The Radiant Mission
The Radiant Mission
90. Empowering Women's Nutrition for Gut Health and Beyond
Embark on a nourishing journey as we welcome back Paula Carper, registered dietitian and women's hormone expert, for a revealing conversation on the unspoken truths of women's digestive health. This time around, Paula sheds light on the pervasive impact of diet culture and the essence of a balanced diet, particularly the importance of protein and the surprising ways it can influence our digestive systems. As the conversation unfolds, we uncover how specific eating habits, from veganism to rushed meals, might be doing more harm than good, and we learn the importance of creating a serene space to savor our food for optimal digestion.
Dive into the nuances of hydration and nutrition with us as we debunk myths and reinstate the importance of listening to our bodies' unique needs. We tackle the sometimes-overlooked role of hydration in our overall health, focusing on the significance of minerals and electrolytes, and share personal insights on the transformation that comes with enhanced hydration. As we discuss, you'll be inspired to rethink your water intake and discover the simplicity behind a balanced plate filled with vibrant whole foods.
As the episode winds down, we discuss practical meal planning strategies that strip away the complexities of healthy eating. With Paula's wisdom as our guide, we explore how to infuse our diets with protein-rich, colorful, and gut-friendly foods, emphasizing the notion that sometimes the most fulfilling meal is one relished in solitude. This episode is loaded with actionable tips and heartfelt advice for anyone looking to nourish their body in harmony with its divine design. Join us and let's transform the way we think about, plan, and enjoy our meals—one bite at a time.
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Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Toomey and I am here with my amazing sister and co-host, rachel Smith. Hey everyone, we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through your life and with your relationship with Yahweh. We are currently in a series on God's design for women's health and we have a very special guest returning with us today, mrs Paula Carper. Thank you so much for joining us again.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It's always fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a good time here with you, Paula. And, just as a reminder, paula is a registered dietitian and a women's hormone expert. She is she's it when it comes to understanding how our body works as women. So be sure to listen to the last episode if you haven't yet, because that's kind of the beginning of this conversation, and if you want to go all the way back, also listen to episodes 18 and 19, because Paula joined us there and that was awesome as well.
Speaker 1:But today we're jumping back into this conversation that we've been having about diet culture, nourishing our bodies and really just breaking free from the system and that system being society and what it's telling us about weight loss and dieting and how we should look and how we should be, and really focusing on how God built our bodies and intended us to treat them and care for them. So when we left our conversation from last week, we were talking about the importance of protein, but mostly the importance of a balanced diet, and Paula mentioned that sometimes when we kind of get sucked into some of those extremes, like with vegetarianism or veganism, and eat too many vegetables, it can actually disrupt our stomach acid or our microbiome in our stomachs, which, in turn, can cause digestion issues, and that's something that I would love to hear more about, paula is digestion and what do we need to know, because this is not something that we as a society, really talk about much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's just to clarify, like you know, I think I think one of the things that we think of, I want you to think about, is like, if you're not eating a lot of protein, then your body is going to downregulate the things that you know it needs to, like, digest it, it's just it's just not going to need them, right? So that's really what I'm talking about. When I see women who have been following maybe more vegetarian or vegan diets or just just not prioritizing protein, they start to, you know, when they start to reintroduce it or introduce it at higher intakes, then what they'll start to see is that they aren't able to digest it as well and they have, you know, more bloating, more, more problems, slower digestion. So one of the things that is happening there is that partly, um, they have not really optimized maybe, their mineral intake, um really getting all the things that they need to create stomach acid, um also their their stress levels, levels, the speed at which they eat, how much they chew their food. All these things really play in.
Speaker 2:And when we think about, you know, vegetables aren't bad, but when we think about eating vegetables that are cooked, or we think about eating breads that are cooked. These are all softer foods in that form. But when we eat meat, when it's cooked or when it's raw, it's a little more difficult to chew, it takes a lot more effort to chew. So if you have bad habits because you eat a lot of soft foods and you're used to only chewing like a few times per bite and you swallow, that's not going to affect you as much when you have a piece of bread as when you have a piece of steak, right. So digestion, starting even before food gets in the mouth, but particularly when it gets into the mouth, you have enzymes that are coating the food from your saliva. This is a process that is important to that breakdown of that food. So when we, when we think about a food like animal protein, like meat, when we think about a food like animal protein, like meat, beef, chicken, you know Turkey, fish, anything like that, fish being a little bit easier to digest um, you know in just in terms of chewing. But when you start to see that it's like if you're used to eating softer foods, you're going to have the same habits when you eat those, those foods that are harder to chew.
Speaker 2:So if you've ever noticed people and you've watched them, people you might know that you eat with a lot, who don't really spend a lot of time chewing their food. They probably often have a lot of digestive problems and it can be upper or lower. So I think this is really a big factor. It's like if they have not been eating a lot of protein, then they don't have the habits of chewing. So one of the things I usually recommend is like chewing your food a lot, especially if you're going to increase your protein intake, because you need to get that meat ground up into much, much finer pieces, because your stomach, you know, can only do so much. So that's a part of the picture.
Speaker 2:And then the stomach acid.
Speaker 2:The robustness of the stomach acid is going to play another role.
Speaker 2:And, um, and that is impacted a lot of times by stress levels. You know, do you sit down and really relax to eat we talk about? You know there's the different states that you can be in the fight or flight or the rest and digest state. You know, if you're going to sit down and eat a big steak, you want to be in a rest and digest state. You don't want to be eating on the fly and on the run and like just running off. You don't want to be real stressed either.
Speaker 2:If you're in a real stressed state, you're not going to have those digestive acids that are being produced in the right amounts to really digest that food. So you, you really this is a lot about the duality of the things that impact our health and kind of how everything, as we look at it, it's like this duality. There's like there's something that provides a good aspect and and the other side is kind of like lower, and then there's this balance that kind of goes back and forth and there's benefits to each of those sides. Well, just like that nervous system, you know, flight, fight or flight is good when you want to survive, but rest and digest is good when you want to live when you're living right when you're, when you're living everyday life.
Speaker 2:So those are things that I see playing into this, and so that's in the upper part of the digestive system, but it's so critical to the lower part. Whatever happens up here, if it's not happening well, it affects everything below, and that's that's something that I really love to talk about, because the microbiome is below that. So when we have poor stomach acid and we can't digest our protein well, we're going to affect the microbiome in a negative way. So so these things all play together right. So so, really, it starts with one, chewing your food really well, particularly those proteins, and then two, having that that good stomach acid, because even then, when, when the digestive process, you know, is happening in the stomach and then it's releasing food that's been, you know, churned and working with that acid into the small intestine, which is the next place it goes, um, that triggers, you know, the gallbladder to release bile. That triggers some pancreatic enzyme release.
Speaker 2:So we've got some things that are going on. After that, the next stage of digestion, um, and that level of stomach acid really impacts that. So this is, you know, it's a process, it's a multi-step process and we have to think about, like, what is the purpose of each of these parts of the process, the system, and we want it to work right. So we got to, we got to think about all those factors, so it really I just wanted to ask because I'm first of all.
Speaker 1:I have about a thousand questions. Hopefully I remember them all. What can women do to improve their stomach acid?
Speaker 2:yeah, so largely for most of the women that I work with a lot of it really comes down to spending the time to get into a state of rest and digest into that parasympathetic nervous system response. The other thing that you can do is eat foods that are more bitter right, one of the things that when we used to eat meals in courses which we really don't do anymore, but you know for years, um, but you know for years um, we used to see food served in courses before the modern times, um, and there was like a greens, a bitter green salad with maybe some vinegar right. That was part of a preparation and that was before we knew the science. Mm-hmm, bitter greens with a little bit of vinegar right, and that was a preparation. It was a dinner salad. That was a preparation for the, the entree that was coming, which usually had some protein in it, right. So so we can, we can do digestive bitters.
Speaker 2:So there are tinctures that you can take. Some some of them are in in like pill forms, um, but mostly in tincture forms Um, and that can actually be taken before meals to like stimulate the gastric stomach acid, um, and and again, what one of the things I recommend before I even look at that is I recommend deep breathing when you sit down to eat, like sitting down and really breathing deep and doing these long inhales and exhales, kind of like you do when you're doing deep breathing, to like get over an anxiety attack. It's like we're trying to come back into that parasympathetic state so that we can make sure we're in a state where our body's able to digest optimally. So that's just like some little practices. And then, of course, you know, chewing the food is going to be part of that process. Just, it's not going to necessarily stimulate a whole lot more stomach acid, but it does give time, you know, and it gives that that additional mechanical and enzyme support of digestion so that the stomach doesn't have to work as hard.
Speaker 1:Right, and how do you know if you're having issues with something like this? I think of the examples you gave of being in fight or flight or rest and digest, and, as a mom of young kids, I'm literally eating running through my house, or else I don't get to eat at all.
Speaker 1:Or I actually think I took a video and I meant to send it to you yesterday, rebecca, that I'm trying to eat at all. Or, like I actually think I took a video and I meant to send it to you yesterday, rebecca, that I'm trying to eat my breakfast and the baby is on the floor between my legs whining and screaming at me because he wanted me to give it to him, even though he already ate and it was like this is how it is for a mom eating and someone's screaming at us or we have to like walk around and eat, so I guess what I?
Speaker 1:that was just kind of my own like example, but how I'm not eating right in like the physical way of sitting and relaxing. So what would that like symptoms be of of, not like stomach acid or how that affects my digestion.
Speaker 1:I'd love to add on to that too, paula, before you comment because I was literally thinking the exact same thing as Rachel that all I could think about, Paula, is how stressed out I am, and a lot of times I don't eat dinner until after I put the kids to bed because I have. I know you're making this make sense for me because God gave us our intuition for a reason right, and I intuitively feel that I don't want to eat if I can't sit down and enjoy the food that is in front of me. I don't want it because I don't feel like, oh, just cramming this in my mouth real fast in between helping my three young children doesn't feel right to me. So it's making sense what you're saying. It's my body saying you do need to sit down, relax and enjoy it, honey.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of reasons.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of great reasons for that. So so that's a. That's really good, you know perception and listening to your intuition. But but some of the ways that you'll know that you have, you know, maybe maybe have low stomach acid is, you know, a lot of belching after meals. You know a lot of bloating and and just slow digestion, like you feel, like your digestion, slow constipation, can be one like in the upper part of their bodies, but they may also experience some of the digestive issues you know that are in the lower part of the digestive tract. So that's something to look for.
Speaker 2:And there's also, you know, obviously there's testing that you can do for this, medical testing you can do for this. That's just not as accessible and not ordered on a regular basis, so it's not, it's not even anything that I would typically recommend, um in terms of medical testing. But we um, we actually in in practice, a lot of functional practitioners will do uh, gut testing, stool testing, and so we can see glimpses and insights into possibilities that are being impacted by stomach acid. We can't actually test the stomach acid. We can actually kind of see how that might be impacting people from a microbial standpoint and just other digestive factors. And then one of the things that I use a lot in my practice is the burp test and um, and that is a test that you do five days in a row, or, as you know, as many days as it takes to get five, five days of testing, where you take a baking soda and water solution in the morning, first thing in the morning, and you drink it and you see how long it takes you to burp um, that will tell us more about, like, how your stomach acid might be. So it's a clue.
Speaker 2:It's not. It's not. It's not super scientific in the sense that it's like a definitive test, um, but it it can tell us because you're introducing a base um, you know how essentially robust your your stomach acid might be, at least first thing in the morning. You know how essentially robust your your stomach acid might be at least first thing in the morning, you know, without any food, um, so it shouldn't be diluted or anything like that at that time. And so if it takes you really long to burp um and your average of those five days is, you know, more than a few minutes um, you it's very likely if you have other symptoms.
Speaker 2:It's a pretty good bet. It's a pretty good guess and it's just really common nowadays because we eat so many highly processed foods and don't need to create a lot of stomach acid to digest those. Um that maybe a lot of people are experiencing that and the older we get, we see the. I don't know if it's really um, always been this way or if it you know, if it's just a natural progression. We don't really have data that I could feel good about on that, but as we get older, we tend to see people have lower stomach acid levels. Interesting, and that might just be a fact of our modern lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this kind of leads into the conversation on minerals, and I'm really curious about your thoughts on water intake and mineral intake. Yeah, obviously, a lot of us don't get enough protein, as as we've probably learned from last episode. What about Rachel's drinking her water right now? What about hydration? What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, so they're definitely different than they used to be, um, but I think I think ultimately, um, everybody's going to have a little bit different needs for hydration. Um, again, some of that affected by what stage of life you're in. If you're nursing, you know you're producing a lot of milk, you're going to need a lot of water to produce that milk. Um, if you're in, If you're nursing, you know you're producing a lot of milk, you're going to need a lot of water to produce that milk. If you're working outdoors a lot and you're living in the South, you're going to need more water. But we also have, you know, homes that have heating now and we dehydrate at levels that we don't even perceive a lot of times when we're in the wintertime and we're indoors a lot with central heating. So there's a lot of different factors that play into the variations, but I think ultimately, you know my my standpoint on just overall general hydration is that you know we can start with a baseline of around eight glasses a day. There's there's been some research on stuff like that and and of course, that's been kind of a standard that people say.
Speaker 2:But I think what's more important than just the water is, of course, the quality of the water, cleanliness of the water and then also the electrolytes and minerals that we're adding into them, because we don't drink water that is highly mineralized anymore. Whether we live in the city and we're drinking tap water, which I hope most people aren't doing, or we're living in the country, like I do, and we have well water, we're not. You know, there's going to be an imbalance of minerals a lot of times in stuff in well water in particular. So we really have to have to think about, like, what are some of the minerals that we need? And, of course, electrolyte drinks have really become popular and I think it's a great way to add minerals to your water.
Speaker 2:I don't think we need to be excessive about it. If we just have a normal, you know, standard American lifestyle where we're just like mostly around the house all day or around the office American lifestyle where we're just like mostly around the house all day or around the office. When we get into more activity, then we can start, and especially outdoors and in the heat, then we can start looking at adding. But a lot of times it's really, you know, mineral mocktails, mineral cocktails, whatever you want to call them, or even just electrolyte drinks like once to twice a day for most people is going to be adequate. But there's a variety of electrolyte drinks on the market and um and so you can get marketed and might.
Speaker 1:If you listen to this episode and it keywords into your brain. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly so, so, um, so I certainly I mean there are a few that I love for for a lot of different reasons. I certainly think we need more sodium that also has some of the other trace minerals in it, so some of these high mineral salts I think can be really beneficial in our water, like Celtic sea salt or Himalayan sea salt, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all those, all those high mineral sea salts can be really great to help bring that hydration in and actually get it into the cells and keep that electrolyte balance where it needs to be, which, again, that's all regulated by our kidneys. That's a really important body feature and it's something that is really important to like our blood pressure, our hydrate, our hydration management, urine production, which also affects, you know, toxin removal, that kind of thing. So these are all important. So when I talk about hydration these days, I don't just talk about water or liquids. I'm usually talking about minerals in addition to that.
Speaker 1:And so that's the combination of the two right that, and so that includes sodium potassium, because it's the combination of the two right that you really need to open the cell in order for it to be hydrated fully right, that's like kind of what we've been discovering.
Speaker 2:It needs to be able to go in and out of the cells, yeah yeah, and some of that is impacted by, you know, lymphatic system and all these other things. But I think ultimately, hydration is not just water and people who are just like slamming down like gallons of water a day or even a gallon of water.
Speaker 1:A day.
Speaker 2:that can be really problematic. Yeah, I did that when I just drank a gallon of water.
Speaker 1:I didn't know about minerals back then and I feel like I just flushed everything out of my body.
Speaker 1:It was not healthy you know what's interesting is, I really got into drinking a lot of electrolyte water when I was pregnant because I was always dehydrated, and now I do when, since I'm breastfeeding because keeping my supply up has been a thing for me. Supply up has been a thing for me, and I find when I drink which is exclusively water with something added to it, it's not always like electrolyte powder, like sometimes it's some lemon or you know just a little pinch of high quality salt or something. But when I am remineralizing my water I pee less, like I drink a lot of water with electrolytes or something else added to it and I don't feel like it's just going straight through me. So, like, where's it going? Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2:So that's a real question, like in some cases, you know, some people will see and notice that they swell or they tend to be more swollen, and that means that they're they're actually not really properly able to like manage that Right. But some people will say, yeah, either way, they're not going to the bathroom as much, which which can be a good thing. It can be a good thing. We what, what the hope is is that we're, we're pulling those fluids more into the cells, we're actually holding onto them and we have more hydrated cells. But you can, you can tell, like, if you have symptoms, like if you have like swollen ankles and you or you notice that, like you know, you have kind of a dematous looking extremities, then you really might, you might be, you might be having trouble with the sodium content in particular. So some of that really has to do with balance of like sodium, potassium, calcium. Some of the other, the other trace minerals, and that I don't think.
Speaker 2:I don't think we have really hard science on at this point. I think a lot of this becomes more about trial and error. But I don't think we can go wrong by starting to, you know, put a pinch of salt in our water here and there, um, or have an electrolyte drink, um, even if it has, you know, a thousand milligrams of sodium, and testing that out and seeing, like how we do, do we have more energy, you know, um? And if we do, and we continue to do that, do we have other symptoms that are negative? And I think a lot of it becomes trial and error, that end of one and kind of trying it for ourselves and seeing what really works for our bodies, because some people are salt sensitive and that that can be an issue for some people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting, very interesting. All right, so let's break this down. What do women need to know about dieting and nutrition and how they can truly nourish their bodies?
Speaker 2:I think that it's definitely a loaded question, but I think that, from a really really basic standpoint, I think that one of the first things, that one of the first ways that women can sort of know what they need to know about dieting and nutrition is first to stop listening to everybody else, everybody else there, including their bestie, who is on a particular diet or you know whatever like this they really need to. Yeah, they really need to start thinking about, like, what's going on with my body? What is the context of what's going on with my body? What stage of life am I in, um, you know? Am I cycling? Am I not cycling? You know? Um, am I pregnant? Am I lactating, like all these things really really play into that, um, and we have to start thinking about context. If somebody is, you know, training really hard for something right Physical, physically, athletically, training for something, that's a context that they have to start thinking about their nutrition.
Speaker 2:But from a basic, everyday human nutrition standpoint, I think that we can't go wrong by going back and starting to really think about getting all the processed foods out of our diet and eating real foods the majority of the time, which takes some effort sometimes, but it's not really all that. It's not really. It doesn't have to be all that difficult. Sometimes we have to change and shift in our mindset, what we think about how we should be eating or what kinds of foods we should be eating. So, if we think that every meal should be kind of a gourmet meal, or every meal should be like giving us the same hit in our brains that like Chick-fil-A MSG food is giving us, then, um, then we probably need to shift because think about it, Like, you can eat vegetables raw. You can eat them cooked, and cooking them is really not that difficult. Um, you can eat fruit right off of a tree, right? So it's. It comes in its own packaging. Um, so this, this, doesn't require any processing. Um, of course, bread has to be baked, you know, grain has to be milled into flour, you know that kind of thing. But again, we can buy that stuff, um, and we can buy better quality of that stuff if we want to. So these are all things we have to go back into and say, well, if I'm going to eat, if I'm going to even eat a balanced meal, how easy could that be? And it could be really, really easy.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times we're used to like some of these flavors and all these things that we think we have to have in a meal. So again it comes back to that prioritization and context like what am I trying to accomplish? So, eating a balanced meal, you know, having a good protein portion, having some vegetables on your plate, maybe even some, you know, some fruit, a little bit of fruit and berries or something, and having a little bit of healthy fat those are things that we want to have at every meal, every meal, and we can have starchy vegetables, we can have grains, there are a variety of high carbohydrate foods if we need more energy, so these can be really simply prepared. They don't have to be heavily processed and we can balance that at every meal. We can do that really, really easily.
Speaker 2:And starting from there is a great place to start. You don't have to count calories, you don't even have to count your macros. Just sit there and sit with these kinds of foods on your plate and start eating and then see when I you know, when I work with people, I'll start them with a template of like here's how much of each of these things you should eat, just in terms of like the plate, of how you fill your plate. Not really about you know portioning out and measuring things, but just this is how you fill your plate. Not really about you know portioning out and measuring things, but just this is how you should serve your plate. And once, once they start there, they're naturally oftentimes going to see what works well for them or not. They're going to see like I need a little. I seem to need a little bit more of this I seem to need. And when they tell me those kinds of things, I listen, I'm like try it, try it.
Speaker 2:I don't know everything. I know a lot of science, I know a lot from practice, but I don't live in your body. I don't know your body as well as you do. I might know a lot of things about it because you tell me in your intake forms and maybe from some labs that we get, but ultimately those are some things, and a lot of that really comes back to your metabolic health, because your metabolic health has a huge influence on your hormonal health.
Speaker 2:So, as women, when we want to have good cycles, when we want to have good hormone balance which is everything for us, um, because it affects every body system then we want to make sure that we have good metabolic health, and a lot of what we're seeing in our modern chronic disease states is affected by poor metabolic health and that's poor blood sugar balance, and that's related to, again, the foods that we're being marketed and fed.
Speaker 2:So we have to come against that whole system. We have to be willing to step away from all of that and start to look at it differently and say what am I going to do, instead of letting someone else determine how I should be eating? And I say this as someone who loves cheeseburgers just as much as the next person. It doesn't mean I never eat them, it just it just means that you know I, I still have context, I'm still, I'm still going to have vegetables, you know, with that meal, and if I don't, I'm going to have a whole lot more vegetables, maybe at another meal, you know. So I'm trying to bring balance at every meal, but sometimes maybe that works out to, you know, throughout the day, because not every day is ideal. And, as a matter of fact, you know what you were talking about before, rachel. You know, for, for mothers and and just that whole context that you mentioned, you know, I think all mothers should eat in the closet. To be honest, I'm kidding in the closet.
Speaker 1:to be honest, I'm kidding.
Speaker 2:No, I'm kidding. Hey, that's not bad advice, I would love that.
Speaker 1:Do you have any privacy, or is there the bathroom?
Speaker 2:So probably you know the bathroom, maybe Sit on the toilet eating, but no, I think. But again, this goes back to like that. That's not a, that's not a simple answer, right? Um, I would like to tell you that the first step to that would be taking deep breaths, because everybody has time for one deep breath, right? One deep breath can lead to another, and that's what I see when somebody is in a state of stress, if you just stop them and you say, just take a deep breath and slowly let it out, they have time for that, they they're resistant to it, thinking that they don't have time for it, because that's what happens when you're in a stressed state. But ultimately you have that moment and when you do that first one and you're letting that breath out, you might not feel a huge transition of like change, but it might actually allow you to be able to think I could probably do that again and I'll probably get more out of that next one, and and and you know that might lead to four or five deep breaths that that really start to calm your nervous system and really allow you to like be present with a baby screaming at you and and actually be able to digest your food.
Speaker 2:But it is more complex than that. Like I, I feel like that's a, that's a good first step to try, you know, and it might not work. It might not work for you in the sense that you might be like Polly, you're stupid, you've never had kids, which is true, but but I have. I was like, I was a nanny, like, like you were, rebecca, but I have some experience, you know.
Speaker 2:But I think ultimately, the complex, the more problematic things to solve is really around lifestyle. And when you're in a stage like you are, you can't solve all the problems, but you can go back again and look at I think we had this conversation maybe, rachel recently your priorities, your goals, rachel recently, your priorities, your goals, and I really start to be like, what are some of the things that I could change in my life that could remove some of these additional stressors? I can't change that. I have a 11-month-old who is like yelling at me for my food. But what are some other things that I can change to like, reduce some of these other stressors?
Speaker 2:And a lot of that really comes back to lifestyle, because we're living such crazy lives and so again it becomes more radical, some of the things we might have to do around our lifestyle to get back some of that peace in our lives. And that's the hard part. I'm a dietician. I'm like I'm not an expert in like shalom, you know. I mean like, thank God he's trying to teach us, but I think ultimately it really is. It comes back to a lot of bigger things in our lives that I have no input on, and that means I have to encourage you to dig into what's going on and unpack those things for yourself, to realize that those things are all impacting that moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, you know you, yep, you said something really impactful. Well, you said a lot of impactful things, but something that is important that I think some listeners can take away is you mentioned keep it simple, you know be approach this simply when it comes to food. I learned a lesson from Rachel and I's nephew. We have a nephew that I know we look really young, but we're not, because my, our nephew's almost 30, and one of them not all of them we have a lot of nephews, and I have even more nephews because all of Rachel's children are boys. So point is he he's actually a bodybuilder right now. He's in that kind of stage of his life where he's working on his fitness and all that. And he came to visit a month or two ago and he kept saying I want to make you dinner and I'm like I didn't know, you knew how to cook. But cool man, yeah, make me dinner.
Speaker 1:And I watched him go in the kitchen and he made a very simple dinner. It was fish, he seasoned it very nicely, rice and broccoli, and I could not believe that he made that entire meal in like 20 minutes. The kitchen was basically clean when he made the dinner and it was absolutely delicious, and I just felt like such an idiot in that moment because I overthink meals. I feel like meals need to be all these ingredients and it needs to be so complicated and have all these flavors and all this stuff. And he literally went in there and made three things and it was fast and delicious. And I think that that's a lesson I learned is stop overthinking it. Just buy a piece of fish, make some rice, throw some broccoli in it and you have a meal that consists of all of the food groups, all of the macronutrients that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really great point and you can build on that. You can build some variety into your meals by saying okay, I'm going to have a different starch tomorrow.
Speaker 1:I'm going to have a different vegetable tomorrow.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, some of the fastest meals that I have recipes for and actually in the um, in the free um meal, uh meal plan that I I shared with you, with your audience, um, the, the fish dishes are the fastest. They're they're all like under 20, they're 20 minutes or under Um, and that includes, like, the vegetables and everything that that goes with them, and so fish is a great fast meal If you, if you are interested in learning how to prepare it, and there there are some intricacies to that Um, but it's not, it's not impossible.
Speaker 2:No, it's just, it's impossible if we keep telling ourselves it's impossible but it's, it's actually really, really easy to do. Um, and so that's a, that's a great point. I think, um, I think again, we have to look and unpack what's in our minds about how do I do this. And that's another area where maybe we've been taught we don't know, I'm like, by who that you know, meals need to be all meals need to be fantastic and gourmet, or have to have 20 ingredients. Yeah, just doesn't have to be that way. Yeah, yeah, so we have to. We have to go back and do that work ourselves. Right, because even as a dietitian and if I'm, if I'm interviewing someone about what they eat, I don't I don't always get that kind of information. Even if I dig deep, we don't always get to that information. So oftentimes people have to be able to unpack that themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So speaking of food, we mentioned it last episode, I'm going to mention it again. Paula has very kindly given us a free resource with some food samples, examples of meals that include 30 grams of protein and definitely reach out to Paula. I'll put her contact info in those show notes as as well. But, paula, could you kind of just give us a little bit of a glimpse of what maybe a day might look like, or not, what it'll sound like, what it might sound like yeah, so, so, um.
Speaker 2:So breakfast is a really important meal, uh, whether you eat it early or late, um, but it it's really important because we now understand that protein is also a signal. It's not just a nutrient that, like, gives us these building blocks, it's signaling our body to do something, it's signaling our muscles, there are signals happening and so, um, so, when you want, when you've been fasting for a long time, breakfast is going to be important. That protein at breakfast is going to be important. So, like in the morning, one egg is not going to cut it right, so you want to have a good source of protein. It might look like maybe two eggs and a couple of sausage links that are like really good size, or maybe sausage patties, um, or or maybe, even less processed, it might be a piece of leftover meat from another meal, um, in addition to those eggs, and then you might have a little bit of vegetables. Maybe you scrambled the eggs and put a little bit of vegetables in, and then you also can have maybe a slice of toast, maybe a tortilla. You know, there's a number of ways you can go about getting a little bit of carbohydrate, the protein, and then you're going to cook that in some fat, some kind of healthy fat, maybe it's coconut oil, maybe it's avocado oil, maybe it's wonderful grass-fed butter. So that would be like a simple way to like. Look at how breakfast should look. Um, it could also be if you are a yogurt type, it could be if you do dairy. It could be Greek yogurt, which is very high in protein, with some berries, um, and maybe some sort of um, you know, it could be cheese, it could be a little piece of meat from the night before, so that you can have some, uh, some other protein, um. And then for lunch, um, cottage cheese. Isn't that all the right? Yeah, cottage cheese is another one. Yeah, and you can, yeah, and you can have, you can have vegetables with that if you want, but it's like it doesn't always have to be. You know the vegetables.
Speaker 2:You want to have some kind of colorful food at, at at all your meals, and that oftentimes is vegetables, but might also include some fruit. And then for lunch you might have, let's say, something really simple. It might be a piece of leftover chicken. You have a piece of leftover chicken. You have maybe some frozen vegetables that you take out and you run through a steamer, or maybe you've already heated them and you're just reheating them and then you have maybe a sweet potato half of a sweet potato depends on the size if it's a large sweet potato.
Speaker 2:But something simple, like it doesn't have to be like a big preparation process, it could be. You could maybe you have bread, maybe you like sandwiches, but you're going to want to have a significant amount of protein on that sandwich if you have a sandwich, and it's going to probably need to be on whole grain bread if you're going to do that. But but in addition to that, you'd want to have vegetables on the side. So you're wanting to have about about half of your plate filled with vegetables, maybe some fruit. So about half of your plate filled with vegetables, maybe some fruit. So you always want to have some kind of color in the form of like a plant food in addition to that.
Speaker 2:And then at dinner that's when a lot of people really make the effort to prepare something and I always say you know, that's another meal, another bookend meal. So you want to have a significant amount of protein there. So make sure that you're prioritizing something like it could be a steak, it could be ground beef, it doesn't have to be the most pricey stuff on the market, um, but it can be as simple as a steak. Um, you know, half of a steak split between two people, if that's that's how it works in your house, um, or you have a few steaks and you do that, and then you have maybe a roasted vegetable something like asparagus goes great with steak Takes about 12 minutes whether you put it in a what are they called Air fryers.
Speaker 2:Whether you put it in an air fryer or a toaster oven or an actual oven doesn't matter. Pretty easy to do. And then again you might have something like rice or wild rice, which is a great non-grain, because wild rice is actually not a grain, just something that has not ideal, but about 45 minutes if it's brown rice, and wild rice is probably about the same. So you can cook these things ahead, though you can make these things ahead of time when you're actually planning for your weeks. You can have rice in your refrigerator, which is great, by the way, for, um, those uh, resistant starches that feed your gut microbiome. So that's like a great little, great little addition. Anyway, I'm this is way too much more than you asked, but it can be really really simple.
Speaker 1:That was a great sample. That was a great sample to just kind of walk people through what that might look like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that was a great sample to just kind of walk people through what that might look like. Yeah, yeah. So so you'll see when you, when you, when you get the little meal plan, you'll see not meal plan, I said meal plan, but it's recipes. When you get the recipes, you'll see that it's very similar to what I described. You're, and a lot of these, most of these recipes are going to be require 30 minutes or less to prepare, so very very simple, yeah, awesome.
Speaker 1:And then the most important part of this meal that Paula just mentioned is when you make that dinner, make it after your kids go to bed. You can take a breath and chew your food.
Speaker 2:Take your deep breath, adjust it and chew your food. Those are yeah, those are the biggest pieces of advice. Or eat in the closet.
Speaker 1:Or eat in the closet or the bathroom, the bathroom.
Speaker 2:Gotta do what you gotta do. Sometimes I imagine there are people who have done this. So there's that, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Listen, I love me a good steak, but I want to enjoy my steak, although I will say that is, I got to enjoy it. That's a big thing that we would say Paula and we enjoy it. My littlest, my little Brenny, she loves steak. I give her a little piece, she puts it in her little cheek. You know, she only has three teeth in the the front but she just gnaws on that, so I don't. I don't mind eating steak with with brin it sounds like haven yes, yeah, rachel's little yeah his.
Speaker 1:We already decided, because his first birthday is next month, that on his birthday, instead of letting him have cake're going to get him a tomahawk steak, presented singing happy birthday. But he loves it so much and like, why give him his first taste of sugar when we already know he loves steak? I love it, I'm all for it, and that's what I will confess to my dietician friend, and not that I only ate chips for lunch today. Oops, I guess I did confess, you did, you did.
Speaker 2:That's okay, she's coming over tomorrow.
Speaker 1:I didn't have time between all the screaming. She's going to come clean you up tomorrow. Rae, make sure that you guys have a nourishing dinner. That's right. This has been awesome. Seriously love having you. We could do 100 episodes and maybe we should.
Speaker 2:Maybe we need to plan a longer series, or maybe it's time for me to start that podcast.
Speaker 1:I've been saying I'm going to start. That's true, paula. Come on, girl Well if you need help, just call Rachel and I.
Speaker 2:It's next up on the project list.
Speaker 1:Awesome, anything you want our listeners to leave with today.
Speaker 2:I think that one of the things that we didn't talk about as much as I thought we would is that duality thing. You know that the, the nervous system, is one of the examples of that the fight or flight, the rest and digest. Um, I think that if, if we can start to think about, like, how things are impacting us, what kind, what things are caught that we're doing in our bodies or to our bodies, what it's costing us, when we think about diet, culture and dieting and eating, we really want to think about, like, what am I doing here? What's it? What am I trying to accomplish? What are my goals? But then also, what is it costing me If it's not ideal?
Speaker 2:If it's, if it's not the ideal, what is this actually costing me? Because what we're willing, the price we're willing to pay individually, differs from person to person. You know, and I think that's always going to be a factor of what are my goals. And then, what's the cost of accomplishing that? What's the cost of not doing that? These are things we should always be asking questions about, and that is always based on what our value systems are, what we're trying to accomplish, and that takes everybody else out of the picture, you know. So I think that's, that's probably the number one thing when it comes to our health that I think people should really be thinking about Awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Paula.
Speaker 1:Listeners, you can find Paula at paulacarpercom. I will put those details in the show notes, along with her free recipes and more information on how to contact her. Thank you, paula. Thank you for having me and thank you for tuning in and being on this journey with us. If you'd like to listen and follow along outside the podcast, you can do so on YouTube, instagram and on Facebook at the radiant mission. And today we are going to be closing with third John, one verse two. Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along Well. We're wishing you a radiant week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everyone Bye.
