Docker reverse proxy simplify setup

Currently I am running docker with a custom network to bind services to for port forwarding and static IPs (I have a program that refuses to bind to anything but port 80 and 443 on this server and uses 0.0.0.0, so I have an nginx reverse proxy running:
jwilder/nginx-proxy
with
jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion

I followed the manual docker setup instructions, but the difficulties I’m having are related to the nginx container wanting to only work with SSL. I created some manual certs (as in the instructions), but during startup it still has issues. But this isn’t a support request, so my request:

A way to specify that a reverse proxy is being used (perhaps in an env file) and to only use HTTP for nginx to be pointed to by the reverse proxy.

Thanks!