Podcast Episode Five 2013 · three-year-old has never had any gluten. I mean he occasionally has grains, but he’s been a paleo baby both breastfed and eating since his birth. So

Podcast Episode Five

2013

{Music}

Host: Welcome to PRM, Paleo Magazine Radio, where we bring you Paleo

nutrition, exercise and lifestyle perspectives from both the experts and the

everyday. PRM is brought to you by Paleo Magazine; the first and only print

magazine dedicated to the Paleo lifestyle and is hosted by Tony Federico.

Tony Federico: Hello everyone and thank you for tuning in to PMR. My name is Tony

Federico and I’m your host on this journey of modern day primal living.

Women make up over half of the population in the United States and there’re

numerous diets, weight loss products and services marketed to them in the

quest for health, beauty and happiness. But do these cause more harm than

good? Is there a better way for women to reach their goals, or do the goals

themselves need revisiting? To help answer these questions and to share their

own experiences I’ll be talking with an all female panel of expert and

everyday guests. So stay tuned; this one’s going to be good.

{Music}

So here we are with Stacy Toth of the Paleo Parents, Krista Scott Dixon of

stumptuous.com and Shelly Good, one of my friends that I actually met on

Facebook. If you could, introduce yourself and share a little of your own

personal story. Stacy, let’s start with you.

Paleo MagazinePodcast Episode Five

2013Page 1

Stacy Toth: I’m Stacy Toth. I run the website paleoparents.com. I’m the coauthor of two

paleo cookbooks. One is a family-friendly book called Eat like a Dinosaur

and we’re finishing up our second cookbook that’ll come out in July called

(Beyond Begin). It’s a nose to tail paleo recipe book. My site focuses both on

being family friendly and paleo. Our three children are all paleo and my

husband and together lost over 200 pounds. I specifically also blog about what

it’s like to have lost over 100 pounds, still not have an ideal body type and

focusing on my health. I have an autoimmune condition. I no longer have a

gall bladder and I just started CrossFitting.

Tony Federico: Now for you, what was the motivating point? What was the point where you

said I need to make a change in my life?

Stacy Toth: It was the birth of my third child. So I unfortunately did not have a paleo

pregnancy, but I did literally leave the hospital after my third c-section, come

home and check out The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, which was one of only

books on the market at the time, read that book and threw everything out of

my pantry within days of coming home from the hospital. So my now almost

three-year-old has never had any gluten. I mean he occasionally has grains,

but he’s been a paleo baby both breastfed and eating since his birth.

So I just really, really was sick and tired of being sick and tired after {laughs}

the birth of my third child. I needed a little more energy to run around after

them. And it was really a focus on health and not so much weight loss. And I

just was amazed that I lost so much weight so quickly. I lost 135 pounds in 16

months. And most of that came off the first six months, so it just is a testament

to the health of a diet and nutrient dense food giving your body what it needs

to get back to the shape that it wants to be in.


2013Page 2

Tony Federico: Now you and your husband are doing this together. Have you noticed that

you’ve had to do things differently than he has?

Stacy Toth: Oh yes, but I think it’s a personalized paleo, right. Like, I think this is the

mentality of the movement now is that every single person has to do different

things. I was much more metabolically broken. I have celiac disease. I don’t

have a gall bladder. So I’m not able to eat the same ratio of fats and carbs that

he’s able to eat. I have to eat higher carbs because my body can’t digest fats.

Just a lot of little nuances that we’ve each kind of learned over time. And

when we eat the exact same foods I am more likely to put on weight than he

would be if we kind of go on a paleo cookie binge over the holidays or

something like that. But I think that’s important for everybody to understand

that this is not a one size fits all solves your problems kind of way of life. It’s

a template to figure out how to optimize your personal health.

Tony Federico: So let’s go ahead and we’re going to go over to Krista, so we want to go ahead

and hear a little bit of your story and how you came into this.

Krista Scott Dixon: Well, yes, so I’ve run stumptuous.com since about 1997 and I’d always

been focused on women’s health and fitness. And actually I became paleo sort

of by accident. In the early 2000s I was reading a lot of the research on insulin

and inflammation. I discovered Cordain’s work around that time. So I thought

I would try to solve my own health issues. And I really hadn’t thought about

losing weight or anything like that. I think a lot of people get into it for that

reason. And {laughs} it seemed like a lot of problems I just sort of thought I

had magically cleared up, so I was sold pretty early on. But at that time we

didn’t call it paleo or anything like that. It was just something that we did to

reduce inflammation. So yes, it was really accidental for me.


2013Page 3

And, you know, now that I am more into it, I really try to focus on testing a lot

of the theories in real people’s lives. Like, how does this work for real people

with real jobs and families and diverse health situations? And it really isn’t

one fits all, as we’ve talked about. So I try to test these theories that we’ve got

and see how to make them work.

Tony Federico: And now you’re involved with is it Precision Nutrition?

Krista Scott Dixon: Um-hum [affirmative], that’s right.

Tony Federico: How are those two related? How do you relate the paleo perspective of your

own personal experience and then working with clients?

Krista Scott Dixon: Well, I think a lot of the same principles apply, right. I think fundamentally

your body composition reflects your state of health. And one of the things I

tell our clients is that your body is your truth. And so whatever is being played

out in your body is some reflection on what’s happening inside and what’s

happening in your life. So one of the most common problems we see is that

people have the sorts of autoimmune issues or sort of a low-grade ickiness

that can be ameliorated to some degree by moving towards the more primal

end of the continuum. So I think it’s applicable every day.

Tony Federico: So now we’re going to go ahead and come over to Shelly and you can go

ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about you.

Shelly Good: Hi, I’m Shelly Good. I’m 42. I’ve been married for about four and a half years

and I’ve got a four-year-old son. I work full-time and I’ve been CrossFitting

for almost the past year. And I discovered paleo in March of 2010 when my

son was turning one. And at that point I was kind of realizing I can’t use the


2013Page 4

excuse that I just had a baby. He was a year old; I didn’t just have a baby. I ran

across paleo and I started reading and it made a lot of sense to me and I tried

to implement it the best I could for 30 days. And my husband was kind of

onboard with me as far as dinner, because that was the main meal that we

shared together. And in the end he got onboard with it full time because he

saw the benefits as well. So we’ve been doing that ever since.

Tony Federico: Now you had also had gastric bypass surgery. Could you tell us a little bit

more about how that has affected your own particular paleo path?

Shelly Good: I had gastric bypass in March of 2003. I lost 140 pounds within nine months.

And since then I’ve kept off about 110 consistently. I gained weight when I

was pregnant and during that time I had a lot of pasta, albeit whole grain

pastas, in my diet. And finding paleo kind of made me realize that those things

were not benefitting me and when I took them out and started seeing how I

felt I realized what they were doing.

Tony Federico: And for somebody who doesn’t necessarily know, with gastric bypass surgery

there’s a rebound and people can lose 100 or more pounds and they’ll often

gain it back. So it’s pretty remarkable that you’ve been able to keep it off for

this long.

Shelly Good: I would agree. I’ve met a lot of people. Through that journey and not all of

them have been able to be as successful. I don’t know why that is, but it’s

been important to me to just kind of stay the course and not fall back into all

those patterns that I used to entertain.


2013Page 5

Tony Federico: Absolutely. And you said you recently started CrossFit. How’s that changed

your just physical health and maybe outlook on exercise and diet and things

like that?

Shelly Good: It’s definitely made me stronger. Like, this paleo journey that I’ve been on has

really helped not just me but the people at the CrossFit that I’ve met. Because

it’s new to them, so they’ve come to me a lot of times for meal advice and,

you know, just different things because I’ve been there already. So it’s been

kind of fun to be able to help people in that way.

Tony Federico: So we’re going to actually take a short break, but when we come back we’re

going to have everybody just answer the questions that I had asked out on

Facebook. So we’re going to go ahead and come back in a moment. I’m Tony

Federico and you’re listening to PMR.

{Music}

Welcome back to Paleo Magazine Radio. So we’re actually going to be

answering some questions now. I put a message out on Facebook letting

people know that I was going to be talking to everybody and wanted to find

out what their specific questions were with regards to paleo and women’s

health. So the first question is from (Kristen), and what she wanted to know

was “I’d like to hear more about stress’ impact on female hormones and how

it affects mood and energy.” So I’m thinking that Krista, you might be able to

offer us some insight into this.

Krista Scott Dixon: I mean, I think the simplest way you could talk about the relationship

between stress and hormones is that our bodies are really exquisitely tuned

sensing instruments. And so they will dial up or down depending on what’s


2013Page 6

going on around us, whether that’s internal stress, external stress. And it really

is a holistic load of stress, too. It’s kind of like, you know, whatever is going

on for you in a cumulative sense. And so in terms of our hormonal response, I

think one of the simplest ways I’d explain it is that there’s an acute response

and there’s a chronic response. So acute stress is kind of like all hands on

deck; everybody help out, we might need to survive this difficult situation.

And then with chronic stress it’s like, ooh, we’d better shut things down and

dial it back a little bit so that, you know, we can survive this long term.

And so with women’s hormones, they’re very sensitive sensors, really, and

they’re very well tuned in to what else is going on in your life. And so

especially if you’re experiencing chronic stress, you’re very likely going to

see a scaling back of your reproductive function. So you’re going to see

suppression of your sex hormones, suppression of your feel-good hormones

like serotonin and so forth and, you know, as the stress progresses, even if it’s

not particularly significant, you’re just going to see a loss of reproductive

function, which you might not even notice right away or you might notice but

it’s kind of vague, you know; sort of non specific. And then over time you

might see more significant effects.

So, I mean it varies quite a lot from woman to woman. And I think this is part

of the difficulty in figuring it out because it’s not consistent. Some women can

take a lot of stress. Some women can get super lean. Some women can fast.

Other women can’t. You know, other women have to run heavier. Other

women have to take more time to rest and recover. So it’s quite individual. But

I guess the piece I want to leave folks with is that sex hormones in particular,

estrogen, progesterone and so forth, are really good at sensing what’s going on

in your life and responding to it.


2013Page 7

Tony Federico: So when you say reproductive function, would you be referring to maybe

some fertility issues like having trouble getting pregnant or full-blown

amenorrhea where menstruation stops or is it, again, just kind of a spectrum;

it’s something that could really kind of go to varying degrees of how it

expresses itself?

Krista Scott Dixon: Yes, it’s really a spectrum. And sometimes you might see the full scale

suppression of all sex hormone or most sex hormone production. Sometimes

you might see the hormones go up or down asymmetrically. So for example,

one of the things that’s quite common is for women to have lower

progesterone relative to estrogen. So we get the situation of estrogen

dominance. You know, other women might find that their hormonal

expression is a little bit more towards the, you know, what we’d call the

masculinization end of the spectrum. So their skin starts breaking out. They

start dealing with facial hair. And again, it’s really more of an imbalance in

that case.

So it really is quite diverse. It really is a range. And because these hormones

operate in concert, it’s all about not just absolute levels but also relative levels

and the change in levels. Some of the symptoms that we feel are actually not

really about high or low hormones, per se, but really more that we feel the

hormones fluctuating and changing.

Tony Federico: And on a practical level, is there any advice that you’d be able to offer for

someone who may suspect that that’s something that they’re experiencing?

Krista Scott Dixon: You know, the best advice I think I could give is go and find out for sure.

Go and get tested.


2013Page 8

Tony Federico: Don’t self diagnose, in other words?

Krista Scott Dixon: Yes, don’t self diagnose, because many of the symptoms can have multiple

causes, right. Like, if I’m feeling low energy or if I’m feeling anxiety or I’m

noticing skin changes, you know, there are many things that could be taking

place. So go and talk to your doctor. I like to see something like a month long

salivary panel, but you could start with a blood test. You know, a simple blood

test can start to give you some clues at the very least. And also, too, like, keep

track of what you’re noticing. Keep track of your symptoms. Keep a symptom

diary. And over the course of a month or a couple of months you might start to

notice some patterns.

Tony Federico: Now is this something that you’d want to address with a general practitioner, a

gynecologist? What kind of practitioner would you recommend somebody

address these questions to?

Krista Scott Dixon: You know, it’s kind of hard to say, actually. My experience with

endocrinologists is that often they don’t see this problem a lot. Their domain

of expertise is often things like thyroid; it’s things like type II diabetes. They

don’t often see this kind of population, by which I mean women of

reproductive age who are generally fit and generally eating healthy but who

have disrupted hormones. They don’t deal a lot with hypothalamic

amenorrhea, for example. So if you come in and let’s say you’re kind of a

normal weight and you exercise regularly and you seem to eat okay,

sometimes they’re a little bit stumped by it. But nevertheless I would say a

reproductive endocrinologist is a good place to start. I have mixed feelings

about gynecologists because often you go in and they try to fix everything

with oral contraceptives or something like that.


2013Page 9

So {laughs} you know, it often is a little bit of a crap shoot, but that being

said, you start where you can. So if all you have is a GP, start with your GP. If

you can get a good endocrinologist, awesome. Start there, too. Some women

also find that a naturopath is a really good approach because naturopaths will

often do things like run a salivary cortisol panel or something like that. So

start where you can and ideally see if you can find someone who understands

hormones a bit.

Stacy Toth: I don’t mean to interrupt. This is Stacy.

Tony Federico: Oh no, go for it.

Stacy Toth: I wanted to mention even at a more basic level stress has been a huge

component in my maintaining my health and wellness. Because I allowed

myself to get too stressed out about a year ago I’ve been fighting an

autoimmune condition flare ever since. And what I’ve learned through that is

management of stress. And what I think is nebulous in the world is when

people say stress and we’re not identifying, like, what that means. That means

a lot of different things for different people. If you’re unsatisfied in your day

to day work. Or work can mean a number of things. You know, {laughs} if

you’re unsatisfied with being a stay-at-home parent or you’re unsatisfied with

sitting at a job all day, you don’t necessarily have to be stressed, but you

yourself aren’t necessarily happy. Or let’s say you’re doing too many things.

You have multiple children and you’re doing sports and you’re running

around and you’re not taking time to just sit and breathe and think for yourself

ten minutes a day. Or if you’re on electronic devices all day long and your

body doesn’t have time to just calm down and relax. Just some simple things

like that can play a huge impact to a lot of the things that we’re talking about.


2013Page 10

And I know for me personally there are some warning signs that come up that

I’m able to identify before I need to see a professional, and that’s where I

think a lot of people – you want to self identify. Not necessarily self diagnose,

but if your skin becomes irritated and you’re breaking out with acne or your

digestive function is no longer as good as it used to be even though you’re

eating the same high quality foods, or you’re noticing that your sleep cycles

aren’t what they used to be, you either want to stay up later or you’re

exhausted in the middle of the day. Warning signs like that I think are really

key to identifying that you yourself are doing something that’s putting

yourself on a path of not wellness. That way you can realize that you have a

problem and try to get yourself back on path before you have a more

significant hormonal problem that then leads to needing to see a health

professional.

Tony Federico: So maybe catching it early and, like you said, detecting some of those warning

signs before it manifests as a real issue.

Stacy Toth: Yes.

Tony Federico: Would you have any, from your own experience, some practical things that

people can do to maybe mitigate stress or to kind of catch it early on? Just

some, I guess, good general practices that have helped you?

Stacy Toth: Well, I’m a mom {laughs} so I think a lot of moms identify with not really

taking a lot of time for themselves. And one of the things that I made myself

do this year was commit to finding time for just me. And I think that often

feels really selfish and feels like you’re a bad person to do that, but I maintain

some personal things that I do for myself. This year I started CrossFit and I

don't feel guilty that I’m away from my children for an hour and a half three


2013Page 11

days a week. I also like to get manicures. I take baths in the evening. I take

Epsom salts soaks. The magnesium is great for you and it’s relaxing to sit in a

warm tub and soak for a little while and no electronic devices allowed. And

I’ve also really, really focused on my sleep. So sunshine is another good thing.

It’s kind of wintertime for most of us, but when you can get sunshine that can

really help reduce stress. And breathe some fresh air outside is really great for

your body and stress as well.

Tony Federico: Now this isn’t a question coming from a reader, but it’s kind of a question that

I have. A lot of times women are characterized as being I guess maybe more

concerned for other people and taking care of other people’s needs versus

guys that are characterized as being kind of more self-centered and more

concerned about just kind of taking care of their own issues. Now do you find

that to be true? Is that something that you have to maybe fight against or is it

something that is just kind of a case by case sort of issue?

Krista Scott Dixon: That’s a loaded question right there. {Laughs}

Stacy Toth: I think it’s individualized, but I think in general women have greater tendency

to forget that they themselves are the most important things in their life. And

that you can’t give back and do for other people if you’re not taking care of

yourself. So I would agree that it’s probably more common on the female side,

but there are certainly cases where just people in general need to remember

that you can’t help anyone else if you’re not focused on making sure that you

yourself are healthy and well.

Tony Federico: Yes, I think that’s a great point and that’s something that it doesn’t matter what

your gender is; it’s just good general practice to take care of yourself. And that

way when you’re giving something to someone else it’s something that you


2013Page 12

can give freely and without having to put yourself in harm’s way in the

process. Now we’re going to go ahead and go into our second question. This

is from (Chrissie) and she actually wanted to know what would be some tips

for preparing quick, fast meals during the week and dealing with picky eaters;

kids specifically who are eating paleo. And I know that both Stacy and Shelly,

you have kids who are on the paleo diet as well, or at least a modified version

of paleo. What has that been like for you trying to get the kids onboard?

Shelly Good: Well, unlike Stacy our son is not 100% paleo yet. We try to include him in the

whole meal preparation. We’ve got him his own little apron with his name on

it and he really enjoys getting to be part of that whole process. On Mondays

(Tim) typically is making bacon; curing our own pork belly to make bacon.

He works with him, makes the cure and puts it on the pork belly. So he really

gets involved in that way. Other than that we just try to explain to him why we

eat certain things, why we don’t eat other things, how they don’t serve our

bodies the best way and we try to get him involved in fitness so that it’s kind

of a full spectrum of a healthy lifestyle.

Tony Federico: Now do you find it difficult having maybe some of the non paleo “kid’s

foods” around? Do you feel like that’s something that kind of challenges your

ability to stick to the diet?

Shelly Good: It definitely does and that’s part of the reason why we’re trying to phase out

more and more of what we would, you know, let him eat. Maybe Goldfish

crackers or graham crackers; little snacky things. So we’re trying to replace

them with better options and slowly we’re getting there. I don’t think that it’s

something that we can just take away immediately. We try to take away one

thing at a time.


2013Page 13

Tony Federico: Just kind of ease him into it.

Shelly Good: Um-hum [affirmative].

Tony Federico: Stacy, do you want to take a stab at this? I know you’ve probably got some

ideas.

Stacy Toth: I kind of wrote the book on it.

Tony Federico: Kind of.

Stacy Toth: I think that it’s completely valid that with some children transition is really

important. Our children also went through a transition. We were just a little

more stringent than some other parents want to be about what transition foods

and when. And I think that’s important for each family to consider their own

dynamic to prepare that, because if you push a child with, let’s say, sensory

processing disorder into something too soon, then obviously you’re not going

to get positive results. But I think for most children that aren’t yet, let’s say,

puberty age the parents are the ones buying the food and putting it in the

house.

And for me the rule at our house is always, before we were paleo and after we

were paleo, what is served at the table is what’s for dinner. And so one of the

best ways to get our kids eating what we were eating was simply to put it on

the table, because that’s our only choice. And we always give the children

choices because there’s never just one vegetable and one protein on the table.

There’s usually multiple vegetables and sometimes even multiple proteins for

them to choose, and obviously healthy fats are included in both of those

dishes. So our children sometimes will say, “I don’t feel like having kale today


2013Page 14

and I’m just going to have carrots,” and that’s perfectly acceptable. They’re

not okay to have four servings of applesauce without any chicken because

they understand that although fruit can be healthy for them they need a

balanced meal for their bodies to grow healthy and strong.

So we try to put the focus on wanting to be healthy. They know that our

family didn’t use to be healthy. They’ve seen the pictures of (Matt) and I

being much heavier. And we talk about them not doing so well in school when

they eat candy and why it’s important for them to want to eat foods that will

help their bodies grow healthy and strong. And we just put the focus on that.

And sometimes we’ll make light of a situation. You know, my four-year-old

goes through phases where he doesn’t want to eat vegetables. And he’s a four-

year-old. Like, that’s just totally normal. But we’ve kind of enlisted the help

of my seven-year-old to make pirate voices and we talk about maybe if (Finn)

doesn’t eat his vegetables he might get scurvy. And we just kind of joke

around a little bit. And then we’ll look over and he’ll have a plate full of kale

and he’ll be, like, shoveling it in his mouth.

And it’s not to say – like, don’t scare your children; that’s not my advice.

{Laughs} But I think making light of a situation and figuring out what’s

funny, what’s interesting to them. We talk a lot of science with our kids. We

have, you know, books about how bodies work and how digestion works and

how muscles grow and we read that to them and we talk about it and we’re

open and obviously relate it to them in age appropriate ways. But it really

encourages them to want their own bodies to be healthy and strong.

And I think, you know, one of the things that Shelley said that’s really

important is she incorporates her child into the process. So the more that you

can do that, the more engaged your children are going to want to be. My


2013Page 15

children are part of every single process of putting food on the table; from

helping grocery shop and meal plan, you know, they pick out things that they

want to eat on my Pinterest wall and then they pick out recipes from

cookbooks that we have. We go to the store. We buy the ingredients. They

help me put it in the cart. If there’s something interesting that they see that

they want to eat, they ask for it. Just yesterday my son ate prunes for the first

time. He didn’t know what they were. He read the label; saw they were plums.

Said to me, “I love plums. Let’s try these.” I was like, okay, go ahead and get

some prunes. So every step of the involvement so that by the time they’re

setting the table and we’re putting food on it, they know what they’re eating,

they know why they’re eating it and they’re usually excited for it because

they’ve been part of the process and helping us get there.

Tony Federico: Very cool. So we’re going to go ahead and switch gears a little bit. This is a

question that came in from (Alex) on Facebook. And she specifically was

referring to an article that Krista had written about women and intermittent

fasting. Intermittent fasting, for those who maybe aren’t familiar with it, is the

process of maybe skipping a meal, so having a period of time between meals

from 12 to 16 or more hours or going an entire day, so 24 or more hours

without food.

And the idea is that this is something that we would have experienced from an

evolutionary perspective on a relatively frequent basis and that it’s allowing

our body to kind of go through certain processes that are healthy. But there

have also been some suggestions that for women this is something that needs

to be handled a little bit more delicately than it would perhaps for a guy who’s

doing the same sort of thing. So could you speak a little bit more that?


2013Page 16

Krista Scott Dixon: Yes, absolutely. And I think the big thing we want to consider before we

even really talk about a specific dietary intervention is that we don’t live in the

world that our ancestors lived in. {laughs} So, you know, we are beset with all

kinds of stresses that they simply didn’t have to experience. And so I think we

always want to be talking about our dietary choices and our other choices

against that backdrop to understand, again like I said, you know, these things

are cumulative and it’s holistic.

So when I wrote that article about intermittent fasting I had tried it for several

years, actually. You know, different protocols; doing it this way; doing it that

way; this duration; that duration; eating, you know, low carb, high carb,

whatever. I basically tried all the combinations and permutations. And I think

the danger for women is not the one-off fast or, you know, oh hey, I don’t have

a good meal available; I’ll just hang in there for a few hours until I can eat

again. That’s cool. No problem. And I think anything that makes us less crazy

about food is ideal, {laughs} right. Because women, you know, we’re set upon

by so many things that can make us crazy about food. So I always fall on the

side of, like, let’s be less crazy about things and let’s be as in tune with our

appetites and physiological needs as we can.

That being said, I think the experiences that I’ve heard from dozens of women

at this point with intermittent fasting as a regular kind of protocol have not

been that positive. Again, we’re not talking about it like a once every few

weeks I go a day without food or I skip a meal now and then. We’re talking

about more of a systematic program that women often use to lose weight or

whatever. The results are not that good. And again, it does seem to disrupt this

hormonal balance.


2013Page 17

But I don’t want to discourage people from trying it. I think you need to try it,

be very observant about what you notice, and just kind of keep calibrating;

keep steering dynamically. The greatest thing about this community is that we

can experiment on ourselves, right. And that’s how we have gained our

knowledge. We hear about something cool, we try it on ourselves, see how it

goes and put the knowledge out there. So I encourage folks to try things, but

also be realistic about what they notice. And in my case I persisted way past

the point when I should have. And I know that’s fairly common. {Laughs}

Tony Federico: Like you wanted it to work, almost…

{Crosstalk}

Krista Scott Dixon: Oh, I wanted it to work.

Tony Federico: …like the idea was attractive.

Krista Scott Dixon: Oh yes, and it’s so beautifully, elegantly simple and all the people I knew

were having – well, all the men I knew were having great results with it. And

so one of the reasons I persisted was I just thought, well maybe if I just work

harder at this, you know, maybe if I find that magic key to do it properly then

it will work. Well, no; sometimes it just doesn’t work. {Laughs}

Tony Federico: Absolutely. Now Shelly and Stacy, have you experienced anything around

intermittent fasting? Have you tried it yourself? Have you had any sort of

results; positive or negative?

Stacy Toth: This is Stacy. I did intermittent fasting for a good portion of the first year of

going paleo just because I wasn’t as hungry as I was and I found myself


2013Page 18

naturally intermittent fasting. And then I realized what I was doing, looked

into it and, like was discussed, really wanted it to work. The good news was I

was losing weight. The bad news was I was severely malnourished because

specifically for my cause; I don’t have a gall bladder. And intermittent fasting

without a gall bladder is actually really difficult because you don’t have the

stored bile for when you do finally eat. Your body has no bile at all to then to

digest your big meal that you want to eat when you break your fast.

Tony Federico: That doesn’t work out so well.

Krista Scott Dixon: No, so I was nutrient deficient because my body wasn’t able to absorb any

of the nutrients that I was eating after the fast. And it took me a long time to

realize that that’s what was happening. I think it also brought about a lot of the

thyroid problems that we’re thinking come about with women from

intermittent fasting. And I think it had a lot to do with the autoimmune flare

that I actually ended up having shortly thereafter. So this whole thing is just

such a journey in figuring out what works. But it’s like was said, you know,

there were warning signs for me. Obviously I knew I wasn’t digesting meals

properly after an intermittent fast. And rather than paying attention to that and

listening to it I was more excited to lose weight and, you know, be proud of

the fast. So I just kept on pushing on, which wasn’t really the best idea.

Tony Federico: So, kind of drawn in by the immediate results and as a result sort of not

paying attention to some of the warning signs.

Stacy Toth: Yes.

Tony Federico: How about you, Shelly? Have you tried or dabbled with any intermittent

fasting?


2013Page 19

Shelly Good: Actually that’s not something that I have had much experience in. I think that I

love food too much {laughs} to be able to commit to something that seems

that strict. I might have done it by accident before, but I typically try to space

my meals out. And that’s something that we’re kind of trying to do more and

more five, six meals a day.

Tony Federico: So a lot of people say that when they kind of switch over to the paleo diet, and

I guess this is where we kind of get into some of that individuality, they

respond that they don’t feel as hungry and sort of naturally move towards

maybe eating fewer meals, eliminating snacks, maybe eating only one or two

meals a day. And that’s actually been my personal experience, but you’re

doing a little bit more of a, you know, kind of spacing food out throughout the

day. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? Like, what would be maybe

a typical day for you and why you feel that approach is working better?

Shelly Good: Sure. Recently we went to a nutrition seminar at our CrossFit. And while

we’ve been doing paleo for several years now, you know, maybe 80% of the

time, we have not learned anything about paleo zone. So that kind of was

touched on with our CrossFit. And it made sense to us, much like the paleo

made sense to me when I first started reading about it. I thought maybe we

should give that a try because we’ve kind of been stagnant in our progress for

a while now.

So what we’re doing now is it’s six meals a day. Within an hour of waking up

we eat some breakfast. A couple hours later we have a snack. Then lunch. So

there’s three snacks in the day and three meals in the day. They’re spaced out

accordingly and it’s just a balance of 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat.


2013Page 20

Where I think when we were doing paleo before we had a lot more emphasis

on fat and I’m not sure how well that was always serving us.

Tony Federico: And it’s still selecting those proteins, carbohydrates and fats from I guess you

could call them paleo approved sources; things like fruits and vegetables, nuts

and…

Shelly Good: Right, yes, that’s why it’s more of a zone paleo/paleo zone kind of thing.

We’re still eating paleo foods, but in more of a zoned fashion.

Tony Federico: So the last question that we’re going to get to, this is something that is

definitely a difficult issue for a lot of people. And I think that in the paleo

community it’s not immune from having to kind of face this situation. And

specifically this is a question from (Nicole) and she says, “I’d like to hear

about dealing with previously disordered eating patterns and how to keep

from reverting while eating paleo.” So speaking to someone who maybe

suffered from anorexia or bulimia or some sort of emotional eating or some

sort of – any sort of disordered eating really and how I guess we can manage a

dietary change; something like going from a standard American diet to paleo

without triggering a relapse of some of these issues. And I’m opening up the

floor because I don’t know who wants to go for this one.

Krista Scott Dixon: {Laughs} Well, I’ll start because I deal with disordered eating a lot in our

client base. And just to give you some perspective, I mean we have about

1,000 women going through any single coaching cohort. So we see a lot of

women. So I’ll just kind of get the ball rolling here.

One of the pieces that we see in our clients who come to us from any

background at all is that disordered eating is really strongly correlated with a


2013Page 21

few things. One of them is the inability to accurately perceive and talk about

what you’re experiencing, both emotionally and physically. And so, you know,

a new dietary regime, whether that’s paleo or anything else, can kind of play

into that because you’re able to displace whatever is off in your own life that

you don’t want to deal with or can’t deal with, you’re able to displace it onto a

new kind of diet, right. So you find paleo or, again, whatever you’re into and

that entertains you for a while. And that gives you structure and that gives you

a sense of control.

That’s the problem, right. And so the approach that we like to use is we get

people focusing on their experiences. We get them focusing on mindfulness.

What are they really actually experiencing? What are they feeling? What are

they sensing? What’s happening in their bodies? And so regardless of the

pathway that they choose, that’s the pathway out. So I would say for anyone

who’s a little bit concerned, you know, to notice your tendencies on this.

Right, it comes back to what we talked about earlier with noticing stress. You

know, where are you finding that you need to be in control? Where are you

finding that you experience distress? If you don’t get your special kibble today

will that cause you crazy anxiety? You know, that’s a sign. So really be tuned

into your signs and signals; especially the emotional ones and the physical

ones because that’s your clue.

Tony Federico: After I’d read that question I was doing a little research and I came across an

article that was posted on Huffington Post. And it was called ‘What Women

Lose in the Fight to be Thin.” And I’m actually just going to read a little

excerpt from this and would like to get some comments from you all and just

kind of see what you think about this particular statement. The author’s name

is Kate Orazem. And again, this is on huffigtonpost.com and this is what

wrote.


2013Page 22

“I don’t think I’m alone in this. I think I am one of a multitude. I’ve met

women my age who eat what they want and couldn’t care less if they gained

two pounds over Christmas. But I’m convinced that they’re the exception; not

the rule. The rule is that if you’re a woman in America you want nothing quite

so much as you want to be a little smaller. The rule is you’re always trying to

lose. It’s no coincidence that this plague primarily strikes women, though I

don’t want to discount the growing number of men who struggle with

disordered eating.

As women our bodies are not entirely our own and we are not always able to

avoid other’s attempts to pass judgment on or make demands of or possess

them. Having been made emblems and objects of desire, we do our best to live

up to the role tithing gym trips and skipped dinners. Whole nations of women

spend their hours not reading books or loving bands or making g------ed

[expletive] change, but instead agonizing over the inches of a waist.”

I mean that was pretty powerful for me just reading that. And I think that it’s

easy for me to take for granted as a guy maybe some of the struggles and

some of the pressures of, I guess, society’s expectations of women. So I just

wanted to spend the last couple minutes giving you all an opportunity to give

your comments.

Stacy Toth: So this is Stacy. Now when we talk about disordered eating I also want to

mention that it’s not just anorexia and bulimia that fall into that category. I

was actually bulimic in high school and I was treated for the purging of my

bulimia and I went through counseling and all of that stuff and still continued

to have the bingeing part of my disordered eating well into adulthood. Which

then, of course, caused disordered eating and a terrible relationship with food.


2013Page 23

And most people don’t get to be over 300 pounds, which I was, by having a

healthy relationship with food.

So when we’re talking about disordered eating it’s not just, you know, I think

a lot of people in the paleo community think like you say, “Well I’m not

anorexic and I’m not bulimic so it’s fine.” Orthorexia is the problem that I

think faces a lot more paleo people than are willing to admit. And I think

bingeing often happens with, you know, you adopt a paleo lifestyle and you

think, okay this is great I’m eating healthy. And then you have six days where

you’re great and then you have one day where you just go completely off the

rails and you think, oh, that was my 20%. That’s not 20%. That’s bingeing. If

you’re not able to control yourself and you have to go completely off the rails,

the question is what is going on in the rest of your life that’s causing you to

have an unhealthy relationship with food?

And I think just like was mentioned earlier, you just have to be really honest

with yourself about what are you dealing with in the rest of your life that’s

causing you to have that relationship with food. And most people just aren’t

willing to admit to themselves that they have this problem. So I think maybe

asking yourself a question, you know, how do I think about food? Do I think

about food in a way that nourishes my body, to eat when I’m hungry, to fuel

me? Because that’s what food is; it’s fuel for your body. Or do I think about

food in different terms and what are those terms and are they healthy?

I know for me personally I am able to think about paleo in a healthy way

because I know that the foods that I’m eating are nourishing foods for my

body and they fuel me and they make me feel good and I don’t have to think

beyond that. When I have to start going on the autoimmune protocol and when

I do a whole 30, those kinds of activities cause disordered eating in me


2013Page 24

because it’s no longer just a straightforward mindset. And so those personally

make me think a little bit more and I have to watch myself. And so I would

imagine that that affects other people as well.

Tony Federico: Now we only have a couple of minutes left, but I did want to give both Shelly

and Krista and opportunity to comment as well.

Krista Scott Dixon: Well, I’ll jump in quickly. I think that just nailed it. You know, that was

just bang on. I think that there’s really a continuum between being conscious

about what you eat and what you put in your mouth and using that as a tool to

solve other problems elsewhere in your life. I do think that paleo has the

wonderful benefit of often helping to balance our happy chemicals and so

often problems with disordered eating that we might have seen through

malnutrition sometimes disappear when folks take up a paleo way of eating.

But, you know, fundamentally these currents run through North American

society and, you know, industrialized society more broadly. So, you know, it

really represents a larger problem that sometimes we can attempt to solve

through controlling our diets, but really does speak to other challenges

elsewhere in our lives.

And I think we have to approach this with a lot of compassion. It’s very easy

to feel like I’m the only one with this weird problem. No you’re not.

{Laughs} You’re in a very sad majority, in a way. And be gentle with yourself;

be compassionate and understand that disordered eating comes in all different

kinds of forms. And so if your eating is causing you distress and anxiety, that’s

something you need to look deeper at, but, you know, with compassion and

gentleness, too.

Tony Federico: Absolutely. So Shelly, we’re going to go ahead and let you take the finish.


2013Page 25

Shelly Good: {Laughs} I mean I knew that I overate. Yes, and I knew I ate the wrong

things. But I can still see now with what they’ve said about this disordered

eating, which I never really kind of thought of myself as falling under, but

maybe I do.

Tony Federico: Absolutely. So for you this might have been sort of an eye opening experience

just coming on the show and listening to them talk; thinking about maybe how

you related with food personally.

Shelly Good: Oh absolutely, yes. They’re like experts, you know, to me. So to be in the

presence of them and listen to them speaking it’s like, okay, yes.

Tony Federico: That’s awesome. And hopefully there are some listeners out in our audience as

well that have been able to tune in and take something away from this. And as

we’ve discussed with stress and all these other issues, catch things early, stay

self aware and prevent it from becoming something bigger or something

that’s, you know, a full-blown health crisis or eating disorder or anything like

that; catching those warning signs and heading it off at the pass.

This concludes this episode of Paleo Magazine Radio. I want to thank all of

you for being on the show. It’s been really great for me just to listen and I

think that I’ve gained some insight into some of the specific concerns that

women have and some of the things that they face.

Stacy Toth: Thanks so much for having us, Tony, and Shelly, don’t think negatively with a

label.

Shelly Good: {Laughs}


2013Page 26

Stacy Toth: Just think positive about all the great stuff you’re doing and it was great to

chat with everyone.

Shelly Good: Oh no, thank you guys.

{Music}

Host: If you would like to share your story on PMR, please visit our Facebook page

at facebook.com/paleomagazine. For full transcripts of the show as well as

exclusive online content, go to our webpage paleomagonline.com. You can

also talk to us on Twitter at #pmradio.

THE END


2013Page 27

Documents

Podcast Episode Five 2013 · three-year-old has never had any gluten. I mean he occasionally has grains, but he’s been a paleo baby both breastfed and eating since his birth. So