. Some days you do aerobics, some days you weight train, should you eat differently on workout days versus non workout days or on strength training vs. aerobic?

Ryan Baggett: [00:06:01] Yes to some extent. I mean on a rest day compared to an exercise day. Especially around the actual exercise itself you should be eating a little bit more on those exercise days. You know for a lot of people they work out either first thing in the morning or after work. And if you haven’t eaten since lunch and you’re trying to work out at 5:30, I mean that’s a long time or you haven’t necessarily having something. So, whether you do or don’t do a snack in the afternoon it’s one of the things maybe you need to want to beef up your snack a little bit you know add in a granola bar, a flavored yogurt, a banana that’s something with some extra kind of starchy carbs in it to get you through your actual exercise. Whereas, maybe on a rest day you could do a small snack or you wouldn’t necessarily worry about having a bigger snack like that because obviously exercise requires calories to fuel. So, I mean I usually try to get people not necessarily to eat a lot more overall but to specifically eat those extra calories you’re probably going to burn around your actual workout. That way you have extra energy to complete the exercise and then afterwards you know hopefully getting some of those healthy carbs whether be fruit or whole grains or starchy vegetables, a potato with protein afterwards. I know a favorite for me it’s like a baked potato with chicken and beans and vegetables like that’s a great recovery meal people underestimate potatoes they are super healthy if you cook them correctly. Just don’t let them down with butter and sour cream and then as far as protein. That’s actually something I’ve been doing a lot of research on lately and it really does vary with exercise. How much protein you need? It’s going to be different based on what your goals are. So, if you’re someone who just the average exerciser you know probably that’s 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram that they just recommend that’s going to keep most people healthy. You know if you’re a healthy person its probably enough but if you’re starting to run well then they recommend you get closer to 1.2 grams per kilogram. If you’re looking to build muscle or maintain muscle during weight loss because you know unfortunately you don’t lose just that whenever we lose weight so increasing in protein in addition to strength training can actually minimize how much lean tissue you lose during weight loss. And that gets up to more like 1.8 to 2 grams per kilogram. You’re looking at over double just the regular recommendation of protein is strength and weight loss is a goal. So, it really can vary based on how much. What type of exercise and what your body composition goals are for how much protein any exercise.

Mathea Ford: [00:08:32] So, you recommend to people typically if they’re starting or getting ready to start running, you lead them towards more of the healthier carb, higher carb, a little more protein and managed fats type of diet?

Ryan Baggett: [00:08:45] Yes. Keeping for someone you know maybe looking to start that 5k training you know getting them to you know just starting into running. Still keeping carbs around 50%of your total calories you know not not going to low and protein you know sticking between that recommended 0.8 grams per day up to about 1.2 o per day so maybe just a little bit extra but it’s not something that far especially for fueling exercise itself. That’s where carbs can be more important and then as far as recovery, endurance running doesn’t really require extra protein as much extra protein for recovery as weight lifting does because it’s working slightly different muscle fibers. The main benefit with extra protein with running is that it can help prevent muscle soreness and it helps reduce the damage that occurs with you know breaking down those muscle fibers from the actual exercise itself but it’s not going to be quite as much as with strength training.

Mathea Ford: [00:09:39] Okay. So, we talked about food a little bit. What about water? Do you have advice about water intake or hydrating depending on the weather, depending on the day?

Ryan Baggett: [00:09:51] Yes. So, sweat loss is one of those things that is extremely weak person to person. Some people don’t sweat a lot in some people’s sweat liters upon liters per hour. I mean obviously temperature and humidity is going to have the biggest difference. Dehydration generally is a huge concern in the colder months. Now if you’re going to be out there for four full marathon training like three four hours yes you’re going to be losing water, you’re going to lose electrolytes. You need to take fluid and electrolytes with you. But you know when it’s cold. Most people exercising are going to be fine doing just water as long as exercise is lasting about an hour or less is when you start to get over an hour of exercise. Then it starts to become important to start replacing lost carbohydrates and lost electrolytes. But as far as how much you should drink that’s where we’re really figuring out how much you sweat becomes important. And you can do that if you know you can be out there for a couple hours. You can weigh yourself without clothes on before you say go for a run and then the goal is to prevent a greater than 2 percent weight loss. So, two percent of water you don’t want to lose for more than 2 percent your body weight on a run. So if you go on a three hour run and you weigh 150 pounds that three pounds could be at 2 percent. So, then we come back from your run take your clothes back off on the scale and as long as you didn’t lose three pounds then you know that you hydrated enough that you lost four pounds. Well then you know that on that next three hour run that you do if the temperature is similar you need to drink an extra at least 16 ounce of water during the run to keep your weight loss less than 2 percent. But as far as how much you drink on the run you know generally you’re getting in hotter weather closer to 16 ounces an hour is usually good for most people. Now, colder weather some people can get by with not much salt but it’s really going to depend on how much you sweat as an individual.

Mathea Ford: [00:11:47] So, on days that you’re not working out do you have a recommended hydration that people should do versus when they’re running?

Ryan Baggett: [00:11:55] Yeah! I actually say if you’re getting close to 100 ounces a day with fluid then you’re probably going to stay adequately hydrated. Just know exercise aside a lot of people don’t realize that liquid foods or things like soups and then thinking foods that have a high water content such as fruits and vegetables all these things count for hydration as well. So, I usually tell people you know if you’re finding yourself going to the bathroom every 30 minutes you’re probably over hydrating. But you know if you’re getting around that hundred ounces a day and you’re not rushing to the bathroom all the time then you’re probably hydrating pretty well.

Ryan Baggett: [00:12:27] Usually the best way to tell if you’re hydrated is they say it’s the check your first morning urine whenever you wake up and go to the bathroom first thing. And as long as it’s a pale color not super dark and as long as there’s a decent amount of it, it’s pale, you did a pretty good job hydrating in the day before. A lot of times if someone didn’t drink enough you know you’re out exercising. It’ll be darker first thing in the morning. So, that’s a really good way to kind of judge your daily hydration just by checking that first morning that first morning bathroom break.

Mathea Ford: [00:12:58] So, what types of beverages do you recommend people use to hydrate? You know there’s just plain water and then you’ve got the Gatorade, Powerade type stuff and then there’s also flavored water. What do you recommend?

Ryan Baggett: [00:13:11] Anything that’s colder is actually going to empty faster in your stomach. So, if you want to hydrate faster the colder the beverage the better hydrate you are going to get and obviously in hot teachers cold water is more palatable to anything with flavor and carb or flavor or carbs that can be zero calories flavor or it can be something that contains carb and encourages more drinking than plain water. They’ve done studies where they have people run a track and just let them kind of grab water as needed. If they’ve shown that people will drink more when it’s flavored compared to plain water at the same temperature. So if you have a problem with hydration keep it cold keep it flavored. You know if you want something flavor calories like you’re not necessarily burning about for three hours they can make a lot of times like electrolyte flavored tablets. They don’t have sugar in them that you can add to water so it adds little flavor, a little bit electrolytes but not necessarily calories. A lot of people when they’re officially running will use gels or beans or some sort of gummy as a carb replacement so for their fluids it’s more just staying hydrated. So, electrolyte is water but getting carbs elsewhere sometimes helps to do it and obviously Gatorade, Powerade all that are good options for replacing calories and replacing electrolytes at the same time while staying hydrated.

Mathea Ford: [00:14:28] So, you mentioned that you have some elite athletes and you have some people who are starting in the middle. Do you have a lot of people who are trying to lose weight through exercise that you talked to?

Ryan Baggett: [00:14:39] Yes I would say that 75, 80 percent of the people that I’m seeing are trying to lose weight as well as in general get more active you know trying to do it together to helps motivate the other one.

Mathea Ford: [00:14:53] How do you help them with the weight loss?

Ryan Baggett: [00:14:55] I know calorie counting is a very very exciting topic among a lot of dietitians. Some are super super against it. You know they’re totally in favor of it eating calories. A few set of people to have terrible relationships with food but I honestly feel like it’s probably more based on your personal goals whether or not calorie counting may or may not be beneficial. You know for me someone looking to improve their body composition and get fit. You know my my average client is not just someone looking to improve their relationship with food and improve their overall health. Now, for someone who’s just trying to get healthier, want some education on how to eat healthier, in general, I would say that “its you would be eating that. Let’s look at your diet. Make some substitutions, get healthier” is usually enough to lead them in the right direction to be a healthier person overall. But people coming to me they have specific weight or body composition goals. And I do feel like calorie counting does help most of them. You know I never tell people “hey! Guess what? You have to count calories rest of your life.” No that’s not it. It’s just that I have found that most people have absolutely no idea how much food they’re eating. And when it comes to trying to figure out how to lose weight it’s usually a pretty big wakeup call when they just log for a couple weeks and see “oh my gosh! I didn’t realize that going out to eat here that this all had a thousand calories in it” and so I feel like it’s usually a good jump starter for people to kind of start to make some healthy changes and most people eat pretty routinely honestly throughout the week. So, once you kind of get the hang of things you may or may not need to log. Usually, have a good check in every now and then to plug in what you’re eating throughout the day. Because especially I was told clients like food like peanut butter, avocado, oil like you know even if it’s extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil or whatever the coolest oil is right now. You know the foods are definitely at the heart healthy fats they’re good for you. Nuts, peanut butters, seeds, all that but they do pack calories too. So, if your goal is to keep your cards up for exercise and weight, well, generally, if calories have to come through fat you know you still owe it should be keeping your fat at least above 15 percent just keeping need fat for hormone production in general if you’re if you’re doing too much peanut butter on stuff. Well that’s replacing the calories that should be coming from carbohydrates for exercise and so for me I feel like calories. Calorie counting does help people realize where their calories are coming from and it’s part of most of my initial appointment. I actually test people’s rescue metabolism. So, when I first started six years ago at Red Coyote, they purchased the body gym indirect countermeasure for me. And so I can test people’s recent troubles for initial visit. Show them “hey! This is what your baseline is based on your job, based on how much exercise you’re doing. This is a good idea of how many calories you’re burning in the day. So, let’s set up realistic weight loss based off of this.” For most people you know either they’re disappointed because it’s not as low as they think they are or they can kind of see “oh I have a desk job I’m only working out an hour week. This probably isn’t why I am losing weight.” So, for me it’s actually very helpful to show people calories. Now, of course I still teach them. This is why you should eat fiber. This is why fruits and vegetables are important. This is how you can stay full and healthy doing some reduce calories here this week or that week to lose weight while still doing it in a healthy way. It’s not “so, hey just fill up the calories and you’re good.” I mean there’s obviously other education that goes along with it.

Mathea Ford: [00:18:14] So, the indirect calorimetry do you find that’s pretty accurate or at least close enough or?

Ryan Baggett: [00:18:23] I do feel like it’s close enough because I have found that the people you know this obviously a lot smaller of my population but the people who do come for me to gain weight generally younger men, older men who have just always been pretty thin and have a hard time putting on muscle or generally I will see that their metabolisms are on the upper end of normal or even above that like “well, hey! This makes sense why you have a hard time gaining weight. You have a soft metabolism” and then I’ll feel a lot of people you know a lot of middle age women and I get a lot of people in their 40s or 50s and they’ll come and like “hey! I have a hard time with losing weight and you know either their metabolism is in the normal range that’s a little bit lower or maybe it’s 100 or 200 calories lower than what’s predicted based on their weight which you know most just genetics but you know they’ve done a lot of crash diets that could be highly lower because you know they’ve been doing too extreme calorie deficits which can temporarily lower your metabolism if you’re trying to cut back too much too fast. I mean again I have nothing to compare to besides like equations but in general I do find that if someone kind of sticks the initial plan that we said that they will usually see the results that we expect assuming that occupational it can be can really make a big difference for some people because some people just sit all day long and they don’t even really fidget whereas other people may burn a few extra hundred calories here and there and getting up from you know their iconic foot tap or something and that really can’t add up of the course of the day just a little non exercise activity calories.

Mathea Ford: [00:19:50] What would you say are some great snacks? I mean you made me think before you were talking about like snacks in the afternoon and depending on whether you’re exercising or not what are some great snacks that you recommend for people who are you know exercising and trying to lose weight making a snack a little healthier instead of just grabbing something out of a vending machine?

Ryan Baggett: [00:20:08] Yeah I always kinda assure people especially if you’re doing it before exercise so make sure it has some good carbs and a little bit of protein. You know you don’t want to do something that’s all protein because that’s not going to give you that quick energy that you need during exercise. But you know doing like a banana like any piece of fruit in a cheese stick or something if you don’t do dairy at a moment it’s a great way to get some good healthy carbs and protein. Even like roast and often now especially compared to chips you know doing something like roasted edamame or roasted chickpea that you can buy prepackaged will give you a lot more protein and healthy carbs than just grab a bag of chips from the vending machine. You know obviously we don’t want people overdo sugar. I mean everyone eat more sugar than they should. I always tell people when it comes to exercise that we’re doing something like a flavored Greek yogurt. It’s perfect because you know it does have a little extra sugar but you’re going to use that when you go exercise or like I have a weird obsession with figs and like they’re all carbs they’re fat free. They’re a part of the 90s craze. I love them. I don’t just snack on them during the day but you know if I want to go exercise I’ll get those whatever the ones you can buy at Target or Sears where there’s the whole grain fig bars or whatever. So, a great free workout snack. Now I’m not going to eat them but they’re great for pre workout and or I have a couple recipes and you can find a million of them in Pinterests for those like oatmeal, peanut, butter, honey, chia seeds and some dried fruit or a few chocolate chips. You know just kind of a little energy oat ball that you usually have between like 50 and 60 calories a piece that you can eat one or two of those before you go work out and get some good things and still get them fiber, get some carb and those are for me so that I could keep that freezer and are easy to grab one or two in shelf stable so that somebody can kind of keep, eat real fast and then go work out without feeling like your weight down your stomach. It’s always a great thing. Yogurt. It looks a little protein fine. So, things like cheese sticks or cottage cheese are all good but mostly mostly carbs.

Mathea Ford: [00:22:11] What should you eat after you exercise to recover well? To have a good next day reduce soreness, reduce lactic acid whatever you’re trying to do?

Ryan Baggett: [00:22:21] Yes. Just making sure that you’re staying hydrated. It can be really important for that because you know if you’re chronically staying dehydrated after an intense workout then your heart has to work harder to feel your next exercise sessions you want stay hydrated but in general I mean you get muscle. I mean as soon as you’re done exercising even during active time you’re getting muscle protein breakdown. The goal is to stop the breakdown and encourage healing and growth. And so in order to do that that’s where protein does come into play especially with strength training. But again you also need nutrients and antioxidants to help recover well too. Obviously, the nutrients in antioxidants that you get from food your body can handle and utilize way better than like some profitable type vitamins so I always find encouraging fruits, vegetables, whole grains. Now, those are going to be great things to help your body recover and heal from the damage of a workout. Anything with lean protein whether it be a little chicken or fish, dairy, eggs. You know those are going to be extremely file available from the protein that your body can use to rebuild and you want to do that within the first hour or two after you finish exercising. So, if you’re an eating exerciser generally as long as you’re going to eat your dinner then a few hours you don’t necessarily need to like chug a protein shake. Now it’s going to be like four hours before you eat, you’re fine. Do that but most of the time you know within that two hour window you should be able to go home and have a meal or go somewhere and get some food.

Mathea Ford: [00:23:45] That makes a lot of sense. So, what is the most common question that people have about exercise related to nutrition that you get?

Ryan Baggett: [00:23:53] I would say it’s probably “how many carbs should I eat? You know how many calories should you eat with this exercise?” You know it might really burning off most I think. And then as well as “how much protein?” So carbs and protein or something that people ask me about a lot probably because it’s a question of fitness industry. So, it’s so in the data that people “Hey! I protein and protein like protein bars, protein powders and you know when it comes down to it like you can get plenty of protein from real food. And ideally I’d like to talk to people about you know you want to spread that pretty evenly throughout the day because the benefit if gaining muscle or weight loss goal you know if your goal is 80 grams protein a day and you’re eating 50 get dinner and 20 at lunch at a breakfast. Well what about the other 40 hours a day where you didn’t eat any protein? So you can definitely increase your strength gains and your muscle gains if you spread it out evenly throughout the day. But for most people it’s just more about finding good sources of carbs and realizing “Okay, I can’t easily erase these calories so let’s get a realistic idea of what I’m actually doing with exercise so that I can properly fuel without overdoing it.” I’ve seen people over eat a 20 mile long run. You know you’re burning over 2000 calories for most people doing a long run for a marathon and then at the store they’ll walk next door to Tucker’s and get a burger fries and the shake kind of like and there goes your 2000 calories. No it’s not as hard to do as you think will be.

Mathea Ford: [00:25:21] If you’re thinking about the listeners and there are people who are either exercising or maybe they’re clinicians or practitioners who are working with people who are starting exercise or doing exercise. What would be your takeaways kind of from our talk that they could use in their day to day life?

Ryan Baggett: [00:25:39] I mean I think just to find especially with exercise and food. You know find an exercise that you enjoy doing because if you don’t like doing it. If your goal is weight loss and you’re using exercise to help as soon as you don’t see the weight loss you expect or you’re done there’s no way you’re going to stop and it’s going to come back on. So no matter what your current level activity is you want to find something that you enjoy doing. And then whether it’s you know running your first five careful marathon how you eat is going to influence your ability to reach those goals. You know people put all this time the gym all the time running. So I was you know you really want to make it count provide your body this nutrient dense foods fiber the proper protein to recover and get stronger versus exercising and then swinging by fast food on your way home and not really encouraging your body to heal as much as it could with again with those nutrient dense foods. We know we all should be eating fruits and vegetables and whole grains. You know because I have seen a lot of people go from being completely sedentary to running happened. So it’s completely doable but commitment to eating proper nutrition is very crucial especially if you’re trying to push yourself further. You know food is fuel. And if you feed your body with those nutritious foods you’re going to help prevent injury, its going to decrease your risk of getting sick and it’s going to help you with your recovery time between workouts. So, I mean I just think it’s one of the things that the food. Food is important obviously but it’s especially important if you’re trying to incorporate exercise into it because it really do go hand-in-hand. It’s kind of hard to exercise all the time and try to get into something more that’s like a training program like a half or full and not really feel that with the right type of food because you would really be doing your body a disservice by doing it like fast food all the time and see that more junky foods.

Mathea Ford: [00:27:28] So, eating better gives them like the fuel to make even more improvements quicker which they’re going to appreciate?

Ryan Baggett: [00:27:35] Yeah! I mean I’ve seen a lot if not a lot, I’ve seen several people I mean it’s kind of same thing. I mean you don’t want to under eat for exercise either because that chronically under eating and try to hit the gym day after day you’re going to get sick, you’re putting yourself at risk for injury to do it that way and you’re just not going to keep it up for very long. So, I mean having that good relationship with food fueled my body and not “Oh! Okay, well I earned back all these calories” or “Oh! I ate this now I need to go burn that.” You know that’s obviously not the type of mindset you want to have when it comes to food and exercise. You know food is what gets you through your exercise. What’s going to make you a stronger runner, a better weight lifter but you know you shouldn’t use it as a punishment or a reward because you did or didn’t do the exercise. It’s a big thing I’d like to kind of push on people too.

Mathea Ford: [00:28:25] That makes a lot of sense. Ryan, I like to ask all of my guests what is your favorite food? Because I love food and..

Ryan Baggett: [00:28:34] Who doesn’t?

Mathea Ford: [00:28:35] I like to hear what other people love. So…

Ryan Baggett: [00:28:36] I mean I would say it’s probably a pretty close toss up between sushi and chocolate which is a weird combination. But I mean I really do feel like I could eat sushi every day but I do eat chocolate every day. I would buy that big a snack at first because you can get it like at Target. And I keep it in my freezer because you know one or two after lunch, splurge after dinner and that usually keeps my chocolate craving as nerve controls I can just have a little bit after my meal. But yeah, I mean it’s a shame I live in Oklahoma because each and every day if I can.

Mathea Ford: [00:29:08] I love that idea of freezing so that it slows you down.

Ryan Baggett: [00:29:12] I mean actually they’ve done studies that show the farther away the food is the less likely you are to get it. So, you know I don’t like frozen chocolate. So the fact that I had to let it sit out and thought for a little bit usually keeps me from just like mindlessly munching on it but that kind of helps me at least. Or I’ll put it up high on a shelf that way I actually have like try to get it. I don’t sleep it out but yeah. I know I can have my lunch and dinner because I do have a very big sweet tooth.

Mathea Ford: [00:29:41] So, what’s your favorite kind of sushi?

Ryan Baggett: [00:29:42] Anything with salmon. Whether it’s salmon or roes. And then I just I like salmon a lot. Salmon is wrapped and roe wrapped in a tube. But I like to have all the different condiments of them too. But if you’re doing a long run on Saturday or Sunday it’s a good thing to eat the day before. There’s a lot of rice.

Mathea Ford: [00:30:00] Yeah! That makes sense. Build up those carb store and got it from a long run.

Ryan Baggett: [00:30:05] Just as those glycogen stocked up.

Mathea Ford: [00:30:06] Yeah. So, Ryan thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners learned a lot about just some basics sports nutrition stuff especially if they’re getting started. So if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?

Ryan Baggett: [00:30:23] Probably e-mail is a great way. It’s my first name Ryan R-Y-A-N at Red Coyote Running (ryan@redcoyote.running.com) or I have a dietitian Facebook page it’s RyanbackatRD on Facebook recently finally got it. Instagram and its @Dietitian_Ryan_Run. So that’s an option too. I should be put out a couple blog so soon but you can find that through my Facebook or my Instagram as well.

Mathea Ford: [00:30:49] Yeah I’ve noticed your Instagram you’ve put in some really good foods on there.

Ryan Baggett: [00:30:52] Yeah. I’m trying to get more into the view back into that the blogging everything again. Kids kind of derail a little bit of everything but I’m getting a little more time that I really enjoy doing the social media activity as well and I find it really helps my clients when I can lead them to “hey! Here’s a great resource for a quick meal. Here’s a great recipe for those protein energy policy before you run. It’s just something that comes in handy. So, as I feel a need for something I can do a post on it to kind of help people the future.

Mathea Ford: [00:31:22] I think a lot of us do that kind of that way. Well. Well guys this has been another great episode of the nutrition experts podcast. The podcast that is all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life.

 

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Filed Under: Blog, Podcast Tagged With: Preparing For Marathon, Red Coyote, Ryan Baggett, Sports Nutrition, Work Out Food

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