Great opportunity for me to expound on this way of eating and tell a client success story.

Simply stated, the components of this diet; less animal foods, more plant foods, and little or no dairy feed the good bacteria in your gut Microbiome.

Those bacteria are responsible for making dopamine, serotonin, and GABA. They all positively affect our moods. And keep our heads clear.

And when you eat more of these foods, you’ll have more of these bacteria and they’ll crowd out others.

The others are responsible for increasing inflammation, and often our cravings for fatty, salty, and sweet foods.

Feed the inflammatory bugs and that, as you might imagine, can get into a vicious cycle.

But what are whole food starches and are there more reasons to eat them?

Whole food starches are among the healthiest foods on the planet.

Most are fairly nutrient-dense.

But here’s the key, they’re Calorie-dilute.

That means you can eat lots of them and not be concerned about gaining weight as you fill your tummy. (An entire pound of potatoes has only 330 Calories! By way of comparison: that’s about the same calories as 4oz. of french fries; 1/4 the amount of potatoes. )

One result is that my clients can stop calorie and carb counting and still lose weight.

My client, Lorna is a great example. Lorna walks with crutches after surviving polio as a child. That makes exercise difficult for her. It also tends to make her less active than others. She spent her lifetime counting calories to maintain weight and going hungry to lose it.

After about 3 months of this approach to eating, Lorna has been able to lose almost 10 pounds. More importantly, she started to realize that she didn’t really need to count calories anymore. She felt satiated with the amount of food she was eating and was still losing weight. (Her name & story are being used with her permission.)

You see, an extra advantage to this way of eating is that thylakoids get all the way down to the colon before they are digested. (Thylakoids are good chemicals in unbroken cell walls, unique to plant foods.) So, they use more calories being digested AND their arrival undigested, in our colon signals to increase production of leptin. That decreases your appetite. (Thylakoids are broken down by grinding grains & overcooking vegetables.)

And here’s the REAL advantage: this means we eat less for as much as 12 or more hours after they arrive in our colon. So, eat oatmeal for breakfast and you’ll likely find yourself still wanting SOME, but less lunch. And eating far less at dinner and not snacking that evening.

So exactly what are whole food starches?

Beans of all types, whole (unpulverized) grains, and seeds like quinoa, brown rice, millet, barley, corn, sweet potatoes, and winter squash to name a few.

The one important thing to mention is minimizing the addition of fats that could quickly counteract the calorie saving. It can also feed the pro-inflammatory bugs.

You can use salsa, marina sauce, or a variety of other nutrient-dense & low calories toppings. Or try mixing your starches with other veggies, or balsamic vinegar. Creamy sauce made with a small amount of nuts, nutritional yeast, and herbs is another alternative.

The possibilities are endless.

Want the recipe for my quick creamy cashew sauce? Email me.

In my next blog, I’ll talk about the connection to more energy.

The post Improve Your Moods, Energy & Clarity with Your Fork. (part 1) appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

Who do you know that doesn’t make conscious food choices? That asks themselves that rhetorical question a regular basis?

Maybe it’s you. Or your spouse. Or someone else you love.

For me, it was my mother. And guess what? It’s something that all of her kids, myself included, have struggled with off and on for all of our lives. 

This might also make you think in THOSE terms if you have children at home.

And then, of course, there’s WHAT we’re eating.

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting at my desk in my home office, noticing I’m hungry.

Unconscious act, I get up & find a piece of chocolate! (Truth!)

Sound familiar? That’s why I keep chocolate in the house less and less these days. 

It’s part of becoming conscious.

So after A, yes just ONE piece of chocolate. I sat back down to continue writing.

“No, I really AM hungry.” It’s lunchtime. I realize.

Conscious now, I get up & put some Ezekiel Bread in the toaster oven for a sandwich. 

So, how do we begin to make these conscious decisions?

Here are a couple of suggestions:

• Sit with yourself, in quiet solitude for 15-30 minutes after you’ve eaten.

Ask: “How do I feel?”
Is the answer energetic, aware, satisfied, and other positive things? Then it’s likely what you just ate was good for you.

Is the answer tired, sluggish, bloated, other negative things? 

Then, did you eat too much? The wrong food? Both?

Tune in.  Your body will tell you. That might be more powerful than outside sources like me, telling you WHAT to eat.

• Next step: Stop buying the foods that your body doesn’t do well with.

It doesn’t need to be an overt reaction. And maybe it’s something you can eat a small amount of. That will require fine-tuning.

Over time and with intention, you CAN develop more consciousness about what you’re eating and how much. 

That chocolate I ate? I bought it when I went to the store when I was hungry. No surprise there.

• Step 3: What about foods that are ok when we don’t overeat them; like the bag of nuts?

Can they live in your cabinet without calling out to you and making it likely that you’ll commit that unconscious act before you think? Then MAYBE you can keep small amounts in the house. Personally, I do a lot better with the nuts than I do with the chocolate! Tune in and make more deliberate choices.

Being conscious about what we’re eating is no different than being conscious about how much time we are wasting on social media, TV or a thousand other unconscious things we do every day. 

Do you have a morning routine that helps you be intentional about getting things done? 

How can you add conscious food choices to that?

Give it some thought. I’d love to hear how you’re doing.

As for me. My toast is ready & it’s time to go make a healthy lunch!

The post Learning to Make Conscious Food Choices appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

In fact, weight gain during the peri-menopausal years is one of the most common complaints I hear as a health coach. My own story about conquering it and what I learned along the way has been one of my major inspirations for helping others.

So, today I want to look at the keto diet. Is a keto diet healthy or harmful for peri-menopausal weight-loss? It certainly IS a very popular answer.

The main features of a ketogenic diet are high-fat foods and veggies. In it’s purest form that’s it.

You restrict (or eliminate) starches, grains, and fruit. Many say berries are allowable but achieving true ketosis with berries usually means limiting them to a cup or less a day. Then you add lots of fat, meats with the fat left on it, dairy, coconut, avocado, eggs, and more; all to push your body to convert to using fat as a primary energy source instead of sugar.

A true keto diet also involves testing your urine several times per day to make sure you’re maintaining ketosis so your body will burn fat as its primary fuel.

And if you cheat, it usually takes about 2 days before you get back to a ketogenic state. That’s the price you pay for an additional piece of fruit or some crackers; two days of standing still!

My first question is a practical one: how long can you do that for?

Personally, the thought of giving up brown rice, winter squash, sweet potatoes and fruit would send me into a frenzy. Those are some of the healthiest foods on the planet. And some of my favorites as well.

As a reference point, Okinawans, who boast the highest percentage of healthy Centenarians (people who live to 100) in the world, get about 60-75% of their daily calorie intake from sweet potatoes! -Of course, they don’t add butter, sugar and other garbage to them!

Carbos are also comfort foods for many of us. And when you really look at it, it’s not the potato that’s the problem, it’s the company it keeps; the sour cream, butter, bacon bits and more that most typically add to it. But I digress, where talking about keto here.

After that, the next question is NOT “does it work?”

The REAL question is “What does it work for?”

The original discovery of the ketogenic was that it reversed epilepsy in children with seizure disorders. However, there are also reports in the literature of children dying from sudden cardiac death caused by selenium deficiency.

 It’s also been well-documented that the ketogenic diet is deficient in at least 17 different nutrients.

But does the fact that it can cure epilepsy in children make it a healthy way for a peri-menopausal woman to lose weight? Or a way to lose weight and fat at all?

Further, can you eat keto and maintain or improve hormones balance and have the energy you need to sustain yourself throughout the day?

And what are the long-term effects of a keto diet? Can it have a long-term positive effect on your health (like eating whole food plant-based can)?

It’s very difficult to maintain a ketogenic diet without eating animal products daily. This means eating high amounts of saturated fats with its negative effect on arterial health and heart function.

Since cardiovascular conditions are already the number one killer in our country already, you might consider:

Do you really want to go on a diet that can increase the chances of you having a heart attack or other adverse cardiac event even beyond what is typical?

And you might also want to be aware that low carb diets, in general, are linked to higher all-cause mortality rates. In other words, all things being equal, a person on a low carb diet is likely to die younger than a person not on a low carb diet.

High animal fat diets are also particularly toxic to the kidneys and the liver. They can also lead to gall stones and increase levels of inflammation in the body. And they are directly implicated in many forms of cancer.

Further, diets high in animal products make it more difficult for peri-menopausal women to maintain hormone balance since they are getting exogenous estrogen from those animal products.

Thus, peri-menopausal symptoms could worsen in some women on ketogenic diets.

So there may be safety, short-term, and long-term factors to consider. And it could make peri-menopause symptoms worse.

Now to the matter of losing weight and more importantly, losing fat weight.

Several studies have compared the fat and lean muscle loss on low-carb diets vs. low-calorie diets. The results might surprise you.

While people on low carb diets lose weight more quickly and perhaps even lose more total weight, it’s well-documented they also lose more lean muscle mass. The title of a 2015 study says it all:

“Calorie for Calorie, Dietary Fat Restriction Results in More Body Fat Loss than Carbohydrate Restriction in People with Obesity.”

My last consideration is about you, as a peri-menopausal woman, having the energy you want and need to make it through the day. The titles of these 2 studies tells it all:

“Blood ketones are directly related to fatigue and perceived effort during exercise in overweight adults adhering to low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss: a pilot study.” In other words: higher ketones in the blood yield higher fatigue levels.

And a more recent study reinforces this point:

“Low carbohydrate, high fat diet impairs exercise economy and negates the performance benefit from intensified training in elite race walkers.”

So, it appears that ketogenic diets also impair energy or, at least the energy needed for exercising.

So there you have it; some considerations to evaluate in regards to high fat, ketogenic diets.

Is there another diet you’d like to get some more factual information on? Comment below and I’ll blog about it soon.

The post The Keto Diet and Peri-Menopause: Healthy or Harmful? appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

Every October we are accosted by pink ribbons, pink buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, pink M & M’s and more! We are urged to get “our mammograms.” But preventing breast cancer is not about pink ribbons. and mammograms. No one ever brings up prevention!  A healthy diet & lifestyle IS primary prevention; regardless of your genetics.  It is NOT as though all you can do is is get your breasts irradiated (with cancer-causing radiation) to find out if you have cancer and them get them lopped off!

I know that last sentence may come off as vulgar & radical but ladies, there is much you CAN do! And maybe the shock of a ‘respectable doctor’ talking about it this way will wake up some folks! I can only hope!

So, How do you prevent cancer and cause it at the same time???

You can’t. The facts are clear: a high-fat diet, like the Standard American Diet, is a Class 1 (Proven), Cancer-causing agent. And the radiation in a mammogram (especially a 3D digital one) is also a contributor to breast cancer.

But no one talks about ANY strategies to PREVENT BREAST CANCER; it’s all just about “early detection.”

Let’s look at what the Medical-Industrial Complex calls ‘prevention:’

Some facts about mammography:

A Canadian study of 44,910 women ages 40-59 who had routine mammography found that 22% of breast cancers (106 of 484 positives) were over-diagnosed. This means 106 women were subjected to surgery and some to chemo and/or radiation who DID NOT HAVE INVASIVE CANCER!

Cancer Research UK and the Department of Health (England) published findings that said in part, “. . . to prevent 1 death, about 250 women need to be screened and 11-19% OVER-DIAGNOSED.”

The UK department detailed, in the above-cited document, that if 10,000 women were invited for screening, 681 cases would be diagnosed, of which 129 would represent over-diagnosis  (almost 1 in 5 cases!).

A study in the Netherlands estimated that screening decreased the death rate by 1-2% while increasing over-diagnosis by 32%!

Over -Diagnosis

Part of the problem with ‘over-diagnosis’ is that women don’t know they were (are) part of this statistic.

Let me explain: Ductal Carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is the most common form of ‘breast cancer’ diagnosed by mammography.

Autopsy studies show large numbers of women die WITH DCIS but don’t die OF it. DCIS is, by definition, not invasive. It plays no role in causing death according to at least 14 separate studies. Some in the medical community feel that DCIS shouldn’t even be considered ‘cancer.’

Increasing Cancer Detection Rates at what price?

Now here’s the real kicker: when mammography was instituted as a regular screening procedure, the rate of diagnosis of breast cancer in the United States went from 1:9.5 to 1:8. This represents thousands of more diagnosed yearly. However, the rate of breast cancer DEATHS has not decreased! So, we are diagnosing more, we are treating more but we are not saving more lives! This, by definition, means we are needlessly screening, diagnosing and treating more women (who have non-invasive conditions).

Did the TEST Find the Cancer?

Now, I understand there are women out there that feel their life was saved by a mammogram and that could be true. Many (perhaps most) of those are cases were cases where the woman found the lump herself and the mammogram confirmed it.  Cases of invasive cancers found first by mammography are extremely rare. And, as mentioned previously, the most common kind of cancer found by mammography is DCIS.

What happens during a mammogram & the potential harm

Now, let’s look at the mammography procedure. The breast tissue is smashed and squished between 2 plates of inflexible material; a physical action that CAN disrupt the tissue enough to cause bleeding under the skin (bruising) and then the breast is exposed to ionizing radiation (which can cause mutation).

The nature of bruising is such that it stimulates white blood cells to flow into the area which stimulates increased circulation to the area. Pressure can also disrupt the capsule the body forms to wall off a cancer mass. So, now, in someone with DCIS, you have damaged the (formerly contained) cancer mass and increased the circulation in the are making it more likely that those cancer cells can be spread.

Then you’ve applied ionizing radiation to the area; potentially stimulating the growth of the cancer cells! So, if the mass was DCIS you have just injured it enough that the cells could be picked up & spread by the circulation to distant body sites. This is something that typically wouldn’t happen with DCIS! And if the cancer is a more invasive form, you have also stimulated possible spread.

A Suspicious Result: What’s Next?

Then, if the mammogram comes back suspicious, a needle biopsy is used to extract cells. The process of puncturing the mass and extracting cells can, again, cause cancer to spread. Then, if you do surgery, the same thing again! (Now I’m not telling you “don’t do any of this.” I’m admonishing you to be aware of what you’re doing and weigh the potential risks and benefits.)

Can You Do Something Else? 

For those that feel they MUST have a procedure for “early detection,” an option is to educate yourself about thermography, which is non-diagnostic but capable of showing inflammation and see if that makes sense to you. Alternatively, you could adopt a healthier lifestyle and understand that there are no guarantees in life.

What About Prevention?

Now that you know all that, how about taking concrete steps to prevent breast cancer in the first place?

First: the absolute best primary prevention comes from diet & lifestyle. A low-fat, plant-centered diet and regular exercise will do more to prevent cancer than any other tool regardless of genetics!

My colleagues at Wellness Forum Health and The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine have teamed up to put forth a 4-point pledge that WILL diminish the likelihood that you’ll get breast cancer. These 4 actions (choosing more whole plant foods, exercising regularly, limiting alcohol intake and maintaining a healthy weight) have all been positively correlated with decreasing the rate of ALL cancers.) So, sign the attached form & send it back to me & I can get you a gift certificate for $100 off a course through Wellness Forum Health. Their science-based approach will teach you to be pro-active and make choices that will result in better outcomes and longer life. 

Disclaimer: The information about the diagnostic procedure in this article is intended to educate and inform only. It does not represent recommendations.

The post Preventing Breast Cancer Pink Ribbons = False Hope appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.