In this interview, Amy Robach explains how she and her close circle of friends gather and vet health information online, focusing on ketogenic diets and intermittent fasting. She recounts discovering a Men's Health article about a study where metastatic mice on a keto diet lived twice as long as those on a standard American diet, which sparked her personal interest. During chemotherapy she gained weight by eating carbs, but after adopting keto she lost weight and felt better. Her oncologist, initially surprised, researched keto herself, adopted the diet, and now recommends it to patients. Robach emphasizes the importance of credible sources such as The New York Times, reputable magazines, and collaboration with knowledgeable professionals like Dr. Jan Ashton, an OB‑GYN with a nutrition degree from Columbia.
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It's so cool. You've actually done so many of the things that are in the lifestyle that I've been evangelizing for a long time. Where did you get all this information?
I mean, online. And my friends and I, we have an amazing friend group and we're constantly sharing different articles and different research that we find in different health magazines. And we're always on the lookout for that. And even someone who I work with, Dr. Jan Ashton, who I love, she is not only is she an MD and an OB gyn, but she's also has her nutrition degree from Columbia. And so she and I are always sending things back and forth too. So she. She's also intermittent fasting and she's modified keto. But she just told me about these amazing palm Mary, these angel hair pasta, that's hearts of palm. Like, so we're always. And all of us are trading different secrets and things that we found. And, you know, it's been really an awesome group of women who have just been sharing information and then doing some of the research and following up with new articles. It's been awesome.
This is something that's really new because I kind of thought you might say, oh, I hired this amazing doctor who put me on a special diet. But there's enough information from enough credible people that if you sit down with a couple friends, you can source it yourself and decide what to do. But you're. I mean, you've got your oils right, you've got your sugars right, you've got your if. And like, you're doing all this stuff, which is really impressive. I was going to say, who's the secret doctor behind you? But I love this. So you're an example of how anyone without a giant doctor's bill can figure out what you figure out.
It's so true. I mean, it's just we have so much information. Obviously you need to know how to vet information and know what's real and what's not. And that's, you know, that's a little bit of a slippery slope just when it comes to the web. But I have been, obviously, you know, what some, you know, certain sources that are trusted in this world. The New York Times, you know, you've got, you know, certain magazines. Men's Health actually was the first one, interestingly, that that sparked my interest, and that was the study on metastatic mice and ketosis. They had a set of metastatic mice. Half of them were put on the SAD diet, the standard American diet. And the other half were put on keto. The keto mice lived twice as long. And I just. I remember reading and I started sobbing because it just. I just thought, why wouldn't I do that? Why wouldn't I do that? And there's just been a recent article that Dr. Jen sent me about combining chemo with keto in lessening the effects. I mean, oh, my gosh, when I was on chemo, I gained 10 pounds because all I did was eat carbs because I was so sick and so nauseated and so. And I felt so sorry for myself, and I just wanted to eat pizza and pasta, and that's all I did. And I gained weight. And when I was finished with keto, I. I'm chemo. I had to lose weight, which is not what people necessarily think of when they think of chemo. And I couldn't believe that I had gained weight on chemo, but it happened because all I did was eat carbs. And then when I started changing my life, my oncologist was. She was one of the first people who said, what are you doing? And I told her about keto, and she was surprised, started doing research, started doing it herself. She and her husband started doing it, and now she tells her patients about it. So how about that?
