Leah Hadley [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Intentional Divorce Insights. I'm Leah Hadley, certified divorce financial analyst, accredited financial counselor and the founder of Intentional Divorce Solutions. I'll be your guide through the complexities of divorce finance and emotional wellness. Join me as we uncover practical tips and empowering insights to help you navigate your divorce with clarity and intention.
Leah Hadley [00:00:26]:
Hi there and welcome back to Intentional Divorce Insights. I am so happy that you are here with us today. We have a great guest and this may feel a little counterintuitive. So today we have Kristin Kirkpatrick on who is a registered dietitian. And you may be asking yourself, what does a registered dietitian have to do with divorce? But the fact of the matter is, you know, emotional eating is a big issue for a lot of people. Something that I've definitely dealt with for my whole life. And when you're going through a stressful time, a lot of times our eating patterns change and that can have a real impact on our energy and our ability to deal with the things that we're dealing with. So I'm thrilled to have Kristen on to really unpack some of these things for us, help us to really understand how our food choices do impact our body, our decision making and our emotional well being.
Leah Hadley [00:01:15]:
Kristin has been around a long time. She has over 22 years of experience and integrative nutrition. She is the founder of KAK Nutrition Consulting and she serves as a dietitian in the Cleveland Clinic Department of Wellness and Preventive Medicine. And Kristin no longer lives in Cleveland, but we were just connecting over our Cleveland roots just a minute ago. She is a best selling author, an award winning dietitian, a sought after national speaker and regularly contributes to numerous publications including Today.com Eating well Magazine, Costco Connection and Cleveland Clinic Essentials. She has been featured everywhere. Shows like The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, Fox Business, Bloomberg, Dr. Oz.
Leah Hadley [00:02:00]:
She's been quoted in outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Oprah, Women's Health. You really can find her resources everywhere. She speaks on sustainable weight loss. I'm not going to say this correctly. Nutrace Genomics. How do you say that?
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:02:15]:
Nutrigenomics. Yeah, you said it.
Leah Hadley [00:02:17]:
You got it.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:02:18]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leah Hadley [00:02:20]:
Nutritional psychology and MASLA, inspiring audiences to embrace healthier values driven lifestyle. Welcome Kristen. Thanks for being with us.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:02:30]:
Thank you Leah. That is such an honor that I was listening to you and that's like an intro that my mother would give. Like that's like right, like oh, this, this and this. Oh my gosh. So I really appreciate it. It's such a privilege to be able to connect to your audience. And I was, as I was saying earlier, before we actually got on together, what a great, what a great thing that you are doing for people that are looking for guidance, are looking for a voice. So thank you for all you do.
Leah Hadley [00:02:59]:
Oh, it is my absolute pleasure. I absolutely love, love what I do and I do recognize how important it is. And I think this is really an under discussed topic right when we're going through and I, Kristen, I lost my mother a couple of months ago. And whether you're going through a divorce or you're going through grief or you're moving or you lost your job or what have you, all of these life things can have a lot of impact on our food choices, how we are fueling our body, how we're kind of thinking about things. Talk to me a little bit about what you see when people are going through really difficult, challenging times in their lives.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:03:37]:
Yeah, well, you hit the nail on the head, right? It's still grief and loss. So whether it is the loss of someone who was dear to you or the loss of a marriage, it is grief and loss and we tend to react to that in the same manner. You know, Leah, I do. I love to present. And whenever I present, I usually have within the first two or three slides a picture of a little boy falling off of a bike. And I stop the audience and I say, I want us to all think about what our fall off the bike moment was in childhood because it has great bearing into our food habits when we get into adulthood. When I fell off a bike and my, I love my mother, she had the best intentions, but when I fell off a bike, it was, oh my gosh, stop crying, you're going to be okay. You want to go to McDonald's or oh my gosh, stop crying, it's going to be okay.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:04:23]:
Do you want to go in and make some cookies? It's never like, oh my gosh, stop crying. You know what? You know what? We're going to go inside and we're going to make a kale salad. Would you like that? Right? It's never that. It's never that. Right? That's not the reward. So when I asked this question in large audiences, we all have, a lot of people have very similar responses. Well, I was given candy. I was taken to my favorite fast food place.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:04:47]:
Some people, of course, would say, my dad came out and told me to rub dirt in it. Okay, so we always have that aspect as well. But my point here is that we learn very early on whether or not food can help us to either stuff down or manage an emotion. And I, you know, you had shared, Leah, that you've kind of struggled with this your whole life. I became a dietitian because I was doing exactly that and I, you know, and my weight and pre diabetic and I had to go see a dietitian who, I think she had great intentions, I felt, didn't see me, didn't recognize me, and simply gave me a low calorie diet. Right. So I think she really wanted to do the right thing. But of course I failed for like two decades.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:05:34]:
And of course when she asked me what am I doing wrong, my answer in my head was like, well, everything. What, what dirty secret do I share with her? Like, are we serious? Like, of course I don't want to eat this at two in the morning because I'm feeling anxious. Like to tell me to stop eating it is not the result. I wish I could stop eating it. So we have that fall off our bike moment. It follows us into adulthood and then the falling off the bike turns into divorce or losing someone or losing a job, whatever it may be when we go back to those areas of comfort, right? And I always say there's no shame in it because it makes sense. Food is a very good mediator of making us feel good. But that good feeling is temporary, right? And so typically when we lose that good feeling, we need to get back there.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:06:24]:
And what, what, what happens is we can just equate it to blood sugar. For example, I used to feel good by using Twizzlers. That was my, the drug, right? And I would have the Twizzlers, I'd have this king sized bag of Twizzlers and man, I feel on top of the world. I feel great. And then my blood sugar would drop and it would be in the tank and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I don't feel so good anymore. Now I'm starting to feel anxious again. You know what's going to help me? More Twizzlers. So, so it is this like vicious cycle that is very hard to break but very rational to get into to begin with, right?
Leah Hadley [00:07:01]:
Sure, absolutely. You know something you said there, Kristin, that I just want to emphasize because I think this is really important for people to recognize. One of the things that we always talk to people about is when we're working with people on financial planning, there's no one size fits all solution, right? I'm not going to just tell you, just spend less. Right? Like that's not. That's not the solution. And I love that you said that you had that experience of going to somebody and being told, you know, here's your low calorie diet, like, here's your.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:07:30]:
And that didn't work. Right, right.
Leah Hadley [00:07:32]:
And that, that can really have such an impact now that you're able to really help people that you had that experience. So I'm thinking that there are a lot of listeners out there who are thinking that if they spoke to a dietitian, that is what the experience would be. Can you talk a little bit about what people would expect if they were to talk with somebody like yourself?
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:07:52]:
Yeah, sure. So I think, you know, I hold a little bit of bias because I'm in integrative medicine. So integrative medicine. And at Cleveland Clinic, integrative medicine and functional medicine are under the same umbrella. So when people say, like, well, tell me a little bit about integrative or functional, I'm an integrative dietitian and typically I start using the word holistic. Right. So very holistic. Really looking at this factor of personalized nutrition.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:08:16]:
And that's what we're talking about. There is no one size fits all approach. What we fail to recognize sometimes is when we think about what kind of diet may work for someone, it's gotta meet four different criteria. The first criteria is it has to meet the why. So we all have a different why. Right. People ask me all the time, well, you're asking me for my why. What's your why? And I would say, well, my why is prevention of Alzheimer's and dementia.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:08:43]:
That is my why. And it dictates my dietary pattern, my exercise, stress management. What other things am I going to do to try and protect my brain as I age? The other thing that it has to fall into is your personal, your cultural and your religious preferences. We actually have data on this that if you were to come to me and I've had this patient before, I've had patients come to me and say, well, I'm here because I want to lose weight. And my wife says, I got to eat better. And I know you're going to make me eat kale, so I'll do it. I'll eat the kale. Okay, I'll do it.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:09:16]:
Right? And so it's kind of like, okay, well, now we're not falling into a personal preference. And you might eat it for a little bit and tolerate it, but the chances are pretty high you'll never love it and it will just become what you think I want you to eat because kale is good. Right. So instead, let's, let's look at the world of kale and the, the composition of kale. It's a leafy green. It's also cruciferous vegetable. Here's five other options. Do you like any of these things? Oh, well, actually, I love Brussels sprouts.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:09:44]:
Okay, well, great. Well, let's talk about how we can make Brussels sprouts. Don't worry about kale. You don't have to have kale. So my point here is that we tend not to think about those things, but that are, they're really important. So my bias in getting to the answer of this is that I think integrative and functional probably offers some of the best opportunity because it is very holistic in nature. Having said that, I've known and worked with plenty of dietitians that are just working in primary care that also are very holistic. I think we hear this phrase, you have to be the CEO of your own health.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:10:18]:
And that is definitely true. So I think when you're seeking out a dietitian, instead of thinking, gosh, I wonder what this experience is going to be like, maybe sending some sort of communication ahead of time and saying, this is the experience I'm looking for, I'd really like to look at a more personalized approach to something that can be sustainable for me long term.
Leah Hadley [00:10:39]:
So many important points that you made there. I just highlight that last one, sustainable for the long term, right?
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:10:45]:
Yeah.
Leah Hadley [00:10:45]:
So often we are really looking for the here and the now, especially when people are going through divorce. Kristen. It's like, what is the easiest solution? And in this moment I don't want to look beyond that. So how do you kind of help people to get into that mindset of longer term thinking?
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:11:05]:
Yeah. So I think when we think about longer term thinking, we have to think about what has actually been easy for us in the past, what has worked. And I always start with that question when someone says, well, I need to change my diet because of X, Y and Z. So I always start with, tell me what worked in the past and what didn't. That's usually a good starting point. So if something worked to say, so let's just use the ketogenic diet as an example. I have many people that will say, oh, gosh, you know, the keto was so successful. I did.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:11:36]:
I lost weight and I felt my head was clear and I loved it. Great, great. So are you still on it? No, I couldn't stay on it longer than 18 months. Okay, so the keto diet is not a good option for you. So we have to look at both of those factors. What did you enjoy and that was successful in terms of not only physical health but mental health? They're equally important. And what do you think you could sustain for five months, five years, 15 years from now? And of course that might change. People use this phrase, oh, I did this and then I fell off the wagon.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:12:12]:
We use that phrase, I fell off the wagon. And I always say, do you know how many times I fell off the wagon? And we all fall off the wagon. No one gets on that wagon and stays there for life.
Leah Hadley [00:12:23]:
It's a bumpy ride.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:12:25]:
It is a bumpy ride. Okay, so you wouldn't be normal if you stayed on that wagon. So we all fall off the wagon. But whatever. You know, what I see in my patients, 22 years of experience is that the individuals that fell off on Thursday and said, well, I fell off the wagon, I might as well enjoy the weekend right there. It's a very different mindset from the individuals that said on Thursday, oh my gosh, I fell off the wagon last night. That wasn't great. I'm going to pick that wagon up, put it on my back and I'm just going to keep moving forward.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:12:55]:
Right like that. That was the past. I can't do anything about it and I'm not going to beat myself up over it. So I think we have to expect that failure, however that's defined in our head is most likely going to come to all of us. But how do we react to that failure? Do we say, I'm such a failure now I'm going to go and get Dairy Queen and I'm using real life examples, right? I have patients that have that have said that. So I think we need to think about long term sustainability in terms of, well, you know, what can I do most of the time? What can I do 80 to 80, 85% of the time and feel pretty successful in that. And that's really where we start the conversation of what makes sense. And it, and it might not be a particular diet, Leah, like, I just can't stand this word, like what's the best diet? Dietary pattern is a better way to depict this because really we could look at the Mediterranean diet, which is very well researched, which has tons and tons of really good data, and we can take that and say, okay, of the structure of the Mediterranean diet.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:14:00]:
Now I'm going to look at this and I'm going to pinpoint what's going to work for me and what I need to alter based on my needs. Right. So dietary pattern is probably the word we should use when we're trying to figure out the best way to eat.
Leah Hadley [00:14:13]:
Okay. Now you made a comment about, you know, how our food choices impact our mental health, and I would love to explore that a little bit more with you. I know, you know, we adopted our three children out of foster care, so they had come with quite a bit of a trauma history. And we have gone to this conference the last several years that gives, you know, parents and caregivers a lot of resources for supporting children who have experienced trauma that, you know, may have some different behaviors and whatnot. Yeah. And one of the simplest things that we implemented, which I just thought was fascinating, this is the first year we went, was just getting them to drink more water, that just getting them to drink more water can help actually with those, you know, like, uneven emotions. Right. So anyway, so I'm curious to explore this a little bit more with, with you.
Leah Hadley [00:15:04]:
Talk to me a little bit about how our food choices do shape our mental health.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:15:08]:
Yeah, our food choices for sure shape our mental health. Not just us, but our kids as well. Right. Just what the point you made. And Leah, I'm also an adoptive mother as well, so, you know, now I love you even more than I did 10 minutes ago. But we have this whole realm of this topic called nutritional psychology. And within nutritional psychology, we have about a little over a decade of research that really kind of breaks down the connection between our neurotransmitters and food choices. We also now have plenty of data within this area of science.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:15:47]:
This is really interesting, looking at the connection with trauma and the microbiome. So we know that trauma impacts the microbiome. And so there's that connection that has been very well documented. Um, Deepak Chopra, who, who most of us know, he is starting a cruise line, this is what I've heard. And so he's done all these interviews and they're all fascinating because he just has so much great things to say. And so someone had said to him in an interview, and I will never forget this, it's a little over a year ago, they said, what is the, the biggest pandemic of our time? And his answer was inflammation that was most likely fueled by trauma.
Leah Hadley [00:16:30]:
Interesting.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:16:31]:
And so it was a really interesting correlation, this inflammation trauma correlation. And you know, kind of looking at the anti inflammatory dietary factors that we look at. But here are the main things that we've seen in the studies. There were three studies. The Smiles trial, the HealthAmed trial and the AMEND trial. Each of them were randomized controlled trials, each of them 12 weeks in length, so relatively short. And in each of these trials, they compared individuals that had high depression scores who were doing a dietary pattern similar to Mediterranean diet with the inclusion of fish oil, either through fish or a supplement. Okay, but the fish oil was really key here, the Omega 3s.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:17:14]:
And then that was group one, and then group two was basically a befriending group that would work alongside usually a physician, so more of a counseling group. So at the end of the both, all three of these trials, they looked at what were the depression scores, and they found that the dietary group with the Omega 3s had lower depression scores. So it beat out the counseling group simply by diet. And then we look at the composition of what omega 3s do within the brain. And of course, if we look at depression, anxiety, things like that, we do know that there is a aspect of omega 3 depletion within the brain which could make a difference in women. We've seen the same type of study with lacking vitamin D. So we've seen women that are vitamin D deficient looking at anxiety and depression. We then supplement these women with vitamin D and depression and anxiety improve.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:18:06]:
So not to say that food is a replacement for therapy, it is not. But one of the things that I have done for many years is work alongside therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists to say, how can we weave in the conversation of diet within the sessions that you're having? Because we have the opposite end of this as well. People that are going to get a lot of fast food, ultra processed foods, very low quality diets, they tend to have worsening depression and anxiety. So when we think about our brain, whether it's a pediatric brain or an adult brain, how are we treating it? Dietary measures have to be one of the goals if we're looking at depression, anxiety or trauma. So if any of those things, any of those boxes are checked, then we have to look at, alongside all of these things that I'm trying to do, what are some of the dietary principles? Should I maybe perhaps start supplementing with omega 3 fatty acids? Should I look at my vitamin D level? Should I look at some of these other aspects within nutritional psychology? So I think the diet can be accompany the therapy, but the therapy without that is not really going to be as effective because the diet plays such a huge role. It has such a huge role in our microbiome and the inflammatory factors going on in the brain.
Leah Hadley [00:19:30]:
This is just so fascinating to me and I'm just thinking about our audience who are likely either thinking about divorce in the midst of divorce or recently divorced, going through all of these life changes or anticipating all these life changes. I'm sure stress eating is a big issue for a lot of folks. Like what? What do you tell them? Like, what would you recommend to them? Maybe simple things that they can do to kind of keep them on target as they're dealing with all of this emotional overwhelm.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:20:00]:
Yeah. So I think, number one, kind of setting up the kitchen in a way that creates success is one of the first things that I would look at. There was a researcher that had looked at a lot of the sociology of why we eat the way we do. There was all this data that he brought up, and it made so much sense about what was at eye level when we open up the refrigerator. The example I think about. I think about my parents refrigerator and my older refrigerators, where the produce drawer was all the way at the bottom. So you'd put all your produce there, and then you'd forget about it, and then everything else was kind of on top. Right.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:20:35]:
And then you'd be like, oh, shoot, I forgot this kale. And now it looks disgusting. I'm not eating it. Right. So instead I said, if. If that's the scenario we have, why don't we go out? We'll get produce containers and the things that make sense from a nutrient density standpoint, let's have that be what we see when we open the fridge. And then you can put, like, your bacon, and you're like, you know, crescent rolls.
Leah Hadley [00:20:55]:
So I'm just laughing at myself talking about this, because I'm thinking about, when you open my refrigerator, what is the first thing you see?
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:21:03]:
What do you see?
Leah Hadley [00:21:05]:
And that is such an easy thing to grab and not always the best thing to grab, but it's right there. So I'm right there.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:21:11]:
So. And making it easy. And the same thing for the pantry, right? Like, I have two kids, okay? My kids absolutely love Oreos. I got Oreos in my pantry, but they are not at their eye level or they're not at my eye level. So they truly are like, hey, here's a treat you can have. I'm gonna have it here. But it's not gonna be the first thing you see when you open our pantry. You're going to see some better choices.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:21:32]:
Because kind of the eye of what you see, you know, and making it easy in terms of, well, you know, I'm not going to have this food if it's not cut up. So, you know, maybe, maybe like I go, I happen to love kale, which is probably why I talk about it a lot. But I go and I wash the kale. I julienne it. It's a pain in the butt. I put it all in my produce container and it's good for three days. So then I have it. I can just make salads, I can put protein on top of it.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:21:59]:
It's super easy. If it weren't easy, maybe I wouldn't do it after I get home. And it's 8:15 at night and we still have homework after we just did sports, right? So, you know, I think making it easy makes a big difference. I had a friend recently who just started going through their divorce and their parenting plan. And this individual was like, you know what? I have my kids for a week and then it's a week off. And on my weeks off, man, Kristen, you should see my eating. It's like I don't have to feed them and I'm sad because they're not with me and I'm depressed. So I just get fast food on the way home or I just have these frozen meals or I just get a pizza.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:22:43]:
Like, it's almost like, almost like self harm during these very difficult weeks that she is now get, have to get accustomed to. And so I think like having those things like at the ready can make it a little easier. And then I think finding support from other people, this, this woman found support through me. I went to her house, I said, hey, let's set up the kitchen this way. Let's, let's go to the grocery store and put frozen things like frozen chicken, things like that, that are easy to put together. And on the same line of thinking, you know, I asked her, I said, well, what, what's, what are you, what are you binging on on these nights? Right? Because that's, that's the other thing she would say. She'd say, I'd be perfect. And I can't tell you how often I hear this.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:23:28]:
I'm perfect till 8 o' clock. And then everything goes to hell, right? So I, I said, well, what, what are you having? And she's like, oh, the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. That's, that's my challenge. And I said, okay, I know this sounds like a statement of the obvious, but let's get these out of the house. Well, my son loves the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Great. So the day your son comes back for the week, you go and get the Reese's Peanut Butter cups. But when you're there, you.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:23:55]:
You don't have them. So you're gonna have to buy small amounts, maybe two individual packets. Right. On the day your son is there. So, you know, making it easy to eat healthy and making it challenging and difficult to not eat healthy. That's how we have to kind of first look at this. If our kitchen is not set up, we're. We're not gonna.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:24:14]:
We're not gonna be successful. Right. It's too easy in this day and age to get onto GrubHub. It's too easy to get something on the way home. So our access to food has increased substantially. And I think, you know, I think Leah and I felt this too, when I was struggling myself before I became a dietitian. I think it's really hard to get there until we start feeling a glimmer of hope. So you need, like, you probably need a few weeks where you're having these new habits where you're like, okay, now I feel good.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:24:47]:
I feel good when I lift weights. I feel good when I'm eating better, man, I feel I want to keep doing this. Right. But, like, when you're not in it, it's hard to, like, to get there. So those first few weeks are really critical, and those are the weeks where we're most likely to fail.
Leah Hadley [00:25:04]:
Yeah. And that's a good point. I mean, if you surround yourself with support, knowing. Right. Knowing that those first few weeks are going to be difficult.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:25:11]:
Yeah.
Leah Hadley [00:25:11]:
Get everybody on your team to help you get through that. Then you have some momentum going and all of that after that. That's great.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:25:19]:
Yeah. And distraction.
Leah Hadley [00:25:21]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I so appreciate all of your insight. I think this is going to be really helpful for our listeners. Where can they find out more information about you?
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:25:30]:
Sure, they can go to my website. It's KristinKirtPatrick.com so just Kristin spelled with an I. It's a key factor. That's the rare way to spell it, I guess. Or my Instagram profile is fuelwellwithKrissy. So if you feel well, you feel well. And so I do have plenty of posts there talking about nutritional psychology and some of the foods that make sense to have better mental health.
Leah Hadley [00:25:54]:
Fantastic. That's going to be so helpful for people. Thank you again for being with us and for our audience. Thank you so much for joining us today, and we will see you next week.
Kristin Kirtpatrick [00:26:02]:
Thank you. Leah.
Leah Hadley [00:26:06]:
Thank you for joining me on Intentional Divorce Insights. It's a privilege to share this time with you. I hope each episode offers valuable guidance to navigate your journey. If you find our content helpful, please leave a review to help others discover the benefits of intentional decision making in divorce. Until next time, take care and continue to embrace your path with intention.
