Episode #124: What Would Happen If You Didn’t Eat Any Carbohydrates?

In this 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 lipoic acid supplementation, and what to do about dry skin from cold weather.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

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've ever listened to his show. And you'll also know when you listen to the podcast today. Now, in celebration of releasing this podcast, I did something that I don't normally do. I 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 that maybe my body was rebelling against those carbs. Either way, it'll be an interesting interview with Jimmy. And 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. And let's go ahead and jump right into this week's special announcements.

Special announcements.

All right folks, the first special announcement is that my birthday is coming up and I recently released a video that you may have seen @Ben. If you didn't see it, go visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com and scroll down because my birthday is on December 20th and on that day I'm going to be releasing the top 10 biggest fitness and nutrition breakthroughs that I discovered during 2010 and I'm going to be focusing on giving you things that you aren't going to hear anywhere else. Some real cutting edge stuff just stemming from the fact that I pour through over 100 pages of fitness and nutrition based research every day. So for you to actually access that free live video cast on my birthday, you have to do a few special things. And I tell you about this in the video, but I'll go over it real briefly in the podcast. You need to make sure you subscribe to my free newsletter. You need to make sure that you follow me on Twitter and then like Ben Greenfield Fitness on Facebook. And then at 7am on Monday morning, December 20, I will send out word on one of those channels. I'm not going to tell you which one, but on one of those channels, Twitter, Facebook or my free newsletter and let you know exactly where to go to take part in that live video webcast. And in addition, that whole thing will be recorded. And again I will only release the recording on one of those channels, Twitter, Facebook or the free newsletter. So either way you can access the live webcast or the recording, but you need to make sure that you subscribe to the free newsletter, follow me on Twitter and like the official Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page and you'll be set to go. Just go visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com and follow the instructions in the most recent post there, the one directly below the show notes for episode number 124. In order to take care of all that and get the links that you need. Now the second special announcement is that it's just about two months away, the official triathlon camp that I'm teaching down in Austin, Texas. If you want to be there, you can still get in, but at this point you need to send me an email. Okay, email ben greenfield fitness.com and I can get you in. But you need to email me soon if you want to take part in my all inclusive triathlon training camp from January 31st through February 7th down in Austin, Texas. It's going to be a blast. Speaking of triathlon, we actually are doing a very special 2010 end of season special over at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy. We're letting new members in for a dollar, but we've added a ton of new bonuses and also slashed the tuition over there at the Academy in half. Just for the next 15 days. You can squeeze in and lock in that new tuition at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Or you can just go to rockstartriathlete. Well, that's going to wrap it up for my special announcements and we're going to have one more special message then move into this week's Listener Q and A.

Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense. Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa have cracked the code on healthy living and revealed their entire system inside the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle, where you'll get instant access to to 24.7forum interaction with Ben and Jessa, a live monthly webinar, meal plans, videos, Ben's Body Transformation Club archives, and much, much more. If you or your family want to learn how to achieve the ultimate healthy lifestyle on a budget, then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is for you. Get four free videos to get you started and full access to the Inner Circle at Ben a.

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That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle we'll see you inside. Listener q and a.

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, December 22nd. 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 BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can call toll free to 877-209-9439, Skype Pacific Fit or ask a question through the free Ben Greenfield Fitness iPhone app. And the first question today came through from listener Justin, and Justin asks, my question is about losing body fat. I carry 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? Well, in guys and in girls, really, there's a few different strategies when you've gotten fairly lean and fairly fit to kind of get rid of that last little bit. One of the things that I highly recommend would be 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 in this show. Real, real simple way to do it is to just quit eating two hours prior to bedtime so after dinner, you're pretty much done eating. And when you get up in the morning, you wait a couple hours before eating breakfast. And with that scenario, if you're sleeping, say seven hours, you've got a good 11, 12 hour fast right in there. The best way to do it is to actually, instead of just getting up in the morning and waiting to eat breakfast, 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 kind of 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 start 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 say like a triathlon or a race. So that works really well. The refeeding would be cutting your caloric intake generally down by about 500 to 1,000 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 say 2500 calories. Well, then the amount of calories that you take in each day would be 1500-2000 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 kind of active weekend warriors, those one to two days per week or on the weekend, you actually bump things up and you take in caloric balance or in slight excess. And 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 1,000 calories without experiencing some type of drop in metabolism or bump down in the immune system, drop in energy levels, chronic fatigue, things of that nature. And so that's where those refeeding days come in. For people who have real high metabolisms who are kind of super lean anyways. A lot of times all you need to do, and this is kind of relevant to today's feature topic, is just cut sugar and starches. Literally just completely cut them. Alcohol goes hand in hand with that as well. If you cut those three things a lot of times that's all it is takes. You know, 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 like a, like kind of an endomorph apple shape. You don't have a real muscular shape, but you're literally a naturally 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 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 formation, insulation, padding, things of that nature. Generally for guys, Justin, it's going to be around 3%. Would not recommend you ever get any lower than that. And 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, where your aesthetic appearance is very important to you. So say if you know, if you want to have a beach body or whatever during the summer, yeah, cut down to a fairly low body fat 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 BenGreenfield. And this question's from Big Polly. And Big Polly asks, how do you feel about hyaluronic acid being injected into a knee to reduce pain in the joint? 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 a similar family. It's what's called a glycosaminoglycan, 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 up of this hyaluronic acid derivative. And 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 viscosupplementation, which is a course of injections into the joint. It's most typically used on the knee joint. And the reason they call it visco supplementation 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 that there haven't been a ton of positive studies that indicate the efficacy of either injections of hyaluronic acid or oral use of hyaluronic acid. And so until clinical studies come out that show that there's some kind of a positive effect on osteoarthritis, it kind of comes down to the thing that you'll hear me say a lot on this show and that is that you may have 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 it 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 is because there's not a lot to be said for it yet. Now that's not to say there's not some derivative of hyaluronic acid that's going to come out at some point in the future that will make all osteoarthritis go away forever and ever. But at this point, I can't with good conscience tell you it's going to help you out much, but you can always go try it out. And 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. He says, does it make sense to add clip on aero bars to a standard road bike? Well, what Jake is referring to are these aero bars that a lot of times you'll see triathletes riding, you'll see time trialists riding and they put you down into this aero position, down on your forearms rather than being up on your wrists and your hands. And the idea is that a triathlon bike is designed so that when you get into those aero bars, it's combined with a very, very steep seat tube angle on the triathlon bike. This puts you into a position where you can maintain a relatively high cadence compared to a road bike. And more importantly, it puts you into a position that's aerodynamic and, and uses more of the quadricep muscles, saving more of the glute and 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 set of aero bars on onto 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 into kind of a triathlon style aerodynamic position when you want to do that. And you'll get a lot of even time trialists, you know, like college time trialing teams that may not be able to afford time trial bikes and road bikes for their athletes. They'll just supply the 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 bit 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. And they're generally fairly affordable in that 50. If you want 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 to go, but especially if you're not doing a lot of running off the bike, it can work for you. I got to tell you guys though, if you want basically like 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 set on my $8,000 triathlon bike last year. This bike cost about $1,700. I got it from Synergysport.com 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, pick that up, throw a set of arrow bars on that and you'll be set to go. So great question. And we're going to move on to the next question from Mike. And Mike says, in your experience with your athletes, has anyone ever complained of TFL pain? And what Mike is referring to with TFL pain is a tensor fascia latte, which actually runs not out of the Starbucks coffee shop, but rather down the outside of your leg. It's basically the band. It's similar to the IT band, the tensor fasciae latae. It's one of the long bands of fascia that runs on the outside of your leg. And he says he's had massages, ice, non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs, active release therapy, grasting, strengthening, refrain from all running, dry needling, hydrotherapy jets and witchcraft. And after seven to eight weeks, the pain is no better. Okay. Yikes. What we're talking about is it band friction syndrome, same as tensor fasciae 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 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, he's tried stretching strengthening, refrain from all running, done dry needling, a little bit similar to ac, 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. And that's really ultimately I'd say if you just want to do a gold standard system that runs you from A to Z through everything, you need to get rid of IT Band friction syndrome. Just go to Bulletproof knee and try the IT band friction fix that I have over there@Bulletproofnee.com and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. 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 hip, 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 simultaneously that are doing a ton of IT Band flexibility work pretty much every stretch. I'm sure you've already tried just about 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 phenylcaine, which is basically COX2 inhibitor. But it doesn't do the same type of damage to your stomach that something like ibuprofen does. And then that's combined with a high dose vitamin C and proteolytic enzymes, preferably on an empty stomach. Something like a recover ease water running to maintain fitness if that's necessary during the time that you're training. Wearing a strap about 2 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 really wouldn't 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 like an overpronation orthotic, something like a superfeet. You can get an oven molded orthotic, but something that's going to keep your foot out of pronation, 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 inward so that your toes are pointed outward. If you're doing any ice, doing the ice as an ice massage, not as just a ice and hold joint foam roller. Definitely every day, 10 to 15 minutes, twice a day. Even better if you're able to get a textured one like a rumble roller. Rumbleroller is something I've talked about at Ben Gruentle Fitness before. Just go to the website and do a search for rumble roller. A ultrasound therapy combined with infrared and electrostim. If you have access to any of those physical therapy modalities, I've found to be very effective with it. Band friction syndrome and specifically the electrostimulation. You can even get like a home electrostim unit, like a Compex, it's called. And you can put the electrostim patches on your leg and then put ice over those and then finally a little bit of extra bang for your buck. If you can get into a non acidic, like an alkaline diet, non inflammatory diet, cutting in a lot of the starches, the sweets, cutting in a lot of the omega 6 fatty acids, really amping up the omega 3 fatty acids, being real, real careful with the amount of processing that goes into the proteins that you're consuming and basically putting all that together in like a shotgun approach. That's what I walk you through in the bulletproofnee.com manual. And then once you've gotten through four weeks of that, then you just kind of move into a progressive phase where you're actually kind of laying down the foundation to rebuild your body. But in a case like yours, a lot of times that's what it takes, is to completely rebuild the body.

So.

Good question. Next question is from Billy. Billy says, I think I recently developed irritable bowel syndrome and I was wondering if you could talk about ibs. My doctor took blood tests and stool samples on an X ray of my abdominal area and the results say I have a large amount of stool present at the time of the X ray. I like to note that I do go one to three times a day, but most times I don't feel relieved. Do you have any advice? I'm assuming that if your doctor took blood tests 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. 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 mean, I think it's like 275, maybe even $300. Well worth the peace of mind that something like that can give you. And so that'd be one option is to actually get tested. The other things that you could do is just run yourself through an elimination protocol. The way that something like that would work is you eliminate gluten, dairy, eggs, fr soy, and any common allergens. You assess your gastric tolerance, and then if you're good to go, you gradually start reintroducing those foods, starting with some of the less. Some of the foods 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 can't really 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 are a very, very active person doing a ton of exercising, obviously not eating gluten, soy, dairy, eggs, fructose, all that jazz tends to kind of 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, resources 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 help walk you through the process. But at this point, you're looking at either doing the testing to find out for sure, and you know what I'll do is I'll put a link to the unikey health test, and you'd want to go do their. Their GI test, their parasite GI test, or you could do run yourself through and oversee for yourself. A elimination diet. So podcast show notes number 124. I'll put that link to the. The Parasitic Stool Evaluation to actually figure out if there's any parasitic or allergenic issues going on. Okay, next question from Blaine. And Blaine says, I know you do a ton of research on various journals and publications. In putting together your podcast, I would really like to learn more about exercise science and nutrition. I was wondering if you'd give me some suggestions on 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 your podcast. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to cite those studies in the show notes. All right, answer to 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 newsletter, the free newsletter online called Stone Hearth Newsletters. It's called Stone Hearth Newsletters and basically get that fed into my email inbox every day. The other thing that I do is I subscribe. Since I'm a member of the National Strength 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 Alan Argon. It's called Alan Argon'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. And then in terms of getting studies out in the show notes, you know, a lot of the time I'm citing research studies that are on the. On the PubMed website through the National Institutes of Health. For me to actually go through and add those citations into 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 kind of 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. So I really can't put exact citations into every single podcast. Now, what I have done in the past is when I've talked about real controversial studies, a lot of times I'll mention the title of those studies, which you can Google over at PubMed, or not Google, but search for over at PubMed. And the other thing that I'll do a lot of times is put a link to the studies in the show notes. 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 kind of looking through the research. And then when I'm prepping a podcast, I'm spending a little more time than that actually looking at the actual study. So hopefully that gives you some things to look at. National Journal of Strength conditioning research, Alan Argon's research review, and PubMed, as well as the free Stone Hearth newsletters. So check out all of those and hopefully that helps you out a little bit. I will. I'll note that in the podcast. Blaine. So if you visit the show notes for podcast episode number 124, I'll put those in the podcast note.

Hey Ben, this is Patrick calling. What they Question Things are definitely cooling off here where I live in Tennessee and really all over America. I'm still getting out there for long bike rides and long runs on the weekends. But I think it's really, really drying out my skin. And I wanted to know if you had any suggestions of good lotions to combat that. Thanks a lot, man.

All right, 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 say, 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 into dry skin, because dry air essentially sucks moisture out of the skin as water moves from an area of low concentration, or I'm sorry, 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 a 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, kind of adds this thin, oily layer. And when you would want to put that on is preferably right after you've dried off, when 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 that you're staying hydrated, that you're kind of 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, helping out with dry skin. Pretty easy to exfoliate. As a matter of fact, my wife just put a video up on YouTube. If you go to YouTube.com BenGreenfieldFitness she put a video up on YouTube where she made homemade body scrub. And that kind of acts as a mild exfoliant. You know, you can use something like an oatmeal soap, any type of scrub like that. You can use it on your face, on 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, three days would be fine. If you exfoliate too often, you end up getting kind of cracked or broken out areas. As far as controlling the humidity, you could do it. I mean, 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 a few 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's water out into the environment. So all of 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 SBR. And you can check out sbrsportsinc.com that's sbrsportsinc.com they make something called Triswim, which is a shampoo, a conditioner, and a lotion. It's kind of like all three. And 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 would 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. And 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. And 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. He says, I have a question regarding the R isomer of alpha lipoic acid. I've heard that R alpha lipoic acid can be used to improve blood glucose levels and possibly prevent some fat gain by increasing insulin sensitivity. Also, I've heard that the generic alpha lipoic acid is a 5050 blend of R and S alpha lipoic acid where the S version has no use and can even be harmful. What is your opinion on supplementing with R alpha lipoic acid to improve insulin sensitivity? And do you think there's any benefit of taking, say, 150 milligrams of R alpha lipoic acid versus 300 milligrams of a standard alpha lipoic acid supplement? Okay, 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. And what they looked at was whether or not lipid peroxidation, 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 that by using the lipoic acid as an antioxidant, they got. Let me see, where was this? It was a significant reduction. Okay, they got 9% body fat in both genders. I'm looking at this study right now, and that's very significant. Or, I'm sorry, not 9% body fat. I was gonna say that'd be huge. 9% weight, which is still significant, you know, considering if you're, say, 200 pounds, that you could lose almost 20 pounds by doing exercise and supplementing with lipoic acid supplement versus just doing exercise. Granted, these folks were taking 800 milligrams a day of lipoic acid, which is one well over and above what you would normally see recommended to you on the back of your lipoic acid supplement. But this was. This study had 445 men and 682 women. So it really speaks to the fact that there could be a potential leak between the use of a potent antioxidant, 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, and taking 800mg a day of 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 be to at least have a lot of promise. Now, you ask about the difference between the R and the S. For those of you who don't have chemistry degrees, whenever you have a molecule, there can be different isomers of that molecule. And essentially, just think of the R and the S being polar opposites or mirror opposites of each other. And 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, alpha lipoic acid, 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 alpha lipoic acid. Now, generally, what you'll see across the board is that supplementation companies who make an R alpha lipoic acid will generally tell you that you only have to take half of that R alpha lipoic acid compared to using like a regular alpha lipoic acid. The trick being that the R alpha lipoic acid 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 alpha lipoic acid, the blend of the S and the R. So if they used 800 milligrams a day, I would propose that it could be, even though obviously this hasn't been carried out in a study, could be effective for fat loss and increased antioxidant activity. To use 400 milligrams a day of an R alpha lipoic acid. 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 question for this week. So with that being said, we're going to go ahead and move on. Take a little bit of a change of pace here and interview Jimmy Moore from Living La Vida Low Carb Show.

Featured topic.

Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and on the other line I have the.

Host I of a really great show.

That 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 before he made some pretty radical changes in his diet and his lifestyle. He is far below £410 now, and I'll let him tell you about that. And he has a lifestyle and a nutrition strategy, if 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, about some of the interesting guests that he's had and about some of the controversy around a low carb diet. So, Jimmy, thanks for coming on the call today.

Hey, Ben, thanks for having me.

No problem.

So before we launch into this low carb discussion, tell me a little bit about how you got up to £410 and what happened at that point.

How did I get there? I ate my way there. Yeah. I mean, 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. You know, my mom was a single mom for much of my youth, and 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, you know, 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 quote, unquote 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 obvious running rampant through our family.

Gotcha. And so did you eventually begin to try different diets or different exercise routines?

Dr. Yeah, it started as early as a child, but I really remember the first time I really found success doing something and it was never about exercise. I'll tell you that right up front, 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 mean, I tried slim fast. In fact, 11th grade in high school, I, that summer did slim fast, pretty much, you know, drank it with skim milk and had a very light, low fat, moderate calorie meal for supper. And I lost, you know, a good amount of weight and looked pretty decent. But then I was just always just ravenously hungry. I couldn't stand that feeling of that you had to be hungry in order to be thin. And to me, I equated those two, that 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.

Well, I think a lot of people think that.

Yeah. And so it was something that it stuck with me. But obviously I didn't learn my lesson from it because I kept doing those low fat, low fat, low fat diets. We do that to ourselves because we've been convinced from decades of lipophobia 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. And 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.

And is that pretty much what you use now is the Atkins Diet?

I don't call it the Atkins Diet anymore, only because I think the Atkins diet as written is meant to be that I guess kickstart into a lifestyle change. And Dr. Atkins will be the first, would have been the first to tell you he doesn't want everybody staying on induction level of carbohydrates, which is 20 grams a day, forever. But for some people, Ben, they have to. Other people can get away with. And 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. But for somebody else, it may be something else.

Right.

So 20 grams a day of carbohydrate, under 100 calories a day of carbohydrate. You switch to this Atkins diet and what happened to your body?

Well, as you mentioned at the Beginning, I was 410 pounds. 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 I pretty much it was all diet and following the diet as prescribed by Dr. Atkins in his book Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution. I lost 30 pounds 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 and was just exhausted doing that. But 380 something pound guy. I kind of was 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 pounds. Had a little bit of a 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 grams of carbohydrate or I gain and I start having issues metabolically. So by the end of that year, I lost 180 pounds total. Came completely off of all of those prescription medications. Haven't really had sugar in high quantities in, God, 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 with for the rest of my life.

What do you weigh now?

Well, I got down to as low as 230 and honestly today I weigh 275lbs and 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 still pretty low.

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?

Yeah, and I post every menu and have been doing this for about three years now. Been on a menus blog. It's@lowcarbmenus.blogspot.com if you just want to go back through and say, hey, how's this Jimmy Moore guy eat? You know, and it's very monotonous. I'm one of those creatures of habits. 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 Mark Sisson'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 then I'll also have maybe 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 some green leafy vegetables to occasionally I'll have a little bit 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.

Dr. 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? I mean, when you go to an exercise session, how is your body actually actually able to get energy from those foods?

Oh, you know, my energy level at thoseI told you before we came on that I did yoga this morning. Yesterday I did pilates and I'll do spin class. I just, I love just doing all of these things with, you know, 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, 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. And so gluconeogenesis 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.

Yeah. And especially if you haveif 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.

Yup.

So that's interesting. Now this is obviously a question that I'm sure a lot of people are going to be thinking about, and that's heart disease, Heart Disease risk, cardiovascular problems. The issue obviously, with having mayonnaise and butter and eggs and high cholesterol and high fat, fat foods in a diet like this, how big of a problem is heart disease risk among the low carb community?

Well, you know, they haven't really done a long term study on this and I wish they would so that 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 Krause. 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, 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's gotten out there and the whole cultural discussion of diet, Ben, that people just kind of believe it because it's always been, and there's really not been any science to back it up. Now in my community, on my forum and 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 that deal with those things either have some kind of familial hypercholesterolemia or something that's making them do it genetically, or they're eating more carbs than they're letting on.

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 is that's produced or aggravated by carbohydrate. And specifically a simple carbohydrate or sugar based carbohydrate sources the small oxidized cholesterol.

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. And when you're eating lots of carbohydrates. What you're doing is you're causing a lot of those small, dense, and what I call dangerous LDL particles that can penetrate the arterial wall. I mean, 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, and you're just better off. Now, 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. And you know what they found, Ben? A big fat zero.

That's interesting. You know, I want to ask you in a second here about some of the more interesting guests you've had, because I've listened to your podcast. You've had some great guests on scientists, physicians, people, people in the low carb and also the non low carb community. And you talking about that reminds me of a fellow that I had on my show named Roger Drummer. And he was talking about how he had one person he was working with who had a big liver issues, a lot 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 ten eggs a day. And he came back to the doctor after a couple months and all his liver symptoms had completely disappeared because he'd actually brought him 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 foods, that's where it becomes an issue. So you've had a lot of interesting people on your show. And again, for those of you listening in, you can go find Livin La Vida Low carb show on itunes or just go to livinlavita low carb.com or follow the link that I'll put in the in the show notes. 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.

I've had so many, I think as of the recording of this right now I am up to about 417 or so interviews that I've done, and it's such an honor because. 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 kind of 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 Ornish, the big low fat diet guy. And my very first interview, I remember I was so nervous because I'd 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, okay. And I didn't even have, you know, I've got a headset on right now. I'm 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 speakerphone in my office at my job at the time, after hours. And it was like, okay, how's this going to work? But it worked out pretty good. And 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 it was so good that at the end of the interview, Dr. Arnish said, well, why didn't you challenge me on anything? And I was like, oh, really? You wanted me to, like, buck back a little bit again? I had never done any interviews before, so.

Right. You didn't want to hang up the phone.

No, I didn't. I had worked like two years trying to get him on the. On the blog. So anyway, so 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. And 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?

Did he come back on?

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 Neil Barnard, who's the head of pcrm, Physicians 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. And so those are two that stick out for the opposite end of the spectrum. And I appreciated both of them because both Neal Barnard and Dean Ornish were very kind to me when they didn't have to be. They were very generous in their time in 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, they were.

Both listening in nutritionally. These are the guys who are very into kind of like the whole grain plant based diet with a moderate to high amount of carbohydrates and. And primarily low fat intake.

That's right. And speaking of plant based, I tried to get T. Colin Campbell to come on my show. He's the guy that wrote the China Study, that big vegan diet bible that everybody 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 carbs are why I think carbs are good. I'm like, really? That's what's your problem now?

I just want to throw this in there while we're on this subject. You know, if you look at one.

Of those low carb lifestyles like veganism.

Or vegetarianism, you know, a lot of people would argue that humans were just kind of designed like gorillas or chimpanzees, to thrive on eating plants and that 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?

I say go for it if it works for you. I say if you found a 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 carb. No, I don't. Low carb works for me. Low carb works for a lot of people. But it's not the be all, end all for everybody. I just don't believe that that's why we have this obesity mess today. As we've been told monolithically that you have to eat a low calorie, low fat diet, you have to exercise till you drop, you have to eat healthy whole grains. You know, all of these monolithic proclamations of diet, I think, is what's 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 of these things that people are truly going to find what works for them.

Speaking of individualization, that some people may, based on blood type or metabolic type 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?

Well, I think as a starting point for somebody 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 carbohydrate 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 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 what that feels like. All I know is I have to, for me and for the people that I've seen that deal with a lot of metabolic syndrome and diabetes and obesity, those people, nine times out of 10, 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, you know, maybe you can get away with more carbohydrates and it doesn't bother your health or your weight. Again, it goes down to that customization of the diet for who you are. And I think, Ben, a lot of us have damaged ourselves. I mean, you don't get to be 400 plus pounds without doing some kind of damage to your metabolism. And I think that's part of the reason why I'm having a little bit of issues today being a little 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.

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. So, 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 does not 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 that 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 resistance of the inflammatory carbohydrate may not be as cardiovascularly damaging. And I've been looking over your low carb menu.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 that you're not necessarily on a high protein diet. Your fat intake appears to be much higher than a lot of folks who I've seen taking in a low carb diet. So you talked a little bit about the controversial or the opposite of the low carb interview guest that you had on your show. How about some of the more interesting folks that you've had from the low carb community?

You know, 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 that kind of updated Atkins, they wanted to add the new science, since all three of them, it was Jeff Volek, 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. And, you know, 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. So he went and saw the Atkins Clinic and saw what they did and started talking to him about doing some research. And 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 Volek later in the year as well. Both of those guys are just doing incredible work getting the word out in the science world about low carb. Now, people may not know them, they may not be household names, but they should be because they are doing incredible work. And one of the people that I did interview, and I've had the privilege of doing it several times now, is Gary Taubes, who wrote Good Calories, Bad Calories, his upcoming book, why We Get Fat and what to Do About It. You know, I think he's really. He's really catapulted the discussion, Ben, about this subject to the mainstream now.

Is Gary Taubes a low carver?

He is. He actually does eat this way. And I've asked him about this. I said, gary, do you eat this way? You know, because he's not a fat guy and he's, you know, and I was like, do you eat low carb? And he's like, well, after all my research, absolutely I do now. So, you know, he'll have, you know, bacon and eggs with some tomato slices, he says, for breakfast. Now he does talk about how he still has the notion from his growing 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 just 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 that people are seriously taking a look at it. You know, when Dr. Atkins died, everybody thought, well, there goes low carb. Nobody's going to really take up the mantle and run with it. Well, Gary Taubes 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.

Interesting, interesting.

One more guest that took me forever to get, 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. I mean, but it was so funny because when I first contacted him, Ben, 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 Bitcher 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? What do you mean no? What do you mean no? And it wasn't until Sean Croxt and one of our fellow podcasters said, hey, that Jimmy Moore guys are a good dude. Go on his show, that he finally said, okay, but I'm not a supporter of low carb. You don't have to be. I've had people on that are opposite of low carb. We just talk about, you know, health, and that's definitely what you're about. So when he came on, it was so funny. Ben. Because I did the interview and everything was 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.

Doctor.

Now, does. Does Dr. Lustig believe that fructose from fruit based sugars is just as bad as, say, fructose from the high fructose corn syrup and sodas?

Yeah, I think he does. I think he does because fructose is fructose in his mind. And obviously, you know, high fructose corn syrup is a lot more concentrated form of fructose, but fructose is fructose, and it's gonna count towards your total amount. Now, he's not total. No fructose. I think he said, yeah, you could probably get away with as much as 30 grams a day of fructose. And I'm assuming he means from like fruits and things like that.

Right, right. And that, that would be, you know, a piece or two of fruit, which, you know, you've got the nutrient density in the water and the fiber and all that jazz. So I tend to be on the side of the fence that if it's from fruit, it's. It's really not as much of an issue. So, you know, you've. You've had one interesting experience that I want to ask you about before I let you go, and that's that you had a chance to testify. Was it before Congress that you went to testify?

Actually, it was before the USDA Committee, Dietary Guidelines Committee.

And what was that all about?

Yeah, the 2010 dietary guidelines, which, as of the recording of this, is only just a couple weeks away from 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 then, you know, fat and it's 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, you know, 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 say, 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? And so when they, when they were coming up with these, you know, guidelines, I was like, well, why don't you put some people in the scientific advisory committee who are like, from the low carb world. People like Eric Westman and Jeff Folick and Steve Finney would be great to put on that panel. Totally blacklisted, totally left out of the conversation. And despite all the great low carb studies that have come out over the past few years, they teetotally ignored all of them and came out with this very low fat, high carb exercise. And 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 D.C. and I'm going to tell my story because they deserve to see the ramifications of what they're doing to people. And so it was about me and maybe six other people in the low carb community. And then all the rest were paid lobbyists for everything. Soy, dairy, meat, you name it. There was a lobbyist there and ironically, Ben, Dr. Neal Barnard right next to me. I looked over at him, I said, hi, Dr. Barnard. He says, oh, do we know each other? And I said, yeah, I'm going to be interviewing you soon. And I'm Jimmy Moore. And he said, oh, you're Jimmy Moore. I've been wanting to meet you. And I'm like, I bet you do.

But no fights broke out, right?

No, like I said, he's a very nice man. And that's part of the problem is people want to vilify Dean Ornish and Neal Barnard. They're not really bad people. So it's hard to vilify them. So 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 these people that got up there again were on 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 have been telling people to cut their fat and to cut their calories and to increase their exercise forever. And what has it gotten us? We've gotten 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. I mean, you should have seen their eyes. They were all bugging out. And every single one of them, Jeff Folick 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 was 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 kind of recommendations of low fat, low calorie and keep making that the mainstay of what we have as healthy in America, I said, I'm going to be back here five years from now. We're going to have more obesity, more heart disease, more diabetes, and I'm going to stand again before this committee, look you right in the eye and ask why.

And do you feel that there's going to be any changes in the upcoming 2010 standards? Jimmy?

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.

And corn to a limited extent.

Exactly, exactly. And so you don't expect them to bite the hand that feeds them. And I think that's one of the reasons why 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, well, 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.

Dr. Oh, absolutely.

Indirectly, it affects us all.

That's what I studied all through college was physiology, nutrition, we take dietetics classes, and everything from sports nutrition to weight loss was all based off that pyramid and those guidelines. Interesting. Well, Jimmy, you've given a lot of resources. During our interview today, you mentioned Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes for a good book for people to read. You mentioned your low carbmenu.blogspot.com and of course your podcast, the Live in La Vida Low Carb podcast over 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, a lot of your other books and podcasts and things of that nature. And your website is your exact website address is what again?

The blog or the website?

The website that would allow people to just kind of tap into all your other stuff.

Yeah, that's living La Vida Low Carb.com.

Live in La Vida Low Carb.com so we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well and check out some of those guests that Jimmy talked about today. Go back and listen to some of those 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?

Well, just find the 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 found what works for you and you can't help but live a long and healthy life.

All right, well, thanks, Jimmy. So, folks, until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and Jimmy Moore signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com well, folks, that is going.

To wrap up today's show. Be sure to leave a ranking in itunes if you haven't yet. And also visit the show notes for links to anything that was talked about today. I link to Jimmy's website to the book Good Calories, Low Calories or Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. I also link out to the special live video webinar that I'm doing on my blue birthday. Be sure you're ready for that. If you haven't gone to Twitter, Facebook and the newsletter and gotten yourself poised to take part in that secret live video webinar, be sure to do so. Also email me if you want to get into the Austin Triathlon Training Camp. Email me Ben greenfield fitness.com and of course, check out the brand new video videos just released in the Inner circle by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out.