October 14, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode of the 'Midlife with Courage'™ podcast, Kim welcomes functional nutrition-based dietician Gretchen Spetz.
They discuss practical strategies for women in midlife to balance nutrition, manage blood sugar levels, and embrace a better relationship with food.
Gretchen shares her journey, including overcoming hypothyroidism, and provides actionable advice on maintaining fiber and protein-forward diets, combatting emotional eating, and fostering self-compassion.
Tune in for insights that will inspire and empower your wellness journey post-40.
00:39 Welcome to Midlife with Courage Podcast
01:01 Meet Gretchen Spetz: Functional Nutrition-Based Dietician
01:27 Gretchen's Journey to Becoming a Dietician
03:31 Starting The Functional Kitchen
04:51 The Importance of Nutrition and Community
06:37 Challenges of Midlife Nutrition
07:37 Understanding Functional Nutrition
09:31 Addressing Disordered Eating in Midlife
13:20 Self-Compassion and Mindful Eating
19:50 Gretchen's Personal Experience with Hashimoto's
23:07 Struggles with Hypothyroidism
23:31 Finding the Right Treatment
23:51 Dietary Changes for Better Health
24:49 Importance of Fiber and Protein
26:00 Managing Sugar Cravings
26:51 Protein and Fiber Recommendations
28:32 Role of Fiber in Gut Health
31:12 Balancing Blood Sugar
36:19 Practical Dietary Tips
38:53 Gretchen's Services and Final Thoughts
To get the freebies that Gretchen mentioned and learn more about her services, and connect with her on social media, go to her WEBSITE.
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Just add your email to the popup and your guide will be on its way to your inbox.
From morning until bedtime, you can help yourself feel better!
Reserve your spot today to get in on the very first Courage & Confidence Hour!
Kim Benoy is a retired RN, Certified Aromatherapist, wife and mom who is passionate about inspiring and encouraging women over 40. She wants you to see your own beauty, value and worth through sharing stories of other women just like you.
My Courage & Confidence Circle is now open! Join a supportive group of other midlife women who are ready to live with courage and stop waiting for someday! This 3-month program starts in November and I would love to see you there!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
when the world feels unsteady,there is nothing like something
(00:04):
crunchy to truly ground us.
So what can we do instead?
You know, grounding, we can golay on the floor with a soft
blankie.
We can pet our dog.
That is huge.
Mm-hmm.
We want a dopamine really?
So we wanna light some fire onour butt.
How about some breath work orhow about go for a walk around
the block?
(00:24):
So if we have kind of a littlecheat sheets.
Of things that we typicallyneed, then we can be like, oh,
I'm gonna go do that.
And I always tell people, don'ttell yourself you can't have
food.
Say, I'm gonna do this first,and then if I still want the
food, I'm gonna come back forit.
You are listening to the Midlifewith Courage podcast.
(00:45):
This is where women in midlifecome for inspiration,
motivation, and sometimes alittle education to help them
flourish.
After 40, don't forget to hitthat follow or subscribe button
so you don't miss an episode.
Now, let's get started.
Hello everyone and welcome backto Midlife With Courage.
I am Kim Benoy, your host.
(01:06):
I'm so happy to have you joiningus here today.
I also am very happy to have myguest here today.
Her name is Gretchen Spetz.
She is a functionalnutrition-based dietician, and
we're gonna talk about that.
But first, welcome to thepodcast, Gretchen.
Kim, thank you so much forhaving me.
I'm so excited to be here.
Yeah, I love your energy.
This is gonna be a greatconversation.
(01:27):
So tell us a little bit aboutyou.
Where in the world are you andwhat you're doing?
Sure thing.
So as you, as you said earlier,I am a registered dietician and
I call my approach a functionalnutrition informed approach.
I'm sure we'll get there in aminute.
I'm based in Cleveland, Ohio.
I grew up here swore I wouldnever come back to the great
state of Ohio, but I has a wayof, of getting you to come back.
(01:50):
So I live here with my husbandand our two girls.
And so before we get into yourstory, I'm gonna ask you my
question I ask everyone, tell usabout a time in your life when
you felt courageous or youshowed courage.
I will say a time in my lifewhen I felt courageous and I'll
actually.
I'll give two examples.
Sure.
If that is okay.
(02:11):
When I was young, actuallyyounger, I had what I
affectionately call my quarterlife crisis, and that's what led
me to become a dietician.
I was working for the thengovernor of Ohio.
I had an undergrad in Englishand history.
And I came home from work oneday and I realized I hated what
I was doing and I wanted to stopworking with so much paper and
(02:33):
start working with real people.
So I just took it upon myself.
I'm like, you know what?
I'm gonna research, what elsecan I do?
I didn't even know that thecareer of being a dietician even
existed.
And I narrowed it down to twothings.
One day after work.
It was probably too late atnight to be up, but it was
between.
A chef and I'm not really anight person, so that didn't
(02:55):
seem like a great fit.
I don't really like workingunder pressure and being in the
weeds as they say.
Sure.
Or a dietician.
And I started my undergrad as asmany do in pre-med and I was
like, oh, this is what Iactually wanted to do when I
decided to be pre-med.
And so I started calling upschools and the, the next year
with great support from theprogram director, I ended up at
(03:16):
Case Western Reserve universityhere in Cleveland, getting my
master's in actually publichealth nutrition and completing
the internship program.
So, really took the bull by thehorns and was like, if I don't
like it, I'm gonna change it.
And I did that.
Mm-hmm.
And another time in my life wasactually starting my private
practice the functional kitchen.
(03:36):
I worked for both the ClevelandClinic and University Hospitals,
which is the other hospitalsystem here in the Cleveland
area.
And when I came back frommaternity leave, after having my
second baby, I found out that myappointment times had been
shortened to 20 minute.
And if you've ever spent timewith a dietician, you know,
it's, I call it, it's kinda likefood therapy.
Mm-hmm.
(03:56):
So we need way more time than 20minutes, not only to talk about
things, but also to get you inthe door just in the first
place.
So I said, you know what?
I can do this better.
So I started my practice inJanuary of 2018.
I had a.
2-year-old and a not yet1-year-old.
So super little kids.
And by May I had actuallyrecouped my income from the
(04:19):
position, part-time position.
I was working at the hospitaland was able to leave my
hospital job and continue forthwith the functional kitchen and
have been in practice eversince.
Nice.
I love that.
Yeah, it 20 minute appointments.
I, I was a nurse for 27 yearsand one of my last jobs was
supervising in a clinic, and theappointment times just kept
(04:40):
getting shorter and shorter andshorter and like, this is
ridiculous.
We aren't helping anyone, youknow, but Right, right.
We're just billing for time.
It's all about getting them in.
The money.
Yeah, unfortunately.
But so what was it aboutnutrition that you were
attracted to or being adietician?
I love food and I'm not afraidto say it.
I love eating.
(05:00):
Eating is fun and I thinkthere's also, I'm sure we'll
talk about self-compassion andshame and blame, and there's a
lot of shame around.
Yeah.
Just admitting I love eating.
It's fun.
Yeah.
So I really like, like theexperimenting.
This is what led me to, to goingdown the nutrition pathway in
the first place.
I loved cooking.
I loved making new recipes.
Experimenting with differentthings.
(05:22):
Trying to make things a littlehealthier was a little hobby of
mine.
And I just think food is reallyfun and it's so nourishing.
I always say to people, youknow, food is three things.
It's fuel.
It's information, so obviouslywe get our fuel.
Lemme back up.
We get our fuel from ourmacronutrients.
We get information from ourmicronutrients, our
(05:43):
micronutrients, so our vitamins,minerals, our phytonutrients are
really in charge of how ourcells and bodies work.
And then it's community.
It's one of the major ways thatwe as humans relate to each
other and the fact that we're aspecies that.
Can have a relationship withfood is really something
special.
And I think something to becelebrated.
(06:04):
Oh, for sure.
I mean, most species eat tosurvive.
That's it.
And with the community aroundfood, like some of my best
memories are around food, likegoing to my grandparents and
having Sunday dinner and, youknow, making cookies with, you
know, family members orwhatever.
So yeah, I totally get that.
That's kind of cool.
Yeah, we should celebrate it andfigure out a way for food to
(06:26):
align with our lives and notjust try and eat in a way that
we are quote unquote supposedto.
So I know tends to be notsustainable.
Right.
Right.
And probably all the women thatare listening are in their
midlife stage, you know, 35 andover and yeah, all the changes
that happen, which we can talkabout here in a little bit, but.
(06:46):
Food becomes more of an issue, Ithink, because we think, oh, I'm
getting this fat around mybelly.
I need to do something differentwith my diet.
Or, you know, it, it's, it's abig deal.
It is.
It is.
And you know, we see actually inmidlife, in perimenopause and
post menopause, we see rates ofdisordered eating increase
(07:07):
because women go to the doctorand they're just told, oh,
you're probably not telling methe truth about your food.
You really just need to eat lessthan exercise more.
And there's nothing morefrustrating than being a
perimenopausal, woman who can't.
Sleep, who is, you know, whiteknuckling every meal and busting
(07:27):
her butt, you know, pounding thepavement to be told that when
it's way more complicated andway more nuanced than that.
Yeah, for sure.
We mentioned that you're afunctional nutrition based.
Is that how you started out ordid you kind of go to that after
a while?
Yeah.
So no, I did not start outthere.
I actually had zero training infunctional nutrition in my
(07:51):
master's degree.
Now I'm excited to say that moreand more including case Western
Reserve University, where Iwent, have functional nutrition
courses.
Functional nutrition is, ifyou're familiar with functional
medicine, it's really aboutgetting at the root causes of,
of chronic issues continuingchronic diseases or chronic.
Symptoms that somebody has.
(08:11):
And I drill down functionalnutrition, thinking about the
diet and lifestyle related rootcauses of chronic symptoms or
chronic diseases.
So I say functional nutritioninformed because, functional
medicine has really evolved overthe last 10 years and.
I think it's really easy to godown the functional medicine
(08:35):
rabbit hole and wind up with noanswers.
And when this happens withnutrition, a lot of the times
it's in the form of restrictivediet, after restrictive diet,
after restrictive diet.
And the only thing you come upwith is 10 foods that you think
your body can tolerate and a lotof frustration.
So I think when we're thinkingabout food.
Thinking about the root causesand how food plays in with your
(08:58):
physiology, because it's a hugeplayer.
Obviously your nutrients thatyou take in are hugely important
to your physiology.
But also thinking about yourpersonality, your mindset, your
traumas, your lifestyle, whoyou're eating with, logistical
stuff, where grocery shop, allof that stuff needs to be taken
into consideration as well.
So taking a really broad basedapproach.
(09:20):
And considering differentfactors is really important to
my practice.
Oh my gosh.
I wouldn't have thought of allof those things surrounding food
and what I'm eating.
Yes, there's a lot.
There's a lot.
And a lot of times with midlifewomen especially, I'll get
women.
And the thing that we end upworking on more often than not
is actually eating more andeating more variety because they
(09:41):
have been on that restrictivediet merry-go-round for so long,
and as I tell my ladies.
F food is generally not theproblem.
It's not the food's fault.
We gotta think about yourphysiology and what is, what is
not working so well there withdigestion being a common one.
Mm-hmm.
Or blood sugar.
(10:02):
Why is that not not working?
And really make sure we have thefood supports to better support
those pieces and parts of yourphysiology.
Right?
What do you think is.
Like one of the top things thatwomen come to you with, like the
restrictions that they've beenfollowing and, and you're like,
whoa, nope.
Stop.
Wait, let's change that a littlebit.
(10:23):
Yeah.
I think two things come to mind.
First one is restricting intakeof animal products in general.
Mm-hmm.
And I think that this absolutelycan make sense.
For some people, people that arevegan or vegetarian for
religious reasons thatabsolutely should always be
respected.
Some people, there are certainconditions where this is the
(10:46):
best route to go.
But for many women, justthinking like, oh, cutting out
animal products automaticallymakes me healthier.
Isn't necessarily true.
As we get older, we actuallyneed more protein and the most
bioavailable forms of proteinare our animal-based protein
sources.
Mm-hmm.
Now we also need to drill into,let's make sure you're getting
(11:10):
the least processed versions ofanimal proteins that you can,
like, we don't wanna do thechicken nuggets.
We'd rather cook chicken.
Right.
Cook chicken thighs, chickenbreast, something like that.
But it's really important forwomen as we age to think about
how much protein we're getting.
And we know with our animalbased proteins, they always have
(11:30):
enough of a, of a very importantamino acid called leucine.
Leucine is responsible forstimulating muscle protein,
Synthes.
You know this, I'm sure yourlisteners probably know this.
As we age, we start to losemuscle more rapidly.
Mm-hmm.
So one of the ways we canprevent that is making sure
we're getting enough protein,specifically protein sources,
(11:51):
rich and leucine, to stimulate,as I say, stimulate that muscle
protein synthesis three times aday.
That's what we want.
So really kind of reformulatinghow we think about healthy
eating.
Mm-hmm.
Is, is really important.
And the other thing is also justthis mindset that less is
better.
Oh my gosh.
Less is better.
And this is what I see so oftenhappening.
(12:14):
A lady comes to me, we'rechatting, she's not hungry ever
in the morning, so she grabs alittle granola bar and then
lunch.
Mm.
You know, she's busy, cheats alittle salad.
And then what happens when weget home from work and the kids
are running around, all of asudden the pantry is screaming
at you.
Chips, cookies, yay.
All the fun stuff.
And you can't stop yourself.
(12:35):
And then you feel wildly guiltyor you eat a really big dinner
or you have dessert afterwardsor at some point in time you
just feel really out of controlaround your portion sizes.
And really what you need is tothink about yourself as a little
computer and upload yourcalories in earlier because you
need that energy to stabilizeblood sugar.
You need that energy to haveenergy to get through the day.
(12:56):
And if you wait too long,ghrelin our main hunger hormone.
It's easy to remember.
It's like ghrelin.
Ghrelin is gonna start yellingat your body and saying, Hey, we
are starving.
So don't let yourself get tothat point.
It's not just about restriction,it's really about being
strategically nourished.
Right.
Oh, I love that.
Strategically nourished.
(13:18):
That is an amazing phrase.
So we kind of alluded to alittle bit, and you just
mentioned too about shame andguilt surrounding what we eat or
how we eat.
Can we talk about that a littlebit?
'cause that, I think that'sreally big.
That's huge.
It is.
We, I don't have a conversationreally with anyone without
talking about what is themindset that you have around
(13:39):
food.
Mm-hmm.
So many people and includingmyself, you know, at times and,
and I always have always jokedthat I, number one, have the
metabolism of an 80-year-old.
It's always been very easy forme to put on fat, very hard to
put on muscle.
I have Hashimoto's.
Hypothyroidism.
It runs in my family.
(14:00):
Got that after I had my babies,which is probably a relatable
story for Yeah, for some ofyour, your listeners.
And although I don't have reallythe metabolism of an
80-year-old, it's always been,you know, very easy for me to
gain weight.
It's always felt like that.
So for a long time I wasdefinitely in the, oh my gosh,
you just have to restrict.
And I was that person having thehealthy granola bar and the tiny
(14:23):
little salad, and then cominghome and reading the pantry in
the evening.
And I had personally a lot ofshame around that.
It was super embarrassing,especially as a new dietician.
Oh my goodness.
Cool.
You kidding me?
What's wrong with me?
Yes, I'm, I'm failing.
I see this in so many people,regardless of, of whether
they're, in the health field ornot.
And it is actually the biggestroadblock to making changes
(14:48):
because if you're just sittingthere whipping yourself
mentally, you are gonna tune outyour behavior because it's just
too painful.
And then before you know it,days are gonna go by and you're
gonna be in what I like to call,excuse my language, F it mode.
I'll eat the pizza, I'll eat thebrunch, I'll have the, you know,
(15:09):
multiple glasses of champagne,whatever you're in, like
celebration mode and you're justnot paying attention until one
day you wake up and you realize,you just, you feel physically
not well.
Mm-hmm.
And then you're on thisrollercoaster of all or nothing.
We can break this by adopting aself-compassion mindset.
We're not here to eat perfectly.
I always tell people that we'renot here to eat perfectly.
(15:29):
You don't get a grade in myclass.
This is even a class.
There are no grades.
Not at all.
So we start with by, byrecognizing number one, I'm not
alone.
I know I'm not alone now, likethe story I just shared
hopefully is relatable to you.
Sure.
We're not alone.
Number two, we do wanna talk toourselves like we would talk to
our best friend and, and showsome self kindness.
(15:51):
So instead of saying, oh, yousuck, I can't believe you, and a
lot of us walk around with thatsort of a mindset or that sort
of an internal dialogue.
Breaking up with that and reallyasking yourself,
nonjudgmentally, let's say yourated the pantry, you know, late
at night or something.
Mm-hmm.
Hey, why did you do that?
Like, super curious, like nojudgment.
(16:12):
And sometimes that won't bringtears to your eyes'cause you'll
be like, my gosh, I'm justfeeling so stressed by the state
of the world, something going onin my life.
And then this gives you space toask yourself like, with so much
love, what do you need rightnow?
Sometimes it is food, but a lotof times it's not.
(16:35):
You can regulate dysregulatedeating patterns or emotional
eating patterns by askingyourself that really powerful
question, what do I need rightnow?
Yeah, that is huge.
And that, you know, we use thatin other ways with other
situations.
Personally, this has been not agreat week for the whole world,
for our country and everything.
(16:55):
And I know why I'm feeling down.
But there's times when I'mfeeling down, like.
Why are you feeling like this?
You have to get curious, and Ilove that you're using this in
this situation too, like why areyou eating two bowls of ice
cream?
Or, why are you grabbing thatbig bag of chips that it just,
takes the blame away.
Yeah.
Blame does nothing but shut usdown and then we can't be
(17:17):
mindful asking the question,what do I need?
Opens the door wide open tomindfulness.
Yes.
And you didn't even have to doanything.
You didn't have to practiceanything.
You didn't have to meditate withspecial music.
You just had to give yourselfthat compassion so that you
could move forward and thinkabout things without that that
(17:38):
shame and blame attachment.
Yeah.
So you have them ask thatquestion and it probably takes a
while to figure that out, well,I'm not really sure.
So what are some next steps thatthey can do if they're not sure?
Absolutely.
So when I work with, with peoplewe often create a little toolkit
list.
So if they have a commonplace,like maybe they go in the pantry
or you know, the ice cream inthe refrigerator, we'll put a
(18:00):
post-it right there.
And say like, what do I need?
And actually before separatefrom the food we're thinking out
like, what would I need?
Sometimes it's comfort foodusually does two things.
It's providing us with, with,with comfort on some level.
Mm-hmm.
A dopamine hits.
So we can go and do things likelight a fire under our butts so
we can take care of the kidsafter a long workday or it's
(18:24):
grounding us.
Especially like you were saying,when the world feels unsteady,
there is nothing like somethingcrunchy to truly ground us.
So what can we do instead?
You know, grounding, we can golay on the floor with a soft
blankie.
We can pet our dog.
That is huge.
Mm-hmm.
We want a dopamine really?
(18:45):
So we wanna light some fire onour butt.
How about some breath work orhow about go for a walk around
the block?
So if we have kind of a littlecheat sheets.
Of things that we typicallyneed, then we can be like, oh,
I'm gonna go do that.
And I always tell people, don'ttell yourself you can't have
food.
Say, I'm gonna do this first,and then if I still want the
(19:06):
food, I'm gonna come back forit.
Sure.
And usually this, this cuts backon the emotional eating.
It also helps you from havingthat all or nothing like, or, or
having an attitude like the foodis bad, the food's No, no, no.
We're not trying to avoid food.
We're just trying to actuallygive you what you actually need.
(19:26):
And first and foremost on thelist, I, this is really
important.
Before you get to what, what doI really need?
You do have to ask yourself, amI actually physically hungry?
Did I just have that granola barand that little salad?
Okay.
You know, it's probably time forme to have like a really good
snack.
Maybe I need some apple andpeanut butter.
Maybe I need a handful of nutsand I'm gonna pair that with
some veggies and dip.
Maybe I need some real food.
(19:47):
Right.
Yeah, that's cool.
Do it.
Yeah.
Let's go back to, you mentionedyou have Hashimoto's and I know
there's a lot of women that havethat and talk.
Do you wanna share that with thelisteners?
Absolutely, absolutely.
So I had my, my first baby andactually had a pretty traumatic
birth.
She was great.
(20:08):
I lost a lot of blood.
Ended up actually being notconscious for her birth and
ending up having to have a,blood transfusion.
So, yay.
That's fine.
We all recovered.
It was great and for the firstit was great.
It was great after that.
It was a little, a little rockystart, but we all made it
through.
I see that though,'cause I thinka lot of women have some sort of
(20:28):
traumatic birth story that sortof kicks off some of this and
sometimes things like that canactually kickstart an autoimmune
response, which I think isalways something important to
keep in the back of the brain.
Mm-hmm.
I'll also say too that on mymother's side of the family,
almost everybody has.
Hypothyroidism.
Most don't know, have never hadantibodies tested to know if
it's autoimmune driven or not.
(20:49):
Mm-hmm.
But almost all the women do havethat, which is which is, you
know, a genetic, a geneticinheritance.
Yes.
Thanks mom.
Yeah.
Thanks mom.
So the first year went by noproblem.
And I decide as my, my littlegirl was, was turning one, I'm
like, oh, this is the time inlife to run a half marathon.
I had run several before, butthis time I was gonna pr.
(21:11):
I joined a run club.
I also decided this was a greatopportunity to get up at three
in the morning.
Baby still was not sleepingthrough the night.
Really compromised my sleep forthe Almighty pr.
Don't worry everybody, I pr thatrace.
Yeah, by one minute.
And and no joke, less than amonth later, I was wildly
(21:33):
constipated, which is actuallysomething that a lot of women
suffer from and do not talkabout.
We don't talk about poop.
But we should, you know,everybody poop, so we should
talk about it.
I was incredibly constipated forthe first time in my life.
I put on seven pounds in sixweeks and I am four 11.
So that was a lot.
Yeah.
And it felt very out of control.
(21:53):
I hadn't changed my exercise andI felt terrible.
I would actually fantasize aboutgetting in a tiny car crash that
required me to spend the nightin the hospital so that I could
rest.
Oh no.
And I share this because I'vetold other people this and
people like, oh yeah, I've hadsimilar kinds of things.
So again, self-compassionmindset.
(22:13):
Gretchen, you are not alone.
Yeah.
And I went to, for, for threeyears, I went to different
providers, functional providers,conventional providers, and I'm
like, I am unwell.
I do not feel well.
Mm-hmm.
And actually to, and in themiddle of that, actually I
jumped ahead a little bit in themiddle of that, I, I started not
feel well, but then I gotpregnant with my second baby.
(22:35):
Ah, so.
We tabled everything.
Had second baby, much betterlabor and delivery situation.
And then also again startedfeeling very bad and had, you
know, was unable to lose weightpostpartum.
Was having those, thosefantasies and that's when I was
started to see people, okay,let's figure out what's really
wrong.
(22:56):
Mm-hmm.
I was diagnosed with smallintestinal bacterial overgrowth
which is where you can have,which is actually very common in
people with undiagnosedhypothyroidism.
Hypothyroidism affects gut, gutfunction.
Mm-hmm.
Actually vice versa can and gutfunction affects hypothyroidism,
so on your thyroid function.
But so I ended up gettingtreated for that, and then I
(23:17):
went to actually six providersbefore somebody would prescribe
me thyroid medicine.
I kept getting the run around.
Oh, you just, oh, we're gonna,you, you're trending bad, but
you're not bad enough.
And I'm like, I feel terrible.
Please.
No.
So I, I found a wonderfulprovider.
I started me on thyroidmedicine.
I'll never forget it.
'cause in 48 hours, I feltwildly better mood.
(23:40):
You know, everything.
Now that was, the middle of thestory.
It took another four years toget my antibodies to be
non-existence.
So it took a gluten-free dietwhich is something I needed to
do anyways with the IBSsymptoms.
It took a lot of attention to.
Supporting my gut.
So a lot of things that I stilldo now.
(24:03):
And most importantly, it took afiber in protein forward diet.
Not that I wasn't doing thisbefore, but I wasn't putting the
attention on the amount ofprotein that I needed as a mom
who was doing a lot of things asI was getting older.
I was in my mid thirties at midto late thirties at this point.
(24:25):
Mm-hmm.
I'm 41 now, and I also.
Was not putting the emphasis onfiber that I needed to.
Sure.
I was eating my veggies.
Veggies aren't the whole story.
When it comes to fiber.
We wanna make sure we'reprioritizing our nuts and seeds.
Mm-hmm.
I can't say enough good thingsabout beans.
I know not everyone can toleratethem, but beans, beans, they are
the magical fruit.
(24:45):
They do a lot of really powerfulthings for your gut.
So when I'm speaking withpeople, my ultimate goal is to
get my clients eating enoughfiber and protein.
Mm-hmm.
Because that really stimulatessatiety hormones properly so
that you feel full after a meal.
Mm-hmm.
Regulates your blood sugar,supports your gut function, so
(25:07):
it's lowering inflammation inthe body.
And if you get the right fiberand protein, generally the fat
and the carb are right, and thenthe calories are right, so
everything connects.
That sounds so easy.
It's totally not sounds, it'snot very, totally not.
No.
It takes practice.
Yeah.
But it can be done and it can bedone incrementally.
Mm-hmm.
(25:27):
Again, you don't have to jumpfrom, oh my gosh, I just
realized I'm only getting 50grams of protein a day to
Gretchen tells me I have to get120.
No, you take that in stages.
Yeah.
We increase at each meal.
And we move up in a way that'sgonna make this sustainable.
Sure.
Okay.
I'm gonna go back to thosenumbers, but first of all, I
will say if you start eating thecorrect foods that your body
(25:51):
wants and needs, your bodystarts craving more of them.
So it does, if you just keepgoing, it helps.
It helps.
Yeah.
I always tell people that areeating a little bit of too much
sugar is number oneself-compassion mindset.
You don't have to blame yourselffor not being able to keep your
fingers out of the candy dish.
Mm-hmm.
It's also your gut microbiometalking to your brain 10 times.
(26:15):
The number of signals travelfrom gut to brain as travel from
bringing to gut.
So, oh, your job as the eater.
Is to say, huh, okay, how can Ifeed more of the good gut
bacteria?
They're gonna help regulate me.
And there's a little bit of alearning curve there.
It takes a minute, but once youstart eating more fiber
(26:36):
specifically to support the goodgut microbes, more of those will
grow.
Your sugar cravings will becomequieter.
It will happen.
Just take some time.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, my sugar is the hardestthing.
It's so hard.
It's so available.
It's so available.
Yeah, for sure.
So protein you mentioned, is it120 grams that we're supposed to
(26:56):
have a day?
Great question.
It actually varies from personto person, I think.
Okay.
The most common thing we hearnow is everyone should get a
hundred grams of protein.
For, for you and your listeners,let's give you the real
calculation.
'cause I know you can all domath.
Sweet spot for midlife women.
I say midlife, anybody, anywoman, sweet spot for any woman
(27:18):
and even any man who might belistening in 0.8 to one grams
per pound.
And I use the term desired bodyweight.
So if you are 20, 40, 60 pounds.
Above your desired body weight.
You don't have to eat 200 gramsof protein.
(27:40):
That's too much.
So the most accessible way tothink about it is about a 0.8 to
one gram of protein per pound ofdesired body weight.
So body weight.
Okay.
If you wanna be just.
To keep the math relativelysimple here.
If you wanted to be 140 pounds,you could think about some,
(28:02):
about 140 grams of protein perday.
That's pretty aggressive, I haveto say.
So you wanna think about 0.8 asa really good starting point?
That's 112 grams of protein,which is pretty accessible for
most people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You have to pay attention to itfor sure.
But that's doable.
Now what about the fiber too,because that's something I had,
(28:23):
this is bad.
I had my first colonoscopy ayear ago, I need to eat more
fiber.
So yeah.
Is there a recommendation forthat?
Yes.
So women should be getting about25 grams of fiber per day.
Okay?
That is the recommendation.
Studies suggest that somewherebetween.
90 to 95% of women do not getenough fiber.
(28:47):
Mm-hmm.
Men do.
Even worse, by the way.
Mm-hmm.
But we'll just talk about theladies here.
So if you feel like you're notgetting enough fiber, you're not
alone.
And I don't know about you, butmy Instagram feed is absolutely
inundated with get more protein,get more protein, get more
protein, and what's being missedthere is the fiber piece.
We need the fiber too.
(29:09):
Some people come back and say,oh my gosh, I can't tolerate
fiber.
I feel terrible when I eatfibrous foods.
Then we gotta look at your gutfunction.
You might have like smallintestinal bacterial overgrowth.
You might have, you know, amotility problem, but we need to
look at that because that it'snot the food's fault.
Something's going on to causethese symptoms.
(29:30):
Right.
And fiber's so powerful.
You know, I hear from a lot ofwomen in midlife where they're
like, oh my gosh, my cholesterolis going up.
Definitely need to talk aboutwhat's happening with estrogen
that contributes to that aswell.
Mm-hmm.
But, we wanna think about fiberand how important fiber is at
sweeping away access cholesterolin the digestive tract.
(29:51):
So that's really important aswell.
It's an important modulatorthat, you know, doesn't require
a medicine.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
We are so quick as a society tojump to.
Medications and pills and quickfixes we think, but we don't
always think about long term.
And I'm not saying we shouldn'ttake medication because you
(30:12):
know, there are obviouslymedications that people need.
Agreed, agreed.
Yeah.
But there are also ways that youcan quote unquote, fix what's
going on with food and changes,just activity changes or
whatever it happens to be, butthey just take a little longer
to work.
(30:32):
Yeah.
Or we need to be reallydiligent, like, are we actually
getting a fiber?
Let's look at this.
Whenever I get somebody and theyare experiencing diarrhea or
constipation or, something onthat spectrum, IBS symptoms,
before I slap them with a$500functional stool test.
Mm-hmm.
We work on fiber and and fluidbecause a lot of those times
(30:53):
it's lacking.
And I'll tell you, nine timesoutta 10 that fixes the issue.
That's it.
Yeah, that's great.
You just saved yourself 500bucks.
That's wonderful.
Right?
Yeah.
I love that.
I love that outlook.
Let's try and save some money.
And, but get you healthy.
Of course.
That's the important part.
Oh my gosh, so many things here.
One thing, and you've mentionedbalancing blood sugar.
(31:15):
I know that's a big deal foreverybody.
My mom has type one diabetes, soI've been watching, my
hemoglobin A1C.
Measures the amount of bloodsugar kind of over time.
It's kind of steadily going upand up and up and, oh, you're,
you're getting to thatpre-diabetic point, and I'm
like, okay, stop.
I, I wanna stop this.
(31:35):
Yeah.
Yeah.
For, for the listeners out therewho might be in that same
situation, or maybe they justwanna make sure that they don't
get into that situation, whatkind of things can we do?
Absolutely.
So this is such a huge topic,especially in midlife.
This is where we see thathemoglobin A1C start creeping up
and creeping up, and you'relike, oh my gosh, what's
happening?
I haven't changed my eating.
(31:56):
Yeah.
Something I just think is soimportant to say is that we have
estrogen receptors and everypart of the body except the red
blood cells, so estrogen declinein perimenopause and, and post
menopause is, is playing a rolehere.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I'm very proencouraging women to be
evaluated for hormonereplacement therapy because it
(32:17):
can be so supportive to ourlong-term health.
Something I just wanna mentionon that point is women have
higher incidences of Alzheimer'sdisease, which is also known as
type three diabetes.
And so blood sugar dysregulationin the brain is what causes the
most common type of Alzheimer'sdisease.
Oh, interesting.
(32:37):
So we really wanna think aboutblood sugar as, as a longevity
issue and getting our bloodsugar in the best place possible
to prevent chronic disease.
So, having a hormone replacementtherapy plan can be very helpful
and I'll defer to your otherguests who prescribe that on
that point.
Yeah.
But getting back, it's verycommon in midlife to see this,
(32:58):
and it's not just about hormonereplacement therapy, it's also
about getting strategic aboutyour diet and movement choices.
Mm-hmm.
It's just all these things, it'sa decline in estrogen.
It's a decline in muscle mass.
'cause our muscle sucks up oursugar from our blood to use it
for energy.
Mm-hmm.
And we have less muscle, sothere's less cells doing their
(33:20):
job.
Also, lifestyle wise, justculturally we live in a culture
where we have a lot of carbsthat are available at the ready.
Mm-hmm.
And.
We often eat what I like to callnaked carbs.
Right.
Pasta with red sauce or a bag ofDoritos while we're watching a,
a game or popcorn at the movies,whatever.
(33:41):
And we wind up in this situationwhere our body is so used to
being inundated withcarbohydrates that digest pretty
quickly.
Mm-hmm.
And our cells develop insulinresistance, so they sort of get
numb to all the sugar and thebloodstream.
They close their doors so thesugar cannot get into the cells.
We see this, A sign of this isthat you're real tired after you
(34:05):
have a high carb meal.
Sometimes it doesn't even haveto be a super high carb meal,
but you just get really tired.
Yeah.
And that's because your sugar'snot actually making it into the
cell to be used to make energy.
And so what can we do?
Fiber and protein.
Oh my gosh, there's so manythings, but fiber, having a
fiber and protein forward dietis going to first and foremost.
(34:27):
Reduce the amount ofcarbohydrates that you take in,
but it also slows down thedigestion of the carbohydrates
that you are eating.
Remember, our fiber foods arecarbohydrates too.
Yeah.
They just digest a lot slower.
Mm-hmm.
So you don't have this big bolusof sugar flying out and I the
bloodstream that then yourpancreas has to send insulin out
(34:49):
and, and take care of all this.
It's much slower trickle.
And the cells aren't like, whoa,too much.
Ah.
The cells are like, oh, okay,I'll take you, I'll take you in,
come on in and, and we'll useyou for energy.
That's awesome.
So we wanna think about, Hey,what can I eat that's can
actually gonna slow my digestiondown?
Which of course also stimulatesour satiety hormones in our gut,
so we feel like we're actuallyfull after a meal.
(35:11):
And then we wanna eat the foodsthat are also supporting the
growth of our muscles.
So our protein.
Protein.
And then fiber, again, apositive for fiber, really great
at reducing inflammation.
Inflammation's a two-way street.
Too much blood sugar causesinflammation.
Also, poor digestive healthcauses inflammation that can
(35:33):
affect your metabolism.
So if we can get enough fiber inthe digestive tract to lower
inflammation, it does this byfeeding the good gut microbes
supporting regular motility inthe gut, then we can be
supporting better blood sugarslonger term.
So it's about thinking aboutdigestion.
Mm-hmm.
It's about thinking about theright foods to fuel your, your
(35:56):
muscles, and it's also aboutreducing inflammation.
Oh my gosh.
I love this.
I love that We could be talkingfor hours, I know it's really
easy to get overwhelmed withinformation.
If you could tell Gretchen, ourlisteners, a couple simple
things they could do just tostart thinking about food
differently or helping them feelbetter?
(36:17):
You know what I'm saying?
Absolutely.
So I'll talk about three things.
I actually really like to startwith breakfast because so many
women fall into the camp ofeither they're the granola bar,
breakfast, or they just don'teat it.
'cause we've heard so much aboutintermittent fasting.
Oh.
And that can be supportive.
But I find more often than notin practice, it's actually not
(36:38):
supportive to metabolic and bodycomposition goals.
Mm-hmm.
Long term in women because wehonestly just get too hungry.
Oh my gosh.
And yeah, it's really hard toget the protein we need if we're
not eating three meals a day.
Mm-hmm.
So having a really good.
Breakfast that has about 20 to30 grams of protein.
(37:00):
It could be something like aprotein shake, for instance,
that you can do you can do a cupof berries in here.
Chia seeds.
Again, you're getting a littleprotein.
You're getting a lot of fiberand some healthy fats.
Mm-hmm.
And that can be a really niceway to start your day.
That's a really easy proteinshake.
You can also do something like Idid today.
So I had an apple with peanutbutter and this is something
(37:21):
that's super convenient forpeople.
I did what's called an eggwitch, so it's two egg patties.
You can usually find'em atCostco.
Two egg patties with a chickensausage patty and a slice of
cheese.
And that's usually somevariation of that is my
breakfast on.
Fridays like today.
I'll do something like that.
So remembering to pair proteinand fiber at your breakfast is
super, super key.
Another thing is, again, theself-compassion mindset.
(37:43):
You kind of wanna get curiousabout why you're eating patterns
are what they are.
Mm-hmm.
But not in a judgmental way.
Again, why am I eating all thepeanut butter cups in the
cabinet?
Is it that I'm not properlyfueled?
Or is it that I, I need someemotional support, what's going
on here?
Or I'm just overstimulated.
Mm-hmm.
And then, you know, last but notleast, really thinking about
(38:07):
dinners and make lunches anddinners, making sure you have
protein there, because a lot oftimes we forget, especially at
lunch, we forget about theprotein and we forget about the
vegetables.
Half a plate of veggies at lunchand dinner.
That is a key.
That's good for fiber, that'sgood for antioxidants.
It's gonna help you stay morefull.
(38:28):
And if you're thinking, if youhave body composition goals
really triggering those satietysignals in the digestive tract
is really, really helpful toyou.
'cause you don't wanna be whiteknuckling your way through a
diet that's almost assuredlygoing to fail.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why make yourself miserable?
Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
Do it.
Let's be joyful about this.
(38:49):
So Yes, for sure, so tell thelisteners what you do.
How do you help people?
Do you have something where theycould talk to you and do you do
online or how do you help women?
So I have a virtual privatepractice called the Functional
Kitchen.
I have three ways that you canwork one-on-one with me.
(39:09):
We can meet twice a month.
We can meet once a month or wecan meet quarterly.
Everybody in our program getsweekly message check-ins because
accountability is so helpful.
Mm-hmm.
And what I like to do is justinvite you to book a
complimentary nutritionevaluation call with me.
(39:29):
You sit down with me.
I don't know if sales team oranything like that.
Sit down directly with me.
We have a chat if, if this is agood fit for you, so I'm happy
to provide that.
Kim, for your show notes?
Yes, I'll provide you that link.
And then the, honestly, the bestplace to start is with my
freebies.
I have a video series andcookbook called.
Protein and fiber first, and itreally covers a lot of the
(39:53):
things that we talked abouttoday, but gives you practical
tips in the video series.
Real short sound bites, justthinking about how to support
those satiety hormones, how tosupport your blood sugar, your
gut health, those sorts ofthings.
So like the, the, what we wannabe thinking about, like what's
happening.
And then the cookbook is allabout practical ideas for how do
(40:15):
I get enough fiber and proteinat my meals without spending all
day in the kitchen.
So you can accessthat@gretchenspzrd.com slash
freebies, and that's entirelyfree, and I would love for you
to check it out.
Yeah, I will definitely, we'llput those links in the show
notes for people.
I feel too, like, I'm glad youmentioned accountability.
(40:35):
I think you would be someone whowould really be good at holding
people accountable in a niceway.
That is, my number one goal isI, you know, I, we had talked
about what we were gonna talkabout.
I just, I'll share this.
An early blunder in my career, Iwas newly married, so, you know,
like 28 years old.
Mm-hmm.
Only responsibility was a dog.
(40:55):
Right.
So, and I remember I had a, amom come into my office who had
several kids.
She was a single mother.
She was in her forties.
She had a toddler and thistoddler you know, made, made
dinnertime and mealtimes reallysuper fun.
Can I say that?
Fun sarcastically fun.
So mealtimes were extremelychallenging and she was falling
(41:18):
into that habit of just sort ofeating off of her toddler's
plate and eating kind offanatically.
And she had a full-time job ontop of all of this.
And I remember looking at herand being like, oh, you know,
you just need to make eatingyour full-time job.
And I'll never forget the lookon that woman's face.
And I learned so much in thatmoment.
(41:39):
And I've heard otherpractitioners say this as well.
And I always say, no, eatingshould never be your full-time
job.
It should be aligned into yourlife.
That's really what we'restriving for here.
It's the magic is in the tweaksand the consistency, not in the
overhaul.
I love that, it makes it so mucheasier.
(42:00):
Just, just that thought of that.
Yeah.
Like this is accessible.
So many people don't see thedietician because they're afraid
they're gonna wind up with beingshamed or you can't eat
anything.
This is the food police.
No.
Yeah.
You know, we're here to help andwe're here to, to help you do
what you want to do.
You are ultimately in charge ofyour choices.
(42:21):
Yeah.
Let's just help you be reallyempowered to make choices that
align with your life.
And help your health.
Yeah, for sure.
I love that, that that just soaligns with what I've been
trying to do with empoweringwomen.
Find your confidence, build thatcourage, and it starts with you.
So, yay.
(42:41):
So I hate to say goodbye, but wedo have to say goodbye.
But before we do, is there anyone last little nugget of
information you wanna share withthe listeners?
I just want to encourageeveryone to take a moment today
and just notice if you aretalking to yourself in a way
that you would not talk to yourbest friend and see if you can
(43:03):
employ some of thatself-compassion mindset.
Say, Hey, I'm not alone, andthen B, Hey, I'm Nonjudgmentally
asking what's going on here andwhat do I need?
Tell yourself those two things.
I am not alone.
You're never alone.
A ton of people are feeling thisway and what do I need and can I
not judge myself for it?
(43:24):
You are gonna open up the doorto so much mindfulness and it's
gonna be way less drama filledas well.
Yeah.
We all need less drama for sure.
Kim, thank you so much forhaving me on your show.
This has been so enjoyable.
I have loved every minute ofchatting with you.
Me too.
I just love this.
I feel like we need to just keepgoing, like I said, but yeah, I,
(43:45):
I, I see some collaborationsomehow in the future with us
somewhere.
Let's do it.
I'd love that.
Yay.
Alright, well, Gretchen, thankyou so much and like I said, I
hope I talk to you soon.
Yes.
Thanks Kim.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you for listening to theMidlife with Courage Podcast.
If you liked what you heard, Iwould love it if you would leave
a review or even better send alink of this episode to a
(44:06):
friend.
Until next time, take care ofyour beautiful self.
when the world feels unsteady,there is nothing like something
(00:04):
crunchy to truly ground us.
So what can we do instead?
You know, grounding, we can golay on the floor with a soft
blankie.
We can pet our dog.
That is huge.
Mm-hmm.
We want a dopamine really?
So we wanna light some fire onour butt.
How about some breath work orhow about go for a walk around
the block?
(00:24):
So if we have kind of a littlecheat sheets.
Of things that we typicallyneed, then we can be like, oh,
I'm gonna go do that.
And I always tell people, don'ttell yourself you can't have
food.
Say, I'm gonna do this first,and then if I still want the
food, I'm gonna come back forit.
You are listening to the Midlifewith Courage podcast.
(00:45):
This is where women in midlifecome for inspiration,
motivation, and sometimes alittle education to help them
flourish.
After 40, don't forget to hitthat follow or subscribe button
so you don't miss an episode.
Now, let's get started.
Hello everyone and welcome backto Midlife With Courage.
I am Kim Benoy, your host.
(01:06):
I'm so happy to have you joiningus here today.
I also am very happy to have myguest here today.
Her name is Gretchen Spetz.
She is a functionalnutrition-based dietician, and
we're gonna talk about that.
But first, welcome to thepodcast, Gretchen.
Kim, thank you so much forhaving me.
I'm so excited to be here.
Yeah, I love your energy.
This is gonna be a greatconversation.
(01:27):
So tell us a little bit aboutyou.
Where in the world are you andwhat you're doing?
Sure thing.
So as you, as you said earlier,I am a registered dietician and
I call my approach a functionalnutrition informed approach.
I'm sure we'll get there in aminute.
I'm based in Cleveland, Ohio.
I grew up here swore I wouldnever come back to the great
state of Ohio, but I has a wayof, of getting you to come back.
(01:50):
So I live here with my husbandand our two girls.
And so before we get into yourstory, I'm gonna ask you my
question I ask everyone, tell usabout a time in your life when
you felt courageous or youshowed courage.
I will say a time in my lifewhen I felt courageous and I'll
actually.
I'll give two examples.
Sure.
If that is okay.
(02:11):
When I was young, actuallyyounger, I had what I
affectionately call my quarterlife crisis, and that's what led
me to become a dietician.
I was working for the thengovernor of Ohio.
I had an undergrad in Englishand history.
And I came home from work oneday and I realized I hated what
I was doing and I wanted to stopworking with so much paper and
(02:33):
start working with real people.
So I just took it upon myself.
I'm like, you know what?
I'm gonna research, what elsecan I do?
I didn't even know that thecareer of being a dietician even
existed.
And I narrowed it down to twothings.
One day after work.
It was probably too late atnight to be up, but it was
between.
A chef and I'm not really anight person, so that didn't
(02:55):
seem like a great fit.
I don't really like workingunder pressure and being in the
weeds as they say.
Sure.
Or a dietician.
And I started my undergrad as asmany do in pre-med and I was
like, oh, this is what Iactually wanted to do when I
decided to be pre-med.
And so I started calling upschools and the, the next year
with great support from theprogram director, I ended up at
(03:16):
Case Western Reserve universityhere in Cleveland, getting my
master's in actually publichealth nutrition and completing
the internship program.
So, really took the bull by thehorns and was like, if I don't
like it, I'm gonna change it.
And I did that.
Mm-hmm.
And another time in my life wasactually starting my private
practice the functional kitchen.
(03:36):
I worked for both the ClevelandClinic and University Hospitals,
which is the other hospitalsystem here in the Cleveland
area.
And when I came back frommaternity leave, after having my
second baby, I found out that myappointment times had been
shortened to 20 minute.
And if you've ever spent timewith a dietician, you know,
it's, I call it, it's kinda likefood therapy.
Mm-hmm.
(03:56):
So we need way more time than 20minutes, not only to talk about
things, but also to get you inthe door just in the first
place.
So I said, you know what?
I can do this better.
So I started my practice inJanuary of 2018.
I had a.
2-year-old and a not yet1-year-old.
So super little kids.
And by May I had actuallyrecouped my income from the
(04:19):
position, part-time position.
I was working at the hospitaland was able to leave my
hospital job and continue forthwith the functional kitchen and
have been in practice eversince.
Nice.
I love that.
Yeah, it 20 minute appointments.
I, I was a nurse for 27 yearsand one of my last jobs was
supervising in a clinic, and theappointment times just kept
(04:40):
getting shorter and shorter andshorter and like, this is
ridiculous.
We aren't helping anyone, youknow, but Right, right.
We're just billing for time.
It's all about getting them in.
The money.
Yeah, unfortunately.
But so what was it aboutnutrition that you were
attracted to or being adietician?
I love food and I'm not afraidto say it.
I love eating.
(05:00):
Eating is fun and I thinkthere's also, I'm sure we'll
talk about self-compassion andshame and blame, and there's a
lot of shame around.
Yeah.
Just admitting I love eating.
It's fun.
Yeah.
So I really like, like theexperimenting.
This is what led me to, to goingdown the nutrition pathway in
the first place.
I loved cooking.
I loved making new recipes.
Experimenting with differentthings.
(05:22):
Trying to make things a littlehealthier was a little hobby of
mine.
And I just think food is reallyfun and it's so nourishing.
I always say to people, youknow, food is three things.
It's fuel.
It's information, so obviouslywe get our fuel.
Lemme back up.
We get our fuel from ourmacronutrients.
We get information from ourmicronutrients, our
(05:43):
micronutrients, so our vitamins,minerals, our phytonutrients are
really in charge of how ourcells and bodies work.
And then it's community.
It's one of the major ways thatwe as humans relate to each
other and the fact that we're aspecies that.
Can have a relationship withfood is really something
special.
And I think something to becelebrated.
(06:04):
Oh, for sure.
I mean, most species eat tosurvive.
That's it.
And with the community aroundfood, like some of my best
memories are around food, likegoing to my grandparents and
having Sunday dinner and, youknow, making cookies with, you
know, family members orwhatever.
So yeah, I totally get that.
That's kind of cool.
Yeah, we should celebrate it andfigure out a way for food to
(06:26):
align with our lives and notjust try and eat in a way that
we are quote unquote supposedto.
So I know tends to be notsustainable.
Right.
Right.
And probably all the women thatare listening are in their
midlife stage, you know, 35 andover and yeah, all the changes
that happen, which we can talkabout here in a little bit, but.
(06:46):
Food becomes more of an issue, Ithink, because we think, oh, I'm
getting this fat around mybelly.
I need to do something differentwith my diet.
Or, you know, it, it's, it's abig deal.
It is.
It is.
And you know, we see actually inmidlife, in perimenopause and
post menopause, we see rates ofdisordered eating increase
(07:07):
because women go to the doctorand they're just told, oh,
you're probably not telling methe truth about your food.
You really just need to eat lessthan exercise more.
And there's nothing morefrustrating than being a
perimenopausal, woman who can't.
Sleep, who is, you know, whiteknuckling every meal and busting
(07:27):
her butt, you know, pounding thepavement to be told that when
it's way more complicated andway more nuanced than that.
Yeah, for sure.
We mentioned that you're afunctional nutrition based.
Is that how you started out ordid you kind of go to that after
a while?
Yeah.
So no, I did not start outthere.
I actually had zero training infunctional nutrition in my
(07:51):
master's degree.
Now I'm excited to say that moreand more including case Western
Reserve University, where Iwent, have functional nutrition
courses.
Functional nutrition is, ifyou're familiar with functional
medicine, it's really aboutgetting at the root causes of,
of chronic issues continuingchronic diseases or chronic.
Symptoms that somebody has.
(08:11):
And I drill down functionalnutrition, thinking about the
diet and lifestyle related rootcauses of chronic symptoms or
chronic diseases.
So I say functional nutritioninformed because, functional
medicine has really evolved overthe last 10 years and.
I think it's really easy to godown the functional medicine
(08:35):
rabbit hole and wind up with noanswers.
And when this happens withnutrition, a lot of the times
it's in the form of restrictivediet, after restrictive diet,
after restrictive diet.
And the only thing you come upwith is 10 foods that you think
your body can tolerate and a lotof frustration.
So I think when we're thinkingabout food.
Thinking about the root causesand how food plays in with your
(08:58):
physiology, because it's a hugeplayer.
Obviously your nutrients thatyou take in are hugely important
to your physiology.
But also thinking about yourpersonality, your mindset, your
traumas, your lifestyle, whoyou're eating with, logistical
stuff, where grocery shop, allof that stuff needs to be taken
into consideration as well.
So taking a really broad basedapproach.
(09:20):
And considering differentfactors is really important to
my practice.
Oh my gosh.
I wouldn't have thought of allof those things surrounding food
and what I'm eating.
Yes, there's a lot.
There's a lot.
And a lot of times with midlifewomen especially, I'll get
women.
And the thing that we end upworking on more often than not
is actually eating more andeating more variety because they
(09:41):
have been on that restrictivediet merry-go-round for so long,
and as I tell my ladies.
F food is generally not theproblem.
It's not the food's fault.
We gotta think about yourphysiology and what is, what is
not working so well there withdigestion being a common one.
Mm-hmm.
Or blood sugar.
(10:02):
Why is that not not working?
And really make sure we have thefood supports to better support
those pieces and parts of yourphysiology.
Right?
What do you think is.
Like one of the top things thatwomen come to you with, like the
restrictions that they've beenfollowing and, and you're like,
whoa, nope.
Stop.
Wait, let's change that a littlebit.
(10:23):
Yeah.
I think two things come to mind.
First one is restricting intakeof animal products in general.
Mm-hmm.
And I think that this absolutelycan make sense.
For some people, people that arevegan or vegetarian for
religious reasons thatabsolutely should always be
respected.
Some people, there are certainconditions where this is the
(10:46):
best route to go.
But for many women, justthinking like, oh, cutting out
animal products automaticallymakes me healthier.
Isn't necessarily true.
As we get older, we actuallyneed more protein and the most
bioavailable forms of proteinare our animal-based protein
sources.
Mm-hmm.
Now we also need to drill into,let's make sure you're getting
(11:10):
the least processed versions ofanimal proteins that you can,
like, we don't wanna do thechicken nuggets.
We'd rather cook chicken.
Right.
Cook chicken thighs, chickenbreast, something like that.
But it's really important forwomen as we age to think about
how much protein we're getting.
And we know with our animalbased proteins, they always have
(11:30):
enough of a, of a very importantamino acid called leucine.
Leucine is responsible forstimulating muscle protein,
Synthes.
You know this, I'm sure yourlisteners probably know this.
As we age, we start to losemuscle more rapidly.
Mm-hmm.
So one of the ways we canprevent that is making sure
we're getting enough protein,specifically protein sources,
(11:51):
rich and leucine, to stimulate,as I say, stimulate that muscle
protein synthesis three times aday.
That's what we want.
So really kind of reformulatinghow we think about healthy
eating.
Mm-hmm.
Is, is really important.
And the other thing is also justthis mindset that less is
better.
Oh my gosh.
Less is better.
And this is what I see so oftenhappening.
(12:14):
A lady comes to me, we'rechatting, she's not hungry ever
in the morning, so she grabs alittle granola bar and then
lunch.
Mm.
You know, she's busy, cheats alittle salad.
And then what happens when weget home from work and the kids
are running around, all of asudden the pantry is screaming
at you.
Chips, cookies, yay.
All the fun stuff.
And you can't stop yourself.
(12:35):
And then you feel wildly guiltyor you eat a really big dinner
or you have dessert afterwardsor at some point in time you
just feel really out of controlaround your portion sizes.
And really what you need is tothink about yourself as a little
computer and upload yourcalories in earlier because you
need that energy to stabilizeblood sugar.
You need that energy to haveenergy to get through the day.
(12:56):
And if you wait too long,ghrelin our main hunger hormone.
It's easy to remember.
It's like ghrelin.
Ghrelin is gonna start yellingat your body and saying, Hey, we
are starving.
So don't let yourself get tothat point.
It's not just about restriction,it's really about being
strategically nourished.
Right.
Oh, I love that.
Strategically nourished.
(13:18):
That is an amazing phrase.
So we kind of alluded to alittle bit, and you just
mentioned too about shame andguilt surrounding what we eat or
how we eat.
Can we talk about that a littlebit?
'cause that, I think that'sreally big.
That's huge.
It is.
We, I don't have a conversationreally with anyone without
talking about what is themindset that you have around
(13:39):
food.
Mm-hmm.
So many people and includingmyself, you know, at times and,
and I always have always jokedthat I, number one, have the
metabolism of an 80-year-old.
It's always been very easy forme to put on fat, very hard to
put on muscle.
I have Hashimoto's.
Hypothyroidism.
It runs in my family.
(14:00):
Got that after I had my babies,which is probably a relatable
story for Yeah, for some ofyour, your listeners.
And although I don't have reallythe metabolism of an
80-year-old, it's always been,you know, very easy for me to
gain weight.
It's always felt like that.
So for a long time I wasdefinitely in the, oh my gosh,
you just have to restrict.
And I was that person having thehealthy granola bar and the tiny
(14:23):
little salad, and then cominghome and reading the pantry in
the evening.
And I had personally a lot ofshame around that.
It was super embarrassing,especially as a new dietician.
Oh my goodness.
Cool.
You kidding me?
What's wrong with me?
Yes, I'm, I'm failing.
I see this in so many people,regardless of, of whether
they're, in the health field ornot.
And it is actually the biggestroadblock to making changes
(14:48):
because if you're just sittingthere whipping yourself
mentally, you are gonna tune outyour behavior because it's just
too painful.
And then before you know it,days are gonna go by and you're
gonna be in what I like to call,excuse my language, F it mode.
I'll eat the pizza, I'll eat thebrunch, I'll have the, you know,
(15:09):
multiple glasses of champagne,whatever you're in, like
celebration mode and you're justnot paying attention until one
day you wake up and you realize,you just, you feel physically
not well.
Mm-hmm.
And then you're on thisrollercoaster of all or nothing.
We can break this by adopting aself-compassion mindset.
We're not here to eat perfectly.
I always tell people that we'renot here to eat perfectly.
(15:29):
You don't get a grade in myclass.
This is even a class.
There are no grades.
Not at all.
So we start with by, byrecognizing number one, I'm not
alone.
I know I'm not alone now, likethe story I just shared
hopefully is relatable to you.
Sure.
We're not alone.
Number two, we do wanna talk toourselves like we would talk to
our best friend and, and showsome self kindness.
(15:51):
So instead of saying, oh, yousuck, I can't believe you, and a
lot of us walk around with thatsort of a mindset or that sort
of an internal dialogue.
Breaking up with that and reallyasking yourself,
nonjudgmentally, let's say yourated the pantry, you know, late
at night or something.
Mm-hmm.
Hey, why did you do that?
Like, super curious, like nojudgment.
(16:12):
And sometimes that won't bringtears to your eyes'cause you'll
be like, my gosh, I'm justfeeling so stressed by the state
of the world, something going onin my life.
And then this gives you space toask yourself like, with so much
love, what do you need rightnow?
Sometimes it is food, but a lotof times it's not.
(16:35):
You can regulate dysregulatedeating patterns or emotional
eating patterns by askingyourself that really powerful
question, what do I need rightnow?
Yeah, that is huge.
And that, you know, we use thatin other ways with other
situations.
Personally, this has been not agreat week for the whole world,
for our country and everything.
(16:55):
And I know why I'm feeling down.
But there's times when I'mfeeling down, like.
Why are you feeling like this?
You have to get curious, and Ilove that you're using this in
this situation too, like why areyou eating two bowls of ice
cream?
Or, why are you grabbing thatbig bag of chips that it just,
takes the blame away.
Yeah.
Blame does nothing but shut usdown and then we can't be
(17:17):
mindful asking the question,what do I need?
Opens the door wide open tomindfulness.
Yes.
And you didn't even have to doanything.
You didn't have to practiceanything.
You didn't have to meditate withspecial music.
You just had to give yourselfthat compassion so that you
could move forward and thinkabout things without that that
(17:38):
shame and blame attachment.
Yeah.
So you have them ask thatquestion and it probably takes a
while to figure that out, well,I'm not really sure.
So what are some next steps thatthey can do if they're not sure?
Absolutely.
So when I work with, with peoplewe often create a little toolkit
list.
So if they have a commonplace,like maybe they go in the pantry
or you know, the ice cream inthe refrigerator, we'll put a
(18:00):
post-it right there.
And say like, what do I need?
And actually before separatefrom the food we're thinking out
like, what would I need?
Sometimes it's comfort foodusually does two things.
It's providing us with, with,with comfort on some level.
Mm-hmm.
A dopamine hits.
So we can go and do things likelight a fire under our butts so
we can take care of the kidsafter a long workday or it's
(18:24):
grounding us.
Especially like you were saying,when the world feels unsteady,
there is nothing like somethingcrunchy to truly ground us.
So what can we do instead?
You know, grounding, we can golay on the floor with a soft
blankie.
We can pet our dog.
That is huge.
Mm-hmm.
We want a dopamine really?
(18:45):
So we wanna light some fire onour butt.
How about some breath work orhow about go for a walk around
the block?
So if we have kind of a littlecheat sheets.
Of things that we typicallyneed, then we can be like, oh,
I'm gonna go do that.
And I always tell people, don'ttell yourself you can't have
food.
Say, I'm gonna do this first,and then if I still want the
(19:06):
food, I'm gonna come back forit.
Sure.
And usually this, this cuts backon the emotional eating.
It also helps you from havingthat all or nothing like, or, or
having an attitude like the foodis bad, the food's No, no, no.
We're not trying to avoid food.
We're just trying to actuallygive you what you actually need.
(19:26):
And first and foremost on thelist, I, this is really
important.
Before you get to what, what doI really need?
You do have to ask yourself, amI actually physically hungry?
Did I just have that granola barand that little salad?
Okay.
You know, it's probably time forme to have like a really good
snack.
Maybe I need some apple andpeanut butter.
Maybe I need a handful of nutsand I'm gonna pair that with
some veggies and dip.
Maybe I need some real food.
(19:47):
Right.
Yeah, that's cool.
Do it.
Yeah.
Let's go back to, you mentionedyou have Hashimoto's and I know
there's a lot of women that havethat and talk.
Do you wanna share that with thelisteners?
Absolutely, absolutely.
So I had my, my first baby andactually had a pretty traumatic
birth.
She was great.
(20:08):
I lost a lot of blood.
Ended up actually being notconscious for her birth and
ending up having to have a,blood transfusion.
So, yay.
That's fine.
We all recovered.
It was great and for the firstit was great.
It was great after that.
It was a little, a little rockystart, but we all made it
through.
I see that though,'cause I thinka lot of women have some sort of
(20:28):
traumatic birth story that sortof kicks off some of this and
sometimes things like that canactually kickstart an autoimmune
response, which I think isalways something important to
keep in the back of the brain.
Mm-hmm.
I'll also say too that on mymother's side of the family,
almost everybody has.
Hypothyroidism.
Most don't know, have never hadantibodies tested to know if
it's autoimmune driven or not.
(20:49):
Mm-hmm.
But almost all the women do havethat, which is which is, you
know, a genetic, a geneticinheritance.
Yes.
Thanks mom.
Yeah.
Thanks mom.
So the first year went by noproblem.
And I decide as my, my littlegirl was, was turning one, I'm
like, oh, this is the time inlife to run a half marathon.
I had run several before, butthis time I was gonna pr.
(21:11):
I joined a run club.
I also decided this was a greatopportunity to get up at three
in the morning.
Baby still was not sleepingthrough the night.
Really compromised my sleep forthe Almighty pr.
Don't worry everybody, I pr thatrace.
Yeah, by one minute.
And and no joke, less than amonth later, I was wildly
(21:33):
constipated, which is actuallysomething that a lot of women
suffer from and do not talkabout.
We don't talk about poop.
But we should, you know,everybody poop, so we should
talk about it.
I was incredibly constipated forthe first time in my life.
I put on seven pounds in sixweeks and I am four 11.
So that was a lot.
Yeah.
And it felt very out of control.
(21:53):
I hadn't changed my exercise andI felt terrible.
I would actually fantasize aboutgetting in a tiny car crash that
required me to spend the nightin the hospital so that I could
rest.
Oh no.
And I share this because I'vetold other people this and
people like, oh yeah, I've hadsimilar kinds of things.
So again, self-compassionmindset.
(22:13):
Gretchen, you are not alone.
Yeah.
And I went to, for, for threeyears, I went to different
providers, functional providers,conventional providers, and I'm
like, I am unwell.
I do not feel well.
Mm-hmm.
And actually to, and in themiddle of that, actually I
jumped ahead a little bit in themiddle of that, I, I started not
feel well, but then I gotpregnant with my second baby.
(22:35):
Ah, so.
We tabled everything.
Had second baby, much betterlabor and delivery situation.
And then also again startedfeeling very bad and had, you
know, was unable to lose weightpostpartum.
Was having those, thosefantasies and that's when I was
started to see people, okay,let's figure out what's really
wrong.
(22:56):
Mm-hmm.
I was diagnosed with smallintestinal bacterial overgrowth
which is where you can have,which is actually very common in
people with undiagnosedhypothyroidism.
Hypothyroidism affects gut, gutfunction.
Mm-hmm.
Actually vice versa can and gutfunction affects hypothyroidism,
so on your thyroid function.
But so I ended up gettingtreated for that, and then I
(23:17):
went to actually six providersbefore somebody would prescribe
me thyroid medicine.
I kept getting the run around.
Oh, you just, oh, we're gonna,you, you're trending bad, but
you're not bad enough.
And I'm like, I feel terrible.
Please.
No.
So I, I found a wonderfulprovider.
I started me on thyroidmedicine.
I'll never forget it.
'cause in 48 hours, I feltwildly better mood.
(23:40):
You know, everything.
Now that was, the middle of thestory.
It took another four years toget my antibodies to be
non-existence.
So it took a gluten-free dietwhich is something I needed to
do anyways with the IBSsymptoms.
It took a lot of attention to.
Supporting my gut.
So a lot of things that I stilldo now.
(24:03):
And most importantly, it took afiber in protein forward diet.
Not that I wasn't doing thisbefore, but I wasn't putting the
attention on the amount ofprotein that I needed as a mom
who was doing a lot of things asI was getting older.
I was in my mid thirties at midto late thirties at this point.
(24:25):
Mm-hmm.
I'm 41 now, and I also.
Was not putting the emphasis onfiber that I needed to.
Sure.
I was eating my veggies.
Veggies aren't the whole story.
When it comes to fiber.
We wanna make sure we'reprioritizing our nuts and seeds.
Mm-hmm.
I can't say enough good thingsabout beans.
I know not everyone can toleratethem, but beans, beans, they are
the magical fruit.
(24:45):
They do a lot of really powerfulthings for your gut.
So when I'm speaking withpeople, my ultimate goal is to
get my clients eating enoughfiber and protein.
Mm-hmm.
Because that really stimulatessatiety hormones properly so
that you feel full after a meal.
Mm-hmm.
Regulates your blood sugar,supports your gut function, so
(25:07):
it's lowering inflammation inthe body.
And if you get the right fiberand protein, generally the fat
and the carb are right, and thenthe calories are right, so
everything connects.
That sounds so easy.
It's totally not sounds, it'snot very, totally not.
No.
It takes practice.
Yeah.
But it can be done and it can bedone incrementally.
Mm-hmm.
(25:27):
Again, you don't have to jumpfrom, oh my gosh, I just
realized I'm only getting 50grams of protein a day to
Gretchen tells me I have to get120.
No, you take that in stages.
Yeah.
We increase at each meal.
And we move up in a way that'sgonna make this sustainable.
Sure.
Okay.
I'm gonna go back to thosenumbers, but first of all, I
will say if you start eating thecorrect foods that your body
(25:51):
wants and needs, your bodystarts craving more of them.
So it does, if you just keepgoing, it helps.
It helps.
Yeah.
I always tell people that areeating a little bit of too much
sugar is number oneself-compassion mindset.
You don't have to blame yourselffor not being able to keep your
fingers out of the candy dish.
Mm-hmm.
It's also your gut microbiometalking to your brain 10 times.
(26:15):
The number of signals travelfrom gut to brain as travel from
bringing to gut.
So, oh, your job as the eater.
Is to say, huh, okay, how can Ifeed more of the good gut
bacteria?
They're gonna help regulate me.
And there's a little bit of alearning curve there.
It takes a minute, but once youstart eating more fiber
(26:36):
specifically to support the goodgut microbes, more of those will
grow.
Your sugar cravings will becomequieter.
It will happen.
Just take some time.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, my sugar is the hardestthing.
It's so hard.
It's so available.
It's so available.
Yeah, for sure.
So protein you mentioned, is it120 grams that we're supposed to
(26:56):
have a day?
Great question.
It actually varies from personto person, I think.
Okay.
The most common thing we hearnow is everyone should get a
hundred grams of protein.
For, for you and your listeners,let's give you the real
calculation.
'cause I know you can all domath.
Sweet spot for midlife women.
I say midlife, anybody, anywoman, sweet spot for any woman
(27:18):
and even any man who might belistening in 0.8 to one grams
per pound.
And I use the term desired bodyweight.
So if you are 20, 40, 60 pounds.
Above your desired body weight.
You don't have to eat 200 gramsof protein.
(27:40):
That's too much.
So the most accessible way tothink about it is about a 0.8 to
one gram of protein per pound ofdesired body weight.
So body weight.
Okay.
If you wanna be just.
To keep the math relativelysimple here.
If you wanted to be 140 pounds,you could think about some,
(28:02):
about 140 grams of protein perday.
That's pretty aggressive, I haveto say.
So you wanna think about 0.8 asa really good starting point?
That's 112 grams of protein,which is pretty accessible for
most people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You have to pay attention to itfor sure.
But that's doable.
Now what about the fiber too,because that's something I had,
(28:23):
this is bad.
I had my first colonoscopy ayear ago, I need to eat more
fiber.
So yeah.
Is there a recommendation forthat?
Yes.
So women should be getting about25 grams of fiber per day.
Okay?
That is the recommendation.
Studies suggest that somewherebetween.
90 to 95% of women do not getenough fiber.
(28:47):
Mm-hmm.
Men do.
Even worse, by the way.
Mm-hmm.
But we'll just talk about theladies here.
So if you feel like you're notgetting enough fiber, you're not
alone.
And I don't know about you, butmy Instagram feed is absolutely
inundated with get more protein,get more protein, get more
protein, and what's being missedthere is the fiber piece.
We need the fiber too.
(29:09):
Some people come back and say,oh my gosh, I can't tolerate
fiber.
I feel terrible when I eatfibrous foods.
Then we gotta look at your gutfunction.
You might have like smallintestinal bacterial overgrowth.
You might have, you know, amotility problem, but we need to
look at that because that it'snot the food's fault.
Something's going on to causethese symptoms.
(29:30):
Right.
And fiber's so powerful.
You know, I hear from a lot ofwomen in midlife where they're
like, oh my gosh, my cholesterolis going up.
Definitely need to talk aboutwhat's happening with estrogen
that contributes to that aswell.
Mm-hmm.
But, we wanna think about fiberand how important fiber is at
sweeping away access cholesterolin the digestive tract.
(29:51):
So that's really important aswell.
It's an important modulatorthat, you know, doesn't require
a medicine.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
We are so quick as a society tojump to.
Medications and pills and quickfixes we think, but we don't
always think about long term.
And I'm not saying we shouldn'ttake medication because you
(30:12):
know, there are obviouslymedications that people need.
Agreed, agreed.
Yeah.
But there are also ways that youcan quote unquote, fix what's
going on with food and changes,just activity changes or
whatever it happens to be, butthey just take a little longer
to work.
(30:32):
Yeah.
Or we need to be reallydiligent, like, are we actually
getting a fiber?
Let's look at this.
Whenever I get somebody and theyare experiencing diarrhea or
constipation or, something onthat spectrum, IBS symptoms,
before I slap them with a$500functional stool test.
Mm-hmm.
We work on fiber and and fluidbecause a lot of those times
(30:53):
it's lacking.
And I'll tell you, nine timesoutta 10 that fixes the issue.
That's it.
Yeah, that's great.
You just saved yourself 500bucks.
That's wonderful.
Right?
Yeah.
I love that.
I love that outlook.
Let's try and save some money.
And, but get you healthy.
Of course.
That's the important part.
Oh my gosh, so many things here.
One thing, and you've mentionedbalancing blood sugar.
(31:15):
I know that's a big deal foreverybody.
My mom has type one diabetes, soI've been watching, my
hemoglobin A1C.
Measures the amount of bloodsugar kind of over time.
It's kind of steadily going upand up and up and, oh, you're,
you're getting to thatpre-diabetic point, and I'm
like, okay, stop.
I, I wanna stop this.
(31:35):
Yeah.
Yeah.
For, for the listeners out therewho might be in that same
situation, or maybe they justwanna make sure that they don't
get into that situation, whatkind of things can we do?
Absolutely.
So this is such a huge topic,especially in midlife.
This is where we see thathemoglobin A1C start creeping up
and creeping up, and you'relike, oh my gosh, what's
happening?
I haven't changed my eating.
(31:56):
Yeah.
Something I just think is soimportant to say is that we have
estrogen receptors and everypart of the body except the red
blood cells, so estrogen declinein perimenopause and, and post
menopause is, is playing a rolehere.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I'm very proencouraging women to be
evaluated for hormonereplacement therapy because it
(32:17):
can be so supportive to ourlong-term health.
Something I just wanna mentionon that point is women have
higher incidences of Alzheimer'sdisease, which is also known as
type three diabetes.
And so blood sugar dysregulationin the brain is what causes the
most common type of Alzheimer'sdisease.
Oh, interesting.
(32:37):
So we really wanna think aboutblood sugar as, as a longevity
issue and getting our bloodsugar in the best place possible
to prevent chronic disease.
So, having a hormone replacementtherapy plan can be very helpful
and I'll defer to your otherguests who prescribe that on
that point.
Yeah.
But getting back, it's verycommon in midlife to see this,
(32:58):
and it's not just about hormonereplacement therapy, it's also
about getting strategic aboutyour diet and movement choices.
Mm-hmm.
It's just all these things, it'sa decline in estrogen.
It's a decline in muscle mass.
'cause our muscle sucks up oursugar from our blood to use it
for energy.
Mm-hmm.
And we have less muscle, sothere's less cells doing their
(33:20):
job.
Also, lifestyle wise, justculturally we live in a culture
where we have a lot of carbsthat are available at the ready.
Mm-hmm.
And.
We often eat what I like to callnaked carbs.
Right.
Pasta with red sauce or a bag ofDoritos while we're watching a,
a game or popcorn at the movies,whatever.
(33:41):
And we wind up in this situationwhere our body is so used to
being inundated withcarbohydrates that digest pretty
quickly.
Mm-hmm.
And our cells develop insulinresistance, so they sort of get
numb to all the sugar and thebloodstream.
They close their doors so thesugar cannot get into the cells.
We see this, A sign of this isthat you're real tired after you
(34:05):
have a high carb meal.
Sometimes it doesn't even haveto be a super high carb meal,
but you just get really tired.
Yeah.
And that's because your sugar'snot actually making it into the
cell to be used to make energy.
And so what can we do?
Fiber and protein.
Oh my gosh, there's so manythings, but fiber, having a
fiber and protein forward dietis going to first and foremost.
(34:27):
Reduce the amount ofcarbohydrates that you take in,
but it also slows down thedigestion of the carbohydrates
that you are eating.
Remember, our fiber foods arecarbohydrates too.
Yeah.
They just digest a lot slower.
Mm-hmm.
So you don't have this big bolusof sugar flying out and I the
bloodstream that then yourpancreas has to send insulin out
(34:49):
and, and take care of all this.
It's much slower trickle.
And the cells aren't like, whoa,too much.
Ah.
The cells are like, oh, okay,I'll take you, I'll take you in,
come on in and, and we'll useyou for energy.
That's awesome.
So we wanna think about, Hey,what can I eat that's can
actually gonna slow my digestiondown?
Which of course also stimulatesour satiety hormones in our gut,
so we feel like we're actuallyfull after a meal.
(35:11):
And then we wanna eat the foodsthat are also supporting the
growth of our muscles.
So our protein.
Protein.
And then fiber, again, apositive for fiber, really great
at reducing inflammation.
Inflammation's a two-way street.
Too much blood sugar causesinflammation.
Also, poor digestive healthcauses inflammation that can
(35:33):
affect your metabolism.
So if we can get enough fiber inthe digestive tract to lower
inflammation, it does this byfeeding the good gut microbes
supporting regular motility inthe gut, then we can be
supporting better blood sugarslonger term.
So it's about thinking aboutdigestion.
Mm-hmm.
It's about thinking about theright foods to fuel your, your
(35:56):
muscles, and it's also aboutreducing inflammation.
Oh my gosh.
I love this.
I love that We could be talkingfor hours, I know it's really
easy to get overwhelmed withinformation.
If you could tell Gretchen, ourlisteners, a couple simple
things they could do just tostart thinking about food
differently or helping them feelbetter?
(36:17):
You know what I'm saying?
Absolutely.
So I'll talk about three things.
I actually really like to startwith breakfast because so many
women fall into the camp ofeither they're the granola bar,
breakfast, or they just don'teat it.
'cause we've heard so much aboutintermittent fasting.
Oh.
And that can be supportive.
But I find more often than notin practice, it's actually not
(36:38):
supportive to metabolic and bodycomposition goals.
Mm-hmm.
Long term in women because wehonestly just get too hungry.
Oh my gosh.
And yeah, it's really hard toget the protein we need if we're
not eating three meals a day.
Mm-hmm.
So having a really good.
Breakfast that has about 20 to30 grams of protein.
(37:00):
It could be something like aprotein shake, for instance,
that you can do you can do a cupof berries in here.
Chia seeds.
Again, you're getting a littleprotein.
You're getting a lot of fiberand some healthy fats.
Mm-hmm.
And that can be a really niceway to start your day.
That's a really easy proteinshake.
You can also do something like Idid today.
So I had an apple with peanutbutter and this is something
(37:21):
that's super convenient forpeople.
I did what's called an eggwitch, so it's two egg patties.
You can usually find'em atCostco.
Two egg patties with a chickensausage patty and a slice of
cheese.
And that's usually somevariation of that is my
breakfast on.
Fridays like today.
I'll do something like that.
So remembering to pair proteinand fiber at your breakfast is
super, super key.
Another thing is, again, theself-compassion mindset.
(37:43):
You kind of wanna get curiousabout why you're eating patterns
are what they are.
Mm-hmm.
But not in a judgmental way.
Again, why am I eating all thepeanut butter cups in the
cabinet?
Is it that I'm not properlyfueled?
Or is it that I, I need someemotional support, what's going
on here?
Or I'm just overstimulated.
Mm-hmm.
And then, you know, last but notleast, really thinking about
(38:07):
dinners and make lunches anddinners, making sure you have
protein there, because a lot oftimes we forget, especially at
lunch, we forget about theprotein and we forget about the
vegetables.
Half a plate of veggies at lunchand dinner.
That is a key.
That's good for fiber, that'sgood for antioxidants.
It's gonna help you stay morefull.
(38:28):
And if you're thinking, if youhave body composition goals
really triggering those satietysignals in the digestive tract
is really, really helpful toyou.
'cause you don't wanna be whiteknuckling your way through a
diet that's almost assuredlygoing to fail.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why make yourself miserable?
Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
Do it.
Let's be joyful about this.
(38:49):
So Yes, for sure, so tell thelisteners what you do.
How do you help people?
Do you have something where theycould talk to you and do you do
online or how do you help women?
So I have a virtual privatepractice called the Functional
Kitchen.
I have three ways that you canwork one-on-one with me.
(39:09):
We can meet twice a month.
We can meet once a month or wecan meet quarterly.
Everybody in our program getsweekly message check-ins because
accountability is so helpful.
Mm-hmm.
And what I like to do is justinvite you to book a
complimentary nutritionevaluation call with me.
(39:29):
You sit down with me.
I don't know if sales team oranything like that.
Sit down directly with me.
We have a chat if, if this is agood fit for you, so I'm happy
to provide that.
Kim, for your show notes?
Yes, I'll provide you that link.
And then the, honestly, the bestplace to start is with my
freebies.
I have a video series andcookbook called.
Protein and fiber first, and itreally covers a lot of the
(39:53):
things that we talked abouttoday, but gives you practical
tips in the video series.
Real short sound bites, justthinking about how to support
those satiety hormones, how tosupport your blood sugar, your
gut health, those sorts ofthings.
So like the, the, what we wannabe thinking about, like what's
happening.
And then the cookbook is allabout practical ideas for how do
(40:15):
I get enough fiber and proteinat my meals without spending all
day in the kitchen.
So you can accessthat@gretchenspzrd.com slash
freebies, and that's entirelyfree, and I would love for you
to check it out.
Yeah, I will definitely, we'llput those links in the show
notes for people.
I feel too, like, I'm glad youmentioned accountability.
(40:35):
I think you would be someone whowould really be good at holding
people accountable in a niceway.
That is, my number one goal isI, you know, I, we had talked
about what we were gonna talkabout.
I just, I'll share this.
An early blunder in my career, Iwas newly married, so, you know,
like 28 years old.
Mm-hmm.
Only responsibility was a dog.
(40:55):
Right.
So, and I remember I had a, amom come into my office who had
several kids.
She was a single mother.
She was in her forties.
She had a toddler and thistoddler you know, made, made
dinnertime and mealtimes reallysuper fun.
Can I say that?
Fun sarcastically fun.
So mealtimes were extremelychallenging and she was falling
(41:18):
into that habit of just sort ofeating off of her toddler's
plate and eating kind offanatically.
And she had a full-time job ontop of all of this.
And I remember looking at herand being like, oh, you know,
you just need to make eatingyour full-time job.
And I'll never forget the lookon that woman's face.
And I learned so much in thatmoment.
(41:39):
And I've heard otherpractitioners say this as well.
And I always say, no, eatingshould never be your full-time
job.
It should be aligned into yourlife.
That's really what we'restriving for here.
It's the magic is in the tweaksand the consistency, not in the
overhaul.
I love that, it makes it so mucheasier.
(42:00):
Just, just that thought of that.
Yeah.
Like this is accessible.
So many people don't see thedietician because they're afraid
they're gonna wind up with beingshamed or you can't eat
anything.
This is the food police.
No.
Yeah.
You know, we're here to help andwe're here to, to help you do
what you want to do.
You are ultimately in charge ofyour choices.
(42:21):
Yeah.
Let's just help you be reallyempowered to make choices that
align with your life.
And help your health.
Yeah, for sure.
I love that, that that just soaligns with what I've been
trying to do with empoweringwomen.
Find your confidence, build thatcourage, and it starts with you.
So, yay.
(42:41):
So I hate to say goodbye, but wedo have to say goodbye.
But before we do, is there anyone last little nugget of
information you wanna share withthe listeners?
I just want to encourageeveryone to take a moment today
and just notice if you aretalking to yourself in a way
that you would not talk to yourbest friend and see if you can
(43:03):
employ some of thatself-compassion mindset.
Say, Hey, I'm not alone, andthen B, Hey, I'm Nonjudgmentally
asking what's going on here andwhat do I need?
Tell yourself those two things.
I am not alone.
You're never alone.
A ton of people are feeling thisway and what do I need and can I
not judge myself for it?
(43:24):
You are gonna open up the doorto so much mindfulness and it's
gonna be way less drama filledas well.
Yeah.
We all need less drama for sure.
Kim, thank you so much forhaving me on your show.
This has been so enjoyable.
I have loved every minute ofchatting with you.
Me too.
I just love this.
I feel like we need to just keepgoing, like I said, but yeah, I,
(43:45):
I, I see some collaborationsomehow in the future with us
somewhere.
Let's do it.
I'd love that.
Yay.
Alright, well, Gretchen, thankyou so much and like I said, I
hope I talk to you soon.
Yes.
Thanks Kim.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you for listening to theMidlife with Courage Podcast.
If you liked what you heard, Iwould love it if you would leave
a review or even better send alink of this episode to a
(44:06):
friend.
Until next time, take care ofyour beautiful self.
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