Ep. 170 – Thinking Beyond Medication with Nourishment: Giving Your Body the Chance to Heal with Courtney Contos

I am excited to have Courtney Contos joining me today! After years of working in restaurants, cooking, and sixteen years of teaching cooking, Courtney realized that she could probably cook most anything – even without a recipe. But, what she did not know until recently was how to nourish herself. Food is information. After suffering for 12 years with chronic debilitating rheumatoid arthritis and being told she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, Courtney reversed her symptoms. She now helps people as a board-certified health coach specializing in functional medicine.

Autoimmune diseases and disorders happen when our immune system mistakenly attacks our bodies, and the onset is usually triggered by childhood trauma, a stressful event, or antibiotic therapy. Autoimmune conditions can be systemic, localized, or both, and they tend to impact women twice as often as they do men. Some other common autoimmune disorders include psoriasis, type 1 diabetes, lupus, and multiple sclerosis.

In this episode, Courtney shares her story and talks about healing autoimmunity with nutrition. Stay tuned to find out more!

“When you want to dial in and start to optimize health or reverse a nagging symptom, test for nutritional deficiencies, microbes, toxins, and allergies.”

Courtney Contos

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

• Courtney’s traumatic childhood led to her developing chronic and debilitating rheumatoid arthritis.
• Traditional, western medicine does not do a great job with the prevention and management of chronic diseases.
• The point at which Courtney started thinking outside of the box about her condition.
• The changes Courtney made with her nutrition, that allowed her to heal.
• The benefits of starting your day with a bowl of bone broth.
• The various tests that you should have done to determine your nutrient deficiencies and autoimmune triggers.
• Some of the foods Courtney finds the most healing.
• The importance of pattern interrupting and trying new things.
• Some tips to make bitter vegetables taste more delicious.
• Planning your meals will help you make your cooking more interesting.
• Courtney talks about herbs and spices.
• Some tips for controlling the variables when you’re eating out.
• Some lifestyle choices can help you on your healing journey.
  

Connect with Courtney Contos

On her website

On Instagram 

Book mentioned:

When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate

Connect with Cynthia Thurlow

• Follow on Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn
• Check out Cynthia’s website
• Check Out Dry Farm Wines: www.dryfarmwines.com/cynthiathurlow

About Everyday Wellness Podcast

Welcome to the Everyday Wellness podcast with Cynthia Thurlow! Cynthia is a mom of 2 boys, wife, nurse practitioner, and intermittent fasting and nutrition expert. She has over 20 years experience in emergency medicine and cardiology, but pivoted to focus on food as medicine. She loves to share science-backed practical information to improve your overall well being and is grateful to be interviewing leaders in the health and wellness field.  Her goal with Everyday Wellness is to help her listeners make simple changes to their everyday lives that will result in improved overall wellness and long term health.

Presenter: This is Everyday Wellness, a podcast dedicated to helping you achieve your health, and wellness goals, and provide practical strategies that you can use in your real life. And now, here’s your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow.

Cynthia: Well, today, I am so excited to be joined by Courtney Contos. After years of working in restaurants and cooking, and 16 years of teaching cooking, Courtney realized that she would probably cook most anything even without a recipe. But what she did not know until recently was how to nourish herself. Food is information. After suffering for 12 years with chronic debilitating rheumatoid arthritis and being told she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, she reversed her symptoms and now helps people as a Board-Certified Health Coach specializing in functional medicine. Welcome, Courtney. I’ve been so excited to interview you.

Courtney: I appreciate this time together, and I’m really excited to share my story with your beautiful tribe and to give hope to others. We’re just spreading information and hope so other people can transform. So, this is great time together.

Cynthia: Yeah, and one of the things I was mentioning before we started recording is that typically, a week or two ahead of interviewing certain guests, I’ll reach out on social media and ask, mostly women, that’s mostly who follow me, what they are interested in learning from guests. So, I’ve incorporated that into areas that I definitely want to touch upon. But when we talk about autoimmune disorders or autoimmune disease, it’s important for us to in the context explain what that is, because there may be people listening who aren’t familiar with that term, and really defining it, and explaining that it’s all about the immune system mistakenly attacking your own body. It can be systemic meaning thinking of things like lupus or could be localized. I know for you, you have rheumatoid arthritis, and obviously, that attacks the joints, but obviously also localized and systemic, because I’m sure it wasn’t just one joint that was impacted.

The other really interesting thing about autoimmune disorders is that they largely impact women much more than men at 2:1 ratio. Some of the more common examples, we have talked about rheumatoid arthritis briefly, psoriasis, type 1 diabetes, lupus, multiple sclerosis are all examples. There are a lot of them, even celiac. Those are all terms I’m sure people have heard of. But what I think is really interesting is when I was doing my reading, because I have had some autoimmune disorders as well, there’s usually a trigger or an impetus. So, as you were going through your healing journey, was there’s something that happened, either a big stressful event, or you got treated with antibiotics, or something that had been the initial trigger for you developing an autoimmune disorder? So, I’d love for you to start from there talking about your story, and what brought you, and lead you up to that initial diagnosis.

Courtney: Yeah, absolutely. We’ll dive into that. First of all, I should say, I feel I have all of the above. Yes, antibiotics. Yes, childhood with trauma and alcoholic parents, and sure, luxurious French food in my father’s restaurant, and a glamorous upbringing in downtown Chicago but yet, alcoholism and not growing up in this environment where I did not know how to handle stress. All of this got buried, I just got goosebumps, actually into myself, because it’s still with us today. If we have memories from childhood, we have also those unplanned, pleasant memories, and they’re in ourselves. So, trauma. I know I’ve read too a lot of times that when you’re diagnosed, you can almost do a map of 8 to 10 years before, was there a trigger event around that time because it takes a while to really evolve and for symptoms to evolve. For me, that was my father’s death. It was just, I think a cumulative of those things.

Then of course, there were some diet choices growing up, but I think, a lot of us had it. Then it’s like, “Well, why me?” Well, you could add on, I guess the trauma just really deep trauma, and I just was diving into the work of Gabor Maté, and his book, The Stress. Was it the Stress Lies Within or I forget that one, do you know the one I’m talking about?

Cynthia: Yep. Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Yeah. That work of just healing all that old trauma. For me, that was a big piece of it. I was diagnosed because I had toe pain. Toe pain, that’s excruciating, the sheath alone, just one sheath was traumatizing, I could not believe the amount of pain. When you often are diagnosed with these conditions or trying to figure out what’s going on in the beginning like toe pain, or you go on a slew of like doctor’s visits and you end up with the podiatrist, and you’re here and you’re there, and then finally it comes down to the rheumatoid arthritis. At that point, I’d never heard of it in my life. I guess, I probably was around 29 years old, and I’d never heard of it. I started crying. I was like, “Am I can I get married? What’s my life going to be like?” I was told that, “Well, there’s no cure, and that you’re going to go on all different types of medicine to control it.” That’s how it started. It was just in one toe.

Then, I got hit by an oil tanker, jackknifed on black ice and it came straight at me, and I thought I was going to die. I literally screamed, “Not now.” What happened was two hands on the steering wheel, a foot on the brake, and after that, it just really spiraled. Both my wrists auto-fused, and my foot now has eight midfoot fusions in it. But it was a journey. This was 12 years of intense, high tolerance to pain, lots of pain, and why can we tolerate so much pain? Does that go back to childhood? I’m fascinated by all that, because I was able to tolerate a whole childhood of trauma. Now, I’m experiencing this pain and I’m able to somehow try to function in life too with it.

They’re deep, these journeys, and my hope is to help people find a way out a lot sooner so that they don’t have all the surgeries I had that were unnecessary and really just a life of pain. The rheumatoid arthritis, you are told that there’s nothing you can do, and I know you’ve heard this a lot too that there’s no food that can help you, there’s nothing. They actually told me that I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. My husband and I, we were there together in this appointment, and it’s very emotional, and I really couldn’t walk at that point. So, I’ve been carried. I spent at least 10 of those years being carried. I remember my wedding day like, “Am I going to be able to walk down the aisle or are these shoes going to work? Should I take them off.” Just so much extra stress. So, I hope that we can spread hope to other people that there is a way out because there is a positive end to this story.

Cynthia: Yeah, and I have to congratulate you on being a survivor. I too had an alcoholic parent, and that definitely formed me into the person I am today. I always say, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I truly believe that. Because if you grew up as a child in a home where you have an alcoholic parent, you usually end up being one of a couple personality types, and I was the pleaser, because I had good grades, I didn’t get into trouble, because I didn’t want to disrupt– even though my parents were divorced. I didn’t want to disrupt things, and I tended to gravitate towards being a little bit more quiet and introverted, because there was a lot of yelling, and screaming, and abuse, and things that went on. So, I have to applaud you for surviving, growing up in that environment, and obviously, each one of us have our own story. But I know growing up with an alcoholic parent is very stressful.

Unfortunately, it’s something that I have to as an adult, I’ve learned over and over again is that, when we talk about trauma, it doesn’t have to be something catastrophic. It could be little micro traumas that add up over time. If you grow up with multiple little traumatic events that occur in your childhood, they really do carry over into our adulthood until we actually face and address these things. So, I just wanted to take an opportunity to acknowledge you and to say that I’m so grateful that you are where you are, because this is part of your journey, and I believe on so many levels that when we’ve experienced those types of traumas when we’re younger, it either makes us stronger or can really drag us down, and we can end up falling into patterns that we’ve seen throughout our lifetime.

So, it sounds like you were diagnosed– and for me being a nurse practitioner, I hear toe pain, and I automatically think gout, and I’m sure you probably got misdiagnosed at least initially, because for anyone that’s listening, gout in the great toe, when you first look at books where people were writing, talking about painful toes, and that’s something actually called podagra, and I saw a lot of it when I was in inner city Baltimore. It can be caused by a variety of things. But I’m sure you’ve got mis diagnosed at least initially. People assuming it was gout, absolutely didn’t fit the profile of someone with gout either.

Courtney: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Going into the rheumatologist office for 12 years, you and many others, most people, you go into those visits because you’re in pain. It’s been three months, you haven’t seen them, you’re in pain, you’re suffering, and you finally have this appointment because it’s hard to get them. You have so much hope. I could almost be teary eyed now thinking about pushing the elevator button, really amping up like, “What questions am I going to ask?” You have so much hope and all they want to do is give you different types of medicine. They just want to change the medicine, and you leave there, and I remember telling them, this is just so sad. It’s just there has to be, I always believed a way out. It was just my hero’s journey to go through that time, and then find my own way out but it’s really sad because they don’t have an answer, and you can end up I think feeling a little bit of anger when you do get better. But I realized the best thing I can do is just spread love to all those people out there treating these chronic diseases. They just don’t know any better. That’s fine. That’s their path too.

Cynthia: Absolutely, and I think for anyone that’s listening, there’s a role and a place for allopathic traditional western medicine, I always say. If you have an emergency and urgency, that’s where arguably we’re some of the bests in the world in terms of care. We don’t do a great job with chronic disease management prevention, and we sure as heck get very little to no nutrition education. So, is it any wonder that when a patient comes in with a symptom, we’re really looking to prescribe a medication because that’s what we’ve been taught? We want to be sensitive and I always say like, “I want to be sensitive,” but it also speaks to the fact that we need to be thinking beyond just looking at medications.

When we’re talking about this autoimmune journey, there’s usually a trigger. I always find that, like I mentioned, it could be a stressful situation, it could be internal trauma. antibiotic therapy is a big one. I always like to share that I develop psoriasis after being treated for Lyme. So, I always say, I’m grateful I got treated for Lyme, was caught early, have the classic bullseye rash. Then six months later, developed psoriasis. But I never made the connection, because in the traditional western medicine mindset, you wouldn’t expect to develop leaky gut after being treated with antibiotic therapy. So, I always like to be sensitive to that. But I think it’s important for who are listening and there’s usually a trigger.

Then, symptoms can go from mild to severe depending on the individual. Obviously, for you, your symptoms were fairly significant. If you went from being walking, talking, toe pain all the way to needing to be in a wheelchair, needing to be carried. At what point during your journey, did you decide that this prescription medication route and the traditional way they were addressing your rheumatoid arthritis was not working for you, not serving you, or you started thinking outside the box? When did that happen?

Courtney: Mm-hmm. Well, during those 12 years, I never gave up hope. I tried everything from bee sting therapy. I remember going to an apiary and having this sweet man sting my wrist 10, 12 times, and I did multiple visits like that. I cleaned up my water, I grew food. The only problem was that those really never fell into places because there was no framework. There was no structure, and there really wasn’t the deep dive. I had always been trying and had hope, and it wasn’t until a couple beautiful things aligned at the same time. Just like in that hero’s journey, the mentor shows up and it was my best friend from third grade, Dr. Caroline Schier from Wildwood Functional Medicine said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were suffering so much I can help you. I really think I can help you.” I had that call with her, and at the same time, Seamus Mullen, a wonderful chef who wrote the book, Real Food Heals, who had a similar journey, a chef with rheumatoid arthritis, came out on the other side. I had been trying to get in touch with him for about a year. He’s a tough one to get ahold of.

My spice therapist, [unintelligible [00:13:21] in New York City, I was coming up to do an event at my cooking school, and he saw me limping, and he said, “I have a friend.” Right away, I knew I said, “Oh, my gosh.” In 24 hours, I was on the phone with Seamus Mullen, and he gave me so much hope. Now, I have this hope angel. Just being able to talk to him, did this really happen? Because you’ve been told for 12 years, there’s nothing you can do. I really wanted to just this whole time, just talk to Seamus hear, it from him, yes, this is true, and he gave me a framework and it was the same framework that matched up with my doctor. And off I went, and then I just never looked back. Within six months, my markers were starting to reverse and within a year and to this day, there’s no rheumatoid factor anymore, and the numbers, they just kept getting better and better.

Cynthia: What do you think was the significant change about your nutritional program that impacted– and obviously, you’re a trained chef, a very successful one. I’ve actually had the opportunity to bring you on as a guest expert in some of my groups. So, what do you think was the biggest inflammatory component or biggest food group that you were consuming that was really driving the rheumatoid arthritis and the significant degree of inflammation you were experiencing?

Courtney: Yeah, I think it was a double whammy. I was using industrial seed oils constantly. Canola oil, we actually thought that was a decent oil. To top it off, I was allergic to it. I had an allergy test done, and that was number one, the ELISA, ELI– love that test, the ELISA Test. It changes. I do this test every six months to this day, but it was canola oil, honey, and lemon. Well, I’m Greek, and I was a chef using canola oil and everything down to banana bread. I think that was the big thing, and then you can pile on gluten, you can add on to that dairy, and I was using clean meats, I was doing organic. So, that’s not going to I don’t think really make a huge impact. It was really the allergies.

When I think of health, what I learned was, when you really want to dial in and start to optimize health or reverse a nagging symptom, its nutritional deficiencies. No big deal. Easy test. Takes an investment that you’re well worth. The nutritional deficiencies, allergies, and microbes, so what’s happening in your gut, so you probably need a stool test. No one had ever done that. My doctor said we’re going to do that, I thought, “Why would we do that?” That was really when I started to understand the whole connection with gut health. You’ve got nutritional deficiencies, allergies, toxins, a huge category, we could have a whole two hours just talking about that, and microbes, and stressors, so the traumas, and then you have all the environmental inputs, the light, all the things that you’ve shared on your podcast here too. Wearing blue blockers, cleaning up your water, what is the breath work you’re doing? Are we overbreathing? So, just tuning into that, and then of course, nourishment.

I had a client, texted me this morning. “I don’t know what to eat for breakfast,” because she’s not having– She’s got her allergies, and then she’s not doing gluten. I said the best thing that has always helped me for breakfast is a beautiful bowl of broth. If you’re a vegetarian, fine, but I’m not. I have a bone broth, and then I add vegetables and leftover meats to it. Then Dr. Cowan’s vegetable powders, turmeric or ginger, you want to make it Thai, you want to make it Mexican, you want to make an Italian, but starting your day with that broth is beautiful and energizing. So, yeah, that’s a big answer to your question.

Cynthia: Yeah, no, and I think we talk a lot on the podcast about the major inflammatory foods like gluten, grains, dairy, soy, processed sugars, alcohol, and it’s not surprising that you started making those connections that when you started pulling some of these inflammatory foods out, you started to feel a whole lot better. I’m curious, when you initially did the stool testing, did they find the micro Prevotella? I know that’s– Yeah, and if you’re using the GI-MAP which I talked a lot about, this DNA based stool test, I know when I’m working with clients, I always tell them just because this comes up, it doesn’t automatically mean, but this is the microbe that is really implicated in rheumatoid arthritis. I’m curious if that was something that they found.

Courtney: They did find that. In my research, I was sad and happy to learn that even and I think Switzerland actually tests people for that like way ahead of time before any symptoms. How amazing if we could do that here? Yes, I did have that, and I don’t have that now, and that gut test is just is really key and the people that I help, I always offer them the resources in the beginning, the GI-MAP, the nutritional testing, and the allergy test. If you want to make this investment, take it to the next level, discover what your red flags are ahead of time, even if you feel great now, we all probably have a little a few things we can tweak to just be preventative.

Cynthia: Absolutely. I think it’s super helpful for people to do food sensitivity testing, or do allergy testing and/or stool testing, micronutrient deficiencies. I’ve been doing a lot of work with Cronometer where clients can plug in their meals, and it will actually tell you. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Marty Kendall. But he’s this amazing engineer, researcher in Australia. Engineers have such a fresh take on all the medical stuff, and the health, and wellness. They just view it through a very unique lens. They’re very data driven, which I know sometimes I tease my husband, because he’s an engineer. But there are a lot of advantages when you’re learning things from an engineer. He has developed this app where it can map out where your nutrient deficiencies are. But I agree with you that at least once a year, you should really be looking at these studies to get a sense for, “Am I doing pretty well, or do I need to clean some things up?”

Certainly, looking at autoimmune triggers on the GI-MAP is one way to really look at that. It’s amazing how I did read the research and prep for this interview really looking at, and I believe the work was done in Sweden. They were talking about this in the intestinal tract. They actually can find this Prevotella and it can be a precursor to even developing symptoms. For people who are not wanting to clean up their diets or don’t really want to get on the band with a lifestyle changes where they don’t feel badly yet or they’re just disconnected from their bodies, it can be a really powerful tool to maybe push them towards making some changes sooner rather than later, so they can save themselves from a diagnosis. As you said, I think most people that get diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder feel hopeless. By the time they get diagnosed, they’ve been suffering for a while, and I in no way, shape, or form am trying to compare my skin issue with psoriasis to certainly the degree of suffering and your own physical journey but we as clinicians really need to be more proactive thinking ahead as opposed to just being reactive.

Along your journey, when you finally got to a place where you’re realizing that food really heals, in your estimation, what are the some of the most healing foods? You mentioned bone broth, which is definitely a favorite of mine, and I love that you made that suggestion to that client who was struggling with trying to re-engineer her breakfast and was probably feeling lost if she wasn’t doing gluten and dairy.

Courtney: Mm-hmm. Well, I think one of the big things that I’ll just start off with when I think of these health journeys, and especially nutrition is pattern interrupting, really need to shake it up and maybe even erase what we think nourishment is and just start fresh. If breakfast to you was that, well, maybe it can be something different now. Let’s just maybe get rid of the word ‘breakfast’ or maybe we’re fasting, but really pattern interrupting because you cannot get well in the same environment you got unwell. It will be your food, it’s going to be all kinds of things in your home environment that you might want to change up. We’ve got to pattern interrupt and that includes even your drive to work. Maybe you need to take a different path. You really need to shake up your life. Sometimes, people need to even move. That can be healing.

But with nourishment, I think, I always think of a varied and diverse diet. My sweet doctor and friend was like a broken record like, “Oh my gosh, varied and diverse diet.” When I go to the grocery store and I teach this with my clients too when we’re talking about nourishment is, look at all the beautiful produce and think what haven’t you had lately? Because if you’re just buying the same broccoli, and cauliflower, and carrots all the time your body is going to develop nutritional deficiencies, and it’s going to be missing out on some other great opportunities to make you feel good. Look at the celery root, look at the radishes, and if you’re not familiar with what to do with them, people can email me. I love answering culinary questions. I always say, I’m your chef friend for life. So, that’s fine. Reach out because I want people to try new foods. Be brave, be courageous, grab the celery root, grab the dandelion greens, even though you think they’re a weed, and they’re gross, and they should be killed, but the dandelion greens are fantastic. I go out now here in New England and I pick them every other day, and just throw them in the soup, or in the omelet, or just like you can hide them in your veggie pancakes.

Having a variety and veggie pancakes is one of the first recipes that I’ll share with a client because the goal is to increase your vegetables. I really feel like especially when you’re wanting to repair and nourish your gut, I think about cooked vegetables a little easier to digest and maybe more gentle on the system, and so sure that goes with stews and broth, but, two, it’s nice to have a veggie pancake once a week and you can put so many different foods in there, because we want to have a variety every day, and we were hoping to eat the rainbow a little bit every day, and then we’re also hoping to get six to eight cups of vegetables. So. I feel the veggie pancakes, my five-minute vegetable soup, and the bone broth, those things can help. But with veggie pancakes you can add eggs if you’re having them, and then you throw in your dandelion greens, they can be quick too. So, maybe some frozen organic, cauliflower, mushrooms, and then I’ll think of broccoli, definitely onions. Lots of sliced garlic, not pressed but sliced garlic, so it gets a little crispy around the edges when you’re making them, and you can use the paleo flour just a little bit to bring it together, and then I will make them Indian like with garam masala or a curry powder, and you can make them a little Thai with Thai chili paste. You can put an Italian seasoning. So, they can change. It’s a recipe that evolves depending on what’s happening with your mood and in your kitchen that day. But it’s a great way to get a lot of vegetables and you can add turmeric into that. I definitely like to use turmeric, use ginger, and get some of those power foods in there.

I’m a chocolate lover. I have a sweet tooth and I’m always battling with, and I’ve figured out a way to make some desserts that are just sweetened with one or two dates. Then, I’ll add spirulina into, I call it dirt because I don’t have time to form it into truffle. So, I have this cute glass jar. It would be a nice truffle if you had time to roll it, but instead of just put it all in there and I have a spoonful. But you can sneak those power ingredients into things like that. Like ground flax, and spirulina, and turmeric, and you don’t notice it’s there, but it’s those hidden power foods tucked in.

Cynthia: I can tell you my mouth is now watering hearing about what sounds to be a very savory pancake. I think most of us think of pancakes, and we think of maple syrup, and they’re very sweet, and they’re probably going to spike our blood sugar, and this sounds like that’s the antithesis. But I love that you are encouraging individuals to really feel empowered when they go in the grocery store, because I think it’s so easy to get into a rut. Especially for those of us that are non-chefs, I try to go to the farmers market, I tried to pick seasonal things. There are definitely things my kids really gravitate towards, and summer is like a heavy summer fruit season. My kids will go through buckets of berries, and they’ll have tropical fruits, and so it’s easy to get them to eat, and we always have apples on the counter. I’m always encouraging them to grab something fairly healthy.

But I think most, if not all Americans eat a lot more fruit and a lot less vegetables. I know just from my reading that a lot of our vegetables have been engineered to be less bitter. I think that’s flavor profile, when we’re talking about bitter greens or maybe veggies that aren’t more bland tasting, people gravitate away from them, because they’re so used to sweet. So, I agree with you that, trying new things.

It’s funny. We had a foray into root vegetables over winter, and my family can tolerate rutabagas but they don’t like parsnips. Parsnips were a big no. I was so excited, because my mom is Italian, and I’m like 25%, I’m like a scooch Italian, and so, root vegetables are very Italian thing. You roast pan vegetables, and that’s what you do with them. My kids will tolerate Brussel sprouts, and they love things like that. But parsnips got a big no. It was a big thumbs down. I said, it was just an experiment. We don’t ever have to make them again. But I agree with you trying something new, even if it’s a new protein. But I do think that people need to eat more veggies, less fruit.

I always love to tell the story that when I was still working in cardiology as an NP, I had a lovely vasculopath. So, that means he had vascular disease from his head to his toes, also diabetic, and I sent him to the diabetes educator thinking maybe she can help him augment his diet, because I seem to be getting nowhere with him. He came back and he said, “Oh, it was great. I learned so much,” and I was like, “Fantastic. You’re going to count carbs. Great.” I said, “What did you eat yesterday?” He started talking about his diet, and it’s like not great. Then he mentions, he’s had six bananas. I said, “If you have a problem with fruit sugar just in general, fruit sugar fructose is not good for you.” So, I said, “If you were to tell me I had a quarter of a banana, half a banana, and I only thought once a week that would be one thing. But in one day, you blew your carb counting for the whole week.” So, I found it really curious. I don’t know if you see some of your clients struggling with the same issues that they really like that sweet flavor profile as opposed to the savory, salty, bitter greens flavor profiles.

Courtney: Yes, it’s huge, and a lot of the people I help are, just like you said, stuck in a rut. They’re often like moms who feel like they’ve lost themselves, and they’re cooking the same thing, and they just feel like blech, and they want to just switch up their lifestyle a little. I can offer culinary inspiration all day, 24 hours like that’s my jam. When I think of bitter foods, well, first of all, I’ve got to go back to those parsnips. Next winter, let’s try adding those parsnips into a mash. Boil your rutabaga, your celery root, and a few parsnips, and maybe a carrot, and then mash it all up, and the secret to making that taste good is going to be sherry vinegar, a splash of sherry vinegar. You need that acid. When I think of cooking, I’m always balancing the flavors, so sweet, sour, salty, spicy, bitter. When you think of bitter foods, what cuts bitterness, acid. Acid cuts bitterness. So, if you’re cooking collard greens, kale, dandelion greens, Brussel sprouts, any of these bitter vegetables, no way, I don’t want to eat them if you’re just sautéing them in butter, or boiling them, or doing it’s something simple. They need acid, and they need some of those other components too. If you sauté kale in a nice healthy fat, and then you think, well what flavor profiles, what is it missing because you’ve got bitter. It’s straight up bitter. I need salts. Great. You could use some acids. You’re going to add apple cider vinegar, maybe lemon, maybe sherry vinegar, some kind of an acid, and then maybe a few chili flakes. It wouldn’t hurt. A pinch of chili flakes or little jalapeno has more vitamin C than any other vegetables. So, mince a little jalapeno.

Then, if you need to balance that sweetness still, but you can slowly wean off of, what if you chopped a half a date and minced it, and mix it in. So, now when it hits your mouth, you’re going to be more excited. It’s going to be actually delicious, and it’s going to make you want more.

I taught a Thanksgiving cooking class for 12 years, and there was always someone in it that’s like no Brussel sprouts for me, but when we added Dijon mustard, which is our acid, we added walnuts, we added a little maple syrup. When you’re balancing out the bitter vegetables, it helps you want to eat them more, and you can wean off the sweet components of your cooking Brussel sprouts. Well, maybe you add a teaspoon of maple syrup, and maybe eventually you don’t need it. But that helps.

Cynthia: Yeah. No, and I love that, and you’ve got such unique ones, because of your culinary background, which there are things that you’re saying, I’m like, “I never thought about that. I never thought about that.” But it’s interesting. In my house, my husband has taken over cooking. I used to do the bulk of it. Now, that we’ve been 15, 16 months and he hasn’t done any business travel whatsoever, being the engineer, he loves to batch cook, he finds it very therapeutic on Sunday afternoons. He’ll just do a bunch of batch cooking, generally focused on proteins. But much like you do, he has a very specific flavor profile. He’s always experimenting like he will take hours and make some elaborate Thai dish. Now, it may not be appreciated by my children, but I can certainly appreciate it.

One of the things I definitely want you to touch on during our conversation, I know you did such a beautiful job with this with one of my monthly groups, pantry things that can really take your food up a notch that aren’t strange, that you’re going to be able to get a lot of use out of. Because one of the things I find is, I’ll dive down a rabbit hole, I’ll buying ingredient for recipe that maybe a food blogger has recommended, and it’s turned out beautifully but then I don’t know what to do with it. As we downsized, we sold our house. Now, we’re in a rental, we’re going to go into another rental before our new build is completed. And I told my husband, I said, we have been purging like crazy. I’m just putting free stuff out on my front steps here, and I just said, I’m getting rid of things that we just don’t use, because it seems so silly. I want to use the spices, and I want to use the special salts. One thing I talk a lot about is how much just salting my food, I grew up and as most of us, may be not for you, because you grew up with a culinary parent. But where like salt was bad, and salt shouldn’t be used, and salt contributes to all these health problems, and it’s like a whole new world got opened up when I started using really high-quality salt and salting my food. My kids think I’m nuts. But I even travel with these little things of salt, because I don’t want the crappy iodized salt in the restaurant. I want my real salt. I want the real thing.

So, I would love for you to tangentially touch on this because I think it’s helpful for people to understand like, you don’t have to spend hours, and hours, and hours in the kitchen to have something that’s healthy, lights up your palate, and makes you crave continuing to eat healthy food, and really that is the construct that so many of us work within is recalibrating our palate so that we are craving healthy food as opposed to the highly processed junk that is what the standard American diet is, unfortunately.

Courtney: Yeah, absolutely. It comes down to eat real foods, whole foods, and try to cook at home as much as possible. Where does that inspiration come from, and how do we carve out the time to do it? That’s the way I help people do. So often, it’s like let’s plan to plan to cook. I just not even just planning to cook. You’ve got to plan to plan the cook. A couple things coming up. One I wanted to share, the salad bar idea in the refrigerator because I think it’s a really great tip is to whatever day of week, you and your husband’s doing the batch cooking, I think having one day, the week Sunday is really good. I guess you’re preparing ahead of time is doing the salad bar in the fridge. I use all glass jars. There’s no plastic. But whatever you’re going to use, chop up your vegetables so that you can have quick things to grab or quick things to sauté. It looks beautiful and it feels good. It doesn’t take a lot of time because you’re going to do it later anyways. So, just organize it, so you have everything clean and prepped.

Radishes are great snacks, carrots are great snacks. Try something different like yucca, it’s one of my favorites. Once a week, we have boiled yucca with lime juice, and lots of crispy garlic, and that’s a Cuban thing, but it’s a nice healthy starch, and it’s actually one of the superfoods. But when you think of your spice cabinet, I have a nourishing club coming out in June that I’m going to do a once a month, walk everyone through this because it’s a big topic. What do you have in your kitchen, everyone’s going to be different? But let’s just talk about spices for a moment. Whole spices last a year and ground spices last about six months. Now, it’s going to be like shocking to some people I know.

Cynthia: [laughs]

Courtney: Oh, my gosh. When you smell your spices, you don’t want them to smell like an old shag rug. It should make you hungry. You should get excited about it. So, take a look at your spices and then when you are now bringing in new spices, can you buy them in smaller amounts or can you think about just using them more? I think that’s where more of bravery and courage comes in to say, “Well, I’m going to try this powder that I bought. I’m going to use it.” Bone broth is the most wonderful vessel waiting for all these odds and ends, curry powders, and spices that you have in your cabinet. Food is information. Spices are also information.

When you mentioned salt, I also think about salt is information. It’s a mineral profile. Different salts have different mineral profiles. I like to have at least three that I’m rotating. I have three jars of salt. The Baja Gold from the Sea of Cortez has super high mineral content. Real Salt is fabulous, Celtic Sea salt, so they’re all different pieces of information for your body. Rotate yourselves. Even rotate your peppercorns. Peppercorns, it’s like the most magical world. There are so many types of peppercorns out there. [unintelligible 00:35:29] Crew in Montreal, a wonderful family-owned business that ships to the United States has just a fun selection of spices but especially peppercorns. Think about what you like. Do you like Indian food, do you like Thai food? Because then you want to probably have some spices connected to those ethnic cuisine.

Then, I think of herbs. This time of year, I hope if you’re living in a place that you can have one pot or a big herb garden, do it because it is so rewarding to go out there. If it’s just a pot of rosemary in your kitchen, that is going to bring you joy in a kitchen. So, we want to think about building enthusiasm, building confidence. Some people have got to take smaller steps, some people already are like have the herb garden. Well, great. But some people don’t even know which herbs to buy or how to store them. Herbs come in two categories. There’s fines herbs, which are the delicate parsley, chervil, chives, cilantro. Those you’d never want to have dried because they don’t have that resume foresty sticky life to them, like thyme, rosemary, sage, marjoram, oregano. Those herbs you can buy dried, and they’re fantastic to even grow yourself, and have dry them or buy them already dried. Herbs are wonderful to have around. One of the best salad dressings is some herbs, whether it’s parsley, chives, cilantro, basil, it could all go together with a little bit of tahini and lemon juice. That salad dressing now can also become a dip for that salad bar that’s in the fridge, and it can also become a sauce for the seared salmon or roast chicken. So, maybe on that batch Sunday making a couple of base dressings, and dips, I think most salad dressings that’s not vinaigrette can become some a sauce or a dip.

Using seeds and nuts, if you’re soaking and maybe sprouting them, but that’s another big conversation. But adding some nuts to your salad dressings, and then when we say adding nuts, it’s not just almonds, it’s a variety. So, Brazil nuts, beautiful. Selenium, we probably all could have a little variety with our nuts. So, Selenium or so Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, and as you have a base salad dressing, you have different nuts, you’re going to get different flavors. So, it can be simple where, “Oh, now I have a hazelnut lemon vinegar red. Oh, now I have a walnut, sherry vinegar bread.” It’s all with the same recipe, the same formula.

Cynthia: Oh, I love that. Your enthusiasm is so pervasive in your discussion. You light up when you start talking about food. It’s interesting for me because we have been so conditioned as a society that– we’ve been conditioned that food is complicated, cooking is too hard. The processed food industry wants us to buy their shortcuts, and there’s nothing better than batch cooking, or roasting a piece of meat, or chicken, or fish, and just using really simple ingredients. I think that’s one of the reasons why and the pandemic has just magnified this for our family. We actually like eating at home because we can control the ingredients, we can control the quality of what’s used. I don’t have to worry about the seed oils, which you already alluded to. For anyone that’s listening, if you haven’t listened to my podcast with Dr. Cate Shanahan, she’s one of the big MD researchers who’s really drawing a lot of attention to seed oils are toxic, they are highly inflammatory, they are rancid, etc. That’s soybean, canola, sunflower, safflower, etc.

There’s so many alternatives, but you really have to educate yourself and I invite everyone to, if you’re not already doing this, read your food labels because those seed oils are nearly everything, and it’s really cut down on the amount of processed food we bring into the house. I have teenagers. So, we do have some chips, and we do some pretzels, but we source them from higher, better companies that don’t use those things, and it’s amazing to me. When we go out, my husband now zeros in, if we go to a party, and there’s a big bag of Doritos, and there’s no judgment, but there’s no way in heck I’m touching that. There’s just no way it’s happening.

The other thing that I think is really interesting is if you go to most restaurants even if you eat out, you can ask what oil is the salad dressing made with, and 99.9% of the time, it’s a seed oil or they’ll say like an olive oil blend aka seed oil. I’ve actually recently gone out to lunch with some girlfriends and I brought my own salad dressing that I made, and I pass it around the table and the poor waitress could not have been more gracious, and I just said, I just prefer not consuming those foods because they don’t give me any benefits. So, what are some of the suggestions you make to your clients when I know, we’re still emerging from the past 15, 16 months, but what are some of the suggestions you make for your clients if they’re eating out, or if they’re going to a family or friend’s house for a meal, and they’re feeling a little stressed? Because maybe at home, they can control the variables, and they can’t when they’re not in the kitchen where they’re eating out?

Courtney: Yeah, that’s just said, first of all, I just love that, you’re bringing your olive oil.

Cynthia: [laughs]

Courtney: I love [crosstalk] eat with you. I think they have so much fun. When I think of eating out, well, the first thing that I always do, because you’re absolutely right. There’s really no salad dressing in any restaurant unless you’re in Hearth in New York City, and maybe another handful that I don’t know about. But it’s pretty much been– It’s too expensive, let’s face it, for restaurants to be using, a high-quality olive oil is going to start at $25, $30 and go up. You bring your own oil, there’s nothing wrong with that, and I think all of a sudden, I say that out loud, and I can feel someone saying, “Oh, gosh, maybe I’m embarrassed or I’m with this person, and what’s my mom going to think,” and I have clients that are like that too. When I go to my mom’s I can’t talk about this stuff, because she doesn’t understand.

I think the language that’s helped me a lot is that, I’ve cracked my own code. This is my code, it is no judgment, like you said, and this is just what’s helping me feel better. If you can have that little language too in case you get into a situation where people are like, “Oh, she doesn’t eat the Doritos.” This is just for me. There’s no judgement. It’s just my code. But when going out, the first thing I say to the waiter is, even though I’m not anymore, but I am allergic to canola oil, period. Because it’s going to be on everything. So, I just want to make that clear, because you don’t say the word ‘allergy,’ they don’t really take it serious. It has to be like that way for me.

Then I order things, and I order like a steak or that has to be good meat. But honestly, it’s really hard. You want to order as clean as possible, and order your meat grilled or just cooked on the flat top. If they want to use butter, then that would be fine too. So, it’s either use butter or just cook it dry. Put it on some vegetables or salad greens, and then I’ll have my own oil, and I always ask for lemons, and I also have my own sea salts. I’ve been known to even bring hot sauce depending on where we’re going. So, no problem.

When you’re at these events, I had a client recently going to a beautiful birthday, it was either a birthday or huge Latin celebration, big, all-out fun festival. Food truck– It just sounded so amazing. What am I going to do? And I said, well think about what’s going to be like, the cake, how far is that going to set you back because she wanted to have something, but she just knew it was going to be hard. So, we decided that you know what, maybe a glass of champagne is going to be that you can nurse for an hour is going to be a lot better than cake or any fried foods, because I consider those oils probably worse than the one glass of bubbles. We talked it out and figured out like, “How can she go, and still–” We call it a controlled burn. So, you have something that your body’s going to be able to balance out. But I think those oils and the side effects of all of a sudden introducing gluten having not had it for months is going to be a longer healing recovery than, say, a glass of bubbles. That was just one situation, but that’s how I’ll work with people and talk through it, and help them go in to these events ready to feel strong.

Cynthia: Yeah, it’s all about feeling empowered. I think it’s important for people to understand, I’ve had people who’ve been gluten free for years, and they think every once in a while, they’ll have some gluten, and I just remind them that then I learned this through Dr. Tom O’Bryan that, each time you reintroduce gluten, you set off this inflammatory process that can last up to six weeks. So, it’s really not that benign. What I’ve started doing is actually taking a supplement with me, so when I eat in restaurants, it’s like a gluten dairy arrest. So, I always say, even if I explain that I’m gluten and dairy free, you know you’re going to get exposed to some of these things. It’s just inevitable unless you’re in a kitchen that’s 100% gluten free and that’s not realistic. So, from my perspective, feeling empowered, I just know that I do specific things when I go out.

During the pandemic, when a lot of people were ramping up their drinking, I actually stopped drinking and I think that’s been really interesting for me as not having really had much of any alcohol over the last 15, 16 months, when I have consumed it, I felt so poorly that I just decided I was like, “I’ve already done the gluten grains dairy thing. It’s not a big deal if I add in alcohol too.” So, feeling empowered and feeling comfortable articulating what works best for you, like one side of my family thinks I’m absolutely bananas. So, they gently tease me. I don’t even pay attention to it anymore. I’m like, “Listen, this is what works for us, this is what works for me. I don’t feel like I have to explain myself anymore,” which is a good thing. For anyone that’s listening, and you feel like you have to explain your idiosyncrasies, sometimes, just saying this is just the way things are. I’m happy, excluding these things from my diet. I don’t judge the choices you make. But when you come to work with me as if you’re working with me or certainly working with you, we’re going to definitely give you the best guidance, and I always say good, better, best.

It’s always given your circumstances, what’s the best decision you can make. If you’re at a picnic, where there’s, I always say, gravitate towards the probably the meat and the vegetables, and you generally will be better off than if you gravitate towards the sweets, and the cookies, and the alcohol, which will generally– You’ll continue that slippery slope down. It can definitely be problematic. I know we talked a lot about nutrition. I’d love for you to touch on some of the lifestyle piece. I know for you that helped with your healing. You’ve touched on some of these. A lot of these things are hormetic stressors. So, when you’re talking about things that tap you into the parasympathetic, the rest and repose side of your brains, which is so important in our super, overstimulated culture where largely, we could be stimulated from the time we get up to the time we go to bed. What are the things that help ramp down the body helps support the body and were part of your healing journey?

Courtney: Well, I start every day with an affirmation. It’s generally pretty simple, and it’s the same one, like today is going to be an amazing day. I say it out loud, and I just kick off the day with that, and then I go into five gratitudes, and then I do control pauses, I might be my eyes are open or not open, but I’m still in bed, and so, I’ll do the control pause Buteyko breathing, and I do that three times throughout the day. As soon as I’m up, I think heading outside and this is all tools that I started long ago, which is light. I think, okay, the whole conversation of light. What do I need to add, what do I need to remove? I needed to add morning sun, evening sunset, catching a few glimpses of that, needed to remove the blue light in the house, so that’s light. And then air, so the breath work incorporating that throughout the day.

I’m a big fan of enemas. I think and I’m– you know the gut psychology syndrome, she has some interesting recipes for enemas. I do a basic recipe with baking soda and salt, and then I do a second one right after that with some coffee and kefir, or minerals, or some oxygen drops, all kinds of things. But my doctor and I joke you’re going to have to write a recipe book for that. I’m like, “No, no, no. It’s all good”

Cynthia: I’ve heard of coffee enemas, but I haven’t heard of the others. This is fascinating.

Courtney: Then breath, so we talked about that. Sweating, I have a sauna space, big into some deep sweats and then with mindset, just trying– It’s practice. It’s forever a practice. I’m a huge fan of Joe Dispenza’s course and just his message about mindset. It’s I think it helped me feel a lot of trauma, too. Air, like water, all the people I help, they’ve all started off having toxic water, and then, they say we have a Brita. No, sorry[?], that’s crap. I love you. But we’ve got to get rid of that, and let’s get reverse osmosis re-mineralized water, and maybe you want to have a whole house water. But what you’re cooking, drinking, and brushing your teeth with needs to be clean water, because most city waters, chromium hex– the arsenic is like through the roof, and if you came over in my house, and I said, “Here’s a glass of water, I just added arsenic and 10 other really harmful chemicals,” you would run the other way. But yet people have tolerated this.

We’re chasing kale, we’re chasing avocados and almonds, but we’re still drinking toxic water. So, that’s one of the first things that we dive into is repairing and fixing the water, and then water then makes me think of well baths, and then baths makes me think of EMF exposure and radiation. One of the baths that I like to take is with sea salt and baking soda, one pound of each. Especially if you’re just coming off an airplane, that helps you get rid of some of the radiation. That’s what the research shows. Then in our home environment, a lot of people aren’t ready for this, but we take small– Tiny decisions that change your life. That’s really like my teacher. It’s tiny decisions change your life.

But when I think of the electromagnetic frequencies and your home environment, which is the place that you can protect, we have a zero Wi-Fi home, everything’s hardwired to the TV, this computer, my cell phone is always Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular off, and when I need to use it, I plug it into the ethernet that has the adapter. Those are all the tools that I can help share with people because it’s just tiny little steps, you can start by shutting your Wi-Fi off on a timer at nighttime so that when you’re sleeping, you’re protected. Then when you’re ready, you can take those next steps to start to wean yourself off of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Often a lot more challenging if there’s kids involved, but hey, I think it’s cool and I want to make it even cool for the kids to raise their standards too. It’s all those environmental inputs.

I had a client recently who’s like I’m just so overwhelmed with– I’ve got a dry brush, and I want to drink this and do that. One of the things that’s helpful is I created a list of 25, maybe it’s 28 things that I’d like to do, say, every day, it’s not going to happen. That’s my list. My self-care, there’s green tea, dry brushing, facials, enema, Joovv, sauna, walk, breathing all these things. It can be overwhelming, but how about just pick five? So, as you go throughout your week, you realize that you’ve covered them all at some point. We don’t need to dry brush necessarily every day, but it is nice. But take the pressure off. I think people are sometimes pressured with self-care and the things that they can do daily, and that’s not helpful. So, really reducing stress.

And the environmental inputs were huge for me. So, it’s air light, water, sound, stress, nourishment, getting rid of the toxins, opening windows in the morning, getting fresh air in all those tiny decisions. It’s beautiful, and it’s just a journey. You don’t transform once. I hope that people will have lots of transformations and then it will be an ongoing beautiful journey.

Cynthia: Yeah. Such an important message. Well, I’ve so enjoyed our conversation today. Can you let listeners know how to connect with you, how to sign up for your classes? You have amazing resources on your website with a lot of links to some of the products that you’ve talked about, the spices and things like that. So, how can they connect with you?

Courtney: Thank you and your website too. I realized we’re so aligned. There’s so many things. I was like, “Oh.” I just felt like, it was just so fun to look at your resources too. ccontos.com is my website. My new e-cookbook, Spring and Summer, is there and the Nourishing Club starts in June. So, we’ll be live together. Just 25 of us from my kitchen to yours, talking about all things nourishment, and I’ll be cooking live with everyone, and then there’s all kinds of fun things included in the club. So, ccontos.com and @chefcoachcontos on Instagram, and anyone can reach out. If you have a question about how to cook rutabaga or how to like dandelion greens, I know I have a recipe to share.

Cynthia: Well, thank you so much for your time today. It’s been such a pleasure. We’ll have to have you back.

Courtney: I loved being here. Thank you.

Presenter: Thanks for listening to Everyday Wellness. If you loved this episode, please leave us a rating, and review, subscribe, and remember, tell a friend. And if you want to connect with us online, visit the link in the show notes.