Episode 9 Shownotes - Choosing Your Food Protocol

You are listening to Best Life After Cancer, Episode 9.

Hello, my best lifers! Hope you are doing well today. It is such a stressful time in the world, and I especially have sympathy for all cancer patients today. Regardless of color, between the pandemic and riots, and all of the hightened emotions, it is a rollercoaster for all people, and having cancer on top of all that is just more challenging than it has been in the past. I am thinking about you, and trying to find ways to make this a little easier.

As I told you last week, I am going to continue with the weight loss work for today, because I really think that managing weight is important from a survivorship perspective. Being overweight or obese is clearly linked to an overall increased risk of cancer diagnosis and we believe also contributes to an increased risk of recurrence in some cancers. According to research from the American Cancer Society, excess body weight is thought to be responsible for about 11% of cancers in women and about 5% of cancers in men in the United States, as well as about 7% of all cancer deaths. Being overweight or obese is clearly linked with an increased risk of many types of cancer, including breast cancer (especially in women past menopause), colon and most other gastrointestinal cancers, endometrial cancer (cancer of the lining of the uterus), thyroid cancer, and others. The link to body weight is stronger for some cancers than for others. For example, excess body weight is thought to be a factor in more than half of all endometrial cancers. Excess body weight may affect cancer risk in a number of ways. Excess body fat might increase cancer risk by affecting inflammation in the body, increasing the levels of certain hormones, such as insulin and estrogen, which can fuel cell growth, along with another hormone that regulates cell growth, such as insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1).
Not only can reducing weight potentially affect cancer growth and proliferation, it reduces risk of other medical conditions like heart disease, diabetes and hypertension, or high blood pressure. I see this as the most important factor for cancer patients, because I really feel like we didn’t do all this work to cure you from your cancer, only to have you die from heart disease or complications of diabetes or hypertension soon after!
Ok, so we know we need to do it. I don’t think any of you are arguing with me on that point. The question is HOW. We went over the hormones related to weight in podcast 7. This is such an important starting point, because if you don’t change your insulin, any weight loss you have may come back, sometimes with more than you had initially. We worked on the brain space aspect of this in episode 8, with how to work on allowing urges. Today, we are going to talk a bit more about how to decide what your plan is – or how you want to eat for the rest of your life to maximize your health and well being. I will help you decide exactly what you should, and shouldn’t be eating, along with other tips and tricks I have learned. What I would like to encourage you to do this week is create what we weight loss coaches call a “food protocol”. This is not a diet plan, because the goal is not to get the weight off and then go back to eating everything. Eating everything led to you being where you are today, and going back to eating everything will mean that you gain it back again. You have proof, likely multiple times of losing and gaining, that prove that what you have been doing just does not work. This time, we are working on losing weight, safely, effectively and for the LAST time. I prefer to think that for years you were searching for what would work, and now have found it, instead of the thought that you have failed so many diets before. It is a thought that will give you much more traction and motivation. I have a great worksheet that will help you create your protocol, and I will include samples from my protocol for you to look at. You can email me at [email protected] and I will send it to you. So, we first need to decide how we will eat. I have told you about intermittent fasting. I think it is the best way to live and stay thin. My protocol says that I will eat for 8 hours a day max. I can add breakfast and extend my window if we are on vacation, with a plan for a very active day. For instance, if we are hiking, and have a 15 mile hike planned, I will eat breakfast that day. My protocol does NOT say that I have to fast 24 hours on certain days, as I want the flexibility to decide on a weekly basis when and if that fits into my schedule for the week. I often choose to do a longer fast, but it is not on my protocol, which would make it a hard stop that I have to do every week. I also have not chosen a specific time, but rather a window. You can choose whatever works for you, but what you write down is a contract you are making with yourself, so don’t write it down if you don’t want to do it permanently. You are going to start to work on following what you plan, and gaining faith in yourself that you will do what you say, so for now, please, don’t write it on the protocol unless you are 100% committed to doing it for the long haul. Once you make a protocol, you will follow it for 3 weeks. After 3 weeks, you can make changes and rewrite it based on how you felt, whether you lost weight, and so on.
Next, you need to decide what you will eat. To help you understand the conversation about food, I want to introduce the concept here of a joy eat. What that means is that once or twice a week, you can plan to eat one serving of any food that you want, even if it has flour and sugar, if you plan it 24 hours in advance. A joy eat is one serving of one food, and must be planned 24 hours in advance. This is NOT a full meal free for all, like Thanksgiving dinner. That is considered an exception meal. We will talk about that in an upcoming podcast.
For the protocol, though, you need to decide what you will eat every day, and also what you will drink. Is alcohol going to be on your daily plan? For a long time, it was for me, but I found that losing weight was really hard with it on my daily plan. Part of that was that I didn’t follow my plan as well if I was drinking, and part was likely the sugar in wine making it harder to lose. I went to just having it on the plan Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and that it had to count as a joy eat if I want it any other day. As you may recall, I have currently given it up entirely for the month of June to see how that affects my weight. Back to setting up your protocol. You should take into account what foods satisfy you, taste good, and feel good in your body. For me, I hate liver, fennel and okra, so they are not on my protocol, because I know it will be something if we cook it, I will hate, and I will have huge urges to eat off plan. I also have a dairy issue. Dairy from cows gives me horrible belly pain the next day. So, even though I love it, it is not on my daily protocol, though goat cheese is fine and is on my protocol. Cheese from a cow is something that I consider as a joy eat, taken with a triple dose of lactaid, with full knowledge that I probably still won’t feel great the next day. If I could permanently give up pizza, maybe that would change, but the thought of life never having pizza again is just not sustainable, and I know I need to keep it on my allowed food list as a joy eat. If you are a vegetarian, your plan will not include meat, and so on. My plan includes all protiens including meat, fish, and shellfish, eggs and tofu. It includes all vegetables except okra and fennel, and includes all fruits. I have olive oil, butter, avocado, alternative butter, canola, sesame and peanut oils on my plan. This doesn’t mean I will not eat things made from other oils when I am out, but this is what I keep in our house. I have included a link on the facebook page to help you learn about oils, and which are better health wise. My protocol does allow things that are breaded and fried as a joy eat ONLY because of the flour used to bread them. Many things like chicken nuggets are as much bread as nugget, so you need to take that into account. Many weight loss coaches say no fried foods or chips, but on my protocol, I do allow French fries once a week, or one serving of chips per week. What I decided when I made my protocol is that I wanted it to be a little easier, and accepted that that would mean that it would take longer, so that was just a thought I had about what the right protocol was for me, and it lead to me including some alcohol, chips and French fries, on a limited basis. What I am doing will not be a guaranteed win for you. There is no “one size fits all protocol”. It is trial and error, taking out things that don’t serve your body, and so on. I also keep a running list of things I have strong urges for – there are two reasons for this. It helps me think about what I really want for my joy eats each week. It also lets me see that things I really wanted in the moment are often NOT what I ever choose for a joy eat when I plan ahead and really think about what will taste the best, and give me the most enjoyment. I think this tends to help me in the moment know that the urge is really a thought error, and not something I want to be putting into my body.
Let’s talk a little more about joy eats. As I told you, on normal weeks, I have 1 to 2 planned per week. Starting out, the first month, you may want to skip them, or consider just a savory joy eat like pizza, as something very sweet may kickstart your urges again and possibly get you off plan. I chose to skip all joy eats for the first 6 weeks I was off flour and sugar to make it as easy for me as possible to stay on plan. Once you get to where you are fat adapted, which is where your body will easily transition into using your fat as fuel, these are better tolerated. I think it is wise to start with one, and do that for at least a few months, before you move to two. I’m going to tell you about one of the challenges I had initially. My husband makes the BEST chocolate chip cookies on the planet. I mean, seriously, no purchased cookie is even close, and no one else makes them as good. It was something that when he made them, I would eat a spoonful of cookie dough, and several cookies, whenever he made them. I had to rein that in when I went on this plan. I asked him if he could limit the cookies to weekly, and he said no problem. What he couldn’t do was commit ahead to when he would make them. So – I have one spoonful of cookie dough or one cookie on my plan every day, with a note that it can only be one time per week. I have planned ahead that I will eat one, and that is how I let him have the flexibility to make them when he wants, and me the option to have one, planned as it should be. Another thing that is on my protocol is one square of dark chocolate per day. It has to be at least 80% and it has to be dark, not milk. It has been something many coaches say is ok, and is something I use to signify that I am done eating for the day – my brain knows once it gets it that the kitchen is officially closed.
Once you make this plan, your brain in the moment will have a TON to say about it, and will be asking and then demanding things off the plan. Here is where you have to allow the urges. Listing 100 urges in some form is helpful. You can use a jar with beads, or write 100 urges down on a list, but track them and know that after 100 they will get much easier. There are 2 tips I have here to make it easier to follow your plan in the first weeks. First, when you give up carbs, your body needs calories from some source, and you HAVE to increase your fat to make that work out. It is amazing how a pat of butter on veggies makes them so much tastier, and helps to have you feel more satisfied. Full fat salad dressing is not only ok, it is actually what I recommend. Ones with less chemicals and preservatives and good quality fat are going to taste amazing and fuel your body well. The second tip is to put more food than you think you need on your protocol for the first 4-6 weeks. This allows you to follow the plan and build accountability with yourself. It strengthens the bond between your past, present and future selves. If you always plan a dry chicken breast and iceberg lettuce, your present self when you go to eat it is going to be like, hell no! If you plan a lovely salad with lots of variety for taste and crunch, with a lovely piece of salmon or some shrimp, make it the night before and have dressing waiting, your present self will think – thanks so much, past self! It will happily eat it and you will start to build that relationship back up. I admit, I fail on this still. My planning brain wants to be too strict, and my future brain sometimes gives it the finger. That is when I eat off plan, and then my future brain is sad that it is up a pound. So, put on things you will enjoy, plan ahead, make what you can ahead, and make it as easy as possible for the brain to follow the plan in the moment.
Ok. Now we get to where I really struggle. I sometimes worry that telling you I struggle will make you not feel like I have all the answers, but guess what? I am human, too. I struggle too. Anyone who tells you they don’t is likely BS’ing you. It is like the whole second opinion thing in cancer patients. Any doctor that is not confident enough to encourage a 2nd opinion is likely NOT who you want to pick. I welcome my pts getting another opinion. 98% of the time, it confirms exactly what I told them. 2% of the time, they get an option I hadn’t considered, and often, they come back to me to ask if it is something I could do for them! Same with coaching, I am not going to tell you I have all the answers, and I am not going to BS you. You can learn from my struggles as well as where I excel.
So – vacations are my downfall. We travel often, and we travel exotically, and we often never go back to the country again. I have had the thought all of my life that when you travel, you immerse yourself in the culture. You eat what they eat, you try their specialties, you drink what they drink. I have had a massively hard time planning ahead for trips, and it lead to me thinking I just can’t plan on trips. I got coached about this multiple times. Finally, we came to a solution, which is exactly what I told you to start with. Plan what you will do. So I do. I plan 2 meals on sedentary days, and 3 meals on active days. I plan alcohol – more than I think I will possibly drink – one at lunch, 2 at dinner, one after dinner on the balcony, etc. I plan a joy eat daily, and write that I will have it sometime during the day. Surprisingly, when I started doing that, I found that in the moment, I often chose BETTER because I didn’t feel like it was off limits. I do often choose eggs and protein for breakfast over a pastry, because I know I will feel better hiking. I often choose meat and veggies over pasta, because I know my joints will hurt the next day if I eat a ton of flour. If this is a struggle for you, write what you can commit to. One s’more planned instead of 6 on the fly. 3 beers planned while fishing instead of a six pack. I also acknowledge that I WILL come back from every vacation 5-10 pounds up. I plan before the vacation what I will eat when we get back, which days I will fast and how I will get back on plan immediately. With this, I have found that I really never spiral off plan after a vacation, which I think is really the most important thing. I also am true to my real self. I have long lived by the mantra that the world is a book and people who spend their lives in one place only read one page. I honor that part of me that wants to go, see the sights, interact with the people, eat the food, and see the best of what the current destination has to offer!
Ok, friends, that is it for today! We are going to be at the beach, so I wrote and recorded this ahead of time, to make sure I get it to you. I will let you know how my plan went with the boardwalk and all of its treats available to me all week!