ben greenfield podcast 124
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Listen to this podcast http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/12/episode-124-what-would-happen-if-you-didnt-eat-any-carbohydrates/TRANSCRIPT
Podcast #124 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/12/episode-124-what-
would-happen-if-you-didnt-eat-any-carbohydrates/
Introduction: In this episode: what would happen if you quit eating carbs, how to
get rid of that last bit of body fat, hyaluronic acid injections,
putting aero bars on a road bike, TFL pain, irritable bowel
syndrome in athletes, good sources of research for fitness and
nutrition, alpha lipoid acid supplementation, what to do about dry
skin from cold weather.
Ben: Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here. And in today’s interview I have a
really interesting guest. This is a guy who I heard on a podcast
actually a few times. He runs the Jimmy Moore’s Living La Vida
Low Carb show and the guy literally is really not into carbs at all.
Which you’ll know if you ever listen to his show and which you’ll
also know if you listen to the podcast today. Now in celebration of
releasing this podcast, I did something that I don’t normally do. I
had a big sandwich. Literally. Right before I sat down to do this
podcast. No actually, I had a killer workout today and that was my
refueling protocol. However I did choose the sandwich just to see
what would happen and tolerate digestive tolerance while I
recorded today’s podcast. So if you hear things blowing up and
going crazy and maybe hear some strange sounds. Even hear a
toilet flush during the podcast, that means maybe my body was
rebelling against those carbs. Either way it’ll be an interesting
interview with Jimmy. Probably the other biggest thing about
today’s show is that the Inner Circle news is out. If you subscribe
to my newsletter list, then you’ve already heard about this and you
may have seen it floating across Twitter but my wife and I are
releasing some very cool, high quality, free videos over the next
week. And I’ll be giving you a special message that tells you a
little bit more about it after today’s other special announcements.
But we also have some Q and A today, so quite a bit to squeeze in.
So let’s go ahead and jump right in to this week’s special
announcements.
Ben: So before we get into this week’s Listener Q and A, just a quick
clarification. That Inner Circle podcast is not actually going to be
totally accessible until Wednesday, Dec. 22. However, all four free
videos are going to be released over the next week between now
and then and you’ll be able to get into the Inner Circle within a
week after this podcast is released. So onto the questions. If you
have a question, you can email [email protected].
You can call toll free to 8772099439. Skype “pacificfit” or ask a
question through the free Ben Greenfield Fitness iPhone app. And
the first question today came through from Listener Justin.
Justin asks: My question is about losing body fat. I carry my excess in my
thighs and in my low abdomen, I’m about 12% body fat and it’s all
in those areas. How can I get rid of the last bit?
Ben answers: Well, in guys and in girls really, there’s a few different strategies
when you’ve gotten fairly lean and fairly lean to kind of get rid of
that last little bit. One of the things that I highly recommend is
periods of intermittent fasting or periods of caloric restriction
followed by refeeds. And the way that that would work – you’ve
heard me talk about intermittent fasting before on this show. Real,
real simple way to do it is to just quit eating two hours prior to
bedtime. So after dinner, pretty much you’re done eating and when
you get up in the morning, you wait a couple of hours before eating
breakfast and with that scenario if you’re sleeping seven hours,
you’ve got a good 11 hour, 12 hour fast right in there. The best
way to do it is to actually – instead of getting up in the morning
and waiting to eat breakfast is to actually get 30 to 60 minutes of
light aerobic fat burning cardio in, in the morning prior to
breakfast. So you wake up and your liver’s carbohydrate stores are
empty so you accelerate the activity of the fat burning enzymes by
keeping the exercise session aerobic. You don’t get a big cortisol
release so your body doesn’t get all catabolic and digesting muscle
for energy and it’s really a great way to shed fat. I personally do
that a lot when I’m trying to lean up for a triathlon or a race. So
that works really well. The refeeding would be cutting your caloric
intake generally down by about 500 to 1000 calories per day below
what you’re actually burning. So you take your resting metabolic
rate and you take how many calories you’re burning during
exercise and let’s say you add all that up and it comes out to 2500
calories. Well then the amount of calories that you take in each day
would be 1500 to 2000 calories. So you’re at that strict caloric
deficit and you shoot for that anywhere from five to six days per
week but then one to two days per week and a lot of times for real
active weekend warriors, those one to two days per week are on
the weekend, you actually bump things up and you take in caloric
balance or in slight excess. So those refeed days allow you to
replenish your muscle glycogen stores and also allow you to
maintain some semblance of intensity going forward into your
program, and the last thing that that does is it keeps you from
resetting your metabolic rate to a lower set point after you’ve gone
through a period of caloric depletion, because really it’s very rare
that you can go three to four weeks of caloric undercutting by 500
to 1000 calories without experiencing some type of drop in
metabolism or bump down in immune system, drop in energy
levels, chronic fatigue, things of that nature. So that’s when those
refeeding days come in. For people who have real high
metabolisms who are super lean anyways, a lot of times all you
need to do – and this is relevant to today’s featured topic – is just
cut sugar and starches. Literally just completely cut them. Alcohol
goes hand in hand with that as well. You cut those three things, a
lot of times, that’s all it takes. If you want to drop from 12% down
to 8% and you’re a fairly lean person already, you’re not built like
a football player. You don’t have an endomorph apple shape, you
don’t have a real muscular shape or you’re literally a lean and
skinny person – just cutting sugar, starches and alcohol does very,
very well in eliminating that last little bit of body fat if you’re
already exercising. So, when I say the last little bit of body fat, of
course I’m referring to the unnecessary body fat. Everybody has a
certain amount of necessary body fat that is crucial for metabolic
function, hormonal formulation, insulation, padding, things of that
nature. Generally for guys, Justin, it’s going to be around 3%. I
would not recommend you ever going lower than that. Really, it’s
only elite athletes that are going to function very well for any
period of time at that body fat – and even that body fat, I only
recommend maintaining during periods of competition or during
periods where your esthetic appearance is very important to you.
So say if you want to have a beach body during the summer, yeah
cut down to a fairly low percentage during that time. But
preferably bump it back up once sweater season rolls around and
you’ll be doing your hormones a big favor.
So another question came through via Twitter. If you want to ask a
question via Twitter, just go to twitter.com and follow Ben
Greenfield and this question is from Big Paully.
bigpaully1 asks: How do you feel about hyaluronic acid being injected into a knee
to reduce pain in that joint.?
Ben answers: Well we’ve talked about glucosamine before on this show as an
amino group that can be injected or taken in orally to combat some
of the symptoms of osteoarthritis and hyaluronic acid is kind of in
the similar family. It’s what’s called a glycosolaminoglycan and
it’s widely distributed through a lot of your tissues and especially
your connective tissue and basically it plays a role in cartilage
formation. A lot of the molecular components of cartilage are
made of this hyaluronic acid derivative. The idea is that by
injecting that into a joint, you can accelerate the healing of a joint
or you can reduce the degradation of a joint from something like
arthritis. It’s a great idea and this treatment would fall under the
category of something called viscousupplementation which is of
course injections into the joint. It’s most typically used on the knee
joint and the reason they call it viscousupplementation is it’s
supposed to increase the viscosity of the joint fluid. So it increases
the lubrication of the joint, increases the cushioning around the
joint and could have a little bit of a pain killing effect. The issue is
there haven’t been a ton of positive studies that indicates the
efficacy of either injections of hyaluronic acid or oral use of
hyaluronic acid, and so until clinical studies come out that there’s
some kind of a positive effect on osteoarthritis, it comes down to
the thing you’ll hear me say a lot on this show and that is that you
may need to use yourself as a case study of one and if it works for
you then fantastic, you found what works for you. But in terms of
having significant efficacy in a controlled study, there hasn’t been
a lot yet that’s come out in terms of the efficacy of hyaluronic acid
and that’s really why a lot of pharmaceutical companies haven’t
taken this on as kind of a big player or a money maker for them,
because there’s not a lot to be said for it yet. Now that’s not to say
that there not some derivative hyaluronic acid that’s going to come
out at some point of the future that’s going to make all
osteoarthritis go away forever and ever. But at this point, I can’t
with good conscious tell you it’s going to help you out much, but
you can always go try it and out. The flip side is there’s not a huge
amount of danger to it, assuming you’re not getting these
injections in a third world country with dirty needles. So good
question.
Now the next question came through from Jake, and it’s a question
about bicycling.
Jake asks: Does it make sense to add clip on aero bars to a standard road
bike?
Ben answers: Well what Jake is referring to is these aero bars that a lot of times
you’ll see triathletes riding, you’ll see time trialists riding and they
put you down in this arrow position, down on your forearms rather
than being up on your wrists and your hands. The idea is that
triathlon bikes are designed so that when you get into those aero
bars, it’s combined with a very steep seat tube angle on the
triathlon bike. This puts you in a position where you can maintain
relatively high cadence compared to a road bike and more
importantly it puts you into a position that’s aerodynamic and uses
more of the quadricep muscles, saving more of the glute and the
hamstring muscles for running, which would be important for a
triathlon. Once you switch to a road bike, you tend to use the butt
muscles a little bit more. So you don’t typically run quite as
efficiently. You can produce a little bit more power, but the seat
tube angle is less steep so you’re in a less aerodynamic position
which doesn’t favor riding on what tend to be relatively flat
triathlon style courses and you’re not really doing yourself a favor
when it comes to running off the bike either. That being said, for
the first five years that I did triathlons, all I had was a road bike
that I slapped a pair of aero bars on the handlebars. And I have a
lot of people that I coach that do it that way and the nice part about
it is then you have the advantage of being able to use a road bike
when you want to use a road bike and being able to convert it to
kind of a triathlon style aerodynamic position when you want to do
that. You’ll get a lot of even time trialists like college teams that
may not be able to afford time trial bikes and road bikes for their
athletes. They’ll just supply their athletes with aero bars and when
time trial comes around, you take your road bike and throw the
aero bars on there. Again, not that big of an issue especially if
you’re not running off the bike. If you’re in a triathlon, it makes a
little more sense to switch to the steeper seat tube angle that’s on a
triathlon bike. That being said, it does make sense to add those clip
on bars if you don’t have access to a triathlon bike but you still
want to ride in the aero position. They’re generally fairly
affordable in that 50 – depending if you’re wanting to go with a
carbon aero bar, you can spend up to 250 bucks on a set of aero
bars. But yeah I used to ride that way. My wife rides with clip on
aero bars on her road bike and it’s definitely something that you
can do. It’s not going to be the fastest way but especially if you’re
not going to do a lot of running off the bike, it can work for you. I
got to tell you guys though if you want basically a dirt cheap
triathlon bike, you should go where I recently went to get one. It’s
what I’m riding now and I’m smashing apart all my records that I
sent on my $8000 triathlon bike last year – this bike cost about
$1700. I got it from synergysport.com. It’s made by a company
called Gray and it’s called the Gray Storm Time Trial Bike. If the
issue is financing, that’s about the best way to go . Super, super
stiff frame. Picked that up, throw a set of aero bars on that and
you’ll be set to go. Great question, and we’re going to move on to
the next question from Mike.
Mike asks: In your experience with your athletes, has anyone ever complained
of TFL pain? (What Mike is referring to with TFL pain is tensor
fascia latae, which actually runs not out of the Starbucks coffee
shop but rather down the outside of your leg. It’s basically the
band that’s similar to the IT band. The tensor fascia latae is one of
the long bands of fascia that runs on the outside of your leg.) I’ve
had a few massages, ice, NSAIDSs, A.R.T., Graston, stretching,
strengthening, refrained from all running, dry needling,
hydrotherapy jets, and witchcraft. And after 7-8 weeks, the pain is
no better.
Ben answers: Ok, yikes. What we’re talking about is IT band friction syndrome.
Same as tensor fascia latae syndrome. But Mike has basically tried
a lot of the things that I would recommend right off the bat. He’s
done the soft tissue work with massages. He’s tried icing, tried
non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, not that I’d necessarily
recommend those. He’s tried active release therapy which is
basically where you pin the end of a tendon and then run it through
a stretching protocol. He’s tried Graston, stretching, strengthening,
refrained from all running, tried dry needling – a little similar to
acupuncture – hydrotherapy jets and don’t know what kind of
witchcraft you’ve done Mike. But there are a few things that you
haven’t tried that I talk about in my Bulletproof Knee program.
That’s really – ultimately I’d say if you just want to do a gold
standard system that runs you from A to Z for everything you need
to get rid of IT band friction syndrome, just go to
www.bulletproofknee.com and try the IT band friction fix that I
have over there at www.bulletproofknee.com. I’ll put a link to that
in the Shownotes but basically what you’re going to be looking at
is in that program you begin with some real focused gluteus
medius strengthening. So you do a lot of fire hydrants, hip hikes.
Work on the butt – the outside of the butt and the external rotators
of the hips which tends to take a lot of stress off the IT band when
you’re running, doing single leg squats, things of that nature.
There’s really absolutely nothing half ass in that part of the
program. It’s four weeks of zero running combined with giving
yourself basically just a Superman butt. Then you simultaneous to
that are doing a ton of IT band flexibility work, basically every
stretch. I’m sure you’ve already tried every stretch known to man
but you continue to do a very specific stretching protocol. I lay out
all the exercises in there and kind of walk you through them via
video. Nutritional supplements – preferably not the non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drugs. In that program, what we go for is
fenocain which is basically a cox 2 inhibitor but it doesn’t do the
same type of damage that something like ibuprofen does and then
that’s combined with a high dose vitamin C and protolytic
enzymes preferably on an empty stomach, something like a
Recoverease. Water running to maintain fitness if that’s necessary
during the time you’re training. Wearing a strap about two inches
above the knee especially if the pain is localized to the IT band
attachment of the knee. If it’s primarily up in the hip, then you
wouldn’t really need to wear this strap, but you basically wear this
strap two inches above the knee to keep friction from occurring
over the tibial area where the IT band attaches. Switching to a
custom molded orthotic or even an over pronation orthotic,
something like a Superfeet. You can get an oven molded orthotic,
something that’s going to keep your foot out of pronating which
tends to put a lot of stress on that IT band, making any
modification on cross training equipment like dropping the seat
height on your bicycle or turning the cleats on your bicycle slightly
inwards so your toes are pointing outward. If you’re doing any ice
– doing the ice as an ice massage, not just an ice and hold joint.
Foam roller, definitely everyday. 10 to 15 minutes twice a day
even better. If you’re able to get a textured one, like a rumble roller
– a rumble roller is something I’ve talked about at
bengreenfieldfitness.com before. Just go to the website and do a
search for rumble roller. An ultra-sound therapy combined with
infrared and electrostim – if you have access to any of those
physical therapy modalities, I found it to be very effective with IT
band friction syndrome and specifically the electrostimulation.
You can get a home electrostim unit like a Compex. And you can
put the electrostim patches on to your leg and then put ice over
those. Then finally a little bit of extra bang for your buck, if you
can get to a non-acidic – like an alkaline diet, non-inflammatory
diet, cutting a lot of the starches, the sweets, cutting a lot of the
omega 6 fatty acids, really amping up the omega 3 fatty acids.
Being real careful with the amount of processing that goes into the
proteins you’re consuming and basically putting all that together in
a shotgun approach. That’s what I walk you through in the
www.bulletproofknee.com manual and then once you’ve gotten
through four weeks of that, then you just move into a progressive
phase where you’re just kind of laying down the foundation to
rebuild your body. But a lot of times in a case like yours, that’s
what it takes – to completely rebuild the body. So good question.
The next question is from Billy.
Billy asks: I think I recently developed irritable bowel syndrome and I was
wondering if you can talk about IBS. My doctor took blood tests
and stool samples and a x-ray of my abdominal area and the results
says I have a large amount of stool present at the time of the x-ray.
I like to note that I do go 1-3 times a day, but most times I don’t
feel relieved. Do you have any advice?
Ben answers: I’m assuming that if your doctor took blood test and stool samples,
that these probably were not looking for intolerances or allergies. I
would definitely go to a company – go to somebody like Unikey
Health Systems. That’s one of the companies that I send most of
my people to for doing a comprehensive parasitic evaluation of
your stool and also evaluating any food allergies or intolerances
that may be present at the same time. That test runs – I think it’s
$275, maybe eve $300. Well worth the peace of mind that
something like that can give you. So that’d be one option, is to
actually get tested. The other thing you can do is just run yourself
through an elimination protocol. The way that something like that
would work is you eliminate gluten, dairy, eggs, fructose, soy, and
any common allergens. You assess your gastric tolerance and then
if you’re good to go, you gradually start re-introducing those foods
starting with some of the foods that are less of a culprit like eggs or
soy and then moving on to adding in a little bit of dairy, a little bit
of fructose, a little bit of gluten. Usually athletes with IBS really
can’t handle too well any of those last three and then at that point
you’re basically kind of doing the detective work to figure out
what was causing the bloating. As you add stuff back in, once the
bloating starts back up, you know what the culprit was. And then
this sounds really dumb. It’s something my wife and I talked about
in an Inner Circle podcast, but it’s chewing. And something that
people really don’t do enough of is chew food and a lot of times
that tends to be personality based, sometimes stress based,
sometimes being in a hurry when you eat. But literally chewing
each bite of food 20 to 25 times can help tremendously with
something like IBS. I know it sounds simple. I know it sounds
stupid, but it actually works. Now if you’re a very, very active
person doing a ton of exercising, obviously not eating glutens, soy,
dairy, eggs, fructose – all that jazz – tends to present a paradox.
Because you don’t end up having barely any energy sources or
most people perceive that they don’t have any energy sources left
to actually go out and train and exercise. That’s where somebody
like me comes in where I can help walk you through that, create a
meal plan for you. If you didn’t want to do this on your own, just
shoot me an email and I’ll walk you through the process but at this
point, you’re looking at either doing the testing to find out for sure
– you know what I’ll do – I’ll put a link to the Unikey Health test
and you’d want to go do their GI test, their parasite GI test. Or you
could run yourself through and oversee for yourself an elimination
diet. So podcast Shownotes number 124, I’ll put that link to the
parasitic stool evaluation to actually figure out if there’s any
parasitic or allergenic issues going on.
Blaine asks: I know that you do a ton of research on various journals and
publications in putting together your podcasts. I would really like
to learn more about exercise science and nutrition and I was
wondering if you could give me some suggestions of some good
journals or websites to follow or ones that you get the most
information from. Also sometimes you mention some of the
studies when answering questions on the podcast. I was wondering
if it would be possible for you to site those research studies in the
show notes.
Ben answers: To answer your first question Blaine, probably two of the biggest
sources that I use – the first is that I subscribe to several different
topics in the free newsletter online called Stonehearth Newsletters.
And basically I get that fed into my email inbox everyday. The
other thing that I do is I subscribe – since I’m a member of the
National Strength and Conditioning Association – I subscribe to
their Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and that
comes out once a month. The other thing that I do is I subscribe to
a research report. That one’s put out by Allan Aragon. It’s called
Allan Aragon’s Research Report. He grabs research and studies
from various journals in physiology and nutrition, and basically
puts his spin on them. I don’t agree with everything that he says
but it does give me a way to get my hands on some of the more
controversial studies that come out on a monthly basis. Then in
terms of getting studies out in the Shownotes, you know what? A
lot of the time I’m citing research studies that are on the Pub Med
website through the National Institute of Health. For me to actually
go through and add those citations in to every show would vastly
slow the rate at which this podcast can be produced and the amount
of work that would go into producing each podcast, and it would
really make each podcast turn into like putting together a graduate
thesis which I’m in no way proposing that this podcast be and I
don’t want this podcast to pose as some type of highly academic
research review.
In my response to Billy, I mention Alan Aragon’s Research
Review, the National Journal of Strength and Conditioning
Research, PubMed, and the Stone Hearth Newsletters. So I really
can’t put exact citations into every single podcast. Now what I
have done in the past is I have talked about real controversial
studies. A lot of times I’ll mention the title of those studies which
you can Google over at Pub Med, or not Google but search for
over at Pub Med. And the other thing that I’ll do a lot of times is
put a link to the studies in the Shownotes and if I say that I’m
going to do that, I will do it. But those are my primary sources of
research, and generally for me it’s about 15 to 20 minutes a day
that I’m actually looking through the research and then when I’m
prepping a podcast, I spend a little more time than that actually,
looking at the actual study. So hopefully that gives you something
to look at. National Journal of Strength Conditioning Research,
Allan Aragon’s research review and Pub Med as well as the free
Stonehearth newsletters. So check out all of those and hopefully
that helps you out a little bit. I will note that in the podcasts,
Blaine. So if you visit the Shownotes for podcast episode number
124, I’ll put those in the podcast notes.
Patrick asks: Hey Ben, this is Patrick calling with a question. Things are
definitely cooling off here where I live in Tennessee and really all
over America. I’m still getting out there for a long bike ride and
long runs on the weekend but I think it’s really, really drying out
my skin and I wanted to know if you had suggestions of any good
lotion to combat that. Thanks a lot man.
Ben answers: Alright Patrick, good question. And obviously the bane of anybody
who is trying to train right now and lives in a cold weather climate
is the dry skin. And really it’s basically a result of low moisture so
if you watch the weather report on a cold winter morning, you’ve
probably heard the weatherman say that there’s going to be low
humidity which basically means there’s not much water in the air.
So when there’s not much water in the air, that translates to dry
skin because dry air essentially sucks moisture out of the skin as
water moves from an area of high concentration to an area of low
concentration. So to avoid having dry skin, you either have to
control the humidity in your environment by increasing the amount
of moisture in the air or figure out a way to actually keep the
moisture locked into your skin. So the latter part is obviously a lot
easier than somehow rotating the planet and getting some more
clouds and moisture into the environment that you’re living in. So
let’s talk about that. Moisturizer – basically pretty vital part of your
skin care regime. And lotions and body creams would all fall into
the category of moisturizer. They provide a protective layer on the
skin. They help to hold water into the skin, kind of keep it supple
and if you normally use a light body lotion, you can actually
switch to just a richer, heavier formula when the temp drops. So
that feeds your thirsty skin a little bit, keeps out the drying effects
of the cold and adds this thin oily layer. When you would want to
put that on is preferably right after you’ve dried off and you’ve
gotten out of the bath or the shower. Related to that, don’t use real,
real hot water when you can get away from it because those high
temperatures can actually dehydrate skin even more and cause
more dry skin. So keep the water kind of warm when you’re
bathing or when you’re showering. And preferably if you’re able
to, use a body lotion on your body and then use a facial lotion on
your face, because the facial lotions are typically a little bit kinder
to the skin on the face which is a bit more delicate. I’m assuming
you’re staying hydrated, that you’re controlling your consumption
of coffee and caffeinated soda drinks and tea and any of those
diuretics that could suck water out of your body if you’re not
staying hydrated with water. Exfoliation can be real, real useful in
helping out with dry skin. Pretty easy to exfoliate. As a matter of
fact, my wife just put a video up on YouTube. You go to
youtube.com/bengreenfieldfitness, she put a video up on YouTube
where she made a homemade body scrub and that acts as a mild
exfoliant. You can use something like an oatmeal soap, any type of
scrub like that. You can use it on your face, your body. If you’re
getting dry feet or dry heels, pumice stones work really well also.
You just want to remember not to exfoliate too often. Once every
two or three days would be fine. If you exfoliate too often, you end
up getting cracked or broken out areas. As far as controlling the
humidity, you could do it. The weather indoors during the winter
can contribute to your dry skin as much as the weather outdoors
and electric heaters are especially notorious for leaching moisture
out of the air. So, one thing you can do if you have electric heaters
in your house is keep humidifiers around the house and adjust the
humidity gauge until you get about 40 to 50% humidity and that
will help out quite a bit. Getting some plants into your house and
literally putting those plants in strategic locations throughout the
house and keeping them watered can help as well because plants as
a natural part of their photosynthesis actually let water out into the
environment. So all those things can help out quite a bit. As far as
actual lotions, body lotions that you could use – one that I use
particularly quite a bit is one that is designed to help remove
chlorine from the skin, because I do a lot of swimming, so the one
that I use is made by a company called SPR. And you can check
out sprsportsinc.com. They make something called Tri Swim,
which is a shampoo, conditioner and a lotion. It’s kind of all three.
They sent me some samples last year and I started using it on a
regular basis. It works really really well and that’s what I’d
recommend in terms of a lotion. My wife for the Inner Circle is
working on a video kind of similar to the Body Scrub video where
she teaches you how to make your own lotions that would have a
lower amount of toxins and potential irritants than a lot of
commercial lotions, but for now that’s one of my favorites. So
great question and we’re going to move on to the final question
from Listener Pete. Before I even get into this question, I do need
to say that, Pete, because you asked the best question of the week, I
am going to give you a free month of membership to my Body
Transformation Club. The Body Transformation Club is the
weekly workout and meal plan that I send out via postcard to
people’s homes. And I’m going to give you a free month of that.
Just shoot me an email and I’ll hook you up, and here’s your
question.
Pete asks: I have a question regarding the R isomer of Alpha-Lipoic Acid. I
have heard that R-ALA can be used to improve blood glucose
levels and possibly prevent some fat gain by increasing insulin
sensitivity. Also, I have heard that the generic Alpha-Lipoic acid
is a 50/50 blend of R & S ALA, where the S version has no use
and can even be harmful. What is your opinion on supplementing
with R-ALA to improve insulin sensitivity? Do you think there is
any benefit of taking say 150mg of R-ALA vs. 300mg of a
standard ALA supplement?
Ben answers: Ok. Well this is actually very timely because a study just came out
on alpha lipoic acid supplementation in terms of obesity therapy in
a journal called Current Pharmaceutical Design in 2010. What they
looked at was whether or not a lipid pro-oxidation, which is
basically cellular injury and cellular damage could be slowed down
by alpha lipoic acid and whether the slowing down of that oxidant
induced cellular injury could actually affect obesity or body mass
index. And what they found was by using the lipoic acid as an
antioxidant, they got 9% body fat in both genders. I’m looking at
this study right now and that’s very significant. I’m sorry, not 9%
body fat. I was going to say that’d be huge. 9% weight, which is
still significant considering if you’re 200 lbs that you could lose
almost 20 lbs by doing exercise and supplementing with lipoic acid
supplements versus just doing exercise. Granted these folks were
taking 800 mgs a day of lipoic acid which is well over and above
what you would normally see recommended to you on the back of
your lipoic acid supplement. But this study had 445 men and 682
women. So, it really speaks to the fact that there could be a
potential link between the use of a potent anti-oxidant, something
like alpha lipoic acid, and a better rate of weight loss. Now of
course for you folks out there who are just going after burn
everything to shreds triathlon style fitness, overusing antioxidants
– I’m taking 800 mgs a day of alpha lipoic acid – may not do you
any favors when it comes to teaching your body how to burn its
own free radicals or how to scavenge its own free radicals. But if
it’s just obesity and fat loss that you’re going after, this stuff
appears to at least have a lot of promise. Now you ask about the
difference between the R and the S. Those of you who don’t have
chemistry degrees, if you have a molecule there could be different
isomers of that molecule and essentially just think of the R and the
S being polar opposites of each other. Whenever you have two
different asymmetric molecules – symmetry is something that the
body takes into account in terms of biological activity and
metabolism and it does turn out that R-ALA and what’s called the
chirality of that or the symmetry of that can produce increased
biological effectiveness and activity versus the S isomer of ALA.
Now generally, what you’ll see across the board is that
supplementation companies that make an R – ALA will generally
tell you that you only have to take half of that R-ALA compared to
using a regular ALA. The trick being that the R-ALA can
sometimes be a little bit more expensive because it’s just a little bit
more expensive to make. Now the issue with this recent study was
it looked like all they used was the regular ALA, the blend of the S
and the R. So if they use 800 mgs a day, I would propose that it
could be – even though obviously this hasn’t been carried out in
the study – could be effective for fat loss and increased antioxidant
activity to use 400 mgs a day of an R-ALA and you could get
pretty good benefits from that if what you’re going after is fat loss.
So great question and that is going to wrap up the questions for this
week. So with that being said, we’re going to go ahead and move
on – take a little bit of a change in pace here and interview Jimmy
Moore from Living La Vida Low Carb Show.
Ben: Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and on the other line I have the
host of a really great show you should definitely check out on
iTunes called the Living La Vida Low Carb show. And the
gentleman who’s with me today is named Jimmy Moore and I’ll let
Jimmy tell you a little bit more about this but he used to be 410 lbs,
before he made some pretty radical changes in his diet and his
lifestyle. He is far below 410 lbs now and I’ll let him tell you about
that. He has a lifestyle and a nutrition strategy as you can guess by
the title of his show, that we’re going to talk about today and we’re
going to go a little bit beyond simply defining what a low carb diet
is and talk more about Jimmy, talk about some of the more
interesting guests that he’s had and about some of the controversy
around low carb diets. So, Jimmy, thanks for coming on the call
today.
Jimmy Moore: Hey Ben, thanks for having me.
Ben: No problem. So, before we launch into this low carb discussion,
tell me a little bit about how you got up to 410 lbs and what
happened at that point.
Jimmy Moore: How did I get there? I ate my way there. My whole life, Ben, had
pretty much been defined by when was the next meal and how
much was I going to eat. I guess that’s just the typical American
these days that you just eat anything and everything without regard
to really what it’s doing to your body. And that was my family.
That was my whole growing up life. My mom was a single mom
for much of my youth. So she had to feed me and my older brother
Kevin and my younger sister Beverly and of course me and Kevin
would eat the house down, you know? If she had made it out of
food, we would have literally eaten the house down. And we just
ate, and what did we eat? We ate the cheap garbage carbohydrates,
cereals, Hamburger Helper, you name it Ben, we pretty much were
eating it. And even sometimes we would try to eat “healthy” and
mom would buy nice whole grain English muffins and such things
like that and nothing ever seemed to do anything to help curb the
obesity that was obviously running rampant through our family.
Ben: Gotcha. And did you eventually begin to try different diets or
different exercise routines?
Jimmy Moore: Oh yeah. It started as early as a child, but I remember the first time
I really found success doing something and it was never about
exercise. I’ll tell you that right upfront Ben. I’ve always been
active but I’ve never been purposeful in that action until I started
the low carb lifestyle but yeah I tried Slim Fast and in fact 11th
grade in high school, I did Slim Fast pretty much – drank it with
skim milk and had a very low fat moderate calorie meal for
summer and I lost a good amount of weight and looked pretty
decent. But then I was just always ravenously hungry. I couldn’t
stand that feeling that you had to be hungry in order to be thin and
to me I equated those two. In order to be thin, in order to be fit, I
had to literally be starving because that’s the way it feels when you
lose weight.
Ben: Well I think a lot of people think that.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. So it was something that stuck with me but obviously I
didn’t learn my lesson from it because I kept doing those low fat,
low fat diets. We do that to ourselves because we’ve been
convinced from decades of lipo phobia in this country that you’re
supposed to fear the fat and that you’re supposed to embrace whole
grain carbohydrates as the energy source for your diet. For me,
obviously, that was not true. And it wasn’t until I was able to find
the Atkins diet that I was actually able to finally find something
that worked for me, that kept me satiated, that I could do forever
and ever amen for the rest of my life.
Ben: Is that pretty much what you use now? The Atkins diet?
Jimmy Moore: I don’t call it the Atkins diet anymore only because I think the
Atkins diet as written is meant to be that kick start into a lifestyle
change. And Dr. Atkins would have been the first to tell you he
doesn’t want everybody staying on induction level of
carbohydrates which is 20 g a day forever. But for some people
Ben, they have to. Other people can get away with – people like
you who exercise like mad men can get away with a lot more
carbohydrate than a Jimmy Moore can even with my exercise
routine. It’s just a matter of individuality and I think that’s what
gets lost in a lot of this discussion over diet is – well this worked
for me, well great that it worked for you. I’m so happy you found
what worked for you. For somebody else, it may be something
else.
Ben: Right. So 20 g of carbohydrate, under 100 calories a day of carbohydrate. You
switched to this Atkins diet and what happened to your body?
Jimmy Moore: Well as you mentioned in the beginning, I was 410 lbs. I was on
three prescription medications for high cholesterol, high blood
pressure and a breathing medication because I was having some
wheezing and within the first month I didn’t do any exercise
because I quite frankly couldn’t hardly breathe so I didn’t want to
try to get on a treadmill and exercise so the first month, it was
pretty much all diet. Following the diet as prescribed by Dr. Atkins
in his book, Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution, I lost 30 lbs that first
month, which again I was 410 so I had a lot to lose. By month two
I was so energetic, had so much energy from the weight loss that I
just had to start exercising. Started off on the treadmill, three miles
an hour for about 15 minutes. I was just exhausted doing that. But
380 lb something guy, I was kind of supposed to be exhausted at
that point. And so I continued the plan of course and by the end of
month two, I had lost 40 more pounds. So by the end of 100 days, I
had lost about 100 lbs., had a little bit of stall in the middle there
because I was trying to climb the carb ladder that Dr. Atkins talks
about and unfortunately that just didn’t work for me and I needed
to climb back down off that ladder a little bit and even still today I
have to stay right around 30 g of carbohydrate or I gain and I start
having issues metabolically. So by the end of that year I lost 180
lbs total. Came completely off all those prescription medications.
Haven’t really had sugar in high quantities in I don’t know how
long Ben. And I feel fantastic. This is definitely a lifestyle change I
can live with and plan on living for the rest of my life.
Ben: What do you weigh now?
Jimmy Moore: I got down to as low as 230 and honestly today, I weigh 275 lbs. I
have been having some issues with a little bit of regain and I’m
working on that. I’m certainly adding in a little extra activity
although I don’t think that necessarily equates to automatic weight
loss. I’m also trying to be mindful of the calories – not that I’m
counting calories but I’m trying to be mindful of them that I’m not
going overboard on the fat and protein that I am consuming
because I’m obviously keeping my carbs pretty low.
Ben: Right. Gotcha. Well to talk a little bit more about the specifics of
what a low carb diet actually looks like, can you walk us through a
typical day of eating for you?
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, and I post every menu and I’ve been doing this for about
three years now on a menu’s blog. It’s at
lowcarbmenus.blogspot.com. If you just want to go back through
and say hey how does this Jimmy Moore guy eat? It’s very
monotonous. I’m one of those creatures of habit. I don’t know if
you’re this way Ben, but if I find something I like, I’ll just keep
eating that. Why mess with a good thing, right? So a typical day
when I was losing weight is about the same as it is now. I’ll have
some fat and protein in the morning. Lately I’ve been having
Marksison’s Primal Fuel protein shakes. That’s been my breakfast.
But I also love a good scrambled eggs with maybe some cream
cheese mixed in for breakfast. Cooked in butter or cooked in
coconut oil. For lunch I could have salad greens with cheese and
bacon and maybe a few seeds, some ranch dressing. That’s the
vegetables part of it and I’ll also have a small burger with a little
cheese. Maybe another side of asparagus or mashed cauliflower or
something like that. Of course, with butter. And then for supper,
again it could vary. Anything from a steak with green leafy
vegetables to occasionally I’ll have a little of low carb bread with
some cheese – make a little grilled cheese out of it too and cook
that in butter or coconut oil. So it’s very high fat, moderate protein,
low carbohydrate.
Ben: Gotcha. Now I know you’re not a scientist per se Jimmy, but for
people who are wondering how the body actually can create energy
from all this whatever it might be – butter or cream cheese or eggs
– where do you get your carbohydrate based energy? Can you
explain how that actually works for you? When you go do an
exercise session, how is your body actually able to get energy from
those foods?
Jimmy Moore: You know my energy levels at those – I told you before we came
on I did yoga this morning and yesterday I did Pilates. I’ll do spin
classes. I love just doing all these things with taking care of my
body and feeling good about it, that’s the neat thing. How do you
get the energy? There’s really a neat word that we talk about in the
low carb community that people should be aware about. It’s called
gluconeogenesis. And what gluconeogenesis does is it basically
takes the protein that you’re consuming – now a lot of people call a
low carb diet a high protein diet but by very definition, it’s really
not high in protein. It’s high in fat. And moderate in protein and
low in carbs. But the moderate amount of protein that you do eat
gets converted by the liver into glucose that the body can use as
fuel. So gluconeogenesis – a shortened version of that is GNG –
you’ll sometimes hear it talked about – allows your body to make
its own carbs. So you don’t have to eat carbs in order to get
carbohydrate or glucose in your body. Your body does it for you.
It’s a beautiful thing.
Ben: Yeah. And especially if you’re overweight, if you have storage fat
to burn, if you have adipose tissue to burn – you’ve got a lot of
potential gluconeogenesis on board. So that’s interesting. Now this
is obviously a question I’m sure a lot of people are going to be
thinking about and that’s heart disease. Heart disease, risk for
cardiovascular problems. The issue obviously with having
mayonnaise and butter and eggs and high cholesterol, high fat
foods in a diet like this – how big of a problem is heart disease risk
among the low carb community?
Jimmy Moore: Well you know they haven’t really done a long term study on this.
I wish they would. So we could settle this nonsense once and for
all. But what they have done and there’s a big one that came out in
January of 2010, that was from a guy named Ronald Kraus and Dr.
Kraus basically took a look at a lot of the studies that have been
out for over a 20 year period that kind of looked at low carb and
the amount of energy intake from various forms – fat, protein,
carbohydrate – and what he found was, hey you know what? This
whole idea that saturated fat is going to clog your arteries, there’s
really no evidence for it. There’s no more heart attacks, there’s no
more strokes. There’s no more heart disease in people who
consume a high saturated fat diet than those who don’t eat that
way. So I think it’s just one of those things that have gotten out
there and the whole cultural discussion of diet, Ben, that people
just kind of believe it because it’s always been. There’s really not
been any science to back it up. Now in my community, in my
forum, in my blog and my podcast show – I’m not hearing about
people keeling over from heart disease or having a heart attack
because they eat a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. Usually what
you hear is people who deal with those things either have some
kind of familiar hypercholesterolemia or something that’s making
them do it genetically or they’re eating more carbs than they’re
letting on.
Ben: I think the interesting thing and of course a lot of medical
professionals will acknowledge this now, is that the more
dangerous form of cholesterol is really the one that’s produce or
aggravated by carbohydrate and specifically a simple carbohydrate
or sugar based carbohydrate sources. The small oxidized
cholesterol.
Jimmy Moore: That’s right. And see, a lot of people – they just hear LDL, and
they just think LDL is one thing. But what they don’t realize Ben,
and I know you realize it is there’s various sizes of LDL and the
size of that LDL and the amount of particles that are in your body
is what’s most important. When you’re eating lots of
carbohydrates, what you’re doing is you’re causing a lot of those
small dents and what I call dangerous LDL particles that can
penetrate the arterial wall – that’s not what you want in your body,
and the only way you can get rid of those is to eat more fat, eat less
carbohydrate and making sure that you do it consistently because
your body remembers. Your body won’t let you get away with
making too many mistakes in that realm. You’re just better off.
Speaking of the particle size, I did a heart scan where they did a
CT chest scan. This was back last year. To see if there was any
arterial plaque buildup that was happening in my chest. You know
what they found, Ben? A big fat zero. None.
Ben: That’s interesting. You know, I want to ask you in a second about
some of the more interesting guests you’ve had because I’ve
listened to your podcast and you’ve had some great guests on.
Scientists, physicians, people in the low carb and also in the non
low carb community. You talking about that reminds me of a
fellow that I had on my show called Roger Drummer, and he was
talking about how he had one person he was working with who had
a big liver issue. Lots of inflammation in the liver, basically a
failing liver and one of the things that the liver relies on is healthy
fat levels and actually not having the cholesterol too low. And the
guy started eating – he was at something like eight to 10 eggs a day
and he came back to the doctor after a couple of months and all his
liver symptoms had completely disappeared because he had
actually brought his cholesterol back up to the level that the body
needed. A lot of people don’t realize that cholesterol is good. Once
you start creating some issues with it in your body from chemicals
or inflammatory food, that’s where it becomes an issue. So you’ve
had a lot of interesting people on your show, and again for people
listening in, you can go find Living La Vida Low Carb Show on
iTunes or just go to livinglavidalowcarb.com or follow the link that
I’ll put on the Shownotes. But in terms of some of the more
interesting guests that you’ve had on your show Jimmy, can you
talk a little bit about the top guests that you’ve had and why?
Jimmy Moore: I’ve had so many, I think as of the recording of this right now, I’m
up to about 417 or so interviews that I’ve done. It’s such an honor
and you know, doing podcasts yourself Ben that when you want to
find somebody, all you do is ask. And they say yes, it’s funny how
that works. And the more you do it, the more you get out there as a
reputation for doing good interviews and people want to come on
your show, and that even attracts people from the other side and
that’s who I want to start with, is one of the very first interviews I
ever did. It was even before I had my podcast show but I had been
working on trying to get a blog interview with Dr. Dean Ornisch –
the big low fat diet guy and my very first interview, I remember I
was so nervous because I had never interviewed anybody before
but he would not do a blog interview. He wouldn’t sit there and
type out all the answers to my questions. He wanted to talk. So I
was like “Ok” and I didn’t even have – I’ve got a headset on right
now and talking to you through Skype – I didn’t even know what
Skype was at the time. I just got a tape recorder out and had it next
to a speaker phone in my office at my job at the time after hours.
And it was like, ok how’s this going to work? But it worked out
pretty good. I pretty much let him talk and let him espouse what he
wanted to espouse because I’m all about keeping an open mind, at
least hearing people out about what they have to say regarding
nutrition and health, and then making my own decision based on
my own experiences and what I’ve learned. So that experience was
really cool, and at the end of the interview Dr. Ornisch said well
why didn’t you challenge me on anything? I was like oh really,
you wanted me to butt back a little bit? Again, I had never ever
done any interviews before.
Ben: Right, you didn’t want him to hang up the phone.
Jimmy Moore: No, I didn’t. I worked like two years trying to get him on the blog.
So, anyways at the end of that, he said you know what? I’m
writing a book and when I’m done with that book I’m going to
come back on your show again. I was like wow. Here he is, this
big low fat diet guy and he wants to come on a show called The
Living La Vida Low Carb Show. Are you sick?
Ben: Did he come back on?
Jimmy Moore: He did come back on and we had him on, his book was called The
Spectrum, and we talked about it and I pretty much let him have it
in a lot of areas. Now you know my style Ben, I don’t beat people
over the head like Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly but I do
sometimes gently challenge people when they have something that
runs counter to what I believe is true. And the same thing
happened recently. I interviewed Neal Barnard who’s the head of
PCRM – Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine. The
same thing happened. I could have beat him over the head with a
lot of my questions but I choose to try to learn even from people
who might be antagonistic to my overall message, I think we can
learn from anybody. Something. So, those are two that stick out for
the opposite ends of the spectrum. And I appreciated both of them
because both – Neal Barnard and Dean Ornisch – were very kind
to me when they didn’t have to be. They were very generous in
their time and as much as they would come on a show that they
know runs counter to what they believe, and they were just nothing
but cordial and kind towards me and I have nothing but good
things to say about them as human beings. I don’t care for what
they believe nutritionally but as human beings…
Ben: For people listening in, nutritionally these are the guys who are
very into the whole grain/plant based diet with the moderate to
high amounts of carbohydrates and primarily low fat intake.
Jimmy Moore: That’s right. Speaking of plant based – I tried to get T. Collin
Campbell to come on my show. He’s the guy that wrote The China
Study, the big vegan diet bible that everyone quotes from and he at
first agreed but then he kind of found out about me a little more,
and he was like well I don’t want to come on a show where I’m
going to be asked about why I think carbs are good and all that.
I’m like really? That’s what’s your problem?
Ben: I just want to throw this in there while we’re on this subject, if you
look at one of those low carb lifestyles like veganism or
vegetarianism – a lot of people would argue that humans were just
kind of designed like gorillas or chimpanzees to thrive on eating
plants and that’s a healthy diet especially if they’re somehow able
to get enough protein in. What do you say to someone who is a
proponent of that eating style?
Jimmy Moore: I say go for it if it works for you. I say if you found the plan that
has made you healthy and healthy by all the markers, lipids, blood
sugar, everything and veganism is the way that got you there, then
I say keep doing veganism. Now that’s controversial within my
community because they’re like well you have to tell them to eat
low carbs. No I don’t. Low carbs works for me. Low carbs works
for a lot of people, but it’s not the be all end all for everybody.
Don’t believe that. That’s why we have this obesity mess today.
We’ve been told monolithically that you have to eat a low calorie,
low fat diet. You have to exercise until you drop. You have to eat
healthy whole grains. All of these monolithic proclamations of diet
is what I think has gotten us into this trouble to begin with, Ben.
And it’s not until we can individualize diet and individualize a
specific exercise routine and all these things that people are truly
going to find what works for them.
Ben: Now do you believe, speaking of individualization that some
people may – based on blood type or metabolic type – actually
have a need for a higher carbohydrate intake or do you believe that
metabolic typing is something that may be true, that a guy like you
might have a blood type or a metabolic type that thrives on low
carbohydrates whereas some people would simply melt into a
puddle of uselessness on a low carb diet?
Jimmy Moore: I think as a starting point for someone who’s not sure Ben, about
what way will work for them, I think as a good starting point, at
least cutting down on the amount of carbohydrates is a good start.
And then you can tweak it from there. I think what happens is
people drop the fat and that’s the wrong macronutrient to drop
first. I think they need to drop the carbohydrates first, see how
they’re doing with dropping the carbs and of course when you drop
the carbs as a percentage of your total calories, your fat has to go
up by definition. So it’s kind of like a high fat, moderate protein,
low carb – that’s a good place to start. Do I think there’s some
people that do better on higher carbs? I don’t know. I don’t know
how that feels like. All I know is I have to, for me and for the
people that I’ve seen, deal with a lot of metabolic syndromes –
diabetes and obesity – those people, nine times out of ten are going
to have some kind of carbohydrate intolerance. And they’re going
to need to cut their carbs. Somebody like yourself who’s very
svelte and very fit, maybe you can get away with more
carbohydrates and it doesn’t bother your health or your weight.
Again, it goes to that customization of the diet for who you are and
I think Ben, a lot of us have damaged ourselves. You don’t get to
be 400 plus pounds without doing some damage to your
metabolism. And I think that’s part of the reason why I’m having a
little bit of issues today being higher in weight than I’d like to be.
It’s because I think I so damaged my body from all those years of
poor eating and you don’t even want to know what I was eating all
those years – that I think it’s catching up to me in my late 30s that I
have to be that much more vigilant with what I’m doing to keep it
in check.
Ben: Yeah. I would absolutely agree that there’s definitely some insulin
sensitivity issues that can be taught to the body with chronic high
carbohydrate intake that takes place when you gain weight like
that. Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right and I think the other very
important point that you’ve made so far is that switching to a low
carbohydrate diet doesn’t necessarily mean switching to a high
protein diet. I think a lot of people leave out that equation that you
have emphasized and that is that you can include fat in a low
carbohydrate diet and fat can actually be processed and utilized by
the body for energy and is in fact crucial in some cases, and the
amount of cholesterol you’re getting from the fat in the absence of
the inflammatory carbohydrate may not be as cardiovascularly
damaging. And I’ve been looking over your
lowcarbmenu.blogspot.com and that is a stark contrast between
your diet and many others that I’ve seen who are eating low
carbohydrate and that is you’re not necessarily on a high protein
diet. Your fat intake appears to be much higher than a lot of folks I
have seen taking in a low carb diet. So you talk a little bit about the
controversial or the opposite of the low carb interview guests you
had on the show. How about some of the more interesting folks
you’ve had from the low fat community?
Jimmy Moore: 2010 has been a banner year for the podcast, I’ve been able to get so
many people from the low carb world to come on. It’s almost like
now Ben, they’re knocking on my door. They’re like “Can I come
on your show and talk about…” I’m like “Come on.” So it’s really
neat. At the beginning of this year, I was able to interview Eric
Westman who is the big low carb researcher at Duke University.
He’s also a practitioner who uses low carb with patients so he kind
of has it from both ends of the medical world, both from the
research and the practitioner side and he is one of the three co-
authors of the new Atkins for a New You book that came out –
kind of the updated Atkins, they wanted to add the new science
and all three of them – it was Jeff Bollucks, Steve Finney and Eric
Westman. Those three are like the big three when it comes to
researchers in the low carb world and Eric has become a very good
friend of mine so of course he was very happy to come on the
show and talk about the book. He’s just such a neat guy because he
came at this from a total skeptical standpoint. He was like you
know what? I don’t think this is going to work but I have patients
coming in telling me they lost weight reading a diet book. He said I
had to find out what this diet book was. He went and saw the
Atkins diet and saw what they did and started talking to them about
doing some research. It’s just really neat to see these people that
work behind the scenes that are really doing yeoman’s work and I
also did interview Jeff Bolluck later on in the year as well. Both of
those guys are just doing incredible work getting the word out in
the science world about low carbs. People may not know them,
they may not be household names but they should be because they
are doing incredible work. One of the people that I did interview
and I’ve had the privilege of doing it several times now is Gary
Tobbs who wrote Good Calories, Bad Calories. His upcoming
book Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It – I think he’s
really catapulted the discussion, Ben, about this subject to the
mainstream.
Ben: That was Gary Tobbs, a low carber?
Jimmy Moore: He is. He actually does eat this way. I’ve asked him about that. I
said Gary, you eat this way? Because he’s not a fat guy and I was
like do you eat low carb? He’s like well after all my research,
absolutely I do now. So he’ll have bacon and eggs with some
tomato slices for breakfast. Now he does talk about how he still
has the notion from his grown up days that he has to have a little
bit of carbohydrate like in starchy vegetables from time to time, or
maybe a whole grain bread from time to time just because he had
that so ingrained in him as a kid. That was funny when he said that.
But he definitely I think more than anybody in the past few years
has moved the discussion along in a productive way so people are
seriously taking a look at it. When Dr. Atkins died, everybody
thought well there goes low carb. Nobody’s going to really pick up
the mantle and run with it. Well Gary Tobbs took that as a
challenge and has really done a great job I think. When this new
book comes out, it’s going to be a huge splash because it’s a lot
more user friendly than Good Calories, Bad Calories which was
meant for medical minded people to read. I think that people are
really going to be surprised pleasantly by what he shares in that
book.
Ben: Interesting.
Jimmy Moore: One more guest that took me forever but I’m so glad I got him was
Dr. Robert Lustig. Dr. Lustig is the fructose guy. He believes
fructose is at the heart of why we deal with many of the health and
weight issues as a culture today. And he was neat. But it was so
funny because when I first contacted him, I said come on the
Living La Vida Low Carb Show, we’d love to have you. People
are asking about you. He’s got this grand video on YouTube called
Sugar, The Bitter Truth. I’m sure you’ve seen that. And so I said
people are begging to have you come on my show. Will you come
on? No, because I don’t believe in the low carb lifestyle. I went,
what do you mean no? And it wasn’t until Sean Crocston, one of
our fellow podcasters said hey that Jimmy Moore guy is a good
dude, go on his show that he finally said ok. But I’m not a
supporter of low carb. You don’t have to be. I’ve had people on
who are opposite of low carb. We just talk about health. And that’s
definitely what you’re about. When he came on, it was so funny
Ben because we did the interview and everything went great and
we aired it and it’s gone on to be the top rated podcast on my
podcast site of the year. No other show, even Gary – nobody else’s
podcast became even close to the number of listens that that one
got.
Ben: Now does Dr. Lustig believe that fructose from fruit based sugars
is just as bad as fructose from the high fructose corn syrup and
sodas?
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, I think he does. Because fructose is fructose in his mind, and
obviously high fructose corn syrup is a lot more concentrated form
of fructose. But fructose is fructose and it’s going to count towards
your total amount. He’s not total no fructose. I think he said yeah I
think you could probably get away with as much as 30 g a day of
fructose, and I’m assuming he means from fruits and things like
that.
Ben: Right. That would be a piece or two of fruit, which you got the
nutrient density and the water and the fiber and all that jazz. I tend
to be on the side of the fence that if it’s from fruit, it’s really not as
much of an issue. So you’ve had one interesting experience that I
wanted to ask you about before I let you go, and that’s that you’ve
had a chance to testify – was that before congress – you went to
testify?
Jimmy Moore: Actually it was before the USDA dietary guidelines committee.
Ben: What was that all about?
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, the 2010 dietary guidelines which as of the recording of this
is only just a couple of weeks away of being released in early
December, they put out these dictates of how people should be fed.
It’s basically the same old, same old. You’ve heard about the food
pyramid over the years where grains are at the bottom and fat is at
the very top. And it’s like nothing has changed, Ben. They haven’t
been looking, despite the fact that they have this grand scientific
advisory committee that they go from all the various aspects of
nutrition and health and academia and they try to find the best of
the best of the best people and they come up with these guidelines
that pretty much says keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing.
And I’m thinking, let’s see, obesity is worse. Heart disease is
worse. Diabetes is much worse. Why would we want to keep doing
the same thing over and over again? Isn’t that insanity? So when
they were coming up with these guidelines, I was like well why
don’t you put some people on the scientific advisory committee
who are from the low carb world? People like Eric Westman and
Jeff Bolluck and Steve Finney would be great to put on that panel.
Totally black listed. Totally left out of the conversation, and
despite all the great low carb studies that have come out over the
last couple of years, they totally ignored all of them. And came out
with this very low fat, high carb, exercise – it’s just like really?
We’re going down that path again? So I said you know what? I’m
going to go to Washington DC and I’m going to tell my story
because they deserve to see the ramifications of what they’re doing
to people. So it was about me and maybe six other people in the
low carb community and the rest were paid lobbyists for
everything. Soy, berry, meats – everything. You name it, there was
a lobbyist there. And ironically Ben, Dr. Neal Barnard right next to
me.
Ben: Wow.
Jimmy Moore: I looked over at him and say “Hi Dr. Barnard.” Oh do we know
each other? Yeah I’m going to be interviewing you soon. I’m
Jimmy Moore. Oh you’re Jimmy Moore, I’ve been wanting to
meet you. I’m like I bet you do.
Ben: But no fights broke out right?
Jimmy Moore: No. Like I say, he’s a very nice man and that’s part of the problem
is people want to vilify Dean Ornisch and Neal Barnard. They’re
not really bad people so it’s hard to vilify them. Anyway when it
came time for me to get up there and give my spiel because
everybody got I believe it was three minutes each, and most of the
people that got up there again were paid lobbyists on behalf of
these different groups. They were reading from a script. I didn’t
bring a script. I just totally shot from the heart and told them – I’m
like look, you’ve been telling people to cut their fat and to cut their
calories and increase their exercise forever. What has it gotten us?
We have more obesity, more heart disease, more diabetes, and I
said you know what, I used to be one of those people 400 plus
pounds and I decided to do everything that you told me to do
except I’m doing it the opposite. You told me to eat less fat, I’m
going to eat more fat. You told me to eat more carbohydrate, I’m
going to eat less carbohydrate. You should have seen their eyes.
They were all bugging out. Every single one of them – Jeff
Bolluck was saying he was watching them, he said most of the
time when the others were talking they were looking down at some
papers, whatever. He said when I started talking and getting into
my spiel, he said every one of them was looking right at me. So
that was kind of funny. But at the end of my talk I basically said
you know what, I’m here representing a lot of people and I want to
let you know that if you continue to put out these kinds of
recommendations of low fat, low calorie and keep making that the
mainstay of what we have as healthy in America, I’m going to be
back here five years from now and we’re going to have more
obesity, more heart disease, more diabetes. And I’m going to stand
here again before this committee, look you right in the eye and ask
why?
Ben: Do you feel that there’s going to be any changes in the upcoming
2010 standards Jimmy?
Jimmy Moore: Oh heck no. They’re not going to change a thing. The USDA was
created for one reason and one reason only. They want to protect
their interests, and their interests are grain based companies.
Ben: And corn too, to a limited extent.
Jimmy Moore: Exactly. And so, you don’t expect them to bite the hand that feeds
them. I think that’s one of the reasons we need to remove the
dietary guidelines from the USDA, make it an independent, non-
governmental third party that truly does bring in researchers and
scientists and academia people that can truly look at these things.
And some people may say nobody ever listens to the dietary
guidelines anyway, but people don’t realize this but the American
Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, welfare
programs, school lunch programs – all of these things are based on
what is in the dietary guidelines.
Ben: Absolutely.
Jimmy Moore: So indirectly it affects us all.
Ben: That’s what I studied all throughout college, was physiology,
nutrition, tennis classes and everything from sports nutrition to
weight loss was all based off that pyramid and those guidelines. So
interesting. Well Jimmy you’ve given a lot of resources during our
interview today. You mentioned Good Calories, Bad Calories by
Gary Tobbs for a good for people to read. You mentioned your
lowcarbmenu.blogspot.com and of course your podcast the Living
La Vida Low Carb podcast that people can get for free of course
on iTunes, and you have a website as well that’s kind of a hub for a
lot of your other books and podcasts and things of that nature.
Your exact website is what again?
Jimmy Moore: The blog or the website?
Ben: The website that would allow people to tap into all your other
stuff.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, that’s www.livinglavidalowcarb.com.
Ben: www.livinglavidalowcarb.com. So we’ll put a link to that in the
Shownotes as well and check out some of the guests that Jimmy
talked about today. Go back and listen to some of the podcast
episodes and check out some of his interviews. It’s good stuff. So,
Jimmy anything else you’d like to tell the audience before I let you
go.
Jimmy Moore: Well, just find a plan that works for you, follow it exactly as
prescribed and then never stop doing it for the rest of your life. If
you do that, then you’ve found what works for you and you can’t
help but live a long and healthy life.
Ben: Alright. Thanks Jimmy. Folks, until next time, this is Ben
Greenfield and Jimmy Moore signing out from
bengreenfieldfitness.com.
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