89. Dismantling Diet Culture: Embracing Whole-Body Nutrition with Paula Carper

Embark on a transformative journey with us as Paula Carper, a registered dietitian with an expansive three-decade career, returns to the Radiant Mission Podcast to unpack the challenges and triumphs of women's health in the face of toxic diet culture. Throughout our conversation, we navigate the often treacherous waters of online health information, guiding you toward a functional approach to nutrition that honors your unique needs. With Paula's expertise, we cast a light on the evolution of dietary guidance, dissecting the discrepancies between outdated government advice and the latest research that champions a whole-body perspective.

As we unravel the threads of diet culture's pervasive marketing, prepare to redefine your relationship with health and self-perception. We explore the historical allure of weight loss trends, the corporate machinations behind them, and their impact on our hormonal and endocrine systems. Alongside Paula, we foster an awareness of the psychological battles waged against women's body image and advocate for a critical mindset shift. This new perspective celebrates holistic well-being and a nourishing lifestyle over the detrimental narratives that have long been the norm.

The narrative crescendos as we discuss the crucial role of protein in our diets, especially for women at varying life stages. Whether you're postpartum or facing the natural changes of aging, join us for an empowering exploration into health, muscle maintenance, and body acceptance, leaving you with actionable advice and a renewed sense of what it means to truly nourish your body.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Toomey and I'm here with my amazing co-host and sister, Rachel Smith. Hey everyone, we're on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through this crazy 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, very special guest with us today. Her name is Paula Carper, which might sound familiar to you. If you listen to episodes 18 and 19 of the podcast, you will have heard Paula. She is an amazing woman of God. She is a registered dietitian and a women's hormone expert. Paula, thank you for joining us again today.

Speaker 2: 1:19

Thank you for having me. This is so great. It's great to be back and to talk to you both, and I'm looking forward to it Very exciting.

Speaker 1: 1:28

You know when I was looking back on my previous notes, I realized we recorded together in 2022. So we are in 2024 now and it feels like that was yesterday In a lot of ways right.

Speaker 2: 1:44

I was actually mentioning it, I think I said it to my sister and I said I'm going back. And I said, but I think it's been almost two years.

Speaker 1: 1:54

It's crazy. You were episode what did I say? 18 and 19. Yeah, and now here we are. We're like at the 80s almost 90 episodes. It's crazy. I love it. So glad to be chatting with you again, rachel. I I'm sorry I cut you off before. What did you say before? I don't know? Okay, no worries. Well, paula, since it's been a hot minute since you've been here, I would love for you to just share a brief intro on what you do and how you help women.

Speaker 2: 2:31

Sure yeah, so I've been a dietitian for nearly three decades, which is really hard to say and fathom, especially after we've been talking you're way too young for that.

Speaker 2: 2:43

Especially after we've been talking about, like you know, two years ago, like it seems like yesterday, but um, but the last decade I've really been focused on women's health and what's funny about that is that even before that, you know, I saw so many more women than men throughout the years in my practice, because women seek out healthcare a lot more than men.

Speaker 2: 3:02

So that's been, you know, a big focus. And then in the last decade I've really focused on helping women with their hormone health, with their metabolic health, and that's something I've been doing, you know, from the beginning, because I did work with diabetics over the many years that I worked in healthcare, and so I help women and I educate women primarily that's a big part of what I do to really focus in and understand their unique design and I teach them how to optimize their hormone health, their metabolic health, especially for women over 40 as they're entering perimenopause, of course, as they're going into menopause. And I've worked with women, you know, at all different stages, but it's really. It's really the focus has been more on helping them optimize their nutrition, their lifestyle, the the things that really move the needle, and really getting back to like the roots of a lot of the problems that we're having today.

Speaker 1: 3:58

Yeah, that's awesome. And, for those that might not know, rachel has worked with Paula and Rachel and Paula are very good friends. Yes, paula's my friend too, but Rachel has worked with Paula on her protocol.

Speaker 2: 4:12

We live near each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:15

And I met Paula through our fellowship me and Holmes and so when I found out she was a dietitian like I have always had an interest in that. I don't know if you remember, but my first major in college was in dietetics and then when I had to take um organic chemistry, I was like, wow, I don't like this.

Speaker 2: 4:42

Change my major. Don't feel bad, because I wanted to as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:51

And you know what it really was. In my Dietetics 101 class, I remember my teacher teaching us the food pyramid from like the, who puts out the food pyramid? The USDA? Yeah who puts out the food pyramid? The usda, usda, yeah, and I'm like this doesn't sound anything like the health advice and that I read on my own and at the time, like internet access wasn't as prevalent as it is today, like we didn't have as extensive social media, but exactly I just remember the disconnect and what I was like learning in my college class about nutrition and what I was reading in books on my own, and I'm like I don't know if I would do well in a professional job doing this.

Speaker 1: 5:35

But that's one of the reasons like I was so inspired. Meeting you is I feel like you kind of push against some of the mainstream norms of nutrition and you have, you know, like your focus on women's hormone health, but also just this functional mentality of like the whole body and you are so researched in things that it's not just like whatever the government puts out there. That's the nutrition advice that you give to others, which is it's just kind of I don't know a contradictory. I mean, you would know better than me, but yeah it is.

Speaker 2: 6:20

Yeah, yeah, and we're going to I think we're going to get to that at some point in the conversation just some of the kind of reasons why. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Yeah, absolutely. It definitely is pretty backwards out there. And it's interesting, rachel, that you mentioned social media, and you know the internet, the access that we have more than ever. I think that many women can almost be so overwhelmed with all of the random advice that's out there. You know, there's all those joke reels now that I enjoy, where they'll say, oh, you're supposed to eat this, knock it out of someone's hand, or you're supposed to drink that, like. There's so many things now that are kind of diluting the important message around nutrition because people are nitpicking. Oh well, avocados, yeah, they're good for you, but they have too much fat, or whatever the case might be. And this goes into our conversation about toxic diet culture, which is what we're referring to it, as we did talk about this a little bit back in the day in 2022 when we met last time was that concept, but it's still here today, if not worse than ever.

Speaker 1: 7:38

So I kind of love, paula, for you to give us a little bit about that culture and what you know. What is really wrong with the way that women are dieting today and have been dieting over the past few decades? What?

Speaker 2: 7:51

are we missing.

Speaker 2: 7:53

So I'd like to say what's not wrong with it, because I think I think that's you know, that's really, you know it's it's a loaded question there there's a lot wrong with it. It's a very complex kind of situation. I think it comes back to a lot of the things that even you've been talking about in this latest series with the conversations that you've had in the last few episodes even and that has a lot to do with marketing, right, um, marketing is a big part of it. Of course there's science, um, but you know I don't know if you know this, but the science of nutrition is only a little bit over 100 years old, and so we're not dealing with as much information as some other disciplines have. And it's great. That we face is that it seems that everything in the medical, health and even the wellness industry a lot of times has been more in the line of a reductionist kind of mindset, where we're reducing or boiling everything down to one or two things and we're much more complex beings than anybody really wants to give us credit for, and I think that's really part of the big problem. The other side of it, of course, is that the marketing is why we have so much of this, even as I've been growing my own business and doing online marketing and that kind of thing, the things that you're told about how this works and watching what other people do, as you see, other people in the industry. Everybody's really trying to make a living. Everybody's trying to sell something and make money and there are ethical ways to do that and there are unethical ways to do that, and sometimes people in the marketing industry and in the businesses can really convince themselves that, you know, everybody really does need this product, or maybe they really believe the science that they're reading or the reductionist theory that they're kind of subscribing to, and so I think we just have to be really savvy.

Speaker 2: 10:03

But we also have to look at not just the science that we're seeing. We have to look at where's it coming from? Um, what, what's the context of it? All um are? Are we looking at isolated nutrients in some of this science? And and then, um, expecting that this is going to all play out in our complex bodies with all kinds of different foods, and then it's just going to work like magic. You know, there's there's a lot at play, there's a lot of variables, and what I have found is that, the more I look back, the more I look back to before. 200 years ago, particularly before, like the industrial revolution, before we had lots of manufactured foods. Back when people had, you know, lived on the farms, back when people bought their grocery, their groceries, their food, whatever you want to call it, locally. Those are, those are some factors.

Speaker 2: 10:56

So we're eating in ways that we're being told how to eat, we've been market marketed to about how to eat and nourish our bodies, but it's really not based on some of the fundamental things that for thousands of years, we've been doing, and so so I think that's one factor, and so it's taken that agency away from, from women in particular. It's we're the ones who get, who get to tell you how it is and what to do, and whatever you think or feel about your own body, it's not relevant, because we are the bearers of that. You know sacred information, right, that, that, that, that information that you need, and so that's one of the things that I've been trying to do differently, of course, and I know other practitioners are doing that and that is to help women understand and learn about how their body works. What are some of the major features of the design that we have and how to really evaluate and look at how we're doing these things. I think I remember one of the conversations early on that Rachel and I had.

Speaker 2: 12:06

It was really more about perspective than anything and it really helped her with that shift in that mindset that she really needed to be empowered to do the thing that she needed to do.

Speaker 2: 12:16

It wasn't so much me telling her every last thing that I've ever learned about foods and nutrition Right. And so I think I think the diet culture is busy telling us all the specific details of everything we need to do and how the formula has to be to get it right, to get that thing we really want. And it's really. It's more nuanced than that, but it's also, I think, been more intuitive throughout history, although throughout history I don't think people have been focused on dieting and weight loss in the ways that we do now, because previously we didn't have the abundance that we have now. Now we have the abundance plus these lifestyles of pretty much sloths, much sloths. You know we just we sit down all day and you know, look at a screen or whatever it is, but there there's definitely some, some huge factors that are at play. Um, but it's again plays into that agency issue that that that, being your own best advocate and knowing and understanding how your body's supposed to work, that there is a complete lack of that in the diet culture you brought up.

Speaker 1: 13:29

So many, so many, so many good points there. The thing that really let's all start at, kind of the beginning of what you were talking about and mentioning, which is this idea of these marketing tactics right, or I don't. What's the word that we the predatory marketing tactics of some businesses, because this is a business weight loss I have here. Anybody can Google weight loss industry revenue and the global weight loss market is in a robust growth and has been for a period of time now. It has reached 165.5 billion and is expected to surge to 399.3 billion by 2032.

Speaker 2: 14:22

Which means obesity isn't going anywhere. Yeah right 2032.

Speaker 1: 14:26

Which means obesity isn't going anywhere. Yeah Right, it's almost kind of I hate to use this reference, but it almost kind of reminds me of vaccines. The introduction and more and more and more and more and more shots has not equaled healthier human beings. It's actually equaled unhealthier more autoimmune disorders, more disease. And now look at this weight loss industry that we have. That's not helping people to actually be healthier. We are getting sicker and living more and more unhealthy lifestyles. Yeah Well, actually I'm sorry, Go ahead. I was just going to say, and like you mentioned the predatory marketing, like I recently saw marketing ads for different diet products for weight loss throughout the decades, and I think it was in like the 1940s or something, and it was an advertisement for sugar. Sugar was a diet food because it would make you. I don't remember the reasoning, but it was like a woman like eating a spoonful of sugar. It probably gave her energy so she could be more active.

Speaker 1: 15:42

Yes, something like that to be trim, and so what's just kind of interesting is how every decade has a different thing that is either bad or good, and it's all marketing. So, when it really comes down to it, what is the truth? Yeah, it's nothing that the marketing is selling to us because they're they're selling that stuff to us because the you know, big sugar or big corn or big dairy or whatever it is is pumping money into the market to get their products sold more and more, and it's all part of the machine, right, it's all part of that consumer machine. And this is why I'm so excited to talk to Paula about this, because Paula is here saying, y'all, god designed our bodies to function a certain way.

Speaker 1: 16:44

He designed our hormonal systems, our endocrine system, our nervous system. We have all of these different components, our organs, that everything works together and what foods fuel it, what foods crash it. Then you are empowered to live a healthier lifestyle and actually be nourished, versus follow all of these distractions, all of this marketing propaganda that keeps us in the matrix and keeps us buying, keeps us in the matrix and keeps us buying. I can't even tell you how many times I get ads on Instagram for those apps that are workout apps and it's, like you know, an AI image or cartoonish image of a woman walking and she's really overweight, and then they're like walk away the pounds and the little computer animated woman gets skinnier and skinnier and skinnier.

Speaker 1: 17:44

Right I get that?

Speaker 2: 17:46

Why are you giving me this?

Speaker 1: 17:47

ad first of all. But I can see how people get sucked into that kind of stuff because it's being marketed to, it's thrown in their face and then God forbid they click on one of those ads. Now, you're going to get more, and more and more, and you're just overwhelmed with all of this advertisement and it's all a distraction. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:10

Yeah, and it reinforces the narrative over and over and over again. I mean the women that I work with in their forties and above, like you can see, when they've been steeped in that diet culture, their entire lives, the ramifications, the mindset shifts that they have to make to kind of get out of that, and sometimes they can't. They've just believed something for so long they can't make the leap to believe something else. You know, so it's, it's, it's really it's detrimental and and I think, ultimately it's detrimental to our own psychology and our own health and how we perceive ourselves. And that's when you know like the enemy is, like getting the messages in and really like doing the work over years and years of time to the point where, like you can't hear anything else, you can't hear that there's, there's an alternative, you can't hear that there's a different way. And that's what's so unfortunate just watching women who will go back to the same thing over and over and over again when they don't see results fast enough.

Speaker 2: 19:15

And a lot of this really goes back to the idea of some of what I think we see in the world of dieting is really an issue of force. It's that we can actually force something to happen. This is very similar to the conversation you've been having about birth control. It's about control. It's about taking control and forcing something to happen, and all of the narrative around these, these tactics and strategies and these diets, really is about being able to force something to happen.

Speaker 2: 19:45

But our bodies just aren't designed to, um, to respond very well to force. They're, they're just, they're just not you know. So that's a really important fact to consider too is that what are you really understanding about your body so that you can then leverage the things that you have access to, the resources, the nutrition, the lifestyle you know, information and the habits around that to really support your body, so that your body's actually edified, your body's actually, like you know, doing what it is designed to do, so because you actually are giving it what it really needs, as opposed to this force of like restriction or this force of you know over exercising or the force of just like I'm going to do these things and manipulate this into happening and there's so much stress around that there's so much by the time you get to be a woman, you know 40 years old or over that it is detrimental to your health, like you start to really see the effects of it to your health.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Absolutely. There's an obsession over how we look right, are these earthly bodies that we have? And wanting it to look a certain way because of our culture and because of the way that society says this is what looks good, this is what both had babies. We both have, you know, nine and 10 or 11 month old babies right now. And this was something that I really had to learn and kind of reprogram my own brain after I started having babies is I kind of grew up in a society that was all about bounce back culture. You know, you got to bounce back, you got to get your old body back, and as soon as I was postpartum, I'm like, well, that doesn't make any sense to me. And you know, I started researching things about birth because of the bad experience I had the first time. And the more that I researched birth and the more that I learned about birth, the more I was able to actually accept my body for how it is now. And rather than trying to say, oh, I need to get my old self back, accepting that I'm not that old self anymore. I'm a new person now. I'm who I am. Now I don't need to look how I looked when I was 20. I'm not 20 anymore, you know. I'm in a new phase of my life, and that's okay.

Speaker 1: 22:18

And that's the thing that I wish more women would talk about and more women were promoting is, when you're postpartum, your priority should be taking care of your baby and nourishing yourself to nourish your baby, not dieting to be skinny because that's what looks good. That's not caring for yourself, that's caring about what other people think. You know to care about ourselves If we care about our health. Those two things aren't always the same, right? Because weight isn't always necessarily the best metric for our health, and that's a question I have for you. What are your thoughts on that? Is our weight the best way to tell us if we're healthy or not?

Speaker 2: 23:10

Yeah, that's a great question. So it's one data point and I think that you know again, it goes back to that reductionist way of looking at things. Weight has been something that's so heavily marketed in terms of dieting and we've equated a lower weight with health. And certainly, you know, being normal weight or close to normal weight is going to be important and a metric that's important and maybe even telling about your health. So so there is some validity to the idea that weight is an important metric, but what that weight is made of is much more important.

Speaker 2: 23:55

You know, until recent history, you know, people were very physically active for the most part in their daily lives and had a lot more muscle and maintained muscle over time. Also, we're living longer. So now we're seeing, you know, differences in like what happens as you age, especially in an environment that's so completely opposite of the way we were designed to live. You know that that's really, I think, a big factor. So when I, when I think about weight, I think that's, you know, the gravitational pull, you know, on an object like that's. That's really what we're kind of kind of measuring. So what does that really tell us about health? So we really have to look at things like you know what's your body shape? Where's your weight distributed? Um, you know, how much muscle mass do you have versus fat mass? Um, these are all things that we should be looking at and, you know, if you haven't followed Dr Gabrielle Lyon, you know she's been at the forefront of the muscle centric medicine movement.

Speaker 2: 25:02

These are things that the diet industry has really gotten us so far away from thinking about. It just makes a lot of logical sense to be thinking about. Well, how much muscle do I have compared to fat? Because once we hit a tipping point, we got problems, and this has to do with metabolic health. It impacts hormonal health, it impacts every aspect of your health, so it's really not the best single measure. It is only one data point for us.

Speaker 2: 25:32

So, if I could, in my practice I'm always encouraging women to do body composition if they have goals, if they're trying to do something. But one of the things you said just a few moments ago, rebecca, made me think about the fact that you were talking about postpartum, like what stage you were in and you weren't that person. You were a new person, and one of the things that I think we have the opportunity to do, especially now, with the information that we have and the resources that we have, is we have the ability to continue to build and grow, and so the perspective that I'm always looking to help people shift into is the what am I building, what am I becoming?

Speaker 1: 26:12

There, you go, you know, and if you have body goals, that's great.

Speaker 2: 26:15

I mean, there you go, you know, and, and if you're, if you have body goals, that's great. I mean, if you have, you know body, shape, body, look, goals, you know all that kind of stuff, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, um. But what we have to understand is that we really are. We've been fed this line by diet culture and it's all about like losing something, losing something, losing something. They never talk to us about what we're becoming and who we're becoming and what we're building.

Speaker 2: 26:44

But in reality, you know, just the fact of nourishing your body is an act of trying to build something and trying to keep something from breaking down. So when we start restricting and we start doing all this stuff, we're going to lose. We're not just going to lose fat. As a matter of fact, most of the time, if you're just dieting, you're going to lose muscle and fat, and you might lose more muscle than you will fat. So these are really important things to consider. So I'm always I'm always encouraging people to think about. We do this in every other aspect of our lives. We have careers, we have families, we have goals and we have things that we're building, but when it comes to our bodies, we're like I want to lose, I want to lose something, and it just seems crazy to me. It doesn't make any sense and we don't even know what we're losing when we're doing these things. So it comes at a cost.

Speaker 1: 27:31

So it comes at a cost, yeah, and it's more than just weight too, right, paula, because potentially you're creating other health problems inside of your body through some of these means. Right? If you're doing the HCG diet and starving yourself, you're not doing a service to any of your organs in that process. Absolutely, absolutely, go ahead, rae. Yeah, I was just going to say that something that I've always appreciated about your health advice of when you and I talk about it like we were recently having a conversation of me being in this postpartum period and breastfeeding and for whatever reason, I don't lose weight.

Speaker 1: 28:16

When I breastfeed I gain weight and I'm right there with you, rebecca of like it's totally been a paradigm shift for me mentally on accepting this body that I'm in and really just the stage that I'm in.

Speaker 1: 28:31

But there is this kind of internal, there is this internal struggle that is still frustrating, like when you don't even really recognize your body anymore and you kind of become just a mom with milk bags and and like nothing fits, like the pregnancy clothes don't fit and you know nothing else does, and so there's a struggle and I think probably you're right, that part, a big part of that is like what society puts on us and also just how we grew up. But either way, I shift my own mindset, that I'm committed to be there for my baby first and foremost, and I feel like I'm being pretty healthy. Yet I still like my body doesn't reflect health, like what you were saying, paula, about. Weight is a you know it's not the only and most important metric of health, but it is a data point. I feel like it can be a symptom of something else going on.

Speaker 2: 29:46

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 29:47

It's often a symptom.

Speaker 2: 29:48

Yeah, Right.

Speaker 1: 29:48

So, for instance, when I first started, you know, working with you a little bit when I was having health issues and fertility issues, and you helped me discover that I had estrogen dominance, and you hypothesized that that is what I had because of various symptoms, and one of the symptoms was weight gain. And then it turns out that I did have estrogen dominance. And the interesting thing is, when I did the paleo AIP diet which was not for weight loss, it is an autoimmune protocol, so it's for health I was losing a lot of weight on it, and it was kind of the first time I did a quote unquote diet that I wasn't doing for weight loss, but that was a effect of it. So, anyway, the point I was actually going to get back to, though, is in this postpartum period.

Speaker 1: 30:41

What I appreciated about your advice to me is kind of what you just said in a practical way of instead of focusing on taking anything away, because I'm a breastfeeding mom is focus on small steps that I can do, habits that I can add in, like drinking more, hydrating more, and you were the one who got me on starting my day with lemon water on an empty stomach, so it's like, start my day with that that's a health habit and try to walk every day, which I have been doing now. So it's not necessarily about just losing and taking away and putting the strain on our bodies, but instead adding in habits that are healthier. Like you've always said, just add some vegetables to your plate. Like you don't necessarily have to like cut a bunch of things out, just eat more vegetables. So I love that practicality of what can we add in that is nourishing to our bodies and that, like you said, builds us towards the person and the lifestyle that we want to have.

Speaker 2: 31:57

Yeah, well, and also in different stages and we've talked about this kind of stuff recently it's like in different stages you're going to have different goals. You know, being a new mother, whether you know it's for the first, second, third time, however many times, you know, when you're postpartum and you're nursing, the priority, the priority shift right. So nursing a baby to growth and health is a really high priority. So if we were to look at these things in context and really think about these things every time we went into a different life stage you know this, maybe this should be part of people's birth plan into their fourth trimester and beyond is is this idea that what are going to be the highest priorities here and how do I behave? What are the things I'm, I can do to make those things a priority? And then, all of a sudden, we filter this, this, this idea of what our bodies are doing and what's happening or what they look like, what they feel like, all that kind of stuff, through the lens of those, those goals and those priorities. And I think it's the same way for every other stage of life we're in. If we, if we can align with our goals and our priorities, make the, make those things work together, then we can say, for this, my body is great, Right, and so we don't have.

Speaker 2: 33:22

When we start to look at it in that context, you know you're not going out to the clubs in your skimpy dress and like trying to look perfect right At this stage of life that was maybe in your twenties, if you ever did that and and so what I think is that if you start to really think that, how could you ever have a negative perspective about your body? If you're thinking about these are the top priorities for me and my body right now, and then how are these things that I'm doing suiting that goal and helping me reach that goal? And then when you look at your body and you see your body and you have, maybe you know, inconsistencies in like looking at yourself and saying, is this me, does this look like me? You know, like this, I don't even look like myself anymore.

Speaker 2: 34:09

Whatever it is that's going on, you can at least come back to a reality check of like here's where I am, here's what my goals are, here's what I'm doing to align with those goals, and my body right now is perfect for that, right. What if we actually shifted that conversation that we're having in our heads and really started doing that. And we can do that in every stage of life, you know, because that's we do go through seasons and our, our bodies are meant to be doing different things, you know, and we can be very healthy and very youthful until a pretty good age with our modern, you know, technology and even with the resources we have. But the reality is that there are different stages and if we were actually to get our heads in the game like we do for other things, I think we could actually leave the negative thoughts behind and really only like edify ourselves, really only edify one another around this stuff.

Speaker 1: 35:13

Absolutely. I totally agree with that, paula, and that's such a great perspective. And, you know, when we're talking about being postpartum moms, we have to also remember how blessed we are to be in this position and going through this experience. Right, we have gone through something that the Lord has given us as a gift, and to then take that and be like, well, I hate this body that you have now given me because of what I went through. I feel like that's a smack in the face to our creator, honestly, because we're not appreciating how he created our stomachs to grow and stretch to fit a human being in there. And it's going to take time for that body to you know, for you to get comfortable with how your body is now after the fact. Right, because that's, it's changed, it's just different.

Speaker 1: 36:10

And I think that when we kind of step back and look at the full picture, just like we are when we're talking about nutrition, our mentality around, how we look, when we think about our creator, what is he thinking about, our thoughts about ourselves, that's something that I think about a lot, because we're just so in the depths of vanity as a culture that that's at least how I grew up in South Florida. You know, rachel and I grew up in South Florida. There is no. La is probably the only other place that could could rival where we grew up that everyone was. It was all about how you looked and you know how you looked in year round.

Speaker 1: 36:54

Exactly, and it was very. It was very toxic for both she and I growing up. Worse so for Rachel in many ways than it was bad for me too. But Rachel has her own testimony about her struggle with eating disorders and things of that nature. But that stuff, that's enemy stuff right there, focusing on what we look like versus focusing on the health aspect of it, on what we look like versus focusing on the health aspect of it.

Speaker 1: 37:26

And, rachel, you mentioned that part of your protocol in doing the paleo AIP diet. It was to help resolve your autoimmune disorders. But what's really interesting is I kind of learned on the path of pregnancy. There is a protocol diet out there called the Brewer's diet for pregnancy and it's similar-ish. There are carbs in that diet but the focus is on protein and how protein builds up our muscles and in turn also wards off other health issues from happening Anytime. I'm in all these birth groups right, because everybody on this podcast knows that I love birth stuff. How many episodes on birth now? But every group that I'm in, whenever there are women that have certain types of health issues that come along. That is the recommendation Follow the brewer's diet. Eat more protein, more electrolytes, more hydration. There are certain things that we go to and I believe that it really makes sense to what you teach, paula. So tell us a little bit about protein and how important it is in our lives.

Speaker 2: 38:40

Sure, yeah. So you know, we've had all these different diets that have been marketed over the last few decades and every every decade or so it kind of changes. You know, we got to have low carb, we got to have high protein, we got to have low fat, we got to, we got three macronutrients to deal with. And we get, we get all of them from, you know, simple, real foods that we eat. And so when, when we think about it, we have to think well, if I get rid of one, you know, or if I have so much of one, I might crowd out the others. We really have to think about balance and and I love protein I think protein is really great and we certainly need it, it is essential. But we have to think about it again in context, like, what are we really trying to accomplish? And so, when we think about growing children, um, you know there's a guy on uh, on Instagram, that I love to follow, steven Lynn. He's a dentist, I think he's from Australia and he is promoting, you know, a lot of animal based foods um, for children as they grow, because a lot of the nutrients that they need really come from those foods. And what's interesting is that, like a lot of things, as we get older, we need a lot of the same things we needed when we were growing, and so so what I see with protein is that it is a really essential nutrient for growth and repair of tissues. And when we learn that, when we start to understand that and then we start to understand that some of our even like body goals if we want to be more muscular, right that we're going to actually want to prioritize protein because we're going to, we're going to use that to, like, rebuild and remodel the tissues. But that means we also have to have the second factor that stimulates muscle protein synthesis, and that is lifting weights, using resistance to actually micro tear our muscles and then feed them, eat the right foods, eat that that protein food and actually rebuild that tissue so that we can grow those muscles. So it's the same thing happening with children when they're growing and developing.

Speaker 2: 40:42

But once we get adults, we we stopped thinking about, oh, we're not growing anymore, right, and often we just grow sideways, you know. So we really have to. We have to think about like, well, how do we, how do we stop that? And a lot of this really comes back to a lot of what we're dealing with in terms of the veganism sort of movement and the idea that plants are better, and you will not hear anything from me to say that plants aren't great. They are great. They have so many great nutrients, especially fiber and lots of vitamins. You know, there's just lots of things that we can get gained from plants and they're wonderful. But again, you know, when we're actually thinking about what's my goal, what am I trying to accomplish?

Speaker 2: 41:34

If we're trying to accomplish better hormone health, better metabolic health, or if we're trying to grow or develop in some way or repair, then we're going to need adequate protein. And one of the things that we have to understand is that plant protein is, or those proteins are, incomplete proteins. They don't have all of the correct amount of amino acids to stimulate those repair and development and building of muscles. So animal proteins are a high priority in my world and before the last couple of hundred years, before the last hundred years, it's mostly what people ate and if they only had plants, they could survive only on plants. That's wonderful, but survival is not the same thing as thriving, right? So if we want to thrive, if we want to have really robust metabolic and hormone health protein is going to be a big part of that, and that means that we're going to have balanced meals that incorporate a significant protein portion at each meal and when that brings that balance.

Speaker 1: 42:41

What do you recommend? I mean, obviously every person is going to be different, Paula, but as kind of a rule of thumb, what should the average woman look for at every meal when it comes to protein?

Speaker 2: 42:54

Yeah, I like, I like the 30 gram rule that I think a lot of people are using Um, because I what I see in practice is that a lot of women don't even come close to that. Oh yeah, in practice, like they're just kind of whether it's a snacky kind of meal or they kind of snack throughout the day, it's just not something they're prioritizing. Plus, a lot of them have really been affected and impacted by the veganism propaganda, and so there's a lot about that, where they start to think plants are better, plants are better. Again, plants are wonderful, but they're not everything. So, again, it's all about context, it's all about balance, it's all about trying to figure out, like, what my body really benefits from and what are my goals. So if somebody is looking to, you know, lose weight, or manage their weight better, or lose visceral fat, or whatever it is, then if they're saying you know, I think you know, plant-based diets are superior, because I've read that and I've learned that. Um, then the question is well, you know, is the science really supporting that, really supporting that? And then, in practice, what? How does that actually play out?

Speaker 2: 44:01

What we have seen, though, is that for younger women like you guys are younger than I am.

Speaker 2: 44:05

Um, if you're, if you're under 40, um, you can get away with more of the animal proteins and not, as I mean, sorry, more of the plant proteins and not as much of the animal proteins. Um, it's as we age and then when we're younger where we really need to have those things prioritized, because it's either development that's impacted or that aging, where we don't have the turnover and the um, the ability to really, um, build that muscle as easily. So we need more stimulus for for that muscle. So, um, so I would say like, if, if you're, if you're under 40, if you're over 40, 30 is kind of that general standard and you can actually do that with a protein portion of animal protein, usually with about three and a half ounces of cooked protein. So, once it's cooked, about three and a half ounces is going to get you to that 30 gram mark without having any other protein sources in your meal, which you will if you're having other foods, if you're not just eating a bunch of meat. Yeah, absolutely, so it's not a huge portion?

Speaker 1: 45:12

It's not. But when you actually start to track your macros you mentioned protein, fat and carbohydrates are your macros when you start to track those and I encourage women to do this as an exercise to see where you are, because you will find that you eat very little protein and very high fat and very high carb. And that was something I learned years ago when I went through kind of learning about macros that for me to get over 100 grams of protein was hard. It was work Like. It is not an easy thing because of how we just function as a society.

Speaker 1: 45:59

Protein is not at the center of most of our food and our meals, even though it seems like it might be. When you actually measure it out and see what a portion of protein is and you look at it that way, it's very different than how you know, because most people, if you think about breakfast for the average person it's mostly carbohydrates, and then maybe at lunch you have a little bit of protein if you have lunch meat and then maybe you have an actual piece of meat for dinner. So how much protein did you actually have throughout that day? 50 grams. So I would encourage women to actually go through this exercise. Once you retrain your brain on this and you start to recognize what protein looks like, it becomes easier. Obviously but it's a great point In the beginning it can be a little confusing, yeah it can be and I think a lot of this really.

Speaker 2: 46:50

it has been informed by one the food guide pyramid. You know that's been around for a long time, which you know that that that's a big disaster. You know at the base of it was like breads and cereals, right, and again, you know not to vilify.

Speaker 1: 47:08

Are you telling me that cinnamon toast crunch is not part of a healthy?

Speaker 2: 47:11

breakfast Exactly, and so yeah, and so we talked about, you know, kellogg's and cereal and how that all came to be. Right, we have all these different things that we now understand. But these foods that have been marketed to us when we go into the grocery store just think about how the grocery store is when you go to the grocery store. If you are a person who's uninformed and you walk into a grocery store, there are so many foods that are prepared and packaged that you can eat in minutes, and a lot of them are grain based, right, or they're vegetables which a lot of people don't eat very many of, or fruits, and fruits are pretty easy because they're kind of packaged in their own little packaging.

Speaker 2: 47:53

So there's a lot more of these high carbohydrate foods that are really easy to eat and we tend to just you know one, we enjoy carbohydrates. I think it's it's part of our makeup to really enjoy them, you know, for kind of survival, um, for energy, that kind of thing, but um, but I think ultimately, what's happening is that people are, um, just eating what's there. And again this comes comes back to what are my goals, what am I trying to accomplish? And not just walking into a grocery store and just like buying what you feel like buying or what you think is good, without questioning, without evaluating that yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:34

Um and without evaluating it in the context of what your actual goals are and and what, what you know, what's really true about how your body is designed and how it works, so, um, so I think that's a part of it, um, and then, of course, like I mentioned, the food guide pyramid. But the other, the other is just, it's just that, um, you know again that that agenda that we've had, where it's like plants are so much better for you, um, and then people just subconsciously don't even realize a lot of times that you know, I've met tons of people who say they're vegetarian and they don't even eat vegetables. It's like pasta and bread all day long you know, so so again, a lot of people.

Speaker 2: 49:12

just there's a disconnect, and part of that is because we are disconnected from what real food is. You know, we buy everything at a grocery store, so so those are.

Speaker 2: 49:21

those are factoring into the psychology of how this actually really plays out you know, and it is one of the things that I see really commonly when it comes to protein is that because we've been doing this for so long, then what we will often see and I see this a lot, of course, with women that I work with is that stomach acid production is reduced, and so when they start to try to eat more protein, that becomes a huge problem for them. It's, it is a chore, it is difficult, and it's not just difficult to get it accomplished, it's difficult to actually, um, you know, digest the food and feel good still. So that's a that's a big factor.

Speaker 1: 50:00

That is super super interesting.

Speaker 1: 50:02

We are going to chew on that in our next episode with Paula. Paula is coming back to talk more with us. This has been super helpful. Paula, you are also going to provide a resource for our listeners. We will put that in the show notes, so be sure to check the show notes for that resource. Paula also has a program that is super awesome, that is, she has lots of programs and ways of working with her that are awesome, but I will throw her information in the show notes for anyone interested. Please go there and you'll get to know Paula and get her information. But, paula, thank you for kicking off this conversation today. More to come next week.

Speaker 1: 50:45

We're going to start by talking about that stomach microbiome and that gut. And, yeah, thank you for being here today. Thank you for having me Awesome and thank you so much for tuning in and for being on this journey with us, as always. If you'd like to follow along outside the podcast, join the mission on Instagram and Facebook at the Radiant Mission and you can also watch this video. Watch, listen, watch on YouTube to this audio at the Radiant Mission as well, on YouTube and today. We'd like to close with 1 Corinthians 6, verses 19 through 20. We'd like to close with first Corinthians six verses 19 through 20. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You are bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies, and we are wishing you a radiant week. We'll see you next time. Bye guys, bye everyone, bye.