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

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In part 3 of my interview with Ashley Koff, R.D.,we talk about calories and how Ashley really pays attention to the nutrient value rather than calories and she calls meals “Eating Occurrences”.  Eating occurrences are not what we normally consider  a meal but eating every 3 hours rather than gigantic meals all at once.

This is the opposite of “backloading” which is eating small all day and then having a gigantic dinner with snacks the rest of the night. This prevents people from saying  “ I can go all day without food but then at 3pm I need my sugar. 

Ashley’s 4 tenets for healthy eating are

1.Quality,
2. Quantity,
3.Frequency and
4. Nutrient balance.

Food allergies are then discussed and the role of GMO’s in contributing to this. Our bodies are getting all sorts of things in modern food that it does not know how to deal with. This causes the body to become less efficient and irritated. Food intolerances are a wake up call –Your body is telling you it is so irritated that is not accepting the food you are putting into it.

So we use a simple bland diet for a while to clear the cobwebs so to speak and then try the foods again. Often you will be able to eat many of the foods that you thought you were allergic to. 

This gut irritation can be part of what causes elevated HS-CRP
–C Reactive Protein which is great marker for inflammation and Ashley uses this regularly as a marker for gut inflammation. In traditional medicine, instead of looking at the gut and diet as a way to lower the inflammation, the patient is given a pharmaceutical drug to lower it.

The difference between a vegan diet and a whole food plant based diet is important to understand. 

Ashley notes that Research is “Me-search”!

We also talk about the EWG and their safe cosmetics database as a place to start.  Be aware that the packaging will only tell you what you want to hear.  Whole foods do not require labeling!

I also ask Ashley her answer to “What is the one thing we could all do to improve our energy and as a result our health today. She gives a great  answer!

How do get started? Start with right where you are now and it will grow.

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

Ashleykoffapproved on Facebook

@ashleykoff on 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