Ep. 204: Eating Close to Nature for Health and Wellness, with Chandis, RDN

We all want to eat healthier, but it's not always as easy as it sounds. When you walk into a grocery store, how can you know what to buy and what to skip? We can't always make gourmet meals when we have 30 mins to make something healthy happen. Yet we know that the food we eat has a meaningful impact on our overall health and reproductive function. This is why we've invited Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Chandis, to join us to talk about the simplest approach to eating as close to nature as possible. She talks about real snack options, easy meal templates, and how to tackle the grocery store. We hope this super practical episode is helpful to all!

NOTE: This episode is appropriate for all audiences.

GUEST BIO: Chandis is a registered dietitian nutritionist and homeschooling mom of three who is passionate about teaching families how to nourish their bodies well. After struggling through her own childhood blood sugar issues, Chandis became determined to share what she's learned about feeling balanced and energized for God's glory. She has created a video series for Christian moms to learn all about eating well on a budget, with specific grocery items and recipes to cut the confusion out of feeding your family well.

HELPFUL LINKS:

Chandis's website: www.closetonature.health

20% off coupon code for Woven Well listeners: "wovenwell"

*Email Chandis to learn more about an available scholarship*

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Ep. 63: Postpartum/BF Nutritional Needs, with Rebecca Slane, RD

Ep. 175: Gut health, blood sugar, and hormon

Transcript

Caitlin (00:24)
Welcome back to the Woven Well podcast. One of the topics that we continue to come back to are ways to nurture and care for our female bodies, which are meant to be a gift and not a curse. And I think that perspective makes a big difference, but how we care for our bodies and focus on the essentials like sleep, hydration, movement, nutrition, they really affect how we feel physically, but also mentally, even spiritually.

We've learned all sorts of great information about balancing blood sugar, investing in gut health, preventing inflammation, more in previous episodes, but sometimes at the end of the day, feel like listeners can struggle with what to do next. Like, how can we actually get started with these health goals?

Well, I got an email a while back from a registered dietitian who wanted to provide some of those resources to our listeners. So we got to talking and I ended up inviting her to be on the show and share with you all just how she breaks down nutrition to make healthy choices simpler and easier for the average woman. Chandis is a registered dietitian and homeschooling mom of three who is passionate about teaching families how to nourish their bodies well. After struggling through her own childhood blood sugar issues, Chandis became determined to share what she'd learned about feeling balanced and energized for God's glory. She's created a video series for Christian moms to learn all about eating well on a budget with specific grocery items and recipes to cut the confusion out of feeding their family well. Chandis, welcome to the show.

Chandis, RDN (01:55)
Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.

Caitlin (01:57)
I'm glad you are too. And I'm curious, like, what drew you into nutrition yourself?

Chandis, RDN (02:04)
I remember even starting back in third grade, I was very interested in nutrition, which I think is a really cool thing that God's given me this thread throughout my life of just having this passion. And it really came down to my own blood sugar issues. Like you mentioned, I was very excited to play a lot of sports and do well in school. But what I found was that if I didn't fuel myself well, I really could not perform at the level that I was used to doing. So at times I was playing two or three sports and it's hard in public school to find time to eat throughout the day, at least back then especially. And so that's really where I became passionate because I realized I could be performing at the top of my class or hardly able to get out of bed if I had really low blood sugar, which was a common problem in my family. And my mom helped me connect how I feel to what I was eating.

And so I knew in college right away I wanted to study that in order to help other women. We really wanna maximize our skills and talents that God has given us in our lifetimes. And so that was just really important for me to gain more knowledge, more tools on how to help other women.

Caitlin (03:13)
Wow, I love that. And I love so much that it was your mom that helped you connect what you eat to how you feel. And just making those connections a lot of times are challenging. We don't realize that it has such an impact. But it sounds like food has been I mean, really, we are all eating food every day of our lives. But it's really played a meaningful role in your life. And you've kind of made those bigger connections even from a young age. So that's great.

Well, I know something that you feel passionate about is like you were just saying, empowering women and especially just like in the everyday going to the grocery store sort of thing. I think that it can be a challenge, know, choosing the right foods or planning out weekly meals. It can feel pretty intimidating for a lot of people and many women want to do it perfectly or they feel overwhelmed about how to even get started there. 

So maybe we could start with what do you feel like is the most helpful way for those that are beginning that nourishing nutrition journey, thinking about it a little bit differently.

Chandis, RDN (04:17)
That is a great question. I've spent the last decade helping moms, specifically going grocery shopping with moms and then helping them cook even in their own homes and looking at their pantries. And since I'm a mom of three, that's not the most efficient use of my time anymore in this season. And so I'm really passionate about teaching moms these simple tools so that when you go to the grocery store, you're equipped to know what you're looking for because, once you walk in there and maybe you have littles that you're shopping with, it can become really overwhelming. So specifically, I teach on two topics and that's eating close to nature, eating the way God made our food. That is such a simple tip as Christian moms and women, we can recognize, did God make this or is this more manmade? Those are really clear distinctions when we're at the grocery store. And the second thing is we wanna balance our blood sugar, which I know you've had other guests on that discuss that. But when I'm looking to teach moms, I'm reviewing that we've got three categories of macronutrients, so protein, fat, and carbohydrates. And protein typically looks like animal sources for my family and animal products. So that's chicken, beef, eggs, milk. Those are really high protein sources. 

And then healthy fats, what we're looking for is fats that come as close to nature as possible. So we really like avocado products, coconut, and also cream and butter for our fat. And then carbohydrates. We're looking to have carbohydrates that are as close to their form in nature, how God gave us carbohydrates, as possible. So that would look like brown rice, wild rice, sweet potatoes, organic red potatoes, as close to nature as possible.

So once we have an understanding, first of all, of those categories, protein, fat, and carbs, then we can think of it like a campfire. I really like this analogy. So when we think of a campfire, we've got to have logs, sticks, and kindling to burn a campfire. Logs would represent dietary fat in our diet. So fat is a long burning fuel. It can help us feel good, calm us down, protect our hormones and our mood, and we need logs in our fire throughout the day. Next on our campfire would be sticks, and that would be protein. I'm looking for at least 100 grams of protein a day, and again, animal sources, if that's possible for you, if ethically you're comfortable with that. I love that God gave us really wholesome animal food sources of protein. So that is the sticks on our fire. That helps us, again, have energy for a longer amount of time.

And then finally, the kindling is the carbohydrates of our diet. So kindling is what helps boost our energy in short amounts of time. So we need to be able to start the energy for our day. And so I like to have some carbohydrates at our breakfast, plenty of protein and some fat.

And I can get into the specifics of what we eat later on in this episode. But in the American diet, we typically have so many carbohydrates that it's really hard to balance our blood sugar throughout the day. So when I'm teaching moms and young kids how to eat to sustain energy throughout the day, we're looking at having plenty of fat, protein, and some carbs to keep us going.

Caitlin (07:37)
I think it's so helpful to break it down like that and give that analogy that, you know, even if you're not someone who's out in the woods a lot, like, you know what it takes to start a fire. And you know that if you just start it with some lint or twigs, that it's gonna just flame out super quickly. And we think about our regular lives, like how often if we're snacky or hungry, we just grab a bag of chips or something like that, but that's gonna help us in that moment, but then we're going to be hungry again, maybe 30 minutes later. So we would much rather have something that was fat or protein based and feel full for longer and actually have the support that our body needs during that time. So I love that you enjoy the grocery store. I watched some of your initial videos and you told a story about your mom kind of empowering you to go to the grocery store for your family.

It is not my happy place. Okay, that is not where I love to go. But there are millions of us, you know, walking the aisles each week trying to come up with snacks and meals to provide for ourselves or our families. So I would love to hear what kind of tips you have for how to know whether or not something is nourishing or whether it's just yummy. Like, you know, we want it to always be yummy, but nourishing is really important to you. What do you recommend?

Chandis, RDN (08:54)
That's a great, great point with the grocery store. I do really love grocery shopping. And ⁓ the food that God gives us does not always have nutrition labels on it. So when we're thinking about a typical nutrition label, we've got the calories, protein, carbs. ⁓ When I am grocery shopping, I'm really sticking to the foods on the outside of the grocery store. And that looks like protein first to stretch our budget and then fruits and vegetables. And a lot of those items don't have nutrition labels.

But once I get into the internal items, and I'm looking for pasta, chips, snacks, cereals for my family, that's where I do look at the nutrition label. I actually need to know what are the ingredients in this item I'm about to pay money for. And so a really empowering way is to think about looking at the ingredient label. Do the foods represent foods that I can find in nature? Did God create these foods? So for example, if we're looking at a bag of potato chips, there are often within any grocery store. For example, I love Walmart. There are potato chips right next to all the others that have fewer ingredients and are much closer to nature. So when I'm buying potato chips, for example, I am looking for potatoes, oil, and a sea salt. And specifically, I'm looking at either Boulder chips or Siete chips. These brands use olive oil or avocado oil to cook in. So I'm looking for the most simple ingredients. Often found within the mix of all the other ones. And at first, this takes some extra work because you've got to read each label. But once you get it down, you know your favorite brands, which is what I'm really passionate about teaching is just looking at brand recognition. So another example in the cracker aisle, I would grab Simple Mills is typically one that I could find at Walmart or Costco, Sam's Club. And Simple Mills is like the title says, it's more simple ingredients for the crackers. So that's what I'm looking at when I look at nutrition labels. I actually create nutrition labels for some food companies. I do not look at the calories. That's not important to me. Calories is an example of what the energy of the food could contain, but it doesn't tell us how the food is digested. So if we have the example of chicken breast versus a can of soda, the chicken actually has a little bit more calories.

And that's a good example of why I do not calculate calories throughout the day. Because the chicken breast digests completely differently than the can of soda. We've got protein, some fat, minerals, structured water. That chicken is gonna take time to digest and it's gonna fuel your body much more than the can of soda. So I don't look at calories, I look at ingredients, and then I look at added sugar. So if I'm between two products, like there's two acai bowls in the frozen food section of Walmart, and maybe I'm gonna get that for my kids for a treat. If the ingredients are all close to nature, then I'm gonna look at how much added sugar is next in those, because some products could have a little added cane sugar, let's say less than four grams, and other products can say cane sugar in the ingredients, but have 20 grams of sugar, or something really high that would affect my blood sugar too much. So I'm looking at ingredients and added sugar, not calories.

And then finally, if I'm getting a packaged item, I'm looking to see if it's organic. That's ideal. If I can afford organic, I do because then we have less pesticides. Automatically, it's not genetically modified. Those are ways to eat closer to nature.

Caitlin (12:20)
I like the mentality of closer to nature because I think a lot of times I have heard stick to the outer aisles, you know, and not the inside. And I've heard all these like buzzwords of things to avoid. So look out for sucralose or look out for sunflower seed oil or look out, you know, for these things. And then it becomes this hunt to look through the big list of ingredients. But you're kind of flipping that and saying,

No, you want to be able to recognize all the words. You want to know that they are simple. You want to know that they come from things that God has created in this world. And I think that mentality can be a really helpful mental switch just for getting started. It doesn't mean that every single thing is automatically going to be like that, but finding those initial swaps that can make the most difference can, I would imagine, be really helpful.

And so we've got snacks and we kind of talked about the big picture, but we also think about dinners. You know, when you've got just a short amount of time, but you want to make a healthy meal for yourself and your family, you want it to be something in nourishing. It's not spiking your blood sugar. It still tastes amazing. You know, like where do we start? What would you recommend there?

Chandis, RDN (13:32)
That's a really good question. So the meals that I make at my house are really build your own meals. So I have three littles and they like to play a part in the meals that we make. So for example, we do a lot of bowls and that could look like taco bowl, cheeseburger bowl, or chicken and wild rice. And what I do is I put ingredients on the table so they can add their own ingredients. So if we're doing a taco bowl, for example, I've got one daughter who could eat half an onion by herself and my son can't stand onion.

So we have chopped up vegetables, chopped up toppings like cilantro, cheese, sour cream, and they get to build their own bowl. And this makes it so easy because I can literally cook the grass-fed ground beef in 10 to 15 minutes and dinner is ready. It has changed how we eat in our house. And then everyone is satisfied because they get to add their own ingredients, including how much sea salt or black pepper they like on their food.

So that's how I really like to do the meals, but really it's centered around a protein item. And if the protein like beef already has fat in it, then I don't need to cook with a lot of fat. But if it's something more lean like chicken, then I either cook that in ghee or avocado oil. And the fat is what makes food very palatable. So the kids get excited to eat our food because...

I cook with plenty of butter and cream and any vegetable we have is really cooked down for the most part. So it's nice and tender and soft. And a lot of our vegetables are more of a fruit for their age. So that would be like zucchini, squash, and it's really easy for them to digest. And these are just foods that over time they have been open to trying. We've started from when they were tiny, trying different seasonings and vegetables. And now they're so excited to make food with me, they make curry with me and ramen and so many different things. But it's really fun to do it as a family and really focusing again on that protein and fat component. And then anything that they add is just extra nutrients. So if they add cilantro or they add a little lettuce, that's just bonus nutrients for their day.

Caitlin (15:38)
I love that you're making it fun at the same time, which, know, even us adults, we need a little fun in our day. And so I think that's a great way to do it. Now, I know that you offer several recipes that are part of your online video series, would you want to talk to us a little bit about that and what that is?

Chandis, RDN (15:57)
Absolutely. Yeah, so I was feeling a little discouraged because I couldn't find a creation or Bible-based resource to offer my clients. A lot of material ⁓ comes from an standpoint or something that I just couldn't fully back, just like your podcast. It's a wonderful hormone resource and from a Christian perspective, it's just so refreshing.

So I decided with my husband, who's a Christian filmmaker, we made a 12 part video series that moms and women and kids can watch. It's totally appropriate for families. And it's fun because I've had several people comment or email that their kids are watching and other kids are excited to cook alongside of them. But basically I break down what it is I'm choosing at the grocery store. I bought hundreds of items and I set them out in categories to show you this is what I purchased at my local grocery store so that you can have brands to recognize. And then I do a cooking segment too. So this is actually what I make at our house. And then we talk about topics like technology around the table or eating together, praying and gratitude. So those are really big topics that I'm passionate about. And that series is closetonature.health is my site and I'd love to offer your listeners 20% off. You can use WovenWell code at checkout. And I also want to extend to a scholarship. If there's any women who feel like financially there's a hindrance in their life and they can't afford to learn the information, I really want you to have access to it. So my email is on the website and if you're interested, you can email me scholarship and we can set you up with a free video series to get to watch to empower your family and your future generations.

Caitlin (17:38)
I love that and we'll make sure to have all of that information in the show notes as well for anyone who wants to pursue that. So Chandis, thank you so much for being on the show and sharing some of these great starter tips with our listeners. I really appreciate it.

Chandis, RDN (17:52)
Thank you so much.

Caitlin (17:53)
Well, we'll add in some of our most listened to nutrition episodes in the show notes as well. We want to make sure you have lots of great resources out there. We are all about finding ways to support your female health, your hormones, ovulation through simple but powerful lifestyle choices, just like these very approachable. So do you have a topic that you'd love to hear us discuss? Well, we would love to hear from you about that. So just click on text the show in the show notes and leave an idea. can't reply to those texts, but we do receive them and we'd love to get one from you. As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.