[00:17] Greer: 
Hi, this is Greer, your host for Femammal, the podcast that holds space for women to explore what it means means to live well in our bodies, and celebrates moving through this world as female mammals. Today. My guest is Kristen Drahos, an assistant professor at Baylor University in the Great Texts program. She earned her PhD in Theology from the University of Notre Dame and focuses on themes of suffering, doubt, faith, and the cross. She embarked on an anti-inflammatory diet while in graduate school, and today she shares with us what she has learned over the years about how to enlist food as your ally to address a variety of symptoms. We also talk about strategies for dealing with the social challenges that arise from eating an anti-inflammatory diet in a culture where that's uncommon. She has so much practical wisdom to share, so I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Welcome, Kristen. I'm so excited that you are this week's guest on Femammal, because we have been best friends for gosh, well over a decade, and we lived together in our 20s and we went to college together, so we've known each other forever. And one of my favorite things to connect with you about is food. So I'm excited to talk to you about anti-inflammatory diets and how lifestyle tweaks can make a big impact on health, and it's just wonderful to have you.

[02:03] Kristen: 
Well, likewise. That is a very good summation of our kind of, a basic of our relationship, and I'm delighted to be here and talking about food. I love eating, so this is a great thing.

[02:16] Greer: 
Oh, yeah, that's a great disclaimer. We're not dietitians, we just love food. 

Kristen: 
Yes, very much so. 

Greer: 
Can we kind of do a throwback moment to when we were sharing that apartment in our 20s? Do you want to describe the way we were eating in our 20s?

[02:33] Kristen: 
Yeah. So I thought about this because I thought you might ask it, and I guess the best way to describe it is cheap. We tried to be cost conscious on everything, and we also had a cookbook. We both weren't great at cooking, I would say, yet my skill level was a step above boxed macaroni and cheese, and that's about it. But you might have been more prepared. And we were very excited to try recipes out of a cookbook, but it was a cost conscious cookbook called Betty Crocker's something or other. I was trying to remember the name and blanked on it, but Betty Crocker kind of got us into eating different recipes, which was good for us to expand our palate. But we were always concerned about cost, so we bought the cheapest ingredients possible. I think that is a general early 20s motto, to be cost conscious when cooking, and it's not a bad one, but it may not have all the health benefits you may want later in life or at any point in your health journey.

[03:37] Greer: 
Yeah, I remember a lot of cans involved in that cookbook. It was very much the kind of thing where you reach for a can of this and a can of that and combine them. I think I was a vegetarian at the time, wasn't I?

[03:53] Kristen: 
Not quite. You were a meat minimalist, as was I, because meat is expensive.

[03:58] Greer: 
Right.

[03:59] Kristen: 
And we bought frozen meat to try to cut down on our cost. By frozen meat, I don't even mean the good frozen meat. I mean the bulk chicken breast packages that tell you rib meat has been added. This is not actually chicken, but you can pretend it is, right?

[04:16] Greer: 
Yeah. Okay, blast from the past. I do want to say something that was very sweet about those years is we would go grocery shopping together on the weekend, and we would have planned to cook two big meals together that week, and then we would make enough that there would be leftovers. So those two meals turned into, like, four days worth of dinners or leftovers for lunch. And that was lovely. I loved cooking with you in our tiny, not air conditioned kitchen.

[04:49] Kristen: 
That's right. It did not have air conditioning, and we did some of that in the summer. Yes. That was a sweet thing. And honestly, that part of that eating habit was probably the healthiest thing we had that we ate together. You were such a, how do I want to say this, a slow meticulous eater. And I generally gobbled food. So you forced me to be slower, and that conversation made digestion wonderful. So we had some good stuff going. We didn't necessarily buy the best ingredients, but part of that was I mean, we didn't have to. We didn't think we should. And, yeah, there's a lot of reasons people don't eat as healthy as they could.

[05:30] Greer: 
Yeah, absolutely. So sometime after I moved out of that apartment, you started a health journey and adjusted your diet. Do you want to talk about how your journey into anti-inflammatory eating began?

[05:45] Kristen: 
Yeah, so I kind of was seeing a doctor about a headache, and there was some suggestion, hey, maybe some diet could be a good thing. And so I started researching more on diet. I was in a PhD at the time, so googling everyone can do, but probably people don't go quite down the rabbit holes one might if you start pretending this is your real job. So I was really researching diet, and I thought, let's give a real anti-inflammatory diet a go because of some of the literature and the scientific literature I was coming across. So I don't recommend doing it this way, but I'm one of those people, if you choose to do something, you kind of go all in. So I went for it. I went hardcore anti-inflammatory. I went to Whole Foods. I got two days worth of groceries, according to some cookbook recipe blog that I was going to follow. And it was $80 worth of groceries for two days.

[06:45] Greer: 
Yeah.

[06:46] Kristen: 
And it wasn't even the greatest tasting stuff, let's be honest. Please never make a grape and parsley smoothie for breakfast. It will make you cry. It was awful. Don't try raw turnips for breakfast. As nutritionally interesting as they may be, they suck for breakfast. Anyway, I just went for it. I was going to dive in and I cried on day two when I had the terrible smoothie and I thought, I can't do this. But I was committed to at least six months of really hardcore anti-inflammatory eating and in a certain way that would up my vegetable intake in particular. So there were sort of categories of vegetables like sulfuric vegetables, leafy green vegetables, and then the colorful kind of vegetables, including fruits. So it wasn't anti sugar, because a fruit has sugar, but it was very much a vegetable forward, farm to table kind of meat scenario. So wild caught to farm raised, grass fed kind of meat sources, protein sources, did not include eggs for a while. And I will tell you that within a couple of weeks, my now husband, we were dating at the time, he said, your skin looks phenomenal. Like, you just look radiant. And it was true. This sort of habit of eating for a few weeks really just was transformative in certain ways I didn't expect. Does it sort of cure everything in your body perfectly? Not necessarily. But I was shocked by how much I could see a change in only a few weeks and then the months that followed. The sort of benefits did continue in a way. Not always visibly, but it was an enlightening experience.

[08:35] Greer: 
Yeah, I remember witnessing that change and seeing all the energy you had when you started eating that way. I also, and listening to you brings us straight back, remember my reaction of, wait, vegetables have categories? I mean, you threw out a whole bunch of words casually that even at the time, I just thought, I have never heard these words before. I didn't know that food was this complicated. And it doesn't necessarily need to be that complicated, but maybe you could do kind of a big picture for us on inflammation and what an anti-inflammatory diet is and why anyone should care.

[09:14] Kristen: 
Yeah, so agreed. I didn't know those words either, and they just sort of became part of my lexicon. But an anti-inflammatory diet is aiming to reduce natural reactions your body might have to foods you eat. So when you eat anything, your cortisol might spike and other reactions happen in your body depending on what you've ingested. So we might know, for instance, kind of loosely in our brains that eating a McDonald's hamburger isn't doing us any favors. But we may not really know what our body is reacting to when we eat a trans fat or something that's not, say, a natural fat that has not kind of gone through unnatural processes or become rancid in any way while cooking. Fats have different temperatures that you're supposed to use for cooking or things like that. So whenever you cook a food, you change it chemically and those changes will impact what it does in your body. And even natural foods have sort of reactions in your body that you might not expect. For instance, I didn't realize that I was so sensitive to certain kinds of food. I love bell peppers. I could just eat bell peppers all Sunday long and be a happy clam. And if you add some hummus, all the better. But unfortunately, they belong to a category of foods called nightshades. And nightshades can cause reactions in some people, they can cause some extra inflammation. Your body is like, oh no, I don't know what to do with this. Let me kind of have a freak out moment. Sort of like we might get stressed and have a few ten minutes where your body might have a stress reaction to a food that, although natural or unnatural, isn't great for you. So nightshades are one category that I have to be a little more kind of particular about. Some people have no problem, they could eat bell peppers again all Sunday long and be happy. I actually do have an issue if I eat too many bell peppers, or really, I probably should avoid them almost all the time, but occasionally I'll let them slip in because they have other health benefits. So again, it's not saying foods are evil or not evil, or you should always avoid X and never indulge, but more that you should be conscious that some foods, even healthy foods, can cause reactions you don't want in your body. Stress your body out, put it in a stressed situation, and then your body, in various ways might react. How do you know it's reacting? You might feel tired, you might have some brain fog, you might want to fall asleep after you eat, or you might have skin reactions. That's sort of where I could really tell when foods were causing some issue in me, especially after I ate in a way that my body, I just never had breakouts anymore. I cut out things like dairy and I just had no more weird breakouts that I couldn't explain, which I never linked to diet. And yet it seems so clear to me now, oh, that was linked to inflammation from diet and hormone changes in the female body. But nightshades are one of those kind of funky, tricky, healthy, but unhealthy things for me where I might have a reaction. So I have to kind of limit certain delightful foods, but you'd be surprised what you can add back and which foods might cause you to react and when they might cause you to react. So yes, nightshades are these kind of sneakier categories of vegetables. But yeah, there's all sorts of different categories. You don't have to be sort of hyper vigilant about knowing them all, just getting a general rough sense. The diet I started on had this sort of rough categorization, sort of leafy greens. I feel like that's somewhat self explanatory. Anything kind of leafy and green put it in that category. Sulfuric vegetables would have been all of your sort of onions, your mushrooms, anything that has a sulfur content, like a broccoli has that. And then anything bright and colorful like a berry or a tomato or something like that, a pepper, you'd put it in the color category. So I thought the three categories for me worked really well to simplify thinking about things and then being kind of conscious of trying to up, roughly up in sort of equal measures, the quantity of each of those categories. Every day, roughly at the time I was eating three cups of each, which oh, my gosh, three cups of leafy greens every day. It's a lot of eating. You have to eat a lot to get that done.

[13:31] Greer: 
Yeah, it's a lot of chewing, but it's not really very many calories. So it's a slow process for me because I am a slow chewer. There is so much in what you just said. One thing that's really jumping out at me is the way you learned to listen to your body. It's not necessarily a skill that you had really perfected going into that, and it's really bringing back memories of I remember being a teenager, and after dinner almost every night, I would have a stomachache. And it just never occurred to me that that was not normal, not healthy. Maybe something to question. I also think back to college when I just very regularly, like, hours every day, had a real strong sense of acidity in my stomach. And now I look back and think, well, no wonder. I mean, all the caffeine I was drinking, all the coffee, all the poor choices I was making about food, I was just consuming a whole bunch of sugar that I didn't need, and I was not yet even aware of the concept of inflammation or the idea that you could enlist food to help you. So it's just funny to me to look back on now. There were all these red flags that I completely missed because I never even second guessed it or thought, oh, maybe I shouldn't feel this way all the time.

[14:55] Kristen: 
Oh, I know. No, I had a whole skincare routine about avoiding acne, and all I needed to do was eat different foods to avoid acne.

[15:05] Greer: 
The other thing that I loved in what you were just reflecting on was it's not just about or primarily about avoiding certain types of foods. It's also very much about going for those colorful vegetables, those colorful fruits, the berries. There's so many things that have omega three fatty acids that can be so good for you. And I'm thinking, about things like walnuts or salmon or chia seeds in there, and it's enlisting the properties of those foods. And to me, that concept was very freeing because I think when I started following your lead on the anti inflammatory diet later in life, it just felt overwhelming to be avoiding so many things. So thinking about the positive, what I'm adding in, was so helpful.

[15:57] Kristen: 
No, I 100% agree. I think, especially in the United States at least, it's very challenging to try an anti-inflammatory diet because so much of what we eat is very inflammatory. In other countries, it seems like, at least in European countries, and I would say also South American countries, just the different kind of quality of food. It changes the way you might approach a diet like this or your diet in general. So I wouldn't want to speak to those countries. But you're right to say enlisting food is a helpful way of thinking about it. Food is my ally, not necessarily my enemy, but I will say it's not a cakewalk. And for anyone trying something like this, it's okay to be overwhelmed the first days, weeks into trying this out. It's not easy. And not everyone gets what you're doing. Just the meal prep alone, trying to plan on your own especially, can be very daunting.

[16:56] Greer: 
Yeah, I spend a lot more time in the kitchen listening to podcasts than I've ever spent in my entire life because I need to avoid processed foods. And so that means every weekend I'm prepping a lot of food for the week ahead. And I think I just had to make a decision to see it as a hobby and to enjoy it and not let myself get bogged down in the sense of it just being such a time suck.

[17:23] Kristen: 
Yeah, I mean, it takes time. The more people in your life who eat this way, the easier it is. A, you can visit them and that's great, and they'll have foods that you can eat, but if you have someone in your immediate household eating this way, it's incredibly helpful for morale and also, obviously, the prep time or having other hands to help you. My dad actually has very severe allergies, so he doesn't have the same diet I do or sort of loosely try to follow, but the restrictions that he has in certain ways, I've been sort of helping the parents understand what is all this about and why this can help my father. And it really helps him just like tremendously helps him to be on a version of a diet that avoids certain things and yet can also benefit from others. So I would say anyone in your immediate household that you can rope into it or help, there's more benefits than costs, the easier it becomes.

[18:23] Greer: 
Oh, definitely. So it sounded like you were very rigorous at the beginning, and that might be a little bit intimidating. What was your trajectory like and how do you eat now?

[18:35] Kristen: 
Yeah, I eat differently now. Initially, again, I went on this, like, hardcore. It was every meal. If I'm going to do something, let's go all in. So I went all in, and I did see great results in a certain way, but it's not a miracle. Going back to doctors and chatting about sort of results kind of led me to think, okay, I think I can see clear benefits to this way of eating, but it's not a perfect system. It's not going to make your body be a machine that never breaks down. We're not Cartesian here, and that's fine. So I might want to change the way I eat again and be a little less rigorous and try maybe a few foods that I've been strictly avoiding, one of those being eggs. Eggs are wonderful. I eat eggs almost every day. I love them. I know more about them now, and if there's ever a problem with them, I can change it up or whatnot. But I would say now I eat in a much more flexible way and probably a little more flexibly than I should at certain times. For instance, if I see my skin break out somewhere, I'm like, Oops, I know that's me, or I know that's me, and some hormones of the month having a moment. So I think that it depends on who you are as to how strict you need to be. But I would say as a philosophy of eating, it's still very much present. And in the background, I will tell you I'm not eating three cups of each kinds of food every day. Would my skin benefit? Sure. Do I have the discipline right now with all that life throws at me, to be that rigorous? No, I don't. So at the moment, I would say the philosophy of eating is generally a healthy protein, cooked well, whatever that means for the protein. And then I would say vegetables, like green leafy vegetables. So I always have a box of mixed greens and spinach on hand. I can tolerate certain kinds of night shades. Tomatoes are friendly as long as they're not canned. Canned tomatoes seem to change the acidity of the tomato, and then I react badly. So if I get little fresh tomatoes, I can have a few on a salad. I love it. I love the tomato. I wish I could eat more of them, but I just kind of eat them in very moderated portions. So I would say, like a salad and a protein are kind of our go to meals in our house. We eat grains and carbs, very limitedly, even like a sweet potato. We eat with moderation, and that would be kind of the default way I eat. And occasionally I do cheat more than I ever used to. I kind of let myself do that. And it depends on what your needs are, if that's a good idea for your body or not.

[21:19] Greer: 
I love that concept of being in dialogue with your body throughout the process and in an ongoing way. Because for something like this, where it's not that you're allergic to a food and 100% have to avoid it so that nothing catastrophic happens, it's more like you have these sensitivities that you're learning about and becoming more aware of and how foods impact you might change over time based on environmental factors, stress, how much rest you got. And so you can kind of go back and forth and be a little bit more flexible. And it must be hard because it's not black and white, there are shades of gray that you're dealing with. But it just illustrates so wonderfully the process of listening to your body and taking that feedback and then moving forward so that you can really be your most energetic self. I had a real run in with that this winter because I went on an anti-inflammatory diet two years ago when I was facing up to all of my symptoms of endometriosis and it was really severe pain and just a big constellation of symptoms, not just related to severe period cramps, but kind of my whole body. And I went into that really rigorous mode like you did for about six months. And then I just had lost too much weight too quickly. It didn't feel sustainable. Also, Christmas was coming and so I started branching out a little bit because it was Christmas and I really wanted to eat some of my favorite holiday foods. And after that, I just didn't totally revert again. But something that really helped me was my husband and I bought into a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture. It's where you get a bundle of food from a local farm. And so once a week we pick up a bag of food from the farm. And so you're eating seasonally, you're eating very fresh produce. It is very vegetable forward, as you were describing. So for me, that just sort of almost created a default situation of eating very anti-inflammatory foods for six months of the year. But then it was winter and so this past winter I had a really rough go and I was just completely exhausted all the time and would come home from work and would go straight to bed. And then my husband would come up to the bedroom about like 08:00 at night and say, are we going to eat dinner? And I would say, I'll eat something if you make it, but I'm not getting out of this bed, I'm exhausted. And it was just bleak and my moods were all over the place. I was really down. And then what I realized over time is that there was stuff going on. I was stressed at work. Eventually that winter got diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, so that was definitely a factor. But I was not being my own best ally with food because I was eating all these nightshades this winter and wasn't even thinking about it. In my head, it was, oh, I'm eating lots of vegetables. That's great. And they were vegetables that it makes sense to eat in the winter. I mean, potatoes, I love potatoes. It makes sense to eat potatoes in the winter. And I would get a sleeve of colorful bell peppers every week at the grocery store thinking, well, that's my vitamin C. That's great. And tomatoes and eggplant. And I'd be eating these things, not even thinking about it. And then one day, it was just kind of an epiphany, and I said, maybe I need to not eat the nightshades. I took a week off from eating nightshades, and I immediately felt significantly better, had a lot more energy, mood was better, and, oh, I didn't even talk--so I feel like people need to talk about poop a lot more than we do as a society. That whole winter, I'd been having really loose stool, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. And it was the nightshades. Like, as soon as I cut out the nightshades, my stool just really firmed up, and I was like, Wait. Whoa. So clear. I feel like my body was screaming at me all winter, stop with the nightshades. And it took me a good four months to get the message.

[25:51] Kristen: 
Yeah. Oh, man. I don't identify perfectly with you, but I get what you're saying so much, and it's funny. Some of those vegetables that yeah, seem totally fine, your body may not do well with, or you have to really be kind of more conscious of how to eat them. Like I said, canned tomatoes and I never are going to be friends again. Will I occasionally allow some canned tomato in? Yes, but very carefully. But for instance, you and I used to eat some sort of eggplant dish in our apartment. Eggplants are a nightshade, and I don't get along with them at all, so I will only very rarely indulge in something like baba ganoush. That's a delicious Mediterranean eggplant based dish. But I just know that eggplants and I are not going to have a good day. Never. We never do. And it's unfortunate, but I'll live with it. You just have to kind of be aware of it. And like you said, stacking nightshade on nightshade really can kind of be a major downfall, where if you eat them just a little bit every four days, you might not have any problem. So I think it's really, like you said, a dialogue, see how your body's doing. It can be really challenging, though, to kind of have that dialogue, because it might take you being a bit stricter and saying, let me get out of the inflammatory modes that I'm maybe causing in my body, and then see how I do with individual foods and see how much we can be friends or how much we need to kind of have a distant wave, like see each other for two months instead of every day. There are certain foods that act sort of like estrogens in your body, for example, they're called phytoestrogens. Soy is one of those I have to be kind of careful around. I don't think you have to be so crazy. I used to avoid soy lecithin. I don't know if I'm even saying that right. I only read it. It's in everything. You read it and it's in every label, even in tea bags. Go figure. Like an herbal tea will have soy lecithin as sort of part of its ingredient list. That one is less a problem. But I am more conscious of soy. I avoid dairy in general. I do really well avoiding dairy. I don't know if that's because of hormones and things added to our dairy products on like, a grocery store shelf. I don't really drink fresh milk from a goat or a cow, so I can't speak to that. But I do much better if I very much limit or avoid dairy. So other things kind of you just have to really learn about your body and try out a very different way of eating to see if it helps you. And I would wager it helps you in some way.

[28:30] Greer: 
Yeah, it's so personal. But like you, I avoid dairy. I haven't 100% completely sworn off dairy for the rest of time because I'm worried that I might become lactose intolerant. And then if I needed dairy at some point or if it cropped up and I couldn't avoid it, I wouldn't want to have that kind of bad reaction. So I would say once every couple of weeks I enjoy a little sprinkle of cheese on top of something I'm eating. Or maybe I'll have a little small scoop of ice cream and just kind of keep it on the horizon. But because it is so personal, what works well for one person versus another, and because it can be really overwhelming to go whole hog, what would be just a very basic way for someone to dip their toe in the water of anti-inflammatory eating?

[29:21] Kristen: 
Yeah, I think the easiest way is the Whole 30 movement. I think that movement, it challenges you to eat whole foods for 30 days, essentially cut out processed foods, cook foods, eat vegetables that are whole vegetables and whole protein sources. I think that's a great thing. It limits sugar, so that'll knock down inflammation in our body pretty quickly. And it's a 30 day thing, right? It's a little challenge. I think most people respond really well to like a month worth of trying something out. And I also think that there's enough support online, there are recipe blogs. It makes it a really approachable way to try a relatively anti-inflammatory pattern of eating without getting super overwhelmed by it.

[30:05] Greer: 
Yeah, I like that idea that there are just a few categories that you could focus on instead of becoming an expert on how to categorize your vegetables.

[30:15] Kristen: 
Yes.

[30:15] Greer: 
If you could maybe just significantly reduce your sugar, think about your relationship with dairy, consider nightshades. I mean, just a couple of categories might be a good place to start instead of trying to do something really all consuming.

[30:32] Kristen: 
Yes, and I think avoiding, I think it's fine if you want to try Paleo or Keto. I would say generally I eat a version of Paleo, like something like Paleo, but I don't think you have to be so hardcore. There are other kind of cool blogs online you could find that advocate some version of something like those diets. Avoid the things that say, I want to lose 50 pounds in x short amount of time. That to me, sort of screams unrealistic diet goal. What are you doing to your body? I would say in general, follow the ones that seem to say whole foods are good for you, vegetables are really good, protein sources matter. And avoid processed foods and sugars to a larger degree. That'll help you out more than anything. And again, try it for 30 days. Set something realistic, even if it's a week. Try it for a week. Two is better, but even one could be a really good place to start. You don't have to say six months. You and I both did something crazy. Like six months was what we started with. And that's trickier, because you start hitting birthdays milestones, going out to dinner or any social event starts to feel horrible because you feel like the pariah who can't eat anything. It can be very unpleasant or difficult. So something realistic is important.

[31:51] Greer: 
Can you please talk more about that kind of social aspect of things? Because food is so social and communal, and I think it's one thing for a person to say just individually, oh, these are the foods I want to eat, and I think I want to try that. But it's a whole nother ballgame about how that affects how you relate socially and maybe other people's commentary on the choices you're making.

[32:18] Kristen: 
Oh, man, it's hard. I wish I had an easier answer than that's the hardest part. Or it was for me, just gosh, everyone eating something I couldn't have was awful. Then them asking questions about why are you doing this? Was another layer of what do I want to explain or not want to explain to somebody. And then the fact that at the time, none of my friends ate the way I was eating, so I just felt different and not in an easy way. That just was not pleasant. I hate to say this, but when you started eating this way, it made me feel so much better. I was like, yes, I have a friend, I have an ally. There's someone like me who's also noticing there's benefits and costs to eating different ways. So gosh, I wish I could have the ease of having friends who ate this way in certain kind of larger social scenarios. For instance, like a holiday dinner. It would be so much easier if everyone was like you and kind of ate the same way. I don't know. Apart from saying it's okay to feel unhappy or dissatisfied with your social engagements in certain ways when you're doing one of these diets or trying to eat in a certain way. I guess what makes it slightly better is if you can find something that you would really enjoy and bring it with you to the gathering that you either can't avoid or absolutely want to go to, but are just knowing that dessert time at Thanksgiving will be terrible if you don't have a dessert, so you have to bring your own. Is it great? No. But is it great that you have to do this extra step? No, it's not great. But will you feel better bringing something that you know you'll enjoy and you can eat at this gathering and you'll feel less strange and actually enjoy people and not resent them for not eating like you? It's worth it. It's worth the extra time to bring that item. So gosh. Other than sort of encouraging you and telling you you can be an advocate to your friends. I wish I had better words, but I felt like that was the hardest stuff that I went through emotionally, I think, with the diet, apart from like panicking day two and crying about grapes and parsley. Don't mix. Please don't do it.

[34:31] Greer: 
I love that strategy of kind of potluck style, bringing something that you know you can eat and maybe will be enticing to other people and maybe they'll get interested in it. I think I've had to develop a lot of strategies too, because when I started the anti-inflammatory diet, it was in the depths of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I didn't have to worry about eating with other people. I was not sharing meals with other people. I was not leaving my place. Then when it became more safe to mingle with people again, when I got vaccinated and there were dinner parties again or lunch meetings at work, it was definitely a new ballgame. And trying to develop some strategies around what do I communicate, because I couldn't possibly give someone the whole list and philosophy of things that I'm limiting. And when I choose to indulge in those things versus when I avoid them, it would just be a lot to navigate. So I do sometimes bring my own food or food to share to an event that I know that I can be confident eating and invite people in to eat that healthy food too. That works for me. I also take more social initiative than I used to. Maybe, so, for example, if I'm going out to eat with a group of people, I might be the person to suggest the restaurant because I might have researched some menus ahead of time, and I wanted to be confident that there was something that I could joyfully eat while I was there. Instead of feeling like I just needed to avoid a lot of bad things or things that are troublesome for me, I should say. I think I also became more inclined to host gatherings at my house and to make all the food that I was going to serve be food that I could eat joyfully because I didn't want to put myself in a situation where I make something and then don't get to enjoy it myself. So being able to sort of overhaul the party menu and make it all stuff that's friendly to me has been really great, too. I think also, it can be good to give yourself a break sometimes and know that you can make a choice to enjoy something that maybe isn't going to be the most helpful thing for your body, but might kind of meet a mental or emotional need as well. And I think the last thing I do is create a lot of very flexible meals with a lot of mix and match elements so anyone present can choose what they want. So I do a lot of grain bowls or burrito bowls where there's a lot of different elements and everyone can avoid what they need to avoid. So I might put taco meat where I made my own taco seasoning so it wouldn't have nightshades in it. But then I'm being careful. Like, I'm not going to put dairy on mine, I'm not going to put tomatoes on mine. I'll load it up with chopped lettuce, I'll load it up with guacamole. And that kind of choice and flexibility has been really helpful, too.

[37:52] Kristen: 
No, I love everything that you said. I want to reiterate, if you can choose your own destination for a social gathering, research the menu ahead of time and like you said, find something you can eat joyfully, it can be a challenge, but if you do it ahead of time, I think it takes some of the sting out of the moment, especially, and you don't have to worry as much. I also love what you said about choosing your battles. Sometimes you can indulge for a mental reason and it's okay. Also, sometimes you can indulge in a clever way. So, for instance, maybe you really are craving that sweet treat and you're okay with adding some sugar, but you know that Ben & Jerry's dairy will always give you problems. As I have found out, Ben & Jerry's is just floated with preservatives or whatever is in it I don't do well with.

[38:40] Greer: 
But as much as we love it.

[38:42] Kristen: 
I know, but there are some really great coconut flavored coconut milk ice creams. Luna & Larry, I'll just do a shout out. They are phenomenal, or at least they used to be. I don't eat as much of them anymore. But there are ways you can find non dairy items that might kind of satisfy the sweet tooth indulgent moment. And you can just go for it. Just do it and say, I'm not going to do this every day, but I'm almost half eating in my diet zone and not going insane, but I'm really satisfying the emotional need to go for this. So I think as much as one can do that and do it a little smart, like in a smarter way, that's great. Like you said, kind of making a meal occasion where you can flex with your choices is amazing. I haven't started hosting as much, but that sounds like a great goal for anyone if you can host something awesome. And I would also say, just know it's okay to kind of be where you are in this if it's sort of I'm trying this way of eating and it's frustrating and hard and you're upset about it and you need to vent, that's okay. And other days it might be easier and you might actually find a lot more people doing some version of a diet that you're actually helping them. I remember I was talking to a friend once, I used to kind of social dance at certain events, and I happened to know something about vitamins at the time. And I was like, oh, you're probably struggling with fat soluble vitamins. And this person was just floored. They're like, I have this autoimmune condition and I really struggle to get that. And I said, yeah, have you tried this sort of way of eating? And they were just kind of taken aback that someone knew enough and cared enough to kind of talk to them about this. And I thought, it's so crazy that this is such a basic part of our being. We have to eat and we don't know as much about it as I think maybe we should. Or we've gotten into these strange patterns of eating such processed food that we are no longer aware of kind of what food is and what it's doing in our bodies.

[40:46] Greer: 
Oh, yeah, just reading the ingredients list can be really overwhelming in the grocery store sometimes I'm looking for those non dairy treats, and I realize that some of them have a bunch of potato starch in them, and that's not going to do well for my nightshade problems. I spend so much more time in the grocery store now reading labels.

[41:06] Kristen: 
Oh, I know. And some of the diety foods are like the gluten free foods are just so sneaky. They're not really that great for you. I would say the avocado is probably the most versatile, delightful fruit you can encounter. Almost no sugar. It's just a healthy fat, basically. And it can go savory. You can put salt on it and it's delicious. Put it into guacamole. Phenomenal. Or if you're feeling adventurous, put it with cacao powder and a little bit of like maple syrup. And in a food processor, you're going to get the most decadent mousse you've ever had. Seasoned to taste, i.e. as much chocolate and sugar as you can tolerate and are willing to do, but man, is that delicious.

[41:49] Greer: 
That really is a delicious dessert. I think you've made that for me and it's yummy. Yeah. I feel the need to acknowledge right here that my grocery bill definitely got more expensive when I started being more intentional about what I ate. And I don't really have any suggestions to mitigate that, but it was definitely something that I needed to start seeing as an investment in my health.

[42:13] Kristen: 
Yeah, I would say if you're worried about cost, I understand. And I would say the vegetables are your friends and a little bit of a challenge. It is a little more expensive to buy fresh produce, but sometimes you can really get away with certain things that you wouldn't think about. For instance, frozen produce can be a good option if the budget is so tight that like fresh broccoli versus the frozen broccoli is a big enough difference. There are things like the Dirty Dozen lists that you can look at. For instance, man, berries are really dirty if you don't buy organic, right? So if you're really trying to limit like pesticides and things, okay. It's awful to buy an organic berry on price point alone. Again, seasonal eating will help you with this, but so will a frozen food aisle. Frozen organic berries are much more affordable than fresh ones. So if you're really trying to keep the berries in your life but are struggling with your price point, there are some things you can try that will help you. You're right. It is just more expensive. It doesn't have to be as expensive as it was the first two days when I shopped just at Whole Foods and bought off a very specified list. Eat seasonally. Play with the frozen food aisle. Ask yourself what you can eat organic and what you can maybe try non organic. Sometimes things that are buried under the earth, especially if you're going to peel them, you might get away with not organic. That's okay. See how your body reacts. See what your budget can let you do. Choose protein sources that make the most sense for your budget and have the highest quality for the price point. I think everyone, for the most part, can afford really high quality eggs. If you can tolerate eggs, not everyone can. If you can, awesome protein source. Pay for the protein, right? It's a dozen eggs. And if you pay $6 I know it sucks when you look at the price of like $3 or $2 versus the six, but you're getting twelve servings of protein in a dozen. It is the cheapest way to eat a great protein if you get a well sourced egg. So I would say look at that and kind of weigh where you're getting your food from.

[44:29] Greer: 
That's so helpful to be able to maybe prioritize what you do spend more money on and what you can maybe be more price conscious about. That's really helpful. I'm wondering because all of this sounds like a big commitment. It's a financial commitment. It's a time commitment. It might involve some research looking for new recipes. What makes you feel like eating this way is worth it? Like, what are the tangible benefits where you just go, yeah, this is my lifestyle now?

[45:03] Kristen: 
Okay, so there's a whole bunch. Energy is one of them. You mentioned that before. You do just feel so much more energetic. If you've ever had the post lunch slump, post dinner slump, or your stomach felt upset, it's very likely that if you change your eating habits, you'll find a lot of relief, if not total relief from those feelings. And you will likely have more energy. It may take a week or two or even a month for your body to adjust. I would say it's not necessarily day one. You should feel more energy as time goes on. I would say also likely your skin, hair and nails will all appreciate the change. I can likely pinpoint when I'm going askew with my diet based on skin. So my skin tends to break out when I'm eating something I shouldn't be eating. And I likely know I'm doing it, but I've chosen to. So it's kind of a nice reminder ish nice is one word for it, but it's a reminder that my body is actually multifaceted and reacting to all sorts of things stress and diet and other hormones in kind of the normal flux of life. But diet has a huge part of that or plays a huge role. So I pay attention to those signs now instead of ignoring them or thinking I just need to apply a topical solution, when it's an internal solution, my body is asking for. Other benefits: you might notice improve sleep, improve sex drive, improve mood. I can definitely tell you if I am not eating well or trying a strange diet. Some diets don't work for some people, by the way. Certain forms of fasting. I think fasting is a cool technique. You just have to figure out what forms work for your body. And if you're a female bodied person, some fasting forms may or may not work well for you. Again, it's very variable. For me in particular, I don't do well fasting for 24 to 36 hours. I've tried those fasts. I can do them, but I get irritable and cold. My body doesn't react well necessarily. It's not really all that helpful. So occasionally you might try something like that. But be aware, like, your body might not always react to what other people's bodies react well to. Generally though, you should feel everything about your natural rhythms is doing better. You sleep better, you sleep longer, you sleep more deeply, you wake up feeling refreshed. You feel kind of natural energy throughout the day. You don't feel jittery. You may be avoiding caffeine at this point, so your jitters might disappear. You're limiting caffeine to, say, one cup of coffee, and then you switch to a lower caffeine source and that might really help you throughout the day. You don't feel cold. I used to feel cold all the time when I was restricting calories too much or eating weird carb calories, but mostly like hollow calories in a way. I would get cold frequently, especially in a cold climate, and now I don't have that problem. So you'll notice some of that as well.

[48:10] Greer: 
That's awesome. Yeah. For me it was a lot of eliminating just massive alarms that my body was sending off. So I would get hives. They seem to be somewhat correlated to stress, but not entirely so. But pretty much since heading down the anti-inflammatory rabbit hole, the hives don't happen anymore. So that's been wonderful. My asthma has been so much better since I switched to anti-inflammatory eating. My period pain is significantly less. It makes a huge difference for me, and I hope that other people experience that if they're struggling with symptoms of endometriosis too. For me, the energy level just went way up and that was really helpful. Mood massively improved. My mood massively improved my challenge with PMS. So I would get very moody right before my period. And I almost never experienced big mood swings right before my period anymore. It really leveled out my moods across the whole month in a very relieving way. And now I kind of know if I decide to have a couple of alcoholic beverages or if I have a big dessert late at night for fun, I almost can tell you for sure that it's going to leave me feeling moody the next day. So it's definitely kind of a calculation I have to do. Like, is my desire for this significant enough that I want to deal with being maybe low energy or sad or maybe closer to angry the next morning and make the decision based on that. So it's great that you can really enhance your life, but also if you can just sort of take care of some real health issues that you are having that's so good just through the three meals a day that you have to eat.

[50:24] Kristen: 
Oh, absolutely. And I would say even if you don't fully, some people, like you said, you feel very stable overall across your cycle. I would say healthy eating doesn't eliminate my PMS entirely. It really helps it, but it doesn't eliminate it. Some people online may tell you'll, never have PMS again, and I go, no, my breasts still gets sore. I still have a week of semi-bloating. Is it way less than it used to be? Yes. But do I still notice the PMS? I do. Unfortunately, it doesn't cure my PMS fully to eat perfectly healthy. I will also say my first part of my cycle, the day one and day two, those are my potential for usually just one set of Advil. Like kind of a one, knock it out the first set of cramps. When I first started the diet, I was going hardcore into avoiding NSAIDs, which are that's a blood thinner, that an Advil or an ibuprofen. That's what it does. So I tried to avoid that, but that left me curled up in a ball on a bed. So I think if you're in that position, it's okay to say this isn't working for me. Whatever I'm trying to do in the super health way, for whatever reason, it's not quite there, it's not quite working for me. And trying to find that medium zone of I don't avoid Advil anymore, I don't try to take it excessively at all. But if my period starts and I have a cramp that I want to take Advil, that's fine in my book. I'm not trying to take witch hazel capsules and ride it out and then I'm stuck on a bed. That just doesn't work for me. And if a blog or anything that you read makes you feel guilty or worse for doing some sort of adjustment because your body doesn't respond the way the blogger's body does, I would just tell you that's fine, go with what your body is telling you.

[52:27] Greer: 
Overall, I love how you just framed that because it can be really overwhelming reading articles about how you should eat and there almost becomes this moralistic component to it or this purity component to it. And that should not be the takeaway. It really should be about listening to your own body and that takes some time to do and figuring out what's going to work well for you and be sustainable for you. So that's so beautiful.

[52:57] Kristen: 
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. As much as you can make it a lifestyle, rather than I would say a fad, a competition or something like that, the better because I think it's more sustainable over time. And as you said, sometimes you just choose to do something different and that's fine. You may just choose in two days time to change back to your normal habits and be the better for it. But for mental reasons and all sorts of reasons, there are times where you might want to change your ways and that's totally normal and acceptable and great. Listening to your body and listening to your world is important.

[53:32] Greer: 
Do you have any last advice on the mental game that you have to play when you're convincing yourself to eat this way and then also the mental game around the fears that you have about what people think about you? I know for me I get the fear that people think that I'm a picky eater, which why do we even use that word? Like that's very judgmental. Or I get the fear of being an inconvenient dinner guest or something like that.

[54:03] Kristen: 
Gosh, yeah, the mental game is tough. So like you said, there's the social mental game and then the personal one, I think. So as much as you can rely on yourself and friends to help you through the personal one where they tell you, no, you're not strange, this sounds like it's helping you, someone to support you is incredibly helpful as you try this out on your own in the social world. I think most people actually are so used to, I would say strange now, but they're not strange, just different diets and different dietary needs. The world actually has become much more accepting than it was even ten years ago of people eating differently. So I would say trying to I guess if you didn't grow up that way and I did not. But saying, like, oh, no, this is just the way I eat in the way that's better for me, and just kind of letting it be what it is and not necessarily feeling like you have to explain every part of your diet or why you're doing something. You don't owe anybody an explanation necessarily. You just have to kind of state what your needs are and maybe help provide a few solutions, because occasionally your needs might be a little not typical for someone else in the world. So very much like we'd hope other people accommodate things that are not typical in their lives. I mean, just remember, you might be a little differently typical or not as typical in someone else's life. And trying to kind of just be present in who you are is not necessarily an inconvenience, but yeah, just sort of being comfortable with what you need and saying what you need when you need it is a good way of going forward. I don't think this is a very helpful answer. I wish I had something better. Do you have anything better here? How do you deal with this one?

[55:48] Greer: 
I think that's great. This is definitely one of my ongoing personal struggles because I think people, by and large, do want to be supportive and affirming. And so, if anything, I feel like I perplex people where I'll eat something sometimes, but not other times. I'll make a compromise here, but I won't make a compromise there. And it's something I'm definitely still growing into. I think an experience I had recently that really helped and maybe I'll leave it here is I was at a week long contradance camp for my summer vacation, and that was an incredible experience. And I was dancing so energetically every day, and someone commented on it like, you have amazing energy. You bring your whole self to every dance. And that felt great to hear because I knew what I've been through. And I could think back to this winter when I was crawling into bed right after work, and I knew that a big game changer for me was the way I'm intentional about what I eat. And so it's helpful for me to reflect on everything that this is doing for me and the way that it empowers me to show up in spaces in an energetic, happy way. And that has to be sort of my mental armor against my fears that other people are being critical, even if they're not saying anything. Or when people do say something, it just gives me a positive thought to fall back on.

[57:20] Kristen: 
Yeah, that's so true. I would also say you have to remember also if you see some people at a certain time and then several months later, you see them at another time, it's likely if you've had a difference in diet the first time, they may not understand the change the second time or constantly kind of ask you like, oh, do you eat anything? Like, what do you even eat these days? If you can have some patience, kind of explaining wherever you are in your journey and what you're eating and not eating, kind of when that is happening. Just remember, people don't have crystal balls into your life necessarily, and they don't see the evolution that's gradual over a month, several months, period of time for you. But I love that people noticed that and it became kind of like armor for you or sort of empowering for you. I hope diet is empowering for most people. I think it should be empowering. Not something that is just a burden on your life. It should be something that makes your life better. Eating well, making nutrients, something that helps your body is wonderful.

[58:22] Greer: 
That's beautiful.

[58:23] Kristen: 
Yeah. No, I hope it helps people. And again, just remember, there's no one size fits all for every person, every body, and even every food category. See what works for your body and what doesn't. And be honest with yourself. If it helps you try to do it, it's worth it in the long run.

[58:45] Greer: 
Such great advice. Thank you so much, Kristen.

[58:48] Kristen: 
You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

[58:56] Greer: 
If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at femammalpodcast@gmail.com that's femammalpodcast@gmail.com. You can also follow this podcast on Facebook. Just search for Femammal Podcast and you will find a community of people who are interested in living well in our bodies. And of course, I'd love for you to rate this podcast and leave a review wherever you download your podcasts. Until next time, be well.