S7E13 Webinar highlights – Eating Well and MS

Melody Landwehr  0:00 

Not once during that first year, did I count and I still don’t. Did I count my calories or track my macros, or worry about, you know, am I having too much fat? I just, I listened to my body. I I only, I started eating only when I was hungry. Being a foodie, that can be difficult, because I’m always thinking about food and just eating mindfully and enjoying the things that I get to eat, not worrying about the things that I no longer get to eat, but I no longer want to. When it comes to adopting the OMS lifestyle, you really want you really need to follow something that works for you. For me, it was baby steps. If I was going to make it a lifestyle, I had to go slow and take it one meal at a time.

 

Overcoming MS  0:43 

Welcome to Living well with MS. This show comes to you from Overcoming MS, the world’s leading multiple sclerosis healthy lifestyle charity which helps people live a full and healthy life through the overcoming MS program, we interview a range of experts and people with multiple sclerosis, please remember all opinions expressed are their own. Don’t forget to subscribe to living well with MS on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And now let’s meet our guest.

 

Karen Lee 1:17

My name is Karen Lee. I’m a facilitator for overcoming Ms. I’m also a nutritional therapist, and I’m joining you from mid Devon, which is in the southwest of England. We’re going to be exploring the diet and nutrition pillar of the overcoming MS program, and we’re going to be welcoming plant based chef Jack McNulty and overcoming MS community members Melody, Landwehr and Jenna Cox to the virtual stage for a panel discussion. You’re going to be hearing about their experiences, and we’re going to be sharing our top tips. Okay, so in just a little summary, the overcoming MS diet, in a nutshell, if you like, it consists of eating a low saturated fat diet. So it’s not low fat way of eating. It’s low in saturated fats, and it’s dairy free and full of lovely Whole Foods, which are plant based. And also you can have fish and seafood if you if you like. And then we also supplement with 20 to 40mls of cold pressed flax seed oil every day, it gives us a lovely boost of omega three fatty acids. And then, if you’re wondering, well, what does that mean I can eat? well, all sorts of beautiful and tasty foods, so a huge range of fresh fruits and vegetables. These especially thinking about all the different colors that you can have, because they all give different benefits, like special phytonutrients and things grains, preferably whole grains. But if you choose to go be gluten free, there’s still quite a lot of grains and pseudo grains in there. So we’re looking for complex fiber, which is really good for gut health. So that means that you can have all types of pasta and noodles and rice and most breads, obviously, there’s some some breads have a lot of saturated fat in it, or butter enriched breads, which need to be avoided. Then there’s lots of different types of plant proteins, which you can get from beans and lentils. Also got lots of fiber in there as well tofu and tempeh, and you can create all sorts of delicious meals with these. Then on the oily fish side of things, this is for sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon, herring and trout. So these are all good quality oily fish. And also do try to have the eat fish on the smaller end of the scale. So slightly smaller fish, the larger fish, have a build up of other toxins, and then all sorts of white fish and shellfish, lots of nuts. So any nuts, except for peanuts, which I know is not a nuts, but peanuts is, is not included. But otherwise, there’s a lovely selection of nuts and seeds that can be included in dishes. And then there’s all the lovely things which bring out the flavors, like pickles and capers and fermented food, particularly good for gut health. Then on the drink side of things, and there’s teas and coffees. And then on the chocolatey side of things, cacao and cocoa powder, which can be used in baking and drinks and things like that. But I’m afraid chocolate we do need to avoid because of the saturated fats. I’d like to welcome our first guest speaker, Jack McNulty, to the stage.

 

Jack McNulty 4:36

Hi Karen, hi everybody. I’m coming to you directly from Zurich, Switzerland today, which is where I live. I’ve been following the OMS lifestyle since the end of 2009 My goodness, that seems like a while now, which was about three months after my diagnosis, and I currently spend most of my time writing about food these days and exploring new ways to remain healthy and just spending time, yeah, exploring especially new ways to eat well and healthy. I appreciate the opportunity and usually when I like to talk about food, I like to try to create images in people’s minds. I think that those are good little hooks to remember things by. And if you’re new to OMS and OMS diet, maybe we can just begin by just imagining you’re starting a journey on a highway, and there are multiple lanes to choose from, and clear guardrails on each side to keep you safe and various rest stops along the way, and this is exactly how I think we can consider the OMS diet. It’s really it’s a journey, and it’s a journey towards better health with clear boundaries and certainly enough built in flexibility for real life situations. Food is one of those things that probably creates the most conversation for people when they just first start out on the OMS world. It’s something you know, when you really think about it, something that we have to deal with multiple times, every day and every day it’s really kind of an opportunity to make good choices and to choose for yourself am I going to do something to promote health or, you know, am I not? And that’s kind of the basis of OMS, it’s really our choices that we make on a daily basis. Let’s just review for a second, Karen just went over the pillars of OMS, but I think even before there, I think that there’s a really important question that we can ask ourselves every day, and it’s something I’ve been doing for a long time, and I just keep reminding myself what’s what’s my objective with respect to OMS and with respect to food, is that in alignment with what OMS is saying it’s really trying to get to quality of life. That’s the ultimate goal. You know, to get to get a sense of my life means something. And there’s some quality here, and I think that that aligns perfectly with the OMS objective. You know, I hear a lot when people are sometimes critical of OMS and especially the diet, they say, Oh, it’s too restrictive or it’s too difficult. So let’s explore that. And perhaps one way of doing that is to maybe create another little visual if we if we can, and let’s just think for a minute that our bodies are sort of like a car engine, and your blood is like the oil running through it. And just as a car needs the right type and quality of oil to run smoothly, I think that your body also needs the right type of fats in your blood to function well, that just makes perfect sense to me. And if you put thick, heavy oil in your car engine, it creates friction, runs hotter, parts start to stick together. And over time, this, of course, leads to engine damage, and this is similar to what happens when we consume too much saturated fat. The cells in our blood and throughout our body becomes stickier, and it creates inflammation, making it harder for our body systems to work properly. Now imagine changing to a high quality, clean running premium oil for your car. The engine runs cooler, the parts move more freely, and everything works more efficiently. And this is sort of like shifting to the healthy fats emphasized in the OMS program, especially omega 3s. They help our blood flow more smoothly and reduce that inflammation is what we want. And just as you wouldn’t necessarily put the wrong oil in your car and expect it to run well, we can’t put the wrong fats in our body and expect optimal health. It reminds me, I had a conversation one time in Italy with a producer of olive oil, and he said that people, you know, just spend so much time and energy making sure to take care of their car and put the right oil in their car, but we spend very, very little time thinking about the oils that we put into our own body. Is probably the same with foods. We just take it for granted, and we think that everything that we’re going to eat that we can trust that is good, and that’s not necessarily the case. And just like in the car analogy, you know, you don’t necessarily have to wait for the next oil change to start benefiting. You know, it’s, it’s really a situation with every meal, you get the opportunity to improve on what we’re putting into our body. So I think that that’s a good place to start. The OMS. Diet as being a sort of wide road, and on each side of the road there are these guardrails that are keeping us on the road. And within, within the road, there are a number of different lanes that we can travel within. So let’s just explore those. There’s one lane that, if you choose to drive that’s very strict, it’s a whole food, plant based diet. And then there’s a step above that. There’s a sort of more moderate lane to drive in which is going to be the same, but it’s going to allow for using nuts and avocados and these sorts of things. But there’s some cautions there. You know, if you choose to drive in that lane, you have to be aware that nuts and avocados themselves are quite fat rich. So you have to be a little bit careful on how much you consume. You can eat them, but just be cautious with that. And if you jump over another lane, it’s a little bit more flexible still. And this is, again, the same basic diet, but this time is the inclusion of healthy oils. And that term healthy oils always makes me cringe just slightly, because that always gets to the point of define healthy and which we’ll try to do in a few minutes. And just right next to that particular one is the diet that Karen was just talking about, the OMS diet and the OMS approach, which is the inclusion of fish and actually egg whites, although that’s not really talked about much more, but I think that that’s still acceptable. And of course, there’s plenty of room on this road if you choose to create another lane and want to eat gluten-free. No one says you have to, but you can and live within the guardrails or live within the recommendations of the OMS plan. So this, it’s very flexible, and it fits to individual needs quite nicely, and it’s extremely broad, when you think about it, the inclusion of so many different foods there and so many different opportunities to eat extremely well and quite happily, why is it that fats and oils appear in so many different recipes? Is it even necessary, you know? And I looked into this quite extensively, and I’ve discovered that really over time, it’s so prevalent because the main function of fats and oils in most cooking is purely human pleasure. And when you put it in that context, it becomes very easy to look at it and say, is it really necessary in what you’re making? It may be, but is it all the time? Maybe not. The human pleasure involves, you know, it creates moistness in the food. There’s a flavor element there, and there’s texture elements. Fats transfer heat really effectively. And so when you apply heat to something that has fat in it, especially on the surface, it’s going to caramelize sugars and proteins and give you that crispy texture, such as on bread that we all sort of crave. It can also emulsify liquids and proteins. Mayonnaise or ice cream as two examples of how fats might work. There and in baking, it does literally shorten gluten strands. That’s why fats and oils are often called shortening, and that’s going to yield a different texture, a sort of cake like texture. And I think that you’ll find that in most cases, the fat itself can be eliminated from most recipes without negative effect whatsoever. On the other hand, there’s plenty of room to use it, but you have to use them effectively. And before you even get there, you have to decide, well, what kind of fat am I getting? And we all know, on the OMS website, there’s a list of what fats that you should have and what fats you shouldn’t have. That’s only telling part of the story, because even if it’s a fat like an extra virgin fall olive oil that you buy doesn’t necessarily guarantee that that fat is going to be good, because fats degrade over time. There’s air, light, heat and time all degrade fat or oils. How long has that oil been sitting on the shelf? That’s a That’s a good question to ask. Is it really been stored safe? Has it been made? Well, all of these things can have a direct effect on the quality the oil, which is the quality that you’re putting into yourself. The other thing to look at is the cooking methods. They really matter, really matter in terms of how fats play within food is when you think about cooking, which is applying heat to something, that the cooking temperature and the food temperature are not the same. And I think that’s just really, really important to understand, to understand the various kinds of cooking methods and how fat sort of Interplay there. So the first method to maybe think about is moist methods. So that’s things like boiling, steaming, even microwave cooking is considered a moist method. That is really important to understand that just physics will tell you that if water is involved, it’s only going to go to 100 degrees centigrade, or 212 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s going to reach the boiling point and no more, fats begin to break down at around 120 degrees centigrade, so there’s plenty of room there, and that’s going to maintain the integrity of the fat if you’re using moist methods. That’s why things like cooking an onion in a saute pan with a little bit of water is going to protect the integrity of the of the oil. It’s not going to rise above 100 degrees. So that’s one method. Direct or dry heat method is different. So direct is going to be something directly on fire or directly on the stove, like on a on a saute pan. You heat up a saute pan and it’s going to rise immediately to 180 200 degrees, rather rapidly, and that’s usually what you’re going to be cooking out if you’re using like medium high heat. Indirect heat is a little bit different, and that’s oven as an example, and that’s going to rely on the air circulating the heat around to cook whatever you’re putting into the particular oven. The cooking temperature might be 100 degrees. That’s boiling water. If you put your finger in boiling water, chances are you’re not going to keep your finger in that water very long. It’s going to hurt, and it’s going to hurt fairly quickly. I’m not encouraging you to go out and try that, you can take my word for that one. But if you put your arm in 100 degree oven and just leave it in there, obviously, with the door open, you can keep your arm in there quite long before it starts to get too hot or too uncomfortable or possibly even slightly burning, but that would be quite a long time. So that’s how, that’s how heat transfer works, you know, and that’s really important to understand in terms of cooking temperature and food temperature. And that’s why, if someone says, Well, if you read a recipe and says, Well, cook it at 210 degrees centigrade, it’s chances are that’s going to be perfectly safe, and you don’t have to necessarily stick to the 180 degrees that is often quoted. It’s because the heat’s going to take a long time to actually get inside that product that you’re cooking to affect any oils that are in there. I will slice up an onion. I will put that slice in the small bowl, I add a pinch of salt to the onion, and I kind of rub it with my hands to work it and that creates what’s called the osmosis, and that’s going to draw a little bit of the natural water out of the onion and into the bow. If I choose. I sometimes add one or two spoonfuls of oil into the onion at the same time, which will, because of the osmosis, drive the oil into the into the internal portion of the onion. It creates a little bit more flavor that way. Then I will just simply cook that over medium heat, medium low heat, without doing anything else. I just allow the onions to just slowly cook that way, the moisture that’s been drawn out it from the onion is going to protect the oil that’s in there, if I choose to use it. Perfect adherence isn’t necessarily the goal. The goal is consistency. And consistency over time, there’s going to be situations that come up for everybody, where compromises will be necessary, and every compromise yields just a little bit of control. It takes a little control away from what we’re able to put into our mouth, but we have to be comfortable with that, and we have to only worry about what’s in our control in that particular moment. And, you know, be happy with those situations when they come up. Don’t try to micromanage everything. I hope that you take the opportunity, you know, get a hold of the OMS handbook. If you haven’t read the chapters, there’s just a treasure of information in that book for people, from people written by people with just a ton of experience and offering excellent and practical advice that’s great.

 

Karen Lee  19:31 

Thanks, Jack. If I can ask Jenna Cox and Melody Landwehr to join me on the virtual stage. So first of all, Melody, let’s come to you. You’re both members of the Overcoming MS community. But melody, can you just tell us a little bit about your story and your experience of this, this way of eating.

 

Melody Landwehr 19:53 

I’m Melody, and I’m joining you from London. I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting MS about 11years ago, while living in Minnesota on a Midwestern diet, high in dairy and meat and processed foods and a high stress lifestyle of poor jobs and family movement. When I was diagnosed, I was feeling pretty well, but I did decide to increase my exercise and eat a healthier diet, which, in hindsight, wasn’t incredibly healthy. I moved to London in 2016 shortly after another relapse that resulted in a walking stick, and shortly after, I found OMS and I’ve not turned back. Within a year, I was sleeping better. I no longer need my walking stick. I have more energy, less mental health issues. And not once during that first year did I count, and I still don’t, did I count my calories or track my macros or worry about, you know, am I having too much fat? I just, I listened to my body. I only, I started eating only when I was hungry, being a foodie, that can be difficult, because I’m always thinking about food and just eating mindfully and enjoying the things that I get to eat, not worrying about the things that I no longer get to eat, but I no longer want to. When it comes to adopting the OMS lifestyle, you really, you really need to follow something that works for you. For me, it was baby steps. If I was going to make it a lifestyle, I had to go slow and take it one meal at a time. I started with dairy, and I don’t think I cut out meat completely until about 18 months ago, and on my journey, I’ve just learned that you need to be kind to yourself and lean on others. The Live Well Hub is there for you to use and reach out to us. And I’ve come a long way in the last eight years. Instead of thinking about what I can’t have, I am happy about the things that I can have, and I’m continuing looking for new things to try and like, for example, I still struggle with tofu, so I try to find ways to build it into my diet in ways that I like, or sardines, mackerel and anchovies, I still struggle with those, but I try to throw them in recipes where people suggest throwing them in, and I like to cook, but I’m not very good at building things on my own, so I start with the recipe. And so I just look for recipes that sound good, or that people on the Live Well Hub or friends who just suggest and I go from there, I think the biggest change is the perspective of being on a diet. It’s a lifestyle we all eat, so we’re all on a diet, and it’s not what I don’t get to eat, it’s what I get to eat, and it’s how that food makes me feel. And if I eat something, I try to pay attention to how I’m feeling. And if it’s not incredibly delicious and I don’t feel good after eating it, then I avoid it.

 

Karen Lee  22:49 

Fabulous. Thank you. Melody, that’s brilliant, and that’s a really great way of looking at what what we’re what we’re eating. Because, as you say that the what often the problem is the word diet, isn’t it, which does literally mean what we eat. That’s brilliant. So lovely, Jenna, let’s let’s come to you.

 

Jenna Cox  23:06 

Yes, my name is Jenna. I’m a nutritional therapist, and I support people with MS and other health conditions. But I also myself, and I was diagnosed in 2016 very shortly, actually, after having symptoms. So I was quite lucky. I went through that process quite quickly. And straight away, I started Googling what else I could do to improve my health outcomes. And I came across Overcoming MS, read the book, devoured the book. I think quite a lot of people go through that, that process quite quickly, and it really aligned with what I already knew about health, longevity and then some. And it really inspired me to really get into it. And I It motivated me to do all those things I loved. I loved dancing, and I love walking in the mountains. And it was remembering those things I really want to be able to do years from now. And although some of the, some of the ways of eating, I thought, oh God, that’d be quite tricky. My motivations to continue with, you know, looking after myself with those and staying independent and doing everything that was within, within my power, really. And I started thinking about health is playing the long game. I’d already got, MS, I didn’t want to have anything else. I don’t want to have any other illnesses. So we also sort of saw it as a way of looking after myself as, you know, a whole picture looking after myself as I as I get older. And I actually did go cold turkey with it, and at the time, that actually really gave me quite a lot of hope. And it was something that I needed to do, to be really proactive and do something. And I actually found it quite exciting making all those changes. But I do understand that people have different scenarios, different situations, in their life. At the time, I was single, I was living alone. That’s actually a lot easy, a lot easier than if you’ve got a family, you know, if you’re cooking for other people. So I really do appreciate that. But what I did do is I cut out a lot of foods, and really what I would advise other people to do is really work on what you’re going to bring in. And before you start cutting everything out, because I was left thinking some days like, what am I going to eat? I have no go-to’s anymore. And so, yeah, it’s more about bringing everything in to crowd out those maybe less health healthful foods. And dairy was one of my big things. But love cheese, love cream, love butter, love all of it. And I slowly started seeing in supermarkets that the vegan options were not going to be an option really, they’re full of saturated fats coconut oils. So it was like, What am I going to make myself that maybe will not going to mimic all of the qualities of cheese and things, but things that I’m going to start to enjoy? So I got really into making my own cheeses with like cashew nuts, blended cashew nuts, cream cheese with garlic and herbs and chives and things like that. And silicon tofu has also been really useful to start making creamy sauces. I use it in things like dals and curries instead of using coconut milk, and you can blend it with nutritional yeast, miso to give a bit of a tangy flavor, some lemon. I think it’s a really, really versatile ingredient. And I started getting all of these ideas together. And I’ve got a book on my website. So it’s Jenna cox.co.uk, if you want to have a look at that, it’s just a free download. It’s got about 10 recipes, I think of my favorite, dairy free alternatives that are really my go to a lot. And you’ve got some sweet things in there, some savory things in there. And slowly, those have become the things that I’ve been able to replace in my diet. I thought at the beginning, I thought that was going to be really tricky and go going out for dinner is tricky, and I think over time you become a bit more comfortable with it. So there are certain types of cuisine which I think lend themselves a lot more easily. Is that Italian food, it’s more vegetable focused, maybe seafood and fish takes a bit of a role there. Japanese if you eat fish, sushi is great. You can get vegan sushi, vegetarian sushi as well, different options, Vietnamese food as well. I think is a really great option with the summer rolls instead of spring rolls. So like unfried options. But I always make sure that I look at I always look at menus online beforehand. You can’t really surprise me in a restaurant these days, I’ve always microphone ahead. If everyone going with the group, and I don’t have much control over the restaurant, might phone ahead to see what they can do for me. I know MS has those great chef cards as well on the website. So if you really did want to make sure that there was something available for you and that made you feel comfortable sending over a chef card just to explain what the diet involves, that can also be helpful. But then, once I’m there, you made the best decisions out of what’s available. If it’s not perfect, it’s not perfect. I think the most important thing is just enjoying yourself, enjoying your friends, your family, laughing, those are all wonderful things for your health and wellbeing and not panicking too much that, you know, you’ve already made the best options you can, and at that point have fun, life is for living.

 

Karen Lee  28:09 

I think it’s interesting, you know, that we’ve all got a kind of a slightly different journey. And what you were just saying there, Jenna really goes in with what Jack was saying about, you know, every time we eat, we get this opportunity to have an impact in on our bodies. It’s one meal out of three in a day, not just that moment. It’s everything else that we’re doing. Often, it is a real steep learning curve. You know, when I started following the Overcoming MS Program, I was already focusing on a whole food, plant based diet turns out as eating too much coconut. It’s changing and experimenting. And it doesn’t have to be complex, does it? So on a weekday, let’s just share our like, kind of go to quick evening meal.

 

Melody Landwehr 28:54 

OMS circle, I think. And I asked someone for some ideas for quick meals, because I love sandwiches and I don’t eat meat anymore, and they told me about this thing called smoked tofu. My mind was blown. So my quick evening meals, because I often work evenings, is a smoked tofu sandwich with chicory and mustard. And then I always have frozen veg in my freezer, so I warm up some frozen veg to go with it, and often have, like, a side of kimchi with it, because I love kimchi.

 

Karen Lee  29:2, 

Oh, wow, that sounds fabulous, right? Thank you. And Jenna, how about you? What’s your what’s your quick go to evening meal?

 

Jenna Cox  29:33 

My really, really quick one is getting out something from the freezer that I’ve made the week before, because I’m a really big fan of batch cooking. And I do a batch of something each week, and then I can, you know, mix and match in the freezer. But if I’m not allowed to cheat, then using just fresh ingredients from my fridge. Tray bakes. I love a tray break, vegetables as well that you don’t have to chop up, like flat mushrooms, asparagus, tender stems, you know, got a tin of legumes, you know, whatever, what you want to put in garlic, balsamic vinegar. Mix it up. You can, you know, get really creative in what you put in that tray bake.

 

Jack McNulty 30:05

For me, the quickest meal is whatever I happen to be writing about, because that’s usually left over. In all seriousness, I think that pasta always comes to mind because I lived in Italy so I make a lot of pasta. Beans, I think I use beans and legumes, probably legumes including lentils probably the most because they are quick, if I want to be really quick I am not against using tinned beans, there’s so many ways to mix and match and add different things.

 

Karen Lee 30.33

Well my one is, so I’m not a good batch cooker, I’m a real kind of open the fridge and see what happens. So mines often, the quickest one is, I just do a very quick stir fry, so whatever, there’s always loads of veg, there’s always tofu because I’m a big tofu fan, some rice noodles and some chilli and soy sauce, just very quickly done in a pan and we’re usually done in 10 minutes.

One of the things that changes, is when you change kind of having a lot of saturated fat, a lot of salts, a lot of all these processed foods is our tastebuds change, don’t they? So that the flavours are suddenly quite a new experience, which is fantastic. So let’s just quickly say, Melody a suggestion for a snack?

 

Melody Landwehr 31:16

A veg or popcorn.

 

Karen Lee 31:19

Jenna?

 

Jenna Cox 31:20

Any bean dip, doesn’t have to be hummus with chickpeas, you know, blend up all your other beans and add different things like sundried tomato paste and you know, different things to give it different flavours and different herbs and spices and things. Make a batch of that every week and you’ve got, you know, a snack for a good few days.

 

Karen Lee 31:35

Jack, how about you, quick snack?

 

Jack McNulty 31:37

Yeah all of the above plus an apple.

 

Karen 31.39

My favourite afternoon snack is, I have 3 dates with a walnut inside a date, three of those. I hope you found that all really interesting, thank you so much to everybody, thank you Jack, Jenna and Melody.

 

Overcoming MS

Thank you for listening to this episode of Living Well with MS. Please check out this episode’s show notes at overcoming ms.org/podcast, you’ll find useful links and bonus information there. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and please rate and review the show to help others find us. This show is made possible by the Overcoming MS community. Our theme music is by Claire and Nev Dean. Our host is Geoff Allix. Our videos are edited by Lorna Greenwood and I’m the producer Regina Beach. Have questions or ideas to share, email us at podcast, at overcoming ms.org, we’d love to hear from you. The Living Well with MS podcast is for private, non commercial use and exists to educate and inspire our community of listeners. We do not offer medical advice. For medical advice, please contact your doctor or other licensed healthcare professional.