021-My Interview with Ashley Koff RD on Integrative Nutrition for Optimal Health- Part 2 of 3

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This is part 2 of my interview with Ashley Koff RD on the importance of good diet for our health

We talk about her two books, Recipes for IBS and Mom Energy: A Simple Plan to Live Fully Charged which she wrote with Kathy Kaehler, who is a celebrity trainer. 

25 million people have IBS and that is why Ashley wrote a book on the dietary approach to helping patients with IBS. Ashley wanted her book to be called Digestive Wellness and that is what it is really about. 

In her new book Mom Energy: A Simple Plan to Live Fully Charged. In this book she talks about how fatigue is one of the main complaints in our society.  She talks about how people are confusing MORE energy with Better energy. We want to learn what a good baseline energy for us. Her book is much more than just the mother with children but really anybody who needs to give out a lot of energy.

She points out that in the name of being a mom, women are often rewarding themselves with food. She talks about the importance of being selfish so that you can take care of yourself and that you can then take better care of your children and family. In our society the idea being selfish is regarded as negative, but that is not really the way it should be. This will let women be better in their own lives and better for others.

The simple analogy is that on an airplane you are advised that if the oxygen masks drop down you are to put it on yourself before your children so that you can properly take care of them. 

Ashley talks about how she met with an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Center in New York who always advises his cancer patients to eat only organic but he does not eat organic himself at home!

I find this very often in my practice that people do not pay attention to these things until they reach a crisis point.

We talk about which diet Ashley recommends to her general clients. She recommends a Qualitarian diet which is a diet that uses high quality foods that are not loaded with pesticides, or sugars, or preservatives.

The idea of what I can and cannot have should always be based on what is best for your body. Somebody on a vegan diet could be eating sugar and caffeine all day and be very unhealthy. Not everybody should be on the same diet. But synthetic, processed, poor quality food does not work for anybody.

You have to play an active role in order to be a “Qualitarian”. With this diet you have to be knowledgeable about nutrients. This is important thing to know if you are vegetarian or vegan in order to avoid belly fat.

We need to get complete protein but you do not have to eat meat to do that but just a variety of foods to give you the full Amino Acid balance.

We also talk about how it is ironic that cows are vegans and yet we eat their meat in order to get our full protein!  They got their full proteins from eating a variety of grasses that carried the full amino acid balance, so why can’t we? And of course in fact we can! 

To find out more about Ashely, check out her website or find her on facebook and twitter

You can find her book Mom Energy: A Simple Plan to live Fully Charged which you can get here

Or here as a kindle book

You can get her book on Recipes for IBS here

or on Kindle here

Please leave comments and questions below or email me at questions@askdrsoram.com