Diet and metabolic health coaching is a part of every physiotherapy visit set aside for food and how it changes healing. An injury hurts and heals inside a whole body: blood sugar, belly fat, all-day snacking, stress and sleep all change how fast tissue heals.
What is diet and metabolic health coaching?
Each visit, we go over your meals since last time and whatever made the plan hard, then pick a change or two to try before the next visit. When an RQ breathing test is ordered, its results become the starting point.
Why does food matter after an injury?
High blood sugar, extra belly fat and eating all day long keep inflammation running all over the body, and tissue that is inflamed mends slower and hurts more. Stress and short sleep pile on. Changing what you eat, and when, a little at a time, makes every other treatment in the program work better.
What happens at each visit?
A conversation, not a lecture. We go over your week and agree on the next small step together.
Your eating protocol, from first step to last
Food is medicine, and it is information your body reads. Eat for real hunger, not out of boredom. Your physician fits each step to you. You leave your first visit with the protocol in writing, and it is revisited at every appointment.
Before every step: walk after you eat
Any time you eat or drink, even if it is only water, follow it with a 10-minute walk.
Step 1: Stop all vegetable oils
Vegetable oils are really industrial seed oils; not one vegetable goes into them. Check the label on everything and put back any food that lists one. Leave spray-on cooking oil on the shelf too.
- Real olive oil
- Coconut oil
- Butter or ghee
- Avocado
- Duck fat
- Beef tallow
- Canola oil
- Corn oil
- Soybean oil
- Crisco
- Margarine
Step 2: Stop sugar and sweeteners
Anything sweet goes: candy, juice, soda and diet soda. Chips go too. No artificial sweeteners. Allulose is probably safe.
Step 3: Sleep
Sleep a full 7 hours or longer without waking. Screens of any kind stay out of the bed.
Step 4: Supplements
Supplements your physician may recommend include krill oil, D3 together with vitamin K2, and SIBO yogurt you make at home. Ask us first before adding anything new.
Step 5: Pick your plan with your physician
Best if you are just starting out, are not sure which foods drive your inflammation, or have weight to lose and have stalled.
- Two meals a day, no more.
- Beef, chicken and fish without limits, cooked in butter with any spices.
- The menu is meat, cheese, eggs, butter and salt.
- Water is your only drink.
- SIBO yogurt may help.
Keep at it 4 to 12 weeks. Then return foods one per week, as long as each one fits the Live Health Protocol.
The everyday plan for living well with less pain and inflammation. Every bit of vegetable oil and sugar you eat adds to pain and inflammation. Feeling worn out or crampy is a sign you may need more salt.
Real food to eat- Chicken, fish, beef and pork
- Whole eggs
- Leafy green vegetables
- Tree nuts like almonds and macadamias, plus seeds
- Water, coffee and unsweetened tea
- Bread, pasta, rice, rice cakes, cereal, grits, oatmeal and potatoes (grains and starches)
- Processed food with added colors or flavorings
- Fruit
- Ground-grown nuts, including peanuts and cashews
- Soda, juice and diet soda, plus coffee creamer
Eat inside a time window
Squeeze all of each day’s food into a span under 8 hours. When that gets easy, cut an hour off the span every week, down to 4 or 5 hours. Breakfast tends to kick off a day of overeating more than any other meal.
Move every week
Your physician writes you a walking and strength routine totaling no less than 150 active minutes each week. Keeping your strength protects your muscles while you heal. If you smoke, we help you quit.
What should you tell us first?
- You are on insulin, diabetes pills or blood pressure medicine. A new way of eating can shift the dose you need, and your physician handles any medicine changes.
How long does it take?
Part of every visit.
What to remember
- A 10-minute walk follows every meal, snack or drink.
- No vegetable oils, no sugar, no sweeteners.
- All food fits in a daily window under 8 hours.
Show us you have it: Bring us a report at each visit on what you ate, your walks after meals and your sleep. If any part is unclear, ask us to go over it again; there is no limit on that.
For how food affects sore joints, read diet for joint pain. Coaching here ties in with our wider metabolic and lifestyle care and the RQ breathing test.
This page belongs to the Gateway Midwest physician-directed physiotherapy program. On Natural Bridge Road, the physician who examined you signs each order, and no treatment runs without a physician on site.
Hurt in an accident? Start here.
You do not need a lawyer, a police report or a referral to be seen. Bring your symptoms and we will work out the rest.
Monday–Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Same-day appointments are often available for new accident and injury patients.