The Hemp Connection:
dieting

The last two weeks I have been spending a lot of time on my new gig with Chow Locally. It has been inspiring and eye opening for one interesting reason related to the readers of this blog.
It has reminded me how normal people relate to food.

For the past 20 years I have worked, mostly with people who do NOT have a healthy relationship with food. It often leaves me feeling as though something is wrong with ME for eating the way that I do. Most of the people I am in contact with, with my work, are either clients who bounce back and forth between extremes of restrictive dieting and bingeing…or professionals who are very good with their analysis of food but not always great in the kitchen. Or…people working in the field who are there because of issues they had and may still have and are not admitting that they have them.

I honestly don't mean to offend anyone here…I am just saying it has been a wonderful experience to be in the real world with people who truly embrace I intuitive, mindful, healthful eating.

Here are some things these people do and do not do. Can you do these things? If you are shifting in your chair as you read this, consider that one of the reasons you are not able to make changes that would promote your hormone balance is because your relationship with food is not healthy. inCYST network members are happy to help you repair that relationship, on which you can build a healthy foundation of productive food behaviors.

Here is my list of Ten Signs of Healthy Eaters.

1. They try recipes, they don't just collect and/or read them.

2. They do not, after asking for help with recipe ideas, launch into a dissertation about why they eat raw/vegan/paleo/whatever. While they may do these things, it is not their lifestyle or their religion.

3. They have tolerance for ways of eating that are different than their own, even if those ways are not"healthy".

4. They don't need a nutritional breakdown, point value, or calorie count for everything they eat. They know that kale is inherently good, that fried kale is not going to be as nutritionally dense as kale salad, and that kale in general is a better choice than French fries. And so they eat kale. They don't order French fries and then monopolize the conversation explaining or apologizing for their choice. If they do order French fries, they eat them and savor them. They do not hide it, binge on them, or save them for that ridiculous thing known in some circles as a"cheat day".

5. Back to recipes. They use them as guidelines, not dictations. OK, so you forgot to buy the paprika. Make it anyway! Do not let it rot in the fridge because you were so perfectionistic that if you could not make the recipe exactly as directed you were not going to eat it at all.

6. If a new food is presented, they learn about it, ask about it, experiment with it, and try it. They don't offer an immediate"Blech!" simply because it is a new food.

7. If one recipe with a food doesn't work, they do not assume they do not like the food. they give it a couple of tries fixed in other ways before making that decision.

8. They know what is in season. They are in touch enough with Mother Earth to use seasonal variation as a menu guide.

9. While they may enjoy the occasional exotic food, they focus on what is available locally and have fun turning local foods into exotic creations.

10. They savor the finished product, often with a nice glass of wine. A well cooked meal is a work of art, a self-nurturing reward at the end of a hectic day. They would never consider eating it in the car or standing up in the kitchen.

One of my biggest frustrations with dietary advice I see for PCOS, is that the first word out of anyone's mouth regarding the issue, is"lose weight". I don't disagree, for some women there are hormone issues related to weight that are important to consider. Extra weight, while it does not CAUSE PCOS, does tend to worsen existing symptoms. Additionally, for the lean woman with PCOS, and there are many, it's simply useless to recommend weight loss as a fertility strategy. It certainly doesn't help your credibility to only have this advice to offer.

Now research suggests that how you eat, especially if you're unnecessarily restricting, in your perinatal years, has far reaching effects. It could hurt the baby you're trying to have, to restrict excessively during the time you are trying to conceive.

Researchers in this study used genealogical records in Finnish churches and plotted births against information about agricultural trends, mainly crop yields for rye and barley). The time period they researched was the 18th century.
The analysis consistently showed that individuals who were born in a year in which crop yields were low (in other words, when they were in the wombs of women who were not eating adequately), had a strong predilection to not bear children as adults. Babies born in years in which there was a bumper harvest would have at least one child later in life.

Bottom line: How you eat affects how your child reproduces. Rigid dieting may not interfere with YOUR fertility, but it's a short sighted strategy. It may prevent you from becoming a grandparent.

A side note: the two crops studied in this research, barley and rye, that promoted fertility, are both gluten-containing. So for those of you who are restricting gluten who have not officially confirmed that you have trouble with gluten, you may be barking up the wrong nutritional tree. Best not to restrict a food unless you are absolutely sure you do not tolerate it.

If you eat well, learn to deal with stress in ways other than binge eating and dieting, and if you are carrying extra weight when you include these changes in your eating style, chances are you WILL lose weight. But you will be better nourished and better able to create a healthy baby.

If you're going to work as hard as you're working to conceive…don't you want the end product to be as healthy as possible?

Ian J. Rickard, Jari Holopainen, Samuli Helama, Samuli Helle, Andrew F. Russell, Virpi Lummaa. Food availability at birth limited reproductive success in historical humans. Ecology 91:3515–3525

I had an experience just weeks into my career that forever affected how I answer this question.

Our assignment for the first six weeks of our internship, was to follow a different therapeutic diet--low cholesterol, low fat, diet for kidney failure, etc. Our internship director wanted us to have more empathy for our future patients, who were being asked to make a major life change in order to follow our recommendations. I sailed through the assignment, actually enjoyed it…until we hit the 800 calorie diet assignment.

I became cranky, lost energy, started obsessing about food, and made it about 2 days before I started sneaking snacks. And then, midway through the week, I binged. Big time. And I swore, I would never, EVER, ask anyone who came to me for help, to go through what I had just been through.

So even though the standard way to prescribe a weight loss diet is to figure out how many calories it takes to maintain your current weight, then subtract 500 calories per day for each weekly pound you wish to lose, I have refused to inflict that madness on anyone.

I've even pushed back when working with eating disorders, where as the dietitian, I was often badgered by my treatment team members to just keep piling on more calories until we hit the total that resulted in weight gain. For the simple reason that there is no way you can help a person learn what healthy eating is when you're treating her by feeding her two to three times what she is realistically going to need to eat in order to maintain a healthy weight.

So what do I do? Easy. I calculate how many calories it would take to maintain the ideal weight, and leave it at that. So if you're 180 lbs and you want to weigh 140, eat what it takes to maintain 140. Get used to the idea. Don't deprive yourself. Get off the starve/binge cycle and really learn what normal people do in order to maintain"normal" weight.

It's not a magic, speedy weight loss. (Or gain). It's slow and steady. But the reality is, if you envision the person you'd like to become, and start to make choices that such a woman would make, you will become her.

Do you wish to become an anxious, food-obsessed, unhappy person? Or do you wish to become a nurtured, nourished person with energy for herself and those she loves?

Dieting will bring you one, and healthy eating the other.

Which path most reflects your intentions?

Malnutrition is another cause of low progesterone. If you automatically assume that this can't apply to you, your loved one or a patient, because sitting in front of you they are"overweight", consider the many ways someone can be malnourished.

You can be malnourished if you eat a lot of calories without nutritional value. Eating a lot of junk food, and very few fruits and vegetables, for example, can deplete the body's supplies of important vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

You can be malnourished if you eat so much of one kind of food that in the process of metabolizing it, you burn through important nutrients. That can happen if you eat a lot of carbohydrates, for example, it uses up a lot of chromium.

You can be malnourished if the list of foods you eat is very narrow--even if all of them show up somewhere on the Internet as the"world's healthiest". You need variety in order to get all the nutrients that makes your hormones work.

You can be malnourished if you take certain medications. The list of nutrients that can be depleted on certain medications is long. If your physician or dietitian have never checked yours, maybe it's a good service to request on your next visit.

You can be malnourished if you only consider"nutrition" to be what you weigh and you starve yourself in order to change that number. That happens a lot with PCOS. It is an erroneous belief that overweight causes PCOS. PCOS is worse if your weight is too high, but your weight does not cause it. Eating healthfully will steer your weight down, if you need to lose some, but starving yourself may keep you stuck at a weight you'd rather not be at.

You can be malnourished if you yo-yo diet. That is what happens when you put all of the above together in one scenario. Eating disorders and PCOS go hand in hand. Most of the women I work with are soooooo afraid of food on our first visit. They don't eat anything because they're scared that one indiscretion will elevate their blood sugar, prevent that pregnancy, make the scale go up…and then when they can't take it anymore, they binge on all the foods they tried to avoid.

That is simply no way to live!

I had the most enjoyable visit with a client a few days ago who was exactly like that when we first met. I was so surprised when, in the middle of our visit, she took me into her kitchen and showed me her refrigerator, loaded with all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Then she cooked me some green beans in red chile that she'd created. We finished the visit over mango slices sprinkled with chile powder. (For another post!) It was such a turnaround, and I was so happy to see that the focus had become all of the wonderful things you can DO with food, instead of all of the sacrifices you have to make if you want to"eat healthy".

She's pregnant now. At one point she rubbed her belly and said,"Thank you, baby!" That little miracle we are all extremely excited to meet did her mama a huge favor by introducing her to food as something fun, and something to enjoy.

I am hoping that all of you enjoy your Thanksgiving dinners and think about what you eat as how you NOURISH, not what you DEPRIVE yourself of. It may prove to be an important part of pumping up your progesterone.