Hi everyone! I hope your week is going well so far. Happy you are here! 🙂
How great has the sunshine / warmer weather been for those of you who live in Michigan?? Such an instant upgrade to the week!
I wanted to do a post today sharing some of my general thoughts on gut health AND share about a tool that I’ve been excited to be incorporating more in my practice over the past few months.
First things first! Some random gut health and candid dietetics processing:
Lately I have been thinking about this idea of “trade-offs” in making food choices.
I think a lot of us find making trade-offs or compromises to be a natural/intuitive way to navigate health/wellness decisions in a number of areas of our lives.
A common example might be sleep. If you’re like me, maybe you value getting good-quality sleep, but from time to time you sacrifice your sleep in order to have a fun/later night hanging out with friends because you also see this as important for your emotional health and overall experience of fun/joy in life. Or maybe at other times you sacrifice sleep to travel, to provide emotional support to a friend or family member, or to get some sort of urgent/important task done.
Part of one of my key health values (good sleep) is sacrificed to some extent to support my some of my other health values (good relationships, fun, spontaneity from time to time, travel, etc.).
Another example that comes to mind is with toxic exposures. I do my best to limit my exposure to certain toxins and take a number of actions to do so. In my life this looks like using a water filter, running an air purifier in our home, buying products without certain chemicals or fragrances in them, avoiding moldy/musty buildings whenever possible, and buying mostly organic food. At the same time, I know I could go crazy trying to avoid toxic exposures at all costs, so I accept that I will do my best within my limitations/reality of the world we live in and not overly stress about it. I sacrifice some of my desire to totally avoid toxins in order to exist/function in the world!
What is interesting to me about this idea is how many of us struggle with this idea of trade-offs or compromises when it comes to food and nutrition.
You may feel like…
What I’ve found in working with clients and in my own personal experience is that whenever we so overly fixate on “nutrition in the name of health,” our overall health (physical health included) suffers.
Hello friends! How is your week going so far?
I am feeling good this week overall after an energizing weekend at my grandparents’ house enjoying time on the lake. It was pretty much a perfect summer weekend as far as sunshine + weather goes! We waterskied, went on a few boat rides, and experienced a devastating loss to my grandpa in our family card game! 🙂
Today I wanted to do a post on some key reasons why eating regularly is beneficial – both from a nutrition and a relationship with food standpoint.
By “eating regularly,” I’m talking 3 meals and around 3 snacks per day, every 3 hours or so. Some people may prefer/need more like 2 or 4+ snacks, and some people eat a little more often or go a little longer in between meals, depending on hunger cues/personal preferences/schedules each day. BUT, I find these rules of thumb for regular eating rhythms to work well for pretty much everyone. (Since they are based on human biology & psychology!)
You can check out how I might incorporate 3 meals/3 snacks in my everyday eating here.
Oftentimes, a client will come to me eating only 2-3 meals per day and no snacks. Snacks might be viewed as “bad,” and the thought of eating more regularly may at first seem anxiety-inducing or counterproductive. However, it’s common that the client is experiencing a range of symptoms that can be vastly improved upon with regular eating rhythms. Symptoms may include bloating, constipation/diarrhea, obsession/preoccupation with food, binge eating, chaotic eating, difficulty noticing or listening to hunger/fullness cues, lack of hunger cues, slowed metabolism, imbalanced hormones, feeling addicted to food, and more!
Once we begin to understand more what is going on and start to make gentle shifts towards more regular/balanced eating, these concerns start to improve.
Let’s explore some of the main reasons why I recommend eating regularly! (3 meals and ~3 snacks)
Do you avoid, or intentionally incorporate, fat into your diet?
It seems to me that many people are under the misguided impression that fat is always something to be avoided, and that consuming a higher-fat diet will lead to weight gain or worsened health.
My general nutritional opinion is that it is more the quality of fat in our diets that matters, and that it is generally other factors (like chronic stress, overload of processed foods (including many unnaturally low/non-fat foods!), sedentary lifestyles, etc.) that lead to poorer health outcomes.
Eating a diet full of high-quality fats is essential for hormonal health, brain health, immunity, energy, nutrient absorption, and more!
My appreciation for this macronutrient was recently reinvigorated as I was learning more about the story behind one of my favorite cookbooks, Run Fast, Eat Slow. Elyse Kopecky, one of the co-authors, had been a competitive runner since her preteen years and still hadn’t had her first period by the time she went off to UNC to run cross-country in college. Predictably, the doctors she saw prescribed the birth control pill to induce what we know is an artificial period. Not one suggested she alter anything in her diet/lifestyle!
After college, Elyse tried several times to go off the pill to have a natural cycle. Time and time again after waiting and even nixing the running, her period fail to make an appearance, leading her to repeatedly return to the hormonal birth control band-aid “solution”. It wasn’t until moving overseas to Switzerland and experiencing a whole new way of eating that Elyse had her first natural period at age 30! She left behind her low-fat, processed foods diet and filled it with satisfying and nourishing high-fat foods like whole milk yogurt, aged cheeses, butter, egg yolks, and grass-fed red meat.
Elyse started her first natural period after only a couple of months of eating this higher-fat, nutrient-dense diet. (And noting no noticeable changes in body size or composition). Later on, despite being told by doctors she would have trouble getting pregnant due to her period history, Elyse got pregnant immediately with her first daughter!
You can read more about her story here or listen here.
Reflecting on Elyse’s story and my own story of using higher-fat foods to get my period back and balance my hormones has re-inspired me to be even more intentional about incorporating more quality fat into my meals and snacks throughout each week. Read on for some of my favorite fat sources to incorporate, as well as ideas for enjoying them in especially delicious ways!
10 Healthy Fat Sources to Include Regularly:
Today I thought I’d do a blog post discussing a bit about IRON. Iron is a common micronutrient deficiency in the populations I work with and it can take a little intentionality to be consuming adequate amounts of iron in your diet on a regular basis (and in ways that promote optimal absorption – more on that later).
In this post we will be thinking about:
Over the years I have read several books and many articles online about tips for improving hormonal health that seem to make things overly complicated, in my opinion, and potentially, when followed, end up doing more harm than good. These protocols advocate for eating only a very specific list of foods in addition to suggesting very specific forms of exercise and other life habits for each phase of your cycle. While I think there is some truth to these suggestions (for example, basic principles like eating iron-rich foods like red meat and doing lower intensity exercise when you are on your period) that can be helpful, I generally think extensive, black-and-white protocols like this way overcomplicate things, adding unnecessary stress, rigidity, and confusion. This is the LAST thing you want if you are having hormonal problems, as the root of a lot of hormonal imbalance issues is unhealthy stress (in any and all forms – physical, mental, emotional, environmental etc.).
SO… in the spirit of making things LESS complicated and hopefully MORE effective, I have for you in this post ten of my top tips for hormonal health. Between an eating disorder, recovering from an eating disorder, lots of other life stress throughout college and beyond, and genetic predispositions to certain hormonal issues, I have (unfortunately in many ways!) plenty of experience dealing with hormonal imbalance myself. NOT FUN as hormones affect basically everything.
I’ve had several people ask me recently some version of the question, “After learning all that you’ve learned in your program, what can you just not eat now??” I think they are expecting me to share something along the lines of the “horrors” of McDonald’s, added sugar, or processed foods. My attempts to answer this question got me thinking about how going through a master’s program in nutrition has actually increased my flexibility with eating and confidence that a healthy diet can incorporate all foods – hence, there is nothing that I, as a nutrition professional and enthusiast, “can’t eat now!”
So, I thought I’d share a few key takeaways of what I learned from my time in school. I’d love to hear what resonates with you!
