Kelsey Marksteiner: First, resources: I just want to point these out in case you haven’t heard of them. One of my favorite resources for the autoimmune protocol, in general, is ThePaleoMom.com. I’m going to give you this link, Lauren, to put up because these are her books, too, that I’ve specifically pointed out here, which I think can be a really, really great resource for people who are new to this whole thing. She has a book called The Paleo Approach. It’s a really great book. Then there’s also a cookbook that goes along with that, which, of course, is going to be probably even more useful for people, especially coming from a Standard American Diet, where maybe they’re not doing a whole lot of cooking, or even if they are, this is a whole new world to them. Any of these are going to be really useful for your clients who are new to this stuff.
I usually recommend, when I’m introducing someone to either Paleo in general or, more specifically, the Paleo autoimmune diet, that you do recommend some sort of book for them to just get a sense of why they’re doing it. If they really want me to, I’ll spend a lot of time in the consultation talking about the why, but usually for me, I at least imagine that most of my clients would rather get their more specific recommendations from me during the time that they’re paying me more and then be able to read this stuff on their own and take it at their own pace so that they can really start to understand why they’re trying to do these things. At the end of the day, knowing why you’re doing something is going to make you way more likely to actually follow through with it, so I do really encourage my patients to read a bit more about what they’re doing and why it’s important because, again, I’ve just found that that really, really helps with motivation and actually following through with the recommendations that I’m making. So that’s my favorite resource.
Now, I will say that if you have someone who’s on a Standard American Diet right now—and this seems super-overwhelming—I honestly would recommend maybe just starting with a normal Paleo reset kind of diet, but you really want to talk to your patient and find out what kind of patient they are. I typically find that there are two different kinds of patients. There are patients that will want to jump into everything right away, they’ll want to do everything perfectly the first time. They don’t want to kind of go through many iterations of what you’re trying to get them to. They just want to start, and they just want to do it right. That’s one. And the other is somebody who knows that just the way they are and thinking about habit change for the long term that if they just jumped straight into something this restrictive, it would never last. They would maybe do it for a week or something, and then they’d just fall off the wagon and they wouldn’t really be interested in doing it.
So I actually always ask my patients this question, and you can put that on your intake form. I’m not sure if something like this is on one of Chris’s intake forms, but it’s a good question to ask either in the consultation itself or to put on your intake form. I probably have, really, a 50/50 split among all my patients of what type of patient they are, and it’s really important to know that because you don’t want to recommend to someone who really wants to make gradual change that they need to jump into this totally and completely right off the bat. You’re kind of just going to scare them away, they’re not going to want to work with you, and they’re just going to be really overwhelmed, whereas if you recommend gradual change to somebody who’s just ready to jump in, they’re just going to feel like, Why are we dragging our feet? Why are we taking so long to get to the good stuff here? Let’s just do it. A lot of times you’ll be able to tell what kind of person it is once you start talking to them, but I find it’s very useful to just ask them right off the bat.
That said, make sure that if you have somebody who is a gradual changer or who you can kind of tell that if you don’t do things gradually it’s never going to last, I would really recommend just starting with the main stuff. Like, you could start them with the on-ramp of the 14Four program and just take them off gluten and grains and sugars and oils. Just start with that kind of stuff. You can even do it one at a time if it seems too overwhelming to take all those things out at once, and then push them slowly into the full 14Four program. Then eventually maybe start with nightshades. Take those out. Then take eggs out, etc. Then of course, once they’ve been on that for 60 days straight, you can start to add things in one at a time.
Take things slowly if someone wants to because it’s just going to make it really, really tough for them if they are the kind of person that likes to take things gradually and you’re forcing them to go a little bit fast. You have to remember that people are not perfect, and it can be really easy, especially once you’re thinking about all this functional medicine stuff, you’re like, Gosh, the diet is the easy part. Let’s just get into this so we can do all these labs and figure everything else out, but people have habits, and you really need to work within those habits to make actual habit change that’s going to stick with a person. That’s really, really tough, and it’s something that can be easily overlooked when you as the clinician are thinking about all this functional medicine stuff and you’re like, Can’t you just do the diet? We’re not going to get anywhere unless you do the diet. At least for me, when I’m thinking about all the functional medicine stuff, it can be hard for me to dive deeper with the person into their actual habit change because I’m sort of excited for them to see the benefits and I just want them to do the diet right off the bat because that, to me, is the obvious next step, but for them, that’s a really, really big change. You need to make sure that you’re sympathetic to that and you’re working with them to make sure that these habit changes actually fit into their lifestyle or working with them to make it fit into their lifestyle for good because you want them to stick with this for probably the rest of their lives. You can always say, too, that at least for a lot of people with autoimmune conditions, they may need to do this 60-day strict autoimmune protocol and then add things back in one at a time. Typically they’re not reactive to all of the nightshades or even eggs or nuts, whatever. They’re not going to be sensitive to all of it. They’re typically just going to be maybe sensitive to a couple of nightshades in particular. Maybe they don’t really do well with tomatoes or something, and once they figure that out, that becomes a lot more manageable if they only have to, off all the nightshades, avoid tomatoes rather than all them. So you can kind of give them this idea that for most people they will not have to worry about all of the nightshades. It’s just a couple. That makes it sound a lot more manageable, and they’re willing to sort of put in this 60-day period where they’re being very strict about it so that they can know in the future, All right, I only have this one thing that I’m really sensitive to and that I should really stay away from as much as possible.
In terms of the 14Four or reset protocol with autoimmune people in mind, I don’t think Chris has any plans for that. Don’t quote me on that. You can definitely ask him in his functional medicine Q&A or the webinar, but as far as I know, he doesn’t have any plans to do that, though it is a good idea. I would definitely suggest at this point to just kind of point them to The Paleo Mom because she’s a really, really great resource.