Hello everyone and welcome to episode 94. I’m so happy you are here and have stuck it out with me. I’ve been on a break for about 6 weeks to spend some time with family out of state but I am back! It feels good to be back at it and into my routine again. I’m grateful to have you all to come back to! I’m grateful to you for listening and for writing to me to say you love the podcast and to keep doing it. It really means a lot to me to have your support and to know that what I am putting out there is helpful. For this episode, I thought I would take you through what it is like to work with me. I have a real person with Hashimoto’s who has taken my nutrition assessment. So we are going to dive into what her body is doing and what my suggestions will be to her. There are some visuals for this one so you may want to follow along on my website www.outofthewoodsnutrition.com and search episode 94. There will be a blog type post or transcript for this, and most episodes actually.
When someone works with me my current practice is to use my nutrition assessment questionnaire or NAQ. It is extensive and covers all the body systems showing me where you, the client, have imbalances. I also get a health history and like to see a minimum of three days of food journaling. I have no judgment. My job is to help you optimize your health so I need your reality, whatever that is. Normally I would also take the time to listen to my client when we meet via Zoom or in person. For this client, that is not the case because I am keeping their information private and we are not meeting. They were willing to allow me to use their information on the podcast as an example of what to expect. So please keep in mind that the information provided in this episode specifically is a bio-individual approach. What I recommend here is for this person, NOT for everyone because there is no one sized fits all approach to health. There is no specific diet that will help heal you. In fact, as a side note, research shows that the best diet for you is one you can follow. So how about that. If AIP is too hard, there are other ways to get there.
Ok. Let’s get started on this client’s info. I’m going to start with their health history.
I guess I have to give away some personal information in that this is a 28-year-old female. her top health concerns are blood sugar dips with a severe symptom of feeling light-headed. She is also dealing with anxiety and overthinking along with brain fog. Her goal is to become healthy again and feel like how a 28-year-old should feel.
She states that she sleeps well, doesn’t wake up in the night, and gets a good amount of sleep but feels like she has been hit by a train when she wakes up, sometimes feels just a little better than that when she wakes.
She drinks around 3 liters of water a day, no caffeine.
Her childhood eating habits were pretty good with sugary treats being a rarity while consumption of meat and veggies was standard.
99% of her food is home-cooked while she eats out about one time per week. She cooks with mostly olive oil. She has just started AIP but had contacted me because she wasn’t feeling any different on this diet. Her current three worst foods she eats are dark chocolate rice, cakes, gluten-free and dairy-free cookies, and fried rice. Keep in mind that this is subjective information. What you think is bad for your diet is not what someone else sees as bad for them. Her three healthiest foods she eats are coconut yogurt, fruit, meat, fish, veggies.
She often feels tired, bloated, and/or gassy after a meal and has constipation which was 7 days a week until she began the AIP diet. She craves sugar but not salt.
She has exposure to gas fumes at work and she loves doing farm work. She walks 1-2 days a week. She spends about an hour per day in front of a screen. She perceived her stress level to be between 8-9 on a scale of 1-10.
She is currently taking T3, zinc, magnesium, B6, selenium, and vitamin D along with a couple of other things.
Ok- that is the health history. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary here. A few things stand out - We will find out more about the gas and bloating in a few minutes.
She reports the following items as being severe or regular:
Bloating within one hour after eating
Sweat has a strong odor
Feel like skipping breakfast
Sleepy after meals
These are all indications that your stomach is not breaking down the food you eat due to a variety of reasons.
Become sick if you were to drink wine
Easily intoxicated if you were to drink wine
Easily hung over if you were to drink wine
Sensitive to chemicals (perfume, cleaning agents, etc.)
Exposure to diesel fumes
These indicate issues with liver detoxification or an issue with gallbladder health and/or function.
I’m going to just highlight a few things from other categories since this client has so many issues.
Small intestine imbalance: hives, wheat or dairy sensitivity, bloating within 1 hour of eating
Large intestine imbalance: cramping in lower abdominal area, yeast symptoms increase with sugar, starch, alcohol such as fatigue, poor memory, feeling spacey, muscle aches, joint pain
Essential Fatty Acids are out of balance: headaches in the sun, sunburn easily, dry flaky skin
Blood sugar dysregulation: excessive appetite, crave coffee/sugar in afternoon, sleepy in afternoon, fatigue relieved by eating.
Now let’s take a look at her food journal:
Day 1
Breakfast: (I sometimes fast until 10am) coconut yoghurt with some fruit
Morning tea - coconut wrap with leg ham (unprocessed) salad
Lunch: meat and veggies including sweet potato plus more fruit (I get sugar cravings and migraines until I bring my blood sugar back)
Dinner: coconut chicken and broccoli soup
Day 2:
Breakfast: coconut yoghurt fruit and carrot/bacon fritters topped with avo
Morning tea: same again
Lunch: chicken, veggies and sweet potato
Dinner: coconut chicken soup with broccoli
Day 3:
Breakfast: same as day 2 just no Avocado on fritters
Morning tea: lamb chop with veggies
Lunch: soup with chicken
Snack: watermelon and mango
Dinner: steak with veggies
“I get a bad slump at 2pm just after my lunch at 1pm and I get dizzy, light headed and bad anxiety. My thoughts lately have been all over the place as well since starting AIP. It’s like everything has been disrupted.”
This diet looks good at first glance. When you take in to consideration that she has a potential issue with digesting fat, the AIP diet may not be ideal since it is pretty high in fat. She is consuming quite a bit of fruit and since she is having blood sugar issues, those snacks of fruit would be better served by switching them to veggies and doing less fruit. That said, for the constipation- blackberries and kiwi can be very helpful in getting your bowels moving. If I were to discuss her food journal with her I would want more details about how much animal protein at each meal and how much veggies. The average healthy person should be consuming around 1 to 1.5g/kg/day in protein and ¾ of a plate of veggies at each meal. This person needs some help with digesting their food so a recommendation of some digestive enzymes and potentially some stomach acid supplementation will be the first step. This might also help the constipation. If we are not digesting our food, we are not extracting the nutrients from it which can cause all kinds of imbalances. I might also recommend something to aid in fat digestion such as TUDCA which is a water based bile support.
As far as the slump in the afternoon- after lunch- it could be due to waiting too long between the morning tea and lunch, it could be that the lunch meal is too heavy, it could be that it isn’t enough food, it could be a food sensitivity. These are all things we would normally hash out on the phone.
The sugar cravings could be a blood sugar issue or they could be a yeast overgrowth or a vitamin or mineral imbalance.
Since you feel horrible on AIP, I would back off of the restrictions, keeping off gluten and making sure you are eating a ton of veggies, moderate protein and even less fat until you get your body back in to better balance. I would do this for 3 months and then revisit your progress on the NAQ and then make adjustments.
As far as supplementation goes, I would have you take something to help with fat digestion such as bile salts or TUDCA. This will also help with sugar cravings. You may also need some kind of blood sugar regulation support and I will not give the specific product name here because it isn’t supposed to be sold on Amazon and it is being sold there. It is a practitioner only product. Next, you probably need some digestion support. Likely low dose Betaine HCl- look for 150mg betaine in a product. I would suggest electrolytes in your water or a pinch of salt and if you like fish, consume fatty fish 1-2 times per week. I don’t like to throw supplements at a problem so I won’t recommend anything more. You definitely need some help via supplementation but as I always say, you should be able to get what you need from food most of the time. There are exceptions to that of course, as there always are.
So, this is a short version of my process. I have had people come to me for help and then not follow a single bit of my suggestions and then wonder why they don’t see any changes. You really have to be willing to trust the process, make yourself a little vulnerable, be willing to change a bit and know that healing your body takes time. It didn’t all the sudden break down and it won’t all the sudden be well again either. Give yourself some credit and compassion. You deserve it.
Ok. That is it for today. I hope that was helpful for you guys. Please sign up for my newsletter at outofthewoodsnutrition.com and if you could leave me a rating and review on iTunes/apple podcasts I would be so grateful. It helps more people find the show!
Until next time. Peace.