Written by Christopher Kelly
July 30, 2015
[0:00:00]
Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly. Today, I'm joined by my food scientist, Julie.
Julie: Hello.
Christopher: And the podcaster and host of Livin' La Vida Low-Carb and the author of the new Ketogenic Cookbook, Jimmy Moore. Hi, Jimmy.
Jimmy: Hey, what's up, guys?
Christopher: Jimmy is somebody I've been working with for a few months now. We've done lots of testing together. And we've found some problems that Jimmy has already done a ton of work on fixing. But before we get into that, why don't you tell us about the cookbook, Jimmy, because I was quite excited to see that when I got home from my travels to the UK yesterday.
Jimmy: Yeah. Last year, I released the book Keto Clarity, which we tried to make a resource for people who desire to be in a ketogenic state, here's how you do it. And that have all the different health parameters that get better when you eat a ketogenic diet, which is a low carb moderated protein high fat diet. And so when the book came out last August, it just was an immediate huge success and my publisher called me and said, "We want a cookbook." And I'm like, "You do know my idea of cooking is throw, throw, throw, stir, cook, serve?" And then eat this wonderful meal.
I said, "Can I collaborate with somebody that I know is really anal retentive about writing down quarter cup of this, a pinch of that and all this?" I went out and got one of my fellow ketogenic enthusiast, brilliant recipe maker named Maria Emmerich. Do you guys know her?
Christopher: I haven't heard of her but I have now.
Julie: Yeah.
Jimmy: Marianutrition.com is her website, if you want to learn more about her. But she has two beautiful little adopted boys from Ethiopia and her and her husband Craig are just awesome pillars in the community. Anyway, she had self-published about eight books and I was like, she deserves to get a higher profile. So I had to go back to Victor about it and I said, "Okay, I found the lady I want to collaborate with." And Maria was all excited to collaborate with me on a project.
So we wrote this thing. She did basically all the recipe development. I did all of the front matter, which include a lot more information than what I put in Keto Clarity, a lot of the historical data about ketogenic diets, where they came from and how they're being used and where we are today in the movement, so to speak. Christine, my wife, actually crunched all the numbers. So if you like calories and fat and protein and carbs and fiber and you want to know what's in your meals, we put that with every single recipe. So that was pretty cool.
And then some gorgeous, gorgeous photos in here of all the recipes as well. A lot of cookbooks, they'll show a few photos but we have one for every single recipe. And, of course, that front cover is just beautiful. Couldn't be more proud of this book. And July 28th is -- I don't know when this airs -- but when it came or will come out and, yeah, The Ketogenic Cookbook is what it's called. It's going to be available on Amazon, of course. It's there right now. Or you can go to Barnes and Noble. It will be well represented in all the Barnes and Noble stores as well as Books-A-Million and all your independent retailers. We're also going to be in all the Costco Canada stores. We just found that out. We're still working on Costco America but it's going to be a really cool project.
Julie: That's great. Yeah, it's a beautiful book, Jimmy. I really enjoy it and I'm excited to dig in and start cooking from it as well.
Jimmy: Lots of real food. That's the cool thing too that Maria and I both have such a heart for using real food ingredients. Unfortunately, a lot of the low carb cookbooks that are out there use these funky ingredients with artificial sweeteners and almond flour and all the treat recipes. That's just not where we are. And this is a good segue to what we're going to talk about today. But, yeah, I mean, it's really cool when you focus on real food. You can make it taste really good.
Julie: Definitely.
Christopher: The most important thing, I think, or the most important kind of criticism it answers is that the ketogenic diet is somehow restrictive or it's going to be too difficult to stick to long term but just because of the restrictions. When you thumb your way through -- This is a big book and it's full of lots of really beautiful pictures.
Jimmy: Thank you.
Christopher: Yeah. It seems hard to imagine that anybody could thumb their way through that and say, "This is not a diet that anybody could stick to." Like that's just completely ridiculous. It's just like the imagination.
Jimmy: I want a mom to pick it up at Barnes and Noble and go, "That's a great book full of recipes that look delicious and healthy." Not, "Oh, it's such a restrictive diet. Maybe I'll figure out how to--" No. I just hope it's -- The real food, I think, is going to shine in this more than the ketogenic aspect.
Christopher: Yeah. That will be the real acid test when you get people buying it, they're cooking the recipes and not really know much about the ketogenic diet. This is just a good recipe book. The ketogenic thing is a bonus.
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Jimmy: All I know is I want that meal on the front cover right now.
Christopher: Yeah. So today, I won't get into all the testing that we did together too deeply because we've already had that conversation and it's been on the Livin' La Vida Low-Carb podcast. I'll link to that in the show notes. One of the things that came out of that was maybe Jimmy was deficient in a few different nutrients and that it might be possible to get those nutrients from food. And so this is one of the main areas on which we concentrate at Nourish Balance Thrive.
I have to say that most of the thinking here is not really mine. It's Julie's. I got into this business because of my own personal need and I have to say that it wasn't really me that got myself out here. It was Julie with her cooking and her brain power. That experience is working out equally as well for all the other people that we work with now. And so even though Jimmy is an expert and has produced literally a thousand podcasts now, I think it might be useful for you to have a conversation with Julie about what you're eating right now in the hope that we can maybe make some tweaks that make you less deficient.
You started by sending me your food diary which I entered into an app called CRON-O-Meter. I have difficulty saying that word. Yeah, that's how it's pronounced. CRON-O-Meter. CRON-O-Meter is nice because it gives you this macronutrient, micronutrient sorry, breakdown. So you can actually see how much fiber and iron and calcium and vitamin A and all the other micronutrients you can think of in your diet. Of course, it's not perfectly accurate. You have to take it with a pinch of salt.
And, of course, it doesn't take into the account the bioavailability of the micronutrients in your diet. But it's kind of a good place to start. It gives you a rough ballpark. The other thing is you have to remember these are just the RDAs. So this is just kind of the "let's not die" type limits here. I think you could do better than this. For some of these micronutrients, you came up short. So I'm wondering whether we can make some changes to your diet to improve that situation. Before I go any further, I should ask you what you're eating now because I know it's changed a bit since you first sent me that food diary.
Jimmy: A bit is an understatement.
Christopher: So why don't I run real quick through this list of food that you sent me for one day. So pork sausage, beef broth, butter, eggs, chards, spinach, kale, cheese, tomato sauce, garlic, salt, oregano, cacao, sweetener, kombucha, a lot of heavy whipping cream, some Quest protein chips, Stevia, more heavy whipping cream, cheese. A lot of your calories were coming from dairy. I wondered whether that would be a problem. What I remember actually, one of the main things I thought was that there wasn't that many calories total. Because you're a tall guy, right? I mean, obviously, you have a weight loss goal.
Jimmy: 6'3".
Christopher: 6'3", yes. So this is not very many calories.
Jimmy: How much was the calories there?
Christopher: I'm just looking for the total. I can't find it now.
Jimmy: It'd be 1900?
Christopher: Yeah, because it's a screen shot. Yeah, that's right. So, 2300, 2400 some days.
Jimmy: Yeah, that's generally where I try to stay, right around 2300 to 2400. So you think that's too low?
Christopher: What do you think, Julie?
Jimmy: I think it all kind of depends, which is how I make all these decisions when I'm speaking to people. You have to dig a little bit and get a synopsis of what's going on. If you're somebody that has a lot of healing to do or if you're somebody that's an athlete and you're putting extraneous strain on yourself, you have different caloric needs. And one of the things that I find most common with people that we work with that they have a lot of goals in terms of getting themselves, fixing a lot, righting a lot of wrong in terms of things that we find in a testing.
So they've got gut healing to do. Maybe they have an infection to kill. Maybe they have a weight loss goal. All of those things equal different caloric needs, different nutrient needs, all of that stuff. But mainly, what I find is most people aren't eating enough to support those processes. So if your body needs to heal, you don't want to distract it by starving it. You don't want to distract it by not giving it the proper nutrients that it needs, so kind of creating this environment for your body to say, "Hey, okay, I can turn down the immune system. I can reduce inflammation. I have all the nutrients I need to start maybe thinking about losing weight."
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It's just sussing out what are the things that are missing to create this ideal situation where healing can take place. And that's kind of where I start. For you, for somebody that we know now after looking at test results that there's some significant healing that needs to take place or some significant wrongs that need righting, then, yeah, I would say that maybe a little bit some more calories might be what's needed but probably what goes hand in hand with that are the type of calories and where they're coming from.
And do we need to reduce some of the calories from maybe an inflammatory source or from maybe a source that isn't providing you enough nutrients and replace it with a different source? In your case, taking the diary and really drastically reducing that for the main purpose of, the main reason being that it's not the most nutrient dense thing that you could be consuming with the deficiencies you have. So replacing that.
Jimmy: Right. And I'm not eating that diet right now. I mean, the diet you just described is radically different than what I'm eating now.
Julie: Yeah, I know. That's really important. It's like figuring out where those changes need to come from. It's kind of how you structure these conversations. I think that's great and I'd be really interested to hear what changes you've made and what instigated that.
Jimmy: Well, instigated is your [0:11:32] [Audio Glitch].
Julie: Yeah.
Jimmy: Telling me I needed to change or else. So I'm like, "Yes, sir."
Christopher: The dairy thing, obviously, there'd be some people listening to this saying, "Wow, dairy is excellent source of fat soluble vitamin and this guy is an idiot." That might be true but I still think it's worth doing the experiment to see what happens when you--
Jimmy: Oh, yeah, sure.
Christopher: So tell me what did you change then?
Jimmy: Before I tell you what the changes are, it's interesting because I started posting a lot of the pictures of the foods I'm about to describe to you on social media and people are like, "Man, that's a lot of food." It's kind of funny hearing you say I'm not eating enough food. The main changes that I did -- And just to let you know and maybe this is something we can talk about, Julie, is I tend to eat maybe one to two meals in a day and those meals tend to be pretty sizable when it's just a one meal just to make sure I'm getting enough calories and, like you said, not provoking that starvation response.
That's one reason people think I'm eating a lot of food is they see it on one fell swoop and then, "Oh, you're having that for breakfast, lunch and dinner?" And I'm like, "No, I eat one, maybe two meals a day and that's it because I'm so satisfied." What did I change? I now have added in bone broth to every meal. Every single day, I'm having copious amounts of beef bone broth, sometimes chicken bone broth. And then I'm having obviously real foods. I'm having grass fed meats that are cooked in that bone broth with some butter. I know that's still a dairy source. I could certainly switch to ghee if you think that would help or coconut oil. And then I'm adding a ton of vegetables. Butter is okay?
Julie: Yeah. That's not usually where I start. I mean, if it seems like an out and out right, like allergy or there is an issue, butter is not usually the problem. It's more of the milk thing. Milk is an issue.
Jimmy: I got you.
Christopher: I think it would be an appropriate time to interject and describe some of Julie's history. Julie is a dairy scientist. That's what she did her master's degree. She's actually spent time in a milking shed with cows. It's kind of interesting. Do you want to talk a little bit about that work and what your opinions are on dairy now at this time?
Julie: Yeah. I mean, I don't need to harp on the dairy industry or dairy products.
Jimmy: Yes, you do.
Julie: Yeah, it's interesting. Looking back, at that time I didn't really realize that this would be so informative later on. But studying how to take these proteins out of -- There's tons of proteins in milk, obviously, which is why it's probably desired food for people and why they think it's like a really good nutrient dense. It is really nutrient dense. But if you think about what milk is for, it's for baby cow, it's for making baby animals bigger and it wasn't milk that we, as humans, were necessarily designed to eat.
That doesn't mean that we can't eat it. But I think it's important to keep that in context especially when you're trying to solve a problem with your health. Because it can cause a lot of reactions because of the types of proteins that it has. One of the things, one of the many projects that I worked in was actually taking proteins from milk to create other products and put them in other products, things like baby formula and things like that.
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So it's not useless. It definitely has its place. But I think not enough attention is paid to what is milk designed to do, what can it, do and what do we need to think about when we're trying to decide how it fits into our diet. And, I think, it's just kind of a lot of people take it because it's something very traditional part of a lot of cultures to consume it. We have a lot of people grew up eating it and it's always, without fail, when someone comes to me and they've got issues going on and I asked them to remove dairy or if they've removed it before, everybody's initial response is, "Oh, I'm not lactose intolerant."
I say, "Okay. Well, that's fine. But what about the proteins in milk? There's a lot of proteins in milk that you could be sensitive to." And casein specifically. And those proteins will look very similar to gluten. So if you do have gluten issues, then that's definitely something you want to pull out of your diet because you don't want to run the risk of crossing them or cross-reactivity. I just think it's something that it gets brushed off to the side like, "Oh, it doesn't matter. Oh, it doesn't give me outright symptoms so, therefore, I don't have a problem with it." If you really want to get down to the root of what's going on with you, it's worthwhile to do the experiment like you mentioned earlier, Chris.
Christopher: So then butter versus ghee?
Julie: Yeah, butter versus ghee. So the reason I don't always have an outright issue with butter is that the milk solids in butter are generally quite a lot lower than just drinking straight milk or cream, for example, even some cheeses. It's not the first thing that I eliminate but if you're doing a true elimination kind of experiment, then you would want to remove it and replace it with ghee which is clarified butter which obviously has all if not most, more of the milk solids removed than butter.
Christopher: It's really delicious as well if you have it and it's not difficult to make either, ghee.
Julie: No, it's not. I typically make it myself. But you can buy it. That's 100% certified free of milk solids. But, yeah, Jimmy, I don't think that that's something necessarily that you have to do. I'd be much more interested to hear if you feel like there's been any changes from just removing some of the other dairy.
Christopher: But why don't you get through -- I mean, you were just telling us what you're eating. Why don't we finish that?
Jimmy: Yeah. In the pan that I'm cooking with the butter, grass fed butter, by the way, with the bone broth from grass fed cows, and then the grass fed meats, I'm adding in all these delicious vegetables I'd been getting from the farmers' market which I know this will make you perk up, Julie, because I know you're a maven at that as well. Literally lots and lots of green leafy vegetables. I'm totally in love with kale right now. I could eat that all day every day. It's just awesome.
And then some non-starchy vegetables, things like squash. I'm looking at my front yard now. I have a zucchini in my garden, cucumbers. There are some tomatoes. They're a little slow coming in. Literally, just real food based foods. And I'll eat that. And that will keep me satisfied for hours. And if I have to eat a little bit later in the day, it's more of the same. And if I want a little something sweet, I'm not turning to any artificial sweetened things or anything like that. It's mostly I'm going to try to be, maybe a few berries with some cream. But very little of that. I don't hardly ever have fruit just for the obvious reasons, because I'm extremely insulin resistant.
Christopher: And then you found that adding those vegetables -- I know a lot of people that are on a ketogenic diet will be worried that if they add these vegetables in that it's going to somehow mess with their blood glucose. So you have found that -- For example, the zucchini, you don't notice any glycemic impact with those?
Jimmy: Well, I think it's all in the dosage, in how much. And each person is going to have to kind of tinker and test to see how much is right for them. I do know I could go overboard on those but there's certainly no harm in trying and testing anyway to see how you do because, like you said, I was deficient in some of those key micronutrients and possibly adding in just a strategic amount of these vegetables could be all I need to put me back over the top again.
Julie: I think that's important. I mean, to point out that a kind of individuality of all of this and that. That's another thing that we're always getting people to do, is to check their blood glucose. Not everybody we work with has the goal of being in ketosis but we do kind of try to move everyone more towards more of a fat-burning approach to their diet or at least a more higher fat moderate carb or low carb moderate protein kind of diet even if their ultimate goal is to not be checking their ketone levels or anything like that.
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Jimmy: Right.
Julie: But just checking the blood glucose for people, I look at it as kind of a tool to decide what fruit, what vegetables, what carbohydrates. If you're going to consume carbohydrates, you should find the ones that work best for you and work best for your level of insulin resistance and/or just how your body responds to them. Some people, for example, me, I really can't eat sweet potatoes.
Jimmy: Yeah, me neither.
Julie: At all. I mean, I could maybe eat like one or two slivers but if I was to eat a quarter of a sweet potato or half a sweet potato, I know exactly what my blood glucose is going to do. And it's not pretty.
Jimmy: You mean, it's not a safe--
Christopher: All we need to do is some kettlebell swings in between bites.
Jimmy: You mean, it's not a safe starch?
Julie: Yeah, no. But that isn't everyone. That doesn't describe everyone. So that's one of the main reasons. When people get annoyed that they have to check their blood glucose and I point out to them that it's actually really useful tool for making these choices because sometimes making these choices blind is very overwhelming. You feel like, oh, I just want to eat X, Y or Z and I don't understand why my blood glucose is out of control. It's like, okay, well, let's look at this in context. Let's maybe add some variety of vegetables. Let's look at vegetables as a little bit of another vehicle for fat, to get some more fat into your diet.
And play around with the types and kinds of carbohydrates that you're eating whether they're -- Maybe that carbohydrate is just fiber or maybe that carbohydrate is a little bit more of a starchy carbohydrate. Which ones can you tolerate? How much of them can you tolerate? That's the second piece. Can you get away with half a sweet potato or maybe only a quarter of a sweet potato? And really trying to dial that in and answer those questions is another great reason for using the blood glucose meter.
Jimmy: And I think it's important for people to know that food is not the only thing that affects that blood glucose. So you've got stress levels and lack of sleep and hormonal disorder. I mean, there's all kind of things that can impact that blood sugar. Just because it's elevated doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong in your diet.
Christopher: Yeah. So my idea of swinging kettlebells in between bites of sweet potato is probably a bad one because you get some stress hormones going and some gluconeogenesis going and then you might see it.
Julie: You're just trying to make a case for me to never eat sweet potatoes again.
Jimmy: Or to never swing kettlebells. No, that's not happening. I got the kettlebell. The last time we talked, Chris, you mentioned getting kettlebell, so I've got a 30-pounder now.
Julie: Good.
Jimmy: I've got a 15-pounder, 20-pounder and 30-pounder. Yeah.
Christopher: We'll get you up to 70 in no time at all.
Jimmy: That sounds painful.
Julie: I'm not there yet either, Jimmy, don't worry.
Christopher: It doesn't take long actually. It's not very long that I'd been doing kettlebells and I can already do Turkish get up with 35. I think it's a 70. It might be an 80 that I'm swinging now. The change is rapid.
Jimmy: I do get the tire, by the way.
Christopher: Yeah, that's a good one.
Jimmy: Yeah. I finally found the tire that I could flip.
Julie: Oh, good.
Jimmy: That thing is heavy.
Christopher: I'm sure.
Jimmy: Speaking of swinging a kettlebell, that bad boy there.
Christopher: So before we get too far off topic here, the testing, there is some method in our madness, on the organic acid test that you did, we saw undergrowth. So there's a whole section where the organic acid -- So these are the metabolites that's being measured in the urine sample are coming from bacteria. And I know from the research that I've done and the various experts that I've interviewed that the human gut, the collection of microbes, the bacteria that live in your gut are really important for determining health outcomes.
And it's very unusual for me to see what I saw on your test result, Jimmy, which is really low levels of all of the markers that come from bacteria. I wouldn't like to say for sure that this means that there's no bacteria there or undergrowth or anything like that. Again, I think it's definitely -- Once you seen this, it's worth doing the experiment especially since I've seen on the CHRON-O-Meter results that your fiber was only a third of what the RDA is.
Jimmy: It's higher now.
Christopher: It's higher now. Yes. Have you been tracking this? Have you actually got any more fiber?
Jimmy: I don't physically track anything. That's dieting and I stopped dieting years ago. But I know just from the sheer volume of what I'm eating I'm getting probably eight or nine times the amount of vegetables that I had when you got my list before.
Christopher: That's great.
Julie: That's a huge improvement. I think that's a really important message for people. I think that's one of the most common myths that I have to bust when trying to transition someone to more of a fat-burning state.
[0:25:05]
And they are just afraid of vegetables and they feel like they -- They just look at them as all as just one big carbohydrate family. I think that that's really important for people to understand that you can, and we think we've proven that ourselves by the diet that we follow now for the last over a year, is that you can definitely maintain a ketogenic diet and still get enough fiber to feed the good bacteria in your gut and maintain ketosis.
I definitely fluctuate in and out of ketosis and don't really care. But you are much more adherent to that diet than I am, Christopher. But I think that that's really important because I think I would really hate for someone to get the impression that they can't follow a high fat carbohydrate diet and--
Christopher: To be quite specific about what types of carbohydrates you're talking about.
Jimmy: And that's the key, I think. I think choosing your carbs wisely, just like you would any part of your diet, choosing that wisely is so important. And if you're not choosing the right kinds of carbs, it should not be surprising when you don't see the results you want. And so, yeah, I mean, I have zeroed in specifically on, and thanks to my talking to Christopher, is getting a wide of variety of those vegetables. Literally, when I'm at the farmers' [0:26:31] [Audio Glitch] looking for the most oddball vegetables that I can.
Julie: Yeah. I think that's great. I mean, I tell people that find something you've never tried before. All the farmers are really knowledgeable about how to cook everything or the best way to prepare it, so they're a wealth of information. And usually ends up being pretty delicious. Yeah, I think that's good. That's really.
Christopher: It's time I should credit Dr. Grace Liu, who's been on my podcast, for educating me on these different types of carbohydrate. The thing that I found so delightful about that education was the fact that it wasn't really the starchy vegetables that she was talking about as being important food for the bacteria. It's all the kind of non-starchy things. In fact, the types of bacteria that like to eat starch are not really the ones that you want to be encouraging to grow anyway. And so I think I first came to her through the debate over the raw potato starch which I'm now pretty convinced is a terrible idea.
Jimmy: And so does she. She thinks it's a terrible idea too.
Christopher: Yeah. And it kind of makes sense. If you just silently check that thing, who or what civilization would have eaten raw starch?
Jimmy: Yeah. Did cavemen go around with Bob's Red Mill potato starch? No.
Christopher: No. I think it's also true that probably cavemen didn't eat Glucomannan or acacia root powder or Inulin from Now Foods. But these things can still be useful. But it's interesting to see the wide variety of vegetables that Grace talks about are those same types of carbohydrates that's in those vegetables. What are types of vegetables we are talking about? We should probably name some names here.
Julie: I think another thing that you touched on that I think is important is the variety, the species, the number, the sheer volume of species that we would have eaten a long time ago. So with modern agriculture and kind of the rise of the supermarket, even farmers' markets now, just because it's a matter of taste. There's very few species of vegetables left, like the number of different types of vegetables is very, very--
Christopher: They're all bloody broccoli when you think of it.
Julie: There's many brassicas, so like broccoli and kale, all those things, kind of fall in this brassica family. It's very difficult to branch out of that group of vegetables. That's another reason to really try very hard and very diligently to get a very wide variety of vegetables and different types of vegetables.
Christopher: Colors of vegetables.
Julie: Colors and shapes and smells and variety is the spice of what we're getting at here because that's what we would have eaten as traditional as cavemen, as hunter gatherers, we would have been eating hundreds of varieties of different plants because we would have been gathering small amounts of things as we move from place to place and they would have been different based on the geography. They would have been different based on the climate. They would have been different based on the altitude.
Christopher: There's just a sheer number of plants.
Julie: That too.
Christopher: I've read about sort of aborigine cultures that they found 400 different types of plant in single fecal sample. And we did that experiment. So how many types of plants do we eat? Julie goes to farmers' market three times per week and makes a point of trying to buy as many different types of plant she possibly can and I think we had it up 46 different types of plants.
Julie: Yeah. It was so pathetic. I mean, I was embarrassed. That was just like -- seriously.
[0:30:02]
And you can combat this by growing your own garden and trying to find heirloom varieties of different types of vegetables and things like that, rare vegetables or things that you don't typically see in the farmers' market. But it just takes effort. You have to try your hardest. And it sounds like you're doing a great job of that, Jimmy, just by trying to just have variety. I think that's the best you can do.
To name them, I mean, you want to be looking at, like you mentioned, the leafy green vegetables. So kale. And there's about, I can think of about six or seven different varieties of kale that I try to buy in a rotating basis. There's collard greens. There's curly kale. There's purples. There's dinosaur kale. I mean, all of these things have much more scientific names. That's what you'll see in the supermarket or in the farmers' market.
Christopher: Yeah, a fancy Latin names to impress the people.
Julie: Yeah. Things like, even salad greens. Like if you can find microgreens that have lots of different varieties that are mixed into like a bag or in bulk or you want to grow them so that they're kind of the baby versions of kales and lettuces and things like that. That's another good way to get tons of variety. And things like the non-starchy vegetables like the cucumbers, the zucchinis, the squashes. Right now, it's the perfect time of the year to look for all of those things.
Jimmy: Yeah. I can't make my cucumber stop growing right now. They're growing so fast.
Julie: Yeah. Everybody ends up with that problem. The zucchinis will be next.
Jimmy: I did pickle some of them so that helped.
Julie: That's great, yes.
Christopher: And then Grace talks about a lot of vegetables that look like an onion. So these are the Inulin containing vegetables. Things like leeks and spring onions.
Julie: We eat a lot of onions.
Christopher: We eat a lot of onions. And then also, you can probably get some kind of glycemic impact actually if you cook onions the right way and eat enough of them.
Julie: Well, yeah. I mean, if you're caramelizing your onions every time you eat them, then yeah, you have to be careful. I try to just sauté them until they're translucent and then stop.
Christopher: Stop before they're [0:32:00] [Indiscernible]. But, yeah, she also talks about some other less well-known things like celeriac like root we eat a lot of.
Julie: So that would be celery root for non-British speaking people.
Christopher: And it's a real--
Jimmy: I'm glad you have a translator, Chris.
Christopher: It's a real beast of a looking thing. It's like a small hairy football, isn't it? It's the best way I spot at the farmers' market. It's pretty low carb. It certainly doesn't impact my glucose at all. Of course, we already talked it won't necessarily impact yours, but it's worth trying.
Julie: Yeah. I mean, I cook these up a couple of different ways. I can either steam them or sauté them gently in coconut oil or ghee, your favorite fat. And then make them really soft. And then you can mash them with cauliflower to make a mash and I think that's a really nice way to make a mash because it adds a little flavor to it and it has a nice consistency. I also just peel it and chop it into small cubes and fry it like potatoes. You could also roast it like potatoes as well. And that's a nice substitute and I think it has a great flavor. We did a couple of roast dinners when we were in the UK recently.
Christopher: We didn't even know it was potato.
Julie: Oh my god, I don't think you eat potatoes.
Christopher: We don't.
Julie: We don't. Except I did when we were in the UK because they were delicious.
Jimmy: How do you know, right?
Julie: Yeah. But, yeah. It's things like that, kind of branching out, trying to do those types of things. And it doesn't have to be complicated just because you're using different vegetables. You can still prepare them the same way. My sister-in-law, she's like," I want to buy these things but I don't know what to do with them." And I said, "You basically do the same thing to every vegetable and it's going to be okay." You can just sauté it lightly in a pan in your favorite fat and some salt and pepper, whatever herbs you want to do and, I think, it's going to be edible. There's not many exceptions to that rule.
Christopher: And then some -- And what do you think about a mixture of cooked and raw?
Julie: I think that's great. I try to do that with every meal.
Christopher: Fennel is a good one.
Julie: Fennel is great. Almost everything we eat ends up being a modified salad. I usually buy a lot of microgreens, baby greens, whatever types of greens at the farmers' market and have those -- I put that as the base of each plate. And on top of that, I put whatever cooked vegetables and protein. And so it ends up always being a mixture of some raw and some cooked vegetables. Yeah, fennel is great because you can shave it really fine. It's also great cooked with leeks or whatever veggies you're cooking.
Carrots, you can shave with a peeler and make them really thin and those are great raw. Same thing with cucumbers and squash. There's lots of different things that you can eat raw. And it is nice, I think, to have a mix as well. Then you're not just decimating all of the nutrients and every single thing that you're eating.
Christopher: Yeah, I do worry about that.
[0:35:00]
Certainly the vitamin C is destroyed by heat. So if you're cooking everything then that could potentially be an issue if you're not eating, especially if you're not eating.
Julie: But there was a time period -- I mean, this is important. There was a time period where you couldn't eat raw vegetables. You could just not eat them. It took a significant amount of healing of your gut in order to get you to a place where you were then digesting raw vegetables.
Christopher: Yeah, yeah. I should make that clear, actually. When I first started with all of this and I was kind of a wreck and had a lot of bloating and GI issues, that I can't go near any of these things that we're talking about. If you're listening to this thinking, "No way can I eat. That's just going to blow me up like a balloon." Then you got something going on. You need to do some testing and figure out what that something is. And then come back to this interview later on. This is kind of the advanced stuff if you like. All the stuff that keeps should be for life. You should be doing this all the time.
Julie: How are feeling, Jimmy?
Christopher: Yeah, that's the big question.
Julie: Have you noticed? What's changed? I mean, I know that the diet has changed but what else has changed? Anything?
Jimmy: Well, this is the strange thing about my case. This is certainly not all the cases I'm sure at Nourish Balance Thrive, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I feel better than I have in years."
Christopher: Yeah.
Jimmy: I didn't feel bad. Even with the very, very, very low iron levels I had, which I assume are very normal now with all the changes that I made, I never felt it. So I don't know if the ketones helped to mitigate some of that response.
Christopher: It could be.
Jimmy: I don't feel bad at all. I never had.
Julie: I think that's really actually an important point because those are actually the people that I worry about more, is because there's definitely a portion of the population that never presents with symptoms but then there's other kind of characteristic that's definitely more of a character trait than it is anything else. And it's just that some people are just kind of -- What's the word I'm looking for? They just--
Jimmy: Tolerant?
Julie: Yeah, they're just tolerant. They're just very resilient. That's the word I'm looking for. They're very resilient and they are able to just kind of -- Things just roll off them like water off the duck's back. And even if they're really ill on paper, they're not going to present with the same symptoms that somebody else would present with. I think I don't want anybody that's feeling great to just go and say, "Oh, maybe I'm dying." I think it's important that testing and just establishing a baseline and always being responsible and taking ownership of your health is really important.
Because there are people like that. There's lots of people that have had a very high stressed life and maybe they don't look like it on the outside or maybe they're not presenting with any types of symptoms but on the inside they're panels look really bad and there's a lot of things that they need to address in terms of stress management and sleep and diet and all of the rest of the things that we always talk about.
Jimmy: And I have worked on the stress management part since Chris and I talked a couple of months back. Christine and I, my wife and I have literally gone away like four or five times since then just to kind of try to relax. I'm not a natural worrier or stresser or anything like that but I think sometimes you can allow it to creep on you and not deal with it in an effective way. So working on that aspect too.
Christopher: Enormously insidious, this stress. I mean, you've really put yourself out there with this stuff as well. I mean, I must admit it was getting to me as well because I had all these people -- Because I'm not a doctor. I'm just an enthusiast that likes to look at biochemistry and run these tests. And I do work with several people who are medical doctors and they educate me and guide me and make sure that I don't go off the rails and all that kind of thing. But there was lots of people writing in after we did that interview saying, "Oh, this guy has got this, this, and the other." I mean, the way that I like to go about teaching or coaching is to assume that everything I say or 50% of things I say are wrong. I just keep adding that element.
Jimmy: You just don't know which 50%.
Christopher: Yeah, right. So I just want to always be kind of open to the possibility that I'm wrong. And so when somebody who is highly credentialed writes in and says, "This guy is incredibly ill and he needs to get to ER immediately." I listen to that.
Jimmy: And what was interesting about that was some of the medical doctors or people that I know and they wrote to me and everything from some upper GI issue all the way to bowel cancer and I'm going, "Okay, let's stop and breathe a little bit, people." I mean, I appreciate their input, no doubt about that. What they didn't know is those numbers, between those numbers, I had given blood again. So it made sense that the iron went down because I still was under the auspices that had high iron, not low iron. So it does seem the iron level has gotten normalized again.
Christopher: Yeah. I just wondered though, that was clearly a problem that you needed to fix.
Jimmy: Yeah. I wouldn't have known about it but for Nourish Balance Thrive, so thank you.
Christopher: I mean, eventually, one of the -- Dr. Tommy Wood is one of the doctors that I work with on a daily basis.
[0:40:02]
And he said, "Yeah, maybe it's possible you could have hemoglobin that low and not notice it and if it had gone another point lower then maybe he would have started to notice that he was a bit breathless when walking up the stairs. And maybe ketosis affects the amount of oxygen that you need. That's possible too. But, yeah, you can't really know this stuff without doing the test. But I did wonder whether maybe we'd not really got to the root of this. So you're definitely not the typical sort of person that I work with.
Jimmy: You're welcome.
Christopher: Yeah, you're definitely. But I kind of knew that what I was getting into in the beginning. Yeah, definitely didn't find a normal set of things on the test results. I was a bit worried that we missed something. I'm just wondering, have you dared weigh yourself since making these changes to your diet?
Jimmy: Have I -- Oh, dared weigh myself? I'm sorry, I'm still getting the British. I need a translator, Julie. Have you dead weigh yourself? I bet I do it soon. Sorry. Scottish there. Yeah, I have and I actually not lost anything. If anything, since we first talked, I probably have put on about five pounds. Yeah. That's kind of the indication that there's something still going on in there because I'm eating so incredibly well. You say I'm not eating enough calories, possibly. I don't know how I could possibly eat any more calories than I am now because I'm just so well nourished of what I'm eating. I mean, when you eat bone broth, high quality foods, you don't really need as much food as you think.
Christopher: Just add in some carbs, Jimmy. You're ravenous in minutes.
Jimmy: I know that one.
Christopher: I forgot to do that joke, actually. I was going to do that at the start. I was going to say if you're looking at these test results then it shows severe carbohydrate deficiency, all we need to do is eat some potatoes and you'll be fine.
Jimmy: You laugh about that but there's actually people in our community who are talking there being such things as a glucose deficiency and that you have to eat more carbs to prevent that. I'm not kidding you. That's out there.
Julie: It's not coming from us.
Jimmy: No, it's not. Nor is it me.
Christopher: But you understand that there's this mechanism with your thyroids that if you don't eat enough calories then the brain is smarter than that and could try to slow things down.
Jimmy: But I would never believe that 2300, even for a guy my height and size would be not enough. It would seem like if you got into the 1700, 1600, 1500, okay now, for a guy my size that's probably not wise. Is there something to that number? Where are we getting the number from? I know again it's highly individualized but I'm curious.
Christopher: No, it's not. You're right. It's not based on -- So, 2260 kilocalories is the data I was looking at.
Jimmy: Okay.
Christopher: I don't know. For a guy that's 6'3", maybe somebody can write in and tell me I'm wrong but that seems kind of low to me.
Julie: I would say especially if you have started doing a little bit more activity, like if you're doing more lifting and moving, on those days I would say that probably closer to 2500. And this is just based on the sheer volume, like working with lots of different types of people, different body types and activity levels. That is my best guess, probably more around 2500.
Jimmy: Okay. I can add another pad of butter.
Christopher: Another thing I remember, I mean, obviously it's not just about the scale, is it?
Jimmy: No. Never has been for me.
Christopher: Yeah. So what about any of the measurements? Have you noticed any change in the size of your pants or anything like that?
Jimmy: Yeah. My waist has gotten bigger.
Christopher: Oh, really?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Christopher: Foiled.
Jimmy: Yeah. That's the frustrating part. I'm really focused on the real food, focused on the health markers and keeping all the -- And, of course, you've seen the health markers. CRP is brilliant. It was interesting. The cholesterol, when the iron was low, dropped precipitously, which again is not surprising because iron kind of helps regulate that. So as it's gotten back up, the cholesterol has come back up again. Again, I'm not worried about cholesterol because all the relevant markers are brilliant.
It's just interesting how when you watch all these things they are so incredibly correlated. I mean, we did a cortisol test when I was iron deficient and I'm wondering how that has changed now since we've now gotten the iron a little more normal?
Julie: I think that's another important thing though. I mean, I hate to focus in on the weight loss and make that seem like a stumbling block or something that's like a poor sign of progress because I've seen this time and time again with people, is that it's typically the very last thing to give when there's healing that needs to take place. And it's not always as easy as just, "Okay, I've added these things into my diet." It's kind of like at certain point these things will cross and the stress management will cross with the eating the right thing and the right amount of calories with the right amount of activity and all of things.
[0:45:06]
And then that's when the stars are aligned and things start to shift. I think for a lot of people, the weight loss is the last thing to happen especially if there's been adrenal issues and cortisol issues and any kind of infection or any kind of immune response or inflammation or anything like that. I think weight loss is -- Like the body is not going to let go of resources if it needs those resources to survive. That's often I think the last thing to happen for people when there's some significant changes that need to be made.
Jimmy: And it will hit on October 6th. Just kidding.
Christopher: Okay. Well, I feel like we need to do another interview for some of the other areas. We talked about diet today but there's the kind of the sleep and the movement or exercise part too which could be quite interesting. We can talk about what's going on. And then Dr. Grace Liu has been weighing in with her analysis of the uBiome. I've talked about uBiomes several times on the podcast. It's a stool test that you do that sequences the gut microbiome and gives you some more detail about the types of bacteria that are in the sample that you sent in.
Jimmy: So easy to run too.
Christopher: Yeah, so easy to run too and it's not expensive. It's less than $100. I'll link to that in the show notes too. Grace had some interesting narrative on Jimmy's sample. Certainly, it was a case that you were missing all of the species that she believes are important for staying lean. And, yeah, it would be interesting maybe to get her on or have her on your podcast and talk about that stuff. Yeah, I'm not sure how long it takes for those things to change.
Jimmy: But it's quick according to Grace. She said that she can get it changed in about a month or two.
Christopher: Yeah. I can believe it. It makes sense. Is there anything -- We've talked about anything, then any changes that you still need to make or do you think you're already doing everything that we talked about?
Jimmy: I think I'm doing the changes and just kind of working through the process and I really appreciate Julie's emphasis that patience, this may take time. I mean, I still have the fat cells of that 410 pound guy I used to be that I'm sure I'm having to battle. And then, of course, the insulin resistance that I just had to fight despite all the ups and downs over the past decade of doing this. It just goes to show you we're never going to stop learning. Please slap me if I ever stop trying to learn and get better and all that.
I put so much less emphasis on the weight and just doing the methodical things that I know I have to do to get better. And again, thank you to Nourish Balance Thrive because without you, guys, I would never have known about the iron issue and we didn't tell the story on this podcast but the reason I probably had the low iron was I thought I had borderline hemochromatosis, because it was extremely high. Just two years ago I had extremely high iron levels. And so I was told, "Cut the red meat. Don't take an iron in your supplement. Get rid of your cast iron skillets. And then give blood every two months."
So I did all of that obediently for two years and would have continued doing that until, I guess, like the doctor said, would have felt something at some point. But, yeah, this stuff is serious. Definitely get tested. It's worth every penny.
Christopher: Yeah, I think so. And then the angle that I come with this stuff from is, as an athlete, so the doctor is not going to care that you've got very slightly low hemoglobin even though that's going to have a massive on your sports performance. That's where we come in. I'm going to look at your test results and I'm going to be nitpicking, looking for ways to make marginal improvement that's going to lead to stronger sex drive, better thinking, faster times in a marathon, I don't know. So kind of stuff that doctors are not really that interested about.
Jimmy: He will nitpick, by the way, very, very hard.
Julie: I live with him.
Jimmy: And I'm grateful.
Christopher: Awesome, Jimmy. Well, I really believe in you and I'm really grateful for you, for putting yourself out there and you making all these test results public. I'll link to those, like I said, so that people can look at these test results. I think it's great that you're educating people in this way. Someone like you, when I hear your attitude, I'm certain that you can solve this problem. It's just a matter of time.
Jimmy: Yeah, I'm not giving up. I mean, I had a brother die at 41. I've had grandfathers, both of my grandfathers died in their early 50s. I'm now in my early 40s. I have a lot of genetic predisposition that I'm bound and determined to buck.
Christopher: Good for you. Good for you. And you haven't got those results yet, have you? You've done the 23andMe genetic test?
Jimmy: Yeah, that's coming soon. I'm going to see my doctor in a few weeks and we're going to have all that run.
Christopher: You're a really unique situation actually where I've interviewed all these experts and you can basically cherry pick which one that you want to have a look at your results. It's pretty cool.
Jimmy: It helps.
Christopher: Yeah, it certainly does. Excellent. Thank you so much for you time today, Jimmy. I really appreciate it.
Jimmy: Thank you, guys.
Christopher: Okay, cheers. Bye.
[0:50:38] End of Audio
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