Kind: captions
Language: en
What is the keto diet?
Why is it that people need fat and
what's the the experience that you think
that they'll get out of switching their
diet around?
Well, so that's a very complex question.
Um, and comp and there's a complex
equation behind it, but people need fat.
Fat is a uh you know provides not just
uh burnable calories, fuel, but fat
certain types of fat play critical roles
in the creation of uh cell membranes in
the uh uh in the communication between
cells. Um in certain uh hormone
precursor situations
um certain amount of body fat is just uh
sort of requisite to be healthy in the
first place. So, we're not all striving
to be 2%, you know, body fat people. Uh,
but the the idea that fat makes you fat
has been long dispelled. I mean, this
was like that's a quote from Susan
Powder back in the 80s, right? And uh uh
and it still somehow made its way into
medicine for for some unknown reason
because the research has been very
clear. um we we need we need certain
amount of fat in our diet. And that's
kind of the beauty of keto, for
instance, is that we is that we we look
at how we can take this millions of
years of evolution and harness it to
become really good at burning fat, to
become less dependent on glucose, to
spare the protein that we otherwise
would be burning for calories. Uh and
and it's all part of this great system
that we evolved. I don't want to co-opt
your show here, but I want to talk to
talk to you about something.
Please.
Okay.
We talk about metabolic flexibility a
lot now in this new era of of macros.
Metabolic flexibility simply means that
you are able to extract energy from the
fat on your plate, the fat on your body,
the carbohydrates on your plate, the
glycogen in your muscles, the glucose in
your bloodstream, uh the ketones that
your liver makes. That's flexibility.
that's getting energy from all these
different substrates and not become
dependent on burning uh protein to
create glucose.
Yeah. So, keto is a a low carb, highfat,
moderate protein lifestyle. I kind of
feel like there is not a
one-sizefits-all with diets, but for me,
the thing that I hear over and over is
it's like the thing that really helps
people who feel like they have tried
everything else and nothing else has
worked. Um, but ultimately, I feel like
that's the way that we were really meant
to be eating to begin with. I don't
think that all of these processed foods
and all the things that are so high in
sugar was what we were supposed to be
eating. So now switching to this way of
eating, I feel so much better. Um I
actually grew up thinking that I had
really bad stomach issues and had to get
all kinds of testing because I was
always feeling sick all the time. And
then when I switched to keto, I was like
it was totally gone. Um so and then on
top of that, in just one year, I had
lost 100 pounds. So it's like obviously
the only thing that I changed with what
I was what I was eating. So to me that
was kind of like all right like this
we're going in the right direction.
The cholesterol myth.
walk me through what parts of the um the
cholesterol numbers people should be
caring about, not caring about. Um
because so in in my own life, I went
through a period that lasted probably
for about two and a half years where I
was essentially doing rabbit starvation,
right?
So I was eating basically chicken
breast, broccoli,
nothing on it, no oil, nothing. I
felt amazing.
I felt terrible.
Exactly. absolutely horrifying, right?
But damn, I was lean and it was amazing.
Uh but yeah, I was I joint pain just was
like in pure insanity.
And then I because I heard that
ketogenics possibly had some cancer
prevention stuff. I tried it
and it was like it was like taking a
drug. It was so anti-inflammatory on my
joints that I was like, well, I'm never
going back to rabbit starvation. That
was crazy. Um, but my cholesterol levels
were so low when I was doing the rabbit
starvation and I thought that was a good
thing that I was super amped. I felt
bulletproof. Thought I was going to live
forever. Then when I started doing
ketogenics, my numbers went
significantly up and my doctor was like,
"We [clears throat] have to get you on
Lipur." And I was like, "You must be
joking.
I've got two guns, Tom. I've got a a 12
gauge shotgun and I've got a BB gun.
you're gonna get shot with one of them.
Which one do you pick? I
take the BB gun to find out.
That's it. And that's that makes good
sense. And [clears throat] so my
contention is is that an elevated A1C,
an elevated ceptide, which tells me your
blood sugar and and serum insulin levels
are always high, a very low HDL, and a
very high triglyceride level. Those four
tests, those that's the shotgun.
If your LDL is is 250 300 that might
might be a BB gun. But the the even the
research on levels that high is
completely inconclusive. If your doctor
says, "Oh, you have a high total
cholesterol. You need to be on Lipur.
You need to find a new doctor because he
he's at least 10 years behind in his
reading." Okay? Now, if he talks about
LDL, then he's at least current. But
still, when you look at the research in
its totality, it's not a risk factor. It
might be a BB gun, but it's not the
shotgun that that high blood sugar, high
insulin, low HDL, and high triglycerides
are. That's the shotgun that's going to
kill you.
So, every cell membrane in your body has
to have cholesterol to function
properly. And so, when we tell
everybody, you got to eat less
cholesterol. And I'm going to put you on
this pill to lower your cholesterol even
lower. And I want you to eat lots of
whole grains. And I want you to use
canola oil because if you use bacon
grease, that's going to give you a heart
attack, right? And so when you're using
basically what amounts to artificial fat
instead of real fat, you're building
inferior cell membranes. And so every
cell in your body is at increased risk
of something bad. And in the skin, that
could wind up being eczema. It could
wind up being psoriasis. It could wind
up being one of the skin cancers.
What to eat on a keto diet. I wrote two
books that are sort of diet focused. One
of them is headstrong, but the big diet
book is the bulletproof diet. And here's
the gist of it. It is cyclical ketosis.
If you do the the the keto bro diet, as
I'm going to call it, right, which is
you never eat a carb again, I don't
think that's going to work for you. If
you eat lots of carbs, that's not going
to work for you. So, you should
absolutely do keto and then you should
stop. then you should do keto and then
you should stop. And this is for your
gut bacteria and this is for the gal
cells in your brain that prefer glucose
to ketones, right? And so I feel like
like if you go to the oh I'm going to be
like I used to be a raw vegan, you know,
that's not going to end well for you.
They'll just tell you
really you didn't uh enjoy the
experience.
Well, I mean I felt great for the first
two three months like most people do
because you eating a lot less of the
other crap. But it's what happens over
time even if you're pretty
knowledgeable. Very few people, in fact,
none of the anti-aging people I know
support that kind of thing because they
see it in patients, the CrossFit coaches
like, "Yeah, I can spot a vegan or raw
vegan. I ask them to hold on to a bar
and they drop off after 5 seconds." And
people who eat French fries can hold on
for 15 seconds and people eat grass-fed
steak and, you know, do keto and, you
know, are doing things right. They hold
on for 30 seconds. Like, like it it's
quantifiable, right? So, this isn't a
rip on vegans. I was a vegan for a long
time. I would eat gravel if it's what
was best for me or best for the planet.
I'd say eating grass-fed meat that
restores soils um is best for you and
best for the planet, but not too much.
And that plus a huge plate of vegetables
with lots of undamaged quality fats
following the ratio in your cells. Your
cells are 45% saturated fat. Your cell
membranes, especially in the brain, it's
a little bit higher. They're in the
brain about 30 35% monounsaturated fat.
And then the rest of it is all about the
ratio of omega-3 to omega 6. And there
you want more omega-3 and less omega-6.
So, tons of veggies, moderate amount of
high quality grass-fed protein, tons of
fat. The first step would be to just
give the brain an alternative form of
energy and reduce glucose and insulin
spikes as much as possible because that
can contribute to insulin resistance.
Cut out sugar as much as possible or
processed carbohydrates. If they're
eating two 300 grams a day, you want to
bring that down to under 100 grams a day
of lower glycemic carbohydrates,
essentially vegetables, and and go from
there. But if you abruptly take out
glucose from the diet of someone who's,
you know, drinking lots of sugary drinks
and things like that, that may initially
cause even a greater deficit in
cognitive function because their brain
is being fueled off glucose and may take
a while to uh to induce the adaptations
associated with transporting the
ketones, utilizing the ketones, and
switching your brain to an alternative
form of energy. quantity will kind of
trump quality to to some extent. So if
you are running a calorie deficit of a
high carbohydrate diet that has
processed foods, that calorie deficit
will produce a lot of beneficial things,
you know, for a lot of that people are
looking for like weight loss, insulin
sensitivity, even a lowering of
inflammation could be achieved simply by
calorie restriction. Uh, and this is,
you know, there's different, you know,
areas of thoughts on this, but I'm of
the opinion that nutritional ketosis,
but not even necessarily that, just low
carbohydrate diets allow one to have the
discipline necessary to implement a
dietary strategy that allows for you to
uh induce and sustain a calorie deficit
for one thing. And even if you're not at
a calorie deficit, simply by not spiking
glucose or spiking insulin and by
elevating beta hydroxybutyrate that you
know that comes with a whole host of
other advantages. So including the
anti-inflammatory effects, including
perhaps the autoimmune effects, perhaps
the gut microbiome, uh if the ketogenic
diet is well formulated with soluble,
probably most importantly insoluble
fiber that can help restore gut health
over time. the the foods that are part
of the ketogenic diet. Um some people
will argue, you know, against GMOs or
against, you know, grass-fed beef versus
cornfed beef. And if you look at the
lipid composition of fatty meats that
are from animals that were grass-fed,
there is a significant, you know,
difference in, for example,
pro-inflammatory fats or much less in
grass-fed meat. So, I do think that if
you can budget it in to go with foods,
uh ketogenic strategy, it's going to be
you want to get fatty fish, meat, and
and poultry, um to go with grass-fed
relative to u maybe industrial farming
practices. In your book, you do a great
job of not spending a lot of time
demonizing anything, but instead really
being quite prescriptive about, okay, if
you want to upgrade yourself, which is
like the big tag in your website, which
I absolutely love. So, if somebody wants
to upgrade themselves, knowing that
every word that's about to come out of
your mouth comes with compassion and
knowing that there's a lot of individual
variability and you get all of that.
But like in a nutshell, for somebody
that wants to upgrade themselves, what
should they eat and not eat?
Yeah.
So, you know, opt for foods that are
nutrientdense. Um, one of the easiest
things that I recommend that people can
do every single day is to consume what I
call a large fatty salad. Um, I think
it's one of the best ways to really
check off so many of your nutritional
boxes to get an abundance of uh dietary
fiber that the microbes that live in
your large intestine love to consume.
Um, and when I say fatty, I don't mean,
you know, throwing on tortilla strips
and cheese and ranch dressing. I mean,
you know, taking a bowl of dark leafy
greens, kale, spinach, which are, you
know, top sources of magnesium, which
50% of people do not consume adequate
amounts of, folate, um, arugula. Arugula
is a top source of nitrates, dietary
nitrate, really important in terms of
increasing blood flow to the brain. One
single high nitrate meal might actually
improve cognitive function. It's that
powerful. um dowsing those dark leafy
greens with extravirgin olive oil, which
research has shown out of Barcelona,
Spain, the PRIMED study, you can consume
about a liter a week to better cognitive
function, cognitive health,
cardiovascular health, and it might even
help you lose weight because it's so
anti-inflammatory. Actually, there's a
compound in extravirgin olive oil that
is as anti-inflammatory as lowdose
Advil, but without any of the potential
for negative side effects.
And importantly,
you need to have fat in that salad
because fat allows many of the most
important nutrients in the salad to
become bioavailable. So I talk a lot
about in this book which I think is
bringing you know especially um you know
there's a lot I think actually that
there's a lot uh of new information that
I bring to the conversation but I talk
particularly about um carotenoids and
how research has shown out of University
of Georgia that by eating uh lutein and
zeazanthin by by supplementing with
these carotenoids you can actually boost
visual processing speed by 20% even if
you're young and healthy. So I mean
these are young and healthy people that
are already considered to be at the peak
of their cognitive prowess. Visual
processing speed is so important. I mean
think about in terms of responding to
visual stimuli. You know driving,
athletic performance, sports
performance, things like that,
video games,
video games.
Absolutely. So dark leafy greens are
abundant in these two carotenoids and
they're only absorbed through the
digestive tract when in the presence of
fat. You don't absorb any of them unless
you're consuming them with fat. So, like
that fat-free dressing, throw that in
the trash. Extravirgin olive oil, you
know, is super key. And then, you know,
I try to
eat a uh a low carb diet. I try to avoid
um dense sources of carbohydrate with
the exception of occasionally eating
them in the post-workout window. Um
if you're going to eat carbs throughout
the day, you really want to concentrate
them into one meal. Um it seems that
when you consume your carbs concentrated
into one meal, uh less insulin is
required to clear those carbs from
circulation, that glucose from
circulation as opposed to if you were to
spread them out over the course of the
day, which makes that that old advice to
eat six small meals throughout the day
particularly bad because insulin seems
to be able to compound on itself. So
rather than eating, you know, uh, 30
grams of carbs at lunch, 30 grams of
carbs at dinner, 30 grams of carbs at,
um, breakfast, concentrate them into one
meal and there's less of an, you know,
insulin A. So less less insulin being
stimulated to clear that glucose, which
is important because, as we talked about
earlier, glucose is very damaging when
it's uh, in the blood. It glycates those
proteins.
How to figure out if the keto diet is
right for you?
Let me ask you secret of secret
questions. Okay. Gotcha.
Do you [laughter] think though that
everybody should try keto?
Try.
100%. I think so. Why? Because I feel
like for most people if they can
experience the mental clarity, the
improvement in cognitive function, just
that alone will change people's lives.
And so for me, I think yes, there could
be a weight loss and a fat loss um
component of it. But for me, the biggest
thing with keto is shifting from running
off glucose to running off ketones just
for your brain. Like nutrition for your
brain is probably the most remarkable
thing. U being able to go from eating
six, seven meals a day to eating once or
twice a day and feeling optimal or going
seven days without food and still
functioning as a parent as you know
running your business like traveling.
I've done that and it's amazing because
I was told that you can't do that
otherwise you'll lose all your muscle
mass. But for me, I think it's worth
experimenting with just for um how your
brain can improve. There's a million
ways to lose fat, right?
For sure. And I think both you and I.
So, I used to be about 60 pounds
heavier. I lost all my fat. Rapid
starvation, right? It was total misery.
I hated every single minute of it,
but it worked. Not saying it doesn't
work.
Um, but my thing is, and I find this so
interesting about keto. I think you're
right. It's an end of one. Everybody
needs to do self-experimentation. you've
got to try it because it it's the one
dietary thing I'll say changed my life
completely from just being in a constant
state of inflammation to then like that
sense of your inflammation drops to
essentially zero your relationship to
hunger changes um you know I agree with
you I think that there is so much
individual variability everybody has to
try it but keto is the one thing I'll
say everybody should try it yeah
whether it works for them or not I can't
say
yeah and I feel like you know our bodies
were designed to do that for a reason.
We have this backup system, you know, or
whatever you want to call it known as
ketosis for a reason, right? Like it's
how our species evolved, right? Uh if we
didn't have, you know, the ketogenic
state, we probably would have died off
as a species, right? Cuz we went we had
to go times without food, right? There's
feasts and famine. And it wasn't until
like maybe 100 or 200 years ago where we
had access to food on demand pretty much
where we could go to grocery stores or
there was always an abundance of food.
And and because we've grown up in that,
we've kind of like, well, we have to eat
three square meals a day. You know,
that's what we're taught. And it's like,
no, you can go long periods of time
without food actually and still function
and and and thrive. Actually,
right now, we have a ketto craze going
on.
Um, from an evolutionary perspective,
uh, ketosis would have served us only
during starvation.
So, when people tell me, "Oh, the way to
eat all the time is ket." I go,
"Absolutely not." 1.8 million years have
proven that. But if you don't believe
it, look at look at the research being
done right now on huntergatherer
civilizations that are still intact.
Now, when I talk about ketosis, I'm not
talking about half a millole, cuz most
of us wake up in the morning with half a
mill of ketones. I'm talking about this
absurdity of shooting for two and three
millles of ketosis. Unless you're
battling brain cancer, right?
This is actually not a good idea because
it actually shifts mRNA and DNA to think
that you're in a starvation state. If
you're eating 90% fat all the time, your
body thinks, "Wow, this person sucks at
finding food. So, we need to put this
body in like in in in defcon 4 mode
because this idiot's going to die. So,
let's shut down the thyroid. Let's do
all these things to preserve until we
can get out of this jam we're in. And
and proof of that is if if if two people
are into ketto, husband and wife, and
they're both into they're posting their
keto pictures. Oh, I'm 1.2 millm moles
and my wife is 2.6. and they and she
gets pregnant, that baby will be
imprinted with obesity genes because
that baby is being formed under the
guise from an evolutionary perspective
that mom and dad suck at finding food.
So, we have to make this baby so
efficient that it turns everything into
fat.
And this has been proven when I look at
these things, I look at them from
evolution. I say, "Okay, where would
ketosis have really come?" Okay, famine.
It would have got us through the famine.
would because we're metabolically
flexible. I look at everything that way
first. Why is this important? Why would
we be endowed with it? Where did it come
from? And then I do my research from
there.
It's almost like there's two camps of
thought around um diabetes on one end,
which is like metabolically unhealthy
end, and then the performance end, which
is the athletes, right? It's almost like
each group there's like the high carb,
lowfat people and the low carb, highfat
people on each side. And so there's
people who think that you fix diabetes
with low carb, highfat, and there's
people who think you fix diabetes with
high carb, lowfat. What I have found is
that you can actually get the same drop
in glucose and the same drop in weight
in in two different programs, a keto
program versus a high high carb, lowfat
program in the course of a year. I'm
seeing the same drops in people with
diabetes. So I think both can work. It
depends on the individual. I mean, Peter
AIA basically has said that 50% of
people do not respond to keto. So the
question is is are they better adapted
to a high carb low-fat diet or or maybe
more of a balanced diet. But I think
that we are going to learn that like
there are certain times in your life
that you might you might be better
suited for a high carb diet. When I was
in my 20s, I had such an easy time
eating carbs. It was like no problem.
Now that I'm in my 30s, it's like my my
metabolism shifted and I have to be
really careful with carbs and I really
have to eat them in accordance to how
much I exercise. And are you saying that
based on the spike in glucose or based
on um weight gain? Like
definitely weight, but all I mean it
seems like I'm more likely to put weight
on when I eat carbohydrates now. But I
also think that um you know like I I was
able to drop my blood glucose like a
point in a year um from hemoglobin C
from 5.6 to 4.6 and over the course of a
year and a lot of it was carbohydrate
reduction. Most people who have been
keto for any length of time will report
back, dude, I first of all, three meals
a day, can't even handle it. It's like,
I I couldn't eat three meals a day. It's
way too much food. Number two, um I
probably get by on 30% fewer calories
now, doing all the same activities than
I did before I was keto. What's that
about? And what that it's about, it's
about metabolic efficiency. It's about
um you know less um thermic effect of
food. You know sometimes we we eat a a
large meal more than we should have and
the body raises its temperature just to
kind of burn off some of that fuel,
right? Because it doesn't want that much
fuel at one time. Yes, it tries to stash
the the glucose into the glycogen
reserves in the muscles. If there's not
enough room goes to the fat cells. um
you know yes there's some uh uh protein
but excess protein goes to the liver
gluconioenesis gets converted to sugar
same same issue with that
so all these all of these um elements of
of efficiency now you don't need as much
protein because you're sparing protein
instead of daminating it and then peeing
it out all the time. Uh you don't need
as much carbohydrate because you've
learned how to make ketones from your
own stored body fuel. those ketones
really reduce the amount of uh glucose
that you need to make or you need to to
take in from the outside. Um you know
there's a a statement that many people
make in the keto world that there is no
requirement in human nutrition for
carbohydrate at all u because the body
can make enough glucose through
gluconneogenesis and then offset the
rest of the requirements with ketones.
So the efficiency becomes um again a
very um important aspect in uh reduction
of inflammation because the efficiency
also carries with it a a reduction in
reactive oxygen species from the from
the um inefficient burning of fuel to
get rid of it. uh the house cleaning I
talked about where where a cell will
look at the the environment and go uh
gez there's not enough uh substrate
around for me to dive to divide right
now so I think I'll I'll stay where I am
and I'll do some house cleaning and I'll
and I'll literally consume some of the
damaged proteins within I'll um consume
some of the uh damaged fats um a cell
might even say time for me to give up
the ghost I'm going to die autophagy the
the the cell will will self-destruct
based on the signals that it gets from
the environment which and that
environment is a a dir if you will of
nutrients. Now, conversely, if you've if
you're eating every couple of hours, you
know, you're eating three square meals a
day plus snacks in between plus
something before you go to bed, which
most people do, the body goes, well,
there's so much food around. This is
amazing. So my cells, they can divide
because there'll be plenty of substrate
and and and food for the for the two of
me when I divide. But as we know from
sort of the anti-aging movement, you
know, cells have kind of a finite number
of divisions. That's what the telomeirs
are all about, right? And so if you can
prolong that time from from when one
cell decides it's time to divide um and
not only prolong the time but then have
that one cell start to do some house
cleaning, that's a critical kind of
theory behind the anti-aging movement
and the anti-aging aspect of keto and of
intermittent fasting and of long-term
fasting. So there's there's a lot of
it's like a new era of science that
we're that we're embarking on here that
kind of has to go back and refigure the
science because the science for the last
several decades has kind of been based
on body needs sugar. Fat's bad. Uh heart
attacks are caused by fat and
cholesterol. Um you know uh you can you
can you have to do exercise to burn off
all the calories if you want to lose
weight. All these things have been shown
to be inaccurate. Now
Thank you guys so much for watching this
episode of Health Theory. I hope you
guys work with your doctor and give keto
a shot. And I hope it's as impactful for
you as it was for me. Until next time,
my friends, be legendary. Take care.
Thank you guys so much for watching and
being a part of this community. If you
haven't already, be sure to subscribe.
You're going to get weekly videos on
building a growth mindset, cultivating
grit, and unlocking your full potential.