Written by Christopher Kelly
Sept. 4, 2015
[0:00:00]
Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and today I'm joined by my wife and food scientist, Julie Kelly.
Julie: Hello.
Christopher: Okay. So this week, I wanted another show where I got back to basics and I talk about what it is we do at Nourish Balance Thrive. And I thought it was high time we did a frequently asked questions show with Julie because we get a lot of questions and there's a lot of commonality between those questions. So I thought it would be fun to talk about that.
Okay. So first of all, let's back up a bit. I thought it would be really interesting to talk about why we do this at all. I'm a computer scientist by training or through my academic qualifications and Julie is a food scientist. She's not actually a registered dietician or a nutritionist. So what the heck are we doing this for? It's kind of an interesting question, isn't it? I think the simplest answer is we do it because we love it. We absolutely love it.
I was just completely and utterly blown away and amazed by the improvement in my health and performance that I got just simply through changing my diet. And up until that point, I was doing everything right according to the rules as given to us, the general population, the general public, by the FDA and the NHS in the UK. And so that's really what, when we discovered this -- Basically, you need to just turn the food pyramid upside down and eat that way. That was kind of what motivated us to get into this.
I think it's really interesting that it might actually be beneficial to work with someone -- If you're thinking of working with someone on your diet, perhaps you're an athlete or perhaps you're someone looking to lose weight and you're thinking about working with someone, it might actually be advantageous to work with someone who is not registered or licensed. That sounds a bit contentious. But let me just read you this. This is courtesy of Marty Kendall. Hi, Marty. Thank you very much for everything you do at the Optimising Insulin blog, which is very interesting, well worth your time.
But Marty recently posted this link and this is from the Diabetes US, Australia, sorry not USA, Australia, Eating Well Paid. I'll link to this in the show notes.
Julie: And the USA page is very similar, I will add, yes.
Christopher: Is it? Okay. So presuming this is a kind of information that dieticians and nutritionists are required to know in order to be licensed or registered -- Let me just read you this. The Sugar Myth: Because diabetes is a condition where your blood glucose level is too high, many people think that they need to avoid sugar and food containing sugar. However, it is important to understand that for type II diabetes it's not sugar in itself that causes diabetes but rather combination of factors such as being overweight and being inactive and non-modifiable genetic factors that you have no control over such as your origin and ethnicity. For type I diabetes, there's no connection between sugar and diabetes. Type I diabetes is not preventative and we do not know the cause.
Julie: I mean, that is very telling. I can remember you and I having conversations about before we switched to Paleo, before anything, when we were first dating and I had yet to realize all the things that I know now, I was prescribing to you the same thing. And you were mirroring it back to me. We used to talk about saturated fat. We would sit and we would talk about like you could hear the sound of somebody's arteries clogging when they were eating something that was high in saturated fat. Now, that's almost primarily what our diet consist of, is saturated fat.
Christopher: Yeah. Old saturated fat manual. So that's where most energy comes from.
Julie: I think it's important to empathize with these people. They're mirroring, they're mimicking and just kind of a mouthpiece for the greater governmental decision.
Christopher: Yeah. I mean, it's really hard for me to understand. Now I've done as much three years later and god knows how many papers I've read that's there's really no compelling evidence that saturated fat is harmful in any way whatsoever. I mean, I don't want to get too deep into that. But, yeah, that's on the same page in the very next paragraph. It says: For all types of diabetes, it's important to try and maintain a healthy body weight. Sugary foods may add to weight again and this is why it's important to limit excess sugar in your food. Eating less fat, particularly saturated fat, it is also very important to help you manage your diabetes and your weight.
Julie: Yeah. I mean, I think the point of reading all this is to point out that when you're trying to get on top of your health and especially if you're an athlete, even if you're just sick and you're trying to get well, I think what we found in doing what we do is that sometimes almost always -- I'm not saying that you should or we recommend you don't have a primary care physician that you have and you trust and that you work with.
[0:05:07]
But a lot of times it's actually more advantageous to have a detective on your side that's going to help you do the legwork and figure out what's really going on and then also help you debug your diet and help you figure out what it is that you're eating that's either causing you problems or just not giving you the fuel that you need to perform or even holding you back from performing better. I think that's why we've had the success that we've had doing what we're doing.
And I also think that's why people prefer to work with us or at least have us on their team of health professionals because I'm not going to just read to you these commonly held myths and dietary guidelines that the government tells me to read, and I don't have to because I'm not a licensed dietician or a nutritionist. Definitely there's some things that I think can add value in certain circles and I know there's certain people in the Paleo and keto community who are registered dieticians and nutritionists who've found a way to use their--
Christopher: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So just because you are a registered dietician or a nutritionist, that doesn't mean that you're rubbish. It's not true at all.
Julie: No. But I think it's all in what you choose to do with the information and how you choose to present it. And we've met several and interviewed several people in this podcast who are nutritionists who have gone above and beyond their call of duty and have not just settled for the status quo of the guidelines and actually done some really hard graph and research.
Christopher: And so they're self-trained.
Julie: Yeah, exactly.
Christopher: We've spoken to a number of experts on this podcast. They're like, "You know, I finished medical school and I started my practice and realized I didn't know anything and I had to go and start again."
Julie: Which I think is just another demonstration of what we continuously, the message that we push, is that no one is going to care about this more than you. No one is going to -- and that applies to us. We learn that the hard way. No one is going to care about our health and our wellness more than we do. And I think that's what made us choose to do what we've done, is that how can we empower and enable and help other people get to that point where they own their health and they own their wellness and they can do some research and some reading and do some tests and learn about how to take better care of themselves and then act on that and carry it through and create a very balanced and healthy life going forward and not just go on a 20-day diet and lose a few pounds and then go right back to doing what they were doing before, which is what happens most of the time when I see people work with a dietician or a nutritionist.
I might get some hate for that but that's typically what I found. I work with lots of people now who have gone to see nutritionists and dieticians and not the ones that I was talking about in the Paleo community and been really steered the wrong way especially people that are borderline diabetic or diabetic. Yeah, I think that's the long and short answer why we do what we do. We do it because we've done it and we know how great it is and we just want to share it as with many people as possible.
Christopher: And you're incredibly good at it. I'm a computer programmer and I was working at a hedge fund before I quit this job to do this. And if what we were doing, if the advice that you were handing out didn't work then I wouldn't keep trying to sell it, right? I mean, I'd just go get a job at Google. It would be very easy for me. But I don't do that because it gets fantastic results and it's really, really fulfilling to see people get spectacular results, the same results that I had. It's not all just being athletes either, has it, right? It's an obviously difficult problem that when you're consuming more food then, okay, and using more micronutrients, the question of what should I eat becomes more difficult.
Julie: Yeah. No, I mean, everyone I work with has different sets of circumstances. And sometimes they're similar to the last person but they're never exactly the same. And that's part of it. If I was a registered dietician or a nutritionist, I would take those into consideration but I'd still have to go back to the recommendations that I could hand out. And those would be very much based on the food pyramid and dietary guidelines. And I don't have to do that.
And so what I do is I figure out what this person is doing, what kind of healing they need to do, what kind of protocol they're going to be on with us, what that's going to entail, what kind of autoimmunity concerns maybe that they have, their goals, whether it would be weight loss or performance, we definitely take those into account. But I'd say first and foremost we look at what the work that needs to be done and there's always work that needs to be done.
Nobody comes to me 100% perfect because they're here for a reason. You've got something you want to take care of. And so there's always amount of healing that needs to take place. There's always a little bit of kind of reprioritizing goals and reprioritizing, kind of reframing how we think about health and diet. And it's not a four-letter word like food is what we do. It's the most constant thing, I think, in our life besides breathing. You can't live without it. You can't live without breathing.
[0:09:59]
So making it an integral part of how we live our life as opposed to just this thing that we try to constantly manipulate and control and switch around and change up to suit our needs, like how do we make a fulfilling diet that's going to get us through and propel us the best way that we can the rest of our life and for our specific goals? And so it's not just let's do this 30-day detox and lose a bunch of weight and feel really good for a few days and then wonder why the wheels fall off in three months and you've put the weight back on or you're performing crappy or you're not sleeping or you haven't done any healing. So kind of just working back in.
Christopher: Yeah. I've never seen anyone successfully outsource this problem. In theory, I should just be able to. Especially people who are better off. You should just be able to get someone to just bring you all this food and you just eat it. And I've never seen that work successfully having talked to thousands of people literally.
Julie: One time we had one client who had a chef.
Christopher: Yeah, that's right. And you talked to her chef and the chef just did it.
Julie: But the only way that that's going to keep working is if they maintain that relationship with that chef. And so is it really working? I don't know.
Christopher: You'd probably get a call from him in a couple of years.
Julie: If anything, I've trained the chef on how to make more money out of the clients.
Christopher: Yeah, but he got really great results, remember that.
Julie: Yeah, fabulous results. And I think if you have the means to do that and you want to outsource it, you still have to be aware of what you're doing and why you're doing it. But no. I mean, if I get a client that says that they're not willing to cook or they can't cook or they refuse to cook or they refuse to really get to understand what food means to their life, like there's very little, I think, that I can do to ultimately help that person. Maybe in the short term I can help them learn how to make better choices in certain circumstances, for example, in their traveling or eating out at a restaurant, but I mean, are you going to do that for the rest of your life?
Christopher: All right. So ranting aside, into the first question. How many calories should I eat? I want to know the exact number.
Julie: I can't tell you that.
Christopher: 1683.
Julie: I can't tell you that. Truth be told, you shouldn't care. I know that doesn't apply to everyone in every circumstance and eventually that when working with someone I do generally give them a guideline, but that's after talking to them, after looking at their lab results, after -- Maybe they've done a food diary already and I've looked to see what they're eating so I know what's working for them and what's not working for them. It's never a number that I just give to people. That's just not how I operate.
I'm sure some people will operate that way and they're successful in that but I'm not comfortable operating in that way. And I don't. And there's a lot of reasons for that. The first one is my own personal experience of what happened when I truly made some solid changes to our lifestyle in the way that we were eating. And that was that I've had the first experience in my entire life of not having this monkey in the back of my head forcing me to have this bad conversation with myself every time I wanted to eat something.
It was like oh should I eat that? Is this going to make me fat? Is this going to make me gain a few pounds? Am I going to regret this tomorrow? And it wasn't about my health. It wasn't about my vitality. It was about purely about weight and body image. And that was every time I thought about putting something in my mouth. That's what was going on in my head. And for the first time when I changed my diet and my lifestyle, that one went and over time realizing that when you have a healthy diet, a healthy lifestyle, those things should fall by the wayside like random cravings, addictions to coffee and sugar and all of those things.
Those should subside. Your conversations with yourself surrounding food should lessen. You should eat when you're hungry. Those things should normalize. And if they're not, that's what when we need to do some digging and figure out what's going on because there's probably some nutrient deficiencies. There's probably some organic acid things going on that we need to correct.
Christopher: I remember quite clearly actually as a child going through this transition where I stopped thinking about sex and started thinking about food. It's all I used to think about. As an athlete, I'm sure a lot of athletes listening to this will have tremendous willpower and so will be able to just keep their weight and their body composition under control by using willpower. And it's truly not necessary. I'm pretty sold on the idea of a relatively -- when I say relative, I mean with respect to the standard American diet -- relatively low carbohydrate approach is the kind of the main -- That's the backbone of not feeling hungry all the time.
But, yeah, we said it depends on what we're seeing on your, or maybe some of your test results. And so one thing I've been seeing a lot of on the blood chemistry is a kind of a [0:14:56] [Indiscernible] thyroid, it's called, which is kind of funny expression.
[0:15:00]
So what it means is basically your brain has detected there being a low energy state. It's like, okay, maybe this person is starving to death. So we need you to slow things down a bit. And so what you see is maybe normal or slightly low TSH. And TSH is a signaling hormone that goes from the brain to the thyroid gland. And then the thyroid gland produces T3 eventually. It gets converted in the liver but the thyroid hormone and thyroid hormone you can think of that like being the gas pedal.
Every cell or nearly every cell in your body has a receptor for this hormone. That's your brain saying, "Okay, let's go. Pick up the pace. Step on the gas." And when you don't eat enough food, your brain says the opposite. Let's just take a foot off the gas and just this free wheel for a while, coast for a bit. And let's hope the good times are coming around the corner. And so you see people with low, say, 2.3 to under three picograms per milliliter of free T3 thyroid hormone.
And then when you get those people to do a food diary, you see that they're only eating 800 calories a day. Or maybe even worse than that and probably more common actually is they're eating a normal amount of food but they're doing three hours a day of exercise. I mean, I could quite easily create a 2,000 calorie deficit in anyone particular. I mean, the biking is unusual I think in that you can do tremendous volume without much breaking down. If you were to try and run for three hours a day, probably your knees or shins or something would give out.
Julie: Yeah. And I think that's really important. Because I would say that more often than not in people that we work with are not eating enough food. People say all the time, "Yeah, but I have a weight loss goal or whatever. I'm too busy. I wasn't hungry or whatever." I think it's really important to take into account and to pay attention to your energy output, your goals. But more than anything, remembering that the starvation state or getting your body into a place where it's in storage mode because it knows that you are going to be doing three hours of activity and you don't have enough calories on board to see you through. You're not doing yourself any favors in terms of your weight loss goals or anything like that, women especially.
Christopher: Yeah. Well, it's everyone. I've got a bit of analogy of this actually. Everybody knows every athlete listening to this has heard of the story of the guy that got a crappy result one weekend, maybe he came fourth or fifth or sixth when he thought he should win. And so he went, "Right this week I'm going to train really hard and then next week I'll be back and I'm going to win." And, of course, in a week the only thing you have time to do is make yourself tired. And so the problem just gets worse.
And then maybe they just repeat the cycle the following week, training harder this time. And the same is true, I think, with the food. Like if you keep restricting calories and restricting, restricting, restricting, physiology works in feedback loops. And so things slow down. You have to consider those feedback loops when you're trying to lose weight.
Julie: Yeah. So to get back to the question and not to be too long winded about it, it depends. How many calories you should eat totally depends. And it's really important, I think, especially if you've been trying to manipulate your diet for a long time or you've done lots of different experiments and you're kind of confused as to where you're at and what you should be doing, I think it's really important to find somebody to work with.
If nothing else, look over a food diary and just point some things out to you because everyone gets into a rut, they get into a cycle, they get into a habit. And they find what they like to eat that makes them feel okay to get them though and they get stuck eating those things and the same things over and over again. So it's really helpful to have someone go over a food diary with you and just say, "Hey, did you realize that you a green smoothie every day for breakfast?" Maybe that's not the right thing that you should be choosing for breakfast.
Or you're eating a lot of starchy carbohydrate in the morning and maybe we should try to swap that for the afternoon. More kind of granular detail and attention to patterns and choices, food choices, I think, is a much more important conversation to have before calories. Eventually, yes, calories factor into the conversation and can't get away from that. But there's a lot of things that I would like to talk to somebody about before how many calories they should be eating.
Christopher: Yeah, I agree, which says it all really. Okay, so next question. How many grams of carbohydrate, fat and protein should I eat?
Julie: This is almost exactly the same conversation.
Christopher: Almost exactly the same. No, it's not because there's one element of that. So protein requirements, they're not fixed but they definitely can't go below a certain level.
Julie: Yeah, that's true.
Christopher: I mean, especially if you're thinking about ketosis and ketogenic diets, I would encourage you not to restrict protein too much.
[0:19:59]
Definitely don't go below one gram per kilogram of body weight. I would not do that. If you're seeing a ton of gluconeogenesis or you can't keep your blood sugar under control because of the amount of protein you're eating, something is going wrong and you need to continue the investigation. That's a really dangerous place to be. We find, I found, you found, I mean, protein is kind of -- Does people eat the right amount of protein almost by default? We really need a lot of guidance to that.
Julie: I will say though in the early days, there were a lot of people that were probably, I would say, overeating protein because they're definitely has been this crazed of--
Christopher: Protein supplements?
Julie: Protein supplements, protein shakes, protein everything. And a lot of women specifically have been kind of steered down the wrong path specifically because all of the recommendations around protein are from men. And women kind of just get lumped into the same categories especially women athletes. And so, I think, I don't think it's easy to overeat protein -- Actually, it is easy to overeat protein, I think.
Christopher: What, 14 ounce T-bone steak?
Julie: Yeah. But I mean, I often will point that out on -- And, I think, often it's not so much that you're eating too much protein. It's like what is it displacing, which is a conversation I have to have a lot about, especially when deciding on like how much carbohydrate, how much fat and how much protein. When you're eating a lot of carbohydrate or you're eating a lot of fruit or you're eating a lot of one particular thing, it's displacing something else. And we have to make sure that we're paying attention to what it's displacing because you need other things.
So that's a lot of times how I go about answering these conversations. Let's look at your food diary. Let's talk about what you're eating and how that's working for you. And then let's see what we're missing. And a lot of times it's fat that people are missing. And another thing that people are missing is fiber and vegetables. And it's because a lot of people are trying to be more low carb, which is great, but they go about it the wrong way. They stopped eating vegetables and they start eating a lot more meat and a lot more fat, which is fabulous. But you need the vegetables too and they're a great vehicle for fat.
It's kind of reworking and paying close attention to what's being displaced by some of the choices that you've been making. And maybe there's some better choices. Also with women, I also see timing of eating protein and carbohydrates can be really important especially with weight loss goals. For example, if you're trying to transition to be more of a fat burner as opposed to a sugar burner especially in athletes or anyone, you may want to pay really close attention to when you eat starchy carbohydrates.
If it's connected to exercise or after exercise, certainly probably not first thing in the morning because you're kind of setting yourself up for a day of sugar burning when you start your day with a lot or carbohydrate or starchy carbohydrate. So just looking at all of these things in unison, I don't think it's wise -- I hate when the question I have to answer and that's the only question I get is just give me a number for each of these things because that would be really easy. I'd love to be able to just give you a number.
Christopher: It's not even. Because even if you told me -- For example, I don't even know. I'm in ketosis and I know that because I've measured with blood ketones and I still don't know how many grams of carbohydrate per day I really eat. I really don't. I mean, it's not like you can really know. I mean, it depends probably on some of the vegetables, how much you cook them.
Julie: Yeah, definitely. But, I mean, I think the conversation I typically have about vegetables is they're a great vehicle for fat. You should probably have some with every meal. And it's important to think about like the leafy vegetables and most vegetables besides potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, squash, like the heavy winter squashes. The more starchy vegetables, those count -- I count those as carbohydrate and I don't count the leafy greens. Even broccoli, cauliflower, summer squash, those things, I don't count as carbohydrate. I only count the starchier carbohydrates as carbohydrate.
For a lot of people, they don't think about it that way. They just see vegetables as carbohydrates and so they are limiting those. And I think that's a big problem. Yeah, the answer to that question is, again, it depends and I think looking at your patterns and making sure you've got a nice balance that you are definitely eating enough fat and a variety of fat is very important. And then putting the emphasis on fat and protein and kind of just using the carbohydrate to color the rest is how I look at it.
Christopher: Okay. So, next question, when will I lose weight? I'm eating what you told me to eat. When will I lose weight?
Julie: Typically, what the conversation I have to have with this one is looking at a person's test results, looking at their health plan or protocol. Because I think a lot of people just have this association if I change my diet I will lose weight. Because that's just how we've been conditioned.
[0:25:04]
Like if I'm restricting myself in any way or depriving myself in any way, I should see results pronto. And maybe you would if you weren't sick in a lot of other ways. If weight loss was your only goal and you didn't have gut healing to do, you didn't have a pathogen or a parasite you needed to get rid of, your adrenals were in tiptop shape, you might lose weight really quickly. And some people do, definitely. But for most people, you have to change the expectation a little bit and put the emphasis on healing as opposed to weight loss because--
Christopher: Yeah. It's almost like being healthy as prerequisite to being lean.
Julie: Definitely. Because your body -- Man, I often find myself having the conversation where I'm telling someone think about what we've done. We have this body who is depleted in nutrients, who's been starved and then overfed and then starved and overfed. Starving can still be when you're overweight because you're eating all the wrong things and you're still not providing all the nutrition to your body when you're eating. Empty carbohydrate is the main source of your diet so you're still starving even though you're fat.
You've got infections. You have leaky gut. You name it. You've got this long laundry list of things. And you can't expect your body to just flip a switch and drop weight because it's in survival mode. And in order to get out of survival mode, I think we need to calm the immune system. We need to do some significant healing in terms of whatever we found in your test results that need work. And you need to do a concerted effort of just nourishing your body.
That means fixing nutrient deficiencies, eating a really nutrient dense diet like that is your job. Your job is not training. Your job is not exercising to within an inch of your life. It's not counting calories. It's not paying attention to fat and protein ratios. It's saying I'm going to eat this meal because it's going to nourish my body. It's going to give me all the amino acids. It's going to give me the fat. It's going to give me the protein. It's going to give my body what it needs to heal. And that's what you're concerned about.
Christopher: Yes. I think that's an important point to make although it's not really a frequently asked question. That's the goal of our recommendations, is to maximize the intake of micronutrients. So by micronutrients I mean things like B vitamins and vitamin A and C and E and then getting a wide range of amino acids. That's difficult to do if all you're eating is muscle meat. So that's where the recommendations for bone broth and organ meat and some of those other less obvious unusual foods come in. And then our other goal is to minimize inflammation. And so there's some pretty good science now that shows that some of the foods that we tell people not to eat rather inflammatory especially the grains. And so--
Julie: And dairy.
Christopher: And dairy perhaps. So, yeah, that's where those recommendations come from. Much more important than that, what shall I eat for breakfast?
Julie: Whatever you want.
Christopher: What did you have for breakfast?
Julie: Cocoa Puffs. Just kidding. Actually, shame on me, didn't really eat breakfast this morning.
Christopher: Why that's shame on you if you're not hungry? You're not hungry.
Julie: Well, I'm hungry now. Total transparency, I have not been sleeping well because I have a toddler who is in some kind of devilish sleep transition and ruining my life because sleep is very important to me because I make lots of bad choices when I haven't had sleep. Let's just put it that way.
Christopher: Which means there's no bad choices we made in this house.
Julie: No, I know. But it's just like patterns and habits and things of that nature. And I go back to drinking coffee which I wouldn't have been doing. I wouldn't even though about it. I hadn't thought about it in a year and a half and all of a sudden I literally need it to function. And I hate that and I want to get off of it again.
Christopher: Yeah, I don't have babies and if you got any babies again, have him adopted. There's loads of people out there that really want to have a kid. So adoption agencies work.
Julie: He kids. He kids. He secretly loves it when Ivy is begging him for a hug in the middle of the night.
Christopher: I seemed to have survived relatively unscathed through all of this.
Julie: Because you sleep through it. Anyways, back to the story. For breakfast, I wanted to have the leftover steak with egg.
Christopher: Yeah. Why don't I talk about what I had for breakfast?
Julie: You do, yeah.
Christopher: That's probably more interesting to hear about me anyway. Yeah, so I got up with our daughter Ivy this morning.
Julie: For the first time like ever. Don't let him fool you. That isn't a thing that happens regularly.
Christopher: And we made breakfast together as we always do.
Julie: Liar.
Christopher: And we had eggs and we had half of the T-bone steak, the 14-ounce T-bone steak.
Julie: That must have been really nice.
Christopher: It was really good actually, and some vegetables. The answer to the question is forget about the names, the labels associated with food. Okay, so I eat this type of food at breakfast time and this type of food at lunch.
[0:30:04]
It's an unnecessary restriction. So we're already asking you to restrict the types and number of food that you eat and this other restriction is completely unnecessary. And most people get over it about two days. Like, oh, I have cereal for breakfast. Not anymore, you don't. You have leftovers for breakfast.
Julie: Soup or steak or whatever you want to have for breakfast that could have been or dinner or lunch.
Christopher: It's just food. And that is like it's liberating. It really is. Really I'm so glad that I'm free of the tyranny of like breakfast foods. So quite eggs are something I have fairly regularly for breakfast but I don't feel like I'm not going to cry if there's no egg, certainly not.
Julie: No, but I mean, I think in times in the past we've had -- Like when Ivy was tinier and I was sleeping, which seems like an oxymoron, I was eating, happy to eat like soup or bone broth with some leftover meat thrown in it or some greens and a couple of eggs or eggs and some liverwurst. I really love eggs so those feature kind of heavily on my breakfast. Just as happy to have some kind of leftover with some additional fat or some fresh greens or over kind of even like a salad. Those are always good.
Sometimes I just have an avocado. Sometimes it's all I want, just have an avocado. So either half or a whole avocado and share the other half with Ivy. So, yeah, this morning Ivy got the leftover steak. She took that with her to grandma's house. She's got my breakfast. So I'll probably go have some lunch.
Christopher: Okay. So the next questions is, and I've already touched on this, is do I need to be in ketosis? So this is, I think, a really interesting one and it's somewhat hypocritical because it's been a while since we've measured your blood ketones. But mine are definitely in a two minimal range. And then even our daughter Ivy is 1.6 minimal which technically is in ketosis. But that's normal for an infant. You probably could test any infant a couple of hours after they've not eaten and you would find that they're in ketosis, which I think is interesting in itself.
Julie: I'd love to know though. If anybody out there is testing their kids, let us know because--
Christopher: If you got a kid under three, test their blood ketones and let us know what their ketone is because my understanding is that infants enter into ketosis very quickly because they have such a big brain with respect to their body size. And then there's no way that you could support those energy requirements.
Julie: Without being in ketosis.
Christopher: Without the additional ketones. So, yeah, it would be really interesting to have people test because I'm not sure that many people have done that. But the short answer to the question is no, you don't. And I have a feeling, although I don't know this, that back when I was not doing very well, when I was pretty sick and have fatigue and brain fog and I was blown up like a balloon and my sex drive was zero and all the rest of that stuff, that if I had to try ketosis as the first intervention, I think I would have made myself worse. Because going from a sugar burner to someone that's relying predominantly on fat as fuel, that's like coming off of heroin.
Julie: Yeah, it's a big transition.
Christopher: It's a big transition. I made it really slowly. It took me two years to the point where I thought, "You know what, this sounds like something I might try."
Julie: You were also really sick. And I think if you're relatively healthy, it won't take that long.
Christopher: Yeah, yeah, I would agree.
Julie: I was actually just having conversation--
Christopher: So, if you're listening to this, there's nothing wrong with you. Then who knows? Because I think of this stress. This is like a balancing thing, isn't it? It's like a set scale so you just have to balance it. Can I afford to take on the additional burden of keto-adaptation at this time? Maybe if you're healthy and you're doing pretty good. But if you got, you just maybe done an adrenal stress profile saliva test and you saw seven points of cortisol for the day and your DHEA is less than one and your free testosterone is only 34 or something like that, and you're a man, this is then--
Julie: I think this is a good point to point, a good place to bring up the blood glucose monitoring. I mean, that's typically what I get people to focus on first. Let's focus on making sure that our blood sugar is stable. Let's focus on learning about what affects our blood sugar so paying attention to the types and amounts of carbohydrates we're eating and what that does to our blood glucose and really understanding your cycles and understanding what your fasting blood glucose is, what your blood glucose is when you go to bed, what happens when you have a random snack that you thought you needed.
So really getting familiar with your blood glucose is the first thing. And then transitioning to more of a high fat lower carbohydrate approach is where I get people to focus. And then if they want to go into ketosis when they're better, great. But I think just like all the other questions, there's probably a laundry list of priorities that need to come before being in ketosis.
[0:35:02]
Christopher: Yeah. Save it for later, is the short answer.
Julie: Yeah. It's a good project to focus on once you're better and you don't have more tests to take and your supplement list has diminished and all of that.
Christopher: Okay. So this is a good question. What do you eat when you're traveling? All of this stuff is fine and dandy when you got your kitchen and your farmers' market and your refrigerator is full of all these vegetables and your grass fed organic meat and all that good stuff. But then, of course, there's two things. Athletes, they travel all the time for competition. And admittedly, I do not travel much for competition. I do travel a little bit but certainly not as much as a genuine, a real bona fide pro would.
And then the other type of person is some people travel a lot for their work and so asking them to eat fresh cooked, a bunch of organic vegetables from the farmers' market every day is again going to be challenging. I guess, we have just done it. We have just got back from the UK like three or -- How was it, three or four weeks?
Julie: Three weeks.
Christopher: Three weeks of traveling in the UK where we didn't have access to all our normal stuff and we did survive. We'd been to the BC Bike Race in Canada and we'd been to Idaho for bike races and stuff. I guess, to be fair, we have a EuroVan.
Julie: Yeah. That makes it a lot easier.
Christopher: That makes it a lot easier.
Julie: A lot of people are -- Like the most common issue people have with traveling is either they're living out of a hotel or they're stuck in an airport. And that makes it really difficult. Also, I think, staying in other people's homes can be challenging sometimes because you're then dealing with a whole another set of requirements and people feeling like at odd asking for special food being made for them because other people aren't necessarily on board with the way that you're eating.
But, I think, typically, it's the most -- So, for example, if you're traveling and you don't have access to a kitchen so you're going to be in a hotel or you know you're going to be eating in restaurants, for example, and this goes for also airplane travel because it's kind of you're isolated and stuck with very limited choices, typically the easiest thing to find are vegetables. I know that doesn't sound accurate but you can find a salad nowadays almost anywhere, whether it be a salad bar in a grocery store or salad in a restaurant or salad in an airport. I would think you'd be hard pressed to not find a salad with just greens and some vegetables.
So, that being said, to travel, I would always take with me some kind of a clean protein. We don't typically travel without some canned fish of some kind either sardines or kippers or whatever. I'll also usually bring with us some kind of like deli meat which I don't typically buy but I will for traveling situations, so salamis or prosciutto or smoked salmon or something that's kind of fresh but doesn't necessarily need to be refrigerated or frozen.
In that way, I can always put that on top of a salad. I also recommend people always travel with some clean fats. So I bring a travel size bottle of olive oil, maybe some MCT oil and a ready-made salad dressing, so like vinegar and olive oil mixed with some salt and pepper. In that way, you have some clean fat. You have some clean protein and you've some questionable vegetables. But you're not going to die and you're not going to starve.
And just that feeling of not having to depend on just rooting around and finding something is better. And it just saves you from making a really bad choice. Like, oh, I had to go to McDonald's and just eat the burger without the bun. No, you didn't. You didn't have to do that. A little bit of preparation goes a long way. And I think the same thing goes for eating in restaurants. I often recommend people look ahead to try to find the menu of a place and volunteer, if you're in a group of people, to be the one to pick the restaurant and pick the least offensive place.
Most menus are online nowadays so look for that. Order the steak, look on the sides and look with the other meals that are being prepared. If it's a five-star restaurant, you're probably not going to have this problem. But if it's like just in mediocre restaurant and you pick a steak and you look at the other entrees and you try to ask them if they'll substitute some of the sides or just order some steamed vegetables, try to avoid their fat, ask for something with butter, cooked in butter as opposed to their oil.
Christopher: Just check it's real butter.
Julie: Yeah. Even then though, I think even just like moderately okay butter, even if it's not grass fed butter it's probably better than an atrocious seed oil that's been sat there for god knows how long.
Christopher: In America, they're really good at doing substitutions actually. You can be a complete dick in a restaurant and they'll tolerate it.
Julie: Yeah. Nobody will care. And I think they're getting better and better because there's so many people with dietary restrictions. And they're not even doing it because they want to. They're doing it because they have to.
[0:40:00]
There's people that are like flat out just have major food allergies. Ask. Don't be afraid to ask for substitutions. Worst case scenario, like I said, bring your own salad dressing, order a salad and top it.
Christopher: I mean, I think it's important to keep the goal in mind. So going back to what I said earlier, which was to maximize your micronutrient density whilst avoiding the food that we think are inflammatory especially the grains. So when you think about -- Okay, so I'm in Whole Foods. I know that I'm not supposed to eat gluten. How about this gluten free muffin? Does that fit the criteria? Does that meet the goal that we're trying to achieve? We're trying to maximize nutrient density. So what's in the gluten free muffin? Okay, so there's none of the egregious protein that we talked about that could be causing inflammation. But there's almost zero micronutrients.
Julie: Well, knowing that but like--
Christopher: So, it's not met the primary goal.
Julie: -- gluten for you is typically code word for sugar. So they take out the gluten and they replace it with sugar. And whether it be artificial sweeteners--
Christopher: How much gluten do you think -- How many grams of gluten do you think there is?
Julie: There's a lot of other stuff replacing that gluten. Gluten has very specific role in food. So when you take it out you have to replace it with a lot of things to make up for it.
Christopher: Yeah, you're right, actually. It has a spongy quality and some people put extra gluten into their -- Yeah.
Julie: Yeah, there's a spongy quality and it holds things together. So, yeah, when you take that out, especially with baked goods, they tend to crumble. If you've ever done any gluten free baking or Paleo baking, you know that typically your stuff comes up pretty crumbly. And that's because of no gluten in it. When you see a Paleo treat and it's got a million ingredients, it's because that's what holds together. So looking for fewer ingredients -- I think your point is spot on. What could you be choosing that's better? And it's not impossible.
Christopher: See, at Whole Foods, one of my favorite ways to navigate Whole Foods, not that it's really come up for me as much but I think this is weird. Clamshell container for the leaves, avocado, and then buy a little olive boil maybe and then a bottle of vinegar. It's not going to cause you too much.
Julie: You may be able to find a dressing that's not outrageous.
Christopher: Yeah, you may be able to find it. You're going to watch out for Whole Foods because they have a lot of--
Julie: Coconut oil [0:42:08] [Indiscernible] everything.
Christopher: Yeah, exactly. So you have to be really careful. So just no more extra virgin olive oil. And then tuna sardines. And then [0:42:16] [Indiscernible], salt and pepper maybe.
Julie: And even at Whole Foods now, their rotisserie chickens are just salt and pepper and so you can get over a whole rotisserie chicken with just salt and pepper and olive oil and that's it. So that's another option. Whole Foods is definitely a savior and I don't often recommend them because I definitely think there's probably better local options for most people but maybe not. And so Whole Foods I think is a great way to kind of navigate when you're traveling. There's typically Whole Foods in a lot of places.
Most grocery stores, even like the Safeways and Raleys and those chains all have some kind of salad bar or fresh salad, ready-made to go kind of thing. But the point here is a little bit of preparation -- Most of the time when having this conversation with people, I just say a few of these things and they're like, "Oh my god, I never would have thought of that." You can take food with you on airplanes. That's another thing people don't realize. They're like, "Oh, you can't take food through security." Yes, you can. Don't bring soup. But if it's not a liquid, you can bring it through.
And if it's a liquid, put it in a travel size container like, for example, the fats and the salad dressing. Put it in a travel size container and you can take it through. When we went to Europe twice now, we took literally a whole carryon bag full of food to get us through the day. And nobody batted an eyelash. Nobody cared.
Christopher: Oh, they did actually. That's a fantastic way to make people jealous. There's people that post pictures of themselves in first class on Facebook to boast about what a great time they were having in an airplane. Well, you can achieve that same effect without the expense of a business class ticket by just bringing on really good food onto the airplane and you can make hundreds of people jealous.
Julie: Yeah. We have flank steak, we had lamb meatballs and lamb burgers.
Christopher: What everyone else was having their little pretzel biscuit thing that they hand out.
Julie: Unidentified food object that they've been given to eat.
Christopher: Homeopathically weak coffee. It was like one molecule--
Julie: It used to be coffee.
Christopher: [0:44:13] [Indiscernible] coffee.
Julie: First they burn it.
Christopher: It has the memory of the coffee bean. Anyway, I'm getting a little bit off track again now. Let's get back to the questions. So that's how you do traveling.
Julie: I think I have a few blog posts on that. I blogged about it too with pictures.
Christopher: One thing we should before we leave this topic.
Julie: Yeah.
Christopher: The vacuum sealer thing.
Julie: Oh, yeah, that's a great invention that each should have for travel.
Christopher: I'll link to this. I mean, you can get one on Amazon but this vacuum sealer food packs -- Maybe you should describe it because you've used it.
Julie: Yeah. It's called the FoodSaver. It's just a vacuum sealer. It's very easy to use. I think it's pretty inexpensive. I think $80 is the investment for the FoodSaver itself and then the bags -- It comes with some bags. I mean, it is plastic. I will say that. You're storing your food in plastic so that's a huge issue for you. But most of the time you let the food cool and then you put it in a plastic and then you take it out to reheat it.
[0:45:02]
But you could pre-make a whole meal and put it in there. I do this a lot when we were in the band traveling. If you go to the blog and you look at the one where we go to Idaho--
Christopher: Yeah, I'll link to that in the show notes.
Julie: I talked a lot about it in that post. I even prepped vegetables, like fresh vegetables. I prepped them and do the FoodSaver bag. In that way, when we're in the van and it's tight quarters, I don't have to do a bunch of chopping or anything like that. Everything is washed and ready to go and so I just dump it in the pan.
Christopher: Yeah. It's worth mentioning that although we have a EuroVan, it does have a gas stove. It has a refrigerator but it doesn't work. It hasn't worked for a long time.
Julie: Right. So we just use the cooler. It's like trying to pack a bunch of stuff into the cooler and keep it cold. It's kind of the name of the game. You can take a cooler with you in lots of places even if you're traveling in a car and do it much the same way, bring a camp stove. I know lots of people that take camp stoves to hotels when they're driving and traveling.
Christopher: Okay, yes. So next question: The autoimmune protocol. So we've had fantastic results recommending the autoimmune protocol to people. And some people take to it like a duck to water. They're like, oh, thank god for that, a set of rules I can follow. And other people, it causes them endless stress thinking that they can't eat eggs. And so it's hard, I think, in general, overall. It's a difficult diet to adhere to. One of the most frequently asked questions is: I'm doing AIP but can I have something? Can I bend the rules? Can I have coffee? So what's the answer to that question?
Julie: No. There's a very specific reason for that. Because AIP is an experiment and it's not necessarily -- So, for you, you're different. Like you would do AIP until you died. If I told you, you needed to, you would do it and you would not bat an eyelash. Most people aren't that way. And I wouldn't recommend it for everybody forever because I think there's some really valuable food groups in there that you're eliminating.
It's a test. You're doing it to find out and to get to the bottom of what foods you're sensitive to, what maybe alleviate symptoms for you. And it's got a very specific purpose. And so if you're going to make the effort to do AIP and use it as a test and carefully reintroduce things and figure out what you're sensitive to, what's the point of having milk or coffee during that time? And most of the times it's 30 to 60 days. It's not forever.
Or it's maybe six months and then a reintroduction or it's three months with a reintroduction and then you carry on mostly AIP. But for that first period, when you're trying to do the science and figure it out -- Because this is the gold standard for food sensitivity and allergy testing. Do it properly. Don't waste your time. Typically when I put it to people, if you're going to keep with your milk, then you have no idea. You have no idea if it's the milk that's doing it to you. You have no idea if it's the coffee that's doing it to you because you've never taken it out.
And often I'll get the argument, "Oh, I've taken dairy out before and it didn't do anything." Or, "Oh, I know I'm not lactose intolerant." I don't really care about lactose. I care about the caseins and the proteins that are in milk. That's what I'm worried about. That's why I want you to take it out. And with the coffee, it's also, the fact that it's a stimulant, it's probably also not helping your adrenals. It's probably also not helping you sleep. It's probably also not helping you heal properly.
There is a method to the madness in doing AIP. And if you're going to do it, take it seriously for whatever period is recommended for you and then do the reintroduction seriously. Oftentimes I'll have a conversation with somebody about what would be most advantageous to your life to add back in. Typically, it's eggs. Starting with eggs is pretty common.
Christopher: Eggs are kind of one of the few really nutrient dense foods. It's one of those foods where if you consider those two goals again -- maximize micronutrient density and minimize inflammation. Well, it's only the egg white which is a problem. You could have the yolk if you could find somewhere to separate it. But it's very difficult to try and separate an egg like that. Yeah, that's one of the few things which probably people should be encouraged to try adding back once they feel better.
Still, I think it's really important to do it this way around. So logical thinking, you and me thinks, well, maybe I'll do this kind of in a step wise fashion and I'll take out the gluten and see how that goes and then maybe I'll try dairy and see how that goes. No, you're done feeling tired. You're done being bloated. You're done not having a sex drive. Just do everything within your power for a month and then get to a place where you're feeling really good and then do it the other way around. Do a step wise reintroduction. And then you just spend more time feeling good than you otherwise would.
[0:50:01]
Julie: The other issue is cross-reactivity, which a lot of people don't understand or take into consideration or think that they've already figured out because they took out dairy once six months ago and it didn't do anything. So, I think, that's another really important factor of AIP, is figuring out if you're sensitive to things that cross-react with gluten or cross-react with dairy and any of those things that you may be sensitive to. Nightshades, for example.
It's often than not the nightshades themselves. It's the cross-reactivity thing that's going on. So eventually, you may be able to add the nightshades back in but you may be reacting to them now. That's my take. So the answer is, no, you can't add milk and, no, you can't have coffee when you're doing AIP.
Christopher: So what do you do then? Say you're an individual with a family and you've just contacted and we told you you need to do this AIP diet thing. But the rest of the family neither know nor care about what you're doing. So how do you make that work?
Julie: It's really hard. I think that's the hardest situation that people face, one of the hardest situations especially moms who come to us and they are the sole cook of the house. They don't have a lot of help. And they have to do this AIP thing and self-prepare other food for other people. My first recommendation would be to just everybody do it together. Oftentimes that's not possible. But that would be my recommendation. There's a great site that you just pulled up called He Won't Know It's Paleo and she's got a great story. I should have her around her podcast. We should definitely have her on the podcast.
Christopher: For some reason, this website just popped up in my Facebook feed or something yesterday and I thought it was really good. It's called He Won't Know It's Paleo. Honestly, I haven't really looked to see what's on this.
Julie: It's really good actually. Yeah, I know, she's got a cookbook. She's had to do AIP. I think she did AIP while she was pregnant. She was on AIP while she was pregnant and I think maybe still once she starts breeding.
Christopher: That's right because I've been on Eileen Laird's podcast and I'm pretty sure she has some connections. Maybe she's been on her podcast too. Yeah, so that's the kind of -- What we're saying here is the food can still be so good. There's no reason why the rest of the family shouldn't be eating this way. Remember, get back to that original goal to maximize nutrient densities. This is good for your kids. It's good for your grandma. It's good for your wife.
Julie: Yeah. No harm will come to them.
Christopher: No. No. I can assure you. I'll give you your money back if harm comes -- That's ridiculous thing to say. But that's what I'm saying. It's like the best strategy is to get the whole family eating the same way. And the chances are he won't know it's Paleo.
Julie: And it's more than that. AIP can be the same way. When we started doing AIP, there were zilch.
Christopher: There was nothing.
Julie: Zero reference. There was like two articles and one cookbook.
Christopher: Yeah. And even the cookbook came out in an ebook form several months after we had started.
Julie: Right. And I cried. When we had to do a switch to AIP, I literally -- That was my breaking point. I was cool with Paleo. I was cool with all the changes that Chris made. But when we got to AIP, I was like I can't do this. This is too hard. And it was [0:53:25] [Indiscernible]. So now when I see all of the resources that are available to people switching to AIP, I mean, good grief. Every Paleo website has tags for AIP and almost every Paleo recipe has an AIP version or a way to substitute.
There's definitely sites that I trust more than others and we can link to some of those in the show notes, if you want, but I have them on the resources page on the website. Yeah, there's so many resources available. There's no reason to have it be that you're the only one that's eating this weird special diet because it's not weird and it's not special. It's temporary. It has a very specific purpose and it's still very nutrient dense. And it should be very nutrient dense.
Christopher: You know what's interesting? We already said that high end restaurants are probably never going to be a problem for you. And the reason for that is because the chef or the person who's designing the menu, all they really care about is making really tasty food. And humans find food which is dense in micronutrients tasty, I think. So it's possible to engineer food which is hyper palatable and contains few nutrients.
Julie: Yeah. I mean, I'd stay away from the pasta menu, obviously. But like--
Christopher: Yeah, but in general, like we never have--
Julie: In general, if that's a piece of meat--
Christopher: When you see a high end restaurant like Gordon Ramsay, or any other famous chef you can think of, is never going to wow someone with some pasta.
Julie: Macaroni and cheese.
Christopher: Yeah, right. So, the wow factor comes from--
Julie: A really nice piece of meat.
Christopher: Yeah.
Julie: Really well done vegetables that are probably unique or not common to you. You don't eat them every day.
[0:55:04]
And then maybe some kind of starch. So maybe potato or rice or something. But very little of it, I would say. And maybe the portions are smaller but it's because it's really high quality and probably quite well-prepared.
Christopher: So that's what I would do. Try and sell it to your family like I just sold it to you as an experiment. We're going to do this for 30 days and then at the end of the 30 days, we're going to decide whether or not anything has changed for the better or worse. The spoiler is there's always things which will change for the better and that's why you want to keep doing it. And maybe not with AIP so much. You don't have to be that strict. But certainly for the Paleo diet, that's how people keep going on it because they're like, "Yeah, screw that. This is tasty and amazing way. Why would I go back?"
Julie: Yeah. And if you've got kids and you don't want to completely take them off eggs or whatever the case may be, it's not that difficult to make a breakfast that's got bacon and vegetables or meat and you make your kids some eggs and you just don't have the eggs. There's definitely workaround for all of this stuff. But, yeah, that's my general shtick is either you suck it up and you do it on your own because you're not willing to make your family do it or get your family's help or you get everybody involved and just treat it like it's real food because that's what it is.
Christopher: Well, we haven't run out of questions but we have run out of time. So maybe that's a good place to wrap it up. I'm wondering whether you'd been listening to this and you thought of your own questions or things that we haven't talked about that maybe we could, maybe related more to the testing and what we see on the test results that's guiding us in our recommendations for what people eat. Or maybe something completely different.
So, yeah, we'd love to hear from you. You can get in touch. My email address is chris@nourishbalancethrive.com. And also guest ideas as well. I love getting a guest on the podcast and maybe you got a really good idea for someone who I should interview and I'd love to hear from you with those ideas too. Okay, that's about it for the show. Thanks very much. Until next time.
Julie: Ciao.
Christopher: Bye.
[0:57:10] End of Audio
© 2013-2024 nourishbalancethrive