#prednisoneweightgain#prednisonesideeffects#prednisonecravings
How do you resist hunger cravings prednisone hijacks your hunger signals so what are you doing to fight back i’m dr. megan your prednisone pharmacist and my message for everyone is that prednisone while miserable you can fight back so today i’m going to give you tips on diet strategies not diets but strategies that can help you to not gain weight while on prednisone
And maybe even lose weight like last episode where i reviewed actual diets that are popular on the market i’m going to be showing you examples of books that i have read about these topics and give you the highlights of those books so that you know where to dive deeper which books you could check out at the library like i did and just for a personal note i love
Listening to books so there’s a whole bunch of great apps my library uses overdrive and so i got to listen to these while i did the dishes or the laundry or other menial tasks so first today we’re going to talk about the nourish kitchen here’s the nurse kitchen the nourished kitchen is a great strategy for changing your lifestyle to live more like your ancestors did
If there’s one theme in all of the diet books that i reviewed last week it’s that we need to eat less food that was made in a plant and eat more plants and food that came directly from the soil or from the farm and not from the factory so this book teaches you great traditional food lifestyle so how to make your own broth how to make food that you know when i first
Got married i didn’t even know you could make yourself i thought you had to buy it at the store so this teaches you those skills that maybe your grandma didn’t even remember that her parents knew so i would suggest that one if you want to learn how to eat whole delicious foods in a more traditional way it has tips in there about how to not only prepare the food but
How to enjoy the food and i think if there’s one thing that prednisone is really struggling making people struggle with it is that it it removes some of the pleasure some of the satiety the ability to feel full and so doing what you can to improve the experience of your food to really enjoy the food that you are eating so that at least your brain can think i did eat
Yeah i did i ate with my family so that brings me to french women don’t get fat i really like this book for a lot of reasons first of all it dispels some myths about what it means to eat rich food that people in france they eat their back their baguettes they eat their fancy desserts they eat their really calorically dense meals like french onion soup has a lot of
Butter in it things like that but they don’t get fat and why is that well it’s because they have a culture around food they all talk about food they talk about enjoying it they sit down and they take time to eat and so if you can incorporate some of those strategies into your life it will help you to not feel like you just have to shove another cupcake in your mouth
Really fast that that’s what prednisone is telling you to do so try that book if you need that kind of help next and maybe my favorite is vb6 so vegan before 6 o’clock this one to me gives the best balance between getting the nutrients we need because prednisone is stealing it all those good nutrients like calcium and potassium and getting those nutrients through
Food and still being able to enjoy your entire pallet of food so what happens is you eat vegan which means no animal products of any kind so no fish no meat no poultry no eggs no milk none of those things before 6 o’clock so that in the morning when you have more willpower you’re getting the good food in so that by the time 6 o’clock rolls around and your willpower
Is waning for the day that you’ve still got great nutrition under your belt you still filled that void of nutrients that you need to fill up and then you can feel good about enjoying dinner because you worked hard in the morning and you don’t need to feel guilty when you eat the meat product or things that may not be quite as good for you as the vegan food in the
Morning so for me i’ve really enjoyed this because it’s really made me think about my food i haven’t really felt restricted it’s made me feel like get a little more creative about how can i make my lunch vegan but i can still eat whatever i want at dinner time and so i think that strategy is the best balance for me it might not be the best balance for you but for
Me it’s it’s liberating to be able to just focus when got the willpower and then enjoy dinner okay here’s the vegan before sakes cookbook so they’ve got lots of delicious beautiful things on there now we will move on to skinning habits skinny habits so this guy right here he was a biggest loser coach so the biggest loser if you’re not familiar with that is a tv
Show where they’d get really heavy people and whoever lost the most weight wins and so he would help them succeed in that goal and he compiled a list of skinny rules that’s another book he has and this one’s skinny habits what i really like this is it brings reasonable strategies into setting you up for success so basically making it so that your environment
Whether that’s your physical environment in your house or your social environment with the people you’re interacting with helping you succeed and not overeating or eating the wrong foods when you’re in those situations he also has great strategies using tips from a book called the power of habit by charles duhigg where he talks about how a habit is made of a cue
And then what’s it called behavior and reward so an example is oh it’s bedtime i’m going to get ready for bed my behavior is i brush my teeth my reward is my teeth feel clean and minty and so what you can do is interrupt that cycle you’re going to have queues or and you’re going to have a behavior so what are you going to change well you can change the cue like
For example if every time you walk in the kitchen you think i need a piece of chocolate you can not keep the chocolate in the kitchen you can and then another option is you can change the behavior so you want to have it be something similar that has a reward and i really love that book so if you need to change a habit check out the power of habit by charles duhigg
Then some of the strategies in here don’t really make sense for people on prednisone like dress for thin the waistline signaling strategy i don’t really think that that’s helpful when you’re taking prednisone because you’re gaining weight and it’s really hard to control and it’s not just fat but it’s also water weight and so the combination of that means sometimes
You’re really bloated and sometimes you’re not and dressing for thin is just you can ignore that chapter so next is a similar strategy but it’s more just about food this one is called food rules by michael pollan i really like the work of michael pollan he’s a a writer and he has researched a lot about food and he this book is just really simple and literally has
Pretty pictures in it like this is a funny one about the grocery store this book you could read in less than an hour and if you did everything in here you would eat healthy and be happy because he show you shows you great tips about enjoying your food too like one of his tips is eat food that will avenge eat only foods that will eventually rot so basically if it
Won’t rot that means that there’s preservatives in there there’s lots of ingredients that aren’t good for us and so it needs to die and the best way for it to die is for you to eat it but it those are great tips one of the the last rule is one i agree with and it says break the rules once in a while so whatever i say to you today you’re a human you can enjoy life
And if you’re taking brenda zone you need to enjoy life we just need to have strategies to deal with that so another strategy that oh let me say more about the food rules so it’s formatted in his thesis is seven words only seven words and that’s really all you need to remember and it’s eat food mostly plants not too much so by food he means real food not edible
Food like products as he calls them like cereal boxes the food in cereal boxes or the food in a packet or microwavable this or that he want to eat food and then mostly plants is a good strategy because plants are good for us and then not too much is probably the place where we struggle the most when we’re taking prednisone so that brings me to the next one and i
Don’t actually have this book it wasn’t available at my library and it’s called bright line eating and it’s by a phd suzanne something anyway she says that for some well i say for some personalities this would work so if you’re a person who once there’s a rule in place you do it like gretchen rubin says if you’re an upholder and this is the one for you where you
Make a bright line like you draw a line in the sand that says i will not do that ever again because i need to have a healthy body and so one of those bright lines for her is no sugar and so for me when i was taking prednisone i had that same rule i said no sugar and it was so much easier than saying oh i won’t have too much or just a little bit or you know i can
Stop because i can’t i couldn’t stop when on prednisone it was too hard they were just those hunger signals were missing to say you’re full you can stop eating now and so for me while on prednisone draw a line in the sand no added sugar no refined sugar i’m not going there and that worked for me that helped me if you’re not enough holder and you’re a rebel like
Gretchen rubin says don’t do that but that’s what worked for me and the next book is what i believe is the best strategy for people once they’re off prednisone it i think if you’ve gained weight while on prednisone and you’re trying to lose it and you stopped taking prednisone i think this is the best strategy for your life going forward and it’s called intuitive
Eating now intuitive eating is not a diet in fact it is the opposite of a diet their belief is that diets actually cause weight gain because you lose 10 pounds and you’re hungry and you gain 20 and you go back and you try to lose 10 pounds and you gain 20 again and so over time you’re messing with your body’s signals and you don’t even hear them anymore whether
You’re hungry or full and that’s what’s causing the weight gain i think this strategy works great for anybody who’s not on prednisone and so if you work if you are off prednisone this is a fantastic strategy because it is a life it is for the rest of your life it is a lifestyle plan and it helps you listen to your body to like take that brief moment to pay attention
Am i hungry or not and one of michael pollan’s tips was are you hungry enough to eat an apple if not you’re not hungry so i think while you’re on prednisone talk to yourself say am i hungry enough to eat an apple and if not just don’t don’t eat it so the intuitive eating why i don’t think it would be best for people on prednisone is because it relies on hunger
Signals and those being accurate and they’re not necessarily accurate in people who are taking prednisone and so you need to use other strategies to rely on and so using a combination of this and the vb6 and that has helped me i am only one pound away from my prefrontal zone weight and i’m so excited it’s taken a long time but i am about there for me i want you
To know that prednisone is wicked it is miserable but you can fight back you can use these strategies in these books to build your life so that you can be successful they even if you’re stuck in bed you can find ways to interrupt the habit cycle you can set your behavior based on a healthier environment built for success that you can do things to fight against
Prednisone there is hope and if you are needing more help please get my prednisone wellness checklist it’s available on my website which is prednisone pharmacist calm and that wellness checklist gives you tips about how to deal with the top side effects of prednisone and where and when you need to have a conversation with a doctor because for all of the side effects
That i tell you about you can find help there is hope and we can deal with this please let me know if you have any questions and fill it out below if you have any questions signing off as your prednisone pharmacist german
Transcribed from video
Prednisone Cravings – how to resist the extreme hunger By Dr. Megan – Prednisone Pharmacist
