"Skinny Bitch" Co-Author Tells You How To Eat Healthy

By Kim Barnouin Expert

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Kim Barnouin, A New York Times bestselling author, discusses her method to eating healthy without removing all the foods she enjoys from her diet.

Todd Hartley:
If you can’t take one more day of self-loathing, if you are ready to hear the truth and you can’t keep shoveling the same crap in your mouth everyday and expect to lose weight, well this interview, it’s for you and that’s why I am joined right now by Kim Barnouin, a former model who holds a Masters of Science degree in holistic nutrition and the co-author of The New York Times bestseller “Skinny Bitch.” Hi Kim!

Kim Barnouin:

Hi there!

Todd Hartley:
Kim, I hear the term a lot. If we are what we eat, does that relate to the saying garbage in and garbage out? is that accurate?

Kim Barnouin:
Absolutely. I think that, you know, for me, when I really understood what this term meant was that I had so many of my own health problems and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I had no money for health insurance and with enough research I kept coming across foods as a possible solution and when I did a food journal for two weeks of what I was eating and then when I changed my diet, the before and after was so dramatic that I looked in my food journal about two months into it and I couldn’t believe that I was actually functioning on the crap I was putting in my body.

So I have been through the what you put in your body as crap makes you feel like crap and then when you put good, fresh natural foods in your body how that amazing, healing capacity can take over and do wonder for, you know, physically and emotionally to change your life.

Todd Hartley:
Yeah, the body is designed to heal, right? It’s designed to work out its problems. It is a built-in solution creator. My wife keeps a diary on her food consumption and she is always amazingly able to back track which foods didn’t agree with her and which ones did to make wiser decisions in the future. You do something like that too?

Kim Barnouin:
I do and I think that’s amazing that she does that. I think that we really should be doing that. I did it when I was nursing my new baby at the time and he was having some health issues too and I kept thinking, “He’s really gassy,” and I started doing it then too and realizing, “Wow this is amazing; I can do it for me but I can also figure out how this is affecting my son,” but I do it a lot because I think that, and I tell my friends do as well, because I think once you really have it on paper what you are putting in your body it becomes real and then you sort of have to say that to, “Wow, this is really awful” or “Okay, this isn’t so bad; I can make a few changes,” but I think at least periodically making a weekly journal even or every few days is a great way to just get an idea of where your health is and some ways to improve it.

Todd Hartley:
I interviewed Dr. Andrew Weil recently and he was telling me about the concerns of the raw vegetarian diet. Is a raw diet healthier than a cooked vegan diet?

Kim Barnouin:
You know, I think that a raw diet has some really wonderful health benefits. For me, it’s a little bit too much for me. I think that, I know people that follow that way of eating and they are very healthy, but they have to be very careful about what they are eating and making sure they are getting enough of the food groups, but I think adding that sort of value to your everyday routine is great and that’s just really having enough salads, having raw veggies, it’s wonderful having juicing and I think that it’s, the concept is amazing, but for me I don’t enjoy that way of eating every single day.

Todd Hartley:
It doesn’t work for your body every day.

Kim Barnouin:
No, I just find that it is just not enough. I like my comforts and, you know, being vegan I can still have all those comfort foods. I mean I make chicken potpie, it’s just with a different kind of chicken and there’s healthy ingredients in it so I have control over what’s going in the dish, but for me that’s just warm and comforting and I am still enjoying all the wonderful flavors, just, you know, my vegan version.

Todd Hartley:
Sure, we eat a diet that at times has vegan elements to it. One of our favorite items is Tempeh tacos or Tempeh sloppy Joes and they are so nurturing; it’s just like having the real thing. You wouldn’t know. What are the benefits of a vegan diet for a woman who is just hearing about the vegan diet for the first time?

Kim Barnouin:
Instead of looking it as, you know, “Oh my gosh, vegans… they have to give up everything and they only eat salads and rice and beans and lettuce and…’ What we have to say is that most vegans have chosen this as a lifestyle and it’s really about focusing on your entire life. What products am I consuming that have chemicals or animal products and that goes for beauty products and clothing as well, but for us it’s a matter of you know, do we want saturated fat in our diet, cholesterol, things like that and enjoying all the foods that you know, I mean I was a big meat eat before, I just took those foods that I enjoyed and I just made them in a healthier vegan way.

I mean, I love Tempeh too. You know, there’s plenty of choices of protein in a vegan diet. It’s really just about substituting things that you have eaten before with just different things and people worry about, they ask about calcium as well and there are plenty ways to get, you know more than enough calcium and they’re fortifying soy milks and rice milks and orange juice with calcium, green leafy vegetables, getting enough nuts and seeds, whole grains, really want non-vegans to know that even if it’s something that you decide to do with your diet every once in a while, or are adding more vegetables or adding Tempeh to your meatless Mondays or something like that, there are just small ways to increase the nutrients in the meals that you are eating and it doesn’t has to be a drastic change; it can be just be mindful of what you are eating and finding healthier alternatives.

Todd Hartley:
Kim, when women remove processed foods from their diets does that help them become a skinny bitch?

Kim Barnouin:
It helps them become a healthy bitch and sometimes the skinny follows – absolutely. I think, you know, when you are really diving into what processed foods are, there’s ingredients and chemicals in there to really make the shelf-life of the food last as long as possible and be still considered fresh if that’s possible.

So, when you are thinking, “Okay, so there’s chemicals in here that are going to preserve this, what in the world is it doing to my body and if I can’t pronounce any of these ingredients, is that something that I feel is going to be healthy for my body?” So, you know, I feel like if women can sort of read labels, pay attention to what they are eating, and I am all about having fun snacks and things like that, but luckily we have Whole Foods and Trader Joes and different health food stores that are making fun treats that are not as horrible for you as processed foods.

When you look at, you know, high fructose corn syrup is pretty much in everything now-a-days and most traditional grocery stores a lot of the pre-packaged foods processes have high fructose corn syrup in it and that alone is another discussion of how that’s not healthy to put that in your body. So it’s just a bunch of things that are not the foundation for a healthy diet.

Todd Hartley:
One of the things I notice, the more disciplined I am with the diet the more I remove the things that don’t work for me like no dairy or no additives, no sugars, no white flowers, the more disciplined I become the more I can hear my body talk to me, respond back, give me positive signs that I don’t need those things or they are not going to be helpful. How does your body talk to you about which foods work and which ones don’t?

Kim Barnouin:
It’s just a really good point. I think that when you are able to listen to your body and recognize, you know, what it’s telling you then I think you have a great sort of balance of your relationship with food.

Todd Hartley:
A lot of the ladies in the office here at EmpowHER are fans of “Skinny Bitch” and the series. One of them said to me just moments before I came into our radio studio here, “Ask her about Doritos. What’s the deal with Doritos? Are they really poison?”

Kim Barnouin:
Oh Doritos, I grew up on Doritos and I love them but yes, they are poison. If you take a look at the back of the bag you will see the amount of ingredients on there and most of them you probably won’t be able to pronounce and there’s probably MSG in there which is no joke either. So, for what I say is if the smaller the list of ingredients, the better it is for you. If it takes up half the package it’s probably not all that good.

Todd Hartley:
Yeah, I think so. How does a woman get out of the sugar cycle? I know that’s a big problem for a lot of people. Do you have any tips on breaking the sugar addiction wheel?

Kim Barnouin:
That was something that I personally had to deal with myself because when I first started changing my diet and I was reading my food journal, sugar was a majority of my diet and that produced so many reactions in my body and it was horrible for me.

So, what I had to do was sort of aggressively change the sugar that I was using so that it wasn’t the refined white sugar; it wasn’t high-fructose corn syrup. I was consuming a lot of food that had that sugar in it. You know, the white table sugar it was really doing a number on my hypoglycemia.

So I am not saying that sugar, you know, natural sugar is good for you, but I reduced the number, the amount of sugar that I was using and at the same time I was making sure that I was eating a lot of complex carbs and I was trying to get off my sugar. Just having that sense of feeling full, having my blood sugar even, the cravings went down. So I felt like I wasn’t a raving wildebeest trying to get to, you know, the snack drawer.

Todd Hartley:
Because your book “Skinny Bitch” has great shock value and I love shock value, it’s like my kind of humor, when people meet you do they expect you to be a little bit more shocking than you really are?

Kim Barnouin:
They do. I mean anyone who knows me know that I do have a trash mouth. I definitely do and I am getting better because I have a son, but that isn’t perfect yet. So the talk in there is definitely me, but only to be, you know, funny and humorous and I’m not harsh to my friends and I don’t beat up on them if they’re, if they don’t have a perfect diet, but I am definitely not a bitch and it was really just, you know, it was we wanted to write the book the way that we talk and we feel like there is a big health crisis in America and people need to have a drill sergeant sort of saying, “Hey wake up, this is serious,” but you know, making them laugh at the same time.

Todd Hartley:
She is Kim Barnouin. She is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller “Skinny Bitch.” She is speaking at “You Are What You Eat,” which we all know is true – you are what you eat and it’s an event at the Center for Integrative Medicine in Brea, California. For more information you can go to im-cim.com or you can visit Kim’s website at healthybitchdaily.com. Kim, thank you so much for helping us advocate for women.

Kim Barnouin:
Thank you so much! I appreciate it.

Visit Kim Barnouin at Healthy Bitch Daily

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