Episode #001: Radio Interview with Philip Knox from September 2018
Radio Interview with Philip Knox | September 2018
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A great way to get to know me is to listen to what I have to say. I've pulled out some past radio interviews that give you a glimpse of how I developed my practice philosophy which I follow to help people improve their health each day. Here's what's in this episode:
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An introduction to my practice which was originally called livingwell nutrition and wellness coaching
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How I help people with food
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Eating locally and the "Hundred Mile Diet"
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I hope you enjoy this first episode. As a bonus, here's my newsletter about the Hundred Mile Diet. I realize that the website listed is no longer available, but the info is still relevant and a great challenge to try out!
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Full Transcript
​[00:00:00] Michelle Meilleur: Hey there, and welcome to the show. I'm Michelle, and this very first episode is a special one, a replay of a radio interview I did back in 2018 on CJPE 99.3 County FM in beautiful Prince Edward County. Even though it originally aired a few years ago, the conversation is still super relevant Today. We dive into food health and how you can eat more locally with a few simple tips to help you get started. Let's jump in.
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[00:00:31] Radio Station: The following is a presentation of CJPE 99.3 County fm, the voice of the county in Prince Edward County.
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[00:00:52] Philip Knox: Hello. We are back. We have someone who I have, known for a while now on the topic of nutrition. And can you hear me, Michelle?
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[00:01:03] Michelle Meilleur: I can. Hi, Phil.
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[00:01:04] Philip Knox: Hi. How are you doing? I know you just moved your operation in Belleville, but what, what is the actual, company called?
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[00:01:14] Michelle Meilleur: Living well. Nutrition and wellness Coaching.
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[00:01:16] Philip Knox: Livingwell Nutrition and Wellness Coaching. All right. Tell me what is a nutritionist?
[00:01:24] Michelle Meilleur: Well, we're kind of a new breed of healthcare providers. I guess for the last 15 to 20 years. Specialized private courses have been available in Ontario and across Canada to train holistic nutritionists to help people improve their health through food.
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[00:01:43] Philip Knox: Okay , now you've been a nutritionist for how many years now?
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[00:01:46] Michelle Meilleur: It's been 15, believe it or not.
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[00:01:48] Philip Knox: 15. And, and the one topic, I remember you and I having this conversation, the changes over time. That, that we find out more what is going on with the foods. The, we're constantly discovering things and what was once considered, here's what you gotta do, is now no longer the case. I take it, it's a changing world out there.
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[00:02:14] Michelle Meilleur: You are absolutely correct with all the new research and also with helping so many new people with food directly in terms of using food to heal and using it as medicine to heal specific health conditions, we know so much more and we can use it to our advantage to improve our health now.
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[00:02:34] Philip Knox: That's a, that's a new concept. I mean, we've come from a, a time, I think where, the solution by a lot of people was, take a pill, take a pill, take a medicine, do in some cases it might have been an operation, but you are, you are now talking about nutrition that. If you spend a little more time and become a little more aware and educated on what to do about nutrition, that you can actually do some healing of things that maybe we were taking pills for before.
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[00:03:03] Michelle Meilleur: Absolutely. And that's what, my practice is all about. In last. 15 years, I guess, about when I first started practicing. I practiced the way they wanted to. They taught us in school using a lot of nutritional supplements and remedies to help people. But I quickly realized that that wasn't giving me the results that I wanted. So I developed my practice philosophy about 13 years ago, and the first philosophy is food first. So absolutely everybody who walks through my door and who wants some help with their health do the food first. Where I, I do an assessment. Them with specific recommendations regarding what they're going through, and it's incredible. In two to three weeks of just doing foods, oftentimes people symptoms are reduced by sometimes 75 to 80%.
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[00:03:52] Philip Knox: That's incredible. Just by, by looking at what you're taking in on a daily basis.
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[00:03:59] Michelle Meilleur: Correct. That's why, you know, and a lot of times we take away a lot of the bad stuff, but we put a lot of good stuff into, so as a nutritionist and health coach, I'm there to provide a lot of new ideas and new foods, which seem to feed the body some new energy, some new fuel if you'd like. And that in itself starts the healing process.
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[00:04:20] Philip Knox: So, and, and the quality and type of, , I, I shouldn't maybe know not the right quality, but, but what's in the food has changed over time. If I'm not mistaken. Canada is looking at, , something to do with trans fat. , isn't there a law that they're looking at that is talking about trans fat being, , not allowed on foods that are sold in Canada?
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[00:04:44] Michelle Meilleur: Absolutely our foods are improving, but the number one, you know, rule of thumb that I do recommend to absolutely everybody is to eat Whole Foods. Many might have heard of Eat Clean, which means reducing those packaged foods where we find the trans fats and high sodium level and go back. To making our own foods.
Now, to some people they may think, oh, that's a lot more time in the kitchen. But I help my clients find easy ways to prepare and plan for the week of whole foods and reducing the package products that seem to have all those chemicals and added ingredients that are not helping us to function and heal properly.
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[00:05:27] Philip Knox: Okay, so what, what. Can you tell me what you mean by whole food? Like what's an example of a whole food?
[00:05:32] Michelle Meilleur: Absolutely. We all have heard maybe of walking, of shopping the perimeter of the grocery store. So where you're buying your own fruits and vegetables, you know, your proteins, whether, your meats or chicken poultry or vegetarian proteins. And then you buy your herbs and your spices. And the olive oil and then you know, the, some of the dairy products that you need, but that way you're reducing the packaged foods.
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[00:05:58] Philip Knox: Okay. Alright, so, so as convenient as some convenient foods are, they're not necessarily doing your health any good.
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[00:06:07] Michelle Meilleur: That's correct. So it's not like I tell my clients, don't worry, it's not like you'll never have a slice of pizza again. But we try to reduce those foods that we ate so much of in the last 20 to 40 years, and we try to manage them. So having more homemade foods, more whole foods to get us through the week.
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[00:06:28] Philip Knox: I think, you know, one of the things I, I, I like about the concept of a, a whole food is. You, you have an idea of how much salt you've put in. You have an idea of how much, um, basil you've put in. You have an idea of how much wine you've put in whatever you're making, whereas you tend to gloss over that, uh, just the small writing on the tin can or something like that.
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[00:06:52] Michelle Meilleur: Absolutely. And I look at it in a very practical way. For myself, I'm not a sugar person, but I'm a salt person. So one of the big things I've worked on is eliminating or reducing the canned products that are high, high sodium. So the soups, for example, that could be really tricky. Sometimes they exceed the amount of sodium we should have in one day. so I really have, so I buy, if I buy a can of tomatoes now, it's no salt added because in the past I would've bought the full salt added and added more salt. So now if I stick to the no salt added chicken broth, for example, that we can buy now, and the no salt added tomatoes, that way we can control how much salt we add afterwards.
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[00:07:33] Philip Knox: , my mother was a god rest your soul was a salt person as well. It didn't matter what the cook had done, as soon as it, the plate was put down, people put salt on it.
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[00:07:43] Michelle Meilleur: And we have to just appreciate everybody has different cravings and different tastes for something, so we just have to find a healthier way to get those cravings taken care of.
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[00:07:54] Philip Knox: Now, now with the, the travel that people have and the sources of food, people are looking at foods from all over the world. You can get apples from Argentina, you can get, you know, grapes from France, you can get oranges from Spain. You there? It's coming from all over the place. Fish from Russia, who knows where it's coming from here. Is there, is there an advantage where we live in rural, Ontario, here to the local foods.
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[00:08:26] Michelle Meilleur: Yeah, absolutely there is. One of the challenges I sometimes give clients, especially in the months of August and September when our, , markets look so nice and fresh, is to eat locally. And we sometimes call the a hundred mile diet, to try to source as much local food as you can. Because that way it spends less time in transit . Sometimes it would pick too early and it has to. Be ready for the grocery store. So as much as we can get locally, the better. And we're really, lucky in Prince Edward County area. We do have a lot of farmers. We do have a lot of, fresh foods, poultry, eggs. So if, have some time to invest in finding local foods, it is, helpful of course.
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[00:09:07] Philip Knox: Yeah. And then you've got all of the opportunities to. Mix and match anything you want. Especially if you're driving down the road, then you can find these little stalls on the side of the road and say, oh gosh, look, I'll have some of that. And there it becomes dinner. You know?
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[00:09:21] Michelle Meilleur: Yeah. It could be a fun family project actually. And this time of the year is. Perfect. So if, folks wanna look up the a hundred mile diet, I know there were TV shows made at one point. And it could be really neat to, it was , an idea actually developed out British Columbia. You just make a circle around where you're from and try to source out your food.
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[00:09:39] Philip Knox: Now, now. One of the things that you'd mentioned at the beginning of the show, and I know we're not gonna have time to go into this in real deep detail, but you talked about picking things that can improve health. What's an example of something that we could eat to improve one aspect of health?
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[00:10:00] Michelle Meilleur: The one thing that I really work with my clients to increase because it's, it's actually a big challenge for everybody. But that's your vegetables. And this is why practically everybody that I see who comes to me with health issues and they want to get healthier, one of the main reasons that they're not well is because they're deficient in their minerals. So over the years, they've just spent a lot of minerals. That's your calcium magnesium, your potassium, your sodium levels. So there's a lot of different ones, but the reason why they're ill is because they lack minerals, and it's the vegetables that contain our minerals. So one of the things that my clients work really hard on is reducing the amount of fruit, which contains our vitamins, but also turn into sugar quite quickly and try to increase our vegetables. So if folks wanna work on that, I recommend two to three servings of fruit per day. But I also give a challenge to try to reach five to seven servings of vegetables per day and a serving being about a half a cup.
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[00:11:03] Philip Knox: Okay, now, servings you're talking about throughout the entire day, right? That could be spread over. Now let's talk about number of meals a day is, is I know some people that only want to eat one meal a day. And some people want to eat two meals a day. I, I'm a a three meal a day type of guy myself, but I know people that, that are on some very active exercise programs and, hobby sports, hockey guys and things like that may do five meals a day or snacks in between. Is there a, is there a game plan or does it really depend upon your lifestyle and activity level?
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[00:11:38] Michelle Meilleur: So I have a fine print with all everything that I do and everybody I talk to, and it's always, it depends. That's why I take my time when I have a client. I sit down with them from an hour to an hour and a half doing an assessment, finding all that information out so that we can personalize the nutrition plan according to the person. We were always told, you know, to eat three meals and two snacks per day, eating every few hours. Revs up our metabolism. But that's not necessarily true. And you're absolutely correct. It's depending on the activity level and the health of the person. So all of that needs to be looked at to decide exactly what the amount of food is good for one person.
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[00:12:17] Philip Knox: Okay, well listen, we, we've run out of time for today's show, but can I ask if you'll come back with this? 'cause I got a bunch more questions and I know our listeners probably will send them into us as well.
[00:12:29] Michelle Meilleur: Absolutely would love to. I can talk about this stuff for hours.
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[00:12:32] Philip Knox: Great. Thank you Michelle very much for being on the show with us today and look forward to talking with you again real soon.
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[00:12:38] Michelle Meilleur: Great. Thanks for having me.
Michelle Meilleur: Well, that's all for today. I've loved sharing this little time capsule with you, and I hope you'll stick around for more episodes to come. Thanks for listening.