Katrina Foe | An inspiring healing journey

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Career Changers podcast. I'm Elisa Martiniig and I'm the founder and editor-in-chief of the Career Changers. I'm definitely one of them. I learned from my experience that following our dreams requires courage, self-awareness and a lot of inner work. I love to discover stories of career change and share them with the world as a source of inspiration for all those who are still searching.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 0:28

Career changes are not straightforward chronology written in our CVs, but the sum-up of our dreams, ambitions, failures and successes. The Career Changers is an online community that aims to inspire thousands of people during their journey to self-realization. We discover and share inspirational real-life stories of career change. We inspire people that are thinking to change career. We support people that want or need to change career but feel stuck or lacking confidence and clarity. We connect and collaborate with organizations that support career change across different industries. I believe that thinking to have only one job or career in our life is a limiting belief unless the job or that career make us happy. Life is a journey and, with one third of our lives spent working, it would be unimaginable to not have a desire to explore new avenues.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 1:29

Welcome to the Career Changers podcast. Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Career Changers. Today we are meeting Katrina Foe, pilates instructor and certified metabolic approach to cancer practitioner. She has trained over 1,000 Pilates instructors worldwide and also works with women who have cancer or have had cancer, helping them address the root cause and prevent it from returning. Catherine was able to successfully address her own cancer, 100% naturally, and she is also a board certified in holistic nutrition. Hi Katrina, thank you so much for joining us.

Katrina Foe: 2:26

Hi, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 2:29

Well, great having you. So let's start with your background. How did you start your professional life, or better, what was your first job?

Katrina Foe: 2:38

Oh, that's a great question. So out of college I was working teaching Pilates at a couple of facilities, starting their Pilates programs, Because I actually got trained and certified while I was still in college and my first job, I mean, I opened my studio when I was 24. So that was kind of my first real job. Still have that job. I haven't fired myself.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 3:05

That's great. What was your dream job when you were a child?

Katrina Foe: 3:11

When I was little, I couldn't decide. I wanted to be a ballerina and I wanted to be an astronaut. And it was around that time when they had a first teacher in space. So my mom was joking that I would be the first ballerina in space.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 3:25

That sounds really funny. So what is your educational background? I guess you may have started with something and then probably you add up some qualification later on in life.

Katrina Foe: 3:40

Yeah. So I've got kind of two careers. In college I got a BFA in modern dance and kinesiology, as well as getting certified as a Pilates instructor, and I work mostly in kind of more of a post rehab setting for that. And then, after I had my own experience with cancer, I went back to school and became a functional nutritional therapist. I did two years of functional lab training and then actually started working for the company that did the training. And then I'm also certified with Dr Nisha Winters in the metabolic approach to cancer, so as a practitioner to actually help people specifically with cancer.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 4:20

So you started your professional life with Pilates, but you also had you done many things during your career, so what have been the highlights for you?

Katrina Foe: 4:33

Yeah well, I'm super passionate about getting the word out about how to help our bodies and support our bodies. So for me as a teacher in both of those roles, I think the speaking that I've done at conferences all over the world, as well as just a few months ago I released my first published, my first book, which is now an international bestseller. So I think those would be probably that Thank you.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 5:03

So let's talk about the diagnosis. So today you're helping people that are suffering of cancer. You're helping them to heal from cancer. But you had this experience in first person. How and when were you diagnosed with cancer first?

Katrina Foe: 5:23

Yeah, so I was diagnosed in 2015, breast cancer and, yeah, I chose to address it. Naturally, I'd already had quite a few experiences in my life where I'd seen food as medicine, so to me that really resonated.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 5:42

What steps did you take after that? Because of course I can imagine that you were pretty shocked.

Katrina Foe: 5:53

Yeah, absolutely. I was really floored because we had already made a lot of changes to our diet and, you know, getting toxins out of our life, and it was kind of offensive. I was doing all the stuff and I got cancer, but what I didn't realize at the time was that there were a lot of toxins and things that I didn't even know about and I'd never done any testing. So, you know, I'd read a blog, read a book, done a training and done the action steps, but I didn't actually go back and test to see if what I was doing was actually working and having the effect I wanted it to have on my body. So with the cancer diagnosis, I actually went back and just kind of reevaluate everything.

Katrina Foe: 6:44

You know what did I miss? Because clearly something isn't working for my body if my body allows cancer to thrive and grow. And so I took everything under consideration and reevaluate everything. I thought I knew let's double check, Is this really true? And started doing some functional testing with a practitioner and realized, oh no, there's a lot of stuff off that needs to be addressed.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 7:10

So how and when did you decide to become a metabolic approach cancer practitioner?

Katrina Foe: 7:17

That's a great question. So I actually came upon Dr Nisha Winters book the Metabolic Approach to Cancer and ironically I'm actually in her house right now. Back when I had cancer and she just blew me away, I was so excited by her vision and the way she looked at things. It really resonated with how I was looking at things and so after I went, I was done cancering. I went back to school because I really wanted to understand for myself, like okay, I need to know what my practitioner just did, because I want to keep you know out of this cycle and make sure my kids and my family members don't get cancer. So I was doing completely selfishly at first and I quickly realized that oh my goodness, this is powerful, this is, this needs to get out there. And so I went back and looked at Dr Nisha and wanted to go through her teacher training or her training program for practitioners and what did I need to do for that? What did that look like? And so that was kind of my goal with the whole process.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 8:20

Yeah, work nowadays, you're helping other people. So what is specifically the role of a metabolic approach to cancer practitioner, and what do people need to know and do in order to prevent cancer?

Katrina Foe: 8:37

Yeah. So a metabolic approach to cancer practitioner is they. There's lots of different types of practitioners. There's, you know, nutritionists, there's naturopaths, mds, radiologists. It's basically the commonality of they have been trained on how to use functional lab testing to look at what are the root cause drivers of the cancer for that person. So there's a huge array of tests that we use and then we create plans and protocols for the person specifically. So you know, this is a very integrative oncology kind of approach. I obviously focus a little more specifically on the natural side because that was what I chose. I tend to draw people that way, but we're trained to work with chemotherapies and such and integrate it so that the person has really the cutting edge research and what is going to work for them specifically in their protocol.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 9:37

Is this a thing that is only in the US or is worldwide?

Katrina Foe: 9:42

No, this is international, so you can look up and find practitioners local in your area. I personally work with clients remotely and several of the practitioners do. I live out of the middle of nowhere in Idaho and I have actually very few clients that are local to me, so most of my clients are you know. I send the labs out to them, they take it, I get their labs back and then we do consults via Zoom to make sure that they understand the diet, the lifestyle, the supplements and looking at the whole body. As you know one thing, it's one system working together.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 10:22

So what do people need to know and do in order to prevent cancer? Because there is lots of talking and a little bit of generic understanding, knowledge, but I guess you may have a lot more to say.

Katrina Foe: 10:38

Oh, my goodness, we could talk about this for hours. Yes, so what I see is the big problem that people need to understand about cancer is that it's not one thing. People, whether it's research or general public or a cancer client, they're still looking for one thing what is the one thing that's gonna magically fix me and it's just gonna disappear? And so, with our metabolic approach, there's 10 terrains that we've identified. Dr Nisha has in research that are areas that you need to look at because they can drive cancer.

Katrina Foe: 11:15

Now, we're not a research subject and it's never, never one thing that's an issue. So in these areas, these 10 terrain, we wanna first identify it with a functional testing and then we want to see, okay, how can we address that? And so usually with a cancer client, it is usually like six or eight things out of 10 that are issues. And so then we go ahead and we look at and prioritize which of these areas do we need to work on first, how do these overlap and connect with each other, and what is gonna be the best way to address this for that specific person in the situation they're in? Because sometimes we get clients and they're up and going, they're running around like an old person, and some of them, they're in the bed, not able to do anything, and so that obviously is be taken into consideration as well.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 12:06

So are these the same method to find out why people have cancer, or are you using different tools and techniques?

Katrina Foe: 12:17

Yeah. So that's where we do a series of functional testing. So we look at the stool, we look at the blood and a much more extensive than any cancer oncologist looks at usually. We look at genetic testing for the low penetrance genes. We look at several different layers of environmental toxins, things like mold and heavy metals and non-metals. We look at the hormones, not blood, and we look at what other things are going on. So, even like psychologically, what's going on with the person? Where do they live? Are there toxins known to be in that area? We look at the whole picture of who this person is, symptom wise, testing wise all of that, to see why and what are their drivers, because every person's different.

Katrina Foe: 13:09

And when you get all this information, you can see clearly oh, this is an issue, this is an issue. Okay, let's work on these. And it doesn't. It's not this overwhelming scary thing anymore. It's a manageable. I have a plan. These are the areas that I need to work on, and even better, I think at least, is that then you have a plan going forward of these are your weak links. These are the areas you need to be watching ongoing to make sure that the cancer is not allowed to proliferate again, because we all have cancer cells floating around our body. It's a matter of where is the tipping point of enough. Systems of the body are offline, so to speak, are not working properly, so that the immune system can't do its normal job that it was designed to do, of addressing those cancer cells so that they don't become tumors. So this way, you never even get to the tumor stage.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 14:04

So I guess one of the main the big topic about cancer is about what we eat. What kind of diet should people be on if they have cancer or if they want to prevent cancer?

Katrina Foe: 14:21

Absolutely so. Prevention and actually having cancer are two different things. Either way, the base is that it must be clean. So no pesticides, hormones, all that kind of stuff. We're talking organic Predominance of vegetables, but we do want some animal products because those are much more bioavailable forms of protein and it's going to be lower carb and the whole thing is going to have a huge amount of fat Good, clean, healthy fats, no canola oil, none of the process junk.

Katrina Foe: 14:55

Because what we've seen in the research is unequivocably that a ketogenic diet is going to starve cancer. When you get the blood sugar in regulation, that you're going to not allow those cancer cells that are like ravenous for blood sugar in order to proliferate and grow, you're stopping that. You're starving them. And by sugar I don't mean white sugar. A lot of people like I don't eat white sugar. I'm like, yeah, but you're eating potatoes and stuff. Those turn to sugar in your body. So we're looking at everything.

Katrina Foe: 15:25

But if you actually have cancer, dialing it in and making sure that that ketogenic diet is actually allowing you to get into ketosis and then you want to get into a therapeutic level of ketosis where you're dropping extra high levels of ketones, is key and that's going to be a little different for each person. So if, like say, they have mold show up, you know, not only do they need to do a ketogenic diet, they need to do an antifungal, anti yeast kind of diet as well, you know. So there's layers to it and it's it's not exactly a one size fits all.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 15:59

I feel really fascinated by your knowledge. So much to learn. So, moving on from food, what are other common drivers of cancer? I think you mentioned pesticides.

Katrina Foe: 16:14

What else yeah, in terms of the driver that I see, that kind of shocks me and horrifies me and people aren't talking about would be the toxins. Specifically, the thing I see the most is mold. People aren't talking about mold, although you know we have seen in the research that mold, especially specific strains that they've done research on it's a carcinogen and it's in all the houses and most people like, oh, I don't live in you know a wet, damp, humid area and I'm like it doesn't matter. I have a ton of clients in Phoenix. It's those HVAC systems, right, it's everywhere and people aren't testing it, people aren't talking about it, but it's definitely a driver, not only for cancer but for Alzheimer's too.

Katrina Foe: 17:00

So this is a huge deal and a lot of the cancer clients that I'm seeing you know they might be one in, you know a family of four and the other people are fine because they have poor detox genes. So it's not always where it looks like on the outside, a certain way of, oh, you have to have these symptoms. You have a lot of clients that don't have any mold symptoms or that have, you know, different mold symptoms and then it's a lot of times you know, well, my husband doesn't have it. Well, he might be a rock star at detox, and you're not. That was the case with me, for sure.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 17:37

Oh so no, I'm really thinking about mold.

Katrina Foe: 17:40

I'm sorry it's awful.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 17:42

No, I was speaking recently for different reasons, but yeah, I would be interested to be interested to learn more definitely. So how can we help the body, the toxin, reduce inflammation? I guess you mentioned diet, so avoiding sugar, but also, what is Eden sugar? That's a huge one.

Katrina Foe: 18:05

I'm going away from mold, I guess? Yeah, I think the biggest thing, like you said, is diet. So we talked about getting the carb load down and, again, if you don't have cancer, it doesn't have to be a fully dialed and ketogenic diet, but getting the carb load down overall is a huge thing for our American public. The other thing would be getting away from the processed, rancid seed oils, so things like canola, vegetable soy, and this is harder than you think. It's going to be a huge driver of inflammation because, like I said, they're rancid. They've just deodorized and bleached them so you can't tell anymore by your nose.

Katrina Foe: 18:41

But those are in like almost all mayonnaise salad dressings, like at the restaurants. They cook with them, like all processed food has them, unless, you see, very specifically because they're paying more and they will advertise that oh no, this is made with canola oil or avocado oil or something like that. You can be sure that that is going to cause and they'll be like gasoline pouring onto your fire of inflammation. The other thing I would say, besides the food, is to look for those toxins, look for infections, look for what's causing the inflammation. And that's where, again, I'm just really biased with the functional testing, because you can just see it like boom, there it is. But if you get the inflammation down and then you support the body gently to detox, you can get those back online so that the body is not as prone to chronic disease and cancer.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 19:35

So let's talk about your book, the Juvenile International Best Seller, called Nutritional Pilates. How did you start thinking about writing this book and why? And can we find all these precious information in the book?

Katrina Foe: 19:51

Yes, this information is in the book and this is why I wanted to write it, because I don't get super cancer specific. I'm talking a little bit more about just general health, but it's the same drivers and I do talk about how these do lead to cancer as well as other chronic disease in there. But things like mold and hormones and everything I'm talking about in there. It's all point of the book to give people a framework of how to live their life like these low hanging fruit, as well as what to do and things aren't going well.

Katrina Foe: 20:23

You know, I have people come to me all the time that are trying to lose some weight or they've got some joint pain. There's no cancer, but there are issues and it's pointing towards inflammation. These are symptoms. The weight gain is a symptom, a tumor is a symptom, and you know. So they want to know what to do about it. And this is where it all culminated. I don't know it's been, it's been on my heart culminating for the last two decades, but I actually sat down and wrote it about almost exactly a year ago, so yeah, I think I'm definitely gonna have a look at it.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 21:01

So it's quite obvious to me how your work is helping others and how you're making a difference into the world. But in your world, how do you feel? Through your work, you're making the world a better place.

Katrina Foe: 21:17

Yeah, I think it's very important that the word is out there that people have other choices for health care. I mean, I'm not saying standard care is a terrible idea. There's definitely a time and a place. If I'm on a car accident, I want standard care. But there's other choices and there's things you can do simply at home. There's ways you can avoid disease and be more proactive. Just helping people have better quality of life is what I feel is important and what I'm called to do.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 21:49

So many of our listeners are really keen to have a satisfying careers, and they may change until they find the full realization. So why, when we get affected by a needless like cancer, everything may become challenging. In your experience, what are the best ways to preserve our careers during those challenging times?

Katrina Foe: 22:22

Oh, I love that question. So, in terms of your career, first off, I think if we're talking about something like cancer, talking about life threatening disease, I think it's really important to make sure that you live, and I think that that's the meaning that sometimes I have seen people that are so focused on not stopping the career that they don't get the treatment they want. They stick their head in the sand and think it's going to magically go away and it's actually them that goes away and that's not what we want. There is a time and a place to actually take a step back. You know, maybe let someone else be in charge, maybe just have a reduced role and oversee or something instead of the day to day, so that you can actually get the self care and the healing that you need, so that long term, you're still around to grow the business and have that career and such.

Katrina Foe: 23:19

If you're talking about a self or, I'm sorry, in terms of prevention, I think it's key to do a little bit every day not having to take off and preventing having a disease that you would have to take off then.

Katrina Foe: 23:34

So things like making sure that you have a good, solid, appropriate bedtime, that you're eating, like the healthy food that we talked about, that you try to get the toxins out of your life. You know buying organic. You know things like that, little tiny pieces. You know one thing each week that you can change or do to make a tremendous amount of change at the end of the year. So, and honestly, you know what I'm gonna throw one other thing on there, those kinds of things, anything that you're doing proactive for your health, what I have found as a business owner and so you know I think that's a really good thing to do in my career those actually help me play at a better a game, because my brain is functioning better. I'm not as cluttered and all over the place, mentally as well as physically, but keeping myself care allows me to perform better.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 24:29

During your own battle with cancer or your phase of life, what and who did help you the most?

Katrina Foe: 24:41

Yeah, that's a lovely thought back. So, in terms of my battle with cancer, you know, going natural is not the popular choice and a lot of people. I got some good advice. I sent out an email. I'm a pretty extroverted person. Thus I'm here and I sent out an email to everyone I knew. Here's what I have happening.

Katrina Foe: 25:04

This is what's going on with me, just so that I didn't have to tell every single person that I saw over new, and then at the end I wrote in there this is what I have, you know, prayed and thought about and this is the course I want to pursue. I have a plan and if you don't agree with that, I would appreciate that you would keep that to yourself. I don't want any negative influence in my sphere of healing and I think that was the best thing that I've ever done, because there were family members, there were friends that I just lost track of because it turns out, you know, looking on the other side and hearing, they were totally against me, but I didn't have to deal with that, which was incredibly powerful and supportive in terms of not just who was there for me, but who wasn't there to attack me. So I think that was really helpful.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 25:56

What type of advice would you give anyone that is facing a similar journey?

Katrina Foe: 26:02

Yeah, I highly recommend that people do the research. Don't get rushed into choosing what you want to do for cancer. The other thing that I would say is that whether you do standard of care or you want to address it naturally, just know that you need to circle back around and make sure to address the why, because you know just because it doesn't come back in five years doesn't mean that you're not living under the black cloud of is it going to come back? And that's really where you want the quality of life to be.

Katrina Foe: 26:34

I feel that people tend to think that alternative medicine is always just kind of the same thing, but just a herbs or something, and this is a different approach. So a lot of times in alternative medicine for cancer we see this magic bullet thing as well, where it's like I'd be vitamin C for everybody. I mean, it's just wet spaghetti throwing at the wall to see if it sticks, when we really need to be asking the question why and what's good for me specifically, and creating a plan based on that. Because the the one size fits all, the magic bullet. It doesn't work in alternative anymore than it works in standard of care.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 27:17

Thank you, katrina, for joining us today and sharing your inspirational story. But before you leave, I just want to ask you a last question. If you could give yourself a piece of advice, what would you say to your younger self?

Katrina Foe: 27:33

That's a great question, I mean, I think the natural, quick answer would be like do this stuff to prevent having gotten cancer? But for me, the way I look at it, my cancer was a huge blessing on a lot of levels, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Not only has it given me better health now than I had before, but it gave me literally a whole nother career that I feel is incredibly fulfilling, and I get to help more people. So I wouldn't. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I would just say, you know, I would just give myself encouragement on my path.

Elisa Martinig - The Career Changers: 28:11

Well, thank you, Katrina, so much. And I'm sure our listeners enjoy your inspirational story and wisdom. So I just leave a message Don't forget to subscribe to our channel and tune in next week for a new inspirational episode of the career changes. Thank you, thank you.