Navigating the holidays as a kidney stoner

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Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet podcast, a show where we help you reduce your risk for kidney stones and live your best life. I'm your host and fellow student, Jeff Sarris. And I'm here, as always, with Jill Harris.

How you doing, Jill?

Hi, Jeff! I'm so happy to be here, as always, with you.

Yeah, you know, until we started doing this podcast, and I started recording the intro, I never really realized how similar our names are. It's weird to say my name and then yours.

Yes, it is. I have noticed that. But see, you say "Sarris," and I say "Harris." But then I'm originally from New York, so my accent jacks everything up, as always.

But, yeah, no, it is. It's interesting.

Doesn't actually sound different. I don't I don't actually notice the difference.

I don't know. I maybe not. I think I say yours "Sarris." I don't know.

And you know what? Nobody cares about what I'm saying right now. So, I'm just going to shut right on up.

It's all good. But, yeah, so why don't we just dive right in this week? I was thinking, with Thanksgiving literally a few days away and all the holidays coming up, why don't we dive into how to navigate just navigate the holidays when someone has kidney stones?

Yeah, you know, Thanksgiving, well, I tell my patients the nervousness and the stress typically happens right around Halloween. And then you go right into Halloween to Thanksgiving, then you have, right, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Hanukkah, all those, Kwanzaa, whatever you celebrate, right into New Year's Eve. So, it's a very stressful time for people.

Whether people are coming to me to lose weight or kidney stone prevention or, quite frankly, a lot of people come for both, it can be very stressful for people. You have your customs that you have your favorite cookies, you know, there's cookie bakes, there's pies, there's Grandma Jean's special sweet potato, whatever. I mean, you know, so it can be a stressful holiday.

Also, Thanksgiving is particularly high in oxalate. So, people are always like, "What? Does this mean I can't celebrate Thanksgiving?

How can that be?"

So, one thing I always stress to people, whether again, they're doing weight loss or kidney stone stuff or both, it's six days. Really, let's count it. We have Halloween, we have Thanksgiving, we have Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day.

You got Hanukkah in there and other things people celebrate. But let's just say six days, six days. Not 60, not 60 days.

We don't like start with Halloween and say, "Well, the hell with it. Let's just roll right into the rest of the holidays, and you know what? I might as well not do nothing till January 1st now, and make it a resolution." So, it's six days.

So, what I tell people is enjoy yourself. Enjoy yourself on those six days. Just take them off the table.

Now, when you're approaching something like Thanksgiving, the potatoes can be higher oxalate. There's a lot of meat typically for Thanksgiving. There's a lot of sweets.

I want to remind everybody that nobody, nobody made a stone in a day, okay? Nobody does that. And maybe there's somebody in the background right now that says, "Oh, what do you know?

I made one." Well, you're a very rare bird out of the thousands of people that I educate every year. So, if that's what you think, that's great, but I'm just telling you, you don't make a stone in a day, okay?

So, but also from a healthy point of view, want people to understand and think about it. Do you really need three plates of food on Thanksgiving? I'm just saying.

Could you just say, "You know what, I'm going to have whatever I want on this plate. A little bit of everything," because I love Thanksgiving. So, I'm going to have a little bit of everything.

Everybody made our favorite foods, our family traditional foods, and I'm going to taste a little bit of everything. I find that most of my patients do that and they're satisfied and happy. And one of the biggest things about being compliant on any kind of diet is if one is happy and satisfied.

If you leave the table whether it's the holidays or not and you're like, "Ugh, that was not satisfying." Guess who ain't going to be compliant going forward.

So, my job as a nurse as a nurse who educates patients on kidney stone prevention is making sure, sure, we get all the goals in. I make sure they get all their goals each day to not make kidney stones, but I also take into major consideration are people enjoying what they eat? Because the only diet that's going to work for you is the diet that's going to work for you, okay?

So, the holidays are not a problem if you just really limit it to those six days. Have a little bit of extra, have a little bit of pie, and it's not going to be a problem. It really isn't.

And I think the bigger thing is you're going to notice you don't have to gain 5 lb over the holidays. Nobody has to do that. I eat a little bit of everything.

I really enjoy my meals. I don't gain any weight over the holidays. I keep my exercise routine, and so it's very possible.

Don't throw away 60 days for six. Don't do that. So, and in the long run, you'll be a lot less anxious, too, because every time my patients eat a little bit of this, a little bit of that, they're anxious, which that means once they're anxious, they eat a little bit more of this and a little bit more of that, because a lot of people use food for coping skills.

So, it's a vicious cycle. And so I'm just saying it's just the holidays. That's it.

Just have a little bit of extra stuff. Don't have three plates full of nothing. You don't have to do that.

Eat responsibly, and you're going to be just fine. What do you think about that advice, Jeff?

Oh, yeah, it's great. I mean, that's why you talk about portion, not perfection, a lot, is it's not a it's not a diet of mass restriction. It's you're really trying to just reduce their risk for kidney stones.

And there are a couple things, though, when it comes to almonds and spinach that you normally say are off-limits. Would you say they're still off-limits for the holidays?

Yeah, I say they're off-limits, because listen. There's hundreds of milligrams in almonds. Nobody's getting the bag of almonds and saying, "Honey, just give me one." Nobody's doing that.

They want handfuls. And people were using almonds as something to keep their hunger at bay, or, and they heard it was healthy. So, you know, the more the, the more the better, the more the, more health, and that's what happens in conjunction with not getting any calcium throughout the day, which most adults don't.

That was the perfect storm for stones. And spinach is 600 mg of oxalate for 1 cup. By the time you boil down or saute that spinach, that's as big as my nose, okay?

So, that's also not worth cooking. It's just not. Now, you may say, "Okay, you just said nobody makes a stone in a day.

I'm going to have a spinach salad." You can. Really, I'm going to go on record and say you could, but why would you want to do that? It's hundreds.

If that's going to make it, that's going to make somebody anxious. It's going to make me anxious for you. So, just put away spinach.

Put away almonds. You can eat other nuts like sunflower seeds, which is a seed, pistachio nuts, a few pecans. If you do things within normal portion for most foods except spinach and almonds and a few things on a very high oxalate list on my website, you'll be just fine.

Diets don't work for people because we can't be told we can never have a food group again, but you can eat as much as you want of the other one, okay? It doesn't work, because the only thing you think about is that food group you can't have no more, i.e. Carbs.

So, have a little bit of everything. Just, you know, watch your portion size. We don't need to overeat the way we do, right?

That's the problem. We eat too much food, and we need to put our fork down after a certain you know, after your plate of food, that's it. We don't need more food after that.

I know people don't like that, but it's true.

Yeah, we're not always in tune with our body to know when we're actually full, which is something it's worth exploring for everyone.

It really is. I'm going to tell you what a little secret. I'm the first one to tell you all my flaws.

And one of my flaws, and my patients know this, I really eat fast. I eat very fast. You know, I've bartended a lot when I was putting myself through nursing school, nursing school, all the kind of jobs I've had, you had to hurry up and eat.

You know, you didn't have official breaks or anything really. So, I've really always eaten really fast. So, the deal is it's very difficult to know when I'm full.

But I know that I know that I do eat fast. I know it's not a good signal for when I am full, and I just stop when I'm done, you know? And I always say I'm going to work on doing and making that better, but I just don't seem to ever do it.

So, we all have our things we're working on.

Absolutely. And I think that's a good way to close this episode this week. So, if you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening right now, and also check it out on YouTube, where you can see us talking face to face.

Is what is the YouTube channel, Kidney Stone Diet with Jill Harris, I believe?

Yes. Yep.

Yeah. So, thanks again, Jill, and…

It's a pleasure, Jeff. I love talking with you, you know that.

Oh, yeah. It's always great. We'll see you in the next episode.

Bye.