Stop Counting Calories. Count Nutrients Instead

For too long we’ve been obsessed with calorie-counting. It’s high time we started counting nutrients instead. Dianne Koehler is the owner and Director of the Nutrition Therapy Institute (NTI) in Colorado. Today, Dianne helps us get a handle on what to look for when it comes to feeding ourselves and our families nutrient-dense food.

She goes over the building blocks of nutrition. She explains why we must carefully evaluate claims on packages and advice from governmental agencies about what to eat. She goes over how to determine which foods actually serve us best and how to identify foods that deserve the label “superfood”. (Hint: these are foods that offer the most nutrient-density and come from animal products that are well-sourced.) In sum, she gives tips for making better choices in the day-to-day. And along the way she tells about the a-ha that led her to abandon her vegan diet for a more nutrient-rich one, for her and her family.

Go to Dianne’s website: ntischool.com

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Listen to the podcast here

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Dianne Koehler.

Not all food is created equal. Just because something is edible doesn’t mean that it is a nourishing food that supports our health, wellness, and long-term survival. This is Episode 449. Our guest is Dianne Koehler, the Owner and Director of the Nutrition Therapy Institute in Colorado. Dianne explains why we need to stop counting calories and start counting nutrients instead.

She helps us get a handle on the basic building blocks for nutrition. She explains that it’s critical for us to evaluate claims on packages and advice from governmental agencies about what to eat. She goes over how to determine which foods serve us best and how to identify those that deserve the label superfood. Hint, these are foods that offer the most nutrient density and come from animal products that are well-sourced. In sum, Dianne gives tips for making better choices in the day-to-day. Along the way, she tells the story of an a-ha moment that led her to abandon her vegan diet for a more nutrient-rich one for her and her family.

Before we get into the conversation, I want to invite you to make the 50% pledge. It is a pledge to spend at least 50% of your food budget on purchasing from local farms. It’s good for you, your health, the economy, and your community. It’s a simple way to keep farms that are doing it right afloat. We have resources on our website to help you out as you make this choice. Find out more at Weston A. Price/50-50-Pledge. Thank you for joining hands with us in this initiative.

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Welcome to the show, Dianne.

Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.

I know you are in the trenches. I know you hear stories all the time. I was wondering if we could kick off this conversation with a story of one person whose health changed or transformed thanks to solid nutrition.

I hear stories every single day because I have students in class every single day, and a lot of our students come to school because they have experienced changes in their health. In class, I had a student who said that a long history of colitis was changed and altered. He no longer has those symptoms after implementing nutritional strategies that he has learned along the way, plus adding things he is learning at our school. That’s one simple example. As I said, I hear multiple stories every single day.

I feel like we’re so lost when it comes to nutrition. People don’t know what to eat. There are many diets and voices coming at them. Where do you all start? What is the foundation for what you instruct in your school?

The school has been in existence for several years. I have been the owner for the last few years. I have been with the school for many years, since 2005, as a student, as a graduate, as an instructor, as the academic dean, and now as the owner and director.

It’s cool to see how you worked your way up the ranks. What does NTI use as a springboard for their nutrition education?

My priority and mission is to make sure that our students understand how to accomplish the goal of making sure that their diet is nutrient-dense. Nutrient density is something that we talk about all the time. It is what permeates through everything we do. The way to assure, ensure, and understand nutrient density is to understand, from a science-based perspective, what role those nutrients play in human biochemistry and how they bring about the function and the effect they have in the body. Number two is to understand what are the most reliable dietary sources of those nutrients.

That means what foods have the highest quantity as well as the most bioavailable source of that nutrient because there are many nutrients that are found in foods that aren’t easily bioavailable because they are blocked by phytates, oxalates, and other factors. We focus on nutrient density from that viewpoint, the science-based perspective of what it does, and what’s the most reliable source.

Nutrient density is key for the Weston A. Price Foundation. Principle number three of the Wise Traditions Dietary Principles is nutrient density. It’s the key that Dr. Price found. The isolated indigenous people groups had more nutrient-dense diets than the diets of his day. I love that this is a founding principle of your work. I want to ask. How can we identify the foods where the quantity and the bioavailability of those nutrients are most plentiful?

That’s why we exist as a school because it does require investigation. You need to go into the research and have an understanding of the biochemistry of the human body, nutrients, and the chemical structure of nutrients. It’s not easily found in one place. You can’t pick up a magazine or a couple of page packet of something and get that information. That’s what we teach.

I don’t want to say complicated, but complex. That’s why we also can’t pop a pill and think, “I got my Vitamin D.” that’s not how it works. All of these vitamins, minerals, and micro and macronutrients work together in a beautiful synergy in the foods.

We don’t talk about eating this diet. We don’t have named diets. Certainly, we cover what is included in all of these named diets. People have an understanding because if their clients ask them questions, “What about such and such a diet?” We don’t in any way promote that our graduates should be going out and telling their clients, “You should be doing this named diet.” It all comes from nutrient density.

The important thing to know is that the best way to make sure you’re getting the broad range of all the nutrients you need, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. You need to have a broad diet that has some redundancy in it. You are ensuring because it’s very challenging to eat 1 or 2 foods or a limited diet and get the full quantity of the nutrients that you need. You have to have some redundancy by eating a wide variety of foods.

It is challenging to eat just a handful of foods or follow a very limited diet if you want to get the full quantity of nutrients you need. You must have some redundancy by eating a wide variety of food.

There are some less commonly consumed superfoods, which Weston A Price Foundation members and people interested in the Weston A. Price principles would know about, including organ meats and fermented foods. If you are going to consume grains and legumes, proper preparation for those. Those would be additional ways that we would talk about. We do talk about that in our program.

An interview I did with Chris Masterjohn is coming to mind because he was talking about the need to diversify our diet. Most people eat the same foods in the United States. It’s often broccoli, carrots, and potatoes or the side. We have such a less diverse diet than our ancestors did, even in the varied diets that Dr. Price studied around the world.

I’m a big fan of diversity. There are some things that some people may need to exclude, avoid, or reduce because of certain sensitivities, and that’s fine. Once you start excluding something, suddenly you think, “I should exclude this.” You have whittled your diet down to a narrow range of foods. You are likely to experience nutrient deficiencies by doing that.

Do you think one reason people do this elimination is because of sensitivities? They think, “If I avoid it, then maybe my body will heal. I need to avoid it the rest of my life.” The problem is the diet becomes more stringent, and they’re going to be lacking in certain elements.

There are two things that prompt people to do exclusions. Number one, they definitely have someone say to them, whether it be a nutrition therapist, a medical practitioner, or a family member, “Have you tried not eating such and such?” They’re talking about their symptoms. They are prompted to do that because they value whatever information they’re getting from whoever is giving it. That’s one thing.

It is common for people to experience a reduction in symptoms or elimination of symptoms by avoiding certain things that their body has an intolerance to or a sensitivity to. Over time, it can come back in if they participate and take action to address whatever was causing them to be insensitive to it in the first place. It maybe can come back in.

The other way in which people start to self-initiate these exclusionary diets is that they hear out of the nutrition ether. They hear all these people say, “Everyone needs to be this free. Free this.” Suddenly, they’re making these decisions without any justification for doing it because they don’t necessarily have particular health conditions that have a direct connection to those things.

They start doing that. You can’t track or place what was helping with any of your symptoms because they’re doing it in a disorganized way. When someone comes to a nutrition therapist, we’re going to recommend an elimination and challenge diet. We’re going to do it in a methodical way. They’re going to eliminate one thing at a time. We can track it. We are going to do it for a specific amount of time.

WT 449 | Counting Nutrients — Counting Nutrients: A nutrition therapist recommends diets in a methodical way. They will help eliminate one ingredient at a time to see if it benefits towards your wellness goals.

When they challenge, they’re going to introduce it in a specific way so that they can identify if that particular food, and I’m not talking about the mixed meal, I’m talking about a single ingredient if elimination of that single ingredient is going to allow them to have benefits whatever their wellness goal is. If someone is going to implement these exclusion or elimination diets, they need to do it in a way that is planned out so that they can identify what the effects are.

What I was trying to get at in my question, which I didn’t quite complete, is that people are doing it not only because it’s trendy or someone told them about it but because they are having issues with their digestion. They are sicker than the previous generations were. I thought about this because I interviewed Sally Norton about oxalates. When we published that episode, we got some pushback. People are saying, “Is there anything safe to eat anymore?”

She had a personal story of how oxalates were bad for her. It may be that oxalates are difficult for others to process, but our ancestors had no trouble. In part, it’s because they were healthier, and they also knew how to combine the foods that were high in oxalates with foods that could maybe temper that, and they ate seasonally. They weren’t eating sweet potatoes all the time. They would only have them at a certain time of year. There are many factors that are making it difficult for us to eat all the foods that everyone used to eat, in my opinion. What do you think of that, Dianne?

I agree with you. I get a lot of pushback as well about certain things because people say, “We’ve been eating that food for thousands of years in the human diet. Why suddenly now? Is it causing problems?” Our ancestors were healthier because they didn’t have all the exposures to the toxins, the chemicals, all of the pesticides, agricultural chemicals that are used, and toxins in our water and air that we are exposed to now because of all of the industrial processes that are occurring in our modern lives that spew these toxins into the environment, food, and water.

Our ancestors were healthier because they were not exposed to various toxins and chemicals we have today.

Our microbiomes are altered because of all of this toxin exposure. Our microbiome plays a big role in our health and immune system. That’s a big difference, and things that were stressed were different. There are many things that are different about the way we live now. When you layer on these foods, that could have been tolerable and didn’t cause problems thousands of years ago. On top of a template of an already unhealthy group of people, you are going to start seeing problems.

I don’t blame people for hunting around for solutions. It would be preferable to get guidance from someone who knows a little bit more about it than they do. That’s why your school is a valuable resource. Speaking of schools, take us to one of the first classes. Pretend we’re in one of the 101-level courses that you offer. Bring us back to the basics, Dianne. Tell us about what the basic building blocks are for balanced nutrition. We’ve alluded to some of them already.

The first courses that people take here are the science courses, Anatomy, Physiology, and Biochemistry. We don’t get a whole lot into nutrition in those courses. The next course after those two foundational science courses is to understand the human body, how it works, and biochemical pathways. Nutrients, the building blocks, is the first Nutrition 101 course that they take.

We go through the chemistry of all of the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. We don’t use the word balanced diet here because balanced diet has connotations. It comes from a conventional standpoint and viewpoint. In that context, balance refers to getting nutrients within a certain caloric limit. That’s what is referred to as balance from a conventional standpoint. That’s how they frame it.

They always say, “The most nutrients possible without exceeding your caloric limit.” That puts a lot of restraints on things. We take the calorie counting out of the picture. We go back to nutrient density because many of the foods that are the most nutrient-dense are going to have a higher caloric count if you’re counting calories, because they do contain fats. The nutrients that we need to prioritize in our diet are fat-soluble vitamins and nutrients that can only be found in higher-fat foods. We take out that caloric limit from our terminology.

It’s hard for me to believe that some people are still out there counting calories, the energy they get from certain foods, and how much they need to move to burn it off. It feels 1970s to me, but things come and go. As these things go, fewer people are interested in that now. I could be wrong. I may be running in different circles now.

It has to do with the circles we both run in because no one I am directly connected to, talking to, and interacting with is counting calories. You go to the grocery store and still see all the labels. Low fat, no fat, no cholesterol, and all of these things are supposed to imply that we must be staying within a certain calorie count. Even on the revised FDA nutrition facts label, the calorie count of the serving of food has been bolded. It’s the largest font on the label. It is clear that there is an intention to get people to count calories and limit their calories to a certain threshold. While we may not be doing that, it is part of the mainstream and what the government agencies are still trying to promote.

There’s still a great desire by the American people with obesity on the rise. There’s a great desire for people to lose weight. I know of one young woman who’s getting ready for her upcoming wedding. She’s decided to do WeightWatchers to fit into that dress. It’s a sad state because it’s not about calories and calories out. There’s a difference between 100 calories of broccoli and 100 calories of a Snickers bar. I’m glad for your emphasis on nutrient density, but speaking of weight loss, do you address that at all in your nutrition courses?

We have a course called Weight Management and Sports Nutrition. It’s a course where people learn about how the body partitions, energy usage, and energy storage. They learn about all the different influences, the hormonal influences, the genetic influences, the food toxin influences, and the microbiome influences on how the body partitions that energy management.

By having a science-based understanding of the biochemistry of the body and what exactly are the mechanisms via which the body is doing that, I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it becomes easier to understand that it’s not calories in, calories out. There are many more things that need to be considered. Consider what the microbiome is and how you can maybe adjust the microbiome so that our microbiota are not increasing caloric uptake from the gut because that’s one of the things that dysbiosis will do. It can cause you to get more calories from your food than your own digestive system would take in. The microbiota can increase that.

There’s a whole range of things. We certainly cover it, but everything we teach is from the standpoint that you need to know all of this. As you’re working with an individual client, you can pick and choose the things that are most relevant to that client based on their history, what’s going on in their lives, and their food journal and preferences. We don’t teach a cookie-cutter approach that says, “For everyone who needs to lose weight, here’s the plan for what that is.” It doesn’t work that way.

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Go to Dianne’s website: Nutrition Therapy Institute

Make the 50% pledge on our website: Weston A. Price/50-50-Pledge

Check out our sponsors:

Offally Good Cooking’s Liver Lover Challenge

Optimal Carnivore

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Let’s pivot for a second, Dianne, and let’s hear a little bit about your history. Was it a health concern that brought you into this field? How did you get started?

I didn’t know anything about nutrition way back when I was in college. I did take an elective in college because I had to have some science elective. I took a nutrition course. I went to a college that has a prominent dietician program. I took a Nutrition 101 course at college, and I hated it. It seemed crazy to me because it was all like counting calories and grams of carbohydrates. This was in the early ‘80s. I would doubt that it has changed in a Nutrition 101 course.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t focus on nutrition at all coming out of college and into my early adulthood. I made a decision to become a vegan. I’m mostly vegan but have been vegetarian for several years. Several years later, my son started experiencing some scary health challenges. When he was four years old, I took him to his first dentist appointment, and he had ten cavities. He didn’t eat sugar. We didn’t eat candy in our house, and a diet that you would think would promote cavities.

The dentist told me, “There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s all genetics.” Two of his cavities were bad enough that he had to have what’s called baby root canals. He had silver fillings put on those teeth. In every single school picture, he’s got these silver fillings on these two teeth that had the baby root canals. In all of his school pictures, I have this reminder of this situation.

I went into a deep depression because I was like, “How could this happen?” I thought I was eating the best diet that existed by eating a vegan diet. That’s what’s promoted and reinforced. It was then continues to be now. He’s 24 years old. I had enough knowledge to realize that maybe this diet wasn’t working for us, but I didn’t know where to look it.

I was walking through our local natural health grocery store and saw Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions cookbook. I didn’t know anything about it. What caused me to pick it up was the cover is beautiful, the artwork is fantastic, and the title is Nourishing Traditions. I thought, “That sounds interesting. It’s a beautiful book. There must be something good in this book.”

I started reading in the first 65 pages, which threw me into even worse depression. I was crying every day we were on vacation because I started to realize the mistakes that I had made in prioritizing a vegan diet for so long. What I came to learn is that we were incredibly deficient in fat-soluble vitamins. There is no Vitamin A. Vitamin D was only from sunlight. We weren’t getting any D in our diets and Vitamin K2. That’s what contributed to my son’s cavities.

Immediately, I changed our diet to 180 degrees. I started including animal foods. I was luckily able to start accessing raw milk. From that point on, until he was seventeen years old, he never got another cavity after that initial thing. He got another couple of cavities when he was seventeen because, at age sixteen, he got a job and a car. He started eating crappy food again. He got another couple of cavities, but that was his fault. He made a mistake.

The whole time he was under in my house eating my food from that initial first dentist appointment until then, he didn’t get another single cavity. That was my years-long a-ha moment. At the same time, while we were implementing these dietary changes and I was seeing the benefits in my son’s teeth, both my son and my husband had asthma. By this time, he’s in his mid-30s. My husband’s asthma had been lifelong at that time. He was on three different steroid inhaler medications. He’s taking those three different medications twice a day to survive. He had had a lifelong history of asthma.

As I started making dietary changes, he stopped using his asthma medications to the point where he’s on no asthma medications. My son’s asthma ended and stopped. He is also on no asthma medications. Prior to that, he had been doing nebulizers every single day to survive. I have had amazing health adjustments and changes in our life happen because of dietary changes. It was adding those nutrient-dense animal foods that provide those fat-soluble vitamins that had the biggest impact.

Dianne, I feel like many people right now are sick. They’re either having mental health issues, anxiety, or depression. They talk about hormone imbalances, menstruation that’s out of whack, thyroid issues, and even fertility issues. Are these also related to nutrition, do you think?

They are. These things would be categorized as chronic illnesses. All chronic illnesses have an underlying nutrition lifestyle factor. It could be lifestyle things and things that we are unknowingly exposed to toxins. The big issue is metabolic dysfunction. That is a huge one, which is not being able to properly handle glucose and their insulin being excessive because of their inability to properly handle glucose. Metabolic dysfunction is a huge one. Ninety-two percent of the population has a poor metabolic function.

72% of the population has poor metabolic function.

Stress and the chronic stress response that we are all in because of a variety of reasons plays a huge role. It definitely plays a role in hormone imbalances and all the things that you mentioned. Toxins are a huge problem. People are not intentionally making food choices with the idea that I’m trying to reduce my toxin load. Foods are where we get most of our toxins. We get toxins from water and air, but our foods are a big source of toxins because of all the agricultural chemicals that are used in producing both plant and animal foods. It’s definitely a factor.

What I have going through my mind are interviews I’ve conducted. I remember interviewing Kim Schuette about bone broth. She used to be on the board of the Weston A. Price Foundation. She said that bone broth aids in detoxification. When I was interviewing Sally, she said, “Raw milk aids in detoxification.” If we’re getting the right nutrients and nutrient-dense foods in our body, they help that process.

Glycine, which is prevalently available in bone broths, is a detoxification pathway promoter. Simple glycine, which is a simple amino acid, is critically important for detoxification. Bone broth would be another one of those less commonly consumed superfoods that I mentioned earlier.

I’m glad that these came to my mind now because I want to ask you about making those superfood choices, not in terms of kale, spinach, and acai berries, but in terms of the standards of the Weston A. Price Foundation and your organization that have an understanding that is based on ancestral wisdom about what the foods have to offer in terms of the quantity and the bioavailability of nutrients. If you were going to go to the grocery store, the farmer’s market, or your farmer, what would you buy and feel safe at night like, “I got the good stuff for my family?”

I know that I am supporting my overall health when I consume liver every single day. I’m making sure that I get liver, not pounds of it every single day, but a couple of ounces or three ounces of liver in a variety of ways on a daily basis is how I get my multivitamin. That’s critically important. We’re using kale as an example. If I have to choose between kale and liver, I’ll always choose liver because the liver is going to be more nutrient-dense than kale. I like kale. I enjoy eating kale, but if it’s a choice between those two things, I’m going to choose liver.

For other nutrients like B12, iron, and zinc, any animal foods, particularly red meats, are important. I eat red meat every single day in some way, shape, or form. It’s not a sixteen-ounce steak every single day. People are like, “You eat red meat every day.” I eat some quantity in one of my meals every day. I eat some red meat. That’s because I know it is a high quantity and reliable bioavailable source of B12, zinc, iron, and several other nutrients.

I don’t have to worry about whether I am getting it from these foods where there are inhibitors, blockers, phytates, oxalates, and all those kinds of things that bind those minerals. I am lucky enough. We’re in Colorado for those reading. We are in a cow-share state. We do have access to raw milk. I make yogurt with my milk. I consume yogurt every single day. Those are the reliable things that I do on a daily basis. When I go to bed, I know that I got my nutrients for the day. I don’t have to be nervous that I missed out on something.

Source basic ingredients with intention and then cook nutritious food for yourself.

Dianne, what would you say to the person who is reading who might be aghast, like, “Everything she said flies in the face of the recommended dietary guidelines for the government, and this is strange?” What would you say to that skeptic or person questioning what you’re saying?

This happens on a regular basis. I was giving a public presentation with 60-some people in the room. I had a woman stand up and tell me that I was crazy. She tells me that she has never heard of anyone who knows anything about health or medicine, a healthcare practitioner, telling people to eat liver. She said, “That is crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about. To tell people to eat animal foods is the most dangerous thing you can do.” This happens to me a lot.

Some things that I say are the nutrition guidance that we get from our trusted health authorities, whether it be a government agency or a nonprofit public agency. USDA and FDA would be government agencies. Nonprofit agencies would be things like the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, which is supposed to be the arbiter of nutrition or the American Heart Association.

Government and nonprofit agencies are influenced by corporate money. They also rely on decades-old and inaccurate information about nutrition.

These agencies are conflicted because they are influenced by corporate money. They have a lot of corporate conflicts. For them to go against what their corporate conflicts are would be unacceptable for them to say those things in public. Second of all, they are relying on decades-old inaccurate information about nutrition, especially this focus on low fat, no fat, and reduction of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol.

The dietary guidelines for Americans, which are distributed by the USDA, come out every five years. It’s like this big splash like, “Here’s what the official dietary guidelines for Americans are.” 19 of the 20 members of the most recent committee that created the dietary guidelines are conflicted by corporate interests in corporate or pharmaceutical industries. They’re going to say things that are in line with the corporations who want to promote that we eat poor quality nutrient deficient food because it supports their bottom line.

This drive to continually tell people that low-fat, no-fat, saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol avoidance of those things is health-promoting. The evidence is clear. Our population in this country is not getting healthier since we’ve been on this path of low-fat and eating a bunch of refined vegetable oils. They’re not telling us to eat refined sugars.

When you take the fat out of the foods and you refine the foods, what goes back into it? Sugars, artificial flavorings, artificial colorings, and all of the chemicals that make it look like food and potentially smell like food and taste like something that we call food, but because it’s edible doesn’t mean it is food that is supporting our health, wellness, and long-term survival. We are not a society getting healthier on this 45-year-old paradigm of low fat, no fat, and avoiding animal foods. We’re not getting healthier.

What do you think is behind the anti-meat push? It’s not the same groups, or is it?

Some of it is. The dietary guidelines for Americans say to reduce your consumption of animal foods. They don’t overtly say to completely avoid it, but they say to reduce as much as possible and replace animal foods with healthy protein sources, such as nuts, seeds, and legumes. A great incentive is being promoted by this concept that animal foods are the biggest contribution to climate change, which is also inaccurate. When you look at the science, it is inaccurate.

I’m sure your readers know that when animals are raised in a regenerative way, they’re promoting a healthy environment because they are creating a soil system that captures carbon and keeps carbon in the ground rather than letting it be released into the atmosphere and improving soil structure and content. We’ve lost some massive amount of feet worth of topsoil over the last several years. Regeneratively raised animal foods are building back that soil. Monocropping soy, corn, and wheat are not building back the soil. It is degrading the soil faster than we’re ever able to regenerate it back potentially. That’s a big part of it.

That information comes to us from the dietary guidelines and campaigns to have us eat less meat. It is good at programming us that, dutifully, Americans were complying. A relative of mine was like, “I’m trying to eat more beans.” I was like, “I don’t know that they’re going to get everything they need from those.” Although, properly prepared is a fine part of the diet. It’s getting ingrained in the mind and collective consciousness of our country.

I like how you put it that we dutifully comply. We’re good at doing that without asking questions, having discernment, and critical thought. That’s why this school continues to exist. We can continue to have students come here because they want to understand how to critically evaluate this messaging that we’re getting from the government agencies, the other public agencies, and the marketing on food labels.

Most people get their nutrition knowledge from the front of packages. When they see the front of package health claims that help lower cholesterol, low fat, and low sodium, all of these claims on the front of the labels signal to the person that they are making a food-buying decision that is going to benefit their health. They do that because they think that those claims wouldn’t be there if it weren’t going to do something. The thing they don’t realize is that the health claims on the front of packages are not there to help people make better dietary choices. They’re there to sell a packaged product.

There are several countries in which the United States is not one where, instead of having authorized health claims on packages of food, they have warning labels. I don’t know what they exactly look like, but Chile and Peru are two countries where I’ve been told that this happens where they have warning labels, “By the way, this has such and such amount of sugar.” Rather than trying to turn this message on its head, like, “A good source of whole grains. It’s low fat.” You look at the ingredient label, and the first four ingredients are some kind of sugar.

This is what happens with boxed breakfast cereals. On the front of the package, they’re trying to tell you, “This is going to promote your health. It’s low fat and whole grains.” When you look, there are going to be some grain products, but the next 3 or 4 ingredients are sugar, corn syrup, corn starch, and some kind of sugar. People don’t realize that. They don’t think to turn and look at the ingredient list.

I’m pleased to hear how your story has taken you from going with whatever you thought was best at the time to critically thinking, examining your food, and making different choices. It’s improved the health of your family, your own health, and countless people who’ve come to your institute for learning. It’s fabulous. Thank you for sharing all that you’ve learned along the way. I want to finish this conversation with a question I’d love to pose at the end. If the reader could do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend they do?

I would recommend, and I make this recommendation to everyone, that you need to have intention in sourcing basic food ingredients, which means things that don’t need labels and ingredient lists because it’s one thing. It’s meat and vegetables. If they’re going to do grain, it’s a grain. Sourcing basic ingredients with intention, thinking about organic and pasture-raised. Cook for yourself. Put those basic ingredients into a meal that you have prepared. Cooking is a form of food processing. You have processed it yourself. You’ve had control over the initial ingredients that go into that.

That is one of the best ways to take control of your health. Anytime you’re outsourcing your food to someone else, it is not part of their drive to make sure the food they’re preparing is going to support your wellness. The drive is to make sure that you spend money on their product. We all have to remember that. Anytime you outsource your foods to someone else, you are not getting the most healthy and nutrient-dense foods.

Those are perfect words to end on. I’m thankful for this conversation. We look forward to our next time, Dianne. Thank you.

Thank you.

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Welcome to the minisode, Dianne.

Thank you.

You said in our longer form interview that 92% of the population in the US has metabolic dysfunction. Can you explain a little bit more about what that is and how we would even know if we fall into that category?

This is the statistic. What that means is that 92% of the population is unable to properly utilize the substrates from the energy substrates from their food to properly make energy and use that energy in an efficient way. It means that they have lost the ability to use glucose properly for energy metabolism. The way that shows up is there are some classic signs of metabolic dysfunction. A high waist size for women is more than 35 inches. For men, it’s more than 40 inches. Having high blood pressure, high blood triglycerides, and BMI categorizes them as overweight or obese. These are some of the metrics that would be used to consider someone having poor metabolic dysfunction.

Here’s the problem. Some people don’t fit any of those metrics. They still could have metabolic dysfunction. One of the best ways to measure it for yourself is, and this is not something you can do easily. I’m not in any way saying this is easy, but get a fasting insulin test. It is a specialized blood test that rarely can you walk into your doctor’s office and say, “I’d like to get a fasting insulin test.” You have to find someone who understands what that means and a functional medicine practitioner or someone who understands more of a holistic approach to health and wellness who is licensed to be able to order that test. Get a fasting insulin test.

What that will tell you is how high your insulin level has to be to manage your blood glucose. Knowing what your fasting blood glucose is only shows you the effect of what your insulin was. If you do not also understand what your insulin is, you can have a “normal insulin level” to maintain good blood glucose control, or you can have a “high insulin level” to maintain good glucose control. If you don’t know where that insulin is, you could have metabolic dysfunction without even knowing it.

The problem is you can go a long time having elevated insulin to manage blood glucose, and it’s not going to show up in blood tests or any of those metrics. Eventually, it will start showing up. It’ll show up as weight gain, hormone dysfunction, and those other metrics, the things you can measure that I was talking about.

You want to have a baseline to understand where you’re starting from. What about the continuous glucose monitor, which some are difficult to get ahold of, but more of my keto and carnivore friends are like, “This helps me understand how my body is managing insulin and glucose?”

Continuous blood glucose monitors are good. What they are able to do and what they do best is help you understand what your individual response is to the carbohydrate load that you’re eating because everybody is going to have a different response. It’s helpful to see what your individual response is because it’s measuring what is your carbohydrate load doing to your glucose be before your insulin kicks in.

It can be immediate. That’s the benefit of those. You can see what your blood glucose is doing within 5, 10, to 15 minutes after eating something. You can see these wide swings after eating certain foods. Those aren’t as helpful at telling you what your insulin has to do to manage that blood glucose. Having the two together is helpful. Getting a long-term picture of your health outlook and propensity susceptibility to metabolic dysfunction and knowing what your fasting insulin is is helpful and necessary.

I have one more question. You said that some of us have lost the ability, and this is what metabolic dysfunction is, to process our sugar intake properly. How does that happen? How do we lose that ability in the first place?

It’s by eating a lot of refined carbohydrate foods and high-sugar foods. Certain amino acids require insulin as a response, but it is much less impactful than carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are the primary thing that insulin is responding to. That is evolutionarily built in. Insulin exists to manage this blood glucose. Our bodies know that having too much glucose in the blood is a toxin. We produce insulin to get the glucose out of the blood and into the cells.

Forcing the body to always be dealing with glucose, eventually, all of the systems, including the insulin receptors, start to go, “It is too much. I have to start shutting down.” It’s like us being in a loud, crazy place for a couple of hours. Once you get home, you’re like, “Thank God, it’s quiet.” You shut down and be quiet.” That is to anthropomorphize what’s going on. The insulin receptors start shutting down. That means you need more and more insulin to manage that glucose.

Having too much carbohydrates in the form of refined carbohydrates, high sugars, and all the things added to processed foods once refined. Toxins play a role. Toxins influence the way our metabolism works. They interfere with the way our metabolism works and our hormone system, which plays a role in the way our metabolism works. Those are big issues.

When the metabolic dysfunction gets out of control and when the system starts to shut down, it is what leads to diabetes.

You’re going to get to a point where a medical diagnosis from a doctor would be something like pre-diabetes or insulin resistance. If it progresses, that would be where you get a diagnosis of Type-2 diabetes.

This has been enlightening. I’m glad we did this extra little minisode. Thank you for your time, Dianne.

Thank you.

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Our guest was Dianne Koehler. You can visit her website, Nutrition Therapy Institute. She is offering a special for the readers. Get half off of your first nutrition program course. Go to Nutrition Therapy Institute/Wise Traditions to take advantage of this exclusive offer. Now, for our review from Apple Podcasts. Love Life 197781 said, “It’s one of the most life-changing shows I know.” Love Life, I love this. Thank you so much for leaving this review. You are invited to leave us a podcast review on Apple Podcasts. Give us as many stars as you’d like, and tell the world why the show is worth reading. Thank you for reading. Stay well, and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

About Dianne Koehler

Currently the owner and Director of Nutrition Therapy Institute (NTI) in Arvada, CO, Dianne has been a leader in the field of nutrition education for 15 years. She is committed to helping people realize their optimal wellness potential through recognizing the full and inescapable impact of their food choices. Under Dianne’s guidance, NTI students are empowered with science-based curricula, coupled with customizable strategies that are immediately implementable for themselves, their families and those they interact with, from coworkers to clients. Graduates of NTI are known to be highly skilled and knowledgeable, making them well-positioned to meet the increasing demand for holistic nutrition professionals.