Category: Nutrition

Set yourself up for success. As life gets busy, even our best-laid plans go awry. Focusing on easy tips and tricks will get you through the season. Most of us know if we eat whole nourishing food we will feel good. It’s not food rules or KNOWLEDGE for most. And in most cases, it’s not your WILLPOWER that is failing you.

If you had food prepped, you’d probably eat it. Actually, I think it’s our food ORGANIZATION that allows CONSISTENCY that we are all after this time of year (and all year).

If managing weekly food were easier and less stressful, we’d have more success with consistency and more choice with WHEN to actively celebrate with food. Food is something we HAVE to do. Might as well use this month to practice FUEL with consistency.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Well, hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on the ways FDN is different than other programs out there.

We are doing a shorter and sweet episode today in preparation for our 200th episode, which will be our next release. If you are listening to this on Apple podcasts, sometimes it labels it out of order. I think the reason that they do that is because it’s just how many times you’ve uploaded. There’s been times where if you do this long enough, there’s accidental uploads. There are things that didn’t come out right, and it’ll say that we’re at like 203 or 204.

But if you actually look at the literal number of episodes on Apple Podcast, which can be found near the description of the podcast, you will see that it is in fact about to be the 200th episode on the Health Detective Podcast, which is absolutely insane. Really excited for this.

But today I wanted to do not only a short and sweet episode, but I wanted to address something that comes up pretty commonly. One of the things that comes up very commonly for people considering the FDN course is how does this compare to other courses? Why is this unique? What does this teach me? I wanted to go over those things today.

FDN is Different and Had What I was Looking For

One of the things I will not be doing today is pulling up a specific list or description of every other health coaching thing out there, or every other functional health-oriented program out there. I think it’s really easy, even if it’s never my intention, to start coming across as if we’re attacking or going after one of the other programs when we do it that blatantly. That’s not what I’m here to do.

What I want to do then is highlight the good parts about FDN and then let you make the comparison for yourself so that you can make an informed decision. We are never saying this in a cheesy way. It’s not a sales thing. We know that there are people out there who need the FDN course.

You might know this, you might not, I was not working for FDN and then just came in and started doing a podcast for them. I went through this program myself five and a half years ago, and that was three and a half years before I ever started even considering working for FDN, let alone actually working for them. This was never in my thought process, to work for them.

So, when I hype it up or say something like this, I actually mean it. I was one of those people who was looking for a program exactly like this. This is something that I really wanted. I was looking for something that could help me with the objective data side and could tell me precisely what was going wrong in my body so that I could make a plan to help myself get better. I found that and a lot more at FDN.

Do Your Research

So, again, we’re not going to be talking about other companies so directly but do your own research. Make an informed decision. I’m going to highlight the things that I know typically differentiate us from other programs.

Then what you need to do because only you know you’re own unique needs. You need to go out and look at those other programs that you might be considering and see what do they offer. Then think about yourself and your needs.

Which program offers more for my needs than the other one. If it’s another program, go do that. That’s completely fine. Most of our practitioners either come into our program having already done other things, or they end up doing other things just because we’re all unique individuals and we need some different stuff. Again, this is totally fine.

Why FDN is Different: Lab Access

So, the things I want to highlight about FDN, one of the most obvious ones is the lab training and lab access. We allow you to get access to lab testing through our medical director program. This is one of the many perks of being an FDN, it’s probably one of the biggest ones.

You don’t need a medical license. We trust you enough if you go through this program because that’s why this program’s a little tough, right? We’re not just letting everyone through. If you get through this and graduate, which we will help you do, but it’s going to take some work, you will have access to our medical director program, which is our team of doctors that signs off on our facilitating lab orders for clients.

Let’s say you the listener, were my client and I’m the FDN practitioner. I want a specific type of lab test to go to your house and you agreed to run this on yourself. I’m not running anything on you, right? I’m not sitting in your house taking a cheek swab or a urine sample or something like that. That would be illegal. I’m not doing anything like that.

What we’re doing is I share the information with our medical director program. They ship out the kit for you and you get it to your house, and you run that test on yourself. Then you have signed off on me getting the results and we go over those results together. So that’s a really cool and unique thing that we’re able to do as FDNs.

Why FDN is Different: Lab Training

We have access to over 60 labs and counting, including a lot of the most popular ones that people are interested in. Whether it is genetic testing, DUTCH testing, HTMA, GI MAPs, hormone testing, blood analysis, we have it all. Definitely everything I’ve ever needed.

Now, the other side of that is where the market is going, there are more options for direct-to-consumer lab testing. Now, does that cover everything that we have access to as FDNs? No, because some of the stuff they’re never going to allow direct-to-consumer anyway because it would create a lot of issues. But a lot of it is becoming direct to consumer.

So then of course, the biggest difference is the fact that we actually get trained in analyzing these things. If you are running some of these tests direct-to-consumer, I guess from a philosophical standpoint, I do believe people have the right to do that, you’re really not setting yourself up for success.

I mean, if I run a lab that I don’t even know anything about, okay, cool, I spent $300, $400 maybe. Now the data is either useless or at worst, potentially harmful. If I don’t know what I’m doing and I start making assumptions, or I go online and I look up what a specific marker means, now I have this very vague, cloudy picture of what my test results actually mean. I have the potential now to make myself worse with the protocol or decisions that I choose to engage in based off these lab results.

So, the training and the access combined is really where FDN differentiates itself more so than any other area from other courses out there and other programs out there.

FDN Teaches Clinical Correlation

We will help someone who has no training or background in lab testing. You will be very advanced in this by the time that you are done with the course. More importantly, you’re taught a way of thinking cause that’s really what this is all about.

You’re taught clinical correlation. The simplest way to describe clinical correlation is it’s everything that a diagnosis isn’t. A diagnosis says a specific marker or set of markers is out of the reference range, and thus you meet the diagnosis criteria or the diagnostic criteria.

When we’re talking about certain diseases like depression or panic disorder, no, they’re not running a blood test at this time of recording this to diagnose those things. I get that that’s not always how it works. But an easy example would be something like Type II diabetes. You are either in the reference range or you are not in the reference range, and they have to test it a couple of times.

If you appear in the wrong place a couple of times you will get that diagnosis based solely off the numbers being out of the reference range and nothing else necessarily. Yes, you’re probably going to have some symptoms. I would assume any good doctor, especially with Type II diabetes, would correlate that appropriately. But remember certain things, there’s not necessarily a set-in stone symptom profile to get that diagnosis. It could be as simple as the reference range being out of whack.

In FDN, we are teaching clinical correlation. This is not diagnosing. Clinical correlation is kind of cool because if someone comes in and is symptomatic, which every single client that you ever work with as an FDN will probably come in symptomatic. Otherwise, they would not be working with you.

Correlate with the Client’s Symptoms

There are, of course, some very smart people out there who have the ability to kind of see five steps ahead and realize that maybe they should engage in something more preventative before getting sick. But I will be honest at the time of recording this, again, that is pretty rare. That’s not something I see very often.

People usually need a reason to start coming into you and talking about really serious stuff and trying to get better. That’s not something that they do typically without feeling some type of pain, whether that’s directly or maybe indirectly through a family member or a spouse or whatever it might be.

When they’re coming in then for these types of symptoms, it is very often that one of two cases is occurring. They either have a diagnosis and the doctor or Western medicine was not able to do anything for them, or they never received a diagnosis, and their condition is quote/unquote “idiopathic” or it’s a mystery. They don’t know.

When we are utilizing these lab tests, what we would do is we are trained that if the person has a set of symptoms, we’re trained to try to figure out which markers and what things going wrong on the labs correlate with the person’s symptoms. A very basic example of this is one of the hormone tests that we do.

Correlate with the Client’s Feelings or Activities

We measure four times throughout the day, their saliva samples that we take from the individual. The individual, rather, gives it, I guess, themselves. So, when the individual, the client, has the hormone test, they will spit into it in the morning. They’ll spit into it mid-morning, early afternoon, then regular afternoon, and finally about an hour before bed in the evening. Cortisol is being tested in all four of those markers.

When we see someone’s cortisol is at a relative elevation on maybe the third marker, we know that that might correlate with certain symptoms like high stress. It could correlate with certain things, just like fighting with a spouse, eating a food that they’re reactive to. So, clinical correlation’s really interesting cause it could correlate with the symptoms, but it could also correlate with the feelings or activities that the person’s engaged in.

When I say relative elevation, here’s what I mean. Again, continuing this example of the cortisol thing. When you look at cortisol in a pattern throughout the day, what you will get to see is something that is descending. It kind of flat lines more or less late afternoon to evening. It’s not a complete flat line, but if you looked at it at first glance, you would say, wow, that looks pretty much like a curve that just goes down and then is almost flat.

FDN Teaches About Relative Elevation

So, it starts relatively high in the morning when we’re waking up, and then it kind of dips down to late morning, early afternoon. Then after that it’s pretty flat until the point that it’s almost nonexistent at least in terms of what it looks like on the graph in the evening. When we see that, a relative elevation would mean that it is something that is elevated, not necessarily out of a reference range, but it’s relative to the person. Those four markers should be going down.

If you test someone’s cortisol in the morning, late morning, early afternoon and evening, you should see it go down. If the third marker, the early afternoon is up, it might be within the reference range but for us, we know that that’s weird. We know that relative to the other markers, it is an elevation – relative elevation. Does that make sense?

If we should be seeing four markers that are going down in order, then when we see one in the middle that starts going up relative to the other things, that’s a problem. We could start correlating that with things that are happening to the person symptom-wise, or activities that they are engaging in, again, whether it’s a food that they’re sensitive to, a fight with their spouse, maybe they feel a little wired at that part of the day.

There are many routes that we can go with this, but we are going to start correlating. Now, that’s not a diagnosis.

It’s Validating and Motivating

The diagnostic thing is not, hey Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, you have relatively elevated cortisol at this part of the afternoon. No, that is not what we’re doing. What we are doing instead is correlating that together, showing them why they feel the way that they feel, and then this does a couple of things.

One, it’s just validating for them. I think that’s one of the biggest things. I know it was hugely validating for me to finally have someone be able to tell me the things that were wrong with me or not going well in my body. But it also motivates them to stick to the plan.

When we can show them on the lab work, hey, this is pretty clear as to why you feel the way you feel. Then you’re going to take actions for that, generally speaking, assuming that we have some actions to give you, and we are trained in just that. We’re trained in the lab analysis and then the following actions afterwards to help someone actually get through a protocol or start feeling better. That’s a great thing.

So, that training in the lab stuff, the access to it, one of the biggest differentiators with FDN. Number two is that it’s not a coaching course. Why do I say this? You’re like, well, isn’t this health coaching? I mean, it’s the industry that we fall under, but in my opinion, as someone who does this work, I would not consider this health coaching, no.

Why FDN is Different: It’s Not a Health Coaching Program

Health coaching to me, because I went through another program, another certification prior to getting my certification through FDN, I went through a program that was a true traditional health coaching program. Health coaching, look it up. What it actually is, the word and phrase has been completely deconstructed and reconstructed a million times, and every time it looks a little different.

What it was supposed to be is an individual, a health coach who helps someone else set and succeed in achieving their health goals. They will help them set them. I’m oversimplifying it, I’m not saying that they don’t do things that are more advanced than this. But hey, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so. You want to run a marathon? Right now, you’re running two miles a week. That’s obviously off. So, we’re going to help them set specific goals. We’re going to hold them accountable so that they can get to where they need to go. That is important.

It is important to hold people accountable. If it wasn’t, then we would be able to do FDN in a matter of two weeks on every single client and we can’t. There obviously is something else more that needs to be done with clients.

There is course correction of course, but also just the general idea that most human beings are not able to apply a large amount of instructions in a short period of time unless there is enough pain for them to do so. We’re probably going to have to hold their hand a little bit throughout the journey. But FDN is not a coaching program.

Provides Info & Guidance on How to Get Well

FDN is teaching you the science. It’s teaching you the clinical correlation. It is teaching you how to take on a sick client and utilize lab testing to figure out where the biggest opportunities to get this person better is. That is what we train you to do.

The reason that this would be considered a differentiator in a positive way, in my opinion, is because there are enough coaching courses out there. Many of the people listening to this, I would not be surprised, probably already have some type of coaching certification. Maybe you don’t, but a lot of the people listening probably do. You don’t need another coaching certification.

Positive psychology, motivational coaching, there’s only so many things that you need to know to truly help people. Because the people that can’t be helped, no matter how good you are at what you do, to a degree, might not be able to be helped. I’m not saying that in a limiting belief type of way. I get it. Some people might be a little hesitant to get on board with what I just said.

But for the sake of the work that we’re doing, at the very least what I’m suggesting is that some people need so much help that that’s not your main job. I mean, you could do your FDN practice that way if that’s what you chose to do. But most of us get in this work cause we want to work with motivated clients who have the means and willingness to help themselves and we want to provide them with information and guidance in how to do so.

Investigate What is Wrong & Set Protocols

I don’t want to be sitting in front of someone virtually and pulling teeth trying to get them to do the things that we know that they should be doing. That’s a whole different step. It’s a whole nother level of consciousness. I want to be able to provide them with useful information so that they can see what is wrong with them, and that we can work through that together.

I’m not the guy that’s sitting here trying to motivate you necessarily. That’s not my job. Most FDNs don’t want to do that or have gone through a program that already teaches that. We are just focusing on the science. So when there’s 150, 160 hours of content, whatever it is now in the FDN course, we mean 150, 160 hours of content that is dedicated towards learning health information.

Not about coaching, not about positive psychology, not some stuff that you don’t need to know. Lab analysis, how to do the work, how to figure out what’s wrong with someone, how to come up with the protocols for any individual client no matter what they might be dealing with, that is what we are teaching you. And for many people when they hear that, that is a huge win for FDN.

Because a lot of these other places, even if they offer great information, spend a lot of time on the coaching side, which so many people are done doing. They don’t want to pay $5,000, $6,000 to learn more coaching stuff. I’m sure also too, there are phenomenal coaches out there that understand things so deep that I just can’t even, I’m not even close to that level yet.

Why FDN is Different: Get Lifetime Access to Course Updates

I will say that generally speaking, if you buy a couple of books on, again, positive psychology, motivational coaching, you’ll normally get more than enough information to get people on the right track with certain habits and things like that. Whereas, with FDN and health and getting people that are really sick, well, it’s going to take more than a couple of books, right?

No matter what route you end up taking, even if it’s not FDN, it’s going to take more than a couple of books to get you to where you need to go. I find that for the clients that we are taking on, a couple good books on coaching can get you to where you need to go, even if you don’t have that coaching background. So, that’s another big one that differentiates us.

Number three is the fact that we get lifetime access to all FDN updates so long as we are a graduate in good standing. Now, what is a graduate in good standing? I mean, one, it means that you’re doing things ethically. I mean, that’s not particularly hard to do in our world. I’ve never heard of an FDN yet doing things unethically. I’m just saying that is one of the requirements to be clear.

Number two in terms of what is required to be an FDN in good standing is that you will need to pay, I think it’s a $99 fee and it’s every two years. Not very often, not a very expensive thing.

Ways to Stay an FDN in Good Standing

You’ll also need to have some continuing education credits. How you can do that is one, you could do something from our programs that we think is worth the continuing education. It’s very easy to meet these requirements. You’re going to have to put in some work, but it’s nothing that can’t be done simply enough.

Or you could be a member of our Association of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioners, and that will automatically qualify you for the continuing education stuff because that whole group is dedicated to advanced health and business training.

Not many courses are going to continue to give you lifelong access to the information that you learned, let alone the updates. I graduated five and a half years ago. The FDN course did not have as much in it then as it does now. Five years later from now, the FDN course will have much more in it than it did today. The price changes because of that. The price changes because of the economy.

I paid less five and a half years ago, and I still get a lot of the benefits, not all of them. Because like lab tests, right? There’s additional lab tests that are included in the course tuition now that I didn’t get, so fair enough. But everything else I get access to. When I go onto my website for FDN on my backend where I learn and stuff, I can go in there right now and see exactly what that main course has now, and I can go through it and see all the updated lessons. That’s a huge thing.

Why FDN is Different: The FDN Community

The other program that I went to after one year of not being, I guess active is not the right word cause it’s not like I even had an ability to be active. After one year from graduating, it’s as simple as that, they took away my access to the course that I paid for. That course was several thousand dollars. I don’t want to lose access to that.

So again, it’s one thing to have something that you lose access to. I think that’s completely wrong. But then on the other side, it’s another thing to actually get the information that people are now paying more for in the future. That’s a really special thing about FDN. So, that’s number three.

Number four, and I’m hesitant to bring this one up because I feel like it might sound cheesy, but it’s probably my biggest one cause it’s so true. It is the community at FDN. Reed Davis, the founder of FDN, says this himself. He was not trying to do this when he first started. He makes a joke that, you know, he started graduating people from the course and they wouldn’t leave, right?

They’re sticking around, they’re hanging out. They want to talk to other graduates, and it’s blossomed into this beautiful community. I mean, these people are my friends. Even before becoming an employee, these people are my friends. I go and meet up with them when I’m in a city. We grab lunch together, we hop on calls together. They have my back when I need help with something in business or a health problem. I mean, these people are cool.

A Very Supportive and Diverse FDN Community

They comment on my stuff on Facebook, right? And I know that sounds silly, but I mean, think about it. You have people from your high school probably on your Facebook that don’t like a thing of yours, and FDN will always be here supporting you in the things that you’re endeavoring in in life.

And we have a very diverse community. I actually admit it’s probably one of the most diverse communities I’m a part of. I mean, you have every religion here, every race, every age. You got people in 50 countries around the world now for FDN all coming together for one core thing. That’s actually pretty special because in today’s world, it seems like somehow we’re actually backtracking and becoming more divisive than ever before.

It is a very special thing that I can go in my FDN group and get to talk to every sort of person, all respectfully, because we decided to come together for one specific thing, and that is helping people get healier because we probably dealt with something, or at the very least, again, like I said earlier, someone close to us has dealt with it.

I do have a fifth reason for you guys. The fifth one, is the fact that we are not functional medicine, and this is huge for people. I need to actually say this more because people don’t get it until I say it explicitly. It’s my fault. I need to make sure I emphasize this more. We are not functional medicine.

Why FDN is Different: FDN is Not Functional Medicine

Here is the difference between Western, functional, and FDN. Western medicine is allopathic. They see a symptom, they get a diagnosis, they treat it with drugs and surgery.

Functional medicine, not universally, because every functional medicine doctor, or practitioner is a little different. It’s kind of annoying that they’re all using the same title because it’s not necessarily fair to the ones who are not operating in the way that I’m about to say. But I will just say this, most of functional medicine, from what I’ve seen that’s for sure, is basically Western medicine with supplements.

You have a diagnosis. All right, great. We’ll try to get you off this medication, cause many of them are doctors. We’ll try to get you off this medication for this supplement and you can try this diet temporarily and stuff like that. But it’s never really getting to the core of the issue. I mean, they do a little better than Western medicine, don’t get me wrong. But it’s treating symptoms, it’s treating the diagnosis, it’s treating the paperwork.

That’s not what we do at FDN. We are looking for those underlying issues. We are trying to help the person in a very advanced way, get their lifestyle under control and the things that are messed up in their body under control so that they can enable, even though it’s already there, it’s just not being able to work properly, their universe-given, God-given, whatever you subscribe to, ability to heal. And this is not hippie woo-woo.

FDN Recognizes the Body’s Innate Ability to Heal

It’s amazing to me how many people don’t get this, and they think that’s like woo-woo. I can prove it to you that the innate healing ability exists. It’s happened to every single person who’s listened to this. You can prove it to every single person that you ever talked to about this if they challenge you that the body can’t do that.

You ask them, have you ever had a paper cut or a broken bone? Paper cut is probably the most common one. You don’t have to tell your finger to do anything. Just go to bed a few times and it rests and repairs. Then you’ll wake up one morning and notice, ah, wow, it has a scab. Then you wake up the next morning, you notice, wow, this is looking a lot better. A couple weeks goes by, and you can’t even remember exactly where that paper cut was, cause now it looks completely better.

Similar to a broken bone. I mean, yes, we get a cast, we put it in place. But the cast did not regrow your bone if you don’t realize. The body, what it did is it knows what to do. It actually heals that together and refuses your leg and makes you healthy again or whatever broken bone it might be. I was thinking about a leg in my head. You get healthy again.

That’s not woo-woo. That’s something that we’ve grown up with and every single one of us has experienced in some way or another. The body does have an innate healing ability. We help you access that.

Why FDN is Different: Helps Clients at a Deeper Level

We’re not going to treat the symptoms; we’re not going to treat the diagnosis. We don’t care about that. We want to know where are the healing opportunities? Where is your lifestyle stuff wrong? We’re going to help you get both of those on track.

When you do that and you give it enough time, just as surely as that healing of the paper cut happens, just as surely as your broken bone gets better, the symptoms get better. The diagnosis gets better. That is the difference between Western, functional, and FDN. FDN, that’s completely different than those two, if you haven’t noticed.

So, that’s the fifth reason that really differentiates us. I’ve noticed a few functional medicine programs that yes, they teach labs. Yes, they teach all this good stuff. But they’re treating symptoms and paperwork. That is not what we’re doing. If that’s what you want to do, I mean, it has its time and place. There’s certainly a demand for it. Most people want the quick fix. It’s not really a fix, it’s more of a band-aid. But most people want that.

If you want to go work with those people, you’re completely entitled to do it, and I wish you nothing but the best. However, if you want to help people at a deeper level and allow them to enjoy the short time that they have on this earth to the fullest, maybe you want to learn FDN too.

Conclusion

Those are the five things that I think separates us from every other program out there. I’m sure there are more, but those are the top five that I think of and that really sold me on this course being correct for me.

If you have any questions about what we’re talking about, just so you guys know, there’s always a couple of places to reach us. The best one is probably at FDNtraining on Instagram. That’s at FDNtraining on Instagram. You can shoot us a direct message there. We have real human beings that talk to you on the direct messages. It is not a chat bot. We do nothing like that. We have an actual staffed person who will talk to you on the DMs and answer any questions that you have.

So, go check us out there if you have any follow up to what we talked about today. I am looking forward to talking to you guys again soon. I will be back with our 200th episode next time, which is absolutely, again, it’s crazy to think that we’ve been doing this for this long. 200 episodes is a lot for a podcast. I’m excited for 200 more after that and I can’t wait to show you guys what we decided to do for this. Have a great week, and I will talk to you soon.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

To hire a coach, go to fdnthrive.com.

For a FREE Health Review, go to fdnthrive.com/match/.

Is it possible to enjoy holiday treats and still maintain your health? Absolutely! If you want to kick up the nutrition in your sweet treats, try recipes for healthy holiday desserts that contain ingredients with beneficial nutrients such as protein, fibre, healthy fats, natural sweeteners, key spices and vegetables. Yes, vegetables in dessert! It also helps when you whip up treats that are gluten-free and dairy-free, as gluten and dairy can be detrimental to a wide range of health conditions.

Here are some of our favourite gluten-free, dairy-free and healthy holiday desserts. We hope you invite us ’round if one of these goodies will be appearing on your dining room table!

And if you’re looking for more healthful holiday recipes or resources to help you bake sweet treats:

20 Best Healthy Holiday Desserts

Chocolate Beet Cake With Avocado Frosting

Chocolate Beet Cake with Avocado Frosting by The Pretty Bee

Guests will never know this gluten-free and vegan cake contains antioxidant-rich beets and beneficial fats from avocado.

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Orange-Scented Buckwheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Orange-Scented Buckwheat Chocolate Chip Cookies by Ericka Thielke (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

If you haven’t tried baking with buckwheat flour, you really must – and this orange-kissed cookie recipe is a great place to start. Try adding more holiday-inspired spices too like cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg!

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Vegan Coconut Matcha Ice Cream Cakes

Vegan Coconut Matcha Ice Cream Cakes by Elephantastic Vegan

These adorable mini ice cream cakes are simple to make: no ice cream maker required.

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Earl Grey Infused Lavender Cheesecake

Earl Grey Infused Lavender Cheesecake by Rena Williams Wellness (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

A raw, dairy-free cheesecake infused with earl grey tea and lavender leaves. This one will nourish and calm you at the same time.

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Dairy-Free Chocolate Mousse Cups

Dairy-Free Chocolate Mousse Cups by Sheena Scott (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

Have some leftover pulp from making almond milk? Put it to good use with these ingenius superfood chocolate mousse cups. And, while you’re at it, take a peek at Sheena’s pumpkin spice ice cream pie.

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Vegan and Paleo Pumpkin Cheesecake Squares

Pumpkin Cheesecake Squares by Rachel’s Nourishing Kitchen (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

Another no-bake dessert that harnesses the nutritional power of pumpkin. You won’t be able to resist these!

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Gluten-Free Chocolate Almond Cake

Gluten-Free Chocolate Almond Cake by Life and Lemons (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

This fudgy cake is packed with protein and fibre-rich almond flour, plus we love piling fresh berries on top.

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Paleo Cranberry Crumb Bars

Paleo Cranberry Crumb Bars by Bakerita

These grain-free, gluten-free and vegan bars look extremely festive and will fill your guests with holiday cheer.

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Chocolate Avocado Pudding

Dairy-Free Chocolate Avocado Pudding by Jennifer Barr (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

This dairy-free mousse/pudding uses avocado as the base – but you won’t even notice it!

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Flourless Chickpea Blondies

Flourless Chickpea Blondies by Kitchen of Youth

This healthy treat will give you an extra boost of protein and fibre, and deliciousness of course.

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Date Caramel and Pecan Baked Pears

Date Caramel and Pecan Baked Pears by Pure Ella

This simple and elegant 5-ingredient dessert is an ultra refreshing way to end a meal.

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Soft and Chewy Vegan Gingersnaps

Soft and Chewy Vegan Gingersnaps by Radiant Rachels

Chewy cookie lovers will go bananas for these gluten-free and vegan gingersnaps filled with a luxurious macadamia nut frosting.

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Pomegranate Pistachio Dark Chocolate Bark

Pomegranate Pistachio Dark Chocolate Bark by Maple + Mango (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

A very simple and very festive-looking chocolate dessert that only has four ingredients.

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Spiced Sweet Potato Pie Filling

Spiced Sweet Potato Pie Filling by Blissful Basil

Do you ever wish you could eat sweet potato pie in a jar with a spoon? Well, with this sweetly spiced vegan recipe, now you can.

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Paleo Plantain Apple Cake

Paleo Plantain Apple Cake by Goodie Godmother

A gluten-free cake you can whip up using only your blender. No mixing bowls needed – so you’re one step closer to the sweet deliciousness.

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Almond Cinnamon Holiday Nog

Almond Cinnamon Holiday Nog by Meghan Telpner (*ACN Founder + Director)

For those who want an alternative holiday sipper, this alcohol-free and egg-free festive nog fits the bill perfectly. This bevvy matches perfectly with all your favourite healthy Christmas treats and gatherings!

Join our Free Cooking Class: Healthy Holiday Treats and see Meghan in action! She makes this holiday nog plus a few other delicious treats. Download the recipes and watch the demonstrations so you can make them yourself!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BBGsmQQjvY

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Golden Savory Cake

Golden Savory Cake by Nutrition Stripped

A bright gluten-free cake that’s packed with anti-inflammatory spices. You can sweeten things up by drizzling with honey, maple syrup or chocolate sauce.

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Paleo Carrot Cake

Paleo Carrot Cake by The Mindful Hapa

A gluten-free, dairy-free and grain-free carrot cake slathered with rich cashew frosting. Yum.

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Sunbutter and Jelly Thumbprint Cookies

Sunbutter and Jelly Thumbprint Cookies by Sondi Bruner (*ACN Head Program Coach)

These gluten-free, grain-free and vegan cookies have only seven ingredients and are little bites of heaven.

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Chocolate Magic Custard Cake

Chocolate Magic Custard Cake by Gourmand Elle

A gluten-free and dairy-free chocolate cake spiked with an eensy weensy bit of rum.

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Paleo Banana Bread

Paleo Banana Bread by Primal Gourmet

A stunning loaf that reportedly ‘tastes like a cloud’. We’re in.

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No more sugary store-bought chocolate bars, or overpriced vegan nog. There’s a new healthy holiday dessert maker in the kitchen. It’s you!

Get instant access to our holiday treats cooking class, along with the downloadable recipes so you can make these healthy Christmas treats in your own home!

A healthier Bundt cake wreath for Christmas

Feeling inspired by the Christmas spirit and all the beautiful wreaths on doors and on plates so here’s a fun take on a Bundt cake come wreath with a few adaptations to a traditional Bundt recipe to give it a more wholesome twist. You can swap and play with ingredients as you see best.

VANILLA BUNDT-WREATH CAKE

Serves 20

225g butter, softened at room temp

225g coconut yoghurt / natural or vanilla dairy yoghurt

3/4 cup honey*

6 large free range eggs, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup full cream or coconut milk

3 cups (360g) spelt flour

3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda

pinch sea salt

To serve: 1x 250g punnet strawberries, greens removed and sliced thin; honey; small handful mint leaves; 2 tablespoons desiccated coconut for sprinkling as snow (not essential but definitely pretty!)

Heat oven to 170C (Fan forced), grease a 12 cup Bundt pan with butter and lightly / evenly coat with flour. In a large mixing bowl / stand mixer beat butter until light and creamy, add yoghurt, honey, and 1 egg at a time, ensuring the previous is beaten in well before adding the next. In a separate bowl sift together the flour with baking powder, bicarb soda and salt. Start mixing the egg butter combination again and add 3 tablespoons flour blend, mix, then add 1 egg with another 3 tablespoons flour blend and repeat with final egg. Add the vanilla and mix. Reduce mixer to low, and add 1/2 the flour mix. Add half the milk and mix until combined. Repeat. Pour cake batter into the bundt pan and place in the oven to bake for 45 minutes. Check the middle of the cake with a skewer, to ensure fully cooked through. Cool cake on wire rack for 30 minutes. Flip over. Once cooled completely, slice into about 20 pieces. Arrange pieces around a large, round serving plate. Pop sliced strawberries between each piece. Drizzle the top with some honey so the desiccated coconut sticks when sprinkled over. Sprinkle the coconut evenly. Garnish with some mint leaves and serve.

*Honey quantity : this seems a lot I know, remember the cake serves 20, original recipes call for 2 cups refined sugars so it’s a pretty good compromise.

 

For the children’s Christmas parties, we would like to have a special Christmas cake to celebrate Jesus’ birthday. Would you like to make one for the children? It does not need to be complicated/fancy, just an iced butter cake (any flavour), maybe an iced shape of a Christmas tree on top or Happy Birthday Jesus written but your thoughts and ideas are welcome. We will like someone to make a cake for the Nursery/Kinderhaus party (Wednesday 21st December).

Thank you to Gina, Levi’s mum for offering to make Preschool’s Christmas cake.

Please see Natalie or Amanda if you think you could help. We would be very grateful.

Introduction

I was browsing online, when a news site popped up with the headline “Intermittent fasting may raise your risk of an early death” (Ref 1). I’m not the biggest fan of intermittent fasting, but I don’t think it’s a deadly activity to adopt (I summarise my view in Ref 2). We’ve looked at intermittent fasting a number of times in Monday notes (Ref 3). I located the academic article behind the headlines. It was called “Meal Skipping and Shorter Meal Intervals Are Associated with Increased Risk of All-Cause and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality among US Adults” and it was by Sun et al (Ref 4).

The objective of the study was “to examine the associations of meal frequency, skipping, and intervals with all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality.”

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on analyzing results for food sensitivity testing. We are continuing our series where we go over live lab results.

Today will be a little quicker and I will be by myself. I do believe that you can probably get about 80% to 90% of what you should get out of this if you’re just listening on audio. However, if you have the ability, I recommend watching it on YouTube as well.

You know, it’s tough. The vast majority of our viewership and listenership, if you’ll call it that, is on audio. We were really late to the YouTube game. We probably should have done it a little earlier. It is what it is. We’re trying to make amends for it now. You can check it out there, but I know most people, like 95%, are probably going to listen to this on audio only, which is okay. I will do my best here with this one.

Maybe at the very least what you can do is just open up the YouTube video and kind of just scroll through it really quick. If you can even just get a visual idea of what the test results look like, I think that would more than suffice for you to get through this episode and understand what it is that I’m going to be sharing with you today.

What we are looking at are test results from a client of mine. It was actually someone I worked with about two years ago. She does share her story publicly.

Food Sensitivity Test Results of a Hashimoto’s Client

This is quite an audience to be sharing with and it’s a little bit different when we’re using it for purposes such as this. So, I just blocked out her name, but I will share her full story. I know that she probably wouldn’t care. I might be in the complete wrong boat here. She might actually want me to share her name and think it’s cool. But either way, I’m going to take the neutral approach on this.

So, a little bit about the client. Because remember, this is one thing you need to understand about FDN. The client always matters. We don’t look at just test results and say, oh, okay, this is high, or this is low. We look at test results in relationship to the person that the test results belong to. So, that’s one thing to consider.

The profile of this person, mid to late twenties at the time of taking this test, has one child at the time, had just given birth to a child, probably, I think within the last year or two prior to that. She had a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

If you do not know what that is, it is an autoimmune disease of the thyroid. It’s one of the more common autoimmune diseases. You’ve probably heard about that if you’re in this space. But if you haven’t, that’s what it is. It is associated with underactive thyroid function.

This is the people who might be eating 1200 calories a day and they really cannot lose weight. It might be people who feel extremely sluggish, debilitating fatigue. Their heart rate might even be really slow at times. Hair’s falling out. So, you can almost think of hypothyroidism, which is associated with Hashimoto’s as slowing down, right? Hypothyroidism, slowing down.

Jumping Right into the Functional Side of Healing Modalities

In the opposite, much less common, but this was the one that my mom had, so I’ll always shout it out, is Grave’s disease. This is the thyroid autoimmune condition that is associated with overactive thyroid or hyperthyroidism. So hyper, think of everything going fast.

My mom’s heartbeat was 130 beats per minute sitting down. She could not keep on weight to save her life. I know that sounds like that’s a great problem to have. It’s really not, trust me. When it goes to that extreme, it’s just as uncomfortable as the opposite. Racing thoughts, only sleeping three, four hours a night. Whereas a Hashimoto’s person might sleep for 10 to 12 hours a day and still not feel good. So, it’s kind of the opposite.

But again, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is much more common. This is the one this client today had. Sorry that I went off on my side note, but I’m sure you guys appreciated that.

What was interesting about this client is that she was someone who jumped into the functional side of things way sooner than most people do on their healing journey. When most people try to get well, if they are sick, this is how it typically goes.

They go to the doctor. That doesn’t work out. They get put on some medications, whatever. Then over time they realize maybe I have to take this into my own hands. This is assuming they ever come to that conclusion/realization ever. They might never do that, unfortunately.

I have seen family members that were very intelligent people, unfortunately, pass away from the conditions that they dealt with because they did not ever think outside of that Western medicine paradigm. They needed something more than just what Western medicine was offering.

Food Sensitivity Test Results of a Client Still Eating Fast Food

So, assuming we even get there thinking outside the box, then we go through a cycle of trial and error. We were probably doing that before. We say this at FDN, the cycle of trial and error.

When you are sick and don’t really know what the cause is, you’re kind of going from doctor to doctor, pill to pill, maybe surgery to surgery, which is not fun at all. But it’s the cycle of trial and error and it continues into this realm of self-treatment. Then it becomes trying supplement after supplement, maybe alternative practitioner after alternative practitioner, diet after diet is a big one.

What was interesting is the client that I was working with went right from Western medicine to immediately like FDN level. Now this is amazing. This is what I would love to see happen more. I mean, really, I’d love to see FDN be used as a preventative thing. That would be even better. But this was still pretty darn good because most people are suffering for 5, 10, 15 years prior to ever learning about what we do.

It was great that she made this jump, but it was an interesting client because she was coming to me still eating fast food. I’m not suggesting she was being lazy or not disciplined. That’s just where she was mentally. That’s what her paradigm was at the time. Okay, I can still go just eat fast food. It’s not that big of a deal.

Maybe she did know it was a big deal but didn’t realize that this could actually be causal for her health issues. So, she had a TSH of 111. TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone. It’s actually not a hormone produced by the thyroid; it’s produced by the pituitary gland.

Food Sensitivity Test Results of a Client with TSH of 111

You can kind of pick it up from the name that it’s not produced by the thyroid. Although, it’s tough. It’s not inherently obvious, but you can kind of get some clues there cause it is thyroid stimulating hormone. Obviously, in theory, I guess the thyroid could stimulate itself, but it makes a little more sense when you say it out loud.

All right, thyroid stimulating hormone. Hmm. Something else must be stimulating it and it just so happens to be the pituitary gland. The pituitary starts pumping up, pumping up, pumping up, trying to get that thyroid to work. But remember, we’re hypothyroidism, in this case, Hashimoto’s. We’re underactive. The TSH goes up and up and up.

Now, to put it this way, Western Medicine has a TSH reference range of about 0.5 to 4.5, or even 5 depending on who you talk to. We already think as functional practitioners that 5 is a little too high. My client was 111. The highest I’ve ever heard of? No, there was one other person that I know that had higher and he’s been on the podcast a couple of times. His name’s Ryan Monahan.

You guys, if you’ve been long-term listeners, might remember him from way back in the day. He was the first guest on. He had it at 150 and it stopped at 150 because that’s where the test maxed out. So, for all we know, it could have been 151, but it could have been a lot higher than that too. We will never really know cause it maxed out the test. Nonetheless, when we’re talking about something over 10, we’re really messing with some stuff here.

Starting with Just a Food Sensitivity Test

When you’re going 111, it is astonishing that this woman that I was working with was able to get out of bed and help her kid. I think that’s more of a testament to the drive that mothers have, rather than a testament to her not being sick. I’m pretty sure she’s pretty sick.

So, she goes to the doctor, figures all this stuff out and then immediately comes to me. Now, normally in the world of FDN, what we like to do is we are going to run multiple labs at once. Typically, I will do that. This was a unique case because this woman was coming to me way earlier than most people do.

I realized; you know what? Just run the food sensitivity test on someone who is eating fast food currently. That’s the only client I’ve ever had that was still eating fast food. The rest of them had stopped that, or at the very least, maybe it was like a few times a year thing. I’m not talking total abstinence per se, but not a weekly thing. I’ve never worked with anyone else like that. Cause they’ve usually tried a bunch of other things before they get to me.

So, I realized, you know what? We can probably just make a ton of progress here just using the food sensitivity test. She was on board with that. I let her know, this isn’t how I normally work, but I think it’s wise in this case, and totally fine to do. We did this.

Here is how I look at these tests. If you’re on YouTube, you’re watching me. I’m finally scrolling. So sorry, I’ve been sitting on that same spot for a while, but I’m finally scrolling and moving around.

Looking at the Big Picture with Food Sensitivity Testing

We have a lot of different things on this test. There’s over 170 foods and food chemicals. On the left we’re going to see the chemical section. This has everything from ibuprofen to acetaminophen, which is like Advil, Motrin, and Tylenol like prospectively. Advil, Motrin together, they are ibuprofen. Then Tylenol would be acetaminophen. So, you have pain killers to a degree and anti-inflammatories.

Then you have other things like FD&C Red #3 and FD&C Yellow #5. We have food dyes, which is really interesting too. You have things like MSG, aspartame. Clearly, these are things generally speaking that you wouldn’t really want someone consuming anyway. But there’s other good stuff on there. I mean, there’s caffeine, which is not inherently bad. There’s capsaicin. That’s the ingredient that would be found in certain peppers. That’s actually, if I’m not mistaken, I believe Pepper Spray has a high dose of capsaicin. Not the point though.

The point is we have a lot of different things that we’re looking at here. Some pretty bad and we wouldn’t want to take it anyway. Others? Okay. It might come up in a normal day, who knows. So yes, we’re looking section by section. But really as an FDN, we’re always doing what I’m about to say, but especially for this test. I’m looking at the big picture.

When I run this with someone, I’m immediately going down to the grain section. I want to know about grains and dairy, especially if they’re still consuming these things actively.

Investigating Gluten Sensitivity with Food Sensitivity Testing

If someone has a wheat sensitivity that hasn’t been addressed, if someone has a dairy sensitivity that hasn’t been addressed (This is going to be truer for wheat, but it is true for dairy as well.), I know that this test by itself automatically was worth the entire price that they paid. Even though there’s 170 things on here, if just those two alone show up, bam, it was already worth the money.

The reason is, it’s twofold. One. People need objective data to remove foods that are very common, generally speaking. You know, no one really wants to just remove wheat for the sake of removing wheat. However, most people are willing to make some changes in their life if you can show them something objective. In this case, clearly, we were able to do that and show her. Okay, wheat was pretty sensitive, and cow’s milk was very sensitive. I also should break that down.

I apologize for those on audio. When we look at this test, we have three categories. We have green, which is nonreactive. We have yellow, smallest category, which is considered moderately reactive. And then we have red, which is considered straight up reactive.

How we interpret this as FDNs is this. Green, generally safe, but we’ll be a little careful. I’ll explain how we can kind of perfect that in a moment. Yellow, we are going to want them to remove that for at least 60 days, possibly longer, and then we would introduce it slowly. Red is going to be a 90 day removal, minimum, until we’ve really healed and sealed the gut and possibly longer. Again, we’re definitely not going to want to do that every single day. We’re going to kind of do that every few days, tops.

Extended Immune Response from Gluten Food Sensitivity

There are a few exceptions to that, wheat being one of them. If I see that sensitive at all, I don’t care, to me that is too severe. That shows that you are in, you know, some trouble there if you’re eating that food.

We know wheat sensitivities are unique in that the immune response that results from them last much longer than most other immune responses. It can last three to six months from a serving size that is a 10th of the size of your thumbnail is enough to trigger an immune response three to six months down the road in someone who is sensitive to this.

That does not mean they’re eating it every day. I’m saying that if I ate it today, it’s December 5th at the time of recording this. So, it’s December 5th, I record this, I eat wheat today, and then for three, six months, I don’t eat any wheat. I could still be having that immune response because I am someone who’s sensitive to wheat. That’s crazy. So, that’s the one exception on this. Everything else we can kind of work with a little bit differently.

How we are measuring the sensitivities on this one is also a little different, and I’d like to mention that before I continue. I should have done that probably before. On most food sensitivity tests, the major ones that you’re seeing on the market, they’re measuring one of a few things, IgG, IgA, IgM, or maybe a combination of a few of those. That stands for immunoglobulin G, A, and M respectively. That is important.

MRT is Food Sensitivity Testing that is Highly Accurate

That is a few ways the body can react to a potential antigen. The potential antigen in this case, are the food proteins or the chemicals. It’s just a fancy word to say the things that we’re reacting to.

When we’re looking at the MRT test, which is the one that we’re using today, it’s called the MRT by Oxford Biomedical Labs. It’s the one that we train you on in the course if you’re a Canadian or American resident. I think that they have this somewhere else, but don’t quote me on it. So, I’m just going to say Canada and America for right now. It is patented technology.

If you’re watching this on YouTube, you might have actually noticed at the top right, you will see the US patents are actually up there. What they patented is the technology to measure volumetric changes in the white blood cell when a potential antigen is exposed to the white blood cell. What does this mean?

Well, remember, mediator release test. What is a mediator? A mediator is something like IgG, IgA, IgM, or thousands, it’s probably more like hundreds, but at least hundreds of different ways that we can respond immunologically this test accounts for.

Now, when I’m looking at the green or the yellow or the red here, I can’t say, oh, hey Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so. You are reacting with an IgG response. I have no idea. This test is non-specific, but it is highly accurate. In fact, at the time of recording this, they still have 93.6% replicability rates in their testing, which is phenomenal.

In the world of food sensitivity testing, they have been clinically shown to be highly correlated with symptomology.

MRT is Food Sensitivity Testing with Top Technology

That means if the person has symptoms, the food sensitivity test is highly correlated with those symptoms, generally speaking. It’s not perfect, but generally speaking, it’s pretty good for those things. So, it’s a great test. That’s the way that we’re looking at this. It’s a little bit different, right? We’re indirectly looking at hundreds, if not thousands of different ways that the body can react immunologically to a food or food protein versus just one or two. It kind of becomes a no-brainer then.

Because the MRT is maybe like $100, $200 tops more expensive than the other tests on the market, except you are getting so much more, not even comparable. It’s not like you’re even getting three things more, you’re getting hundreds more things looked at indirectly. So, it just makes sense to use this test whenever you have access to it.

There are a few cases where you’d want to use different types of tests called Zoomers. We’re going to have someone on in January to go over that. Those are specific to gluten, corn, dairy, and they have relevance. There’s a reason that we use them.

But any other time, if you have access to MRT or the technology, maybe it’s licensed in other countries, I would imagine they’ve done that and it’s under a different name, then you want to use this one. Because it is by far the most accurate thing that we have currently.

Utilizing BROW with Food Sensitivity Testing

Bringing this all home. I was talking about the client and what I look for first. So, I’m looking at the big picture of the test. I’m looking at, do they have that wheat, dairy sensitivity, or both? And in this case, we have both. Remember, I don’t care if wheat is in yellow or red, if it’s in red, it’s even worse. But I don’t care if it’s in yellow.

If they are reacting to this, I do not want them consuming it. And frankly I don’t want them consuming it anyway. Wheat’s not particularly good. It’s doused in glyphosate in the United States of America. There are many arguments I can make against this. But when you are reacting immunologically to it, then that’s a no brainer. You do not want this.

What’s also interesting when we start looking big picture at this woman’s test is there’s an acronym called BROW. This is the acronym we use to help people get gluten free. It stands for barley, rye, oats, and wheat. Now, out of those four, you might know this already, there is only one that is not inherently containing of gluten and that’s oats.

The reason oats get put into the acronym of BROW though, is because oats are the most cross-contaminated food when it comes to wheat. They are typically harvested together. They might go on the same trucks. It’s very, very common for oats to have hints of wheat in it.

So, for someone who’s sensitive or allergic, you do not want to mess with this. What’s interesting is when we look at her results here, we can actually see she almost uses the acronym.

Commercial Break – The 12 Days of Christmas Special

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hey guys, it is Detective Ev here with some great news. The team that does the podcast asked me to record some exclusive content. We did a 12 Days of Christmas Special. We recorded 20-minute episodes with some of our top FDNs, including Reed Davis, the founder of FDN. We only dive into the deep stuff. No formalities, no bios, just tips to actually help your health and or your business.

We have about six episodes on the business side, and then six advanced health tips ranging from secret gluten sensitivities and how to deal with them around the holidays, how to deal with mold exposure. We got all this good stuff.

You want to go to fdntraining.com/insider, that is fdntraining.com/insider. There you can sign up for that podcast.

It is not going to be released to the public. It is only for people who are registered. You will have it dripped into your email for the 12 Days of Christmas. That is fdntraining.com/insider, and you can check out the link in our show notes as well.

All right, now back to today’s episode.

Investigating Dairy Sensitivity with Food Sensitivity Testing

Her most sensitive food in the grain’s thing, which is off the charts almost, super high sensitivity is barley followed by rye and basically tied for second is wheat. We see three out of those four are right on top there. Of course, oats don’t actually inherently have gluten, so it’s kind of interesting.

This to me, is a woman that has a very severe gluten sensitivity most likely. She is not doing well with this. That’s one thing. I know I just got an easy win for her, and I can help her feel a lot better very quickly.

Then I go down to dairy. What’s interesting is they specify different types of proteins in dairy. Especially if you’ve been into the world of lifting, you know there’s different types. There’s whey, there’s casein. That’s one of the ways they’re able to measure the different types of dairy here.

We have cow’s milk. She’s very sensitive to this. Cheddar cheese and American cheese in the yellow. Whey, cottage cheese, yogurt, and goat’s milk, all doing okay. When I see this though, the problem is there’s so much overlap with these products, you need the person to remove some dairy for a good amount of time there. You don’t want to be messing with that too much.

Thank God. I mean, coffee is in the green for her so she can keep consuming that maybe. It’s a little high green, but it’s okay. Remember, I’m walking you through this in the same way that I walked through this with her. We have other things on here that she’s sensitive to.

Short-term Plan for Gluten and Dairy Food Sensitivity

We have shrimp, we have mustard seed, we have cane sugar. We have mung bean and garbanzo bean. We have tomato, which we’ll get to in a moment, and we have grapefruit. But the main things are this. I’m asking this client, if they can remove the other things, fantastic. But if I can get them started with the wheat and the dairy, they’re going to feel amazing. Actually, that’s what happened.

With this client, I said, hey, so glad we ran the test. Look at these results. We found some big things here. She was amazed. This was motivating for her. Totally worth the money. What we did is we made a short-term plan. Because I know someone like this, as a practitioner, they’re going to feel very good like I said, if they get off the wheat.

I know that they need to be off wheat permanently, but I just start with 30 days. Cause they’re going to feel better after the 30 days and then it becomes kind of a self-fulfilling practice. Like they are going to want to do this on their own because they notice how good they feel.

So, I made a deal with her. I said, I know you’re super motivated by your son because she wanted to help him be as healthy as possible and he had a lot of stuff going on and is thankfully getting a lot better, which is awesome. But she wanted to be this mom that could be an example for her son, learn much so she could help him, and be there for him. I knew she’s motivated.

Taking it Slow and Seeing Tremendous Results

I said, hey, I know it’s a big change for you because you’re doing the fast-food thing right now and this is going to completely eliminate fast food from your life. But we need to do a wheat and dairy thing for 30 days. Is that something that you can commit to? And she said, heck yes. She was in.

Now, this is what’s interesting. This is why sometimes less is more. There’s a saying that goes, “anything permitted increases.” What does this mean? It means if we start watching 10 minutes of TV at the end of the night, generally speaking, it’s not guaranteed, but generally speaking, that’s going to probably turn into 20 and then 30 because anything permitted increases.

Likewise, the opposite’s also true. If we start going to the gym once a week, we probably have a tendency to start going two, three, even four times a week eventually, because anything permitted increases. So, we just start slow. We start super slow and it’s going to work for her. I tell her to do this for 30 days.

We get back on the call, this woman lost 40 pounds in 30 days, and her TSH went from a 111 to a 4.5. One disclaimer on this, she also started taking thyroid medication, which is absolutely an intelligent thing to be doing with a TSH like that. But did that account for all the stuff that she experienced? Absolutely not.

The doctor himself was completely amazed by what we did. They couldn’t believe that her TSH dropped that low in one month. They couldn’t believe the weight thing. She was feeling great. They had to lower the dose of the medication actually.

Testing the Food Sensitivity

It was a really cool experience. And it was a mix of both Western and functional medicine, it was the best of both worlds.

We got all this done. Then I’m on the call and she tells me, hey, you know what? Not only did I stop eating fast food, but I’ve been going to the farmer’s market with my husband, and we’re picking up stuff like where I’m cooking at home. I didn’t tell her to do that. I didn’t ask her to do that. I didn’t even suggest to do that yet. I said, just remove wheat and dairy.

She said, well, you know what I realized? When you’re trying to remove wheat and dairy, it’s kind of just easier to go all in with it and cook for yourself. I’m like, bingo, right? Anything permitted increases. So, she ended up creating a lot of these wonderful habits.

Now, again, on this test, you will find this happens with clients. She messaged me probably two or three months afterwards, and we were still working with each other at that point. She had pasta, right? Because people forget how bad they once felt, and they want to test it. I get that. I don’t recommend it, but I get it. We’re all human. I’ve done it myself.

So, she tested it. I forget what happened. It was something maybe with hives or just puffiness, something like blew up, headache. I don’t know what it was, but it was a common symptom that you might see more with like an allergy. Not that I’m suggesting she has an allergy, but I’m just saying it was a weird symptom that she hadn’t even had before. Her body really responded well to getting off of it.

Lifetime Gluten-free from Food Sensitivity Testing Experience

I think it kind of packed a punch when she ate it that day. Again, remember what I said? It’s a self-fulfilling outcome eventually. She messaged me.

She said, you know what? I’m done. I don’t want to do this. Then you told me that immune response lasts for three to six months. It wasn’t worth it. I felt like crap an hour later, and now I know for three to six months I have elevated antibodies because of what I did. It’s just not worth it. So, this was a lifetime gluten-free person now because of the things that we learned on this test.

Another thing that we can do when we’re approaching the big picture on this test is kind of notice certain patterns. Now what I am saying is not diagnostic in the slightest. It’s just something to keep note of and it shows you how we think as FDNs.

Let’s say this woman felt terrible but had not gone to the doctor yet or at least did not have a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s. This is very common. It’s more common that they would’ve went to the doctor and got misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. That’s more common.

Well, I can see on here. Hmm. You feel terrible. You got the weight issues. Wheat sensitivity, grains are through the roof. We got the dairy thing. What I have noticed in autoimmune patients specifically is that other sensitivities start to manifest eventually. You might have heard this if you’ve been in the space for a while. Many autoimmune patients cannot eat night shades. They start to react to night shades.

Cross-contamination Vs. Cross-reactivity

And what do we have up here? You guessed it. Tomatoes, super red. Green pepper also in the yellow. These are night shades. Okay, interesting. So, we’re starting to see that.

What I will also see sometimes, which I admittedly do not see here, is corn. That’s why this is not diagnostic by any means, but you’ll see corn on there as well. If someone has been suffering for a very, very, very long time, she went pretty early to the doctor. I think her body just kind of like reacted super strong once the chain finally broke. But you know, she was good for a while.

But if you go sick for a while and then ran something like this, you might not only see the corn, but you can see what’s called cross-reactivity. This is different than cross-contamination. Cross-contamination is I eat the oats and there was some wheat in it. Cross-reactivity is a phenomenon in the body that the body actually starts reacting to things that have a similar molecular structure to the food that it’s reacting to.

Normally the main culprit is wheat, and then it goes for dairy. It goes for corn; it goes for cocoa a lot of the times. Coffee and caffeine can be on there, sugar can be on there and we do see that she is sensitive to sugar in here. The night shades can be on there. This is really common stuff and it is patterns that we learn to see as FDNs. It’s patterns that you just start to pick up on the longer that you do this.

Getting in the Head of an FDN

So hypothetically, if I knew that this woman felt the way that she did, but I did not have that diagnosis of Hashimoto’s cause no one had thought about that or no one ran the test, which again, is very common, unfortunately, I’m thinking about this one. I’m going to ask her, hey, maybe you’d like to consider running some type of autoimmune panel or getting some blood work because I’m curious about a few markers here.

Of course, we would be correct if we would’ve seen her thyroid out of whack. If you run an autoimmune panel, there’s an interesting lab by Cyrex. You can actually see; I think it’s antibodies that are correlated with like the 20 most common autoimmune diseases. Very useful test. Very expensive but worth it if you consider what you’re actually testing. I would be running that here. I would be looking at that. Thankfully we already had it, but you know, I’d be running that here.

Again, we don’t want to overanalyze this test. I mean, there’s only so much that we can do with this. These are just examples of how we think, this is how you can kind of get that big picture idea.

There’s one other thing I wanted to show you guys today though, and it’s this program at the bottom. You’ll see the word LEAP if you’re looking on YouTube. It just means lifestyle, eating, and performance. It’s kind of like the consumer facing brand for Oxford Biomedical Labs because they get very technical, they’re very sciencey. If you go to their website, it’s total nerd stuff. It’s stuff that we like, but the average consumer might be really overwhelmed by or confused by.

Using the LEAP Program to Perfect the MRT

I like this protocol that they provide you at the bottom. This is provided to every single person that runs the test. It is included in the cost. It’s not something that many FDNs use. It’s not something that many practitioners use, and I don’t blame them, I get why. It’s complicated. There are a few reasons that we’ll go over. But if you have the ability to do it or the discipline to do it, I have seen high levels of good results with this.

So, you have phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four, phase five, and then there’s something after that which we’ll touch on in a moment. The reason this is different for every single person, like your MRT phase one, would be different than my MRT phase one. What it is doing is it’s trying to perfect that missing percentage. Remember I said this test has 93.6% replicability rates. Well, what about the other 6.4? This is how they try to perfect it.

What’s tough is when we have an immune response from a food, it doesn’t always manifest into something noticeable. It usually does. It doesn’t always manifest into something noticeable. These people might not understand that something’s happening to them, even if they’re sensitive to the food. So, assuming that we get lucky, and they do feel off or just not as good as they normally do, or have a direct symptom, like a headache, rash, or whatever, this is when this can be particularly useful.

Phase one are the foods that the person was least sensitive to, and they do take all the groups. So, they take the least sensitive things out of all the groups.

How to Eat on the LEAP Program

You see proteins at the top. Then we have starches and grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, nuts, seeds, oils, and flavor enhancers is what they call the other section. This works well in this case, honestly. Because it’s only for seven days, it’s days one through seven.

You can eat any of the foods on this list, and it just so happens that the client today has like beef, chicken, egg whites, tuna is in the protein. The protein is the thing that kills people, not literally of course, but figuratively. Because if the person has like really crappy proteins like just fish, some people love fish, but they don’t necessarily want tuna and salmon first thing in the morning for seven days. It can become kind of tricky.

In this case, egg white is perfect. Then not to mention the starches and grains. We have white potatoes and sweet potatoes on here. Butternut squash is in the vegetables, celery. Fruits are cranberry, strawberry, watermelon. We have a lot of different things that we can use here and make some great meals with.

How this would work for her is from days one through seven, we are only eating the foods in that column. Then when phase two comes around, it’s days eight through 12, it’s a little different. It is not just the foods in phase two, this seems to confuse people. What you are doing is now adding on the foods in phase two to phase one. Why are we doing this?

We are starting out with the least sensitive foods and then scaling up. Because if you just use basic logic, you are least likely to react to the ones in phase one and possibly you’ll react to ones with a little bit of a higher green sensitivity.

How to Course Correct If Symptoms Appear

Now remember, green should not be something that you’re sensitive to in theory, but this is not a perfect test. There is no such thing as a perfect food sensitivity test yet. The allergy tests are good, but that’s IgE. It’s something very specific. It doesn’t account for the hundreds of other ways that the body can react to food proteins.

So, this is how we kind of perfect it. We got phase one and then phase two will be eight through 12. We add in those foods. Then let’s say we get to phase three, and this is days 13 through 17. Remember, we’re adding in phase three foods. We are able to eat phase one, phase two, and phase three now.

Let’s say in phase three, I noticed I started to get those headaches again. Or let’s say this client, all of a sudden, the weight loss stopped, or the fatigue came back. They weren’t feeling themselves when they had been feeling really good. It might be an indicator that it was one of the foods that we consumed in this phase. So, we use common sense.

In her case, one of the things in the protein section that she has for phase three, she has venison, red kidney bean, clam, rainbow trout, turkey. Let’s say she started eating turkey. She was throwing that in with her egg whites. She starts to have some reactions. She’s eating that in the morning and not really feeling good in the afternoon.

We can use some common sense and say, this is probably the turkey. We course correct, remove the turkey. Oh wait, I feel better. Okay, that was one of the foods that pissed me off. Everything else worked well in phase three, but turkey, not so well.

Alleviating Anxiety and Depression Using LEAP

Then I continue my protocol, I move on to phase four, and hopefully everything just continues to sail smoothly. If it doesn’t, we’re able to course correct, need be. I hope that makes sense. Again, this is not for everyone.

Some people don’t have the discipline, some people’s test results are not really optimal for it. When it’s not optimal, like usually it’s the proteins again that get people with this, I will tell the client combine phase one and phase two from day one and still just do the full 12 days.

That typically works for people. Cause I think the phase one is with an abundance of caution. When you’re only doing phase one, you are being extremely cautious. Generally speaking, people are going to feel fine in phase one and phase two. So, they’re being extra safe there. I think it’s fine to combine both together.

But what we’re able to do now is we’re able to give the body a little bit of a break. We’re able to lower that immune response and people can feel really good, really quick. I interviewed someone years ago who actually, ironically, did not go through FDN. They went through a doctor that happened to run the MRT exclusively. That was the only test they mainly did. They used this LEAP protocol, which I never hear about anyone doing. I was really excited about that. I thought that was cool.

This is not going to be the case for everyone. It is an exceptional story, I admit that. But this woman, her name is Brittany. She had anxiety and depression for about two to three years prior to that. Once she did this, in three days, her anxiety and depression went away.

Clear Validity with Food Sensitivity Testing

At that point, when I talked to her and interviewed her, it had been about two years since she took the test. How amazing is that? Anxiety and depression, things that we’re told are, oh, that’s a SSRI thing, right? We need benzodiazepines or Lexapro, whatever it might be. Yet this woman just removed some foods from a test, and it only took two, three days, and her anxiety and depression that she had for years went away. That’s crazy.

Untreated depression is the number one cause of suicide and suicidal thoughts. How many people are dying because of foods that they’re sensitive to? I don’t want to go off on a whole tangent there, but I’m passionate about that and I think we all should be. I mean, that’s kind of crazy to think about.

This test has a lot of validity. It works best in combination with everything else. But you can see, I mean, today was a great day for this client. It really worked out well for her. She felt a lot better. I’m super glad we got to do this with her. That’s pretty much the overall, just for the test.

I mean, we talked about the differences in how these tests work. We talked about what the green, yellow, and red means. We talked about the big picture perspective, and we talked about the five-phase protocol. Oh, that was the one thing I was missing. At the bottom, this is technically “phase six”, and it has day one, day two, day three.

What they’re trying to do here is like cycle you through foods because it is believed, I think it’s even known that if you consume foods more often, you are more likely to become sensitive or just generally reactive to them.

Conclusion

I do believe that there’s science behind that. I can’t recite the science offhand, so I’m not going to speak on that. But I think that’s why they have this.

I’ve never really had anyone do it. I don’t think it’s a hundred percent necessary, but the five-phase thing is definitely an easy win for someone. If you want to make someone feel great fast, they run this test, they go through phase one, phase two, at the very least, and they’re going to feel a lot better.

If you have any questions, you can reach out to us. Drop a comment on YouTube or you can comment to our podcast on Podbean. We will be back soon, either way with another interview or maybe analyzing some more lab results. I’m not sure what’s next, but it’s going to be fun either way. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

To hire a coach, go to fdnthrive.com.

For a FREE Health Review, go to fdnthrive.com/match/.

Thank you to all parents who generously filled an ‘Operation Christmas Child
Samaritan Shoe box’. We can only imagine the smiles on the faces of the
children opening them. Your gifts will be a treasure for them and a joy they
will hold onto all their lives. Thank you for your thoughtfulness and
generosity

Thank you to all the parents who have been liking and commenting on stories on Storypark.
We really appreciate it. Here is a small article from StoryPark about being more involved in
your child’s learning.

Storypark creates a secure online network of the people that matter most for your child. It
helps working parents, far-away family, educators and specialists ensure children receive the
best opportunities possible. Be more involved in your child’s learning

How does Storypark help my child?

• Deeper insights into your child’s unique interests, needs and abilitiesallows better support and improved outcomes.
• Improves communication between educators and families.
• Enables educators to spend their time with your child more effectively.
• Helps your child define ‘what’s next’ in their learning.
• Share movement, song, and creative expression through audio and video.
• Actively involves grandparents, family and close friends.

Again, a huge thank you to all the parents who have been interacting with StoryPark. We love to hear feedback. If you do have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask us.

Beverly Hills Montessori Christian Long Day Care combines the delivery of authentic Montessori education with Christian values. Our centre has been around for over 30 years and our passionate team of carefully selected educators is at the core of our success. Come meet us and see why our centre is the best choice for your child’s future – book a tour now.

Key points 

• Drowning can occur quickly and quietly. It’s a top cause of death for children  under five years. 
• Close and constant adult supervision at all times is the key to water safety for kids. 
• Water hazards include backyard pools and ponds, public swimming pools, lakes,  beaches, dams, ponds, water tanks, and buckets with water. 

Drowning and drowning prevention: what you need to know Drowning can occur quickly and quietly, without any warning noises. 

Drowning is one of the major causes of death for children under five years. Babies and toddlers are  top-heavy, which puts them at higher risk of drowning. If a baby falls into shallow water, they can’t  always lift themselves out. 

In Australia, children under five drown in: 

• swimming pools 
• baths and spa baths 
• rivers, creeks and streams 
• beaches 
• dams, lagoons and lakes. 

Children also drown in less obvious locations, like nappy buckets, water tanks, water features and fish  ponds – even pets’ water bowls. 

For every toddler who dies from drowning in Australia, approximately seven other children are  hospitalised from drowning incidents. Some of these incidents result in severe brain damage. 

Water safety for kids: the basics 

It’s important to always stay with your child and watch closely whenever they’re near water – even  when your child can swim. 

Supervision means constant visual contact with your child and keeping your child within arm’s  reach at all times. You should be in a position to respond quickly, whether you’re at the beach or the  swimming pool, near dams, rivers and lakes, or at home near the bath or spa. Hold your child’s hand  when you’re near waves or paddling in rivers. 

Supervision is not an occasional glance while you nap, read or do household chores. It’s not watching  your children playing outside while you’re inside. It’s always best for an adult, not an older child, to  supervise.

You should also teach your child about water safety and how to swim from a young age. Many  children can learn to swim by the time they’re four or five. 

First aid is an essential skill for the entire family to learn. If you know how to do CPR and what to do  in an emergency, it could save your child’s life. 

Water safety around the house 

The majority of drowning deaths in Australia result from a child falling or wandering into water,  particularly into a backyard pool. But a young child can drown in just a few centimetres of water. 

Here are some tips to prevent drowning and improve water safety around your house: 

• Remove any containers with water in them from around the house and make sure your child  can’t get to any bodies of water, including the bath, on their own. 
• Use a nappy bucket with a tight-fitting lid and keep the bucket closed, off the floor and out of  your child’s reach. 
• Always empty the baby bath as soon as you’re finished with it so older siblings can’t climb in. • Empty sinks, tubs, buckets, baths, basins, troughs and paddling pools immediately after use. • Secure covers to ponds and birdbaths and cover other water features with wire mesh, or keep  them empty until your child is at least five years old. 
• Keep aquariums and fishbowls out of reach of small children. 

Water safety around dams, creeks, ponds and tanks 

Children don’t always understand, apply or remember rules, especially when they’re distracted by  play. So, a securely fenced, safe play area can be an effective barrier between small children and  water hazards. 

Here are tips to improve water safety around your property: 

• Fence off the area between the house and any bodies of water. 
• Teach your child to not go near the dam, creek or water tank without you. • Secure a toddler-proof lid over any water tanks. 
• Fence off, drain or seal ponds if your children or visiting children are less than five years old. • Make sure there are no trellises, ladders, windows or trees that your child could climb to get  into the water tank. 

Water safety around beaches, lakes and rivers 

Here are tips to improve water safety near the ocean, lakes or rivers: 

• Always stay with your child when they’re playing in or near the sea, lakes or rivers. Hold your  child’s hand near waves and when paddling in rivers. 
• Take your child only to patrolled beaches where surf lifesavers are present, and swim only  between the red and yellow flags. 
• Teach your school-age child what to do if they need help – stay calm, float and raise an arm to  signal to a lifeguard or lifesaver.

Beverly Hills Montessori Christian Long Day Care combines the delivery of authentic Montessori education with Christian values. Our centre has been around for over 30 years and our passionate team of carefully selected educators is at the core of our success. Come meet us and see why our centre is the best choice for your child’s future – book a tour now.

Stuffed butternut pumpkin with rice pistachio and cranberries

A wholesome, delicious and festive alternative to a stuffed pork / turkey, but ultimately just a wonderful way to look at eating plants a bit differently too whether it’s Christmas or not. Be creative in how you think about swapping out some ingredients too if you like.

Swaps could include:

• buckwheat or pearl barley in place of rice / quinoa
• parsley, coriander, basil in place of sage
• cashew cheese or nutritional yeast (at smaller quantities) in place of feta
• stuffing a larger kent or jap pumpkin instead of a butternut (slice through the middle, no need to tie on those ones)

Any leftover stuffing can be served on the side of the pumpkin or add extra fresh baby spinach or rocket to make a salad for the next day.

STUFFED BUTTTERNUT PUMPKIN

Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour 35 minutes
Serves 6-8

1.5kg whole butternut pumpkin
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small red onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 small zucchini, cut into 1 cm dice
½ red capsicum, cut into 1cm dice
250 g microwave brown rice and quinoa* (do not cook)
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/4 cup maple syrup
50g baby spinach +extra, to serve
2 tbsp pistachios, toasted, roughly chopped
2 tbsp cranberries
1 tbsp sage leaves, finely chopped +extra leaves, fried in olive oil, to serve?
40gm feta cheese, crumbled

Preheat oven to 200°(180°fan-forced). Line a baking tray with baking paper. Cut pumpkin in half lengthways and remove seeds. Place pumpkin on prepared tray, cut side facing up. Spray pumpkin lightly with oil and season. Cook for 1 hour – 1 hour 15 minutes or until just tender. Set pumpkin aside to cool slightly then spoon outflesh from pumpkin halves, leaving a 1.5cm thick border. Mash pumpkin flesh and reserve. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Add onion
and cook for 2-3 minutes or until softened. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add zucchini and capsicum and cook for 3-4 minutes. Add rice, vinegar and 1 tablespoon maple syrup and cook for 1 minute. Stir through spinach, remove from heat, cover with lid and set aside for 5 minutes. Stir through reserved pumpkin, pistachios, cranberries, sage and feta. Season. Divide rice mixture between pumpkin halves. Gently join halves together and tie with kitchen string at 2cm intervals. Return pumpkin to baking tray, brush outside with remaining maple syrup and cook for 20 minutes. Set aside for 5 minutes. To serve, remove string and cut into thick slices. Serve with extra baby spinach leaves and fried sage leaves, if desired.

Prep: 2hr35m
Cook: 15m

Serves: 6

Ingredients

250g Devondale Salted Butter, softened
1/2 cup Devondale Dale Full Cream Pure Milk, save 2 tbs for later
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cup plain flour
1 cup self-raising flour
56g silver sprinkles (to decorate)
530g pure icing sugar, sifted (save 30g to dust)

Method

1. Using an electric mixer, beat butter, caster sugar and vanilla until pale and creamy. Sift
   flours over butter mixture. Add milk and stir until a dough forms. Divide dough in half. Shape
   each half into a disc. Wrap in baking paper and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 170C/150C fan-forced. Line 4 large baking trays with baking paper.
3. Roll each dough disc between 2 sheets of baking paper until 3mm thick. Cut out 18 x 9cm
   stars, 18 x 7cm stars and 18 x 5.5cm stars from dough. Place onto trays and bake for 15
   minutes or until light golden. Stand on trays for 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
4. Meanwhile, to make royal icing, place icing sugar in a medium bowl. Gradually add enough
   milk to make a smooth spreadable icing. Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a 2mm plain
   nozzle. Pipe a little royal icing over the centre of the 9cm star. Top with another 9cm star,
   turning top star slightly. Repeat with a little more icing and a third 9cm star. Continue
   stacking with three 7cm stars, then with two 5.5cm stars. Position a 5.5cm star on top of
   tree, securing with icing. Repeat to make 6 trees in total.
5. Pipe remaining icing on trees and decorate with cachous. Set aside for 20 minutes or until
   set. Dust with icing sugar. Serve.

Recipe from https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/recipes/butter-biscuit-christmas-tree

Beverly Hills Montessori Christian Long Day Care combines the delivery of authentic Montessori education with Christian values. Our centre has been around for over 30 years and our passionate team of carefully selected educators is at the core of our success. Come meet us and see why our centre is the best choice for your child’s future – book a tour now.

Choc orange ginger icy pops

I’ve got the frozen cravings gooooooood. These delicious GINGER CHOC ORANGE ICY POPS are absolutely HEAVEN and definitely solve the cravings in minutes! They’re a yummy little mouthful with plenty of flavour. You can use your choice of ice cream, different types of chocolate, biscuits etc too of course.

To make them:
1. Simply grab your favourite vanilla ice cream or similar (plant based option / dairy free etc etc) and scoop about 12 portions (or however many depending on the people you’d like to serve.
2. Place a wooden popsicle stick in the middle of each, then place on lined tray and back into the freezer to hard set for about 1 hour (this is super necessary otherwise they all melt and fall off the wooden popsicle when dipping in chocolate)
3. Crush about 9 ginger orange almond snaps (I used the yummy Nayker ones which are thin and easy to crush or chop) and set aside. You can use whatever cookie takes your fancy, I just loved this flavour combo with the choc and vanilla ice cream!
4. Just before the hour of setting the ice cream is up, melt about 200g dark chocolate. Once chocolate is melted, dip icy pop in, then roll through the crushed ginger snaps and place on tray. Repeat with remaining.
5. Get them back into the freezer stat to set for another 2 hours or so and then enjoy!

They are DELICIOUS.

Do you often find yourself overeating during the holidays? If so, you’re not alone, and we can help. Keep reading to learn how to stop overeating during the holidays.

The holidays come around every year, and with them comes an influx of emotions. Some are exciting and nostalgic, while others are more overwhelming and stressful. Because of this, navigating food and nutrition during this time can be particularly difficult. 

This year, by simply implementing a few tips and tricks from a registered dietitian, you can set yourself up for success and avoid overeating this holiday season. 

Overeating During the Holidays 

So why does it happen? In actuality, there are quite a few reasons. The holidays generally call for celebration, and the celebration usually means social gatherings. And what do we often find at social gatherings? Food!

Additionally, there are usually nostalgic traditions that the holidays bring about as well, which are often built around food. Maybe it’s a certain grocery store’s seasonal baking mix or your grandmother’s holiday cookies. Either way, it’s safe to say the holidays and food go hand and hand. 

The overeating side of things comes into play here when we mix these two factors with scarcity and mindlessness. So let’s chat about how to prevent scarcity and mindlessness from taking over so you can stop overeating during the holidays. 

5 Tips to Stop Overeating During the Holidays

Start by implementing the following 5 tips this holiday season so you can prevent overeating. 

Enjoy Your Holiday Favorites Mindfully 

No matter where you are during the holiday season, there will always be lackluster holiday treats and dishes around. Whether it’s the stale sugar cookies in the work breakroom or the mediocre bread pudding your aunt insists on making every year. Yet at the same time, there will also always be those delicious, incredible treats and dishes you can’t wait to have.

The first key to navigating the holidays and preventing overeating is to mindfully savor the holiday food items that you actually enjoy. Seek out the food items you look forward to every year, and leave the rest behind.

There’s no need to pick up that stale cookie that you know you don’t want or to feel pressured by your aunt to have some of that bread pudding. Stick to what you enjoy, and leave the rest behind. This is one of the best ways to stop overeating during the holidays. 

Don’t Let Scarcity Take Over

Now that we know we’re only going to eat the food items we really want, we have to talk about the scarcity mindset. The scarcity mindset is what tells us that we must eat as much as we possibly can right now because we’re not going to have access to it again for a long time. 

The outcome? You’re left feeling overly full, and most likely stressed or overwhelmed as a result. Reget settles in, and you can’t believe you ended up overeating during the holidays again. 

First of all, we’ve all been there. It’s human and it’s normal! But I’m going to give you a quick tip to help prevent this from happening again this year. When you’re enjoying those holiday sweet treats and savory dishes, remind yourself that they’ll come back. The holidays come every year, and you get to enjoy them every year. Additionally, you can always make them outside of the holiday season if you really love them! Get that recipe from your friend or family member, or learn how to make something similar that the grocery store provides. 

The more you can call out and prepare for the scarcity mindset, the more in control you’ll feel around food. That way, you can stop overeating during the holidays. 

Find a Balance Between Nourishment and Enjoyment

Due to the increase in holiday social gatherings, it’s easy to lean pretty far into the enjoyment side of things at this time of year. It’s often completely unintentional! Before we know it the holiday season is over and we realize just how much we overeat and indulge in those enjoyment-based foods. 

To stop overeating during the holidays, lead with mindfulness and intention. To do this, you can use Nutrition Stripped’s Balance Spectrum. There are two halves of the spectrum, one representing nourishment while the other representing enjoyment. In the middle, we have a balance between the two. 

Use this visual to check in with yourself. Are you spending too much time on the enjoyment half of the spectrum? If so, how can you pull yourself back to the center of the spectrum, or a bit over to the nourishment half of the spectrum? Prioritize a balance between the two from the get-go, rather than prioritizing one or the other.

Never Leave Go to a Party with an Empty Stomach

This one goes for all social gatherings year-round, honesty. How many times have you said to yourself, “I’m not eating all day because I really want to enjoy myself at this dinner.”?

If this is a frequent sentiment for you, then I’m willing to bet you’re also familiar with the overly full, uncomfortable, stress-inducing sensation you experience after the meal you had or social gathering you attended. 

Fasting leads to extreme hunger, which leads to overeating. To stop overeating during the holidays this year, try ensuring well-nourished prior to the gathering or meal. Conduct your day just as you would any other day! That way, you’ll still be hungry and will enjoy yourself, but you won’t feel so famished that you’re forced to overeat. 

Take Some Time to Manage Stress

The holidays are busy, stressful, and a bit chaotic honestly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely in love with the holiday season! But that certainly doesn’t negate the fact that they can be a bit much. Oftentimes, overeating is just a result of mindlessness because we’re simply trying to get through the holiday season with our sanity intact.

Try and implement some active stress management. Journal through your thoughts, meditate with some headphones in, or do a quick yoga flow. Managing stress manages stress eating, which in turn reduces overeating. 

The Takeaway

Introduce mindfulness, enjoy your favorites, toss in a bit of stress management, and nourish yourself as you always do, and you’ll break the cycle of overeating during the holidays! As always, take these tips slowly. Try out one at a time, see how it goes, make it your own, and move on to the next one. 

Don’t forget to let us know how it goes by tagging us on social media!

Do You Want to Experience More Balance with your Food Choices?

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: All right. Hello my friends. I am back with my friend and fellow FDN practitioner, Becca Kyle. We are also both type 8s on the Enneagram, if anyone cares at all. I find a lot of people in our community of health actually do care about the personality type stuff and things like that. It explains why you guys like the other episode. It was a volcano mixing with another volcano, just bam, high energy.

Today, I appreciate no judgment. I attempted to do my thing after coming out of the sauna. I thought I could pull off an episode after that and my hair said otherwise. I never really thought I’d say that on a podcast, but it needs to be addressed. The good news is we’re not here to talk about my hair. We are here to talk about my poop, though. It’s going to be even more interesting. What we’re going to be doing with my poop is analyzing Live lab results. You guys responded so positively to the episode we did with Ryan Monahan, where it was called How to Actually Analyze Thyroid Markers.

What’s funny is, and Becca obviously knows this as an FDN, we have access to utilize blood work with our clients. You could take our advanced course on that. But the truth of the matter is we don’t actually dive into blood work really, in any extent in the main course. It’s mostly under the premise that when most people come to us their labs kind of look normal or it’s not the biggest clue at the very least. The lab work is almost like, okay, cool.

Analyzing GI MAP Gut Test Results

We can give you a diagnosis with that if we were a doctor. But we’re not a doctor, so we need to look at other things to actually be able to help you at that core level. So, I’m figuring, they like that with the blood work that much for the thyroid markers, we really need to do this with the core labs we teach at FDN.

So today, we’re going to be talking about the GI MAP. It is something that, as I suggested already, is a stool test. We’ll talk about the technology behind it. I’m really here to talk to Becca cause she likes utilizing this test. It is one of the core labs we teach at FDN.

We’ll be going through all of these not in order necessarily. What I mean by that is it’s not going to be one episode after the other, but over the next couple of months touching on all of them, and it’s fun. So, if you are listening to this right now, you can catch us on YouTube. Just go to Functional Diagnostic Nutrition’s YouTube page and you can watch.

But we make these episodes with the audio listener in mind because our audience is way bigger on there. We will talk about this in such a way today that you do not need to see it, but some people are visual learners. With that said, I am going to share my screen and we’re going to bring this up for you here, Becca.

Of course, guys, I think I mentioned this, but if you want to hear Becca’s story, I’ll have that link in the show notes or the YouTube description. Today we’re here to hear her expertise about this test.

DNA PCR Gut Test Results

Becca Kyle: I love this test so much.

Detective Ev: And you can see everything just fine.

Becca Kyle: Yep. I can.

Detective Ev: Okay, awesome. All right, so this is from 2018. I’m doing a lot better now; don’t you guys worry. But the GI MAP was one of the things that when I went through FDN I actually did not end up running this. At the time they were not including this specific lab in the FDN course. Now, when you go through the course, included in your tuition, FDN will pay for it upfront for you even if you’re on a payment plan. You will have access to this test and a few others. It’s pretty cool.

Not that we have to like go crazy with it, but just to give people some context that might be completely unfamiliar with this, Becca, how does this lab work? Like what kind of technology is it using to analyze one’s stool?

[00:03:05] Becca Kyle: What I love about the GI MAP versus the original microscopy test that we were trained on is that I feel like it’s a lot more accurate. It’s not just a positive or a negative. It’s a DNA PCR test. So, instead of someone looking for organisms under a microscope, they’re looking for the DNA signature of the organism. They’ll be able to tell you is it below detectable limits, or is it high, or is it low, versus just present or not present.

But if something is super high to me, that’s going to warrant a little bit of a different action step or strategy than if something’s moderate or borderline, for example.

Gut Test Results to Widen the View on Health

I really love that it gives you the ability to just have a deeper understanding of how many organisms you’ve got going on in your body. It’s got some amazing digestive markers. In fact, I feel like most of the time that the digestive markers situationally may be my favorite markers on this lab.

It gives you a beautiful look at what’s going on in your microbiome. I think most of us feel in FDN, if you don’t have good quality gut health, you don’t have health. What other thing I love about this lab is it really talks to all the other labs. You know, it shows up on a DUTCH hormone test, what shows up on a food sensitivity test, which shows up on even an organic acid or HTMA test.

The data you get really is so synergistic with everything else, every other piece of data that you can come across.

[00:04:33] Detective Ev: Awesome. What’s worth mentioning is that very recently they changed the way this looks. Fundamentally, the test is almost identical. I know that they messed with some markers, but for the sake of today’s learning experience there is no reason that my test doesn’t work.

Of course, it’s just easier to use my own because I can absolutely share that without any problem. So, let’s go over the section. The first one, it just has these pathogens. Obviously, anyone watching this can see that it has every single thing in here below the detectable level.

But humor me. Let’s say something comes back for a client in the bacterial parasitic, or viral pathogen section. Big picture approach, how are you looking at these things and addressing them?

Gut Test Results: Pathogens

[00:05:10] Becca Kyle: Well, I feel like the ones that show up on the first page are what I would call like pretty hard core. If something shows up on this page, we want to really pay attention to it and address it in significant ways. Because something like Giardia, for example, can really cascade into so many health issues. It can even impede your body’s ability to absorb B12, for example.

There are so many things on this first page that we would not want to just be like, eh, it’s fine. No. We address it, and we address it quickly. Because it can, like we said, be implicated in so many of your chronic symptoms, but also really just the underlying large amounts of inflammation and toxic burden even.

[00:05:53] Detective Ev: Sure. So, I happen to pass the test on this one. We are good on this page.

I will be honest, a lot of the clients that I’ve worked with throughout the years have actually historically come up pretty clean on this section. That’s not always the case. We train you what to do if you go through the course if someone comes up on this stuff. But when I’ve even seen it, the good news is a lot of the things were actually correlated with what would’ve been like food poisoning. It was a transient thing, and it passes through them.

But yes, like Becca mentioned, I mean the giardia, certain of the parasites, especially not so great. And depending on what shows up in the bacterial pathogen section, could be not so friendly.

I’ll jump right down to the next section.

Gut Test Results: H. Pylori

Again, for those on audio, what we’re looking at now is a section known as H. Pylori. We see H. Pylori itself as the result, and then there’s a bunch of virulence factors.

Let’s say Becca, maybe I’m a client of yours, right? I haven’t heard of H. Pylori at all, and I get these results back. How would you break this down for those people?

[00:06:44] Becca Kyle: Yeah. H Pylori is really common. I would say probably 80% of my clients end up having it. It’s a bacterium. It can have a positive role in like ulcers and gastritis and some more severe kind of diagnosis. However, in my opinion, we’re looking on a deeper level.

We’re looking at the fact that it can lower your stomach acid, which should be your first line of defense against anything else ingested, like you come across a bacteria or pathogen. Basically, it’s like if you have H. Pylori it can have the potential to kind of be in your stomach and your gut area.

Like you leave for vacation, and you leave all the doors and windows open in your house and say, hey, come on. Let’s go invade. I always say it’s like the mob boss of the gut. If you don’t have it, then it’s always, to me, good news. If you do have it even on, like you see here on yours, that yours is not what we would consider high.

The thing about H. Pylori though, it often hangs out in the more upper regions of the gut, in the stomach area. By the time it gets down into a stool sample, it might actually be higher in the upper regions of the GI tract.

H. Pylori Spreads Via Saliva

I always look at H. Pylori as a huge healing opportunity because of its ability to lower stomach acid, to allow other bacteria and pathogens into the gut, and then it can potentially, with that lowered stomach acid, reduce your body’s ability to even absorb protein. There’s some correlation with low elastase, which we’ll look at on that last page. And it can just be implicated in a lot of chronic issues.

To me, I have a lot of clients that shows up, probably almost always shows up when someone has anxiety, insomnia, things like the neurological issues because it can impact your body’s ability to make these amino acid-based neurotransmitters, the feel-good hormones. They make you feel happy and balanced and all that stuff.

H. Pylori can, if you’re going back root cause and kind of backtracking, it can have a causative role in an imbalanced mood even. So, I look at H. Pylori as a massive healing opportunity. Even though it’s not high on this lab, I would still address it.

It’s very common that it’s spread in families or with a romantic partner because it’s spread very commonly via saliva. It also hangs out in your oral cavity. If you’ve got someone that you’re loving on or you’re sharing a toothbrush, or you’re sharing a straw or spoon, I always recommend that the whole family or whoever is involved there also address it for themselves.

[00:09:09] Detective Ev: It’s a tough thing because H. Pylori, once it is there, it’s a little tricky. Many people thankfully, are asymptomatic. It’s estimated that about 50% of people in Africa actually have H. Pylori.

H. Pylori Could Be Much More Prevalent

This is what’s really fascinating to me. The estimations are always around 20% to 30%, at least by Western medicine, that that’s how many people have this in the United States of America. I’m not even saying that that’s so far off. Let’s say it’s almost completely wrong, and it’s 50% of Americans. What you mentioned before was brilliant about the idea that 80% of your clients show up with H. Pylori.

I have found the same thing over the last five and a half years. I would even estimate, I mean, literally the actual number for me is probably 90%. Then of course we are talking about stool testing, which is an imperfect measurement. There are chances that if you and I run enough of these, we are going to miss something like H. Pylori and it’s going to come back up as a false negative, which is fascinating.

So, there’s only two things that can be happening here. Either this is way more prevalent than we think, which I think is possible, but that still does not account for the numbers that we see. Ten the other side is that this is, even though correlation isn’t causation, it’s something that seems to be par for the course when someone is ill.

You can simply argue that when people are super stressed out, which most people are, if they’re chronically ill, this gives a great ground for something like H. Pylori to hop on in. I mean, if a fraction of the population has it, eventually you are going to be exposed to it in that stressful state and it can come and make its home. I mean, you could spend all day trying to theorize why this comes in, but it’s not something to mess with.

Reduce H. Pylori to Get Rid of Symptoms

I don’t know if we ever got to talk about the virulence factors that can be associated with a higher risk factor for like gastric cancer and stuff like that. I was symptomatic to be clear. Becca wouldn’t have known these things, so I should have mentioned this.

We always correlate with the symptoms that the person is dealing with. Thankfully by 2018 I was doing a lot better. But I was coming off of having pretty severe cystic acne. I definitely had sleep issues when I was younger. A panic disorder, major depressive disorder, GERD. I was diagnosed with that at 15.

[00:11:16] Becca Kyle: I can’t tell how many of my clients have reflux and are on reflux meds. They come to me and they’re like, Becca, I don’t want to be on these meds. I would say 98% of the time, H. Pylori shows up. Get rid of the H. Pylori or greatly reduce it, and they can get off their meds. It’s their own desire to do so.

Cause I, as an FDN, we don’t tell anyone or suggest to anyone that they get off meds. But if it’s there something that they want to do, almost every single time they can’t because H. Pylori also has a causative role in things like reflux or GERD or heartburn, things like that.

When you went through your protocol, how quickly did your symptoms improve?

[00:11:55] Detective Ev: Well, it’s interesting that you said that because one of the things that I did was I utilized Matula tea. I always laugh about Matula tea because it comes from South Africa, but the website that they use is very outdated and the tea is extraordinarily expensive comparing to most teas.

Gut Test Results: H. Pylori’s Virulence Factors

It’s almost funny for people because they’re like, really, this is what you’re sending me to do? This is what I need to go buy? But it’s one of the more effective things and has a high level of efficacy in our world at least.

I used that, and I would say within a month and a half, now I’m including the month that I did the Matula tea, I started to notice the skin get better and things just start to feel better.

What’s really interesting, it’s a point I want to go to with something you mentioned. You talked about, you noticed how people might be able, voluntarily, of course, to get off these medications if H. Pylori is gone or greatly reduced. I have noticed a ton of validity to the latter. In your experience, you have found that if people can get this lower than maybe what they came to with originally, they can still see that symptom relief. Is that correct?

[00:12:55] Becca Kyle: Yes, most definitely. Sometimes, depending on the level that you have, it might take more than one round of some herbal protocol to be able to maybe have it show up below detectable levels on a retest. But the goal is to bring your levels down.

Then of course we look at the next section, it’s about balance. If you’ve got H. Pylori and super low levels of your normal good guys, you’re going to be super imbalanced. We bring down the level of H. Pylori, bring up the levels of your low good guys, and you’re going to have, typically, fewer symptoms.

Yeah, with this virulence factor, it basically has the potential to increase disease in the body. It’s like doubling it up or tripling it up.

Gut Test Results: H. Pylori, Stress, and Symptoms

Now your specific one here, this virB one, unless you also have the cagA, it’s typically less likely to change the clinical outcome of an H. Pylori infection. But yeah, the virulence factors can make your symptom presentation much worse and has the potential to increase the disease potential of the bacteria.

[00:13:59] Detective Ev: I did not even know that myself, so thank you. That makes me feel good.

I will say too, everyone needs to figure out what’s right for them. And if you go through the FDN course, if the client wants to, we would aim that it’d be eliminated, that would be great. I have found that if I am addressing the other things in my life correctly, this does not seem to matter. But it is my belief even without a current retest that I probably still have H. Pylori.

There are two reasons I believe that. One, in the last four years, I don’t know why I would’ve said it on this podcast. I’m not someone that personally believes in going out and just hooking up with random people. And with hair like this, you know, I can only swing them every few years anyway. No, I’m kidding.

But I’ve dated two women since 2018, and I would assume that based on what we’ve seen, H. Pylori was probably present in at least one of these women. So, I know I’m getting exposed again.

What I saw, Becca, which is really interesting, is like, this was just last year. I feel really great nowadays, which is great. But last year when I was pushing the schedule a little bit and I was accepting more speaking stuff than I should have, I started to get symptoms when I would eat ginger or certain other foods.

H. Pylori Asymptomatic from Just Addressing Lifestyle Issues

I never got a diagnosis. This is someone, I made a choice on my own because I felt that I knew what was happening. It appeared to me that I probably had a low-level ulcer because there were certain things, very specific ones, that were triggering pain. The pain would happen at certain times. It was relieved in certain ways, and I was like, whoa, man, I’m pushing a little too hard.

Now, I never went through some Matula tea protocol. I didn’t do all this crazy stuff, but I did do the lifestyle things that I know I should have been doing anyway. I stopped pushing like a maniac and I went through some basic protocols. So, if I tested right now, I would almost bet money that H. Pylori is president in my body, and yet I’m asymptomatic again. I feel good.

I’m not pushing an idea that we shouldn’t try to get rid of it. I mean, that’s great. It doesn’t seem to be particularly helpful. But it’s also one of those things that it is such a nuisance and so prevalent, you can learn to work with it more or less by addressing the lifestyle stuff and doing other things.

But you might be symptomatic again. And I do believe I’ve been symptomatic because of it. Again, honestly, I don’t think it ever fully left my body.

We go down to the next section, talking about Normal Bacterial Flora. We see a lot of lows here for mine. Especially now knowing what I was dealing with, coming off of some cystic acne, severe mental health issues, things like that, what would be your interpretation when you see things this low after all these years?

Gut Test Results: Normal Bacterial Flora

[00:16:24] Becca Kyle: I would say that you have a really decent size imbalance in your gut flora. I mean to keep it simple with my clients, I tend to say good guys and bad guys. It’s pretty basic speech I suppose.

These are bacterial flora that you want in your gut. They’re so important. They make serotonin – feel good hormone. They make melatonin. They make vitamins. They help keep your estrogen balanced. They are what you want.

Another kind of basic thing I say is that in the gut we have this communication highway between our gut and our brain. It’s called the enteric nervous system. We want the good guys to have the loudest voice, versus the bad guys, you know? So, when you have this imbalance of some present H. Pylori, and we’ll see what else you got going on here in a little bit, and low good guys, who’s going to have the loudest voice? It’s these opportunistic pathogens that cause a lot of your symptoms.

So, I would say based on this lab that you definitely needed to rebalance your normal flora. This is such a, again, a significant healing opportunity in the body because these gut bacteria are so important for so many things. If you simply don’t have the amount you need to do all these beneficial processes in the body, that can look like a lot of chronic symptoms.

What you showed up here with all these low bacteria, would you say that correlates with how you were feeling at the time?

Low Good Guys Make Your Gut Vulnerable

[00:17:49] Detective Ev: Of course, cause you know, it’s one of those things where even if I got a lot of the major symptoms out of the way, it’s amazing how sick we can actually be, is what I’m trying to get at.

I thought, and in a sense, I was doing much better than I had been previously in 2018. But like now, it’s like, okay, I’m back to how I really wanted to feel like. You know, I can go work out five, six days a week. I’m doing boxing, I’m strength training, I’m still speaking, I’m doing all this stuff. I’m not saying everyone should push themselves all the time, but I felt like I was missing some of that resilience that I had.

So yes, not only does it correlate with that, but one thing that I omitted today, Becca, was the fact that even though I hadn’t been on antibiotics in several years at that point up until 2018, before the age of 18, I had been on over 20 courses of antibiotics, some of which lasted a month or longer.

[00:18:33] Becca Kyle: Wow. Okay.

Well, that definitely correlates with what shows up on this lab here. So many of us, if we had to do that growing up or whatever, didn’t necessarily take the steps to repopulate your good guys, after a round of antibiotics, you’re just cycling kind of this downward spiral of imbalance of low good guys. When your good guys are low, it’s also kind of like opening up the doors and windows of your house and saying, come rob me.

Time to Feed and Reseed

Your good guys are really a service and protective measure in the gut too.

I would say definitely I see a need here for some repopulation so that we can feed and reseed. You know, reseed with good bacteria, that would be probiotics. Feed them with their food, which would be the prebiotics.

I love all the great, amazing, simple, cheap prebiotic foods you can get out there. I’m not one that typically encourages people to buy bottled supplement prebiotics. No, just eat the prebiotic food. What do you typically do? Sometimes it’s easier just to pop up a prebiotic supplement, but do you prefer to get your prebiotics through food?

[00:19:34] Detective Ev: Well, first of all, I love that you recommend that for clients. I think that makes this work a lot more attainable for people, right? It’s much cheaper. I mean, everyone has to eat. You’re going to have to eat some foods anyway, so to incorporate those make sense.

And yeah, obviously my diet had changed pretty dramatically at that time. I am an advocate for sure, personally, if my clients can afford it, I love sending people almost routinely through the Total Gut Restore by Microbiome Labs. I’ve seen so much success with that, and I actually have gone through it multiple times. I always use MegaSpore, but I’ll keep throwing it in. I mean, yeah, if we could start naturally, that’s great.

I think for me, listen, it was not natural at all to take 20 courses of antibiotics. So, this is the other side of this.

Good Guys are So Low, Need Some Extra Support

I was doing a lot of the things that I thought were right almost for four years prior to this test, and I still wasn’t where I needed to be. I’m sure with certain people, especially if antibiotics hadn’t been in the mix as much, you kind of destroyed it naturally in a sense. So, maybe you have a better chance of fixing it up.

We really don’t know what 20 courses of antibiotics does to someone. There’s not really science showing what that’ll do long term. So, since I got affected unnaturally, I almost try to help myself, I’m using the word loosely, but in an unnatural way cause obviously there’s nothing natural necessarily about taking a bottled supplement like you mentioned.

[00:20:46] Becca Kyle: Well, and there’s a time and a place, by all means.

Especially, let’s say maybe you had some low normal, but your phyla microbiota was fine. Then maybe I might be like, let’s do this with food. But your phyla microbiota both of them were low. And these are good bacteria that dominate your entire digestive tract, from your mouth to your colon.

So, when we see low across the board like this, and even like one is not even there, then yeah, I would say that for someone like you, you need a little bit of an edge, a little extra support. You may be using some of these prebiotic foods, you know, jicama, green banana flour, Jerusalem artichoke, could be more of a potentially long-term maintenance situation.

Let’s get these good bacteria flourishing and then you can maintain with some prebiotic foods and whatnot.

Commercial Break – 12 Days of Christmas Special

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hey guys, it is Detective Ev here with some good news. The team that does the podcast asked me to record some exclusive content. What we did is a 12 Days of Christmas Special where we record 20-minute episodes with some of our top FDNs, as well as Reed Davis, the founder of FDN.

We only dive into the deep stuff. No formalities, no bios, just tips to actually help your health and or your business. We have about six episodes on the business side, and then six advanced health tips ranging from secret gluten sensitivities and how to deal with them around the holidays, how to deal with mold exposure. We got all this good stuff.

What you want to do is go to fdntraining.com/insider, that is fdntraining.com/insider. There you can sign up for that podcast. It is not going to be released to the public. It is only for people who are registered. You will have it dripped into your email for the 12 Days of Christmas. That is fdntraining.com/insider, and you can check out the link in our show notes as well.

All right, now back to today’s episode.

Gut Test Results: Opportunistic Bacteria

[00:21:33] Detective Ev: Awesome. Now moving down to this section here. We’re looking at, for those on audio, opportunistic bacteria. Then the subsections under that are Additional Dysbiotic/Overgrowth Bacteria and Potential Autoimmune Triggers.

This one is not as lit up as some of the other sections. So, what’s your interpretation on this one?

[00:21:51] Becca Kyle: We definitely see some bacteria that are there that aren’t going to do you any favors. I would consider the bacteria that shows up in this section to be pathogenic. They only cause disease. They’re not going to help you in any way, definitely not.

I’ve seen this show up with like, 10, 12 in the high range. You have one in the high and then three that are present otherwise. But I would say that again, it’s about balance. You don’t have a ton on this opportunistic bacteria section, but you did have low good guys.

Again, when we look at the scale here of good guys versus bad, I always kind of think of like an old Western movie, right? Like good guys versus bad guys. Again, we want it to be balanced. Even though you don’t have a ton show up, because your good guys are so low, again, who’s got the loudest voice here? Who can do the most damage?

I tend to see a lot of this can be caused by constipation. That can be caused by you get these in your gut because of that low stomach acid. And that prevotella too is really correlated with rheumatoid arthritis. Were you experiencing joint pain at the time of this lab?

[00:22:59] Detective Ev: Thankfully, that’s one of the things that I’ve never really had.

Be The Brains Behind the Tools

[00:23:03] Becca Kyle: Okay, good. I have some clients who come to me and they’re like, I don’t have any gut symptoms. My gut’s fine. I have a lot of neurological symptoms, you know, but this will light up like crazy.

What we have to do as FDNs is correlate it back to the person. So, I would address these in a GI MAP protocol, a little bit of Biocidin. You know, it’s nothing like, oh my gosh, this is so crazy. But some of these bacteria can still create symptoms, whether it’s bloating or IBS or constipation. They still have the potential to cascade into symptoms that you’re experiencing.

[00:23:35] Detective Ev: Sure. There are two really interesting things that you’re doing here that I hope people that listen to this, that might not be FDNs are starting to pick up on. One is the fact that if you are actually looking at this test right now, there’s only one thing here labeled high, but there’s many things that we don’t necessarily want.

The labs are tools. They are fantastic things. They’re great to use. But we need to be the brains behind those tools. Just because a lab might consider like even H. Pylori, right? It didn’t have H. Pylori as high because it’s a lab. It’s basing it off something else. We, in a perfect world, don’t want that in someone at all. So, you could argue that any amount of H. Pylori is quote/unquote “high”.

Then the other thing that you’re doing is the clinical correlation. If people really understand this, they understand the fundamental difference between a Western medicine practitioner and an FDN practitioner. There are a few differences, don’t get me wrong, but this is the fundamental one.

Difference Between a Western Medicine Practitioner & an FDNP

When a Western medicine practitioner gets test results back, they are looking to diagnose something. That is what they’re trying to do. If your blood sugar was XYZ level over a couple times, you could get diagnosed with Type II diabetes.

We cannot diagnose or treat anything just as FDNs. If you’re a doctor and an FDN, of course you could do that. But as FDNs, we cannot do that. What we are doing is clinically correlating and you guys will notice how Becca did exactly what she’s supposed to do. She asked me, well wait, did you have this joint pain at the time in this case? No, I didn’t have that. Okay. That doesn’t clinically correlate for Ev.

Other people, and in fact most of the time, you will find that you can pretty much guess a lot of the times what their symptomology might look like based on what shows up on the labs. But it’s not always there because everyone is an individual and everyone has their own unique thing going on. Just something to note for people that are listening today.

We have the Fungi and Yeast section. Thankfully at this point in time, I didn’t have Candida show up. Of course, it could be a false negative. But I fell into, before the world of FDN, a lot of those cleanses and stuff, like the Candida cleanses. Even if that wasn’t a complete protocol for the whole body, I feel like it might have helped with there.

But I’m sure you see Candida pop up pretty frequently on tests, I’m guessing, right?

Gut Test Results: Fungi/Yeast & Parasites

[00:25:37] Becca Kyle: I do. It’s just so common too. Cause we think of Candida as a secondary organism. It’s the little brother, a little sister. When you have something like H. Pylori or opportunistic bacteria or parasite or something like that, Candida likes to hang out. You know, it’s always running after saying, hey, I want to play too.

We rarely see Candida on its own with nothing else on the lab. But it is very common to see it hanging out with the other guys.

[00:26:01] Detective Ev: Right. I will skip over that section. We don’t need that right now cause I wanted you to talk about this. On the Parasite section we see something called Blastocystis hominis, and it is high. This is something we are well trained on as FDNs.

What is going on with this Blasto thing for me?

[00:26:17] Becca Kyle: I just like to call it Blasto because it just makes me feel good to say Blasto. I shake my fist at it.

Blastocystis hominis, it’s a parasite, it’s a protozoa. Typically spreads through fecal contamination of food or water. When I say that to someone, sometimes they’re like, but I’m not doing anything gross. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything gross. Maybe you ate at a restaurant, they didn’t wash the produce properly, or you just don’t ever know what you’re going to come in contact with.

Which is why, as Evan stated before, always addressing that lifestyle and keeping your stress levels down and keeping your body able to deal with this stuff that as we come into contact with it.

Gut Test Results: Blastocystis Hominis

Clinical implications of Blasto can present Ev with diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, irritable bowel syndrome, all sorts of things. So, with your symptom presentation at the time of this test, were you experiencing any of those symptoms of it?

[00:27:10] Detective Ev: Interestingly, I never had the constipation thing. I would occasionally have some diarrhea.

One of the things that I got historically, and thankfully it was lessened over time and not even present anymore, but one of the things that made me run this test actually finally, even though I’d been an FDN for a little bit, was the idea that I got this severe stomach pain that ended up landing me in the hospital.

They looked at this as completely benign. But I mean, I was going in there 20, 21 years old and was basically told I needed a back-to-back endoscopy and colonoscopy. This sucked. I was in the hospital for three days, endoscopy, one day, colonoscopy the next, or maybe it’s reverse order. I don’t know. Either way, I got tubes in places I never wanted tubes, and I had it back-to-back.

I would assume that that is probably part of that picture because again, they couldn’t figure out anything. They just sent me home eventually, and I had to have all these expensive things done on me because of the severe stomach pain I was dealing with.

[00:28:03] Becca Kyle: Yeah, it’s a pretty nasty booger. When I see this show up on a lab, I actually get really excited cause I’m like, this is a massive healing opportunity potentially. Part of the issue with Blasto is that it can be difficult to eradicate. Of course, none of the things we do are quick fixes.

Bringing Down Inflammation & Balancing the Immune System

None of what we do is meant to be a quick fix. But definitely some herbal protocols just like we have bacterial protocols for H. Pylori or the pathogenic bacteria, we also have parasitic protocols as well that allow your body to deal with these. Supporting the immune system, you know, supporting detoxification, all the things we would do in order to allow your body to take care of these bugs.

I always think of those, I mean, I’m a lot older than you, but those old Raid commercials, like Kill Bugs Dead. Maybe you don’t even know what I’m talking about.

[00:28:54] Detective Ev: Yes, I vaguely have an image of it.

[00:28:56] Becca Kyle: It’s alright. But I would look at this high level of Blastocystis hominis as a massive healing opportunity for you. Even if you maybe potentially, let’s say you weren’t having some of those clinical symptoms, it can still significantly drive inflammatory processes in your body.

One of the things we do with FDN is we are trying to bring down inflammation or trying to balance out the immune system and allow your body to function at an optimal level. So, taking care of this Blasto, whether you’re symptomatic or not, would be very important.

Then Blasto also has some clinical implications as one of the potential triggers for Hashimoto’s. When I see someone with thyroid issues and Blasto, we definitely want to support them and support their bodies in eradicating this little parasite.

[00:29:43] Detective Ev: Interesting. Yeah, Ryan Monahan, that was huge in his story. When he got rid of Blasto, it’s like his thyroid symptoms changed pretty much overnight, which is awesome.

Getting Rid of Blasto Can Be a Long-Term Project

With this said, one of the only other markers that we’ve really hyper focused on was H. Pylori. We had given the audience a conclusion, just an opinion, not necessarily a rule. But if you did get this lowered and it stuck around, it might not be the worst thing in the world, and you could just kind of carry on throughout your life.

When you see something like this though, you’re going to want this gone on a retest ideally, right? You don’t want this necessarily hanging out?

[00:30:12] Becca Kyle: No. And with something like Blasto, typically I would encourage someone to do about a 90-day parasite protocol. It may take longer than 90 days. When someone shows up with Blasto, I let them know what the expectation is, it’s a long-term project.

You know, it’s facilitated. It’s bringing up your good guys. It’s eradicating. So again, supporting the detox process to allow your body to support your immune system, to allow your body to be able to handle this, and allow those herbs to work. But it definitely can take longer than 90 days.

If you had a different parasite show up, that might be a little bit easier to kind of get rid of in that 90-day process. But then again, that’s why we retest for certain for these. So, we can see what’s going on and what your levels might be after a protocol. Maybe your body is just super awesome, and it dealt with it in 90 days, but maybe not.

So, definitely don’t want this hanging out though. Absolutely not.

Worms May be Less Likely to Get Caught

[00:31:04] Detective Ev: Cool. All right, thank you. Next section here is going to be, well, subsection. Honestly, I have never run one test yet where I have seen Worms pop up on the GI MAP.

Becca Kyle: Me neither.

Detective Ev: Is this something you see?

Becca Kyle: No. Never.

Detective Ev: Got it. All right.

I think for the sake of today, at least just for time, we can kind of skip by it, but we could mention something about it if you’d like.

[00:31:23] Becca Kyle: Well, I think with worms too, they tend to be bigger than say, like a bacteria. So, you can have a lot more colonization of bacteria in that stool sample where a worm might kind of not be in the part that you scooped up and put in the samples. I think it’s just, they’re less likely to be caught per se in that stool sample. But that’s just my own opinion on the squirmy worms.

But also too, if we’re addressing like a parasite or something like that, oftentimes if you did have a worm, it has the potential to take care of that as well.

[00:31:51] Detective Ev: Thank you. Then the last real section here is Intestinal Health. The subsections for those on audio is Digestion, GI markers, Immune response, and Inflammation.

There are a few obvious issues here on mine. We’ll just break them down one by one.

[00:32:08] Becca Kyle: I love these. This is, again, I think I said earlier, one of my favorite sections of the test.

Gut Test Results: Elastase-1 and Steatocrit

So, digestive markers. We’ve got something called Elastase 1 which is a pancreatic enzyme that facilitates the digestion of protein. At 649, I would say you’re doing good. We don’t want to really see it under 500.

If it’s below 200, then you potentially really could have some issues digesting, absorbing your protein, which is important for blood sugar and hormones and muscle growth, all the things. But your Elastase 1 looks great.

It’s also very common with maybe more on the higher side of H. Pylori to have low Elastase 1. Those two tend to correlate a little bit. Your Steatocrit was below detectable levels. Steatocrit is a marker for undigested fat in your stool. So, Evan, you were doing fine with this marker.

If you had some positive numbers on this marker, that can be implicated in a lot of things. You need dietary fat for satiety to keep you fuller. Obviously, you want to be absorbing that. You need it for hormones, dietary fat, and that cholesterol is the precursor for all your hormones. Your brain needs fat.

But on your lab, you seem to be doing a good job of digesting and absorbing your fat. It’s not going through to your stool sample. So overall, I would say your digestive markers look pretty good here.

[00:33:19] Detective Ev: Awesome.

It is worth mentioning for those listening. I personally have used digestive enzymes long term. You know, it’s something as an FDN you can kind of decide what you want to do because it reads clear as day about it in the course that there is a potential downside to using digestive enzymes long term in that they might make your own natural ones not as effective as they could be.

Gut Test Results: Beta Glucuronidase

But to me, with our high stress lifestyle, with everything I’ve been through with the antibiotics, it was a personal choice. I still use them to this day. I don’t know if that influenced these results at all. But either way the GI MAP’s interesting because it’s like, okay, well sure it’s a snapshot in time. But it’s also saying like, even if you’re using supplements, what are those supplements leading to? If it’s leading to overall good results, then that’s probably an okay thing and something I’m willing to stand by because I feel like I’m doing pretty good.

The next little section here says GI Markers, but really what they’re looking at is something called beta Glucuronidase. It’ll look like b Glucuronidase on video and then Occult Blood. My Occult Blood is super good. But the beta Glucuronidase is starting to get a little high there, isn’t it?

[00:34:16] Becca Kyle: Yeah. This is actually one of my favorite markers on the entire test because I see it clinically correlate so well.

Beta Glucuronidase is actually naturally produced by your liver, your kidneys, and intestinal epithelium. But it can also be produced in excessive amounts by pathogenic bacteria in your gut.

What happens when your beta Glucuronidase is high, is that it can disrupt your body’s ability to detoxify toxins and especially hormones. So, think of your liver as a full bucket of toxins and hormones and stuff that’s trying to dump out. It tries to dump them out, but if your beta Glucuronidase is high, it’s like someone taking half those toxins and hormones and dumping them right back in. So, you tend to be recycling estrogen and recycling hormones.

The Body’s Need to Detoxify is Huge

When I see this number high, it’s a good bet that you have a higher toxic burden which can look like, you know, fatigue, acne, hormone imbalance. We talk about this marker correlates so well that shows up on the DUTCH hormone test, if you’ve got crazy high estrogen. I just ended up having a male client who did.

He had really high estrogen and then high beta Glucuronidase. I’m like, well, here we go. Not that it is the one cause, there’s always multiple variables when we have some for whatever marker. But I really think this is a fascinating marker for explaining like, why someone’s toxic burden might be high, why they’re not able to bring their estrogen levels down.

It’s definitely something we want to address or talk about healing opportunity. If you’re recycling toxins, are you going to feel that great? Absolutely not. Are you going to gain the health that you want? Absolutely not. Again, with FDN, we want to reduce inflammation. We want to balance out the immune system, and we want to reduce or eliminate toxic burden.

I mean, everyone has some level of toxic burden in their body, whether it’s metals or mold or endotoxins from gut bugs or environmental toxins. We all have some level. But if you’ve got this high beta Glucuronidase marker, then your body’s just not getting it out the way it’s supposed to.

[00:36:15] Detective Ev: Sure. Well, what’s really cool about this, Becca, is I remember this at the time. Forgive me, what is it, calcium d-glucarate, is that something you could take temporarily? Am I saying that right?

Becca Kyle: Yeah.

Detective Ev: I used that along with Thorne, Liver Cleanse.

Supplements are Temporary Relief While Working on Lifestyle

What was nuts is I could so easily correlate only two days of use of this to lessening of skin symptoms. Now you don’t want to just treat.

What I mean by that is once I got to using it, like if I stopped for a day. I said that kind of wrong. Once I started using it, and I probably got a couple weeks in, if I stopped using it for a day or two, sure enough, right on the chin, another little breakout. Then if I started again, it would seem to support that. That’s really what I meant by the two days thing.

We’re not treating symptoms here because the supplements are great, but it’s more or less just a bandaid for the real problem. Thankfully, this did get addressed eventually, but it’s just kind of amazing how you can see this test.

No dermatologist has ever told me to look out for something like this or talk about my detox pathways or anything like it. Yet one of the cheapest supplements I ever bought was actually very supportive in helping me get some relief from that last little bit of acne before I really identified the bigger stuff that was leading to it.

That’s one of the beautiful things about being FDNs. We’re not going in and saying, oh, hey, just take the supplement for this high marker. No. We’re saying, hey, just so you know, if you can utilize this supplement for this high marker right now, it might give you some relief. We’re also going to work on what’s actually going on here so that you don’t need that supplement one day. That is a beautiful thing about being an FDN.

Gut Test Results: Secretory IgA

The next side here, one of the last things is the Immune Response, and we see Secretory IgA and Anti-gliadin IgA. My Secretory IgA is rather low. It is 192 on a reference range of 510 to 2010. What would your interpretation be of this, Becca, if I came to you back in 2018 and said, hey, here’s my test results?

[00:37:57] Becca Kyle: It’s so low. I want to see this at about a thousand. If I could just pick a perfect level, I would say about a thousand. You don’t want it too too low. You don’t want it too high, necessarily. Although if it’s high, that means your body’s doing something. It’s having probably an appropriate immune response for something.

We have the physical barrier of our gut lining. But the Secretory IgA is also, it’s a chemical barrier. It’s really the first line of defense in your gut against the things that we don’t want there that could potentially create a lot of issues.

This is showing that you potentially, maybe at one time, had high levels of Secretory IgA. I see that sometimes; it gets really high. You have this big immune response and then your body can’t keep up that immune response over time, so it starts tanking.

Some of the biggest reasons this number might be low is stress. High cortisol can decrease that Secretory IgA, but I often see it low with gut pathogens, with some of these opportunistic infections as well as things like food sensitives, like gluten, dairy, corn, some things that could be creating that immune response and that inflammatory response in the gut.

Gut Test Results: Anti-gliadin IgA

I would say that you definitely need some help here bringing up your Secretory IgA levels. Again, like Evan just said, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with creating a plan that’s got some allopathic care, that’s got some, hey, let’s get you feeling better quickly while we work on the root cause.

So, if all you’re doing is that allopathic care, let’s just get you feeling better without actually working on it, like, well, why is it low? What’s going on to cause it to be low? Then you’re never actually going to get the improvement that you want. So, I would say here, you know upping the levels of your Secretory IgA while we work on that root cause.

Now your Anti-gliadin is only 98. I would say though, if it’s above 50, then you’re having some sort of reactivity. Then with your Secretory IgA so low, I would really look at that Anti-gliadin as a false negative. You literally don’t have the immune response capacity to have the appropriate immune response to that Anti-gliadin marker.

By the way, it’s a gluten marker. So, I would call that gluten marker a false negative there because it’s above 50 and because your Secretory IgA is simply so low. I’ll often see gluten in a causative role for that low Secretory IgA.

[00:40:14] Detective Ev: This is a fairly simple example, but it’s one of the just million cool things we learn as FDNs where we look at the labs deeper and with more complexity than Western medicine does. Western medicine is actually not trained for the most part to analyze lab results, guys.

Gut Test Results: Calprotectin

Even if you could find a doctor that would run the GI MAP with you, which might be more likely than a lot of these other labs, but let’s say they did. It’s not that they can’t think of this, it’s not that complicated. But they are not trained to think about the idea that, oh, okay, the Anti-gliadin is a similar marker here in terms of like what is needed to create it.

So, if it’s within range, but the Secretory IgA is super low, oh, that would probably be a lot higher. Can we tell you how much higher? No, we can’t, but we can make a reasonable assumption that that is the case.

I have other tests to absolutely verify what you just said that I am in fact gluten-sensitive and so is my mom. This absolutely is again, really simple. Just one of the cool ways that we get trained as FDNs is different than any other practitioner out there to start looking at these little things that someone else could have the exact same test results in front of them and we’re going to find things and correlate things that other people just were simply not trained to do.

Last marker on here is Inflammation. We have Calprotectin. What is that marker? I’ve seen that very high in some people.

[00:41:31] Becca Kyle: It’s a marker for inflammation in the gut at the most basic level. It’s actually very studied and a very research marker. In my experience though, just because this marker might not be high, doesn’t mean you don’t have inflammation in your body. It’s more of like a gut specific marker here.

Gut Test Results: Occult Blood

Now if this marker was high and say your occult blood was high (Occult blood is a marker for blood in the stool.), I would refer someone out for a GI specialist. Let’s look, maybe get a colonoscopy. Let’s look for polyps. Let’s look for other things.

I often see the calprotectin and the occult blood high. I find that’s more common for me than just the calprotectin to be high. Do you find the same thing, Evan?

[00:42:11] Detective Ev: Yeah. I was distracted because one other thing I wanted to mention, we didn’t go over this on the occult blood, and we should have. Like if women have this, not high, but if it’s like a one, two, or three, we should have also said it’s not something to freak out about because a lot of the times the woman was on her period.

It might be someone that suffers from like hemorrhoids or, and not to be gross here, but we’re in the healthcare space, guys, you gotta be able to have mature conversations about this stuff. Some people, especially if their guts are messed up, they take really large poops. I would straight up ask them, hey, when you wipe, sometimes is there a little blood streak on it? Because that could be the occult blood there.

So, yes to your question. But then also I’m like thinking, dang, we should really mention that, just so people don’t freak out about occult blood if they saw it.

[00:42:50] Becca Kyle: No, I mean, the marker is in range under 10. I’ve seen it in the hundreds. I have a couple that was really crazy high.

Where to Find Becca Kyle

So yeah, what I love about this test, this just overall test, is you can correlate to so many of the things, the health challenges you’ve been experiencing. I always tell my clients; we can do something about all of it. You’re not stuck feeling the way you feel, and so many people feel like they’re stuck, but you’re not. This has so many actionable steps that can be taken out of it. I love this test.

[00:43:17] Detective Ev: Cool. Well, I appreciate you going over this with me. We like nailed the timing. That was kind of unintentional. I couldn’t even see what it was.

Now with that all said, if you guys are interested in like actually learning how to analyze labs like this, this is just the tip of the iceberg for what we get to learn as FDNs.

If you’re wanting to learn more about FDN, you can go to fdntraining.com/tryfdn, and it’ll allow you to try the course for free.

But maybe you’re like, all right, cool. I thought this was awesome, but I’m not necessarily trying to be the person who goes out and does this stuff. I want to learn from someone who does this. Becca, where can they find you? Because I know you utilize this lab all the time as well as many others in your practice.

[00:43:54] Becca Kyle: Yeah, I do. So, if you just want to connect with me, my brand is Holistic Obsession. You can find me at holisticobsession.com. I have a private but free Facebook group. There’d be a link to that from my website. If you just want to chit chat, I offer free connection calls.

Conclusion

I just love connecting with people and really being able to have a conversation about what’s possible for your health. So, again, on the website, there’ll be a button to schedule that free connection call. We can just have a conversation cause most people don’t really know what’s possible, how good they’re meant to feel, and how good they have the potential to feel with the right data and the right action steps.

[00:44:28] Detective Ev: We will have all those links for you guys in the show notes and then in the YouTube description as well, of course. But Becca, thank you so much for coming on with me and helping me continue this series where we get to really show off what we get to do as FDNs.

[00:44:39] Becca Kyle: It’s so much fun. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

To hire a coach, go to fdnthrive.com.

For a FREE Health Review, go to fdnthrive.com/match/.

At the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, we prepare our students as much as possible to set them up for success in working in the health field. We arm them with a variety of skills, from meal prepping to recipe development to how to teach classes, along with the knowledge about nutrition they’ll need to help others. The work is challenging yet rewarding, and delights in ways our graduates never would have expected. Still, there are some misconceptions about working in culinary nutrition that we’d like to de-bunk today!

7 Misconceptions About Working In The Health Field

Myth #1: Competition is Fierce

Some areas of business can be extremely competitive, with entrepreneurs willing to go to any lengths to keep others down. This isn’t the case in culinary nutrition, where we believe that the rising tide raises all ships. We are here to support one another and raise the bar in our industry: when one of us does well, that opens up more room and opportunity for the rest of us.

Each culinary nutrition expert has something unique to offer, and there is enough work to go around.

“The people in this new arena that I work with have the same goal and the support we show for each other’s health has been totally unexpected,” says Heather Gill, Certified Culinary Nutrition Expert in Springfield, Tennessee. “I’m beyond blessed to be where I am today.”

Myth #2: Change Happens Overnight

Patience is a virtue in a health business and in culinary nutrition. Often, we have high expectations of ourselves and our clients, and of course, it is important to do our best and inspire others to strive for the same.

Still, creating long-lasting changes and habits that clients will actually stick to can take time. Celebrate the small wins as they happen and inch forward as you go, and you’ll be surprised at what you and your clients can achieve!

“Educating people about changing their lifestyle and eating habits doesn’t have to be hard and it doesn’t have to be overnight,” says Laura Mierza, a Certified Culinary Nutrition Expert in Ottawa, Ontario. “Once they start changing their health, really look at what they’re eating and noticing benefits, they want to keep it up long term. When they come back feeling like a new person and they’ve recruited other people in their lives to make changes, that feeling is amazing!”

Myth #3: Online Businesses Create Easy, Passive Income

Everyone wants to create an online nutrition business these days. And yes, we do live in a virtual world where our client base can multiply exponentially when we open up our services to people no matter where they live. However, the idea that you can set up a website and watch the money roll in is false. In our view, passive income doesn’t really exist – you really have to hustle to sell your products and services online, from the work involved in creating them to the ongoing product management to the online fees you incur to host and maintain an online business.

There are a lot of amazing nutrition tools that can help ease the process, but there is still a ton of work involved – and nothing worth having is easy, right?

Myth #4: Clients Need to Be Dragged Into Healthy Eating Kicking + Screaming

As a nutrition professional, you might be accustomed to being the weird health nut among your friends and family members. Clients who seek your guidance will not share that opinion. They want to know what you know and are eager to implement the recommendations you make. For someone dealing with a serious health issue, or confusion about what diet trend is best, the knowledge you have to share, the recipes you create and the menu plans you provide are a valuable lifeline.

“One of my favourite things about working in this field is seeing lightbulbs go off for people during cooking classes when they realize healthy food doesn’t have to taste gross or be overly complicated,” says Caitlin Iles, a Certified Culinary Nutrition Expert and program coach in Saint John, New Brunswick. “Getting people fired up and passionate about the things they eat, the thoughts they think, and the people they surround themselves with is such an incredible experience that I don’t believe I get to do it as my job!”

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Ready to Rock Your Own Nutrition Business?

Early registration for the 2023 Biz Rocking Insider Program is open from December 5-9th, 2022. Biz Rocking is a one of a kind, practical skills based, stand-alone business training course, specifically suited to those working in the health field.

This course guides you through the steps you can take your business ideas, turn them into an actual nutrition or health business, and get them out in the world. You will be inspired to think big, move beyond fear and use effective strategizing and detailed execution plans to make it happen. Learn more and register!

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Myth #5: You Can’t Start Without a Slick Website

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on a fancy website in order to do the work that matters to you in the health field. The best way to get started is to get started – the combination of social media, as well as word of mouth, goes a long way. Many of our graduates start off with Instagram accounts, Facebook pages or free WordPress.org sites. As long as you are professional in what you present, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a website filled with bells and whistles.

Myth #6: You Have to Stay in One Place

Many career opportunities in culinary nutrition are not in offices or clinics from 9 to 5. The business you design can be whatever you want it to be! It could be in your home, in a commercial kitchen, in a community centre, in the local library, a coffee shop or none of the above.

“I am a backpacker and I never thought my passion for health and wellness would be something I could do while I travel and earn money. I have realized that it is possible to follow both my dreams of travelling and helping others through offering online health and wellness coaching off of my website,” says Michaela Kascak, a 2018 student in the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program from Stratford, Connecticut. “I have also been able to share my passion face to face with people I have met around the world. It’s an amazing feeling when I go to check on friends I have met abroad and see their lifestyle and eating habits have changed for the better.”

Myth #7: You Have to Know Everything About Nutrition

It’s impossible for you to know absolutely everything, no matter how long you have been practicing culinary nutrition. Knowledge builds over time, and the landscape is always changing as we learn more about food, health and wellness. This is where your research skills and resourcefulness come in! If you don’t know the answer, dive in and do the research. Whether your clients want to know about mood-boosting foods, sleep-inducing foods or a heart-healthy diet, you are equipped to help them. Research for a health business is the name of the game!

If you’d like to learn more about working in the health field, the Biz Rocking Insider Program might be for you. Get all the details and sign up here.