Divorce Rich with Jacki Roessler, CDFA
Welcome to the Divorce Rich Podcast! Join your host, highly sought-after speaker and experienced Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, Jacki Roessler, CDFA in this engaging and down to earth show. Along with her guests, Jacki offers clear and detailed advice to improve your financial decisions before, during and after divorce so you can survive divorce rich! New episodes are posted every other Thursday! You can reach Jacki through her Michigan-based firm, Roessler Divorce Consulting, located at 600 S. Adams, Suite 300, Birmingham, MI 48009 or by email at jacqueline@roesslerdivorce.com.
Divorce Rich with Jacki Roessler, CDFA
Plant-Based Eating: Re-set your Body (and Budget) after Divorce with author and nutritionist, Kathryn Pollard, MS
Discover how a plate full of plants can give your body, mind and wallet the re-set it needs after divorce with my guest, Kathryn Pollard, MS, a celebrated author and nutritionist. Kathryn's award-winning book "Eating Does It" serves as our guide, offering a roadmap to reclaim health and wellness through nutrition. We dig into groundbreaking research by Dr. T. Colin Campbell shedding light on how whole food, plant-based diets can lead to improved health and prevent disease. This episode is a deep dive into how dietary changes can help you regain control over your life.
- Click here to purchase Eating Does It-Healing Ourselves and Our Planet with Food (Divorce Rich listeners can use discount code KP25P (for print) KP25E (for epub)-good through March 31, 2025)
- CLICK HERE to learn more about how plant based diets can help trim your budget
- Click here to book a complimentary30-minute Zoom consult with Jacki https://calendly.com/roessler-jacki/30mi
This episode aims to empower you, offering encouragement and practical steps to enhance your well-being during stressful times through plant-based eating.
Visit us at https://www.roesslerdivorce.com/ to learn more about Jacki's practice and to find valuable resources for your case.
Welcome to the Divorce Rich Podcast. I'm your host, jackie Ressler. I've been a certified divorce financial analyst for 28 years, helping clients and their attorneys navigate the often complex and confusing financial issues in divorce. If you're in the process of, or considering, divorce, now is the time for you to take a deep breath and give yourself permission to find clarity on the financial issues you're facing. Rich means many things to many people. I believe the best definition of being rich is someone who has access to many resources. Along with my guests on this podcast, I will be bringing you a wide variety of information so that you can make sound and informed financial decisions for your financial future. Welcome back to the Divorce Rich Podcast.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is one that is very personal to me. When I was getting divorced many years ago, I really felt out of control in my life, and one of the ways that I was able to take some control in a time that was very traumatic and difficult was by taking a look at how the foods that I put into my body impacted my energy level, my health, my weight, my migraines that I was having at the time, my skin, everything. That was one way that I could really change and take some control over the trajectory of my life post-divorce. Our guest today is Katherine Pallard. She's an author and a nutritionist and she is here to talk about her new book, eating Does it, which is a great book. She won the 2024 Living Well Book Award for this book and it really goes into a lot of detail about some smart and simple ways that we can take control back. This is one of those episodes that I invite you to just sit back, take a deep breath and open your mind to some new ideas. So welcome, catherine.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Jackie. It's such a pleasure to be with you and I'm really honored to be on your podcast and meet your listening audience.
Speaker 1:In your book you're putting forth what the benefits are of a plant-based diet. Can you explain what a plant-based diet, Can you explain what a plant-based diet is different than maybe a vegan diet?
Speaker 2:It really just sort of connotes eating good, eating well, eating whole plant foods. So that of course does correspond with this concept of a vegan diet. But the term plant-based diet was really invented by Dr T Colin Campbell, who is a nutritional biochemist and did the most extensive research done on proteins and its effect on the body, particularly cancer growth. And then he also facilitated the largest population study, or one of was done back in the I think we'd say the 80s in china, called it's. It's referred to as the china park project, where he looked at the dietary patterns of rural chinese people who have been eating and staying in one place and eating like their their ancestors had for generations. And what he found in years and years of research, both in the lab and in population studies, is that the closer to a whole food, plant-based diet, the healthier people were able to stay and avoid disease. So that's pretty dramatic and it's dramatic today.
Speaker 2:So a plant-based diet is one that sort of connotes whole foods, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, beans, pulses and nuts and seeds, and did I say fruits in there Fruits and vegetables. And did I say fruits in there? Fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 1:The people I work with, Catherine, are stressed out. I don't want to overwhelm them by making things really additionally complicated for them and how they eat. One of the things that I really loved about your book was your four eating does it rules, which I thought were really easy and simple to try. Can you walk us through?
Speaker 2:those. Okay, sure, a lot of my research is really influenced with healthy diets and healthy eating patterns around the world and how that corresponds with avoiding chronic disease at a time of climate change. And I know that a lot of my research has just been influenced by well being married to a climatologist for 37 years now and the conversations that we've had, and that there's a lot of intersection and overlap between our own personal habits and what control that we have over really big, challenging issues, in fact, the issues of our time chronic disease and climate change. So that's what got me to the book and to writing the book, and we could certainly start with the four food rules in my book because it simplifies things.
Speaker 2:It's a travesty that just figuring out what good food is and how to keep ourselves healthy is complicated, and it's really not. So that's why I wrote down these four food rules and let's start with them here. It is plain and simple. We've defined what whole foods, whole plant foods, are. The more whole plant foods in your diet, the better, the more you will avoid risk of disease and allow your body to heal. So that's a very general statement that doesn't say, okay, vegan tomorrow, or else we're going to die, no Right. The more you can add these fiber-filled whole fruits and vegetables, nuts and legumes, whole grains into your regular dietary pattern, the better.
Speaker 2:So that's number one the more the better. And the second is going along with that Don't sweat the small stuff. You're going to go to a party. You're going to celebrate grandma's birthday with a cupcake. You're going to have a glass of wine, you know, every once in a while, whatever, whatever it is that you know is not supporting your health in terms of nutrition, it's okay until it becomes a pattern. If you're going to have a cupcake once every couple weeks, that's a little thing. If you go to birthday parties and office parties and celebrations like this time of year and it becomes a regular thing, it's going to add up. So that's the difference Don't sweat the small stuff, don't make it into a pattern.
Speaker 2:The third one is my fave. It's eat the rainbow. And what I refer to in terms of the rainbow, or the variety of the colorful whole plant foods that you find as close to picking it from the soil as you can, because those colors of all of the different vegetables and plant foods and white is a color I include those are the same chemical compounds as antioxidants that help clear our blood, keep our parasites at bay and build up good bacteria both in our gut and keep our bloodstream and our colon healthy. So that's what the rainbow of colors in our food or variety of plant foods represent, and that's number three. Number four is my favorite, and that, as well as three, okay, I like this one.
Speaker 2:I think your audience will like this one, but you'll have to let me define it.
Speaker 1:Okay, ready. Yeah, I'm ready.
Speaker 2:Eat as much as you want, love it as long. Here's the caveat.
Speaker 1:There's a caveat to that right.
Speaker 2:Eat as much as you want, as long as the food you're eating has intact fiber.
Speaker 2:Okay, so what I mean by that is that all whole plant foods nuts and vegetables and fruits and you know avocados and coconut these foods, if they're intact, they have fiber.
Speaker 2:That regularly how quickly those macronutrients get into your system the sugar, the glucose, the protein, the fat and so that fiber not only regulates those nutrients and allows our body to control those nutrients to be absorbed as needed, it fills us up and it also cleans our gut and allows and gives our microbiome the right food it wants to create a healthy bacterial colony in our gut which supports our immune system and regulates our inflammation level and really leads our health. So eat as much as you want, as long as that food has intact fiber, as much as you can. And of course, all of this is not medical advice. If you have a chronic condition, you've got to work with your health care practitioner. This is just a great guideline. It's eat as much whole plant food as you can, don't sweat the small stuff. Look at your big dietary pattern. Eat the rainbow of valuable colors from the plant world every day and eat as much as you want, as long as you have that whole food that has fiber along with it.
Speaker 1:So you brought up a couple of things that I want to circle back to. Can you give me an example of what is an intact fiber and what is not?
Speaker 2:Great question. Yes, so intact fiber is what you'd find on the hull of a grain or the bran of a grain and the nuts and seed on the outside and the inside of an apple. So if you take an apple and you put it in a blender, you take out the seeds first. You're going to break up the fiber, so it's not whole anymore, it's not intact, it's turned into a liquid, say. It still has the fiber in it and that's good for you. Quite often we take fiber in a powdered form because it's been broken up like that. Then it's dry and put in the powder and put it in the jar and then we take a teaspoon of it and that's fiber. It does a good job in an isolated form. But the less you touch that fiber, like if you were to eat the apple whole the more intact that fiber is and the more effect it has to protect your health. So, um, processed foods have wiped out all the fiber like white rice, or right, that's White flour less fiber.
Speaker 2:There's a little fiber in white rice, as you say. There's very little fiber in white flour, but there's more in whole grain flour, whole wheat flour. It's still broken up. If you were to eat the whole wheat buds itself, the grains itself, like whole brown rice as opposed to white rice, then you're getting more of that fiber.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the closer you are to the natural unbroken fiber, the healthier it is.
Speaker 2:Yes. So that doesn't mean that I'm never going to have a smoothie with bananas and greens. I do. I have them quite regularly. But I know that if I were to eat because I don't have time to eat an apple plus five dates plus three leaves of kale and all this, I'm getting all this nutrients pretty quickly into my body with a smoothie. But I want to make sure to have the intact fiber as much as I can. So steamed spinach would have intact fiber. You know a vegetable medley, a stir fry, would have intact fiber. You know nuts and seeds. You know sunflower seeds intact fiber. That sort of thing Does that help. Very helpful, thank you.
Speaker 2:We are so used to getting concentrated heaps of isolated ingredients like sugar and fat and high hunks of protein that our bodies are just not used to. That's not how our bodies are designed. They have addictive qualities. These foods, these isolated ingredients put together, have addictive qualities to them because they're in such concentrated form and our body isn't. You know, not only are they not used to that from an evolutionary perspective, but our taste buds get used to it and then they want that and that can be the beginning of food addiction. I mean, it's not our fault. It's just that you know food manufacturers know how to hit us with food, so we keep wanting to come back to it, and so that's a problem. We need to sort of get our taste buds used to the foods that they're designed to eat, with the portions of sugar and fat and salt in the amounts that they're used to.
Speaker 1:Does that help.
Speaker 1:I find that it does help, and I find that one of the first arguments that people have or actually probably the first one that I had when someone suggested to me that I try a plant-based diet is that everything is going to taste terrible when I'm incorporating more of these foods. I don't feel deprived, and that's one of the things that I like about your book is that there are recipes in there for some foods that sound really delicious, because it's one thing to tell people that they should eat better, but it's another thing to show them some simple, easy ways how to incorporate that into their life.
Speaker 2:So I like that. Thank you for that. And you're right. I mean, the cuisines of the world are just so tasty on their own. It just takes our taste buds a bit of time to get used to it, or just a bit of detachment away from what the ultra-processed foods and the manufacturers who make them want us to taste. So, yeah, the food is flavored by natural herbs and spices and fats coming from whole beans and whole nuts, and even coconut, and if you have these foods along with fiber, you can be able to mitigate that fat and you'll get that mouthfeel that you're looking for. And there are a couple of tips, and that would be. You know, look at these recipes that I've presented in the book or other whole plant food recipes, and don't add the salt as you're cooking. Don't add the fat as you're cooking, salt after you've cooked, because that way you'll use a lot less and no matter what you're making food at home, you're going to have less sodium in your diet than if you buy products already made for it Fast food or right exactly.
Speaker 1:So, catherine, this may not be a fair question, but in my own personal experience and I'm going to sound like a commercial here for whole food, plant-based eating, but in my experience when I was getting divorced and I was trying to find some ways to take control back in my life in ways that I could I found amazing fast results from changing my diet by adding more whole food plant-based foods into my diet. I don't know how typical that is For the person who is eating the standard American diet. How long can they typically expect that change to provide some noticeable results?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a fair question because everyone's different and everyone is coming with their own health status and environmental experience. But if you were to take a normal American who eats, you know 15% of their diet is animal protein and they have a lot of processed foods in their diet and chips and sodas and all that Standard American diet.
Speaker 2:Standard American diet and you take them off. If it was immediate, people would quite often I hear this all the time feel pretty immediate effects. In a few days and in a couple of weeks you can really feel less tired, feel your energy coming back, you might see your skin get better, you might start losing weight. So you know you can get pretty amazing results in a couple of weeks. And then you keep going and you know it's just it's. You know it's sort of uphill, but easy from there as long as you don't expect perfection. It's sort of uphill, but easy from there as long as you don't expect perfection, because we're not perfect. We're humans.
Speaker 1:It's that all or nothing thinking mentality that, if I mess up this one thing that I may as well forget it. And that's what stops people from?
Speaker 2:You can't mess this up.
Speaker 2:There's always another meal, there's always another way to add a green vegetable into your diet, a salad into your next meal, sweet potato pudding, I mean, there's some great examples of easy recipes in there that people don't have to feel like never going to be able to get a better diet. I would say that that's the idea is to make it simple. That's why I wrote the four food rules. The more whole plant foods, the better. You don't have to stress over how many calories do I? You know. You don't have to stress over the numbers.
Speaker 2:You know how much protein, how much fat, how many calories am I taking? And Do I have to add? You know? Do I have to combine grains and beans together to be healthy? No, the more whole plant foods the better, and these foods include leafy greens, other vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds and legumes, and I'd like to just highlight beans and pulses and legumes like lentils and chickpeas and beans, because these high-protein food that has been the cornerstone of so many diets around the world. Those are the populations where they haven't had diseases.
Speaker 1:Another part of what I do with clients is I go through their budget with them and I sit down and one of the areas that's pretty consistent for my clients across the board when I sit down and look at their budget, everyone is shocked when they go back through their expenses at how much they're spending on food. Everyone oh yeah, prices are going up. Grocery prices have been going up. It's really easy to see the real life effect of inflation when you go to the grocery store, but it's not even just the grocery store.
Speaker 1:I think that we are we. We eat out a lot and so much money gets funneled that way. And as a financial advisor working with people that need to find ways to reduce their budget, this is a great way, even if they just were able to replace a few meals, even a week, with something that they put together at home. And it can be as easy as a sheet pan dish with, like you said, chickpeas and spices and some vegetables and you throw it in and you don't have to think about it. Those little ways that we can tweak our budget. Also, the big ticket items on most people's budgets for the groceries are meat, dairy and processed foods.
Speaker 2:Ah yes, very good point, jackie. Thank you for bringing that up. I mean dried beans and whole brown rice in bulk or in packages is not expensive, way cheaper and very filling. So, yes, you do need to learn maybe some new kitchen skills, because we're used to opening can. Can beans are pretty good too, and you can easily find those on sale. There's nothing wrong with that with canned beans at all, and you're right. So we just need to learn that. Oh, we can open a can of beans, we can get a jar of salsa that doesn't have any additives in it and preservatives, and we can make some brown rice. Can even find frozen whole organic brown rice in the freezer.
Speaker 1:No, a Trader Joe's. But there you go.
Speaker 2:That's a little bit processed, not ultra processed, but it's cooked for you, so that's going to be more expensive than buying dry rice and making it at home. Right, so you know your budget. As you're saying, you're working with people. You can make this an expensive journey of adding more plant foods into your diet, but it shouldn't be and there's no need. And the more whole the plant, the whole the food is the beans that you haven't cooked yet, the more fiber you're going to get and the healthier you're going to get as a food product.
Speaker 1:Right, so it's a win-win all the way around. Can you talk a little bit about dairy in particular, because I really think there's a misconception that dairy is good for children and I would love it if you would share some wisdom on that.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's talk a little bit about dairy, because dairy is the perfect food. Dairy is the perfect food If you are a baby cow. It's got the right ratio of proteins and fat, saturated fat and very little carbohydrate. I mean, it's got sugar in it, of course, and it's just what you need. If you're a growing bovine but we're not we don't grow into 1,500 to 2,500 pounds. We're different species.
Speaker 2:We're not designed to drink milk as adults, let alone the milk of another species. So, if you think about it, it's a little odd that we are taking the milk, the breast milk, that we are taking the milk, the breast milk, in a way from another species, and that stuff has a lot of fat and sugar, lactose, and when you make it into cheese, for instance, it's really concentrated. It's got salt and sugar, lactose and fat. It takes 10 pounds of milk to make a pound of cheese, for instance. It also contains casein, a certain protein, casein morphine. It's a compound similar to morphine that during digestion it gives us a hit of pleasure. It may stimulate the brain the same way to make us crave more and more, and it could play into such a food addiction of this very high fat food and lead into. You know, obesity and it's like it's it's. I really want your audience to know it's like not a fault. It's not our fault that we can't give up these high fat foods. They're designed so that you keep wanting more.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of growth hormones in there and dairy, particularly IGF-1, which can simulate the growth of cancer. Milk and we're already grown the protein is going to want to grow stuff and if you might have some exposure to cancer cells or something, it's going to grow the wrong cells. So there is an association of dairy with a lot of issues, including diabetes, autoimmune disorders, of course, lactose intolerance. People often complain of constipation, ear infections with children, sinus congestion, you know, skin problems, asthma, digestion issues, arthritis. All these things mean we're all so different. We could be associated with the amount of dairy that we take in.
Speaker 2:So a lot of us, like 75% to 90% of us, particularly those with Asian or African and East Asian descent, are lactose intolerant. Many people don't even know it, including Hispanics and Native Americans. Hispanics and Native Americans because these cultures have had less time to evolve the genetic tolerance to milk as white Europeans have. They've been drinking milk the longest. Dairy, bovine milk Also, particularly cheese. There's a higher acid load, from meat, from animal foods and cheese in particular just because it's so concentrated and that could demand more calcium to buffer the acid in our blood, and so it's really hard to figure out where that calcium is coming from. But our storage of calcium are our bones, calcium and minerals magnesium and phosphorus so we might be leaching calcium from our bones in order to, you know, buffer the acid.
Speaker 1:So are there other, better places to get calcium and vitamin D than from dairy?
Speaker 2:products. There are, yeah, there are all sorts of foods. There are, yeah, there are all sorts of foods leafy green vegetables, foods that are set with calcium, like tofu. And if your audience isn't familiar with tofu, it's soy, it's made from soybeans, it's processed soybeans into soy milk, so there's not much fiber left in it, but it's lightly processed, so it's almost a whole food, not quite so tofu bok choy.
Speaker 1:I think that when we think of comfort food in the standard American diet sometimes we think of things like macaroni and cheese, and pizza Cheese is so particularly addicting I know from friends of mine the most difficult thing to try to eliminate from your diet sometimes is cheese Because it is so addicting. I hear it all the time.
Speaker 2:I hear it all the time. So women out there listening, it's not you, it's this addictive body of food, just so you know. And it's a great time to think about alternatives, because there's a burgeoning market of cheese, alternatives made from nuts, cashews and in particular, those can be really good in grains.
Speaker 2:So, there are a lot of good replacements that are really yummy and they're high fat, but you can't really get a higher fat than cheese made out of cow's milk. It's pretty high fat. So, even going down to cashew cheese, I suggest, if you are lucky enough to have a grocery store that carry, ask do you have cheese alternatives?
Speaker 2:I know that there's so much that we could talk about alternatives and I know that there's so much that we could talk about. Okay, well, you know, I would say I just I can't just imagine some of your listeners going through very stressful times and I want to emphasize what you said, that a lot of these plant foods they're anti-inflammatory, they're calming foods. They're foods that will allow your body to take a breath and heal and allow our body's stress reaction, which is inflammation, to calm down that I mentioned. There's so many of them, there's so many different kinds and I go through some of them, just a few of them in the book. But here's some good news Cocoa is rich in flavonoids.
Speaker 2:That's a color like dark brown. It's like chocolate yeah, chocolate or cocoa powder. I have a smoothie recipe in the book and if you want to just add some tablespoon of cocoa powder to that, then that will help the release of endorphins that you know are like the relaxing hormones that help you feel better and improve your mood. You know, it's just amazing how just these plant foods, compared to ultra-processed foods, they affect our stress hormones, our cortisol levels and those foods that are associated with lower stress. You may know like chamomile and chamomile tea, but dark chocolate has those flavonoids and green tea is very soothing. The antioxidants in almonds and blueberries and alternative to dairy yogurts like coconut yogurt or cashew yogurt, those can be very calming and they sort of affect your level of stress hormones. So that might be a bit of a tip of um of stress hormones, so that that might be a bit of a tip.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, catherine. I so appreciate you being here and I am excited to introduce you to um people that are going through a stressful time for kind of one way that they can take some control over back over their life by trying to incorporate some of these ideas. So, again, I'm going to have all your contact information, your tips and access to purchase your new book on our show notes. So thank you again for joining us.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, Jackie. It's been a real pleasure to chat.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen to Divorce Rich Podcast. If you like this podcast, please follow us on Apple or anywhere that you download podcasts and share this link with any friends or family that you think might benefit from this information.
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