One Pot Meals that Heal Inflammation with Carolyn Williams

Hi, I'm Dr. Tabitha, the gutsy gynecologist. I'm a triple board certified, OB, GYN and Functional Medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey. And I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. After caring for thousands of women, I've come to realize that your gut health determines your gyne health and your overall health. And it's a super gutsy thing for me to go against conventional gynecology practice to bring you the truth. No more band aid medicine, ladies. We're talking root cause resolution on this show. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place and I want to be your gutsy gynecologist. So welcome.

Hi ladies.

Welcome back. So this week we're going to talk about food yet again because it's that important. I can't emphasize this enough. And this week we're going to be talking to a culinary nutrition expert, which is really fun because I hear from you guys that you don't know what to cook, you're tired of making the same old stuff or you don't have time to prep all those things that we deal with as busy, awesome women.

Right?

So, so she and I are going to talk about all this today and she has a new book that just came out. It's called Meals that Heal One Pot. So the idea is that you don't need a bunch of, you know, different pots and pans and everything that you can make a quick yummy meal in one pot. So let me just sing our praises really quickly. Carolyn Williams, she's a PhD and registered dietitian. She's a leading culinary nutrition Expert and a 2017 James Beard journalism Award winner. She's developed a knack for breaking down complex science into quick reader friendly tips. She's the author of Meals that Heal, which has over a hundred anti inflammatory recipes that can be done in 30 minutes or less. And then her new book, Meals that Heal One Potato. So Carolyn is a sought after speaker on anti inflammatory eating and managing chronic inflammation through lifestyle. Her work is regularly featured in print and online for lifestyle brands and outlets such as Eating well, Real Simple, Cooking Light and all recipes. That's pretty awesome. So I'm excited to talk to her about her new book and give you guys some tips and tricks and really help you to understand inflammation because that is the leading driver of all chronic disease and how food is related to that. So here we go. Well, welcome, Carolyn and the gutsy Gynecologist show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I'm really excited about this conversation because I feel like there's so much misinformation about food and that a lot of us forget that it's actually meant to be nourishing our bodies, but it can also make us really sick.

Right, right, right. You seem to hear more of the bad stuff rather than the good stuff a lot of times.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we don't eat just because we're hungry. We're actually trying to give our body important information in the form of vitamins and minerals and proteins and all that.

Right.

Like, how did you get into all of this?

Yeah, well, I always had an interest in nutrition and cooking growing up, and then I ended up majoring in nutrition in college. But I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. I really didn't want to necessarily work in a clinical setting because I'd done internships there. And a lot of people didn't really listen to the dietitian. They didn't really value the dietitian's opinion. And I really wanted to. I didn't want to see someone two days after they had a heart attack. And I definitely was the last person they wanted to see. Yeah. Recovering from a heart attack. I wanted to see them like 10 years prior. You know, let's maybe see if we can prevent this. Totally. So I really love the preventive side. And so that's where largely my practice is focused. And my practice is really writing communications for media. I've kind of developed a niche where I can take like a big complex subject and break it down really simple and like, okay, here's what you need to know in regard to this topic. When you go to the grocery store tonight, I love it. I like doing that for people.

So in that idea, let's talk about inflammation, because that's your jam. Right. You're really good at explaining it. And I think people hear that word all the time. It's kind of lost its cachet because everything's inflammation now. But it really is important for women to understand this and have some idea of how to have an anti inflammatory diet.

Right, right. Oh my gosh, it is. I know I drives my friends crazy because I'll bring up the symptom or complaint. I'm like, it's inflammation, but it really, as you know, I think people are finally aware that it really drives your chronic Conditions like heart disease and diabetes and those kind of things. But I think what people see still maybe don't realize so much is that it also drives like some of the little things, a lot of things that my age group and below and a little bit above are affecting, you know, our fatigue and our hormone imbalances. It doesn't necessarily cause, but it sure isn't helping things. And thyroid issues and you know, just kind of adding, just fan in the flames of what may already be there. But you know, inflammation is by design is technically not bad. It's more our modern day lifestyle that has created a bad form of it. So, you know, inflammation as it was designed is supposed to be acute, which means it comes on, it does its job and then it dissipates and it's there. It's a reaction of the immune system that's designed to heal our bodies and to protect our bodies, to fight off bacteria and viruses and those kind of things. And so you see inflammation, it's really easy to see an acute inflammation. Like you get a paper cut and so now your finger hurts and it's red or you sprain your ankle and it's, you know, it's swollen or you have a fever, you know, maybe 24 hour fever, you know, and you, you see that, you feel that and then it, but all those things go away. And that's the key with inflammation, right? The bad inflammation, which you often hear, just referred to as inflammation now in the media and in the news is what my, what I'm really focused on is kind of become my big interest. And it is lower grade. So it's much more subtle, like you don't have that fever, you don't have that swelling, you know, at least not initially. And so signs are very subtle. And it sticks around, it doesn't go away, it stays in the body unless you purposely do something. And it's kind of, I tell people, it's kind of like a little motor running in your background. It's not a condition, it's not a, you know, diagnosis, but it's, it's just there. And it is rather a new phenomenon because it is triggered by lifestyle irritants. So 200 years ago, I doubt chronic inflammation was much of a problem. But you know, your key lifestyle irritants are, you know, diet, lack of activity, carrying excess body weight. Sleep is a huge one, stress is a huge one as well. And so, you know, we're all just inundated with those every day. And so it's these lifestyle irritants that you know, can start a little flame of inflammation in the body or you know, maybe you already have a little inflammation, it can kind of fan the flames and exacerbate it. And inflammation is going to really kind of make everything, every minor condition you had start to progress a little.

Yeah, it kind of exacerbates everything, right?

Yeah.

Adding fuel to the fire. For me, shifting my diet was the game changer as far as decreasing my inflammation because almost all of it, you know, is either driven by stress and sleep deprivation or coming from my gut, my poor diet. And that's what I see with a lot of patients. So I love that you are focused on like, how do we, you know, eat an anti inflammatory diet? How do we just decrease that inflammation overall? So what is like step number one when you're thinking about all this?

Yeah, well, and one thing to point out too is, you know, this is really a way, think of it as more a way to eat rather than a so called like diet. This is a way to eat from. That's great for toddlers through grandparents. This benefits all ages, you know, and it slows the aging process, it keeps you healthy, but it can also help manage conditions that you have. So people, when they come to me or you know, message me and they're like, okay, I've got to start an anti inflammatory diet, the first thing pretty much everyone says is what do I need to cut out? And they're usually a little surprised when I steer them back and say, hold on, let's talk about what you need to add. Yes, we are all getting a lot of irritants through our diet, but we are also, most all of us are not getting near enough of the anti inflammatory nutrients and compounds that are in food. We are way low in those and there is so much power in those. And so I really steer people back to, let's start with three things, three kind of groups of foods and focus on adding those and then we'll move on to maybe what we need to work on, minimizing or reducing what's causing inflammation. So when I was doing all my research, you know, there were, I was just really diving into the research to see, okay, what were the connections between foods. And there were three groups of foods that just became overwhelmingly annoying in they were in every single study or this, they had the most research on them in terms of their anti inflammatory benefits and health benefits from them. And the first is leafy greens. So I tell people, okay, start just by trying to get a cup of leafy greens in a day. Usually the darker the better. But hey, I'll take romaine if that's all you can, you know, get that day. Just a cup of leafy greens. Aim for that. And you know, we tend to think of just salads when we say leafy greens, but there are a lot of other options. And it doesn't have to be like measure a cup of lettuce and put it on your plate. You know, I like to keep baby spinach around because it's. I can use it for grain bowls and I can use it for salads, but I can also stir it into like saucy skillet dishes and spaghetti sauce. I can stir it into soup, you know, so you can do those kind of things. You can put baby spinach on your sandwich or, you know, I mean, you can get it in little ways. So it goes beyond salads. The second one was berries. Aim for two to three cups a week. They can be frozen or fresh. Often a lot of your frozen berries will have even more nutrients in them because the nutrient loss has been stalled by the freezing. So two to three cups a week. And then the third one is cruciferous vegetables getting in about five servings a week. And I tell people these are the vegetables that usually stink when you're cooking them because of the sulfur compounds in the broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, those kind of things. But those sulfur compounds can be really powerful in the body. And so it's key to get those. And there's other food, anti inflammatory foods that are great, but those are kind of the three categories that just rose to the top when I was just looking at study after study after study. And so I tell people to start there. Maybe you can't do all three at once. Start with one, then move on to the second and third. But what you find is that usually naturally also cleans up your diet a little because now you're getting a lot of this good stuff. And so it kind of naturally, rather than feel like deprivation, it's, it's more. You're eating these new foods and these good foods and you like them and, oh, I'm not eating as much fast food or, you know, whatever it is, so it cleans up your diet. And then we can focus on kind of maybe what we need to minimize. The other key place where I tell people to start is gut health, because inflammation really stems from the gut. And I know everybody, you know, we know there's such a focus on gut health and we need a healthy gut. But I don't think people necessarily maybe realize just specifically how it directly impacts your health. And so when you have a healthy gut, you have that diverse and numerous supply of different microbes, bacteria in your gut. And what they do when you eat food and you digest it, they form a kind of protective lining inside the intestinal wall, if you will. And so what they allow all the good stuff from the food you eat, like the digested carbohydrates and proteins and vitamins and minerals, they allow those to be absorbed through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream so the body can use them, but they prevent a lot of the junk in food. You know, the stuff that's not naturally found in food, the chemicals, the additives, they prevent a lot of that from being able to cross the intestinal wall into and go into the body. Those things act as irritants. So you're preventing a lot of those inflammatory irritants from being able to enter the body. So when our gut is disrupted or, you know, we have taken antibiotics or, you know, we just don't have a strong gut or we have a less healthy gut, our microbes are out of balance, may not, you know, the numbers are off. And what results is that? Microbial lining in the intestinal wall has holes in it. It's not as, it's not as, I guess, I want to say thorough, but it's not as, you know, think of it, just more of its holes. It's kind of like a sponge, it's got holes in it. And so now the good stuff from what we can pass through into the body, but so can a lot of the junk, those irritants that can trigger inflammation. And that's what you sometimes hear referred to as leaky gut. But you know, inflammation really a key component is really, you know, adding those anti inflammatory foods, but also healing that gut, strengthening that gut. So you stop a lot of the, you know, irritants from getting in in the future. Right.

And those bacteria that make that mucosal barrier, they are eating what we eat. That is what fuels them to multiply and continue on and to produce their protective chemicals, all of that.

Right.

So what do good healthy bacteria love to eat?

They love usually your fibrous foods, they love those. So if you're upping your leafy greens, berries, vegetables, you know, then you're going to have, you know, you're getting a lot of fiber, but you know, upping your produce in general, it's a certain type of fiber in your plant foods, particularly your produce that are referred to as Your prebiotics. And your prebiotics are what our good bacteria known as probiotics. It's what the probiotics feed on and how they nourish themselves.

Love it. So you're not only getting the vitamins and minerals that you need and the antioxidant support to detox all your hormone pathways and everything else, but you're helping keeping your gut lining healthy by feeding those good bacteria and all of that. So that's super important.

I love it.

So I like the idea of throwing it into stuff. You're sauteing, getting it in. In other ways and not necessarily just eating a salad, because I think some people, it is like, I just don't want that cold salad. I don't like that texture or whatever. And so your new book, does it have a lot of good ideas for other ways to get these leafy greens and everything in there?

Yes, definitely. You know, quick skillet dinners, you know, I just try to work them in. In little places and maybe. So it's not quite, you know, you hear someone say, I added spinach to that dish. Well, people are assuming, you know, it's going to be like a green dish. Add it in more subtle ways, you know, not that just naturally work with the recipe, work with the foods. And in all the recipes, you know, it's. It's called one pot, but it just means like, one cooking vessel. So one skillet, one stock pot, one sheet pan, those kind of things. And the meal can. Or that dish can essentially stand alone. You may want to add some sides, but it's got at least, you know, it's got ample protein and it's got fiber, and it's got at least, you know, one serving of vegetables in it.

That's awesome. So a lot of complaints I get from patients are I don't have time to cook. You know, I don't know what to cook. Do you have any great suggestions on just, like, meal prepping and how to decrease the time that we're in the kitchen? Because I really want women to start making their food, but I don't also.

Yeah, I want them to be in.

There for three hours.

Yeah, well, you know, I'm not huge on, like, the meal prepping that you see on Instagram. And, you know, those, you know, they're beautiful. They're all these dishes lined up with the same food in them. You know, 12 for the week. Right, right. And, you know, that's great for, you know, about two meals, but, you know, I don't want the same meal all Week, Actually, no. And plus, I don't want to spend my whole afternoon, Sunday afternoon in the kitchen. You know, not fun, or you feel like you're missing out on things. So I do something that's a lot, I think simpler and quicker, but helps me be prepared to throw healthy dishes together. And so I prep what I call meal components, and I buy key things at the grocery that day. That is the one thing that I make myself do, is go to the grocery if I can't, don't have time for anything else. And so what I mean by that is I'm going to make sure I have leafy greens stocked. I'm going to make sure I have some bags of vegetables to roast that week. Maybe cauliflower, broccoli, green beans, pretty much roast anything. I am going to try to cook a protein, some type of protein, you know, for having chicken for dinner. Then I may do, you know, make extra so that I have some leftover cooked chicken in the fridge. I'm also going to cook some kind of grain, some kind of whole grain, you know, quinoa or brown rice, so that I have it available to heat up in the refrigerator. Whole grains are also a lot of people don't realize. You can make a big batch and then you can freeze them in individual containers so you can just pull them out as you need them. But if I have a protein, if I have a whole grain or things like canned beans, if I have leafy greens, I have roasted vegetables, then I can pull together, usually a quick meal. I can pull together a grain bowl for me. I can pull together, you know, maybe I have corn tortillas on hand. I can pull together chicken tacos for my kids. You know, it's. That's kind of what saves me and, you know, a couple of nights a week keeps me from cooking. But I have to have those key things, you know, healthy carbs, protein and veggies on hand so I can combine them.

I love that. That's a great idea. Okay, and then you're advocating now like, you only need to cook in one pot. So what are your favorite pots or tools to have in the kitchen that you find really helpful?

You know, I'm pretty simple. I mean, I think a great sheet pan is good and then a great skillet. And then it's getting to be soup season with the cold weather. So I love, and that's something else I, a lot of times will do in the winter is make a, you know, a big pot of soup on Sunday and then you have it during the week. Plus, soups get better as they sit. So, you know, they're. They're never. They're always better, you know, on day two or three than they are right when you make them.

Yeah, that's totally true. So for, like, sheet pans, are you using it to roast vegetables mostly?

Well, yes, that would probably be my. When I'm just cooking at home and that kind of thing, roasting is my favorite way to do vegetables. And if people don't think they like vegetables, they need to try roasting, because that can really be a game changer for a lot of people. It's so easy and quick, and it really changes the flavor of the vegetable. Kind of caramelizes some of the natural sugars in the vegetables, which they're very. Mr. Very Low in sugar, but some of the natural ones, and you can kind of get them a little crispy and brown. And I have a. I guess you call it a trick. I have. I did it just the other night. I will. If I'm preparing dinner and I'm doing it not in one pot, I'm doing different things. I will roast whatever vegetable I'm having that night first and then set it out on the stovetop in the kitchen. So the other night I did broccoli, and I just set it, tossed it with little avocado oil, garlic powder, salt, and pepper like I normally do. And, you know, the kids will walk through and, like, snack on the roasted broccoli. And so by the time we sit at the table, there's not much broccoli left. But I am fine with that, you know, So I love roasting vegetables. That's my favorite way to do. To do them. Okay.

I love that idea. I think that's super helpful because I know my kids personally.

They.

That's the only way they want their vegetables. They want their kale and their broccoli and everything roasted. So that makes total sense to me. So if we start to incorporate more of these just antioxidants, fibrous foods, all of that, like the healthy foods kind of, or the unhealthy foods, food just dissipates or there's less room for it, right?

There's less room. But, you know, one of the key things you need to do is also kind of start focusing on your whole or your minimally processed foods. There are healthier process shortcuts that you could. Products you can get. And I use those, and I try to highlight those in the book. And I'll tell you. I can tell you how to find this but you know, just not the. You just don't want the highly, highly processed things. The things with artificial colors, with dyes, with preservatives, with flavorings that just aren't needed, aren't naturally in food. So trying to get more minimally processed food items and whole food items, get those in. Thankfully, there are a lot of new brands out there that really care about the quality, quality of ingredients in them. And so there's a lot more minimally processed shortcuts out there that you can use to save time. You know, two that you know, you'll find, always find in my kitchen are a bottled salad dressing made with good quality ingredients and like a jar of marinara. Now, not all are created equal, but what I tell people is, let's take the marinara. You want to turn it over. And you used to hear, you know, you want to see five ingredients or less. Well, that doesn't really matter. It's really what those ingredients are in there. So although you do kind of want a shorter list. But turn that jar of marinara over. I want to see that the ingredients in that marinara are some of the same things that would be in it if I had a recipe at home and were preparing it myself. So what would be in that recipe if I was cooking it? I want to see tomatoes, maybe even organic tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil, olive oil, salt, pepper, those kind of things. That's what I want to see. I don't want to see a lot of other junk in there. And same thing for like a salad dressing. You can find a few salad dressings now that are made with olive oil or extra virgin olive oil. But you can also find some now with like avocado oil and, you know, walnut oil and that kind of thing. But I want to see a good quality oil. I want to see, you know, it's going to have some kind of acidity in there. So some kind of vinegar or lemon juice or something like that. It may have some egg yolks, or it may have some Dijon mustard, something to a binder to hold the dressing together, and then, you know, seasonings and salt and pepper. So, you know, essentially the same things. You know, if I was following a recipe at home to make a homemade dressing.

Oh, yeah. And I think that's a really important point. Like the oils that we're consuming, because we are consuming way too many inflammatory oils high in omega 6s. I see that all the time. Vegetable oil, canola oil, sunflower oil. We have to stop consuming all those. And most. I would when you say most of the salad dressings are made with that crap?

The majority out there. Yeah. Yeah. So have to look.

You do. But that could be like one simple thing that could really change how you feel. Like, when I got rid of those inflammatory oils, I could just tell, like my joints didn't hurt as much. I didn't feel so puffy and swollen all the time.

Yeah.

You know, I remember I used to bake a lot and I would just use so much vegetable oil. It was crazy. It's like so bad for you.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think compounding it is that we get so little Omega 3s. Right. Which are the anti inflammatory. And I really think it's, you know, part of the problem is just that ratio, that balance is so off.

Yeah. None of us are eating fish anymore or really getting those omega 3s in our diet the way we should. So that's a really important thing to be thinking about. Oh, my goodness. So this kind of eating, it's just like how we should be eating to nourish our bodies at every life stage, every age. I love that because that makes it so much easier. I'm always hearing like, well, my kids want something different. And do you find your recipes and ways of cooking are kid friendly?

Yes, I try to. Now, it may not be what they were dying to have that night. Never usually is, but yeah, my kids tasted all the recipes in both my cookbooks, you know, and, you know, it had to pass my test, you know, as a dietitian nutritionally, but I'm also a foodie at heart. So it really had to be like, okay, this needs to be worth my time in the kitchen after working all day. And then it needs to be things that my kids will eat. So, you know, if stuff didn't meet those criteria, then I was like, okay, let's skip it. Let's move on to a new recipe in there.

Yeah, for sure. So with your clients, what are the biggest things that you've seen when they start eating in this healthier way? Like what kind of shifts happen for them?

Yeah, well, I don't work directly with clients or patients. I focus more in communication and I write and translate research for a lot of media outlets and magazines and those kind of things. But just anecdotally in people that I've tried to help, you know, friends, family, those kind of things. You'll have a decrease in joint pain, you'll have fewer headaches. You'll have. They'll finally figure out, you know, oh, food is causing that bloating. That I'm having, you know, or gluten is causing this or, you know, maybe they, you know, take some things out of their diet and they were like, you know, I can think so much clearer. You know, it, it's, it's small things, but that's how inflammation starts. It starts with subtle small signs and you know, it may even be things. Reducing inflammation in your diet may cause you to realize you had conditions or symptoms that you didn't even knew you had. You may just be like, I feel so much better. Oh my gosh, my joints feel better. I didn't realize they were kind of hurting, you know, going up and down the stairs.

Yeah, I completely agree. I think that once you clean up your diet, like, the picture gets so much clearer and then when you do eat poorly, it's so much more obvious because now you feel well and you're like, oh wait, I'm not going back to, to feeling bad again, you know. Yes, that was definitely the case for me and for like the majority of my patients, so. Well, awesome. So I'll have the link in the show notes for your book and your first book.

Right.

Do they go hand in hand?

They do. They're part of a series. So my first book was Meals that Heal and it was 100 plus quick and easy everyday anti inflammatory recipes. Recipes. And then this, my second book just came out which is Meals that Heal One pot, which is designed to be even a little easier or quicker to get those quick and easy meals anti inflammatory meals on the table.

That is so awesome. Well, cool. So I'll have all those links in the show notes. I'm really excited about all this. I'm going to try them. I'm excited. Really? The roasting? Yes, I think that'll be, that'll be a good thing for my kids. So. Well, thank you so much for all you're doing. Like, your information is so helpful and I hope that my listeners try this because I want it to feel doable. I, I, I agree with you. I don't want to spend my whole Sunday meal prepping and then eating the same meals for the next five days. It's not enjoyable and it's not good for our micro. Microbiome. Right. Our microbiome wants the diversity.

It wants a great point change in.

Our meals to stay healthy. So I love all your tips. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Awesome. I hope you got something great out of that. I can't wait to check out her recipes and start roasting some things. I Know, my kids are gonna love that. So let me know if you found value in this. I hope you did. Check out her books. The links are in the show notes. And let me know what else you want to hear about. Right, Because I do this for you. I am here for you. And you know, we talked a little bit about Omega 3s and Omega 6s. Omega 6s, you don't want to have too many of those because those can cause inflammation, whereas omega 3s are anti inflammatory. And you can do a high quality omega 3 supplement like my omega lift. It's on my store.gutsyguyen.com it's one of my favorite supplements along with Inflammatane to calm down that inflammation. If you really are feeling like I got some chronic disease trying to brew, my joints hurt, I'm tired, I have brain fog. I know, I know my diet's not the best and I gotta start cleaning things up. You know, the best thing to do is get my foundation collection where you're getting your multivitamins and your B vitamins and your Minerals and your Omega 3s and then add in that inflammatory for a couple months and really just like put the fire out. Like if you can wipe out that fire of inflammation and stop that smoke moldering effect that's going on underneath everything, then you can finally make some really good headway. And shifting your diet is definitely a big part of that. So I was thinking, like, I love the idea of Carolyn's new book as a Christmas present or a holiday gift. Like, I think that would be really awesome because we're all looking for new ways to, you know, make quick, healthy, yummy meals. And she has, you know, got it all figured out in a way that you can feed all of your family really quickly and easily. So think about that for a gift this holiday. I think that would be perfect. So check out the links, they're in my show notes. Otherwise, go have an amazing kick ass week and I'll see you next time. Bye, guys.

Sam.