Episode 21 - Anti-inflammatory Anti-diet
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This episode continues education on self-management of fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions. Food and nutrition are an essential part of your well-being. Proper nutrition is also essential if you have autoimmune diseases, like lupus or RA, or other chronic disorders.
I like to break down problems into logical, doable sections that can be tackled using the power of knowledge while acknowledging that we are humans with the human brain and emotions. I also like to think of the root cause of our problems - like weight gain and obesity - it may be a different reason for many people, so forcing the same diet will not work on everyone, and the outcome will be different.
So I teach a 5 step solution that I adopted from many sources; I don't claim that it is my original idea, but separating the approach to eating into these steps lets me think of tackling the problem more effectively, and I need structure.
So the steps of my program are: remove, replace, repair, remain, and relax.
Remove foods you do not want in your diet. Replace them with nutrition, repair digestion/gut, remain committed to this lifestyle change, and relax - work on sleep and relaxation, calm your dysregulated nervous system.
Today I will talk about step one: remove.
Waitlist Mindful Eating for Autoimmune conditions, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia course. (https://www.rheumcoach.com/mindfuleatingwaitlist).
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https://www.buzzsprout.com/1890983/10582628
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Welcome back to Mind your fibro podcast, episode 21.
In this day and age, it seems like everyone is on a diet. You can't get to the grocery checkout without seeing 20 different magazines with weight loss solutions, celebrity diets, or someone's before and after photos.
But if you have a chronic pain condition, like fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, and history of trauma, or anything that activates or dysregulates your nervous system, diet is not an answer.
Diet may be yet another trigger that activates your fight or flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. And our goal is to calm your nervous system down, reduce dysregulation and stress and promote healing.
So the diet culture or diet mentality needs to go.
What are some examples of diet culture? Diets promote not listening to your body and eating with a goal of not nourishing it, but producing results, typically a weight loss. Diets are notorious for labeling foods as good or bad. You are feeling guilt/shame for eating off your diet plan. Feeling unworthy due to your body size or your medical condition, thus trying to fix it by using an external set of rules. If you ever tried "Earning" food following a workout – "I worked out this morning, so I deserve this bagel or doughnut." Suppressing appetite with caffeine, diet soda, smoking water, etc. Counting calories, points, allowances, cheat days, and not listening to your body about how different foods align with your body and health. Our going too deep and giving a lot of power to the food - I ate a morsel of a cookie, no wonder I am in a fibro flare.
Diets are simple; they are often black and white - eat this, not that. But they do not address emotions, stress, chronic pain or illness, painful flares, relentless fatigue, and diversity of cultures and beliefs. So when you force the food choices on yourself to lose weight, eliminate trigger foods, label foods, etc., you are focusing on the outcome from a place of negativity and fail to recognize the complex and multifactorial nature of health and well-being.
So what is the alternative? What should a patient do if she wants to lose weight, avoid foods that may cause disease, and keep her sanity?
I don't think I have an answer that will work for everyone, but this is how I think about nutrition and eating. I have battled with weight all my adult life, and although I love mind and thought work, as I have my educational roots in engineering, math, and medicine, I like to have a systematic approach to whatever I am doing.
So I like to break down problems into logical, doable sections that can be tackled using the power of knowledge while acknowledging that we are humans with the human brain and emotions. I also like to think of the root cause of our problems - like weight gain and obesity - it may be a different reason for many people, so forcing the same diet will not work on everyone, and the outcome will be different.
So I teach a 5 step solution that I adopted from many sources; I don't claim that it is my original idea, but separating the approach to eating into these steps lets me think of tackling the problem more effectively, and I need structure.
So the steps of my program are: remove, replace, repair, remain, and relax.
Remove foods you do not want in your diet. Replace them with nutrition, repair digestion/gut, remain committed to this lifestyle change, and relax - work on sleep and relaxation, calm your dysregulated nervous system.
Today I will talk about step one: remove. Unfortunately, we live in a day and age of our daily foods are comprised of many chemicals known to cause harm. Some substances are known triggers of inflammation; some are carcinogens (chemicals known to cause cancer), and some may contribute to heart disease. So artificial colors or flavors that, for example, are banned in other countries like the UK are still allowed in the USA, would be an example of these substances.
I would not even consider most of these substances as food, so labeling them as bad is OK in my book. If it's man-made, added to food to enhance flavor or shelf life, I am OK labeling it as harmful. If you can not pronounce it, if the food item has 20 ingredients and you can only identify 3 of them as food, I am OK with labeling it as bad and removing it from my diet.
So removing highly processed foods - we read about it everywhere. What is it?
Dietitians group foods into groups. Group 1 are minimally processed and unprocessed foods are all vegetables, fruits, grains, beans, nuts, meat, eggs, and milk - nature-made ingredients. These foods may have gone through roasting, boiling, or pasteurization to increase shelf life or make them safe to eat, but they are not manipulated beyond that. Group 2 are processed culinary ingredients obtained directly from group 1 foods or from nature. This can include foods such as olive oil made from olives/group 1, maple syrup, and salt. Group 2 foods are mainly used to prepare and cook group 1 foods.
Group 3 are processed foods, including items made by adding ingredients like salt, sugar, or other substances from group 2 to group 1 foods. Examples include whole-grain bread, fruits in syrup, bacon, and cheese. So if you followed a recipe and used unprocessed foods from group 1 - vegetables, meat, and added salt and pasta, you made a processed food, spaghetti.
Group 4 is ultra-processed foods. These contain little, if any, of the foods or ingredients from group 1, unprocessed foods. These items are meant to be convenient, highly rewarding to the brain, and low cost and are typically high in sugars, refined grains and flour, fats, preservatives, and salt. Four is white, ultra-fine, and bleached.
These foods are not natural, contain nothing fresh, and the label is a mile long and full of chemicals that we can not pronounce. So these foods we are told to avoid when we are talking about processed foods. Soft drinks or soda, slushies, chips, McDonald's fries, and most fast food, foods you can get from a gas station or convenience store, and it's in a package, snickers bar, and most candy bars, most breakfast cereals, etc. Again, if you can't read the ingredient, it is likely not something you want to eat. If the food has more than 5 ingredients and is in a package, chances are this is highly processed food.
Another ingredient I want you to pay attention to and remove from your diet is excessive amounts of sugar. Again sugar is a refined, processed food; it is not found in nature; it is man-made.
I do not want to label sugar as bad food because sugar by itself is totally neutral - not bad or good; sugar is sugar. I think it is not the sugar, but usually, the amount of sugar is often the problem. I devoted an entire episode on sugar; please look for it in the prior episodes and I will also link to it in the show notes.
So why do I think removing highly processed foods is good for you.
Here is an analogy I teach to my patients.
It's spring, and many of us are planning to grow something in our gardens.
Say you are planting a tomato bush. You carefully prepared the ground, got the best soil, nutrient-rich dirt with some compost, found a sunny spot, you have plenty of water, and bought a healthy tomato plant from the garden supply store or a nursery. You planted the tomato plant, and it looks great. You water it daily, remove weeds and shoo away the pesky rabbits. But once per week, you go to the garden and put a cupful of pesticides, say weed be gone or something like that, and it damages the plant. You are doing everything right, the sun, the water, the perfect soil, but the tomato is not doing so well, because every now and then, you put some poison on it.
Now it may not kill the plant; your tomato may survive and even blossom and produce the tomatoes, but the quality will not be the same; the plant's potential was altered. Your efforts of doing all the right things did not produce the result of a healthy plant because the harmful substances reduced the benefits of the other good nurturing behaviors.
So look at your eating habits. Do you focus on eating and nourishing your body? Do you consume foods that are highly processed? Do you treat your plants (or pets, or children or family) better than you treat your health? Do you water yourself with water or drink diet soda or artificial sugars? Do you eat well all weekend and binge eat or overdrink alcohol during the weekend?
Now, I want you to look at your choices with kindness and grace, without judgment. You are working on the awareness that is essential before you can make a change. Start asking yourself questions with curiosity and love about your choices? are they helping you, nourishing your body? Is the immediate gratification of eating off your plan worth it? Is it worth feeling guilty, ashamed, or be in pain?
So next episode will cover the next step, the Replace step, where we will discuss adding more nutrition to your eating plan.
Thank you for listening!