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Food, Mood and Women's Health – Be your healthiest, look and feel great!

Archives for February 2014

The Super Size Me: 10-Year Anniversary Summit

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Super-Size-Me-10-Year

It’s time to fix food. (join me and 30+ top food experts?)

The biggest voices in health & nutrition are coming together to address the future of food (and how you can help fix it).

10 years ago, the Oscar-nominated documentary Super Size Me showed how food can drastically change a person’s body and health over just 30 days. And what an incredible movie it was! (If you haven’t seen it I really encourage you to see what 3x day of fast food can do to a man!)

In this groundbreaking, eye-opening, conversation-starting, film, co-star Alex Jamieson helped to change the way we think about fast food and how what we eat affects our bodies.

But 10 years after Super Size Me rocked America, we’re still facing some big challenges.

People who desperately need good nutrition, like the working poor, don’t have access to it. Our children are still bombarded with junk food messaging, and our schools have yet to embrace healthier lunch programs and nutrition education.

And at home, we still deal with emotional eating issues, weight problems, and body image troubles. Even when we know that we could be doing things differently to eat better, the idea of fixing healthy food at home seems like a chore.

Which is why I’m excited and honored to join Alex (and her 30+ food experts) on her mission to #FixFood. We met last year and I am so impressed with the wonderful work she is doing! She is a woman on a mission – that’s for sure! Alex is truly a passionate and inspirational leader in the health and wellness field.

In celebration of the 10-year anniversary of Super Size Me, she is reuniting the powerful voices that shaped the film and helped make this little documentary a global sensation.

She’s asked the 30+ top experts in food and health who have come up in the last 10 years how they intend to help all of us #FixFood.

And she’s bringing all of these leaders and experts together for a virtual event like no other…

The Super Size Me: 10-Year Anniversary Summit

This conference is available via online streaming for FREE, March 10 – 14, 2014!

Get inside information on what the future holds for food from Alex Jamieson, and experts including JJ Virgin, Dr. Daniel Amen, Dr. Mark Hyman, John Robbins, Robb Wolfe and many more.

As I said, I’m just thrilled to be one of the speakers! I will be talking about real food, red meat (of course!), emotional eating/brain chemical imbalances and how the amazing amino acids can switch off cravings so we don’t feel deprived and don’t need to use willpower to avoid the junk foods, sugars and carbs. This is just one way that will help us #FixFood!

We have the power to change food culture – and it all starts here. See you March 10!

What you need to know:

Dates: March 10 – 14, 2014
Price: FREE
Where: Sign up online at
http://www.entheos.com/Super-Size-Me-10-Year-Anniversary/Trudy-Scott

9 Steps to Calm the Anxious Mind: Nourishing Hope Support Club

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nourishing-hope-support-club

The Nourishing Hope Support Club is led by nutritionist Julie Matthews and created to help support families of children with autism and ADHD to understand how to apply food and nutrition choices based on each child’s individual biochemistry. She has extensive experience on how food compounds such as salicylates, oxalates, glutamates, and food proteins affect learning, mood and health.

Once a month, Julie discusses emerging research, shares her clinical experience, answers your questions, and interviews special guests. These monthly talks help parents learn to make the most of food and supplement choices, identify possible pitfalls, and stay on track toward improving the health and learning potential of their child. Each month brings content-specific learning topics about how various special diets (gluten-free, GAPS, Paleo), nutrition concepts, and supplements help children with ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorders, and learning and developmental delays.

I am pleased to announce that, this month, I will be the guest presenter on the Nourishing Hope Support Club with Julie Matthews. I will be speaking on “Food and Mood: 9 Steps to Calm the Anxious Mind.”

Guest Speaker: Trudy Scott, Certified Nutritionist
February 26th, 5:00 pm, PST

There is much recent evidence supporting the powerful food-mood connection and there are some very exciting recent studies that support this for both anxiety disorders, stress and other mood disorders. I use a comprehensive 9 step approach with my clients to help them overcome their anxiety, depression, emotional eating and sugar cravings. It is, of course, customized to their unique biochemistry, and includes:

  1. Real whole traditional food, including quality grass-fed red meat and 4 unique antianxiety food solutions
  2. Why and how to quit sugar with no willpower required and how to control blood sugar swings
  3. The effects of caffeine
  4. The importance of optimal digestion
  5. The bad-mood effects of gluten
  6. How to balance brain chemistry with individual amino acids to improve mood and stop cravings in their tracks
  7. How to correct social anxiety / pyroluria with zinc and vitamin B6
  8. The effects of other nutrients (such as low vitamin D), hormones and medications
  9. Simple lifestyle changes that include sleep, exercise and yoga

In preparation for the call, I shared some of the recent research with Julie:

There is a growing body of evidence supporting the very powerful connection between food and mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. Dr. Felice Jacka, is an Australian researcher who is one of the lead researchers on food and mental health.

In this 2010 study in The American Journal of Psychiatry, lead author Dr. Jacka, found that a “western” diet of processed or fried foods, refined grains, sugary products, and beer was associated with a higher risk of anxiety and depression in women. The “traditional” diet or real whole food diet was associated with a lower risk of anxiety and depression. This real whole food diet did include grass-fed red meat and she believes following the recommended weekly intake of red meat could boost our mental health.

Dr. Felice Jacka is also the lead author in a 2011 PLoS One paper that found that diet quality in adolescents was associated with a lower risk of mental health issues. They found that “improvements in diet quality were mirrored by improvements in mental health over the follow-up period, while deteriorating diet quality was associated with poorer psychological functioning.” The author stated that this “study highlights the importance of diet in adolescence and its potential role in modifying mental health over the life course.”

You can read the rest of the article here on the Nourishing Hope site.

I hope you can join us! I’ve known Julie for years and admire her immensely. She is truly a trailblazer in the world of nutrition for autism, ADHD, and other developmental delays.

Here is her bio: Julie Matthews is a Certified Nutrition Consultant specializing in autism spectrum disorders. She provides dietary guidance backed by scientific research and applied clinical experience. Her award winning book, Nourishing Hope for Autism, has helped people around the world to make food and nutrition choices that aid the health, learning, and behavior of those with autism, ADHD, and other developmental delays. She presents at leading autism conferences in the US and abroad, and is the Nutrition Editor of the Autism File magazine. She is on the advisory boards of the US Autism & Asperger Association and Autism Nutrition Research Center. Julie has a private nutrition practice in San Francisco, California, and supports families and clinicians from around the world. Visit http://NourishingHope.com

To learn more about the Nourishing Hope Support Club and join the call, visit: http://nourishinghope.com/support-club/

Trans fats make us depressed and anxious!

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Cheese Pizza

We don’t need trans fats in our diets! In November last year the FDA Targeted Trans Fat in Processed Foods.

Mical E. Honigfort, a consumer safety officer at FDA, says that trans fat can still be found in such processed foods as:

  • crackers, cookies, cakes, frozen pies and other baked goods
  • snack foods (such as microwave popcorn)
  • frozen pizza
  • vegetable shortenings and stick margarines
  • coffee creamers
  • refrigerated dough products (such as biscuits and cinnamon rolls)
  • ready-to-use frostings

Partially hydrogenated oils are the major dietary source of trans fat in processed food. The FDA is in the process of determining if trans fats are GRAS, in other words “generally recognized as safe.” Trans fats, produced by industrial processes, are unrecognizable to the body and inherently unhealthful and I believe we have enough information to show they are not GRAS.

One of the many detrimental health effects of trans fats is that they contribute to mental health problems. I have my clients avoid them at all costs and educate them on the incredible mood benefits of eating only real whole foods.

A 2011 study called “Dietary Fat Intake and the Risk of Depression” looking at the diets of 12,059 Spanish university graduates found that consumption of trans fats were linked to an increased risk of depression. The authors state this: “These findings suggest that cardiovascular disease and depression may share some common nutritional determinants related to subtypes of fat intake.”

A more recent 2013 animal study in Neuroscience found that “chronic consumption of trans fats can enhance emotionality and anxiety parameters resulting from stressful situations of everyday life, which can trigger more severe neuropsychiatric conditions.”

If you recall, trans fats get mentioned in a recent blog post where I reviewed Dr Masley’s new book “The 30-Day Heart Tune-Up”. They are one of the worst culprits for heart disease (together with sugar and carbs).

And my colleague Mira Dessy shares that trans fats lower cognitive performance scores as well as lower brain volume

So ditch those trans fats and eat real whole food to feel calm, happy, smart and live healthy! 

The Virgin Diet by JJ Virgin: book review and webinar

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virgin-diet-book-NYT

Food intolerance is a big factor and something I look at with all my clients. Other than weight gain it can cause a host of other issues ranging from inflammation to aches and pains to fatigue and even anxiety and depression. In fact, over 80% of my anxious clients do better mood-wise on a gluten-free diet.

I’m a little behind the times because JJ Virgin wrote this NY Times bestseller book late in 2012:  The Virgin Diet: Drop 7 Foods, Lose 7 Pounds, Just 7 Days (Why Food Intolerance is the Real Cause of Weight Gain).

With her new recipe book coming out I decided it’s time to do a review!

These are the 7 foods JJ wants you to drop: corn, eggs, peanuts, dairy, gluten, soy, and sugar (including artificial sweeteners).

I have to admit I was skeptical about eggs because they are such a wonderful protein source, such a great start to the day  and so handy for a snack. I used to eat a lot of eggs until I recently discovered that I have an egg intolerance! I’m hoping it’s going to be a short-term problem and that I can eventually reintroduce them because I LOVE my soft-boiled pastured eggs.  [UPDATE 2015: I am now able to eat eggs again!] The message is this: even a healthy food like eggs may be an issue for you.

You eliminate the above 7 foods and see how you do and then add them back and see how they affect you (sugar and artificial sweeteners stay out for good, and possibly gluten too). There are 3 cycles that the book walks you through:

  • Cycle 1: Elimination
  • Cycle 2: Reintroduction
  • Cycle 3: The Virgin Diet for Life

The book goes into a great more detail about the following:

  • what food intolerances are
  • insulin resistance – a condition in which the body produces insulin but does not use it effectively leading to weight-gain and blood sugar issues
  • leptin resistance – leptin is the hormone that signals satiety or fullness and when you have resistance you feel hungrier and have more cravings
  • zonulin – a protein that is affected by gluten and loosens the tight junctions in the gut contributing to leaky gut and more food intolerances
  • the dangers of GMOs and soy
  • the autoimmune connection – and much more

The book has great sections on healthy proteins and fats, quality produce, sugar and artificial sweeteners, exercising, meal planning, eating out and recipes. I’m looking forward to her follow-up book which launches on Feb 18th – her recipe book The Virgin Diet Cookbook: 150 Easy and Delicious Recipes to Lose Weight and Feel Better Fast 

We do have a few differences of opinion. 🙂

  • I’m not a big fan of coffee and JJ admits that she fights her fellow-nutritionists on this one!
  • I find that my clients with adrenal issues need to eat more frequently than every 4 to 6 hours
  • Pea-rice protein is the protein powder recommended and would not be suitable if you need to eat grain free or have issues with peas so adjust accordingly
  • I’m not terribly fond of the 3-bite rule where you get to splurge on desserts. JJ has a great sense of humor and says “share your dessert with someone who has a faster fork!” But I think you can get to the point where you no longer have a sweet tooth.

I’d also like to add that these 7 food intolerances are obviously not the only factor when it comes to weight-loss resistance – it’s one of many factors, including thyroid health, environmental toxins, dysbiosis, brain chemical imbalances, poor eating choices, stress (this is a big one!), lack of sleep and not exercising enough or incorrectly. JJ is the pro when it comes to exercise and she is a big proponent of restorative sleep.  There are also many  other foods that could potentially be an issue for you.

I do love that this book has brought the concept of food intolerances to the masses, bringing awareness of something that had not even been considered before. I commend JJ for this and her big mission to help millions of people lose weight and get healthy! So many people have had such incredible results with her program!

PS. In preparation of the new book launch JJ is hosting a webinar on what you need to know about The Virgin Diet. You can sign up here to get the most up-to-date information. Sign up and get to hear her share her words of wisdom.