Better Midlife Health, and Taming Weight Gain + Hormones with Dr. Mary Claire Haver of The Galveston Diet
Show Snapshot:
Optimize midlife health with nutrition and lifestyle ideas from Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board-certified OB/GYN, and a certified Culinary Medicine specialist. Dr. Haver developed a groundbreaking nutrition and lifestyle program which has helped nearly 100,000 women get in shape and improve midlife health.
Now, she is bringing the same doctor-developed, patient-proven plan to burn fat and tame hormonal symptoms to a wider audience with her new book, “The Galveston Diet.” She joins me to talk about anti-inflammatory food choices, rethinking our eating window to explore intermittent fasting, and how to refocus our food choices to prioritize macro-nutrient-rich meals.
If you're ready for more energy, fewer menopausal symptoms, and a nutrition plan that fuels fat-burning, this conversation is for you!
Show Links:
Follow Dr. Haver
Dr. Haver’s Books:
The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts
Quotable:
The only thing we were taught about weight was calories in, calories out. Basically, putting the onus on the patient because she wasn't trying hard enough or she was lazy… it took my own journey of realizing, wait a minute, I'm doing all the things that I have told my patients to do and it's not working for me anymore.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty 0:03
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. Beauties, navigating menopause is like playing Whack-a-Mole. Just when you get a handle on your sleep disruptions and dry vagina, you learn that every woman in the UK is getting access to hormone replacement therapy over the counter in their local drugstore. And that your favorite pants, the pants you planned to wear to a weekend party, no longer fit. It can feel hard and overwhelming to manage all the menopause things: the latest science, the roller coaster hormones, your changing body. A Certain Age has 25+ shows on all the ways menopause can impact your life and on today's show, we're drilling down in one area. I'm joined today by menopause and nutrition pro, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a wife, mom, physician, and board certified OBGYN. Dr. Haver noticed that as her patients aged, she was overwhelmed with the number of complaints and concerns on midlife weight gain while going through menopause. For years she told her patients eat less, exercise more. It wasn't until she went through menopause and experienced her own midlife weight gain that she realized this advice did not work. Full stop. She created a nutrition, eating and lifestyle program called The Galveston Diet, a program that prioritizes nutrient-rich anti-inflammatory foods and intermittent fasting to burn fat and tame hormonal symptoms. Nearly 100,000 women have done this program and it's now available as a book. Dr. Haver is our guest today and she is here to give us the down low on all things Galveston diet. Welcome Dr. Haver.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 1:46
Hi, thanks for having me.
Katie Fogarty 1:48
I have toured through this book, I learned so much. I'm really interested in exploring it all with you. I've been following you on Instagram for a number of months and I love all the information you share about menopause. I'm really excited to get into the nutrition program and, you know, walk through the different components of this eating program. And I wanted to share with you first that my most downloaded show on this podcast in 2022 was on reversing midlife weight gain and building fat burning muscle because women want information on our changing bodies. But we are also sick and tired of diet culture and body shaming. So I really do want to start with some quick stage setting. Your book uses the word diet in the title, but it's clear from reading it, that you're not about restricting and calorie counting. You're advocating for nutrition as a lifestyle for optimizing midlife health. Because excessive weight is linked to numerous diseases, I would love to open by hearing your thinking on dieting versus an eating lifestyle and why did you decide to write this book?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 2:53
So I, in medicine, you know, I'm a physician. And when I talk to patients, it's not, Are you on a diet? It is, What is your diet? And clinically, a diet is a pattern of eating. So think of it like you would think of the Mediterranean diet. No one thinks that that is a fad, that is a pattern of eating that people in the Mediterranean region eat and seem to have health benefits from. So you know, when I first developed the program, it was prescriptive. It was for my patients, it was for myself, and then my girlfriends, and then when I took it to social media is when it kind of exploded. And so we were happily going as a diet. And no one was really questioning what I was doing until we kind of blew up with it on social media and decided to make it you know, turn the online program into a book. So you know, but my own journey, my story you touched on it a little bit was like in medical school and in my residency program, so those eight years of my life plus my undergrad, which was in geology of all things. I had no, nothing biomedical in my undergrad studies except what I had to take.
Katie Fogarty 4:08
Talk about a pivot.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 4:09
And so, you know, I had maybe an hour, of those 12 years, of nutrition studies, maybe an hour. And so good nutrition was kind of like porn. You know it when you see it. It was not anything that was like seriously taught to us. And so I kind of went in my head of what I thought was nutritious, and the only thing we were taught about weight was calories in, calories out. Basically putting the onus on the patient because she wasn't trying hard enough or she was lazy, you know, and so there wasn't much evolution in that thinking throughout my, throughout my education and then into my practice. And to be honest, I was a terrible menopause doctor. I was a terrible person to counsel someone who was struggling with weight gain, you know, overweight, obesity, et cetera. And it took my own journey of realizing, wait a minute, I'm doing all the things that I have told my patients to do and it's not working for me anymore. There's got to be more than this. So I, you know, got so interested in nutrition and I, you know, went down this rabbit hole of research and inflammation. I decided, you know, can I get a master's in this? Like, like, how would I, how can I improve my learning here, by people who actually know what they're doing? And I found the culinary medicine program at Tulane University. It's now expanded to multiple universities around the US but at the time, it was like kind of the birthplace of where an advanced healthcare practitioner, a doctor or nurse practitioner, or PA, a pharmacist, can go to learn about medical nutrition. And it took me about 18 months. And you know, I had to fly to New Orleans and San Antonio for different labs, but it really was the catalyst for The Galveston Diet and me, you know, getting as much knowledge and education as I could, so that I could be a better physician to my patients at this time of life.
Katie Fogarty 6:06
I love this story. I love that you already were a doctor and decided to continue your education. It's fascinating that there's so little nutrition education in med school. Regular listeners of the show know that there's also very little menopause information in med school.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 6:21
Exactly.
Katie Fogarty 6:22
It makes us wonder, like, who, who's designing the med school curriculums? But culinary medicine, just I mean, can you give us like a quick snapshot of what that means and what it looks like?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 6:32
Sure, it sounds kind of funny.
Katie Fogarty 6:34
No, it sounds very cool.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 6:35
Like what is culinary medicine? And so you know, Dr. Harlan, who, he's like, where health meets food. And so I basically got the equivalent of, you know, maybe the first two years of, or the nutrition science background. So my daughter, who's graduating from college in May, actually has a nutrition science, pre med major. And talk about having a, you know, teen, late teen, early 20s person to hold you accountable, make it be your daughter who's getting a degree in this stuff. So, so I got kind of the basic understanding of nutrition, and then we added in the layer of medicine. And then the third layer they put in, which is the culinary aspect is the labs that we went to were actually in test kitchens, they were teaching us how to cook and so that we could take these techniques to our patients. It was a way to get a good solid background in nutrition, and then learn about different cooking techniques and meet people where they are in the kitchen. And then be able to make, you know, substantial advice, changes to techniques and things that they are doing to cook for their families. And then how to, you know, eat out, how to, what can you get at a fast food restaurant, like really trying to meet our patients where they were, you know, with practical advice, not just like, here's the list, go eat healthy, but you know, getting in the kitchen and learning different techniques really helped me understand what, you know, and how to meet people where they are.
Katie Fogarty 8:03
I'm so excited to explore this because this book is jam packed with really practical, tactical, sort of shopping lists and recipes and tables, so you know that, the nutritional tables, so you can really educate yourself about your choices. We're going to explore all of that in just a minute. But I wanted to ask you a little bit about some of the health impacts and why, you know why we need to be in midlife, you know, managing our weight and our calorie intake in terms of its health.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 8:32
Sure.
Katie Fogarty 8:32
You know, we're setting aside like fitting into our skinny jeans, but we're talking about like, why does it, I would love to hear from you medically, why is it really important for us to care about this?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 8:43
Well, you know, this is part of diet culture and, and part of what I fell into for years. I was only moving my body, I was only exercising to be thin. Everything I did around my health and nutrition before my you know, before I was woke, was to be thin and I, my self worth, how I judged other people's health, my patients, was based on a number on the scale. And that is a complete fallacy. There, you know your weight and your BMI are actually not a great measure of your health. And so, you know, when I counsel patients now it's more about the types of fat we have in our body. You know, subcutaneous fat is the fat we've known our whole lives, okay. And it's basically a storage facility to have energy available when we are not able to get access to food. Okay, that's how we evolutionarily you know, how we developed as a species is we needed calories to be stored somewhere so that in times of famine we had stores to live off of until we could find the next source of food. And so that's what subcutaneous fat is. And if you have large amounts, sure it can increase certain risks, but in and of itself, a few curves are not dangerous. You know, we are all biodiverse, some of us are going to gain weight more in our hips and thighs, you know different areas of our body. But what starts happening in menopause is that our body composition begins to change. And we start looking more like where men gain weight and our health risks associated with that fat distribution change, looks more like a mans. So before this change, the hormonal changes associated with perimenopause, women tend to, not all, gain weight in their hips and thighs and subcutaneous okay, you know. It's curves, it's cellulite, it's cosmetically distressing, but it's really not that dangerous as far as metabolism goes. When we shift our fat distribution from that area to the intraabdominal cavity, something I talk about, you'll hear in popular culture called belly fat, medically, we call it visceral fat. That fat is very, very different. And it's actually an endocrine organ, it starts spitting out cytokines and inflammatory mediators that lead to increasing insulin resistance, increasing heart disease, increasing stroke risk, you know, seven of the 10 chronic diseases. That fat is dangerous. Now, in my clinic, I'm fortunate in that I have a machine that will help measure that, you know, that particular type of fat and I can do counseling around that, like here, this type of fat is increased in you and increasing your risk of these chronic diseases, etc. And even someone who was normal weight can have, it's called sarcopenic obesity. You know, even someone who is really, really normal weight can have elevated levels of visceral fat, I diagnose it all the time. And here they are thinking they're doing great, again, showing us that the scale is not telling us much, is in that they have this, is dangerous, and they're at increased risk of disease, versus someone who's been told she was overweight or possibly early obese her whole life, and she's just muscular. You know, the weight and the BMI don't take those two compartments into effect. And let me tell you, almost all of the research coming out right now with nutrition, longevity, is all about muscle mass and the more muscle mass you have going into your perimenopause and menopause, the healthier you're going to be. And if I could tell one thing to my 25 year old self as far as my health is concerned, stop doing aerobic activity and switch that out for muscle building activity. I did none of that, I didn't lift a single weight in my 20s.
Katie Fogarty 12:22
I love this. I love this because I've taken on weight training myself. I've had a number of guests, I had a fitness expert and trainer, Amanda Thebe, came on to talk about building midlife muscles. The top downloaded podcast of last year that I referred to featured Heidi Skolnick, who wrote a book about protein timing and the importance of muscle building in midlife to fuel longevity. So I'm going to include both of those shows in the show notes. Mary Claire, we're heading into a quick break, but when we come back I am, we're gonna get into these three pillars of your nutrition program, and how we can start to implement them into our own lives.
[AD BREAK]
Mary Claire, we're back. I'm so excited, you have gotten me lit up about how we can tackle visceral fat and sort of optimize wellness as we you know, as we move into the sort of second, third, fourth chapters of our wellness and well being. So I want to talk about your book. I know that it has three pillars. One is intermittent fasting. Two, anti inflammatory nutrition. Three, fuel refocus, which you describe as the ratio of fats, proteins and carbs that help us burn our fat as fuel. We're going to dive into each section but I want to start with intermittent fasting. What is it? Why does it work?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 14:59
So, you've probably heard, seen a lot about it and popular culture, both good and bad. When I started the research for how I felt I could best help my patients at this time of life, focusing on lowering visceral fat, I knew that I needed to use nutrition to help lower chronic inflammation. As a matter of fact, when I you know, did the research on chronic inflammation, there's not a pill or a medication at this point that works for this better than the right nutritional choices. All of the recommendations were to avoid things that can spike inflammation in our bodies. And then to add in lots and lots of things that naturally are powerful anti, you know, the chemical components of that fruit, vegetable, legume, you know, seed, nut, etc, have naturally occurring anti inflammatory properties. But for fasting, there was really amazing research that was done mostly out of the National Institutes of Health. One of my favorite authors was Dr. Mark Matson, and he was studying Alzheimer's and dementia models and utilizing fasting for, to see how it was helping treat those diseases. And lo and behold, it dramatically lowered neuro inflammation, it also lowered insulin levels and improved insulin resistance and helped with fasting glucose levels, despite what they ate, in that eating window. And so I preach, you know, to my followers, to my students, to my patients, daily intermittent fasting. And that can look like several different things to different people. But The Galveston Diet is more about building new habits that are sustainable for the long term than something that's like super restrictive. So, so remember that we fast while we sleep. And so adding on a few extra hours before or ahead of that time, you know, during, you know, adding on to the ends of your sleeping windows seems to be the most logical and easiest way to successfully fast. And so we shoot for, eventually, a 16-8. But I also, meaning you're going to eat for eight continuous hours, you know, in an eight hour window, eight hours or so, and then you fast for about 16 hours. But it's not something you can just go Okay, tomorrow, I'm going to fast for 16 hours, if you've never done it before. I counsel people, give yourself about six weeks to ease into it, just slowly push out those eating windows and back up your evening window, and increase your morning window until it feels comfortable and then push it out another 15 minutes, you know, but once we go past eight hours, what we find because there's you know, people are doing all day fasts or 20 hour fasts and whatever, it's really hard to get enough nutrition. It's, it's challenging, sometimes in an eight hour window. But it's really hard to get enough nutrition, you know, for normal activities when you push past eight hours. Now, does everyone do a 16-8? No, some people are doing a 14-10 or 12-12. You know, really, it's what has, the only thing that's going to work is what works for you. And the magic seems to begin to happen for most of us somewhere around hour 12. So if you can make it to 12 hours, you are getting benefits.
Katie Fogarty 18:12
That's, I thought that, one of the things that I really appreciated about this section of the book is that you break it down into these different options. Like you said, it could be the, you know, 12-12 or, you know, ideally, you might have it be the 16-8, but that you recommend doing it, you know, half an hour at a time. So maybe you're, you're just moving your window very, very, very slowly over this sort of six week period until you get to a place where it feels comfortable. I have a lot of friends who do intermittent fasting. I think of my friend Debbie in particular, she took this on after she went through breast cancer and really, you know, was looking to sort of reset her nutrition and her overall health in the wake of that healthcare challenge. And she's kept it up for years and she looks and feels amazing. And I you know, the biggest part is, she feels amazing. You know, she has a lot of energy with this eating program. So I've seen it successfully work for women in my own life.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 19:10
That's the one pillar that people were kind of the most afraid of. And then they said this was the easiest part and the one that they can fall back on or stick to the most.
Katie Fogarty 19:21
That's so fascinating. Because, you know, to me, it's like I love waking up with a big sugary coffee but I guess like -
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 19:29
You know I was, I was very, very adamant that I would only have my coffee the way I wanted my coffee, which was with Equal and lots of milk. And so that was the hardest part for me was learning how to enjoy coffee black and I did that for two weeks. That took two weeks and then I started moving my eating window out.
Katie Fogarty 19:30
By the way, two weeks is not, I mean, I'm impressed. You know, we could do anything for two weeks, so I might need to try that myself.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 19:55
Well, I slowly decreased the amount of additives I was putting in my coffee.
Katie Fogarty 19:59
That's so smart.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 20:00
I didn't just go black on the first day. I was like, Alright, I'm gonna use half a packet and half the milk. And so I did that and you know, did that for about a week. And then I just slowly kind of weaned myself down to where it was black. And then now I'm like, sipping on my black coffee right now. Like, I'm like, wow, I swore I would never, I traveled with Equal in my purse so that I could always have my coffee the way I wanted it. And it's just so funny, you know, your brain tells you, but you actually can do it.
Katie Fogarty 20:26
Yep. Yep, it's funny, I have three black coffee drinkers in my house, my husband and my two children. And I'm like, at this point I'm the only dumping like big packets of white sugar in there. So I will see if I can take this on. What, your book does talk about all these different anti inflammatory, nutrition, that's another key pillar of your program, and maybe this is the right time to move to that. I know things like white refined sugar is not something that we you know, it's something that we need to be moving away from, sugar causes inflammation, as does other types of -
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 20:56
Excessive sugar,
Katie Fogarty 20:57
- excessive sugar.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 20:58
We don't want it to be restrictive, you know, or people feel like you could never have something that culturally was celebratory, a piece of cake or brownie a cookie, you know. But when you look at the studies, women who limit their added sugars, meaning sugars added in cooking and processing, not fruits and vegetables. So I just want, when I say sugars, I'm talking about you know, simple carbohydrates, things added that God didn't put there, you know, so and alcohol, sugars added to alcohol as well. And if you limit those added sugars to less than 25 grams per day, women who do that consistently have much less visceral fat and abdominal fat than women who don't.
Katie Fogarty 21:43
That's fascinating. One of the things that I actually loved about this book too, is that you had a great quiz that had, helps you assess your personal inflammation score, right because there's, there's no one size fits all for anyone I mean, getting to midlife teaches us that but you ask about alcohol intake, which you just shared, processed food, red dye sugar, and then you also ask about healthy foods like fiber rich foods, plants, veggies, how do we get a perfect score on this quiz? Or at least, at least a better grade. Right? Because perfection does not exist but how can we get a better grade on this, this inflammation test?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 22:17
So that quiz was based on a nutrition screening protocol by the American Academy of Dietetics. And it's kind of a back of the envelope cheat sheet for that, you know. The quiz that they, I mean the questionnaire that they use is like 25 pages long, it's this extensive recall, and you get like micro points for different things. I'm like, let me just round up for a few things and see how you know, with common things that people eat, and see how we do. And so, you get positive points for serving, how many servings of fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, legumes, which is like, you know, basically beans. Beans, okra, that type of thing, for nuts, for seeds. There are things that can be anti inflammatory in small amounts, you know, the poison is in the dose, like for alcohol, especially wine. It's not the alcohol that's healthy, it's the resveratrol in the, you know, in the walls of the grape from the wine. And however, you can undo all of those benefits by having too much, right. I mean water we have to have a to survive, but if you get an IV running of, of not normal saline, of just water with nothing added, you'll die. And so you know, you'll become hyponatremic and all the things. So remember the poison is almost always with food, in the dosage. There are lots of things we can tolerate in small amounts, but it's, it's that consistent pattern of behavior.
Katie Fogarty 23:45
And we live in a supersize culture I mean,
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 23:47
Yes.
Katie Fogarty 23:48
I spent two years after college living in Japan and, which really changed the way I think about food and, and portions honestly, like, and you come back to America, you roll into some of these restaurants, it's like who's eating all this stuff? You're like, everything you're served is supersized.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 24:03
Yes, so same. So we did, I did a trip not for two years, but you know, I did a high school trip to Japan with my daughter. And you know, they eat fermented food all day long. And, you know, in the US, I mean, that's a really, that can be a really anti inflammatory food because it's rich in probiotics. And so in the US, we rarely eat anything fermented other than yogurt, and even then in most grocery store yogurt so much things are added to it that you kind of lose the benefit because it's so pro inflammatory.
Katie Fogarty 24:33
Your book has so many useful lists and information tables to help you make food choices which, I was actually surprised by some of them I'm going to be honest. There was one on page 131, I flagged it, it's a table on fiber rich food and I felt like, you know, at the age of 53 I know them. But I would never have guessed that a cooked artichoke would be at the top of that list with three grams of fiber and that kale you know, you know while still having fiber was ranked lower. So, you know, I just felt like that was such a useful information. I love both kale, I love artichokes. I'm happy to eat both. But I would, I didn't have the information I needed to assess which, you know, option had more fiber. So, I would love it if you could just quickly share with our listeners, what are some of the tables and useful information that people can expect from this book, you know, how did you break it down, what's in the book that people can benefit from?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 25:30
So the first few chapters of the book are really a kind of primer in menopause. You know, what the feedback that I've gotten is, is I have so many stories of people's menopausal journeys, including their change in body composition and weight, but also you know, other symptoms and just people feeling like they could see themselves in the book like this happened to them and things that we've never talked about before. Then we kind of launch into nutrition, how we think about it, you know, basic, basic things that I learned that I didn't know. For example, yeah, all the food lists, things that are rich in fiber, the importance of fiber and micronutrients. And, and we also have like a quiz. We, our quiz on it, could your symptoms be related to perimenopause, that's all there. And then, then we go into the pillars. I talk about fasting, we have lots of research articles, you know as to why fasting may be a health benefit to you. We talk about anti inflammatory nutrition. And in the last section, the third pillar is micronutrients. And for weight gain, it's like teaching people that, you know, healthy carbohydrates, what better options would be, not to villainize all carbohydrates as bad. You know, when we look at sugars, you have to break it down into added sugars or naturally occurring sugars. We talk about micronutrients, magnesium, fiber, omega three fatty acids, and all the health benefits of those and how they can be helpful in menopause, what things we're most likely to be deficient in in menopause like vitamin D. And then we talk about macronutrients, you know, ratios of protein, fats, carbohydrates, we have different ones when you're dealing with weight loss versus just maintenance and trying to stay healthy. And so when people are like, I don't actually have a lot of weight to lose, you know, we're going to add in more protein for you, take away you know, substitute, you know, give you more healthy fat, I'm sorry, give you more healthy carbohydrates. And then finally, we kind of, people when we first started the program, we did not have meal plans, we didn't have recipes, people were just kind of figuring it out on their own. And then as we grew, people were like, wait, just tell me what to eat. So, you know, I spent a lot of time explaining the science in the book so that, it's not a meal plan that's going to keep you healthy long term. It's you understanding the science and when you open that pantry at four in the afternoon, when you're hitting a you know, when you're craving something, and that you know, the new habit you're going to form of reaching for a handful of nuts instead of a cookie or you know, and realizing Wait, if I choose this, then I'm going to meet, you know a handful of pumpkin seeds, I'm going to hit my magnesium goals for the day, I'm going to get a lot of fiber, there's beautiful healthy fats here that can keep me full and keep my blood sugar stable longer, you know, starting to make those new connections in your brain rather than just eat this, not that.
Katie Fogarty 28:14
Yeah, absolutely. I mean you're teaching people to fish essentially. Right?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 28:17
Exactly.
Katie Fogarty 28:17
So it's like, you're not handing them like a big you know, salmon. The book really educates you about what you need to be doing to make the healthy choices that work in your personal life. I want to ask you about magnesium because I occasionally take magnesium, when I'm having trouble sleeping I find that that can be really helpful. I did not realize until you shared it in the book and you just reminded me that pumpkin seeds can be a source of this. Where do you land on you know, I know that you promote macro- rich foods as a core part of your diet, but where, what role if any, does supplements play?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 28:54
So that's a great question. Um, supplements are meant to supplement a healthy diet. So the way popular culture is, is like people are walking out of different offices with car payments worth of supplements and buckets and bags. And they take them into my office and I'm like, What are you eating? And they're like, what? You know, and so you know, I do a nutrition questionnaire with every single new patient of, what's she eating? And so, and they're coming in with two trash bags full of these supplements. I'm like, Look, we gotta, we have to start with nutrition first. And if you think you're eating healthy, but you're not getting the results you want, let's take our anti inflammatory nutrition quiz and kind of see where you fall and it might shock you. Then we, then track what you eat. You know if it doesn't trigger an eating disorder, you know spend a couple of weeks just eating what you normally think is healthy and track what you eat and see where you are falling with magnesium and calcium and vitamin D and omegas. Are you reaching even close to what the, you know, FDA recommends is kind of basic levels of what we should be hitting. I can tell you that about half of women are not hitting anywhere, they're only getting half of the amount of fiber there should be getting. They're getting half of the magnesium they should be getting. And so then see if you can use food to raise those levels. Now, if due to intolerances, allergies, costs, whatever, you can't do that after a good college try, then we can talk about supplementation.
Katie Fogarty 30:20
Yeah, absolutely. I love, first of all, I love that I'm cracking up about these trash bags. And I saw something very funny too about someone taking all these supplements and they were joking that they were creating very expensive urine. You know, by taking all of this stuff.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 30:33
Yes, and if you, you know, I have one of those seven day pill packs that I travel with. So it's the bigger box and I tell myself, if I can't fit everything I need into this box, I'm taking too much. Yeah, I have no scientific basis for this, it's just kind of how I limit myself.
Katie Fogarty 30:46
Yeah but I love what you share because one of my three children has, you know, very profound food allergies, and it's challenging to, to get everything that you need from the food that you can safely eat. So you know, the role of supplements is, is, can be important and thank you for flagging that. Mary Claire, I want to switch gears for a minute and move to fuel refocus, which is the other, the third big pillar in your book. And as we said at the beginning, that's the right ratio, right of healthy fats, proteins, the carbs that you outlined. You know, you've worked with 100,000 women on your coaching programs, you just share that you've learned from this kind of firsthand research that, that some women are not getting enough fiber, that many women are not getting enough carbs. What are the mistakes that too many women make in this area? What can we be doing better? How can we optimize fuel refocus in our own lives?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 31:36
I think a lot of us, and I was definitely one of them, are just paying, not you know, the labeling. You just go to the healthy aisle and oh, it's healthy, it's low fat, it's gluten, it's, you know, we're all, and I was definitely subject to this, falling for the fads. And, and what I hope this book does is breaks down nutrition in, and that they have a better understanding of what they put in their bodies and what the benefits are outside. And that a woman just lets go of that number on the scale as a measure of health. You know, it's one measurement, and it's not even a very good one. A better one is the waist hip ratio, it's way more effecting in predicting -
Katie Fogarty 32:16
And what is that? Tell us about that.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 32:18
Yeah so the waist hip ratio is a way to kind of, it's a back of the envelope measurement for visceral fat. And so, first thing in the morning, when you are your skinniest, okay, everybody knows when that time is. You get up, you pee, you rip off the night gown, and you're like, yep, there it is. And so you're going to do two measurements, you need a tape measure, and probably a calculator. I'm not, I'm not that good at math. And so the tape measure, it doesn't matter if you're doing inches or centimeters as long as you're doing the same, right. And so the hip, the waist measurement, the smallest part of your waist. Now, if you don't have a small waist or it goes out, no problem, just pick your belly button. Okay, just pick one area that's consistent in your waistline somewhere.
Katie Fogarty 33:00
And do we pull our breath into measure this or just be relaxed?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 33:03
Sure, pull it in.
Katie Fogarty 33:04
Okay, I just want to be clear.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 33:06
And you know, then you're going to measure, because then you're pulling in that, any kind of bloating that you might have.
Katie Fogarty 33:12
Okay.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 33:13
So then you're going to, the second measurement is around your hips. So you're going to do the widest part of your hips. So around, the biggest widest part of your buttocks. Okay. And so those two numbers, you're going to divide the top by the bottom. If your waist hip ratio is greater than one, most likely you have elevated amounts of visceral fat, and that is something we need to work on. Okay, if your ratio is less than point seven, you probably don't have excessive amounts of visceral fat. And your curves are great. They're not representing any sign of poor health. We have our students track the waist hip ratio throughout their progress, more than the scale. We actually advise people not to get on the scale more than once a week, because we have normal day to day weight fluctuations based on fluid retention.
Katie Fogarty 34:07
That's so smart. I love this, this piece of advice. You know, this, I've never tried this hack. And believe me, I'm like doing it first thing tomorrow morning. Because I think it's interesting, I'm curious about knowing, this is not something actually that any of my doctors have done with me that, to my knowledge. So it's kind of amazing, all these different sort of tools and tricks that sometimes we feel like we're getting like the best kind of care from our doctors, but we really need to take ownership over some of these for ourselves. That's been one of my big takeaways from recording this podcast. I've learned so much about how to better take care of my body than I've been, you know, given information by the doctors in my life. So, you know, thank you for creating a book that makes it you know, very digestible, no pun intended, but you know really breaks it down with very, very practical, actionable tips. We're nearing the end of our time. But before I let you go, I do want to ask you something. You know, you have many recipes in your book as you, as you shared. But you end with a chapter that really caught my eye and made me pay attention. It's a chapter on making this program stick with you, which is so key. And before we move into our speed round, I would love if you could share, like, kind of the big idea, or maybe a really tactical tip that our listeners can take about how to make this an ongoing lifestyle choice.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 35:24
So I think if you get a flat tire, don't slash the other three, and I'm totally stealing this. You know, we all have times in our lives where we get off plan. And you know, it's just life. For example, tomorrow, I'm leaving for a two week trip to Patagonia to go hiking with my husband -
Katie Fogarty 35:46
Okay, take me with you.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 35:47
- and another couple. Yeah, and so I'll have zero control over what they're serving me for meals, you know, it's all a very, you know, regimented thing, and I'm just going to do my best, you know. I'm going to pack a few high protein snacks to make sure I've got that covered. Because we'll be doing 10 for, you know, huge hikes every day. And, which I'm super excited about, I'm probably not going to be able to fast, I'm going to need more calories, than I'm going to be able to get into an eight hour, you know, window. So I will probably do a 12 hour fast and just, that's fine. You know, I'm not going to beat myself up, I'm not going to just, you know, go rampant and eat a whole box of cookies, maybe I will if there's some available. But, you know, it's like when life happens, or you fall back on emotional eating or a cue, just get up the next day, think about why that happened. And then go back to plan. Don't beat yourself up. One meal, one slip up, one piece of cake, glass of wine, whatever, is not going to reshape your health for the rest of your life. That your health, the habits, it's your habits. The habits you're setting in right now are gonna define your health in the next 20 years. And so think about who you want to be and where you want to be in 20 years. Don't think about fitting into, you know, a dress for your daughter's wedding. You know, of course, we all have that goal, you know, but I mean, think about what you want to be doing with potential grandchildren or in your retirement. Do you want to be plagued by chronic disease? You know, you can control that, your health is controllable, especially what it's gonna look like in 20 years. Stop making nutrition about what you're going to look like tomorrow.
Katie Fogarty 37:29
This is the perfect note to end on because the choices that we make today impact our health in a decade, you know, in five years. I love this, this notion that the choices that we're making can help us live longer, healthier, fitter, happier lives. And that's what, that's what we're here for. Thank you so much for coming on today, for sharing so much about The Galveston Diet. I'm going to be linking to everything in the show notes but I want to close with the speed round because there's so much information that this book includes, we can't cover it all right now. And I would love to just do this, kind of one to two word answers, to close. Are you ready?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 38:06
Go.
Katie Fogarty 38:07
Let's do it. All right, writing The Galveston Diet was:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 38:12
Cathartic.
Katie Fogarty 38:13
When I first saw The Galveston Diet on the shelves of a bookstore I felt:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 38:19
Oh tearful, happy.
Katie Fogarty 38:20
Aw. This anti inflammatory food is always in my grocery cart:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 38:26
Avocados.
Katie Fogarty 38:27
Surprise, I know this healthy food is good for you, but I just can't get into it:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 38:32
Kale.
Katie Fogarty 38:33
Oh ,I love kale. All right. Nope, nope and no, please keep this out of your grocery cart:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 38:40
Oh, oh, man. There's very, okay. Things with nitrites.
Katie Fogarty 38:47
Okay.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 38:48
Things with a lot of artificial sugars. I mean, things that are heavy in added sugars and with no nutritive benefit.
Katie Fogarty 38:57
Got it. That's probably like potato chips. I'm guessing Pringles falls into that category.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 39:02
Oh god, I love a Pringle though.
Katie Fogarty 39:03
I love a Pringle too.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 39:04
The salt!
Katie Fogarty 39:04
We eat them when we, we eat them on road trips. So and then, you know, I'm a New Yorker, we don't drive that many places, I have limited Pringles. All right, consider adding this supplement to your daily routine:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 39:17
Omega three fatty acids.
Katie Fogarty 39:18
Nice. This Galveston Diet recipe is a family favorite in my house:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 39:23
The Mary Claire parfait.
Katie Fogarty 39:25
Ooo. After my fast is over, I look forward to this favorite Galveston Diet recipe for breakfast:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 39:32
I like to break my fast with the Mary Claire parfait.
Katie Fogarty 39:35
Okay, perfect. I'm gonna find that and put it in the show notes. Everything in moderation, I look forward to this treat:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 39:41
Alcohol.
Katie Fogarty 39:42
I am not, this is, I'm putting this in there, it's got nothing to do with diet, but because I follow you on Instagram I know that you always have amazing reading glasses and I want to know where they're from.
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 39:53
Hip Optical, they're amazing.
Katie Fogarty 39:56
I love it. Okay, finally, what's your one word answer to complete the sentence, as I age, I feel:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 40:03
Hopeful.
Katie Fogarty 40:04
Nice. Thank you so much. Before we say goodbye, how can our listeners keep finding you, learn more about your coaching programs, and find your book The Galveston Diet?
Dr. Mary Claire Haver 40:12
Galvestondiet.com
Katie Fogarty 40:13
Perfect. Everything's going in the show notes, beauties. This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Before we say goodbye, two things. A quick thank you to everyone who has taken time to write an Apple Podcast review, I see and appreciate you. And, come follow the podcast's sister account over on Instagram. You can find it at @letsageoutloud. The account spotlights even more stories of women making the most of midlife. Have a story that you want to share? Please head over to @letsageoutloud to submit your story. We would love to feature you. Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then, age boldly beauties!