The Megyn Kelly Show - How To Lose Five Pounds By Memorial Day, with Dr. Cate Shanahan and Mark Sisson

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.440 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. And boy, do we have

00:00:15.920 good news for you. It may be Friday the 13th, but this is your lucky day. On the show today,

00:00:21.260 we are focusing on how to help you take ownership of your health and feel your best this summer

00:00:27.520 and ideally shed five pounds by Memorial Day. I mean, it's a start, right? It's a goal. Hashtag

00:00:33.900 goals. There's a lot going on in the world right now, but it's important to take a break from the

00:00:37.640 news cycle every once in a while and just take care of yourself. How are you supposed to manage

00:00:41.120 all the nonsense coming your way if you don't feel well, if you don't look good, if you don't feel

00:00:45.720 good about how you look? With us now to provide a roadmap for getting your nutrition and exercise

00:00:51.980 routine in gear. And I have to tell you, just reading up on this segment made me feel more

00:00:57.220 devoted to like, okay, come on, stop being lazy and I want to go to the grocery store right after

00:01:03.180 this show. At two o'clock, we're all going to the grocery store and we're going to get new

00:01:07.260 ingredients and we'll go through it. So I think you're going to feel that inspiration by the time

00:01:10.880 the show is done. And here to help us do that, two New York Times bestselling authors and health

00:01:16.860 experts. Dr. Kate Shanahan is a physician, biochemist, and author of Deep Nutrition, Why Your Genes

00:01:23.340 Need Traditional Food. She also created the Pro Nutrition Program for the Los Angeles Lakers

00:01:28.300 basketball team. And Mark Sisson is also here. He's a competitive track athlete who spent years

00:01:33.840 as a marathon runner before entering the nutrition and health space. Mark is a fitness author, founder

00:01:39.940 of Primal Kitchen Foods and Supplements. By the way, I need to order their salad dressing,

00:01:45.540 Abby. And author of The Primal Blueprint, Reprogramming Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss,

00:01:52.120 Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy.

00:01:58.840 Kate and Mark, thank you so much for being here.

00:02:01.080 Thanks for inviting us.

00:02:02.340 So Mark, I say the salad dressing because I know my team said, what do you eat in a typical day?

00:02:06.880 And I was, of course, very interested in this. And I could do it all except the one thing that

00:02:10.600 wasn't on my ingredient list in my kitchen was your salad dressing. So I'm like, okay,

00:02:14.360 I can be like Mark if I just order that. All right, we'll get to that in a minute.

00:02:17.960 All right. So here we are. I was looking at the calendar. We don't have three weeks to Memorial

00:02:22.340 Day. We've got about two and change, two weeks to Memorial Day. And everybody starts to think

00:02:26.320 about Memorial Day as the official kickoff to summer. We have to start thinking about our bodies,

00:02:31.360 which is good. It's good because it necessarily sort of dovetails with our wellness and what are

00:02:38.060 we putting in our mouths and what are we doing to move and all that. So we're going to get into all

00:02:42.820 of it. But overall, let me start with you, Kate, on this. Should we be thinking about jumpstarting

00:02:49.100 a diet right now? If we want to lose five to 10 pounds, let's just start with something

00:02:54.300 manageable like that. Should we be thinking about a diet or should we just be thinking about

00:02:58.860 a way of eating, like a way of life?

00:03:01.840 If you want to lose weight, you really should start and realistically start with thinking about

00:03:06.980 how you're eating, think about your nutrition and think about your metabolism,

00:03:10.260 metabolism. Because there's a reason you've gained weight in the first place. And that probably,

00:03:16.220 I mean, unless you know, oh gosh, I totally overdid it. Most people feel like, I don't really

00:03:22.900 understand why I gained so much weight, why it happened so quickly. And that's because most people

00:03:29.480 have issues with their metabolism where they're not able to burn their body fat the way nature intended.

00:03:35.640 And that's a serious, serious issue that makes weight loss with just a rapid weight loss diet,

00:03:44.560 a total setup for yo-yo dieting. And it's not just bad for your health, it's demoralizing.

00:03:50.940 So I always like to help people to frame it up that we want it to be like a long-term thing. It's great

00:03:57.660 that you want to look good in your bikini. But it's, it's more important to be well in your bikini and

00:04:06.040 bikini, in your bikini and feel better. And you know, you, if you really want to get healthy,

00:04:12.340 the goal is how you feel much more than first and foremost, how you look.

00:04:18.180 Joe, starting your metabolism sounds amazing. I mean, we're all worried about our metabolism and

00:04:23.960 would love it to be a little faster. Everybody I know, especially people who are now like me

00:04:29.020 in their fifties and you can feel it slow down. You know, for sure. I can feel it slow down,

00:04:34.860 not allowed to eat as much, but I still want to. It's so, it's so hard. I'm still so hungry all the

00:04:40.920 time, but I know it's slowed because the same amount of intake every day produces weight gain where

00:04:46.840 it didn't before. So it's just sad. It's just sad, Kate. Well, let me tell you something that,

00:04:51.700 that is actually good news is it is kind of, there's a lot of myths around weight loss and

00:04:58.200 metabolism. And it is actually a myth that your metabolism even has speeds. And what you expressed

00:05:05.980 is exactly what made people think and just assume that their metabolism has speeds is because it feels

00:05:12.160 like it's harder to lose weight and it's become easier to gain, but it has to do with,

00:05:16.840 uh, your ability to burn your body fat, which is something related to metabolic flexibility,

00:05:22.260 which is something that, um, I'm sure Mark can speak to that as well. Just, it means that you

00:05:28.100 need to be able to burn your body fat easily between meals, because if you're hungry, uh, you know,

00:05:36.320 between meals, if you get hungry between meals and you feel like you need to snack, that is a red flag.

00:05:42.440 It's a red flag that you're not burning your body fat because if you want to lose weight,

00:05:46.660 then going between meals should be your best friend. You should be burning your body fat,

00:05:51.920 but most people are not. And they're not because their metabolism is damaged by this stuff in our

00:05:57.160 diet that we're all eating in massive quantities called seed oils that nobody has told you are bad

00:06:03.300 for you. I'm so into the seed oil discussion. We are 100% spending a bunch of time on that because I feel

00:06:08.400 like, okay, elimination of just the choice of a certain food. That's it. That's easy, right?

00:06:13.820 You don't have to get rid of all oils, but there are certain oils we're eating that we shouldn't be.

00:06:17.180 But let me ask you about that, Mark, because when I, when I looked at the Mark diet,

00:06:20.720 one thing I did notice was, um, there are no snacks on there. So to Kate's point,

00:06:26.160 is that hard? Cause I will say for me, and I think it's probably cause I'm not eating the right stuff.

00:06:31.000 It is very hard for me not to snack between lunch and dinner. And like you, I'm an intermittent

00:06:36.340 faster. I know you don't eat before noon or 1230. So I, breakfast isn't really on the menu for me

00:06:42.820 most days, although some days I have it. Uh, anyway, snacking is really hard for me to avoid.

00:06:47.480 So how are you, are you, you don't have that problem. You go right from lunch to dinner without

00:06:52.100 having hunger. Uh, yes, I, I do that. And, you know, to fill in a little bit of what, uh, Kate said,

00:06:57.800 this, this concept of metabolic flexibility really is the Holy grail of not just weight loss,

00:07:03.060 but health. If you can develop metabolic flexibility, if you can train your body through

00:07:08.800 choices of food that you eat and types of exercise that you choose to do, if you can train

00:07:12.400 your body to become metabolically flexible, you can train it to derive energy from whatever

00:07:16.580 substrate happens to be available. So if you eat a meal and there's carbohydrate in that,

00:07:21.080 you can burn the carbohydrates as glucose or as glycogen in your muscles. Uh, you can burn the fat in

00:07:26.660 that meal, or you can burn the stored body fat when you choose not to eat. So metabolic flexibility

00:07:32.640 is when you achieve kind of that, that state, you are now, uh, able to go longer periods of time

00:07:41.120 without eating, which includes not needing to snack. So, um, this, this, you, you mentioned, um,

00:07:47.580 intermittent fasting, I call it a compressed eating window. Um, some people call it intermittent

00:07:52.220 eating, but it's basically this idea that, that when you're metabolically flexible, when you're

00:07:57.000 burning fat, when you're deriving energy from your own body fat stores, and that's magical because

00:08:03.200 then you're burning off your body fat, you're literally using it as fuel, which is what it was

00:08:07.560 intended to do. Then, um, the biggest, um, issue of all starts to dissipate. And that is hunger,

00:08:15.760 appetite, and cravings. Once your body knows that it can get energy from stored body fat and not have to

00:08:20.580 rely on a fresh supply of calories every two or three hours, your body seamlessly goes into this

00:08:27.180 mode of burning stored body fat without a shift in blood sugar, without getting hangry, without a,

00:08:33.540 a, a, a mood swings or any of the other sort of, um, symptoms that people complain about when they

00:08:39.920 skip a meal. So it's, it's now what we're getting into is, okay, how, you know, how do we, uh,

00:08:46.800 arrive at this metabolically flexible body? Yes. How do we teach our bodies? It's very important

00:08:51.560 skill. Of course, but it's, and it's like good news, bad news, right? The good news is,

00:08:56.300 well, I'll start with the bad. The bad news is you've got to do the work, right? You, you're going

00:08:59.760 to have to eliminate certain foods. You're going to have to, um, orchestrate a way of eating, uh,

00:09:05.820 that, uh, you know, that may be different from what you're used to. The good news is it's very easy.

00:09:11.020 If you know the right tools, if you have the right strategy, it's easy. Um, it's delicious. I mean,

00:09:17.020 you don't have to really sacrifice taste or flavor for any of this. And, and, and over time,

00:09:22.980 what happens is you, because you're eating now more nutrient dense foods, uh, as opposed to the,

00:09:29.180 um, you know, the, the highly caloric dense foods without nutrition that most people in,

00:09:33.640 in this country are consuming the body then says, um, I'm, I've got all of the, um, all the

00:09:41.140 macronutrients I need. I've got all of fat, protein, and carbohydrate. I've got all the

00:09:44.660 micronutrition I need. I don't need to eat every couple of hours. And so the first thing that really

00:09:49.500 I find, uh, disappears is this need to snack between meals. And that's kind of step one of this

00:09:56.400 notion that in order to get rid of our stored body fat in order to lose weight, which is what,

00:10:02.260 you know, most people will, will describe it as we need to burn off the, the body fat that we've

00:10:08.340 stored over the years as a result of eating too much food, simply eating too much food.

00:10:14.440 How did, how, like as a practical matter, how do you, do you train your body to, to eat the fat

00:10:21.720 that's on your body as opposed to whatever fuel you've put in your body? Because if you eat,

00:10:28.080 let's say breakfast or you eat lunch, that food takes a while to digest that energy is in your

00:10:34.200 body. So isn't your body necessarily going to eat that fuel, that fuel first, those carbs,

00:10:40.560 those proteins, those fats before it goes to your body fat. Like I always wonder how do I make it get

00:10:48.080 to the body fat and get past the food that I had to put in there, Mark? Um, well, you have to,

00:10:54.440 you have to withhold some of those energy substrates. You have to decide either not to eat,

00:11:00.400 like to skip a meal once in a while, too, too fast. Uh, or, uh, there's a diet based around the

00:11:07.700 ketogenic principle. So you, and I've written a couple of books on the keto diet, um, which is

00:11:13.280 a way of training your body to become what we call fat adapted. So once you withhold carbohydrate,

00:11:19.960 and now you're telling your body, Hey, you're not going to be getting all of the glucose that

00:11:25.200 we've been feeding you every two or three hours for the last 20 or 30 or 50 years.

00:11:29.700 Now we're going to have to go into plan B, which everybody has this, this blueprint in their body.

00:11:35.500 Everybody has the ability to build the metabolic machinery to be better at burning fat. We just

00:11:41.100 never give it the opportunity. So that's part of that work that I'm talking about. There are no real

00:11:46.040 hacks around this. You will have to, in order to develop metabolic flexibility, you will have,

00:11:51.580 have to selectively remove certain things from your diet. It may be, and I think most of us know

00:11:58.760 removing sugars is probably appropriate for just about everybody. We eat way too much sugar.

00:12:03.180 Um, I would say removing starchy, uh, processed carbohydrates, mostly processed grains, uh, pies,

00:12:10.020 cakes, cookies, crackers, cereals, things like that, remove them. And as Kate alluded earlier,

00:12:15.380 you come down to, um, a list of very healthy and natural foods, meat, fish, fowl, eggs, nuts,

00:12:22.240 seeds, vegetables, some fruit, some starchy tubers. Uh, and over time, when the brain gets the notion

00:12:29.340 that you're not going to be delivering it fresh glucose every two or three hours, breakfast, a snack,

00:12:35.500 lunch, a snack, dinner, and a, and a, and a midnight snack. Um, the body has all of these amazing

00:12:42.680 genetic switches that it turns on that says, okay, we're going to get ready to burn more fat. We never

00:12:47.980 had to before now, but now we're going to get ready to burn more of the stored body fat and call

00:12:52.920 upon those reserves, those energy reserves that we've been building up for years and, and, and burn

00:12:59.260 those, um, instead of the plate on the food. So when you say, um, you know, how do you train your body

00:13:06.400 to burn the fat as opposed to the breakfast? I say, don't eat the breakfast. If you wake up in the

00:13:11.460 morning and you're not hungry, there's no reason to eat breakfast. Breakfast is, you know, it's been

00:13:15.720 sold as the most important meal of the day. Uh, it's not, uh, and most of the people who get into,

00:13:21.940 uh, this idea of metabolic flexibility or a compressed eating window will say, if I, if I,

00:13:28.320 if I wake up with all the energy I need, why would I need to eat? This is an opportunity for my body to

00:13:34.180 get 500 calories from body fat between now and the first meal I have at maybe lunch or, or one o'clock

00:13:40.360 noon or what I thought. Okay. But now I know, and I know you write a lot about this too, about

00:13:44.780 plateauing Kate, because I will say that, and I want to get, stay broad, but I'll just, as a quick,

00:13:50.380 um, aside, I've been an intermittent faster for a while and it worked great in the beginning to take

00:13:56.780 off, you know, just the extra flab here and there. And I've never been one of those like bone skinny

00:14:02.280 people, but I'm thin, you know, fine. I was fine with, and I'm still fine with where I am,

00:14:06.540 but then I do think I sort of plateaued. And even now, if I go hardcore on the fat on the

00:14:12.560 intermittent fasting, you know, cause I'll cheat, you know, I'll have like a couple of crackers,

00:14:16.400 which I know you're not supposed to do whatever, but let's say it's summer's coming. I, so I,

00:14:21.900 I go hardcore. It's not changing anything. I think I'm, I'm a plateauer and I know you've

00:14:27.480 dealt with that issue. Yes, actually, uh, quite a bit. It's one of the most frustrating

00:14:32.800 things that people run into and there's always a reason for it. And I usually like to, you know,

00:14:40.140 just back up and give you the big picture of getting back to what we were talking about with,

00:14:45.040 uh, with snacking, snacking trains your metabolism for you to want more snacks. So it's a incredibly

00:14:53.440 dangerous habit because people don't realize how many calories they actually consume when they're

00:14:59.940 wandering around going, Oh, I'll just have a little bit of this. And I'll just have a little

00:15:03.000 bit of that. And, um, many people have doing that have two or three times more calories. So

00:15:10.180 200, 400, 600 more calories just from these little snacks that they pick up. And that is why I say

00:15:17.140 there is no such thing as a healthy snack, uh, because it's not a healthy habit. Even if you're

00:15:24.240 eating a healthy food during your snack, it, the habit of snacking is not healthy because snacking

00:15:29.760 trains your metabolism to wait for you to get another snack instead of doing what it should do,

00:15:35.780 which is burning your body fat. But the other thing I want to go to the fat on my body. Don't

00:15:41.840 like go to my thighs. Don't wait for the carrots or the beef jerky. If you've been eating seed oils,

00:15:49.280 the fat that's in your body fat has changed because of that. And, and this is why I wrote a different

00:15:55.920 book, an entirely different book also, um, for weight loss called the fat burn fix, because I

00:16:01.340 realized at a certain point in my career, I realized that what people had been telling me about their

00:16:07.900 struggles with weight. Um, what, you know, like I understood that it was, it wasn't making sense to

00:16:13.980 them and it wasn't making sense to me either. They would say, I hardly eat anything and I'm not losing

00:16:19.340 weight. I work out all the time and it used to work, but now it doesn't anymore. Something is wrong

00:16:24.820 with my metabolism. And I realized, yeah, there is something wrong with your metabolism. It took me

00:16:30.400 quite a bit to figure out exactly what, but what it was, was that their body fat was damaged by all

00:16:38.700 these seed oils. So seed oils are things like soy and corn. Do you want me to list out what they

00:16:44.600 are? Yes, because these are the devil. Like people should know Dr. Kate feels that seed oil

00:16:49.320 are the devil and that if we can stop eating them and she's got good alternatives, it's going to be

00:16:54.760 so much easier for us to lose weight. So this is actually really important. It's not just about

00:16:58.460 this is not as heart healthy. It's about, these are undermining your ability to lose weight and feel

00:17:05.400 great. Okay, go ahead. These, I call them the hateful eight because there's eight of them. There's

00:17:11.000 three C's, corn, canola, cotton seed, three S's, soy, sunflower, safflower, and GNY, like, uh,

00:17:18.960 sometimes why grapeseed and, and rice bran with the bowels. So there's eight of them. Everybody

00:17:25.920 should memorize at least the first six, because those are in 95% of the products with an ingredients

00:17:32.420 list that you buy in the typical grocery store. Even if you shop at fancy grocery stores, the

00:17:38.020 upscale ones, um, like Trader, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods to name names. If we can do that.

00:17:42.820 Yeah. Yeah. Wait, let me just, let me just repeat what you said. Canola, corn, cottonseed,

00:17:47.560 soy, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, rice bran. What did I miss? I think I'm at seven. Did I miss

00:17:54.020 one? I thought you got eight. Corn, canola, cottonseed, soy, sunflower, safflower. I did make

00:17:59.640 up a little song for it, but, um, yes, I don't. Yes, I do. Okay. So it's corn, canola, cottonseed,

00:18:08.880 soy, sunflower, safflower, please carefully, carefully, carefully, carefully read labels

00:18:14.140 and avoid all of these. I'm not a good singer, but I can handle it. Look how she cares.

00:18:22.440 Audience, look how she cares about us. She did it. I appreciate that. All right. So those,

00:18:27.800 you don't want those. I noticed that olive oil is not on the list. I mean, is all of what you don't,

00:18:33.080 do you like olive oil? Cause that's what most people use.

00:18:35.560 Olive oil is a traditional oil in Italy. Ask anyone from, uh, you know, Italy or Greece or most

00:18:43.040 of the, uh, not the middle East. What do they call that somewhere? Mediterranean. Thank you. I've never

00:18:48.220 been there, but, um, yeah. So all of those Mediterranean, uh, cuisines, they rely heavily

00:18:53.480 on olive oil. Olive oil has been used, uh, for many, many thousands of years. And the reason that's

00:18:59.980 important is because people cultivate what they want. So we've cultivated olives that are high in

00:19:06.360 fat, and that has so many benefits. Not only is the fat itself healthy and full of vitamins,

00:19:11.620 when you do first press olive oil, you're getting all of those vitamins and you're getting the,

00:19:17.300 the healthiest form of oil, but it's been cultivated to be so rich in it that you just need

00:19:22.940 gentle pressing with a stone. That's the traditional way that they did it. Gentle pressing,

00:19:28.060 no factory required to get out a whole bunch of great tasting oil. So that history is really

00:19:34.340 important. And you're going to find, if you go to my website and look at my list of the good fats and

00:19:37.760 the bad, that it's the traditional fats that are on the good list. And that I saw lard is on there.

00:19:44.000 I was like, lard, how can lard be better than sunflower oil? It just doesn't sound right.

00:19:51.260 I know. It's crazy. Actually, it took me, uh, four years before I was comfortable even saying

00:19:55.800 the word lard, like without like apologizing for it. Cause it was just like, it's like a four letter

00:20:00.560 word, right. In the American language. Um, but, um, but yeah, it is a traditional, traditional,

00:20:07.740 we've, we've cultivated pigs to be fatty pigs. We've, we've bred them for so many thousands of

00:20:14.700 generations of pigs that they are, they're like, we bred them literally to be a little like walking

00:20:18.900 butter sticks and I'm walking little butter balls. Um, and they, uh, they are, they are basically

00:20:24.880 a huge source of healthy fat for people all over the globe because pigs made their way all over the,

00:20:33.440 all over the globe. So yes, lard is a healthy fat. And, um, you know,

00:20:37.280 the reason that these things are not toxic has to do with the fatty acid composition and that's like

00:20:45.000 chemistry that we don't necessarily need to get into, but understanding the fatty acid composition

00:20:49.800 is key really to ultimately be coming to understand the difference between fats that are healthy,

00:20:57.440 that sustain your energy between meals that make not snacking be like your default because you don't

00:21:06.120 get hungry. You don't get hangry when you have your body fat, your body fat stores these fatty acids.

00:21:12.440 And that's why it's so, it was essential for me to understand this chemical difference in the way

00:21:18.240 our body processes these different fatty acids, um, in order to be able to explain what was happening,

00:21:23.820 truly happening to people's metabolisms and that it wasn't slowing down. It was just losing its

00:21:29.860 efficiency. It was not able to efficiently go, as Mark was saying,

00:21:34.020 from burning the calories in the food that you just last ate to snap immediately into releasing

00:21:41.260 your body fat from storage and burning that. And when that happens to you, you feel like weight loss

00:21:49.920 is a bigger struggle because you feel bad when you're burning your body fat, you need to burn your

00:21:57.720 body fat to lose weight. But what's in your body fat is from those toxic seed oils. And that starts

00:22:03.960 to make your cells dysfunction. So you start to feel kind of tired or cranky, you get brain fog,

00:22:10.020 you get hangry. We have so many people using the word hangry now, and it wasn't even a word. Like

00:22:15.160 when I was in school, Mark, like, did you ever hear that word when you were growing up?

00:22:19.220 Only in the last 10 years, maybe. Yeah.

00:22:21.860 This is so I can, I can relate to all of this. You're saying it's because it's basically, it's like

00:22:27.880 we had on a guest recently explaining to us how mercury can stay in your cells. And, you know,

00:22:33.020 some say, oh, no, it'll go, it'll, it'll leave. But no, it might be lurking in there and you could

00:22:37.920 get sick from it for a long, long time. That's kind of what you're saying about these bad oils.

00:22:42.480 They're in there. And when we're telling the body, eat the fat, eat the fat, it's, it's eating the fat,

00:22:49.280 but the fat is kind of toxic. And that's making us feel bad. So if we can make our fat healthier,

00:22:54.100 we'll enjoy the non-eating periods more. They won't be quite as hard.

00:23:00.300 They'll actually be glorious because what happens when you go long enough between meals is that

00:23:04.820 your liver starts chopping up the big fat into little tiny special things called ketones,

00:23:10.440 which are your brain's favorite fuel. They actually energize you. And when you get to this state,

00:23:16.340 you feel so energetic. You feel better. You feel like I don't want to eat. And that is why

00:23:24.080 having a healthy metabolism and a flexible metabolism is the key to truly effortless weight

00:23:31.660 loss. It's actually the only key. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of drugs you could

00:23:35.700 take and all kinds of people promising this or that supplement, but really the key is optimizing

00:23:41.080 your metabolic health so that your, your, your liver will produce ketones for your brain.

00:23:47.420 And that takes a while fat burning machine. Okay. Now I want to say that you, you like the

00:23:53.380 following oils. You say eat these instead, avocado, butter, fats, uh, avocado, butter, coconut, duck fat,

00:24:01.220 ghee, lard, which we covered olive, peanut, tallow, sesame, flax, walnut, almond, and macadamia nut.

00:24:09.660 But anything that says cold pressed, and this is critical, everybody unrefined, it has to say

00:24:15.920 unrefined, but here's my question to you. So all of us can do that. You know, when a cooking dinner

00:24:21.080 tonight, I can definitely use lard. It'll be fun to buy that at the store. Um, or, but I have a

00:24:27.060 olive oil so I can do that, but you're, you've raised a bigger point, which is virtually everything

00:24:32.380 in your pantry has already got all the bad stuff in it. Like don't go in your pantry. I mean,

00:24:37.280 it's funny because I'll tell you, Kate, Mark, I I've been, um, one of my listeners pointed this

00:24:41.420 out to me recently, last June 12th, I made a resolution to try to go one year without having

00:24:46.180 a French fry because they were becoming a problem for me. I was just not able to exercise willpower

00:24:51.100 on them. And, uh, I I'm almost there and I've done it. Right. We're like a month away. And, um,

00:24:57.260 a guy from Israel called into the show, uh, like a week or two ago and said, I decided to do it with

00:25:02.860 you. Cause I invited my followers on Twitter to do it with me. And he said, I've been doing it and I'm

00:25:07.020 successful. And what are you going to give up this June 12th? And I've been thinking about it ever

00:25:11.980 since. I liked the idea of like, as opposed to January 1st, I'm just going to make June 12th

00:25:16.420 my day. We're like for a year, I decide like, what could I do? It's just, it's a test of willpower.

00:25:22.600 And I, I feel like originally I was like, I'll give up the pantry. I want to ask your opinion on

00:25:29.840 what I should give up, but like everything you just listed is all over my pantry. I don't think

00:25:33.900 I'd be able to avoid it. And everybody out there is in the same boat, Kate. So what,

00:25:38.160 what do they do? How do they avoid it? It's in bread, it's in crackers and everything.

00:25:41.820 So actually on my website, I have a shopping list that helps people find alternative products

00:25:48.180 that don't have seed oils. And one of my favorite companies is actually founded by

00:25:54.180 because he uses avocado oil in especially like mayo and the dressings, right? Because when you're

00:26:04.160 eating healthy, you don't want your salad dressing or the, you know, the sauces that you put on your

00:26:10.440 healthy vegetables or your healthy meals. You don't want that to be full of toxic fats. And most people

00:26:14.920 have no idea that that's actually what they're doing because, because, you know, most of the sauces

00:26:19.140 that are come in jars and most of the condiments are just made out of the cheapest possible stuff

00:26:24.460 that the companies can find, which is always going to be the hateful eight oils. So, um, yeah, so,

00:26:30.180 so you can find more and more products. It is possible, but you have to know what you're looking

00:26:33.960 for. You have to know, uh, to do this, you have to know to do it, right? Like that's the,

00:26:39.140 the first step is you need to know you need to do this. The second step is to follow me again,

00:26:43.940 decide that you're going to do it with her because if she can do it, you can probably do it.

00:26:47.620 Mm-hmm. Right. So you, so remember, okay, you like unrefined, you like unrefined,

00:26:53.340 you don't like anything that says hydrogenated or any of those hateful eights. Don't go for

00:26:58.240 hydrogenated, go for unrefined. We're going to take a quick break, but for the people who are just,

00:27:02.860 you know, listening to this right now, can you give me the website? Cause they're going to want to know.

00:27:08.100 Drkate.com, D-R-C-A-T-E.com. And then just go to the search bar and type shopping. Cause you'll,

00:27:16.460 you'll find it that way. Within an hour and a half, I will be doing this. And then Mark's got

00:27:23.760 some thoughts too, not just on diet, but on the supplements that may make sense for you

00:27:28.220 when it comes to metabolism and to, uh, metabolic flexibility. I like that new term.

00:27:34.460 Mark, I've heard this before, but can you help us understand what does it mean to remove sugar

00:27:47.100 and starches? Cause it seems so hard. And I wrote, I just ticked down what I could remember of what

00:27:53.520 you said. I'm going to go back and listen to it later. Pies, cakes, crackers, cereals, single tier.

00:27:57.380 I love my crackers. I can, I can probably handle the rest. I love my cracker. So what do you mean?

00:28:03.160 Cause removing sugar seems absolutely impossible. I never understand when someone's like, I gave up

00:28:08.220 sugar. It's like, well, how? Well, it's pretty daunting for sure. And the truth is, you know,

00:28:12.860 our brains are wired to seek out sweet things. So it's one of the reasons that we're attracted to

00:28:18.120 fruit, for instance, fruit is sweet. And, and, uh, by the way, uh, very enjoyable and very healthy in,

00:28:24.600 in the appropriate quantities. So I'm not advocating giving up fruit for instance, but it's,

00:28:30.540 it's interesting. All of these things that we're going to talk about today exist on a spectrum of

00:28:34.280 like really good to probably really terrible fats are a great example. You know, there are really

00:28:39.240 terrible fats you want to avoid at all costs. And then there are really good fats that you want to

00:28:44.200 incorporate in your diet because they're healthful and they taste great and they're satiating.

00:28:48.900 Well, with, with sweets, uh, there's a similar sort of spectrum. So we want to get rid of

00:28:53.900 um, you know, the, the processed, uh, sweeteners, the sugars, the, you know, table sugar. Um,

00:29:03.860 agave is a great example of something that was sold as a, as a health food kind of thing. It's

00:29:08.260 basically worse than high fructose corn syrup. We've all heard, high fructose corn syrup is,

00:29:13.140 um, on the other hand, some amount of honey because it's natural is probably, uh, fine for some people.

00:29:18.860 So this idea of giving up sweets really has to kind of look more closely at what exactly it is

00:29:24.540 you're willing to give up and, and what is, uh, practical in the, in the context of an eating

00:29:31.780 strategy that you're putting together for yourself. So, you know, getting rid of, of desserts would be

00:29:37.640 a great first step for a lot of people. I always thought dessert was kind of a weird, it's like the

00:29:41.820 meal you eat after you've just eaten a meal. Uh, and it, dessert has a pretty devastating effect

00:29:48.800 in most cases on, um, you know, on your insulin level. So when you are trying to lose weight,

00:29:54.800 one of the things you want to do is keep your insulin levels low because insulin is what locks

00:29:58.520 fat into the fat cells. So that's one of the reasons that whenever you eat something that

00:30:02.600 has carbs in it, whether it's starchy carbs, uh, whether it's, you know, bread or, or crackers,

00:30:08.460 for example, um, it'll tend to cause your insulin to go up and insulin is there as a, uh, a hormone

00:30:16.760 that's intended to sequester nutrients into cells. So it'll open the cells up and try to try to put

00:30:22.280 the glucose portion of that into, uh, into muscle cells, for instance, as glycogen. Um, but it'll also

00:30:29.260 drive amino acids into, uh, other cells, which is protein, uh, but it'll also drive fat into cells if

00:30:36.140 insulin is high. So you want to try and, and over time lower the amount of insulin you produce.

00:30:42.840 And that kind of goes hand in hand with the amount of, of sugar that you take in. So, uh, now, uh,

00:30:50.860 sort of good news, you can buy some, some slash, uh, quote keto and quote crackers. So there, you can

00:30:58.740 get that crunchy, salty, fatty, sweet taste without writing that down. Um, uh, so there are now analogs

00:31:07.840 of some of these things that we're going to ask you to give up. Uh, and there, there've been paleo

00:31:11.900 desserts and keto desserts for years. I think it's a sort of an abomination at some point, because a lot

00:31:16.460 of times they, they use some of these ingredients that we're talking about avoiding, but, but giving

00:31:22.020 up, giving up sugar is, is the tough one for a lot of people. On the other hand, um, we're not really

00:31:29.660 addicted to sugar. People say they're addicted to sugar. And, you know, the, I think that the

00:31:35.540 definition of an addiction is something that if you don't get it, you'll go into, um, you know,

00:31:39.620 a biochemical reaction that'll, you'll sweat, you'll, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll go into pain

00:31:44.580 or whatever. That's a true addiction. So what we haven't in most cases, um, is first of all,

00:31:50.220 unlimited access to sweet things. They're everywhere. And then what I call a lack of

00:31:54.840 impulse control, they're everywhere. And oh my goodness, they're in the pantry or they're in

00:31:58.760 the freezer. I've got frozen chocolate in the freezer, or I've got one of the best things you

00:32:03.420 can do for yourself is do what we call a pantry purge and just go through and, and take away

00:32:09.260 that temptation, which isn't to say that you should go hungry or that you should suffer or,

00:32:14.560 you know, feel like you're sacrificing, um, enjoyment of your life in pursuit of this better eating.

00:32:19.940 No, it's just to find things that will replace those, um, that are more helpful for you.

00:32:26.740 Okay. So we have to talk about the replacements. I mean, I will say right now with young children,

00:32:31.500 this sounds impossible. You know, they, you know, you know, right. Like, you know,

00:32:36.960 what's on my shelf without even me telling you, because I have an eight, 11 and 12 year old,

00:32:42.300 and not to mention what's in my freezer. And I know we could say, well, get rid of the ice cream

00:32:46.980 or get rid of the chocolate chips or get rid of the cookies. It's like, there'll be a full-on

00:32:50.380 revolt in my house if I, okay, so we'll get to that. But, but how does somebody start that?

00:32:57.880 Cause you say, stop with the dessert. That's a good place to start. You know, there are a lot

00:33:02.060 of people who are like, I can't do that. Like I need it. I need it. So to that person, what does

00:33:08.380 that person do tonight? When the habit is there to eat the dinner and then have the dessert. And now

00:33:13.660 it's go time. You ate the dinner and all the instincts inside of you are kicking in. Like,

00:33:17.900 now it's my time for my treat. What do they do? Well, there are a number of strategies. One of,

00:33:23.920 one of them would be, um, to recognize that, um, it's human nature to see what we can get away with.

00:33:29.060 Right. So we, we, we, we see how, you know, how much of this meal can I eat and not gain weight?

00:33:34.440 Um, how much food can I eat in a day and not gain weight before the wedding three months?

00:33:40.080 What's the biggest piece of dessert that I can eat and not feel like a glutton, uh, you know,

00:33:45.500 or, or be uncomfortable. So we, we come at it from, from a, what can I get away with

00:33:51.480 perspective rather than how much of this is going to satisfy the sweet tooth. And so the first thing

00:33:58.100 I would say to some people is, you know, you can serve the giant piece of cheesecake and your brain

00:34:02.400 is going, well, that's a serving. So it's not like I'm having two servings. I'm having a serving,

00:34:07.240 even though it's a, you know, cheesecake factory, 1800 calorie piece of, piece of it. Um, I would

00:34:14.340 say, you know, take the first bite and enjoy the hell out of it and love it and, and savor it. And

00:34:19.840 then take the second bite and recognize it. It's great, but it wasn't as good as the first. And

00:34:24.820 usually with most desserts, by the time you get to the third or fourth bite, you go, you know what?

00:34:28.600 I got it. I got the sense. I got the sweetness from this point on. I'm just having,

00:34:33.500 having a contest with myself to see whether I'm a glutton or not. Um, so first, first thing would

00:34:39.980 be just cut back and just see if you can limit yourself to two bites or three bites of ice cream

00:34:45.680 or something like that, or whatever it is that's your poison. Um, it's so much easier though, to just

00:34:52.380 say, um, if I have room for dessert, then I have room for another lamb chop. So I'll skip the dessert

00:34:59.780 and have another lamb chop or another chicken wing or another, you know, whatever, whatever it is you

00:35:03.420 had for, for dinner, that's actually providing protein, um, and some form of healthy fat and

00:35:08.600 some, in the case of a chicken wing, some, some, uh, collagen, you know, whatever. Um, that's the

00:35:14.580 way I would approach this. And that's when I said, it's, you know, the good news, bad news thing.

00:35:19.640 The bad news is you have to do the work. That's part of the work. The good news is you can find things.

00:35:23.240 I mean, my, uh, my, the favorite dessert that my wife ever serves people when we have a dinner party,

00:35:29.360 uh, is, is mixed berries with mascarpone cheese and whipped cream. So it is berries, which I say

00:35:36.540 are tart fruits, which I'm allowing as a, as a, um, something to address your sweet tooth and the

00:35:42.860 mascarpone, uh, and the, um, and this whipped cream together with a little bit of lemon zest.

00:35:47.020 It's unbelievable. So people will say it's the best dessert they've ever had when they come to my

00:35:50.920 house. And these are people who are used to pies and cakes, everything else. So there are some

00:35:55.120 substitutes, some alternatives that will address the sweet tooth part of you without having you say,

00:36:01.580 oh, I have to give up the rest of my life. And I can't, you know, I can't, I can't enjoy food ever

00:36:05.760 again. No. And Kate will agree with me on this. I mean, we, Kate and I eat like Kings and Queens.

00:36:11.720 I enjoy every bite of food I put in my mouth. So it's not like I'm ever feeling like I'm sacrificing.

00:36:16.920 I just choose foods that are a good for me and B I know I'm going to love and love the taste of.

00:36:23.560 Um, and when you prepare them right with the right sauces, dressings, toppings,

00:36:27.120 that's why I started my company Primal Kitchen. Um, you know, I, if I'm, if I'm going to make

00:36:32.900 a giant salad, I don't want to ruin it with canola oil or soybean oil or any of that other stuff. I want

00:36:38.540 to, I want to enhance the experience of the flavor of it with the dressing. And I want to enhance

00:36:44.700 the healthfulness of it with the dressing. So you can have, you can have both of those. I was going

00:36:48.860 to say, you can have your cake and eat it too, but you cannot, I will say just for anecdotally,

00:36:53.280 sometimes it helps me to avoid because my kids love dessert. My husband loves dessert. And I also

00:36:58.120 occasionally like dessert, but if I just go for like a tea, uh, I like this apple cinnamon tea that

00:37:04.360 it's, you know, you just put it in. It doesn't need milk and doesn't need sugar. Um, it seems like a

00:37:09.320 treat and it's something warm and it takes a while, uh, and it keeps you sort of away from

00:37:15.200 them while they're eating their treat. You know, like that moment that you're most vulnerable when

00:37:19.780 everyone's unwrapping their, their popsicle or, you know, spooning in their ice cream. So for

00:37:25.780 whatever that's worth, Kate, I know you share the aversion to refined flowers, refined flowers,

00:37:30.640 but I have to tell you what, I don't even know what that means. And I feel like I've been

00:37:34.280 fairly exposed to this world, but even I sitting on like bread, I mean, what is, what, what does that

00:37:40.440 look like? Flour. So whether it comes from wheat or spelt or, uh, any other kind of thing that's

00:37:49.700 been pulverized into a fine powder, that is something that is very processed. And because of

00:37:57.320 that, it has almost no nutrition and it's pretty much empty calories, but you're correct in that. I,

00:38:02.980 I do tell people to be aware of these things, but I don't tell people that they have to avoid them

00:38:07.460 a hundred percent. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm not in the all or nothing camp. It's not like having a

00:38:12.820 little bit of something sets your metabolism back in some kind of, you know, horrible way. No, it's

00:38:18.480 those, uh, both refined sugars, which basically just means, you know, table sugar, something that

00:38:24.160 looks like granulated sugar, um, or something that is basically pure sugar, like corn syrup or agave

00:38:30.680 nectar, the things that Mark was listing, um, brown sugar, all of those sugars are, are basically

00:38:36.420 mostly empty calories because they're so processed and they're so, so like addicting because they,

00:38:43.440 they raise our blood sugar and they're addicting in a way that you're there, that we haven't talked

00:38:47.880 about yet, but that gives you energy. Um, there's a metabolic addiction that does happen when your

00:38:54.060 body's, when you've been eating seed oils. So there's, there's a lot that I just said that I want

00:38:58.100 to unpack a little bit. So first of all, um, I, I say, you know, you can have granulated

00:39:03.660 sugar. You don't have to do funny things where you like, and you have like some sort of date

00:39:07.520 paste instead, or, you know, um, honey from, from, uh, anointed, um, bees, you know, in the

00:39:15.320 Himalayas, um, you can, you can have like sugar is sugar. Once you've digested and broken it down

00:39:21.860 and it's gotten into your bloodstream, it's identical at that chemical level. Your body can't tell

00:39:27.100 the difference, but you want to get a handle on how much you're having because it's so easy to

00:39:31.240 overeat this stuff. And, um, so you want to like, you know, plan it ahead and to answer your question

00:39:37.880 of how do you deal with this? Like, how do you control sugar? How do you make it so that you're

00:39:43.160 in control of how much sugar you eat? Not whatever you've happened to have in the cupboards or even

00:39:47.580 your children who want you to keep stuff in the cupboards. Um, and, and the answer is there are two

00:39:52.420 strategies and Mark, you did a great job of summarizing one of the two strategy strategies,

00:39:58.600 which is like the mindset, right? Your mindset, uh, about, uh, you know, focusing on dinner,

00:40:05.240 right? Like what I do to myself is I look forward to dinner and I know we're going to have a good

00:40:11.640 dinner. And I'm like all about the dinner. If I was, if just imagine what it would be like,

00:40:17.120 if I was like, I just want to breeze through dinner so I can get to something sweet tasting for

00:40:22.340 dessert. That's my eight year old's approach to life. That's what that's you just outlined his

00:40:26.040 entire nutritional approach. And that's how like probably 90% of Americans think about dinner is

00:40:33.020 like something we have to get through so that we can eat the ice cream that we really are, you know,

00:40:37.760 really wanting like get, get, get through all this stuff. Sure. Yeah. I like burgers. Sure. I like

00:40:41.920 pizza, but really what I want is cookies. So that is, you have that because you've been thinking

00:40:50.420 that way for so long. So it's ingrained in your mindset, it's a habit, but you also have a metabolic

00:40:56.080 problem there. And that's the whole other strategy that, um, that like, I think is the most important

00:41:04.120 part of what is why I wrote the book, the fat burn fix, because there's a lot going on with our

00:41:10.180 metabolisms because of these seed oils that makes our brains need sugar. So we are addicted,

00:41:16.020 not just to the taste, which is what everyone knows. It's addicting taste. You need, you have

00:41:21.680 a little sugar, you want a little more sugar. It's like any other drug. And that is all true.

00:41:27.560 But the, the other part of this, that is so important to understand your relationship with

00:41:32.820 food is that if you have too much seed oils in your body fat, which every, everyone does,

00:41:37.440 unless you've been avoiding them, you are, your brain thinks that sugar equates to energy

00:41:43.020 because your brain does not trust your body fat. Your brain says, I don't want anybody to be burning

00:41:48.000 body fat. Cause when that happens, I don't, I feel bad. And so that your brain now equates

00:41:55.180 sugary things with energy. And that makes it very hard for willpower to use your willpower to control

00:42:02.260 how much you're eating. So you have to get to that underlying metabolic cause and understand

00:42:05.980 how to handle that. And, and that's where the healthy fats are key and knowing, learning how

00:42:12.680 to build meals, meals that sustain your energy. So you don't want to snack and healthy fats is one

00:42:18.900 big piece of it. But the other big piece are kind of like the, the complicated carbohydrates or the,

00:42:25.280 the high glyce, the low glycemic index carbohydrates, the starchy foods that are not refined,

00:42:31.680 things like beans, uh, starchy vegetables, a kind of bread that is made the old fashioned way,

00:42:39.680 the way they used to do. And the Bible days called sprouted grain bread there. Don't make,

00:42:44.640 make it out of flour. You can get that. You can get that at, I think whole foods, right? Was it Dave's?

00:42:49.660 I'm trying to remember it's, they freeze it. Ezekiel. Ezekiel. Ezekiel is the best. Like Dave,

00:42:54.880 Dave makes a, Dave has a brand too, but, uh, I've tested people's blood sugars after they eat Dave's.

00:43:00.440 And after they eat Ezekiel and it's better with Ezekiel, because what happened, Ezekiel is just

00:43:05.120 more, uh, pure sprouted grain, whereas Dave seems to have some more flour in it or something. And it

00:43:10.080 spikes your blood sugar. And that spiking of blood sugar is not a good thing because every time you

00:43:15.620 spike your blood sugar over a certain level, you're exposing all your tissues and your joints to too

00:43:20.520 much sugar. And it basically, it's like sugar in your joints is like rust in an engine. It, it, uh,

00:43:27.820 it makes them sticky and it's the last thing that you want. So, um, so spiking your blood sugar is

00:43:33.120 bad, but it doesn't mean you have to give up bread or all starchy carbohydrate things.

00:43:37.020 It just means you want to eat those that your body breaks down more slowly. So I call them the slow

00:43:43.600 digesting carbohydrates because the technical term is low glycemic, but that doesn't really mean anything.

00:43:49.520 So slow digesting things that break down slow, like beans, actual beans, um, you know, carrots,

00:43:55.540 uh, those have some carbon in them too, not potatoes because they're so that we, we bump our

00:44:02.520 blood sugar pretty quick with those, but pretty much every other like whole food. That's a little

00:44:07.780 bit starchy breaks down very slowly in your body. And it's a great way to sustain your energy between

00:44:14.360 meals. That's what I was getting at. Those, it really helps you not snack. You have to know all the

00:44:18.300 strategies to not want to snack because, um, there's it, when your metabolism is, is like

00:44:25.200 refusing to burn your body fat, you really have to build meals in a smart way so that you don't get

00:44:30.900 that hangry between meals. Hangry is an example of how you feel because your brain is addicted to

00:44:39.340 energy, the energy and sugar and can't use your body fat. Hangry is an abnormal metabolic state. And,

00:44:46.140 and that's why I teach people how to get rid of that hangry feeling. What are you going to do?

00:44:52.020 What are you going to eat step-by-step? Because it's, it's quite a, uh, uh, it takes a bit of

00:44:58.000 learning really to be able to get to that point where you can finally lose weight effortlessly.

00:45:04.540 Now, this reminds me of her comment to Kate's comment, uh, Dave, about, uh, Mark about, uh,

00:45:09.540 you know, just it, you can have some sugar, just make sure it's small. Um, I read that you start

00:45:16.100 your day with some French press, heavy cream in your coffee. Same, by the way, I heard that trick,

00:45:20.560 that trick in it. I love it. And monk fruit sweetener. So now are you embarrassed that

00:45:25.340 you're having monk fruit sweetener instead? Oh, and I, you know, I, sometimes I use monk fruit.

00:45:30.120 Sometimes I use a, uh, a teaspoon of, uh, of table sugar. Ooh, you know, as Kate said, it's,

00:45:38.140 it's one of these things where it's not about, um, it's not, it's the, it's the dose that makes

00:45:42.840 the poison. Right. And a little bit of sugar isn't going to derail you. Um, and it's not going to put

00:45:47.920 you, you know, your, your metabolism out of kilter. I have a real issue with grains. It was probably the

00:45:53.420 most revolution, revolutionary thought that I had 25 years ago changed my life entirely when I realized

00:46:00.660 that, that my, my arthritis that I had, my, my, uh, IBS, my irritable bowel syndrome, my, my getting

00:46:08.720 sick many times a year was largely due to my intake of, of grains. Um, I was a marathoner or triathlete.

00:46:16.220 And so I, I was always looking to take in extra carbs before I knew, um, how inflammatory my diet

00:46:22.900 was. And through the years I was taking in bread and pasta and cereal and beer and, you know, all,

00:46:29.420 all forms of carbs that came from grain. And when I finally eliminated the grains, everything that had

00:46:36.120 been bothering me in my, in terms of my health cleared up, went away. So I realized, um, number

00:46:42.500 one, how antithetical grains are to actual health. And the fact that the U S department of agriculture

00:46:48.660 had listed them as the preferred fuel source with six to 11 servings per day at the base

00:46:54.340 of the food. I found that we've been misled. I got to squeeze in a quick commercial, but I want,

00:47:00.240 I, we have to talk about grains because that's like all the rage.

00:47:06.400 Mark, we left off at grains and I know you're a big fan of keto. Um, some of our viewers, we asked

00:47:13.320 some of the folks on Twitter to weigh in, like, what, what questions do you have? And one of our guests

00:47:18.120 wrote in, uh, this is from Nathan, one of our fans, high fiber diet, yay or nay Mediterranean diet

00:47:24.420 versus keto. You're a big fan of keto and not of grains. So go on. Well, uh, so, so I'm a fan of

00:47:31.980 keto. I employ the strategies of keto once in a while. I don't engage in a regular ketogenic diet

00:47:39.640 because to be frank, I like eating food. I like eating a variety of foods and some of the things

00:47:43.980 that would not be allowed on a ketogenic diet. I want to consume them once in a while. And so I do

00:47:48.720 grains in my estimation. Uh, and there's been a lot of written about, about how antithetical

00:47:55.400 grains can be to health. They're, they're basically a cheap source of calories, uh, for most people

00:48:01.020 around the world. And, you know, when people don't have access to food of any kind, grains can be a

00:48:06.180 lifesaver for us in the United States. We have access to much more healthful foods. So grains,

00:48:12.260 I mean, I refer to them as beige glop that you have to put stuff on to make it taste great. You

00:48:17.840 know, if you have dry toast, isn't that great. You got to put a jam on it or, or, or butter a bowl

00:48:23.760 of spaghetti with nothing on it is not that appealing. You gotta, you gotta have the marinara

00:48:27.460 sauce or whatever. And I just say, why don't you just order a bowl of the marinara sauce? Um, so,

00:48:33.320 so, you know, having said that, you know, the smell of a yeasty bread coming out of the oven is pretty

00:48:38.380 appealing. So once in a while, um, even though I, I keep bread and other grain products out of my diet

00:48:45.800 for the most part, once in a while, I'll have a couple of tastes, a couple of bites of bread with

00:48:49.520 a lot of butter on it. Um, because I want that experience. So this is, it's a, it's a, it's a

00:48:55.300 situation where, you know, you, you craft the ideal diet for, for you, which includes what's best for

00:49:01.720 you in terms of food, you know, that you should not be eating, but also to, you know, to include a

00:49:06.680 variety of foods that you want to try and you want to taste, make your, make your life enjoyable.

00:49:11.800 I mean, as I said earlier, every bite of food I eat, I want it to taste fabulous. I don't want to,

00:49:16.580 you know, if you made me a kale salad with, with, you know, lemon juice dressing on it and said,

00:49:21.220 this is the most helpful thing you could eat, Mark. I'd say, no, no, thanks. Take it away.

00:49:24.620 Thank you. All right. So let's talk. I've been, I've teased the audience long enough. Let's talk

00:49:28.680 about your, what you eat in a day. I talked about your coffee in the morning. Can you just spend

00:49:32.620 20 seconds on why heavy cream? It just makes the coffee taste a little bit better. It's,

00:49:37.160 it's full fat. So I'm, you know, I'm, I'm a fan of, of consuming an appropriate amount of saturated

00:49:42.920 fat. So it's a great way to start the day with a little bit of a dollop of fat, if you will,

00:49:46.760 in my coffee. Um, it's just the right taste combination for me. Again, I want to enjoy that

00:49:51.360 cup of coffee, um, for lunch. Um, you know, I typically have, um, some kind of fish usually,

00:49:57.080 um, just for variety, I'll have salmon, uh, or tuna or tuna sashimi, a little bit of vegetables.

00:50:04.300 I become less and less, uh, enamored of vegetables. We can talk about what that, what that looks like

00:50:08.920 in the context of fiber, for instance. Um, and then for dinner, I'll usually have a steak or

00:50:13.580 I had lamb chops last night with steamed broccoli, glass of red wine. I'm very happy camper with that

00:50:19.760 kind of a eating. So there's no starch because you know, the, the traditional American dinner plate

00:50:24.700 has a protein, a veggie and a starch, you know, whether it's rice or couscous or a little bit

00:50:30.020 of pasta or something, right? Like, are you getting, so to people who worry, well, I'm not,

00:50:34.440 I'm not going to be full enough with just a pork chop and some broccoli. What say you?

00:50:39.820 Well, first of all, the, the, the pork chop, uh, with its fat and protein content is very satiating.

00:50:47.000 It's probably all most people would need to be, to be, you say full, you don't need to,

00:50:52.700 to add a layer of potatoes or rice or anything like that onto that. And the vegetables can take

00:50:57.400 up space as well. And it's, it's a little bit of fiber, but I'm in that camp right now that I don't

00:51:01.640 think you need that much fiber. I think the reason that your microbiome works well, um, is because

00:51:08.420 you're feeding at the right sorts of substrates. And so for instance, if you're a carnivore, you'd say,

00:51:13.280 well, how do these people even go to the bathroom, right? How do they even have a bowel movement?

00:51:16.120 Well, because their microbiome, the bacteria in their gut do very well on the, um, uh, gelatinous

00:51:24.600 material in the, in the steak they're eating or in the animal protein they're eating and can convert

00:51:29.600 those into the short chain fatty acids that they need. So you don't really need fiber and you

00:51:34.680 certainly don't need this, this concept of scouring your colon with fiber. That's long.

00:51:40.400 Wait a minute. So talk to me about the wine, because I saw something about,

00:51:45.440 I didn't actually understand the note, dry farm wine selection. What is it? What's that?

00:51:50.100 Well, it's a dry farm wines is a company that provides, uh, a, uh, curated wines from around

00:51:56.320 the world. Um, I didn't mean to do an advertisement for them, but that's, that's who I use.

00:52:01.500 Same.

00:52:01.780 Yeah. But, uh, there are, there are companies like them who will find wines that are old country,

00:52:08.600 old growth wines that don't have any sugar in them. So most American wines have a lot of sugar.

00:52:13.320 Some wines in the U S have more sugar than Coca-Cola.

00:52:15.780 Yeah. My, my doctor just reminded me, he said, you and your husband share a bottle of wine at

00:52:19.360 night. That's like having a bottle of grape juice. Remember that.

00:52:21.940 Bingo. Well, it doesn't have to be because there are, there are a lot of wines from around the world.

00:52:25.640 Um, mostly not the U S that have, uh, no, like less than a half a gram of sugar per bottle,

00:52:32.820 uh, that have none of the additives that are allowed in the U S and none of the sort of,

00:52:36.480 um, histamine, um, uh, they're fantastic. I prefer them now to the old, big, thick,

00:52:45.660 fat, chocolatey, leathery, California calves that I used to eat. Right. So, so they were so thick.

00:52:51.260 I used to eat them. Um, but, but, uh, yeah, so I enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. I mean, I,

00:52:57.600 again, I want to enjoy my meal. I want to enjoy every bite of food I eat. And I, and I craft

00:53:02.380 my eating strategy around long periods of not eating where I'm living my life and not worrying

00:53:07.820 about missing a meal or, or the energy that I might get from that meal. Cause I have all the

00:53:12.600 energy I want. And then when I sit down to a meal, I'm like very thankful, very grateful. Um, tastes

00:53:18.700 great. It's one of the better experiences of my day. Now I know, Kate, you say don't buy, we've heard

00:53:25.620 like the fat free thing was nonsense, but I, but you say, don't buy low fat. Don't buy low cholesterol.

00:53:31.680 Don't buy fat free food. Don't buy skim milk. Like all the stuff that's had the fat taken out of it

00:53:37.520 was wrong. Exactly. And, and, uh, they do that so that they can kind of sell you the fat back to you

00:53:43.020 twice. Like they make money twice, right? They sell you the skim milk and the skim, skim yogurt.

00:53:47.660 That's got extra sugar in there. Sugar is very cheap, but, um, to make ice cream and cream and those kinds

00:53:52.900 of confections that where you really need butter that they want to keep that to, to use that

00:53:57.840 separately. But it also, it helps make you hungry all the time so that you're more likely to snack.

00:54:02.960 So it really benefits the food companies in multiple ways. Yeah. It's a, yeah, they've been,

00:54:09.560 they get you coming and going. They're really good at that. Um, I wanted to just touch a little tiny bit

00:54:14.900 on, on grains. Like I don't, I don't think anybody's really saying that grains are toxic. It's just that

00:54:19.540 they're easy to overeat. And, um, I actually use flour to, to make one of the most delicious liver

00:54:27.220 dishes ever. I'm actually, I I'm lying. I don't do it. My husband does it. Um, and he dredges the

00:54:32.960 liver in, uh, flour and it just comes out so unbelievably good. I never thought I would

00:54:38.740 actually look forward to a meal with liver cows. That is one part of the Kate Shanahan plan that I'm

00:54:44.820 like, Oh, I don't know. I can do it. Cause Kate loves four things. She loves meat on the bone,

00:54:49.680 organ meats, hello liver, fermented and sprouted foods and fresh uncooked ingredients. You know,

00:54:54.920 raw, she says, those are inflammation fighters and antioxidants. I can do that. I can do, you know,

00:54:59.140 raw vegetables, but like organ meats, Kate, come on. How are we supposed to do that?

00:55:05.040 Yeah. It takes some dedication, but if you really, if you literally can't do it, then you can get a

00:55:09.720 pretty similar nutrient profile from egg yolks. If the eggs are like pasture raised and, you know,

00:55:17.880 we're free ranging. So they were eating like a normal chicken diet with like including some bugs

00:55:22.880 and some fresh greens and stuff like that. Not just the grain stuff, but, um, but there, there are so

00:55:28.360 many liver recipes out there that like liver and onions, when you do it right, it's actually really

00:55:34.800 good. So that's why I say you have to kind of want to, cause you're going to try it a few times.

00:55:39.280 And there's all kinds of- Does it smell up the house? Is it disgusting? Like the first time

00:55:42.900 are you like, ew, I'm not going to be able to do it. Or is it like, actually this is getting a bad

00:55:46.900 rep. Yeah. It's a really good question. It has almost no smell. Like it's the only thing that's

00:55:52.040 smelly about it is like what you coat on it, right. Or what you put it in or the bacon that

00:55:57.180 you're cooking it with or the, the onions that you're caramelizing or charring. And what do you

00:56:02.340 ask a butcher for? What do you, what do you order? How do you get liver?

00:56:07.220 Oh, we go, I go to a kind of a small little farm store where they have grass-fed cows and

00:56:12.960 it's, they're sold frozen in a pack. Like, so when you thought-

00:56:18.020 It's always there. They're like, yeah, no problem. We have tons of it, Kate.

00:56:21.640 Yeah. It's because, well, you know, it's, if you think about it, the cows have livers,

00:56:25.560 right? So they don't want to throw them out. Um, so, and if there's a farm that is nearby,

00:56:30.620 they got to sell those livers. They want to sell every part. They want to make money

00:56:33.200 off of every single part that they can. But I know you also say you can try, you can do

00:56:36.800 the liver pate, which actually is somewhat stomachable. So there, if you like the organ

00:56:43.020 meat and can you talk for a minute about, um, meat on the bone and bone marrow? I, when I was in

00:56:50.180 France recently, that was an order. You could order bone marrow. I'm like, what is that? I, I know

00:56:56.040 people, this is a trend now, but why do people want to eat bone marrow?

00:56:58.880 So there are the four things that you talk about, Megan, um, are, I call them the four

00:57:03.200 pillars of the human diet because they're common to every single traditional cuisine around the

00:57:08.820 world. And they include the, the fresh food and the fermented and sprouted food and the

00:57:14.080 meat on the bone and the organ meat. So the meat on the bone, let's break that down because

00:57:18.800 meat on the bone provides you something that's really good for your skin, for your hair, for

00:57:24.100 your nails and your joints. It gives you collagen and a whole bunch of other stuff that only come

00:57:30.200 from, uh, when you take an animal and you boil its, uh, joint material or its skin, it releases

00:57:37.100 these very special compounds that are basically missing from the American diet. Um, they're

00:57:42.280 including collagen peptides. People heard of collagen now, but, uh, glucosamine and glycosaminoglycans.

00:57:48.420 Those are other chemicals that you get when you make just good old fashioned, like chicken

00:57:54.060 soup, where you include the, the bones, the tendons, the skins, you know, when you have

00:57:59.080 a chicken, say, for example, that white stuff on the ends of the bones and the, like the

00:58:05.200 wiggly white ligaments and tendons, the gross stuff is full of nutrition.

00:58:09.780 And so you're saying when you go to the grocery store, instead of getting like the pre-trimmed chicken

00:58:13.760 breasts that we all go for, cause it seems like cleaner and easier go for like the chicken

00:58:19.540 legs, the thighs with the bones. Yes. And just bake them or fry them or, or just, you

00:58:25.560 know, they, they actually taste so much better, just easy in prepared in easy ways because

00:58:31.100 the breast has had the fat and the skin removed. And those things taste really great when you

00:58:36.640 crisp them up and fry them up. And this fills your house up with this beautiful fried chicken

00:58:41.760 smell that, and those have extremely potent nutrients that help your skin, your hair and

00:58:48.860 your nails that are related to collagen. And they build your collagen, all of those things that I just

00:58:53.080 mentioned, skin, hair, nails, and joints and bones, they're made mostly out of collagen. And

00:58:57.600 the meat on the bone aspect of the four pillars helps fortify those collagen rich tissues. And there's

00:59:06.120 no other way to do it because like, I mean, you can take supplements. Yes. But they are

00:59:11.740 not as effective as the real thing. And it's kind of, that's why I say it's like a missing

00:59:15.900 food group from the American diet. Cause we don't do that. We use bullion to make soup. So don't do

00:59:21.540 that. Just save the bones and, uh, and make your own chicken stock, or you can buy boxed bone stock

00:59:29.400 now really easily. It's at every grocery store you can get from Amazon. It's a great deal at Costco.

00:59:33.800 And that's so much better as a base for your soup gives it so much flavor than just using water. And

00:59:40.500 it's so much better for you than bullion because the bullion cubes to give yourself flavor, that's

00:59:45.100 just chemicals in there. Mostly there's no nutrition. That's amazing. Okay. So that's meat

00:59:50.760 on the bone. Got to do the organ meats, fermented and sprouted foods, at least five times a week.

00:59:55.680 You say that's yogurt. Obviously that's from, as you say, sprouted grains. We kind of talked about

00:59:59.600 the Ezekiel bread that would, that would be, uh, in there legumes, sprouted nuts and seeds. Um,

01:00:06.800 and then fresh uncooked ingredients. So just everybody's inflamed. I mean, everybody's

01:00:12.000 inflamed. Maybe you two aren't, but like, I don't know a woman who at night when she's putting on her

01:00:17.520 nightgown or pajamas, isn't like, why do I look 10 pounds heavier than I looked this morning when I got

01:00:23.220 up, you know, and it's inflammation. And I don't know if, if I eat, if I do all these things that you're

01:00:29.220 saying, am I not going to have that anymore? Or is that just being human? 80 to 90% of the

01:00:34.380 inflammation and inflammatory problems people are suffering from is coming from these seed oils

01:00:39.120 that were never in our food supply until they, we invented the factory processes for doing these.

01:00:44.780 They were released into the food supply without any studies showing that they were like safe.

01:00:51.520 And the worst irony here is that the American heart association got money from a company selling

01:00:57.820 one of the seed oils. So they actually decided to declare it as heart healthy. So that's why these

01:01:03.700 things have gotten to pass for so long because, and no one's really been talking about them or

01:01:07.480 paying attention to them because we have been misled into believing that not only are they not

01:01:12.180 toxic, they're actually the thing to go for. And that we've been misled into believing that these

01:01:17.660 things are what we should eat instead of traditional fats like butter. And we've made lard a dirty word

01:01:22.800 literally because of the American heart association and its relationship with these companies that gave

01:01:28.660 them money to say seed oils were healthy, but they, they, they should not have been released into the

01:01:33.920 food supply without studies to first show that they were safe. And now what's happened is that we're all

01:01:40.200 eating them. We are eating, we're getting 80% of your fat calories from these seed oils. So it's like,

01:01:47.120 we've been in a giant experiment without like our consent. Like nobody told us we're in this

01:01:53.740 experiment. And the experiment is what happens when you feed a population seed oils. What happens is you

01:01:57.980 get inflamed and you don't feel like exercising. You overeat, you get fat, you get diabetic, and you

01:02:03.180 develop all of these chronic diseases. 80 to 90% of the chronic diseases that I see every day when I see

01:02:09.600 patients are related to inflammation, which comes primarily from all these seed oils. So it's, it's really

01:02:15.460 like when you get them out of your diet, it's really the gift that keeps on giving.

01:02:19.180 Yeah. Just reminding people that, uh, Kate is in addition to, uh, being a biochemist and

01:02:24.420 nutritionist is also a doctor and practices, uh, family medicine. So she sees patients and knows of

01:02:30.500 what she speaks. Can I spend a minute on collagen marks? I know this is something that, um, you've spent

01:02:35.280 some time on too. And I, I just liked the look of these collagen supplements. I saw this little

01:02:41.300 inn and my husband and I went and stayed at it. They'd had sort of the old fashioned delivery look

01:02:47.240 on the, on the outside of the bottle. And then I never did anything with them. And, um, we, we have

01:02:52.580 an advertiser that, that sells collagen too. And, and I wonder, cause I've heard both things and like,

01:02:57.600 it's great. It's a game changer. And I've heard, no, it's yet another sort of placebo effect kind of

01:03:01.980 thing. What say you? Well, what I say, uh, much like what Kate said, um, I've been referring to

01:03:08.560 collagen as the fourth macronutrient for 10 years. Uh, you know, if we go back and look at

01:03:13.780 that meat on the bone, uh, picture that, that we all had, uh, basically in the last, in the fifties

01:03:19.760 and sixties, um, we grandma made, uh, chicken stock or she made, she boiled, uh, beef stock

01:03:27.120 made soups. Um, my mother used Knox gelatin, uh, kids ate Jell-O. So we actually had some source

01:03:35.340 of these gelatinous materials, these collagen peptides in our diet. Um, and into the, even

01:03:40.620 into the eighties and nineties and then nineties, the early aughts people stopped eating Jell-O

01:03:45.700 cause it was sugary and they stopped. I don't know anybody that takes Knox gelatin for their

01:03:50.180 skin, hair and nails now. And so, and then we were eating the choice cuts of meat, right?

01:03:54.680 Just the ribeye and just the, you know, just the quarter house and the new, whatever we weren't,

01:03:58.880 we weren't consuming those parts of the animal that we're providing. And by the way, we were

01:04:03.600 eating chicken without the skin and like skinless boneless chicken breast, which was the body

01:04:08.880 building, you know, go-to for, for high protein. So all of this caused, I think a generation

01:04:14.840 of people who had severe issues with, uh, cartilage with ligaments and tendons. So you

01:04:20.780 get ACL tears in, in professional sports, you get all these issues because we weren't giving

01:04:26.140 the body the raw material we needed to repair the actual, the collagen parts of the body. You

01:04:32.040 know, a collagen represents the predominance of the protein type in the human body. And

01:04:37.600 we weren't giving our bodies the raw material. So with that in mind, I've been looking at

01:04:42.660 collagen supplementation for the last 15 years. I mean, I, I fixed a severe Achilles tendon

01:04:48.300 issue by supplementing with a lot of collagen every day. So I had a personal experience with

01:04:53.660 this. Um, so I think collagen is critical for, for maintenance of the soft tissue, the connective

01:05:00.220 tissue, the fascia, the ligaments, the tendons, the cartilage, the skin, hair, and nails. Uh,

01:05:05.360 and so I, I supplement personally, I supplement with collagen because I'm also one who I'd like

01:05:10.440 to eat nose to tail, which is how you can get collagen. But you know, I'm averse to certain

01:05:15.740 nether parts of that animal, just like you might be. Um, and so, um, and I don't think I get enough

01:05:21.580 of it through eating chicken skin or, or, you know, gnawing on the bones the way I used to as a,

01:05:26.500 as a kid. Wow. That is so fascinating. So does it matter the form of the supplement? You know,

01:05:32.260 cause you can take like a powder, you can like, what, how do you do it? There's a lot. Sure. I

01:05:36.960 mean, um, there's a lot of different types of collagen type one, type two, you know, type three

01:05:42.620 there in their mixture. Some is bovine, some is a fish based, um, some chicken based. And, uh,

01:05:50.000 and, and as Kate said, you're, you also want glycosamine, glycans and glycine and things like

01:05:54.960 that. So some of the supplements have, have all of these in them. Um, but they're basically

01:05:59.380 collagen peptides or they're, they're, um, they're amino acid peptides. So they're, they're like two

01:06:05.860 or three amino acids at a time bonded together that can pass through the gut barrier and get

01:06:10.140 into the bloodstream and go where they need to go. All right. And you're too, you're too polite to say

01:06:13.740 it, but I think we can get it at your website too. So tell us what that is, because this is not you

01:06:17.760 trying to advertise. You were going to mention it. I'll mention it. If you want some, uh, we at

01:06:22.220 primalkitchen.com, uh, we have, uh, college, we, we sell collagen peptides and varieties. We have

01:06:28.380 coffee creamers and, and just unflavored or flavored or whatever you want. Just make people's

01:06:32.740 life easier. They've come to trust you. So it's like, you know, there's a lot of charlatans out

01:06:36.260 there. They never, they, they don't know. Wait, let me pause you there. Cause I want to get in a

01:06:39.260 caller. Pam in Texas has a caller as a question about MCT oil. And I have the same question. Hi,

01:06:45.200 Pam, what's your question? Hi, I saw a Ted talk of a lady whose husband

01:06:50.660 had Alzheimer's was in the beginning stages of it and had the scan done and it was just

01:06:58.540 not good. And then she gave him MCT oil. It was more than it says in the bottle and coconut oil.

01:07:07.200 And then months, months, months later, they went back and did another scan. And it was so improved

01:07:13.260 that her unofficial recommendation is that you should incorporate that into your diet. She also

01:07:22.620 talked about the ketones in your brain, why Alzheimer's happens with the glucose and all

01:07:26.760 that. So I don't know, is that, is MCT oil something that is helpful to incorporate?

01:07:34.340 Go ahead, Kate. You're the doctor.

01:07:36.600 You actually get the exact same benefits from incorporating really any healthy fats at the,

01:07:42.100 and following an otherwise healthy nutrient dense diet. In fact, you get more benefits.

01:07:48.640 MCT oil is just kind of high in a certain kind of a fatty acid that if you're metabolically damaged,

01:07:54.580 then you can sometimes, some people can get a little more energy from that, but it's nowhere near

01:08:00.580 as effective as the whole program of just cutting out the nasty stuff, especially the seed oils,

01:08:06.100 the excess sugar, and including all the healthy fats that you possibly can in your diet and also

01:08:11.200 getting a good balanced amount of protein. So yeah, people will love to sell you supplements of all

01:08:16.820 kinds of things just because there's such a high profit margin there, but you really want to be

01:08:20.720 careful. And the collagen supplements is one of the few actual supplements that I do recommend

01:08:25.480 myself. And in fact, I consult for a company myself that sells collagen supplements,

01:08:29.920 but that's, that's it in terms of, for me, for supplements, then the rest of your supplements

01:08:34.220 would be vitamins and minerals, because most of it is total hype because most people would rather

01:08:39.820 just say, here, take this supplement, then go through the whole spiel of what is the actual

01:08:44.000 healthy diet? What are the hateful eight, how much sugar should you have? And all this sort of

01:08:47.520 thing. And you know, you do, if you just get even just a tiny benefit from a supplement that gives

01:08:52.940 you a lot of hope. So maybe that is a good thing. It's a fast way to get yourself motivated,

01:08:57.140 but that's just the first of many steps that you can take in order to improve the health of

01:09:04.060 somebody who is starting with early Alzheimer's or has any kind of a, any kind of a cognitive problem

01:09:09.100 actually, because they're all related to inflammation.

01:09:12.740 Kate, you touched on something about, you know, people like doing these supplements. I was surprised to

01:09:19.160 see one of your other recommendations is do not buy protein powders. It's like my entire morning

01:09:25.840 smoothie that I make for my children is falling apart. We put MCT oil in there and we put protein

01:09:30.480 powders in there. Now we do put spinach in there and a bunch of berries and some yogurt. So I'm

01:09:35.840 with you. I think I felt like I felt like a good mother until we got to this last part.

01:09:41.000 Well, we know there's this term that's come out in the past few years that I love. It's called

01:09:45.560 ultra processed foods. And it's, they're starting to talk about how, okay, so we don't need to worry

01:09:52.400 about cholesterol. We, we need to worry about how the food is processed and the ultra processing

01:09:56.780 is the worst. And there are three major types of ultra processed ingredients, fat, which is the

01:10:02.640 seed oils, protein, which is most of the protein powders and carbs, which is refined flours and

01:10:08.520 sugars. Those are ultra processed ingredients that make up ultra processed foods that everyone is now

01:10:15.620 on board with the idea that these things are what's killing us and making us fat and making us

01:10:20.720 metabolically unhealthy. So yeah. So protein powders are just, they're ultra processed. The

01:10:25.360 most of the nutrition is removed. We were never meant to have our protein pre-digested for us. It's

01:10:31.060 basically pre-digested. So it will bump up your, your blood sugar, your blood, not your sugar, but

01:10:36.720 your amino acid level in your blood, which has the same kind of detrimental effects as too much sugar in

01:10:43.040 the bloodstream. So protein powder is actually different from collagen powder because the way it's made and

01:10:48.720 processed and the way your body processes it, there's dramatic differences. So that's why I,

01:10:54.060 that's why I still can recommend collagen powder. Although I would much rather you make your own

01:10:59.200 bone broth. Um, and I totally recommend it. But the smoothies already got yogurt, so I don't need to

01:11:05.040 add protein. All right. I like this call. This is William from South Carolina, Mark. And he's got a

01:11:08.820 question. Like a lot of the people who listen to this show live when it's on Sirius XM, uh, he's a

01:11:14.320 trucker. And so, you know, he hears us in the, in his truck and he's got a question about, uh, about

01:11:18.380 that. Hi, William, what's your question?

01:11:19.660 Uh, yes. Um, thank you for taking my call. I just had, I travel a lot. I go from South Carolina to

01:11:25.300 California and back as an over the road trucker. And I just want to see if there's any suggestions

01:11:29.980 on, um, trying to eat better and be a little bit healthier out on the road. And, but it's very tough,

01:11:35.660 you know, all the ingredients that she, you know, you just can't, can't make that in a truck. Uh,

01:11:41.700 if there's any, you know, suggestions, uh,

01:11:44.660 It's a very good question. William's not having luck finding Ezekiel bread, uh, at the Motel 6

01:11:50.460 diner. Mark, what are we going to do for him? I mean, that's, that's a really tough one. I mean,

01:11:55.660 I, I would say that access to healthy food is, is, is a real issue for a lot of people and

01:12:00.520 especially truckers. And I don't think the pilot, uh, you know, the, the, the, uh, the stops that you

01:12:05.680 make are going to be providing a lot of this. So I think there's some work involved. I think it's

01:12:09.440 going to, it's going to be planning meals in advance and a lot of Tupperware. I mean,

01:12:14.880 I hate to put it like that, but, um, alternatively, if you can find a steakhouse on the road and just

01:12:20.440 go get a steak and a grilled vegetable and be done with it and not, you know, and, and, and forego the

01:12:26.300 roles, the basket of roles, forego the baked potato and, and kind of fill in the, the, the, the gaps

01:12:32.720 there. If you are at a restaurant with a, with a decent piece of meat and a decent vegetable,

01:12:37.840 um, you can cover a lot of ground with that. And then the other thing I'd say with truckers is

01:12:41.760 whenever you can get out and walk, do it. Yeah. Well, that's important. And we're going to,

01:12:46.160 we're going to talk about exercise and we're going to talk about the weight loss drug sweeping

01:12:52.600 these sort of rich circles, uh, that I've got a toe in. And I want to know more about this

01:12:59.500 diabetes drug they're saying is going to be some sort of a cure-all. Is it, is it Kate and Mark

01:13:04.880 have answers right after this break? Okay. Before I forget, um, can you guys help me

01:13:14.060 understand how this applies to children? I've referenced my kids. My assistant Abby's worried

01:13:19.420 about her kids. All my staff has kids. Like does, do all of these same rules apply to how

01:13:25.480 we feed our kids, Kate? Nature likes to make it simple. So yes, what's good for you at one

01:13:31.380 stage of life is good for you at every stage of life. And yeah, it's, it's, uh, in fact,

01:13:36.980 the earlier you start with kids, the more benefits they get, because it can potentially change things

01:13:43.600 like how tall they will get, how strong and robust their joints are, whether or not they're going to

01:13:49.160 go through puberty, like on time or even completely go through puberty. There's a huge, huge impact on the

01:13:56.560 child's health. And, um, so like, it's, it's really the more important, the earlier that you start

01:14:04.000 and it does get easier. It just has to, you know, you have to believe it yourself. You can lead by

01:14:10.140 example. And then, um, you know, when, when children are, are, are given foods, actual really

01:14:17.280 healthy foods that taste, you know, interesting or new, and you seem to like them in a positive kind

01:14:23.540 of, you know, imagine the Italian family around the table, like, you know, try this. I, I worked

01:14:29.600 all day making it that kind of a thing. That's, that's one way that it makes, uh, introducing new

01:14:35.420 foods and healthy. Let me ask you a follow-up. I find breakfast is the hardest meal to get your kids

01:14:39.420 to eat healthy at. Like my kids will, they'll have eggs. They like eggs two out of three, like yogurt

01:14:43.980 and even plain yogurt. As long as you put enough berries in there, um, they'll eat it. Uh, and then we

01:14:49.620 run out of really healthy options. You know, I don't, I haven't, they're not much into the Ezekiel

01:14:54.600 bread. Like if I made them do it with peanut butter, they might do it. But like, do you have

01:14:59.680 any good breakfast suggestions for kids that are healthy? Well, there's like 87 different thousands,

01:15:06.160 thousand different things you can do with eggs. And one of the things that kids might really love

01:15:10.460 is make crepes. So crepes are a lot like pancakes, except they're mostly egg and just a little bit of

01:15:16.780 flour to hold it together. But then you can put like a whipped cream in there with just a little

01:15:22.080 bit of vanilla and a teeny bit of sweetener. And you're giving them plenty of healthy fats. You're

01:15:26.100 giving them that protein and nutrients from the egg. And it's something like familiar and can play

01:15:30.340 with that. And then there's all kinds of like paleo versions of pancakes too. And, and then there's

01:15:36.000 like muffins that are made with more, uh, protein rich kinds of starchy elements. So you can make

01:15:43.720 muffins out of beans. You can make, um, one of those things called, uh, savory, um, custards,

01:15:50.080 right? Or you can make custards. Custard is a really, you know, it's like pudding basically.

01:15:54.340 Um, and a lot of kids, what you can make a sweet custard for a kid, or you can make a savory one

01:15:59.540 for a more sophisticated palate. So there's a thousand one things you can do with eggs. And then

01:16:04.800 there's a lot you can do with a dairy too. Like you already started there with putting yogurt and

01:16:10.000 putting a little fruit on it, but you can bump up the, like the, the pleasure of it with,

01:16:16.020 you can actually top yogurt with whipped cream. Why not just put a very lightly, um,

01:16:22.280 a lightly sweetened, uh, like a tiny little bit of sugar sweetener in the whipped cream and a little

01:16:28.900 bit of vanilla because vanilla magnifies the natural sweetness that's already in there.

01:16:34.880 And actually I did that for the Lakers. We had that at their breakfast buffet and it was just,

01:16:39.720 it was a huge hit and then put other little things that, you know, kids like, uh, as out for

01:16:44.340 them to top it with sort of like a, um, uh, a Sunday bar except, but with yogurt, or if they

01:16:50.620 don't like yogurt, cottage cheese, or if regular yogurt is too sour, then use Greek yogurt.

01:16:55.380 Is this all in your book? Is this in that the fat burn fix?

01:16:58.780 Yes. I have lots more ideas like that there.

01:17:01.240 Good, good. Cause people are going to want to know. It's good to know. Um, Mark,

01:17:04.380 let's talk exercise. Cause we got to do it. We've got to do it. And I like the way you approach it.

01:17:10.880 You say, look, forget everything. There are four essential movements you need to do.

01:17:17.380 They're just four do these four and you're going to be in relatively decent shape. What are the four?

01:17:22.820 So let's take a step back. This is in the absence of a gym or in the absence of a trainer or in the

01:17:27.080 absence of, uh, access to weights, you can get a tremendous workout doing pushups, uh, pull-ups,

01:17:36.420 uh, planks and air squats. Um, the planks are just, you know, you're on your elbows on the ground

01:17:44.700 with your body out straight. Um, and, and so that's, that's sort of like my vacation. Uh, there's

01:17:51.980 no, there's no gym in the hotel routine. Right. And I can get a tremendous workout doing that.

01:17:57.080 Um, but what I would say is with regard to exercise, look, all of the weight loss gains

01:18:03.160 are going to come from how you orchestrate your eating strategy, your diet.

01:18:07.680 Yeah. A lot of questions about that. A lot of questions asking what's the percentage food versus

01:18:11.520 exercise. You cannot, you cannot exercise away a bad diet. That's sort of a mantra now,

01:18:17.220 but also people shouldn't, for instance, count the calories that they burn in a workout. And these

01:18:22.660 wearable devices that will tell you, Oh, I played tennis and I burned 1200 calories.

01:18:26.500 It's BS. It's there's, and there's no way that that's even an issue. And the fact that you did

01:18:32.300 burn some calories in many, in many, many cases, if your diet is not right, you might go home and

01:18:37.920 overeat. You might, your body might, your brain might have you over consume carbohydrates, for

01:18:42.900 instance, to make up for all the glycogen you burn because you weren't that good at burning fat.

01:18:47.200 So if you train your body to become a good, good at burning fat, that kind of goes away. But the

01:18:52.380 strategy really is, is it's about movement. What we, what we want to do is we want to lose fat

01:18:57.940 from the way we eat. And then we want to tone and we want to create, um, you know, range of mobility

01:19:05.140 from our choices of exercise. So for that reason, I say everyone like walking is still the greatest

01:19:10.480 thing ever invented for humans. What we're bipedal, we're supposed to walk, we're designed to walk.

01:19:14.440 So we should walk as often as we, as we can. You want to jog, that's fine. You want to run,

01:19:19.240 that's fine. But as much as you can, I mean, you can walk walking a minimum of 45 minutes,

01:19:24.700 three times a week would be a great start. Um, and then if you want to supplement that with

01:19:30.580 getting on an exercise bike or a bike outside or swimming, all of these low level aerobic activities

01:19:36.200 are designed to keep your body moving. They're designed to make the, the fat metabolism improve

01:19:42.700 by the throughput of these fat substrates. So that you do that, you burn that instead of the

01:19:47.860 glycogen or instead of the carbohydrate. And then twice a week do some kind of weight training. That's

01:19:52.860 the four essential movements that I just talked about, or it's going to the gym and throwing some

01:19:56.540 weights around in the gym. Um, and then, and then one, once a week, I tell people, you got to do

01:20:02.220 something really all out. You got to sprint and it could, it doesn't have to be sprinting, like running

01:20:06.400 from something, but it could be 20 seconds of all out effort on a bike, uh, swimming, uh, on a

01:20:13.300 stair master on elliptical, whatever, whatever you want to do, do it 20 seconds, hard, wait two minutes,

01:20:19.540 20 seconds, hard, wait two minutes and do that a couple of times. Cause the body really is designed

01:20:24.120 to, to like be in that sort of a fight or flight mode once in a while. Oh, that's fascinating. Okay.

01:20:30.880 Cause I do have a note. What does sprinting mean? I don't like, I didn't understand. So you're

01:20:35.140 saying at least once a week, cause the way you, your short forms on these three main components

01:20:39.020 of the primal blueprint for fitness program, lift heavy things, uh, three, two to three times a week,

01:20:44.120 run really fast one time per week, move frequently at a slow pace, three to five hours per week.

01:20:49.580 So the run really fast, you have sprinting, but it doesn't have to be sprinting. You're saying

01:20:52.900 basically kind of interval training, or I guess, but go hard for 20 seconds, rest for two minutes,

01:20:57.780 20 seconds for a total of 15, 20 minutes. Yeah, that's it. And, and it doesn't sound like that much,

01:21:03.420 but if you do it right, you're pretty gassed at the end of that. And, and again, a lot of people

01:21:07.580 who don't have, um, you know, their knees are kind of, um, um, broken down over the years or can't

01:21:12.880 sprint, like can't, can't run sprints. You know, you can do it on a bike. As I say, you can do it

01:21:16.600 on an elliptical trainer. You can do it on an air and an airdyne. You can do it, um, you know,

01:21:21.340 there are lots in a pool for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And that's very easy on your body. I like that a lot.

01:21:25.660 And the walking. So I see my cardiologist once a year because my dad died of a sudden heart attack at age 45.

01:21:31.120 So I'm very conscious of my health, heart health and thank God I'm in good shape. But, um, I go

01:21:36.900 once a year and I have a stress test and it's, you know, they put you on the machine and you run and

01:21:40.820 then they, you have to lie down right at the end and they hook you up and they check all that. The,

01:21:44.500 the cardiologist said, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. He's telling me about somebody who was, um,

01:21:50.700 65 years old, who came in and her heart, her heart capacity was basically that of somebody half her age.

01:21:56.040 And he said, what, what's the deal? And she said, I don't lift weights. I don't do anything,

01:22:00.180 but every day I walk around the reservoir in New York city, you know, the Jack,

01:22:04.160 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis reservoir. Um, and it'd probably take you about 25, 30 minutes to walk

01:22:09.860 around the reservoir and not to mention what it takes to get there and get back home. And she said,

01:22:13.780 that's all I've been doing since I was 25 years old. So for 40 years, that's what she's been doing.

01:22:18.100 And she, he said she was off the charts in terms of her lung capacity and her heart health and all

01:22:22.040 that. So good to know, like good old walking. As you point out, we were meant to do it, do it.

01:22:27.380 Yep. I think the key point in what he said to you, your cardiologist said to you is that

01:22:33.120 the best exercise is the exercise that you enjoy because the, you can know all, all the things in

01:22:39.380 the world about exercise, but if you don't do it, they're not going to help you. And there's really

01:22:43.540 no wrong kind of exercise because your body benefits from every kind of exercise that, that there is

01:22:49.540 out there. Uh, we just used to call everything that you described, Mark, the term probably sounds

01:22:53.880 familiar cross-training. Like we, we used to just say, yeah, do, if you were a runner, make sure to

01:22:58.780 do some lifting, maybe do some biking or swimming or something else, or actually play a sport.

01:23:02.980 Most team sports are actually a great, like super, super form of exercise. Dancing is also an amazing

01:23:10.020 form of exercise. And one of the things I want to just point out is that when we're talking about diet

01:23:16.660 and exercise, we talk about them like they're separately, but they, we really shouldn't do that

01:23:20.520 because, um, diet supplies the raw materials to do what exercise just told your body that you need

01:23:29.320 to do more of to build like the parts to do all of that. And so when you're walking, you're doing

01:23:35.460 some cardio, you're helping keep your cardiovascular system, building new blood vessels, keeping your

01:23:41.320 heart healthy. When you're running, you're doing that times 10. When you're lifting heavy things,

01:23:46.280 you're building muscle, you're making your bones stronger and more robust. So the two things are,

01:23:52.800 they go hand in hand. And that's why we always talk about them together, but they, they really

01:23:56.360 like the role of exercise is not so much weight loss. It's about building healthy tissues and being

01:24:01.240 healthy and being able to just enjoy life. So exercise should always be fun.

01:24:05.940 One of the things not on your list, Mark is cardio bunny, you know, is do an hour of aerobics a day.

01:24:11.320 And if that's, uh, if that's your, your thing, go for it. Um, I'm, I don't know much about cardio

01:24:16.980 bunny. I've, I've, uh, gotten away from the more, uh, popular, you know, uh, uh, exercise du jour kind

01:24:25.720 of, kind of things. Look, as Kate said, any kind of exercise that you enjoy. And I came, I can't,

01:24:30.840 I was a trainer in the eighties when, when, uh, you know, the aerobics movement became the big thing

01:24:35.960 and Jane Fonda basically transformed. Not just Jane Fonda, Mark. Some of us are out there doing

01:24:41.140 our part in upstate New York as well. Kathy Smith's a good friend of mine. She was there too.

01:24:46.380 So, but you know, but it's, but that was amazing and it changed a lot of lives. Right. But then

01:24:51.160 there's, there's the possibility that you can overdo that sort of thing, which brings us back to why

01:24:57.160 walking is still the best kind of thing that you can do with regularity for the rest of your life.

01:25:02.960 And, and I think that that's exciting because it's, it's not as daunting to think, well, geez,

01:25:07.920 if, if longevity is what I'm after and mobility and all I have to do is walk, are you kidding me?

01:25:13.120 I don't have to go struggle and suffer and sweat and sacrifice and strain and get injured and all

01:25:17.180 these other things. Yeah. To, to quote, uh, that, you know, should have been Oscar winner. Santa Claus

01:25:22.640 is coming to town. Just put one foot in front of the other. Okay. Sorry. Um, let's talk about,

01:25:30.420 I got, if we want to say, forget all that, I'm not doing it better living through modern medicine.

01:25:39.020 What are the options? Because I will tell you here in Connecticut where I am, um, my friend,

01:25:44.600 my hairstylist just told me this, that half of the women are on some diabetes drug that is supposed to

01:25:50.520 be, you know, the new elixir when it comes to losing weight. It's of course, very expensive.

01:25:56.800 That's why I say it's like when there's well-off circles, but Dr. Kate, what is it? And is it

01:26:03.820 legit? Like, should we be trying to pursue? I'm trying to find the name of it, uh, here.

01:26:09.580 We govy metformin. That's all I have written down.

01:26:13.280 Metformin has been with us for a long time. It's a diabetes drug that we, uh, use to help

01:26:18.680 poison the liver. So it doesn't produce so much sugar. So it will lower your blood sugar.

01:26:22.940 And then the newer drugs are, are, uh, come from actually a lizard poison called the Gila monster.

01:26:30.300 Um, and, uh, it's, uh, they're in this category called GLP one and their names are like Trulicity,

01:26:35.760 by byetta, Ozempic. They're, most of them are injectable. You're going to have to give yourself

01:26:40.100 a little subcutaneous shot once, uh, once a week or sometimes once a day. And they do help to lower

01:26:46.200 your fasting blood sugar. Now, does that translate to weight loss? Not very much. If any, like the

01:26:53.660 studies actually show that you do lose some weight. Um, you do lose maybe the average person

01:27:00.260 lost, uh, in this, in a study where they take the maximum dose of the newest one, which is this,

01:27:05.680 the Gila monster type. Uh, maybe they would lose about two pounds in a year, maybe three,

01:27:11.160 some people gain weight. So it, you know, it's not really the answer. Yeah. It's not really the

01:27:16.820 answer. No, it's not the answer. That's disappointing. Um, okay. So that's not as

01:27:21.840 exciting as I thought. What about, okay. This is actually one of our listeners called in Janelle

01:27:27.400 from Texas has got an interesting question that we've also been buzzing about on the team. Hi Janelle,

01:27:32.060 what's your question? Hi, mine is about the fennel seed. I was told that fennel seed is good for

01:27:40.040 anti-inflammatory. I have a lot of problems with my knees. I'm a diabetic. All right. True or false

01:27:47.420 fennel seed. Fennel seed in the diet is, is good in terms of there's some nutrition in it because it's

01:27:55.240 a spice, uh, in terms of, does it have special anti-inflammatory properties? No, most of the

01:28:02.740 inflammation that causes, uh, arthritis is driven by everything we've been talking about in this show.

01:28:10.040 Like the, the, the, the seed oils that have toxins, the empty calories and the lack of nutrition.

01:28:15.580 So that's really the fundamental basis for treating any kind of inflammatory problem, but

01:28:20.500 well, is it what's easier taking this supplement, which I happen to sell off my website or explaining

01:28:28.000 everything, right? So nine times out of 10, the answer for some kind of anti-inflammatory supplement

01:28:33.160 is going to be, it's just eat the food. If you like fennel, you're going to get more benefits from that

01:28:38.580 than you will from some pill that claims to have fennel in it, which probably has some fennel at

01:28:43.440 the max, right? Maybe it could be anything. Okay. So most of the anti-inflammatory.

01:28:47.340 Cancel the fennel order. Thanks a lot, Canadian Debbie. She got us all excited about this yesterday.

01:28:52.460 Uh, okay, let's go to, and she's also in Connecticut. Uh, she's got a question that I

01:28:57.060 think would be good for you, Mark. What's your question, Anne? Hi.

01:28:59.100 Hi. Um, it's actually first a comment, more of a comment in 2018. I picked up Mark's book,

01:29:06.860 the keto reset diet, because I always am looking for ways to feel better, have more energy. You

01:29:14.500 know, I'm 57 and right around 50, I thought, you know, I could put a little more effort into it and

01:29:20.380 it was hugely intimidating, but I just knew there was something to it. And I kind of want to say to

01:29:27.100 the audience listening, it's really hard to get started eating healthier, but it is so much

01:29:34.040 better. And once you know this stuff, you can't unknow it. So you go through the supermarket and

01:29:39.760 you start reading labels and you just put it back and say, I know this is bad for me. Why am I going

01:29:46.780 to put it in my cart and pay for it? So I want to thank Mark for his book. I mean, we, my, I dragged

01:29:52.900 my husband along and we did keto for over a year and then it got really boring to go out to dinner

01:29:58.740 with friends. So we sort of left being so strict because it is really hard, but the way I eat now

01:30:06.000 is so much better. And it's, it's just a habit. It's not saying I don't fall off the wagon, but

01:30:12.480 it is so worth it to just take control of what you're putting in your body and you feel better.

01:30:17.680 All right. And I got to wrap you. Cause we got it. We only have a short time left. Um, Mark,

01:30:21.480 your thoughts on keto to close it out. Cause it's very popular, but there is a question about whether

01:30:25.400 it's sustainable. No. So Anne had a, had like the ideal, um, consummate experience, which was it

01:30:30.620 worked for her. And then it got boring for her. The book that she's talking about is called the

01:30:34.620 keto reset diet. It's about using keto and keto strategy to reset your metabolism, to develop this

01:30:40.560 metabolic flexibility. And now she's at a point where she doesn't need to eat keto, but she needs,

01:30:45.780 she knows what to eat. She knows how to read labels. She, the good news is she knows what to

01:30:50.340 do. The bad news is, is she falls off the wagon. She knows what to do. So, right. Okay. Let me ask

01:30:56.500 you a quick follow-up question though on, on, on the meds. Is there a supplement? So not fennel seeds

01:31:02.020 and maybe not those other things, the diabetes things, but is there a supplement that helps with

01:31:08.200 appetite control, anything like that? Or is it just back to see the beginning of our discussion about

01:31:13.600 eating better to curb hunger? You got to do the work and you can't, there's no shortcuts. You

01:31:19.100 can't hack your way around this really. It's like, there, there are no pills, uh, that work. There are

01:31:24.080 lots of pills. There are no pills at work. You, you have to do the work, but the good news is the work

01:31:28.200 is easy. If you understand it. And hence Kate's book and my book, once you, and, and what Anne commented

01:31:33.520 about, once you understand what's going on, then you know what to do. I want everybody to become an

01:31:38.720 intuitive eater. I don't want anyone to say, well, what would Mark do? Or what would Kate say?

01:31:41.980 I want you to become an intuitive eater as a result of this metabolic flexibility.

01:31:46.320 All right. Last question. What should I give up on June 12th? I'm going to ask you both that.

01:31:51.000 Kate, I'll start with you. What should I give up for this? Just to try for a year,

01:31:54.640 starting June 12th. Seed oils. And if you don't know where to start with that, then the most fattening

01:31:59.920 food as according to Harvard is French fries. Uh, they are saturated with seed oils and the worst.

01:32:06.580 Yes. Good guess. Good guess. Okay. So that was the worst. And then, okay, Mark, what do,

01:32:12.980 what do you think I should give up? Cause my audience may come along with me for this ride.

01:32:16.840 Well, I mean, I would say, I would have said seed oils from the beginning of this whole conversation.

01:32:20.680 Um, and, and I would say that, um, so the biggest issue is going to be when you dine out,

01:32:24.480 like every great restaurant, which has great cuts of meat, great produce, they destroy it with soybean oil

01:32:30.020 and all kinds of other stuff that they put in the sauces and the dressings. So that's really where I'd

01:32:34.120 watch out for everything. What do you do about it? You ask them, can you cook it in butter? Uh,

01:32:39.680 if it's a salad, can you just do some oil and vinegar, some olive oil and vinegar? Um, you know,

01:32:45.640 there's some ways around that, but you gotta be really careful because restaurants are pretty

01:32:49.440 insidious for a lot of people trying to avoid seed oils. Okay. And then, and then desserts. I mean,

01:32:53.760 you gotta, this thing about your kids have an ice cream. I don't want to criticize your parenting,

01:32:58.920 but no, but at some point, I think if you could replace some of those with,

01:33:03.860 with sweet, um, healthier choices, uh, and then you make those choices yourself and your husband

01:33:09.680 as well. Um, and by example, sort of reduce the amount of dessert in your life. That would be the

01:33:15.480 big thing for me. Like, like dessert twice a week, not more than that. Yeah. Oh, I love it. You guys,

01:33:21.400 you are awesome. We have to do this more often. I, I, I was like, how are we going to fill two hours?

01:33:26.440 Now I'm like, we need two more. This wasn't enough time. Thank you both so much, Kate and Mark,

01:33:31.740 all the best by their books, support them. They're trying to help us all. And, uh, we greatly

01:33:36.200 appreciate it. Thanks for joining us today. And all week, uh, we are lining up some great shows for

01:33:41.080 you next week, including one with Dinesh D'Souza by popular demand. He has a new documentary out

01:33:47.040 called 2000 mules. That's getting a ton of attention. So you requested him. We'll provide

01:33:52.420 him, uh, download the Megan Kelly show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher in the meantime. So you

01:33:56.520 don't miss it also at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly and stay tuned because next week could be the week

01:34:03.260 we find the Supreme court leaker. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend.

01:34:09.840 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - May 13, 2022

How To Lose Five Pounds By Memorial Day, with Dr. Cate Shanahan and Mark Sisson ｜ Ep. 321

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