The Liz Moody Podcast - The REAL Science of Eating Well: Cutting Through Social Media Confusion To Find YOUR Best Diet

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Michelle Shapiro, RD, discusses the best way to know the ideal diet for your body and clears up social media nutrition misinformation. What we’re paying too much attention to when it comes to our diet, and what we’re not paying enough attention to The best way to think about calories Exactly what to eat for more energy, ideal metabolic health, lessened anxiety, better gut health, and more How to know what to trust in the confusing world of social media nutrition How worried you should be about glyphosate, Diet Coke, artificial dyes, artificial flavors, aspartame and more The one thing NO one is talking about when it comes to seed oils Why elimination diets are doing more harm than good A functional RD’s secret to figuring out the root of YOUR health problems The one trend you should NOT do if you have a history of trauma A trick to get rid of bloat How much protein you should REALLY be eating And so much more For more from Michelle, you can find her on Instagram at @michelleshapirord or her website, www.michelleshapirord.com. You can find her podcast Quiet The Diet wherever you listen to podcasts. To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order my new book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  This episode is sponsored by: YNAB: go to www.YNAB.com/LizMoody to get one month free. BON CHARGE: visit boncharge.com and use promo code LIZMOODY to get 15% off, plus free shipping and a 12-month warranty. AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today.  Osmia Skincare: get 20% off your first order at osmiaskincare.com with code LIZMOODY. Great Lakes Wellness: use code LIZMOODY for 25% off your first purchase at greatlakeswellness.com. Previous episodes referred to in this episode: Optimizing Brain Health To Maximize Intelligence, Focus, & Memory with Jim Kwik 5 Science-Backed Habits Of The World’s Most Successful People What Everyone Gets Wrong About Self-Care & Burnout (+ What To Do Instead) with Dr. Pooja Lakshmin Secrets To Optimal Health: An Md’s Exact Plan For Inflammation, Supplements, Exercise, & Knowing What Actually Works The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and longtime journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're optimizing our brain health to maximize intelligence, learning the five habits of the world's most successful people, or discovering what everyone gets wrong about self-care and burnout and what to do instead. And yes, those are all real episodes and they are linked in the show notes if you want to listen. There is so much confusion on social media about how to eat, what's best for your body or your goals, the trend, the back and force, and the takedowns. I feel like every single time I scroll, one person has a study up on the screen that is proving something, and then two posts later, someone else has a study on the screen, completely debunking that first person's post. The very nature of social media means that people want to go viral. It means the algorithm is feeding us stuff. designed to be incendiary because that's what gets reaction and thus engagement, triggering it

to be sent out to more people. It is fair to say, not the best place to get into the nuances of how to nourish our bodies and achieve our goals. And it has made me so grateful to have a podcast where I can have on one of the world's leading experts in assessing this information. And we can have a sane science-backed, not at all sensationalist conversation about that topic. I am so excited to welcome Michelle Shapiro to the podcast. Michelle is a registered dietitian and certified functional nutritionist who has worked with thousands of clients to help them find full body healing. She hosts the podcast Quiet the Diet where she helps listeners sort through nutrition

confusion. And in this episode, we are going to cut through as much of that confusion as possible. We get into what we are paying too much attention to when it comes to our diet and what we are not paying enough attention to. The best way to think about calories. Exactly what to eat for energy, ideal metabolic health, lessened anxiety, better gut health, and more. How to know what to trust in the confusing world of social media nutrition. How worried you should be about glyphazate, diet Coke, artificial diets, artificial flavors, and more. The one thing that no one is talking about when it comes to seed oils, this is important. Why elimination diets are

are doing more harm than good. A functional RD secret to figuring out the root of your health problems. This is the actual tool that she uses in her practice, and she was generous enough to share it with all of us so that we can all use it at home and begin to feel better, begin to feel the way that we want to feel in our bodies. The one trend, this is a very popular trend, but you should not do it if you have a history of trauma,

a trick to get rid of bloat, how much protein you should really be eating. eating and so much more. We cover a lot in this episode, but I wanted to really take the time and dive into all of the confusion online so you could come away with a definitively clearer idea about what to eat. We would both love to hear your thoughts as you're listening, especially if you have any unlock. So definitely screenshot and tag us on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody and Michelle is at Michelle Shapiro R.D. Also, please, please share this one. with your mom, your dad, your aunt, your sister, your friends, your coworkers. It is the antidote to

all of the stress, all of the confusion on social media, and it will help people feel so much more empowered about their own diet and their own health. Michelle, welcome to the podcast. Liz, I am ecstatic to be sitting down with you today. I really am. You really bring that energy. It's lovely. I'm ecstatic too, and I'm ecstatic to start to get to the bottom of all of these questions that we all have about how to know what we should actually eat. So I want to kick us off with what is one thing that you think we're paying way too much attention to when it comes to our food and what to eat? And what's one thing that you don't think we're paying enough attention to? Yeah, I think we're getting really granular with how many grams of different like

carbohydrates or different protein. And we should be looking at what is the actual food we're eating. So focusing less on the portion sizes of things and more on the quality and the actual food that we're eating instead of saying this food has this many calories, I'm curious, what is the food that you're eating? And how is that going to affect your body? I was going to ask about calories later, but since you said it, what is your stance on calories? Some people are like, your body is a system and it's calories in versus calories out. And that's the only thing that's really going to matter at the end of the day. And then the other people are like calories don't matter at all. It's just about the food that you eat. What's your stance? The theme of our episode is always going to be,

of course, I'm in the middle of those two things. I think calories are a thing, but they're not the only thing. And what I mean by that is the calories in, calories out model. If we think of our body's like a car, calories in as the fuel in the fuel tank, calories out is when we burn that fuel. What we always want to ask is, is the car turned on? What's going on in the rest of the car? So calories and calories out will matter, but the actual way your body works is going to matter just as much, if not more. Okay, so bring the metaphor home for me. What means the car is turned on? Sure. So the car is turned on is, are you doing movement? Is your movement effective for you to burn calories efficiently? Do you have muscle mass? That would be turning the car on, let's say,

and then calories in depends on not only are you getting a fuel source, is it an efficient fuel source? Is it like dirty, old, have you gotten a fuel change? Those kind of things, which would influence how the whole system runs in the first place. It also occurs to me as you're using that metaphor that it being a fuel source means that it matters for energy, but maybe it doesn't matter for how clean your windshield is or whether your taillights are working. I don't know if I'm taking this metaphor way too far. But like, are calories mostly important in terms of energy? And maybe one of the reasons there's confusion around this is because there's other things we're eating for that aren't just energy. Yeah, I would definitely say so. I think that, yeah,

all the point of all food is that it does get converted into energy. And the question is how usable is the energy? And it's an interesting overall question, too, because I think of fat and carbs as being one type of very usable energy and protein has to be converted into all these other things. to be usable. There's quicker energies and slower energies. And when we think of calories, though, we think of what's the total amount of, I guess, fuel you would be getting. Yes, the point of eating is to get energy meaning ATP, which is going to fuel your mitochondria. Exactly. Which is the powerhouse of the cell, of course. But then also you're getting all of these other nutrients that are impacting your body in all of these other ways, which is what I was referencing. Like,

is your brain health or your hormonal health or your gut health are those sort of like the windshield wipers and all these other things we're trying to extract from our foods in addition to getting this energy to fuel ourselves. I think hormones and I think those other pieces are actually more like the engine. I think those are actually a huge piece of it because the components of our metabolism, actually metabolism means any process that helps you to convert things into energy. That's actually what metabolism means. We think it's like, how fast can we burn fat? It's really what's the process of converting into energy. Your hormones are going to impact that. Your gut's going impact that. Basically, every part of every organ system is going to be involved in the engine of the

car, the really important stuff. How much do the different foods that we eat and the food choices that we're making, how much do those things directly impact things like our gut health, our hormone health, these around our body's systemic issues? 100% directly affect. Every single time we eat a food, we are introducing a new chemical composition to the body and we're introducing work that the body has to do. because everything that we eat needs to be transformed. We don't just take food and then it leaves us as it came in. Every single part of food, every single toxin we take in even onto our skin has to be transformed inside of the body. A lot of it in the gut and the liver.

Okay, so is one of the points of confusion with talking about what the best thing to eat is online is that some people are saying, this food is so great for you, but maybe they're talking about your hormones and maybe somebody else is saying, this food is so great for you, but they're focusing on your metabolic health and maybe somebody else is talking about weight loss, but they're all just couching it in this general. Eat this. Don't eat this. They're almost always talking about weight loss, by the way. They're almost never talking about anything else. I think that's what people are really targeting. This is such a smart question. That's really the question we all have to be asking ourselves when we're looking at social media is what is the point of this piece of information and who is it being targeted to and is it

for me. I think that's what's really important. Oftentimes, what we see online is information specifically targeted for weight loss or a different category now that I'm seeing targeted for our relationship with food. But you can see two extremely opposing pieces of nutrition information that are scientifically backed because they're targeting different things. So yes, a strawberry, while it is high in fiber, can also be high in antioxidant compounds, can also be high in, you know, different nutrients like vitamin C or something like that. And those things, all have different effects on the body. I will say the good news is that if you target the body as a whole and you do things that are generally healthy, you get benefits from all those different

areas too. Can you explain something you just said, which is that two things can be scientifically backed and true at the same time, but they feel oppositional? And I feel like we see that all the time online right now. You have somebody stitching a video, disproving somebody, and then somebody stitches a video, disproving them, and it just feels on and on. But they all have that study behind them up on the screen. How can that be? Yeah, nutritional science is pretty rough, to be completely honest with you. It's a lot of observational studies, and it's really hard to observe humans and try to understand mechanisms through that. If I'm looking at studies, I want to understand the mechanism what happens inside the body as opposed to you eat strawberries and that impacts

your endothelial health and your blood vessel health. It's almost so narrow that a study can be so confounding that you can find one that shows the opposite, essentially, because these studies are actually very hard to conduct. Nutrition is a very challenging science. That's why I don't use nutritional studies to only inform recommendations. I have to use clients' physical experience as well. So knowing that, what's the first step to knowing whether to take in or dismiss a post like that we might see online? Yeah, so I would first experiment with self, especially if it's low-risk interventions, like lemon water is a really good example. Everyone's online. Like lemon water is nothing. lemon water or something, try it on yourself because it's low cost, low risk, and see how it feels

within you. I think also that people who are so evidence, I call them like the evidence-based bullies, the evidence-based bullies, see if they actually work with clients because there's really no greater nutritional science than a practitioner's work. I sit with clients for an hour, a week, for years. Do you know the science I can get from that? Like, this intervention's in place. What happens when we do that?

In my opinion, that's almost the gold standard of nutritional science is actually understanding what happens in someone's body. So looking for those practitioners, not researchers, I think it's really important for people online. So you're like, okay, we can do this intervention, we can see this in real time. I think a lot of us are worried, what about the stuff that we can't see in real time? So maybe my diet Coke is not causing any problems this week, next week, a week after, but am I causing cancer 20 years down the road? Am I affecting my health or my lifespan in 70 or 80 years? Which is why we're looking to these studies because we can't see that in our real lives and our real bodies. What can we do there? Those studies are already going to be really hard because of who's funding them and there's going to be concerns about them.

I think that we can hang our hat on some really foundational principles that are important. And if we can keep coming back to them, I think knowing that artificial sweeteners may be heavily lab influenced is something that I would just consider. If something is really influenced in a lab or has to be created in a lab, it might be harder for our body to recognize and metabolize that. So right off the bat, if that's a concern for someone, when in doubt, leave it out is really my opinion, within reason, obviously. Yeah, but somebody's listening in there like, my Diet Coke is one of my great sources of pleasure in my life. But if I knew concretely it was causing cancer, I would deny myself that pleasure. But a little bit of doubt is not reason for me to deny myself this crispy, delicious, bubbly drink I have every day. Diet Coke is an extremely magical thing.

I completely understand. They're sponsoring this episode, by the first kind of fallacy we need to rebate. rebuke here is that any one food can cause cancer. Cancer is an extremely involved multifactorial process. And I think if we think of things in that granular way, we're again missing the point. The point is that we have to incorporate all of these things. And there are some people that might be more genetically prone to cancer or something like that, where it has a little more of an impact. But we're talking about each one thing outside of like smoking, which is a big thing, is like a 0.1 of a 0.1 of a 0.1 percent, and it accumulates into this larger picture of our health.

So if it brings someone a lot of joy and they don't have a huge genetic risk and they're doing everything else right, you have to assume the risk. But I really have to say you are assuming risk in any sort of consumption of processed foods. Okay. So processed foods, you are assuming some sort of risk. Yes. And that is the unfortunate reality in America, which is that if we and other countries too, but really in America, if at baseline we do nothing and never intervene, you will end up in some capacity sick in a majority of cases. I think close to 60 percent of Americans now have at least one type of chronic illness. And those are people who are kind of trying a lot of them probably.

So at baseline and the way that it's going, like the childhood ages for diabetes are getting younger and younger and younger. So it's very easy to be sick in America. You have to be pretty effortful to not. And do you think that's true even for quote unquote healthy processed foods? Like I'm thinking of. I think it's a step up. Yeah.

Every food is guilty until proven innocent in my head. So if there's been a lot of concern around something, already my attention would be on it as being potentially a concern. If there's certain ingredients that keep coming up and they keep studying and keeps becoming a conversation, I think it's worth being cautious around. Is there anything that you include in your diet that people would be surprised to know? I eat a lot of carbs, to be honest with you. I think people would be surprised that I can and my metabolism just loves carbs. I always have very low trending blood sugar. I feel like I eat a lot more carbs than my clients probably do, but it's fine for me because

my body does really well with them. So I feel like, yes, and I'm not so harsh with ingredients, but like I'll drink out of plastic waterballs and stuff sometimes. If I'm eating out, I'm not concerned about the oils and cooking or anything. I'm just enjoying myself when I dine out. Okay, so the other thing you said is let's talk about evidence-based medicine. I think you have very strong feelings and very different feelings than what I've heard from other people about evidence-based medicine. Can you explain that? Yeah, so I believe in evidence-based medicine. I think it's really interesting because I had an amazing Ayurvedic doctor, Dr. Bata, on my podcast, and we talked about how the rigor of evidence in other countries is in Eastern medicine, TCM and Ierva, is so much stronger than what we would consider here. We consider if you do a study like in a lab on a rat, that's like the gold standard and you can't do anything unless you have that rat study.

You know, in other countries, they have traditions and understanding of science that's been passed down for 10,000 years. They've replicated that science for 10,000 years. That's good science. I believe in science. I utilize and leverage blood labs, any research every single day in my practice. But I will not wait for a study to help my clients. And that's the truth is that by the time a lot of the studies come. out and are put into place, it could be 20 years. I'm not waiting for a really good meta-analysis

before I tell my clients. I think something's concerning for them. Is there anything that you've seen in your practice help a lot of people that there aren't studies yet to support? It's very interesting and very controversial, but even this omega-6 conversation, there's a huge divide in the dietitian world. A lot of allopathic dietitians are really against villainizing omega-6 fats. While in the functional medicine world, there's a little bit too much villainization, there's not that middle ground. But I've seen with clients, like, marked changes in their inflammatory labs, like their CRP from removal of omega-6 fats and upping omega-3, like really can see it in their labs and that's so tangible and see it in the differences in joint symptoms and other

inflammatory symptoms as well. And do you think that's about the imbalance of omega-6s and omega-3s, or do you think there's a lot of other stuff happening in the seed oil conversation? There's the processing of the oils. There's the rancidity, all of those different things. So are you having them remove all seed oils? Do you think those things are concerned? Or do you really just think it's about the balance of omega-6s to omega-3s? So it's all of the things, but the heavy hitter, which is always what I want people to focus on, is the fact that the more omega-6 you have, the less enzymes you have to convert omega-3. So they compete for each other.

So it wouldn't matter if you kept upping your omega-3 as long as you still had a substantial amount of omega-6. And the ratio we have in this country is extremely different. between omega-6 and omega-3. So I think for me, that's the big issue is that omega-3s are considered either neutral or anti-inflammatory, where omega-6s are considered pro-inflammatory based on the breakdown and based on the fact that they can kind of soak up and use those enzymes that are necessary to convert ALI to EPA and DHA. So you're having your clients just say no seed oils, pretty much? We're conscious of the amount of omega-6s we consume. And what I try to do with clients is just don't have it at home, the seed oils, with 100 percent certainty,

There's like five restaurants in the country that don't use any seed oils. It's very uncommon. So if you are eating out, you are eating seed oils. Sweet green doesn't now. I know. But they did until like six months ago. Which I didn't know. I went from like I had this journey of being like devastated. And then I was like really happy because I was like, oh, we're using all olive oil now. But I didn't know we weren't before. But we are now. I did notice it in sweet green. And I'll tell you why. One of my clients was going there and said every single time they eat sweet green, they felt really weird after. And we tried like different options from there. And then. then we really found out that they were very reactive to seed oils. But not everyone is as reactive. But the point is you are definitely going to get enough omega-6 in your diet in America. With 100% certainty you will, the question is, are you going to get enough omega-3? And can you then not add on more fuel to that fire of imbalance? So what would somebody who say, no, no, omega-6s are totally fine, you're overblowingness? What would their argument be?

And how would you refute that? Their argument is they find studies that show that omega-6 fats are actually good for your heart because they're out of context. And my point is, yes, but don't you know how omega-6 and omega-3's work in the body? Don't you understand the mechanism of the enzyme confusion and issue? The other thing I say is that as dietitians, one of the things we learned in school was about tube feeding, right? So if you're in a hospital, enter-only nutrition, it was so important in our education that you made sure that balance of omega-6 to omega-3 was perfect because it's so dangerous to people who are critically ill to give them too high of a proportion of omega-6.

I'm like, do we remember that in school, everybody? Like, we're worried about this one study or this one thing that says omega-6 fats are okay, but we're forgetting about how they operate in the body and these, you know, really big red flags from our education too. Do you think that the people who are grabbing these single studies and using them in lieu of thinking about the mechanism of action or the systemic influence on the body, do you think they are misunderstanding what's happening or do you think they're misrepresenting it? misunderstanding. Okay. I think that, you know, if I think about even the lemon water example, I think if I say like lemon water could be supportive for digestion, I think they're not thinking through step A to step B. Some of the mechanisms of action come through in functional nutrition

education and not conventional dietetics education, to be honest with you. And I am a dietitian. I love dietitians, of course. But yeah, there's a little mechanism missing sometimes. Interesting. Okay. So the core of functional medicine and of the type of registrations, dietitian work that you practice is understanding root causes. Can you explain why root causes could be impacting things that we might not even understand in terms of what we should eat? Absolutely. Yeah. So it's a really well-phrased question too. And just to explain what this root cause thing even is, if someone had a thyroid disease and they went to a conventional dietitian, they would say perhaps here are some foods that may support your overall weight or

something like that, and then maybe you'd go to a conventional doctor and get pig thyroid, which is exogenous thyroid. If you went to a functional dietitian, we'd say, why is your thyroid doing that in the first place? And then we'd understand, well, what's going on with your liver, what's going with your thyroid, what's going on with your gut, to get to that understanding of why is this problem happening in the first place? It's not always the belief in alopathic medicine that chronic illnesses can be reversed or healed in any capacity. That is not true in functional medicine. So I think that every single thing that happens in the body influences every other piece of the body. And so if you're eating one thing, like we were talking

about meat, for instance, while there's incredible micro and macronutrients in meat, so when you're getting micronutrients, like vitamins and minerals, and macro, you're getting all this beautiful protein and fat, some of the protein and fat can be used for energy, some of the protein can be used to make neurotransmitters, some of the protein can be used to make hormones within your liver. So each thing that you ingest influences a different organ in the body and can influence. your overall health in so many different ways. Absolutely. So when I'm looking for a root cause, I'm not just looking for my anxiety is at the root of my gut health issues. I'm looking for my anxiety impacts my gut, which impacts my energy. It's more of a circle cause than a root cause.

I think it's a total bidirectional relationship. I absolutely agree. I don't think the gut causes anxiety or the anxiety causes gut issues. I think it's a circle. I think everything is a circle. Absolutely. When I picture the body, I like almost picture their whole body and I'm like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like, I can picture where the different systems might be going awry. So definitely. And this is why you don't love elimination diets either, right? Yeah.

Let's give the example of an elimination diet for a gut issue. So let's say high fiber foods are kind of irritating your gut. We take out the high fiber foods. If the reason that your gut is irritated is because you have leaky gut or a gut condition, removal of foods doesn't fix the condition. You can remove the foods, but then you have to go in there and fix the lining of your gut. So just removing things doesn't heal. It just doesn't irritate, essentially.

Do we ever just have intolerances to foods, though, for no real reason, no underlying cause? And in fact, the elimination diet would spotlight the food that is irritating and we should take it out. Interesting question. So there are true blue allergies, like IGE food allergies. Those really exist and those can be often from birth. If you develop an IGE food allergy, like anaphylactic, serious allergy, that actually might also be able to be fixed. A lot of intolerances and food sensitivities are immune responses as opposed to gut responses. You will feel better when you take those foods out if they're bothering you,

but the question and the goal is always to reintroduce after doing that gut healing. That's the goal of doing an elimination diet ever. What about when people say I ate too many avocados and now avocados bother me? Can we develop intolerances by eating too much of something? Yes, definitely. Your body can then become a very immune active when having that food. But then the question is also like, well, is it that the food is bothering me or is it that my immune system's acting a little funky? And in that case, I'd be wondering, why is the immune system doing that? That is real, though, by the way. You can definitely develop those intolerances from consuming the same food. If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with

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in over 10,000 five-star reviews. The data backs everything up for a limited time. Get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.co slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at oneskin.co with code Liz. Okay, so let's say somebody's listening and they're like, wow, I stopped eating gluten because I feel like I'm intolerant of gluten. I stopped eating crucifers vegetables. I stopped eating dairy, like all these different things. What would you have them do instead of eliminating those foods? Yeah, so gluten's the only one on that list that's a little bit different of a story because gluten, as it is processed here, especially, is not usually fit for human consumption. So I would say gluten almost always, because of a couple different components, causes. inflammation in people. The question is how much inflammation can we tolerate? And in most people, not too much. We can't tolerate too much inflammation. So gluten's a little bit different. I controversially would ask most clients, short of those with eating disorders, to remove gluten from their diets. Is that included sourdough? Sourdough is the least offensive because it's the lowest gluten variety and it's fermented, so you have two possible benefits there. Now, I'm not saying that,

again, gluten is not the root cause of all illness. But if you are working on something, it's a really heavy hitter to work on. Other foods like cruciferous vegetables, though, what I would have people do, again, is if you took them out already, then I would be focusing on gut integrity. I would be focusing on optimizing digestion in any way you possibly can, and then really slowly trying to reintroduce it. And when you say gluten, do you mean processed gluten? Are we talking like pharaoh? I think pharaoh and other ancient grains and iron corn are probably a little bit better. If I was going to consume gluten here, I would try to get varieties from Italy. Like, I would actually go to the international aisle of the supermarket and go and get products

from different countries. Why? The gluten content is lower from other countries and they don't spray glyphazate. The other concerns we have the gluten are minimized when it's from other countries. I have a lot of clients who order bread and pasta from Italy directly. So glyphosate's another one online. Some people are like, there's their tolerable levels. It's fine.

It's been tested over and over and over. It's cool. Don't worry about it. Other people are like, this is something we absolutely need to avoid. What's your stance? So we can freak out about something that is real or we can not freak out about something that is real. It is definitely a real thing.

The question is, are we going to freak out about it? And for some people, they feel that it is really one of the root causes of disease. I'm not convinced that in isolation it would be the only root cause. I think it's the combination of that plus the inflammatory toxic environment we live in, though I do believe it's potent. And it certainly attacks your mitochondria, which is essential for a lot of your body functions. We're not going to be able to limit all of the glyphosate and the foods that we eat either. But I think it's important then to at least rebuild your mitochondria.

And I think it's important also to be conscious when possible to have better food selections. But it's really, really quite hard. And I think cutting out a lot of those gluten foods does limit some of the glyphazate, although it's sprayed on other food products as well. What else does it spray on? Like, it could be sprayed on any grain. food essentially. Let's go back to the root causes thing because a lot of people aren't going to be able to go see a functional medicine practitioner or a functional dietitian. What are some common

root causes that you see in your practice so we can begin to make those connections ourselves? Yeah, so a lot of people look at root causes as being medical conditions like parasites or thyroid disorder. Everyone has several root causes, by the way. It's not like one thing. But I also look at them as being lifestyle deficiencies. So lifestyle deficiencies can be root causes. You're not getting enough sleep, that's a root cause of illness right there. You're not connecting with people that you like and that like you. That's a root cause right there. Blood sugar, dysregulation, chronic inflammation, like these things that are so we so don't nail down, even though we think we're nailing them down. Those are actually what I think our root causes people can work on

at home and use even the beautiful information you provide to get started in that way, too. Are there connections that always map? Like, if you're not getting enough sleep, is that going to tend to map to certain things or a lot of people are struggling with hormonal things. Does that tend to map to a lifestyle deficiency? Yeah, I would say sleep and blood sugar regulation and inflammation are all related to hormones specifically. I think what I really think of blood sugar dysregulation, I am thinking a lot about hormones. I'm thinking a lot about our thyroid. I'm thinking a lot about anxiety when I think of blood sugar. So I would say that I have those links in my head for sure. and when it comes to sleep, I mean, anxiety, gut issues, weight loss resistance, all are linked to all, but those are the ones that I would link specifically.

If somebody wanted to begin to identify, they just are like, I don't feel great. I want to feel better. How would we look at our life and begin to make those connections? So what I have my clients do is just draw a picture of a body, and then I want you to draw lines on it coming out of each part of your body. And then next to head, you write slight headaches at 3 p.m. every day. or next to your shoulders, right, shoulder pain when I lift weights, inventory your overall health, and then just seriously sit and look at it and say, what's going on with me? We know so much more about our bodies than we give ourselves credit for, but we don't audit ourselves and we don't look at that.

And then I would flip the paper over and I would write sleep, I would write friendship, I would write nature, I would write blood sugar, I would write nutrients, and then inventory yourself on that too. And then you can move from there. It'll become really obvious what the deal is, I think. It's like, okay, I'm eating dessert 14 times a day and I have headaches all the time. Like, there's something up, you know, something's going on. Oh, I love that.

That's such a cool practice to do. Okay, let's talk about genetics. What role do you think that genetics and epigenetics play in the food that we should eat and how our bodies are responding to certain foods? I'm thinking both like you come from Holocaust survivors and they say that trauma like that shows up in grandchildren's bodies, but also people who say, oh, I can drink milk because my family is from this area of the world. I can't process alcohol in the same way because my family's from this area of the world.

So how does that all impact things? It really, really does impact things. But epigenetics is what we always want to look at, not necessarily only genetics. There's been so many studies about genetics and epigenetics, like the human genome project. And after they did that for 20 years, they were like, oh, genetics isn't really a thing. Like, it's actually epigenetics. Like that was kind of the takeaway. They thought they were going to be like, oh, we're going to find the exact key.

And it was like, kind of not. Like, it's actually a lot more complicated than that. definitely genetics plays a role in like true flu again true food allergies lactose intolerance celiac and things like that but overall you can work a lot with your genes it's fascinating the research we're doing on epigenetics now and there's actually entire nutrition teams who all they do is focus on this person's genetic code what will happen if they eat blueberries how does it impact this person and there's this whole field it's called nutrigenomics and it's really focused on that and as an example too i have an aunt who has gliobastomone

brain cancer. I sent her to a nutrition team and all they do is find out what her medication and her specific type of tumor feeds off of. And how do you strengthen the body when at the same time targeting that exact mutation using supplements, foods, and things like that? So this world is vast and brilliant and exciting. And then at the same time, I don't want anyone to feel debilitated by what genetics they have. And like, for instance, again, my aunt having brain cancer, that's the worst diagnosis you can ever have, and I still felt so confident to say there's still something we can do. So just for people to have that hope, too, that I feel like the field is bright with promise and opportunity, not that feeling of, oh my gosh, I'm genetically, you know, in trouble because I have this

predisposition. Just for clarity, epigenetics is the process of literally changing your DNA via your lifestyle and what you're consuming and all of that, which is wild. It's crazy we're even able to do that. Can you talk to me about the trauma and genetic connection? I find it really fascinating. Absolutely. There was a researcher Dr. Rachel Yehuda at Columbia in the city and found that not only is there kind of three areas where people were affected generations after, specifically the third generation after the Holocaust, our generation actually.

Yeah. There was kind of three areas she was studying, which was cortisol metabolism, digestion, digestion, and development of eating disorders. And I'm sure she's done many other studies. These were those specific ones I was referencing. And I find it fascinating because a lot of. of the Jewish clients I have, I'm working on eating disorders of them, gut issues, and anxiety. And those are the three conditions I work with, not surprisingly as well. And it did show an appreciable

difference between the prevalence of these disorders in people. So there are things that can influence your DNA and damage your DNA for generations to come. Like trauma can really do that. And I think trauma does that not by damaging your body in the meantime. I think what it does is it damages your reaction to things. And that's, I think, what's so misunderstood about trauma is we think trauma like hits your cells. It's actually that your body starts acting in a different way to protect you from future trauma. And that causes those downstream effects and that impact back on your DNA. What do you mean? How is it acting differently? So your nervous system starts acting differently. Your hormones start acting differently. You use up more minerals and more nutrients during times of

stress. So your body will shoot out cortisol and adrenaline more effectively and quickly because it's preparing for another attack, basically. So all of trauma, like from a body perspective is actually from that reaction. Like, what do we do in the next time of stress? And that's a lot of chronic illness, too, by the way. A lot of our chronic illness comes from anticipation of illness. And then it is that bidirectional circle relationship, too. So, oh my gosh, this is so fascinating. I've never really been able to get my head around why something that happened to like my grandmother would impact me now. But the idea is that in those moments, her hormones were acting in certain way, her nervous system, so that's having these bodily effects. And then those are impacting her eggs, essentially,

which would be impacting the next eggs, the next eggs, which are me. That's exactly right. Our nervous system learns by example. So we only know what to do based on what our body remembers happened to us. So if our body remembers something horrible happened, it's going to be like, okay, we might starve again. We might face horrible trauma again. Let's preserve all of our resources. Let's do what we have to do. Let's send all of our resources to our feet so we can run from the stressor. And it remembers, like our nervous system always remembers. And then it acts in a way to protect you from that not happening again. So since it's a bidirectional relationship, is there any way that we can use food to calm our nervous system to heal our trauma? Yes, we totally can. And heal our

trauma is like a tricky term, obviously. But I love so much that you can crack into the cycle from the food perspective or the mood perspective, right? Like you can crack in through the gut, you can crack in through the brain. Anything that makes you feel safe is going to reduce anxiety. And safety could be eating foods that feel really nourishing and make you feel strong. That could be going into nature and grounding or something like that. You get the bidirectional benefits every single time you do something nourishing and loving for yourself. You get the benefits internally and in your brain. Yes. I like that. You've dealt with a lot of anxiety. Sure. Again, Holocaust grandchild. Of course, yeah. Is there anything that you feel like is misunderstood about anxiety that we haven't

talked about yet? Yeah, so absolutely. Anxiety is a symptom. Anxiety is a message from your body. It is not in and of itself, in my opinion, a disease. It is your body desperately trying to communicate something with you. And I think our inclination around anxiety is to, of course, try to shut it down. But I really think of anxiety as being like a fire alarm in your head. And if you shut the fire alarm off, but there's a fire burning, your house is going to burn down. So you have to have. to find out where that is. If we sat with anxiety and experienced it, it transforms from that. So I think it's so important. And I also think people will not believe me when I say this. I get happy when I get a little anxiety because I know that I'm getting a kind of a map of what's

going on inside my body and I can kind of work through it. And I'm like, oh, I didn't realize that I like forgot to eat for six hours. Thank you. I didn't realize I haven't slept in days and now I'm so accustomed to it that I invite anxiety in as opposed to fighting it. I truly do do that. What if you can't associate it with anything? Sometimes I wake up and I'm just anxious. I'm like, my life is good right now. Like let's turn the alarm off. Why is the alarm going on? Yeah, it's a really good question. You don't have to find the root of it. You just have to sit with it when that happens. Because also, remember, our nervous system learns by example. So if every time you have anxiety in the morning and you're like, oh, God, why is this happening? Is it because I did something bad? Is it because I

actually hate my life and I need to move everything. It's like, no, no, it's just coming up and showing you a little something. If we react to anxiety with anxiety, our nervous system goes, oh, wait, there is something wrong because she's freaking out right now. If we say, no, I'm good. I just feel a little tightness in my chest and you kind of feel into it and breathe into it. The anxiety does transform. And I think the answer starts coming up when you do that and you're not in this cycle of anxiety. Then you break it. Is there anything from a food perspective that you think somebody who is presenting with anxiety or who has a history of trauma, whether it's in their far, far, distant past or in their own lives, should they be doing anything different from an eating

perspective than somebody who doesn't have that as a root cause? Absolutely. So first thing is intermittent fasting's way out. That's the first thing out when someone has anxiety in my world, because you don't want to signal to your unsafe feeling body that you're not safe by starving it, right? Intermitt fasting is a positive type of starvation. That is the point of it. You are starving your body so that your body can kick on other processes, right? Don't put your body in any sort of undue stress or starvation. That's the first thing I would say. Eating regularly, eating high-quality protein, making sure your blood sugar is balanced because those blood sugar drops are going to cause anxiety for a couple reasons. But really just doing things that make you feel safe and comfortable.

And I feel like I also have clients really go back to cultural foods for them and that cultural could be in their childhood homes. I had one client. from Lebanon and I absolutely love her. And she came to me and she was eating like a lot of pokey bowls and yogurt and smoothies. And she felt very bingy and disconnected from the food she was eating. And I was like, where's our Lebanese food? Like let's start introducing it again. And that connection brought a lot of peace and grounding to her because again, our nervous system remembers childhood and remembers what those foods felt like to us. So diverging your old life and your new life is a problem for people. We need to converge them and bring them together.

What if all I got in childhood was microwave hot dogs? It's funny because I came from like a very no cooking Holocaust impacted household. It was a very survivally kind of household and I love my family and we're super close. But I grew up eating like very cold cereals, like deli cheese, like whatever was around kind of foods. And now I tend towards like more cold foods, but I have to have like adult conversations with myself or I'm like, we do have to have soup now. Like we have to heat it up a little bit. So sometimes it's like time for me to have that inner child's peace. And then sometimes I got to be, you know, big girl and have some hot foods and cooked chicken, you know, not just deli turkey. I grew up in a very calorie counting household. It was very like we eat to live. We don't live to eat. We don't find pleasure and food household. How does that usually spring up in adulthood? Yeah, I think that springs up a lot in adulthood. And then it's like Liz's opportunity also to find what does give Liz pleasure and joy and what does activate that childhood self that lives inside of us. us and like light us up. I think there's things that you weren't able maybe to experience or

we're like naughty and not allowed to that you now have the experience to because our inner child's with us all the time. So now that inner child gets to have what they want to. Interesting. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life and most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning, you're going to be really hot, and sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years,

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Are there any other root cause connections like that that you can make for us? So let's say we're presenting with gut issues. We're really bloated. We're constipated. Our gut hurts after we eat things. How should that person be thinking about food differently? Yeah. So this is what I would be considering also.

How are you eating? not only what you're feeling after you're eating. This comes back to my inventory, too. One other little tip I want to add just for exploring your own root causes at home, not only making that symptom sheet and then flipping it over and making your lifestyle sheet, make a timeline of your health. This is essential and functional nutrition. It's what happens in every single functional nutritionist's office is we make a timeline of someone's health from birth. I have sheets that go across my table with clients timelines. Absolutely, what happened at this age, what happened at this stage, really writing down this point, this point, and then you're like, oh my gosh, I got into this

car accident, and then after that I started having gut issues. That's so weird. You can see your root causes based on your own timeline. So that's a really easy way to draw these conclusions. I would also say, notice, okay, when I eat this food in this place in my house, I always feel weird. It's all about pattern recognition. It's the patterns in functional nutrition that make it what it is. That's the holistic part of it. That's so interesting. Okay, so for the the gut, do you think that's typically indicative of some, you know, a place that we're eating that's maybe something or a trauma in our past? If somebody's presenting with constipation, bloating, things like that? 100%. It definitely could be. Again, if meal times were really

uncomfortable for you, nervous system remembers, it's going to act nervous around those kind of meals. So certainly, so I think even having just very conscious talk to yourself and being like, hey, we're eating now and eating's great, you know, this is a fun thing that we're doing now. And then also positioning, Liz, while you're eating, is so important for digestion. Think about our posture, which I already need to correct, by the way. Think about, like, how complex and long our digestive tract is. If we're sitting like this, we wonder why we have acid reflux because you're pouring acid into your throat because you're smushing your body together. And when we are in a state of stress, we do tend to cover and we want to go small when we're in a state of stress, right? Or we want to run.

So our actual vagus nerve, which connects our brain and our gut and our heart, will also convince how well we digest things. It will control contractions. It will control how quickly food goes down into your gut and so many other functions of our digestion because our body will say in a time of stress, it's not time to digest now. So the mindset you have around food, the position you have around food, that's almost as important as the food that you're eating. And that's what's often missed in this conversation. How much of the gut health stuff is a downstream in disguise version of diet culture as well. I think there's real gut health stuff, but I also think, like, are you bloated, or is that what a human stomach looks like? The bloating, I'll speak to specifically, it's actually not

normal to be bloated all the time, but not normal doesn't mean bad or like make you a bad person. But to feel that way, we have desensitized ourselves so much to being sick that we don't realize what's normal anymore. No one has any idea what's normal anymore. We think having like eating disorders and feeling sick all the time is normal. That's what is normal in this country. I don't want to normalize illness because I've seen when people feel really awesome how magical that is, and I want us all to shoot for that. So if you are feeling bloated in a way that's uncomfortable and you feel actual distension or you can't fit in your clothes, it's not normal. It's not right, but it's okay. What would you do if somebody came into your practice and they were experiencing that?

So depending on where the bloating is, if it's more lower GI bloating, that's where I'm going to be concerned about what's the action of the small intestine or the colon. And I'm going to be wondering, are you tolerating fibrous foods, what's going on there? If it's more upper or you're noticing nausea with it, burping, anything like that, I'm concerned about more stomach digestion. Do you have enough stomach acid? It depends on where the bloating's from. Also, just a little hint for people, if you're having a really hard time digesting protein, it's usually a stomach acid issue, and you should be looking at that. If you're having a really hard time digesting vegetables and carbs, that might be more of a lower GI issue. And by heart,

time digesting, that means that's bloating you. Feeling bloated, yeah, having constipation or diarrhea, anything like that. I do feel like so many people are up being their protein right now, and then they're like experiencing major constipation because they're upping their protein. Yeah, so we definitely can talk about that. That is usually a stomach acid issue. And the reason is that one huge part of protein digestion happens in the stomach where our body has to cleave the different longer chain amino acids into smaller ones and then send it into the small intestine. what happens is if it goes in too long of a chain because we don't have enough stomach acid, it can then go into the small intestine and things get really weird there.

And then we kind of have bacteria that's like, what the heck is this? We can have a little autoimmune issue from that. And that can cause a lot of constipation too just because you can't move things along. And then things start coming kind of upstream instead of downstream. And that's where you get reflux, bloating, constipation and those kind of things. You're not breaking things down properly. So what should we do about that if we're trying to up our protein? Yeah, I think really, this is such a good question because people are like, oh, we need to eat more protein because we see it online so much, which is amazing and we do need to eat more protein.

I think gently having bitters or adding a little bit of lemon water even, a little bit of stomach acid, something that's going to stimulate bile production and stomach acid production before a meal, I think is fantastic for people. Okay. So should we indeed be eating more protein? What do you think about the whole protein conversation that's happening online right now? I do. I really do. I think that we all grossly, especially women, grossly. under-eat protein. I don't know when in time protein became an only man thing. Like, they're the only

ones who have to have protein. Protein is the most important nutrient for all of detoxification in our body. So whenever I hear people saying, I'm going on a juice cleanse or a vegan diet, I'm like, oh, how's your liver going to detox? Which is the actual site of detox in the body? That's most important, in my opinion. Protein's essential for creating all of our hormones, our neurotransmitters. I mean, so essential, and we are usually under-eating it. But it's hard if you've been under eating it for a long time to start to introduce it more. And I know that because of stomach challenges, honestly, because you don't have that stomach acid built in. And also just like taste preferences and cooking wise, it's easier to like cook potatoes than it is to cook like a piece of

meat. So I know those are unique challenges people have with it. And I do believe we should be having more. How do you get people over the hump? This is like my hack. I have people choosing like cold proteins first. So it's usually more tolerable to have deli meats or protein powder or something like that. And then you can kind of work your way up. I also have people just buy a rotisserie chicken, just buy something that's already pre-made because the fear of having to cook protein is a huge piece of this too. And colder proteins are, in my opinion, just less nauseating. If people are having a hard time eating meat, cold food in general is less nauseating because it doesn't have as much aroma. So that's an easy way to just start getting a cold, some yogurt, some cottage cheese,

some rotissory chicken, deli meats, and then work your way up to the hot stuff. I think that's an easier way to start if it's really hard for people. I know that because I wrote a popsicle cookbook. And one of the big challenges of writing a popsicle cookbook is that all flavors are doled when they're cold. And so you're trying to get these flavors to come through in popsicles, which is harder than people think. That's amazing. It's like my little silly cookbook. That's my first cookbook. But there's more difficulty there than people give it credit for. My concern with the protein thing is that I feel like we cycle in and out of like, let's do high fat, let's do high carb, let's do high protein. And I don't to add all this protein into my diet now and then wake up in 10 or 15 years and be like, oh,

there was this unforeseen negative impact of eating too much protein. Now we know, whoopsie, are you worried at all about that happening? No, because we have epidemiological studies, which means like over the history of humankind, we have consumed these foods. We have no better evidence than that. And if we look at studies of any time there's drops in meat consumption, there's usually increases in chronic illness. I think we have so much research from like the existence of human time. So starting on a lower amount, if that also feels safe from a disease prevention perspective for people, if they're concerned about that, I really wouldn't be in most cases. I think is better. I would also say if people want to start with more lean meats, if they feel concerned about saturated fat, which we can talk about too.

I think that's an easier way to start as well. There's no way, though, that evolutionarily we were eating that much protein. So when you say we have all these years of history, do we catch a whole gazelle and eat the whole thing every day? I do. I think when we would sit down and eat, we wouldn't randomly choose like four ounce portions. I think we would sit and eat. And then the amount of fiber we were consuming was over 100 grams a day. Now we're eating like 10 grams of fiber a day because we used to eat also every part of the animal, right?

We would eat like eyeballs. We would eat liver. We would eat organs. Versus you're like, well, versus now we eat like very specific and very small amounts of it. And most of our diet comes from processed foods. Most of our diet does not come from animal protein. Okay. So the fat part of it, there's the fat in animal protein, which is saturated fat, which people

worried about with heart health, which you alluded to. Can you speak to that? Yeah. So there is a small group of people who say. saturated fat does in fact increase their cholesterol, and certainly saturated fat in the context of sugar can be heart risky, let's call it. Other than that, most people can tolerate a nice amount of saturated fat coming from whole foods, coconut oil, butter, meat, and things like that, and do quite well with it and not have appreciable effects on their cholesterol or anything like that.

What do you mean with sugar? So saturated fat and the presence of both them together. Like everyone was like, oh, is it cheeseburgers are bad for you because the amount of saturated fat? But then we started to look at the studies better and say, oh, it's because that bun was on top of that too. So it's the presence of like refined carbohydrates and more refined sugars that actually, when combined in the same meal with saturated fat or in the overall diet, causes an issue. What do you think of the different diet? So there's the carnivore diet. You were vegan for a really long time. A lot of doctors default to just saying the Mediterranean diet is the best diet.

it's the most balanced and neutral. Do you think there's an overall diet that would benefit most people to follow? Yeah, I think if I were to kind of just blanketly say one, I'd say the paleo diet or a Mediterranean diet, either one. And they're not too different in composition. The Mediterranean diet leans more a mono-unsaturated fats, but they're both diets that focus on whole, unprocessed foods. I think you're not going to go too wrong in most cases with those. What do you think about the carnivore diet and what do you think about veganism? Yeah, so I have unique concerns about both.

I think that when you have a lot of beautiful nutrients from meat, you also need the beautiful nutrients from plant. Again, there's other nutrients that plants offer. I don't believe we only need one or the other. And I also will say that some of the creators of the carnivore diet, it started with no fruit, no honey. Now there's fruit and honey in it. I think we've kind of backtracked a little bit on it.

Like they themselves said, we actually need like fruit and honey in these things. So I think anything that is super extreme like that, it's going to leave you nutrient bankrupt in one area or another. Veganism, I have even more concerns about, if you can believe it, because really you can't actually consume a vegan diet and without supplementation, get enough nutrients for your brain to even function in the long term. You need vitamin B12. You need vitamin D. You need iron. And those are not naturally made by the body and quantities necessary for even brain function. So a vegan diet in the long term, I have protein concerns about two, of course, but I have

micronutrient concerns that are urgent. What do you do when you work with vegans who are vegan for environmental reasons? Yeah, so and I completely respect religious environmental reasons. I respect even if people just don't want to eat it. I completely understand. We have to be really careful with consumption and make sure we're hitting the nutrients necessary. I will tell you straight out, Liz, that two of my best friends are the best functional

dietitians for fertility specifically. They both will not accept vegans in their preference. practice. They've both expressed to me that they feel it's worse than smoking. It increases your risk for infertility so high that they said, I can't actually help you if you're vegan in my practice. I don't work super close to with fertility. I mean, overall, you know, fertility health, but they are who you go to when you've been diagnosed with infertility, and they will not accept vegan people in their practice because they think it's such a burden to get their nutrient levels to a level that would, like, help promote life. Do you accept vegan people in your practice?

Sure do. Love them. Yeah, and I was vegan for over 10 years, so I certainly Why were you vegan? At the beginning, it was like a eating disorder. And I was just like, I can do this. And then I can just tell people like, I can't eat anything here. I'm vegan. And then I just became a competition with myself. Like, I can do this, you know? And at school for dietetics, like, veganism was pretty like positive. Meat was bad still then. It was over 10 years ago. I was very on my high horse about the veganism too. And then I got really sick. And I was like, oh, I need all those nutrients and had to give it up. And kind of wish I didn't do it in the first place, but I did learn at least. And I see. see this experience with my clients, they feel incredible in the beginning. And then at some point, they hit a wall and they start feeling really bad, basically. And it's when you hit the wall is when you lose nutrients in a substantial enough quantity that it starts affecting your brain function, body function, everything like that. Soy is a big staple in a lot of diets, but especially vegan diets with tofu and soy mugs and things like that. Is there any truth in that negatively impacting hormone health. Soy protein isolates, I am concerned about impacting hormone health. Whole

unprocessed soy. I know this was a big estrogen conversation. More and more research is coming out that fermented or whole unprocessed soy is not as concerning, although I do think that actually would be a genetic thing. I think certain populations tolerate more soy than others. And a lot of those studies are done on populations who do consume soy regularly. So like in more Asian populations. So it's interesting because I don't know in the American population how those same studies would fare. Also, those studies are done on vegetarians who've been consuming soy for a long time. I do think soy is a valid source of protein for vegans, especially. They might need tofu to meet their protein needs or edamame. Just focusing on more nato, miso and tofu and edamame is the better way to go with soy versus

using soy protein powders or texturized vegetable protein combined with soy proteins like in Morning Star or Boko burgers. How do you square things like the blue zones area? where people are vegetarian or the China study people talk about a lot, how do you square the things that people use to justify the health benefits of a vegan or vegetarian diet? The China study has been like mostly debunked. I hate the word debunked and I hate misinformation. I hate these words.

But it has been mostly debunked in ways of both the Blue Zones diet and the China study. I think they were finding that there were confounding factors that were making people really healthy, which is having a sense of community, doing labor to actually get the food you eat, being connected to nature. And then a lot of people bring up the hodz. tribe and talk about how they were really meat eating and they are also incredibly healthy. So there's arguments on either side. I think the real important piece is that you are eating the whole of a food in a way that we are not going to be doing and that we're communicating

with people. We're in a tribe and we are cultivating our own food. That's what's more important. I interviewed Tim Butner years ago and he's the founder, the creator of the concept of Blue Zones. And I was trying to get to like, what can we steal from all these different areas? And he will go on podcast and he shares all that information and a lot of it's really beautiful and we should be taking it. But it was an interesting interview because it kept coming back to like you're not going to experience all of the benefits unless you literally move there and live your entire life in this way. So he's trying to teach us the little takeaway secrets. But the reason they're having the results they have is because they have an entire lifestyle that is creating those results.

Yeah, the smoking gun is not the vegetables only. That's not the thing. It's not only not eating meat. it's living life like a human being that we just don't do that anymore. But that's too hard. So we want to. It is an interesting thing about this entire food conversation is because we have to eat three times-ish a day, we have to consume food to live. We're like, this is a low-hanging fruit. If I can just impact my health with the food that I eat, and it's also why people love supplements so much. If I can just impact my health in these ways, then I don't have to do this workout or go build a community or decrease the stress in my life.

for all these things that feel much, much, much harder. Yeah, I think so, too. It's just that you're not going to get the bang for your boss unless you do the things. I know. You think I wouldn't like snap my fingers to my clients? If I have suffering clients, I would lay my own health on the line for my clients, but it's just like not real. Food is medicinal in the context of lifestyle medicine. You know, it's not that food on itself is medicine.

It really depends on what the environment is that the food is going into. There's definitely potency of food. and then there's potency of lifestyle, and you really can't out diet a bad lifestyle, unfortunately, even as hard as we want to. I want to really bad. I'm a dietitian. Trust me, but we can't. When it comes to food, do you think what we're leaving out is more important or what we're putting in is more important? I think what we're putting in is more important for sure. With the intersection of every function of our body, I'm always coming back to the liver. I'm thinking about people's livers all the time. And what is the most important thing for detoxification within our liver is having enough nutrients.

more important thing is what we can add in so that we can get all of our body functions running properly. We need enough nutrients. And that's really hard because even our soil is like depleted in nutrients. It's hard to get enough micronutrients especially. So would you say instead of spending a bunch of time being like, oh, is this food killing me? Is this food killing me? Instead, we should be trying to flood our plate every day with as many nutrients as we possibly can. Yes, I do totally feel that way. I do. And feeling like, again, connection to food will alter your digestion. Digestion really starts, they say in our mouth with a cephalic phase. It really starts in our brain, though. That's where digestion really starts. So starting to initiate that positive

relationship with food, I will do experiments with my clients where I will say, let's just sit in front of food and just think about how insanely lucky we are that this gorgeous meal got here. How amazing it is that this exact food came to our plate. And when we think about like food, Liz, I really want us to think food is like life's energy. You're consuming and taking in life's energy. We don't feel that way when we're crushing a bowl of cereal, right? Like think about this is actually going to be transformed into my body to make my brain function. Like that's insane what food can do. And think of it as this like universal spirit that is being given to you or you are taking that is giving you life's energy and life force. Okay, so the cereal isn't making your brain function optimally. What food can we be crushing that would be making our brain function?

optimally. What's a specific example? I feel like meat. I feel like vegetables. Vegetables are very dense in micronutrients and fiber. Fiber will help your liver. I'm always thinking what's going to help that liver too? Meat is going to have the building blocks of so many nutrients and protein, which is essential for your neurotransmitter function. So that's going to give your brain that beautiful energy that your brain needs the building blocks for all these things, your hormones and everything like that. So I'm thinking of like foods that are like food. I think that's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking where are my micro, macro, macronutrients? Where's my fiber? Can you explain to me as if I were five years old why your liver is so important in all of this?

Oh my gosh. I would love to talk about the liver. Yes, so your liver is like this repackaging factory in addition to the fact that it produces cholesterol, it produces hormones, it does all these amazing things. It's where a toxin will go. And by the way, your hormones have to be processed out of your liver too. They get repackaged using a lot of nutrients and then sent out of the body and or the production of these hormones and cholesterol and all these things we really really need. So the liver is this powerhouse of not only creating, but removing things that we don't need. And it takes so much nutrients and so much energy to do that. So what happens if your liver isn't functioning optimally? Every disease you could ever imagine in the entire world. Yeah,

the liver is a huge central feature of any function of the entire body. All right. Interesting. I think time-wise, I'm just going to jump into some of these things that spark controversy online. and I want you to just weigh in on what you think the science shows, what you've seen in your practice, all these things. So we talked about seed oils. Do you have anything else you want to say about seed oils that you feel like to clear up confusion around them? Yeah, I think we don't have to be going super crazy about them in ways of there's practitioners I know who also say the half-life is two years. So if you consume it once, it's in your body for two years. I'm like, all right, there's a lot of stuff in our body for two.

It's fine, you know. I think that approach to it is not supportive, but just taking them out of your house and a really, really easy way, not having sunflower, safflower, canola, peanut oil, corn oil in your house. I think that's a really easy way to start. What do you cook with? I'll use butter a lot in cooking, and I use occasionally coconut oil. And I'll use olive oil unless it's a very high smoke point, which is rare for me. I don't fry anything. Yeah, I use olive oil for almost everything. You can absolutely use olive oil. That was a big myth, by the way, that like olive oil, the smoke point. But it's like pretty high. Like, it's like 300 plus degrees. It's fine. And you can also see a smoke point.

That's the thing I always find interesting about smoke points. We're like, ah, and it's like, well, you can, is it smoking? Like, that's what a smoke point is. Exactly. And so I use olive oil for almost everything. And also to the point of, like, have populations been doing this for years and years and years? I'm like, olive oil has been cooked with for years and years and years. And it's the cornerstone of the Mediterranean diet, which really does have like a really good, tremendous pool of research around.

Okay. Glyphosate. We have talked about that. Is gluten in Europe actually better because they don't use glyphosate? or is it better for some other reason. It's lower in actual gluten amount and it's not the dwarf wheat. It's a more variety that's recognizable to the body. And there's no glyphosate. It's interesting because I was talking to a practitioner on Instagram. He's fantastic. And he was in Australia. And he was talking to me and he was like, you know, we all go to Europe, me and my mates to get gluten.

And I was like, why? I was like Australia. I was like, I would think of Australia in New Zealand as being. And I actually know the rates of celiac are very high in New Zealand. And I was very surprised by that. But I was talking to him and I was like, that's so weird. Do they have glyphazate in Australia? And he said yes. And I was like, oh, that's why. So it's a pretty good, interesting thing that they all also feel better in Europe. So it's not this American made up thing. And I thought that was very cool. And they do have glyphosate of it, unfortunately, in Europe. They do not use it in Europe. In most countries, it's banned. I mean, there are definitely studies that show artificial food coloring can be linked to childhood behavior changes. If you asked a toxicologist, dietitian, actually several ones might be. give you different answers. I think some people believe this is a root cause and some people believe it just causes damage but isn't a root cause. It's probably somewhere in between for most people. I think if you have an inclination towards a risk for toxicity in some way, again, you have you don't have good genetic or you don't have good liver nutrients or something. Or you have an autoimmune condition. Or immune condition. Yeah, you might be more prone to the damage

from that, especially like Red 40. There's real cancer research on that. That's very real the signs. Artificial flavors. A little bit less concerned than the dyes, like again, red 40, like those I would really be avoiding. And the fact that they're specifically in children's foods is so disturbing, by the way, and so odd about our country. We just give the worst to the most important people. Don't get that. Artificial flavorings I'm a little bit less concerned about, but not by much. I just would try to avoid when possible. Aspartame or artificial sweeteners. Aspartame, again, being the root cause of all cancer, I don't think it's the, the root cause of all cancer. Are there substantial studies that suggest that aspartame could

again be related to behavior changes in children to potentially cancer in the long term? Yeah, there are definitely studies that show that. So would try to avoid again if I can. That's another one. For all these things, I'm like, I want to know the mechanism of action in your body. Like, I want to know what's happening when I put aspartame in. How is that impacting myself? Like, what is that impacting and where? A lot of it's going to come down to some level of inflammation that's going to happen as a result. Like your body's not recognizing that, so it's not being broken down properly and it might be continually recirculating.

Although aspartame, I'm sure there's a very complicated chemical process that I don't know the answer to, and I'm honest about that. Interesting. So do you think that's true with a lot of these sort of like more highly processed things that we're worried about? Does it come down to our body doesn't recognize it? Thus, it's creating some level of systemic inflammation. Yeah, I think like with that, there's probably two pathways.

the systemic inflammation can be from this autoimmune response that's happening on a very minute level or mitochondrial damage. And mitochondrial damage would then create a full body systemic inflammation because your body can't do any of the tasks it needs to do and it can't clear anything or get rid of any toxins. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20 minute meal and get into your chef energy, they'll send it to you to all be in perfect portions so you'll eliminate waste.

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So remember to get the offer in there. Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. This is maybe a little bit nuanced, but let's say we want to keep eating a lot of the stuff that we're not really supposed to eat is a way to do that to just like really have our gut be as healthy and thriving as possible. So we have that protective layer so that it doesn't cause as much inflammation. I think absolutely there's things we can do to make our bodies more resilient to those things and like a higher ability to process toxins. So absolutely we can build up our strength and build up our resilience for our ability to tolerate those things.

There is a limit though. And the limit is usually the amount of toxins that we have in America. And you would have to be on your game to be able to tolerate things. And I think as time goes on and we have more immune viruses and more hits, even people who don't have gut issues are now having gut issues. People who don't have anxiety are now having anxiety. So I think we're going in the wrong direction in ways of people's health, unfortunately. So if we were going the right direction, yes, I think we could tolerate more things if we were healthier. What are one or two actionable things that we could all do to build our resilience that aren't just taking things out?

Eating enough, absolutely, going for daily walks and then working on that nervous system too. I know it seems not important in the context of this conversation, but the whole premise of any kind of, any kind of immune reaction, there's tremendous nervous system involvement too. So just kind of creating safety in your life in every way possible, builds resilience. Because then your nervous system remembers to stay calm and cool and not create a biological cascade anytime there's any threat. So I think that's important. And your favorite nervous system practices are? Yeah. I like, first of all, a lot of IFS, like talking to myself is really, really important, getting to know the different voices of Michelle. And then also just consent and checking in with

yourself from a mindset perspective, from a physical perspective, ice packs on your neck, putting ice on your face, doing things that change cold and warm. And then doing humming and things, singing is really beautiful for your vagus nerve too. And then you can even do like direct simulation also, just being really gentle and really conscious of your neck. And then diaphragmatic breathing, just breathing right into your diaphragm, all excellent for the vagus nerve. And when you say we need even more of this because we're kind of going in the wrong direction as a country, do you mean the stress of the country? Do you mean our lifestyle? Do you mean the things that are added to the foods that we eat? Why are we going in the wrong direction? I'm just going to say yes. If we're going in the wrong direction in every single way, essentially. But really, my concern is with COVID and other viruses, I think we had such a hit that our bodies were absolutely not prepared for. And I don't know if you noticed, but everyone was sick all winter this year. If we had our buckets filled to the brim, COVID just knocked that bucket right over. There are some estimates that between, 20 and 35% of the country has long COVID. And long COVID is partially the damage from the virus,

but mostly a nervous system and immune system reaction after, like, I never want that to happen again. There's a specific type of cell in our body, our mass cells that react to that and really want to protect you from it in the future. So I think having our nervous system in line or immune system in line by having adequate nutrients for our immune system is really going to be fruitful as we go down this negative pattern. So our body's not only reacting to the virus, but maybe also the trauma that we endured over those years? Yeah, I definitely think so.

And it's like cellular trauma. So basically there's one very intelligent cell in our bodies called mass cells. And we often think of them as associate with histamines when people think of like allergies and things like that. COVID has a very special relationship with mass cells because there's a receptor on the mass cell called the ACE2 receptor and COVID attaches to it. And then that cell goes nuts and it starts releasing all these chemicals. And there are chemicals that normally are great for an immune response, but then they keep

getting released like histamines. For instance, histamines are amazing because they make us alert when there's a danger. If you have a lot of histamines, you can get a lot of anxiety. So I'm seeing a lot of acute and really intense anxiety and clients who've never had anxiety before right after having COVID, which is really odd because you're like, why would that happen? Clients with tremors, clients with blood heart rate issues. all these random things that are happening, really at the central piece of that is that mass cell.

That mass cell is a piece of our immune system and our nervous system. So if you treat the nervous system, you work on the mass cell. You work on the mass cell, too. Okay. So all of the practices that we've already talked about, eating enough nutrients, the nervous system regulation. Exactly. Does coffee have mold? And is that something we should be worried about?

I do think so. Again, this is the question of if we make our body strong enough, can we tolerate a little mold? I know a lot of naturopathic doctors and specifically one in mind who say lime or mold out of the context of a body that's inviting those in, actually most bodies would be able to fight mold and be able to handle mold because there's mold in our environment all the time. The question is why is your body not doing that? So you're suggesting really this is what root cause medicine is. It's not saying should I be avoiding mold here? Should I be avoiding this, this, this and this? It's saying how can I build up a body that's resilient to the inevitable things that that body is going to face?

You're going to make me cry. Yeah, that's the whole thing, Liz. That's the whole thing. Exactly. It's how do you make your body, instead of a tumbleweed blowing in the wind, how do you make your body a tree that's grounded so deep into the ground that nothing can touch you? That's what really living a strong and healthy life is all about is making your body resilient to handle anything. And part of that, correct me if I wrong, is probably to reduce some of the loads. to those types of outside stressors on the body, including maybe molds and stuff like that,

particularly in the time where you're trying to water the tree and help it grow? Absolutely. Yeah, especially, again, if you're in a situation where your bucket's already overfilled, you just want to limit any kind of risk, like you said, any kind of threats while you're rebuilding. Absolutely. So what I think people do wrong a lot when it comes to mold, when it comes to lime, is they immediately jump into like kill protocols. They're like, I'm going to kill the mold. I'm going to kill the lime. And what happens is those mass cells get very angry at you and do not like that at all. And what happens is people get symptoms from those protocols because their body can't process out the time. You're killing a bunch of stuff, but your body can't do anything with it.

So you end up recirculating those toxins. So what do you do when people come to you with those types of things? We have to build up our strength first. And then we can go into the kill protocols. But I need to make sure my client's detox, drainage, everything is set before we ever do something like that. I need to make sure they're not in any sort of a histamine flare or that mass cell. activation issue. Is there anything else that you've seen online that people are up in arms a little bit about that you could clear up some confusion around? I would say like plastics is really

important right now too. There is definitive information that plastics are endocrine disruptors, the PFAs are concerning for us. And the question is like, again, how much are we going to focus on that? Is that a root cause? A lot of people will say it is a root cause, by the way. It's really all of these things have some level of risk. You have to play the risk-benefit analysis. with all of them. And you have to see, is this my thing? Is this the thing that's really, like, so substantial in my life? And have I tried everything else and nothing's working? Maybe that's the next thing I can do. But plastic is so abundant in our clothing. It's abundant in our food, of course, and beverages, most importantly. Maybe the goal is to just limit plastic,

single-use water bottles or something for yourself. Or are you microwaving your food in plastic pepperware all the time? Yeah. I would not heat plastic. That would be something I would really tell people to avoid. But then does it matter if like the leggings have plastic stem? I don't know. You know what I mean? Is it throw out your clothes worthy? If you're really focused on fertility and nothing else is working for you, maybe that's the next thing to kind of look at. But other than that, I think if you hit the foundations, hopefully it'll be enough. And then once you kind of ascend, you hit your foundations of life. You become a human again. Then you go up and up. You can look at minutia and see if it's the minutia that's affecting you. This is why I love just getting organic sheets because then I'm like a third of my day,

only plastic-free, pesticide-free stuff is touching my body. Absolutely. And then the rest of the day I wear my cute clothes that are definitely made of plastic. And I can look cute and feel not as bad about it. Everything's cumulative. So it matters. Like, it matters if you just cut off 33% of your day in ways of toxin load. I think it's a huge deal.

And it matters. Can you give us one homework assignment, something that we can all do the second we turn off this podcast to begin to feel better in our bodies? I'm going to give two because I gave one already, but I'm recapping it. I want you to take a piece of paper and I want you to write down. every symptom you experience on a daily basis when you experience it and just look at it. That's one thing I want people to do. And then what I want everyone to do also is really get to know how they feel about certain things. And what I mean by that is if you're sitting with a plate of food, notice what you experience in your body and start naming colors for that experience. So it's like, hmm,

I'm looking at this food and it looks disgusting and overly healthy and not what I want to eat. That makes my chest feel red and angry. You know, I want you to start to sematically connect what you feel in your body, maybe it's a friend that you're like, I don't really feel like I like this person anymore. What's that experience? Like, oh, this is making me feel like yellow in my brain. Start to associate the experiences we have with colors and parts of our body. The reason I tell people to do that is because it will draw that anxiety connection really quickly. You'll say, I don't know why I'm yellow in the head, but I'm yellow in the head. And then you can start to recognize those patterns. So get to know yourself and actually ask yourself how you're feeling and dive deep.

into that. That's so interesting. That reminds me, I wanted to ask you about intuitive eating really quickly, just really fast. But I find it hard to eat intuitively or to even be able to touch my intuition when I'm being barraged with messages from the types we're talking about online on social media to advertisements to what my parents told me as a kid, to the way my grocery store is laid out. All of these messages about what I should eat, do you think we can tap into our intuition around eating amongst all of that? Absolutely. Yeah, I think when people think of intuitive eating, they think it's this thing where you're like, ice cream sounds great. I'd love to have ice cream. And intuitive eating is actually this like set of 10 principles that help us to understand more about what's the

somatic experience of our bodies. I think it's more focused on the cerebral part. And I think what intuitive eating is missing is that somatic part where we feel into our bodies. But yeah, I've seen it happen to every day. I see it happen all the time. It's totally possible to tap into that. And is it just if you have the muscle and you practice it and practice it, it can become resilient in the way we're talking about with all things in this episode to that barrage of messaging. Yeah, because every time you do something, remember, your nervous system does it again. And it's like, oh, that worked that time. I'm going to do it again. So there's a lot of proving that has to happen in our bodies. And I think around intuitive eating, for sure, you're resetting the baseline. So it's so important to acknowledge how you feel before a meal,

how you feel during a meal and how you feel after. And then asking yourselves, what does my physical body need from me and what is my physical body telling me too. So it is entirely possible. And I think the kind of piece that's missing is often that somatic experience piece as opposed to just the intuitive eating piece. You got to connect it back to your body. I think we should listen a lot less to even nutritionists on Instagram and a lot more to what makes us feel good and get really good at pattern recognition, really good at noticing how things do make you feel and get closer and closer to being a human. It's hard to be a human. We're like robots. You know, it's like hard now.

But try to be a human. Try to be a human. Thank you so much, Michelle. Do you want to talk to us in your own words about some of your offerings where people can find you online? Absolutely. And thank you so much for having me. You amazed as you always do, Liz, because you are amazing. You can find me on Instagram at Michelle ShapiroR-D.

I have my own podcast, Quiet the Diet, which is really about how to access your own autonomy around food and not listen to any kind of nutrition professional except for yourself for once. And then I work with clients one-on-one. I have an amazing team of nutritionists who works with clients one-on-one as well. And we have some fun long COVID offerings coming up as well that I'll keep you in the loop about. Oh, that's exciting. Well, thank you so much. I love your podcast.

I think it's great. I've binged it. Can I say that? I feel like that's like the wrong word to use for your podcast. It's mostly about binging. But you know what? Honestly, what I would tell people on the podcast is if you want to binge, binge, binge and then just notice how you feel doing the experience. So go ahead and binge, Liz, go ahead and notice.

And we didn't even get into. Michelle has an incredible weight loss story that you've learned a lot in a lot of direction. from two, which you get into on that podcast. So I highly recommend that as well. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much, Liz. This is wonderful. It really was. If you love this episode and you haven't yet listened to the one that we did two weeks ago with Dr. Darshan Shaw, definitely give that one a listen. I will link it in the show notes. He is a world famous functional MD. And we get into debunking internet trends. It's less about food and more about supplements, workout routines, things like sauna, cold plunge, other habits, that type of stuff. It is a lot of stuff. It is, It's one of our most shared episodes of the last year, and I am so glad that so many people are finding it valuable. If you love this episode, also please send a link to someone that you think would benefit. There's so much amazing information in here. You'll have somebody to discuss it with, and it is hands down the best way to support the

podcast, and it is so, so appreciated. If someone shared a link with you and you are new to the podcast, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. If you are not following the podcast, all you have to do is. go to the main podcast page on whatever platform you like to listen on. That's going to be the page that lists all of the Liz Moody podcast episodes. And you'll see the word follow under the logo on Spotify. And then there is a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts.

There's also a recent Apple update that has changed things up a little bit. So if you follow the podcast there, even if you followed it for years, even if you followed it since we were healthier together, you're going to go to that little button in the top right of the page that lists all of the Liz Moody Podcast episodes. And you're going to click turn on automatic downloads so the pod keep showing up in your feed. This way you will not miss out on any new episodes. They'll appear right in your feed every single Wednesday and every other Monday. And you definitely do not want to miss out.

We've got some really, really good ones coming up. We've got a long-awaited episode about fertility. We've got an episode that will make you completely rethink the way that you approach your job. It'll make you happier as a result of that rethinking. I'm very excited about it. And I cannot wait to share. Okay, I love you. And I'll see you next week for the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast.

I'm genuinely confused how masterclass gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest. is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling.

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and interested, and you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually, and you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode, like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody.

That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, masterclass.com slash Liz Moody.