Are you overwhelmed by MS nutrition protocols, the rules, the limitations, the elimination of all your favorite foods? They have promising results, but how? How can you fit them into your daily routine? Of course you want to feel better. You want to get past this overwhelming fatigue and brain fog and all the other symptoms. But does it have to be behind this mountain of impossible rules? Is there a way to make it easier and still get results? Do you have to follow every single rule? Let's find out in today's episode of my MS podcast.

Welcome to Season Four of my MS podcast. It's kind of wild to think that we're already in season four. If you're new to this podcast, be sure to check out some of our previous seasons. Season one is all about the road to diagnosis. Season two is all about handling the holidays while on your nutrition protocol. But of course, that can be applied to so many different things throughout the year because there's always celebrations and family and social gatherings that you can apply many of those holiday principles to. Season three is all about new beginnings.

And it's also one of the topics that I receive the most questions about, which makes sense given that I'm a nutrition coach specializing in MS and autoimmune disease. So during this season, I'm going to do my best to highlight the most important facts that you need to know around multiple sclerosis and nutrition. I want to start us off with a little reminder that healing shouldn't be stressful. Healing shouldn't be stressful. Eating shouldn't be stressful either. And yet, I remember when I was diagnosed with MS in 2016, That's exactly how I felt. Everything about my diagnosis felt stressful. The doctor's appointments, the insurance calls, having absolutely no idea what was going to happen to my body and when it was going to start. That's super stressful!

If there was ever a time in life where I had a lot of stress on my shoulders, it would be then. And if you're listening to this podcast, you know firsthand the level of stress that I'm talking about, the level of stress and the level of fear that comes with an MS diagnosis. And if you're in that place right now, I just want to let you know that it is okay to feel overwhelmed. That is a very normal and natural response. Your entire world just got rocked. Personally, I think it's a little concerning if somebody isn't overwhelmed by a diagnosis like that. It's a chronic incurable disease that is affecting our brain. Yeah, that's going to rock my world.

Definitely go back and check it out because those episodes are all about the road to diagnosis. So there are episodes on simply how to stay calm in an MRI, how to tell your family and friends about your diagnosis, how to build a wellness team. So you're not just putting all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak, with your MS specialist or your neurologist. There is a team of people that you need to develop to help manage this.

Coming up and having to tell somebody about your diagnosis that you've never told before, those episodes are still going to be very relevant. So definitely go check them out. And most of all, again, if you're newly diagnosed, remember you are not alone in this. And I know that's such like a social media hashtag, 'not alone.' But the reality is it feels very lonely when you are the only one in your immediate world that knows what it's like to have MS.

And talking with people who understand the day-to-day reality is so helpful. I remember my diagnosis, like when I would listen to a podcast or read a blog or talk with somebody, having them share their experience; they gave words to experiences that I was having that I didn't have the words for yet. And there was so much validation that came with that.

Of them out there. And that's actually one of the things that I hear most from people in our community. They'll send me messages like, 'Thank you for having a place for us to talk about this and to connect that doesn't feel so heavy and doom and gloom.' Like I live with a chronic illness, but it doesn't mean that I want to be again, doom and gloom is just the word that constantly gets tossed around. Like it's okay. And it's really important to have hope.

But getting back to my point about being newly diagnosed, I remember walking out of my neurologist office at the hospital wondering, 'How am I going to do this? How?' How am I going to manage MS? I don't even know exactly what it is. So first, I need to figure out what it is. But number two, I know one thing's for sure: it's a chronic, incurable disease that affects my brain. That's super intimidating. Now, I actually heard about the Wells Protocol leading up to my diagnosis and I had already started some of it. But when you have a definitive diagnosis, like when MS is now on your medical record,

and I was already a nutrition coach at that point. I had had my nutrition coaching practice for a couple of years. So my mind did naturally go to food. But even as a nutrition coach, I was intimidated by the protocol. I mean, nine cups? Nine cups of veggies every single day? Nine? Can I even do that? Like, what does that look like? What am I just going to eat salad, breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day? Now that sounds exciting. And yet, if that was a way to stabilize this disease, how could I not do it? Not doing it felt like it would just pile on this guilt of me ignoring something that could potentially improve my quality of life today and for years to come. Now, I know so many of you can relate to this place of like being in limbo. You want to follow the protocol because you want those results, but you also don't want to eat salad for the rest of your life.

And does the middle ground get you the same or similar results with MS? I mean, that's why you're doing it. Again, you want to help to stabilize this progression. You want to help to create a healing environment in your body so that you can free yourself from these chronic symptoms and start feeling better on a day-to-day basis so that you can go out and live the life that you want to live. So again, this is where like this place of limbo comes. You want to follow the protocol because you want the results, but you don't want to eat salad, breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of your life. So is there a middle ground and does it get you results? Here's my personal take on that. Yes.

Yes, something is better than nothing. I see too many people take an all or nothing approach. Like you have to eat nine cups or else. And when that doesn't feel realistic, you don't even aim for one or two cups. I see more people than not sticking to the same diet, the same routine day after day that they have been eating for years because they're pushing off their start date, quote unquote, until they can muster up the motivation to tackle the nine cups. But here's the deal. The longer you wait to start, the less likely you are to ever do it. That's the problem with an all or nothing approach. You feel like you have to wait until you have it all figured out, but that's not helpful.

You will never have it all figured out. I don't have it all figured out and I've been following it for years and coaching thousands of people on the protocol. There are some things in life that you can only learn through doing. And following an MS nutrition protocol, it's one of them. I love the analogy about understanding like flavors of food, how you can only understand flavors of food so much by reading a menu. At some point, you have to place the order so that you can actually have the food in front of you and see it and smell it and taste it. That is the learning experience. And that's so similar to following an MS nutrition protocol.

So going back to my point about continually pushing off your start date until you have it all figured out, what if you just started today? What if you didn't give yourself like a start date of Monday or the first of the month or whatever? What if it was just today and you decided that you were going to find one way? One way to eat one serving of vegetables that you weren't already planning on eating today. It can be that simple. It can be that simple. For me, a big win is choosing some cut up veggies for a snack instead of reaching for a bag of chips. Or choosing a salad for lunch, or adding some spinach to my strawberry banana smoothie, or adding a serving of veggies at dinner. And when we hear these, they all sound simple in and of themselves. So if you're like me, it's easy to be like, 'oh, you know what? I can do all of them. I'm going to do all of them, and I'm going to do that tomorrow.' Because doing all of them doesn't feel realistic today. But does reaching for the bag of baby carrots in your refrigerator

become my new afternoon snack. And then once that becomes something I'm not even thinking about, it's just part of my routine, then I take the next step of like, you know what, I'm going to pick up some spinach at the grocery store. I'm going to start adding that into my strawberry banana smoothie this week. That feels ridiculously simple. You buy the spinach, you put the cup in the blender, and you're not doing basically anything else different. So when there's less resistance, it feels easier. It feels lighter. We're more likely to do it. It doesn't feel like this mountain that we have to climb. So therefore we have to wait until we have the energy or the motivation or whatever. Start today. Start simple. What is one step? You will hear me say this over and over and over again on this podcast.

You just have to start. Start with something that feels simple for you today. Now let's circle back to the other question. Can you get the same results with a gradual approach? In my experience, both personally and professionally, so living this protocol out on a day-to-day basis, but also coaching like thousands of people through it. You get better results. Now, let me say, it's not as much of a dramatic, like before and after transformation, like, oh, within 30 days, I accomplished X. However, the gradual approach lasts longer because again, you don't feel like you're following a quote unquote diet. You're building a new lifestyle. I love when I get emails from people asking about my nutrition coaching program. And they're like, I don't want to feel like I'm on a diet.

That's amazing because that helps you to just, again, start simple and build from there. It's not going to give you the big before and after transformation. However, the results are longer lasting because anything that is like clinging to like, say, I don't know, I keep using this example, but like a 30 day diet. Well, those results aren't going to last as long because it's just such a quick ramp up.

You don't look at it like, oh, I fell off. So there goes the rest of my day or there goes the rest of this week. Like, no, you had one off day. And guess what? Tomorrow, you're going to begin again. You're going to start again. The reality is MS is a chronic illness. I've said it multiple times and you know it already. That's not new news. This diagnosis isn't going away. So we need to focus on the long game when it comes to managing it. And having a real-world plan is a lot more manageable than some super rigid, unrealistic set of do's and don'ts. I mean, don't you want a real-world plan? That not only helps you to feel better, but also allows you to make one meal that the whole family will have for dinner, or go to a restaurant for date night, or go out to happy hour for girls' night out, or enjoy the holidays and celebrations like birthdays and weddings. That's what we want. We want the results, but we also want to live in this world. We want to be able to enjoy life, have a social life, be able to travel if that's what you want.

That's not going to work. This is about having a real-world plan. That's what we crave. That's what we want. We want the results and a real-world plan. Personally, I always go back to these five principles. Number one, eat less processed foods. Number two, eat more vegetables and fruits. Number three, have balanced meals and snacks, meaning including protein and healthy fats to minimize inflammation and boost energy and reduce cravings. Number four, eliminate or reduce inflammatory foods like gluten, dairy, and sugar. And number five, avoid foods that your body is personally triggered by. Maybe it's pain, energy, mood, mental clarity, skin issues. There's so many different ways in which our body can express a reaction to a specific food, but avoid the foods that you know your body is personally triggered by. Those are my five core principles with managing nutrition. It's not overly complicated.

So if that's helpful for you, again, number one, eat less processed foods. Number two, eat more vegetables and fruits. Number three, have balanced meals and snacks. Number four, eliminate or reduce inflammatory foods. And number five, avoid the foods that your body is personally triggered by. And then the next step, pay attention to the results. Have you felt better since making these changes?

You can also ask yourself, do you think your health would be negatively impacted by adding these foods back into your diet? Yes, the body doesn't lie. I can't look back on regret of anything I did if I was listening to my body and letting my body guide my choices. But how often do you listen to your body? How often do you listen to your body? Do you pay attention to how your body feels after you eat? Like immediately after you eat? And then maybe two hours afterwards, or later in the day, Or even the next day, do you get quiet enough or still enough to pay attention to how your body responds to certain foods? We live in such a fast-paced world. It's easy to try to follow someone else's diet who seems like they figured it out.

Let me just hop on their bandwagon and keep it pushing without ever asking ourselves if it works for us. What is your body saying? And how does your body speak to you? For years, my body spoke to me through migraine headaches. If I was stressed or taking on too much or eating poorly, my body would respond with a migraine headache. Now it's more likely to respond through my digestive system or fatigue. How does your body let you know that something is off? The best guide for your diet is your body. Through my digestive system or fatigue, how does your body let you know that something is off? The best guide for your diet is your body. And that's what I want to invite you to do more often.

Now you might be saying, okay, all this makes sense. I'll start letting my body be the guide, but where do I start? Helene, give me some type of starting point. Especially if you're bombarded with the do's and don'ts every single day around nutrition. I feel like I can't go on social media anymore without seeing yet another rule I'm supposed to follow around food. So I'm very much in agreement with the message that we don't need to fear food. Too many rules and restrictions creates fear, paralyzing fear, paralyzing in the sense that you start to fear food. You're afraid you'll eat the wrong food and it'll trigger a flare, or you don't have enough of the quote unquote right foods in your house to feed you for the week.

Food becomes a source of stress. I get it. I see it all the time in our community. And I've even experienced it myself. And I'm a nutrition coach. Too many rules and restrictions creates fear, paralyzing fear. Paralyzing in the sense that you start to fear food. You're afraid you'll eat the wrong food and it'll trigger a flare, or you don't have enough of the quote unquote right foods in your house to feed you for the week. Food becomes a source of stress. I get it. I see it all the time in our community. And I've even experienced it myself. And I'm a nutrition coach. But don't just follow food or diet rules because somebody else said so. Hear out their recommendations. I'm all for that. But then filter them through what your body is telling you. Are you sensing a theme? Does this recommendation make sense for you? If you feel better after eliminating a specific food, great, amazing. Your body gave you great feedback. Then discover how you can expand your meals and snacks without a particular food in your diet. Again, if they're saying to eliminate something like gluten, eliminate it from your diet for 30 days or up to three months and see how you feel.

You pay attention to the results. And if you're starting to feel better, great. Again, how can you expand your meal and snack options without having that food in there? So take it one step at a time and pay attention to the results. And it can be helpful to track your progress too. That's why I created my MS Wellness Tracker. It helps you to stay consistent and accountable and to track your progress with, say, the vegetables that you're eating or sleep or water or elimination.

Alenebrennan.com/tracker. It helps you to track your food and lifestyle habits along with your energy. And again, it's a one-page checklist. It's super simple. What a concept. Let's make this a little bit lighter and easier on us. So today's main message, don't believe everything that you hear on social media or in the news. Instead, let your body be the guide. Eat real food and pay attention to the results and track your progress on

Well, my friend, we've reached the end of this episode. Pick one lesson from today's discussion and put it into action now. It's time to reclaim your body, mind and life from multiple sclerosis. And for more resources, events, and programs, head over to AleneBrennan. com. See you on the next episode of my MS Podcast.