Michelle Hurn, RD - Benefits of Low Carb, Animal-Based Diets

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Michelle Hearn, thank you so much for joining us. At clock. So you wrote the book the Dietitian's Dilemma. This is such a important topic to me. So I'm so grateful that you're not only joining me that, but that you wrote this book. Um, do you mind if we start with just a really simple question? Cause I think most people actually don't know what is the difference between a dietitian and a nutritionist?

Yeah, absolutely. So a registered dietitian is somebody who has specifically gone through like to become a dietitian you have to go through and get your four year degree in dietetics like from a university. And then after that you'll go through the dietetic internship. You have to apply, get into one of the internships. They tend to be between 10 to 14 months. And then after that you'll sit for the RD exam. And then once you do that, you have to maintain continuing education every five years. And a nutritionist really has no, at least to my knowledge, legal definition. I mean there certainly are like nutrition therapy practitioners that have like a different school. But yeah, you know, it's kind of almost more like like a health coach type thing. But as we can talk about more, I would argue that a lot of nutritional therapy practitioners and health coaches might actually have a leg up once registered dietitians.

I'm sure there's going to be people watching this that may not know your story that much and I know your story is pretty extensive and pretty in depth, but maybe you can just share a little bit about your journey of. Because everyone that is in the health field came from somewhere, right? There's a reason why they are doing what they're doing. There's a reason why they're eating the way they're eating. And so maybe you can just share a little bit of your journey to, to becoming a dietitian and to how you're eating now.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when I was 12 years old, I was actually diagnosed with anorexia. I was almost 5ft tall and weighed about 57 pounds. So I was very underweight. I was actually, my BMI was 11.7. I was having heart failure, kidney failure. Basically my body was shutting down as a, as a 12 year old. So I was put in inpatient treatment for two months. I was given about a 10% chance to survive. It was not good odds. It's pretty grim. It's a pretty horrific experience. But I did, you know, I became weight restored, meaning I was able to gain weight. But I was told Even from, you know, as a young person, when I was 12, pretty much through my teenage years and early adolescence, that I would always struggle with anxiety, racing thoughts around food, periods of depression, you know, and throughout my early life and even into my adulthood that was true. I had lots of anxiety, struggle with suicidal ideation, and, you know, just had a really hard time. So it was kind of my goal to become like a high functioning person, you know, with a history of an eating disorder. And I wanted to become a dietitian because I knew nutrition was powerful. Like, I knew, you know, I went from being very sick to weight recovered. Like I, you know, I had my life back. So yeah, that was kind of a, kind of my initial goal around that, you know, I was able to become an athlete, a long distance runner. And I basically followed the nutrition guidelines. I ate a lot of carbohydrates, a lot of, you know, quote unquote healthy whole grains, tons of sugar. And I've never had any problems with, you know, obesity. I was always very lean because I was running. And you know, this is definitely the Reader's Digest version, but I, I lost my health a few years ago. In 2019. I was trying to qualify for the Olympic trials in the marathon. My fastest marathon time was 2:54. And you have to run under 2 hours and 45 minutes. So if you're not familiar with marathon, that's a, you have to run a 6:17 mile pace for 26 miles.

It's fast.

Yeah, it's pretty fast. You know, and I had no illusions of like, you know, making it to the Olympics. I just wanted to tow the line for the trial. So about, usually between three and 500 women from the US qualify every four years. And yeah, and so I was training really hard and I was eating a ton of sugar and ton of carbohydrates. And I guess I should back up a little bit. When I was in the dietetic internship, when I was becoming a dietitian, I saw things that didn't make sense. Like, for example, we'd have diabetic patients and we'd be giving them all these carbohydrates and then dosing them with insulin. And as a student I would ask, like, would it make more sense to reduce carbohydrates? And I was always told like, no, everybody needs carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are important. I would look on the back of two feeding formulas. Someone's in a traumatic car accident and they have to be fed nasogastrically. The two feeding formulas in the hospital. And it's similar today. Number one ingredients, maltodextrin, corn syrup solids, canola oil, soy protein. And I would just ask questions like, is this the best way to feed someone who's just, you know, had a traumatic injury or maybe can't eat because of, you know, a small bowel obstruction or something like that? So I was kind of pegged as this, like, difficult dietetic student. But I was new, so I was learning. So it's really indoctrinated into dietitians that you have to have whole grains. You have to really embrace that food pyramid. All foods can fit. And, you know, I did see a lot of disconnect around that. You know, throughout my career. We had patients come in, we'd call them frequent flyers. They come in with a diabetic crisis, they'd have to have amputations. I saw lots of kidney failure. I saw people, you know, younger than I was, that were obese, morbidly obese. You know, I saw lots of strokes, kidney failure. And you're just told that it's not the nutrition guidelines, though, problems. The patient. The patient is just not following what we tell them to do. But my experience wasn't. That wasn't really true. You know, a lot of people were really trying to eat, you know, brown rice and chicken, all the things we're telling them to do, but they were still struggling. So. So, yeah, fast forward to my, you know, 2019. I, all of a sudden, my body stopped recovering well from my runs. If anybody listening to this is athletic, you know, normally you'll work out hard, you'll feel sore, but, you know, you recover in a day or so. I was having lingering, just stabbing, searing pain, muscle spasms, lots of nausea. I wasn't sleeping well, bad blood sugar, crashes. And so I reached out to a few dietitian friends. He said, hey, I'm eating like 350 grams of carbohydrates, which is quite a few, and I'm just not doing well. So everybody told me I needed to eat more, more carbohydrates, more sugar, more often. And I tried that. And as you can imagine, things went from bad to worse. Yeah. And I got really sick and I thought I was never going to be able to run again. Like, it just. It became overwhelming. My whole body hurt. And that's when I ended up adopting a very low carbohydrate diet. So my. And that's when my life changed. And it sounds cheesy and even a little hokey if you're. If You've never experienced it, but I went from, like I said, having anxiety, having muscle pain, having all kinds of issues, to completely transforming my health in a relatively short period of time. Within a month, not only was my muscle pain gone, my lifelong anxiety dissipated. I began to be able to trust my hunger. I wasn't having racing thoughts around food anymore. Like, it truly felt like a miracle. And that was kind of what changed my whole perception of what humans are supposed to eat.

Yeah, that's. It's. It's such a hot topic, right? I mean, because. Because of course, we have that going on around the vaccines and Covid and everything. And that where it's the same discussion of, like, okay, this is what the number says is science. And then people not trusting that or people being scared of that and. Or people being, yes, I completely trust the science. I completely trust my doctor. Whatever they say I'm going to do. And then there's people that are having reactions, there's people that are having issues. But I feel like it's completely all connected to the concept of, like, you. You only know what you know, right? So we're listening to doctors, and they only know what they know. And you can go back in time medically and look at the history of medicine. I mean, I was just learning recently that one of the reasons why George Washington, the first president, died is because they killed him. Like his doctors killed him. They were bleeding him out. Because during the time that was the practice of that medicine, they believed that if they bled you out, you would heal.

And so it's really interesting. I mean, I've had every person that I've interviewed, you know, I've interviewed a lot of people. There's 25 testimonies in the book. Like, you know, it's hard to be like, why didn't somebody tell me this earlier? Why didn't somebody grab me and shake me and say, like, this. This could eliminate your anxiety. This could transform your health. This, you know, people that went from massive obesity to normal weight of food freedom. And like you said, you only know what you know. You can only teach. And unfortunately, you know, the Academy of Nutrition, which is the governing board for all dietitians, is heavily sponsored by, you know, General Mills, PepsiCo, Frito Lay. So that controls the dietitian education. So we get this education that's very carb focused, very all foods fit, very sugar in moderation. And you can't. You're not allowed to teach outside of that. You know, even now, I couldn't go in the hospital and Teach low carb education. So, yeah, you only know what you know. And of course, as soon as I learned and I saw, not only restore my own health, but, you know, a lot of people around me, other people in this community, it's like you can no longer be silent.

So how has that shifted for you then? So you mentioned you're not. You can't be in a hospital talking like this. So how has that shifted your practice?

Yeah, so, you know, when I first started to heal, the late 2019, you know, I, at that point, completely given up running, I decided, like, you know, maybe I could run again. That was something that was initially really exciting. And so I started to train and started to dream of being competitive. And then when you do start daily, you get so excited. So I was talking to all my coworkers, like, this is really powerful. And I actually dug into the research. I was shocked how many clinical trials we have on low carbohydrates and their efficacy, their sustainability. Dr. Eric Westman and I were talking, there's more evidence for low carbohydrate diets, more randomized controlled trials than any other diet out there. And so you think, like, I'm going to just bring the evidence. Surely if these dietitians and people see the evidence, we're going to at least want to discuss. Discuss it. And I was told, no, not at all. Like, it's just not our standard of practice. It's not. You can't do this. And so that was hard and that was frustrating. And, you know, I just. That's when I really decided I wanted to write the book because I wanted to write on disease states that I had seen throughout my dietetics career. You know, specifically the, you know, diabetes, heart disease, sarcopenia, mental health disorders. And, you know, it wasn't very long after that that I realized, like, I'm not going to be able to change this or really help anybody from the inside if they're not going to let me talk about this, if they're just going to tell me to keep telling people. The same advice that I've seen over and over and over again, not work. And I have, you know, we have tons of data that says that diabetes is increasing exponentially. You know, lots of mental disorders, including, like, deaths of despair, increasing. Like, the evidence is not good. Like, what we're doing right now is not working. Yeah. And so, I mean, I was kind of helped by whoever you want to believe, whether it's the universe, God, whatever. During COVID I lost most of my dietitian Hours. So I was actually put into the employee call center. And so what? So I would take calls all day for patients who were ordering food. So I wasn't allowed to actually give any nutrition advice. So I had to take calls from diabetics ordering cake and chips. And I wasn't allowed to give any advice. But I, you know, patients would ask me like, oh, what's good here? And I would say like, oh, you should fast. And you know, so I was pretty quickly told like, okay, you can't say that. You know, but it was really interesting to me that most dietitians seemed fine, they seemed okay, just kind of going, doing the status quo. You know, we would give diabetics 90 grams of carbs per meal. You know, heart, heart healthy patients could. I had one guy order, you know, 142 grams of carbs per meal, but wasn't allowed to have beef or butter. You know, it was just, it was nuts. The advice is terrible. So every moment I wasn't in the call center, I was writing and I was looking for a way out. You know, man, give me an opportunity. The second I get a chance to do something else, you know, I'm going to. And that's when I live right outside of Portland, Oregon. There's a place called Scratch Meats where we kind of break down animals, you know, source from local farms and make sausages. And I'm like, hey, hire me. You know, I'll take a, it's quite, quite the pay cut from, you know, registered dietitian. But you know, I left the hospital, I took a leap and said I'm just going to work with meat and I'm going to write a book and I'm just going to share my story. And I've been so fortunate to really be embraced by the low carb community. You know, I've had some really good feedback from, you know, a lot of different doctors. It's been such a privilege to be on with, you know, like Ken Berry and some of the other big names in the community. So. So yeah, I just, I've been kind of, you know, putting my story out there and just living authentically and trying to spread the word because, you know, a low carb animal based diet really changed my life. And I see a lot of potential and not just with physical, you know, that obviously we know it can help diabetes and heart disease and you know, diseases of obesity. But my big advocacy is more for even the mental health aspect and for people struggling with addictions and eating disorders and you know, any type of Mental disorder.

Yeah. It's interesting because you talk about that. I love that you make the point of like that it. You felt like your anxiety went in a way when you started, I think you initially started with the Carnivore diet, right?

I did, yes.

Are you still eating Carnivore?

No. No. So I am a, I'm an ultra runner. So I, yeah, I do my base, the base of my nutrition and I believe will always be animal based. You know, that 30 days where I just ate meat, fat and butter changed my life, you know, and when my anxiety disappeared, I had to know why, like no one in my never in my dietetics education was I taught about anti nutrients. I had no idea that plants, you know, specifically, you know, all the carbohydrates I was taking and all the oats and seeds and beans had things like phytic acid they could find with iron. And those were really crowding out a lot of the proteins and the things that I needed for my brain to function correctly. So, you know, I think in my opinion for most people, an animal based diet is the way to go. You know, that's, that's the basis of my diet. You know, most of my diet is beef and butter and liver and sardines. But I do use some carbohydrates for my training. You know, specifically, I live in the Pacific Northwest. So, you know, right now we've got cherries, blueberries, some carrots. My wife makes a long fermented sourdough bread. But yeah, compared to what I used to eat, which was just like massive amounts, you know, of oatmeals and stuff. So, yeah, my diet looks very different. You know, you go from like oatmeal and bagels to like ground beef and butter. And, you know, the carbohydrates make up such a small part of my overall diet.

But I love how you connected it to your mental health because a lot of people, I find, don't make that connection. I mean, most people don't even connect food to their body. But then it's an even bigger leap to go, oh, my mental state is actually also connected to what I eat. For some reason, a lot of people don't even connect that to their body. And like, because I think about that a lot, like people that are diagnosed with, you know, mental disorders and stuff like that. It's like, is anyone looking at their diet?

Most cases, yes. Some people are. Dr. Chris Palmer, psychiatrist. Chris Palmer is incredible. And he's written some amazing clinical papers. I highly encourage anyone to check those out. He's working on putting together a clinical study for the ketogenic diet and mental disorders, including major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. So we have people, you know, obviously getting funding for that is a challenge, but we do have people that are trying. Well, when I've worked in two different psychiatric facilities and you know, we talked about in the book, they're feeding people between like 38 and 42 teaspoons of sugar a day. That's the equivalent of four cans of Coca Cola. And that's just like in meals. And if anybody's worked in psychiatric units, they know that often there's, you know, graham crackers and all kinds of other stuff on the units. And so we're feeding these people so much sugar and so much carbohydrates. And what people aren't talking about enough is it's very possible to have insulin resistance in the brain even if you don't have insulin resistance in the body. And what does that mean? I don't get it. I don't understand that. You can think about it like epilepsy. Children that are born with epilepsy, if they take in carbohydrates, they have a seizure. Babies have seizures, toddlers have seizures. Not their diet. They just have a metabolic abnormality in the brain. Well, what happens? We put these babies and toddlers on these very high fat diets, low carb, they stop having seizures. A theory is people with major mental disorders are not able to utilize and metabolize glucose in the brain. So what happens? We take them off these, you know, off sugar, off carbohydrates, we give you protein and fat, your brain starts functioning again. There's a fantastic case study that was just published by Dr. Sethi Shivani. Three individuals with lifetime binge eating disorder. Lifetime, all morbidly obese, all struggling 20 plus years ketogenic diet for one year remission of symptoms. I think like you said, it matters what we're putting in our body. And obviously the theory of insulin resistance is one, but also when you start eating all these nutrient dense foods, you get the iron, you get the folate, you get all the B vitamins, you get all the trace minerals that we have just, we've just made it okay to get out of our diet. Oh, we'll just have cereal and we'll have a bagel. Like all these things that are just processed nonsense that have no actual nutrition the human body can use. So, yeah, we've really done a disservice to many individuals in the entire health Realm, whether it's physical or mental thinking that you can open up a Pop Tart, eat that, be just fine, or that doesn't impact your mental health.

How do you, how do you navigate the whole, like, I mean, because in a certain way you're, you're awakening to your own health through, through diet. And these changes also pushed you out of your career to a degree. Right. So how do you, like, how do you navigate the world of like your kind of philosophy or your kind of faith in even what you're doing now versus, I mean, I know, okay, let's put this way, what you're doing now is connected to your experience. But I'm just saying, like, you're talking about other science around even what you're philosophy now. But those people that are following, you know, the standard American diet, they would argue that there is a science with that as well.

Oh, absolutely. And I, and there, and there is to some degree, like you can pull up any paper that says eating fruits and vegetables and fiber lowers ldl. And you know, and I'm always, I think the best thing about, you know, any individual is like, I'm always willing to have discussion, I'm willing to be wrong and I'm willing to share my experience. But unfortunately, you know, what I've come to discover and what I've even known since I was a younger dietitian, remember at the beginning of this conversation I was, you know, I was like, that doesn't make sense is, you know, the dietetics industry is heavily funded by processed foods. And if you're out, we know if your LDL cholesterol is really high and you eat a bunch of fiber, it'll lower your ldl. Does lower LDL lead to extended health? I don't believe so, not in most cases. And I cite that in my chapter on heart disease. We know statistically if you have normal blood sugar, higher LDL can actually be beneficial as it can actually act as something that binds the viruses, bacteria and pathogens. How am I able to reconcile that? I like to think I'm relatively intelligent. And I had those questions. So I took the time to really study and really be able to, to go back and say, okay, well, I hear you say this. Can you explain this to me? Like let's say a dietitian says, well, Michelle, you need all these healthy whole grains. I could say, okay, well, if I can get all this nutrition from animal based, you know, I could get everything you could possibly get from an animal and it will stabilize my blood sugar. I'll just, I ask questions. Would that make more sense? We have a nation that, like I said, 70% of people are overweight or obese, 88% have some type of metabolic abnormality. It's, things are getting worse. So I think it's our responsibility to go back and say, like, this isn't working. You know, is this data outdated? Is this data funded potentially by, you know, conflicts of interest? So really going back and looking at, you know, where are we at and where can we move forward? Well, you know, some people are so scared to evolve and scared to admit they're wrong, scared to admit we need to change. So, you know, I can only share from my experience what I know and what I've studied. But, you know, I just, I couldn't be silent and I just saw so much sickness and death that I had to, I had to speak up.

Yeah, well, and kudos for you to doing that. You know, it's, it's tough because, because makes me, it kind of scares me when, when people like yourself are getting pushed out in a sense that, and, and I, and I sometimes wonder, it's like, where is, where is the place for this philosophy? Like, because, because sometimes the, the beast, you know, the industry feels so big and there is so much complacency of like, people just kind of following along. So it sometimes just feels a little hopeless, you know, and helpless.

So I agree and I don't blame anybody. I've had several people reach out to me and are like, what do I do? I was. And I cannot leave. If I stand up to this, I know it's wrong, but if I stand up, I will lose my job and I have no answer for you. You need to do what makes sense for you and what's best for you. You know, I was fortunate to get to a position where financially I was able to do that. And I do think, you know, when you, when you follow your passion and you're, you're true to yourself and you just. Time on task. You know, I had to stay in that stupid call center for much longer than I wanted to, you know, but every single moment I had, I was, I'm going to find another job. I'm going to write, I'm going to find another job, I'm going to write. And you just, you put it out there and you put your passion out there and you're going to attract people to you. You know, I've been so fortunate to really gather a great community, and I think that's the only way we're going to make sustainable change, because things are not going to start at the top. We are not going to see changes in nutrition guidelines. We're not going to see changes in the hospital. There's so much money. I don't. I feel like people know that, like, oh, yeah, there's no. You don't know that. I mean, think about how much money you think there is and multiply it by like a billion. It's so profoundly corrupt. And I'm not saying every nurse, every doctor, every person I've ever met, like, genuinely wants to do a. And make a difference, but you're overwhelmed in the number of patients. You have to get insurance reimbursement, you have to charge, and you cannot question the status quo or we'll just kick you out. You know, there's people behind you that want your job. So, you know, it's hard and it's challenging. But, you know, I. For me, I was very blessed that I was able to leave and was able to advocate something that I believe really works. Like I said, I've been really grateful that I've been, you know, embraced by other people and that people are reading the book and, and hopefully at some point, maybe, hopefully before I die, maybe we'll get more health systems. Maybe not the major healthcare systems, but maybe there'll be clinics that pop up. I'm so encouraged by Chris Palmer and Dr. Tony Hampton and Dr. Robert Silas and Ken Berry. Just people that are speaking out and that are making some waves.

That's so great. I want to bring up something because I thought you touched on something that I more and more think about and I want to talk about. See, so you mentioned moderation with processed carbohydrates is not possible on a psychological basis. And I. That idea of just moderation in general, because when I think of my own process around diet, like, I really am the type person, like, if I just say, don't eat sugar, I'm better off doing that than if I say, well, I'll eat a little bit sugar. Sometimes it's like, no, the moderation does not work for me. And. And so I'm kind of more of, like, I do better with, let's just say a no or a yes, you know, around certain foods. Can you talk a little bit about, like. Because if you're coming from a, you know, food, you know, eating disorder for someone, for someone who had an eating disorder, sometimes saying the very strong yes or no, like, that actually feels hard. Right? I mean, because it's kind of. You're. You're you're most ingrained to think like it has to be moderation. Yes, but it sounds like you're not going in that direction.

No, and I mean I will always like disclaim this with, you know, and I say my eating disorder chapter that there's nothing more important than saving your life if you are incredibly underweight. I mean there are people that like when I was, you know, 57 pounds, I needed to be hospitalized. You know, I actually was very fortunate to sit in on it. On a lecture for people with, it was a discussion that they were talking, they were supposedly talking about advances eating disorder treatment. But yeah, often if you're super underweight and you need to be hospitalized into tube fed, there's a difference between I think nutrition potentially to like get your life back. But when it comes to actual moderation, what we know is it just, it doesn't work. It doesn't work for most people on two different levels. You know, on the physical, physiological, like your body and then the psychological on your brain. And you know, I was once again these are things we're just not taught. You know, I was floored that you know, when you have a lot of these processed foods, these sugars, these seed oils, these really processed flowers, they can actually suppress neuroplasticity. They can stop your brain from being able to cope with stress. You know, your brain, that's one of the most beautiful concepts in my opinion is the brain can change, it can mold. Like if you're depressed and anxious, struggling with addiction or eating disorder, it can mold and change and rewire and. Yeah, so it's like somebody who's going through treatment or who's trying to get new behavior patterns or learn new coping skills. But if you're constantly flooding your brain with all of this sugar and this flour. Well, let me break it down a little bit better. When you eat a lot of sugar and flour and now unfortunately so much of our diet is breads, bagels, granola bars, cereals, cookies, crackers. What happens is it actually shifts some of the neurotransmitters in your brain. A really important one, specifically the neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitter glutamate. When that goes up really high, that actually can suppress brain derived neurotropic factor which keeps your brain from engaging neuroplasticity. So we're constantly doing that. We're constantly, you know, you're trying to change and your brain can't reapply. Your brain can't mold and change. So let's say you're trying to do all this recovery work for someone in like an eating disorder recovery, but your brain can't actually take in that new information. So it's, I feel like we're setting ourselves up. You know, I cite in the book, really interesting study on addiction, cocaine addiction and what they found. That was when the brain was flooded with glutamate relapse, people were relapsing. And of course, you know, the article is like, oh, we need to make a drug that stops people, stops the flood of glutamate. We can actually naturally stop this despite, you know, not easy tigering on all the processed food or processed nonsense. So yeah, so it's not popular in the eating disorder community to say like all foods don't fit or, and I've had people ask me that like, oh, don't you feel like you're prescribing a restrictive diet? But let me tell you what's restrictive. I've been to hell and back having struggled with eating disorder. I was told you're going to have racing thoughts, anxiety, your entire life I've done self injury, I've struggled with suicidal ideation. The most unrestrictive thing that's ever happened in my life has been what's been my life the last couple years. Once you are free, you don't obsess about food all the time. You don't worry about it, you don't have. That's freedom to me. And if that means I'm not going to eat Cheerios for breakfast and a donut as a snack and instead I'm going to have steak and butter and you know, some vegetables, hallelujah, praise the Lord, like I am free. And I would tell you like if you had told me that two years ago that hey, we're going to saw off your right arm and you'll be free, I would have been like taking, you know, most eating disorder people, it's a horrible place to be. It's a horrible, shame filled. You know, there's a reason why eating disorders, specifically anorexia, have a highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. It occupied every minute of my thoughts. You know, I was constantly worried thinking about what I'm eating. So is it restrictive to remove things like Oreos and bagels and whatever? In my opinion, I think we're asking the wrong question. I think we should be asking if these things are consistently altering the neurotransmitters in my brain and causing inflammation throughout my body. Maybe these things aren't food. Maybe we need a new definition of food.

That's so good. I've been trying to kind of influence and think about how to change just our relationship to sugar, for example, like, how. How we use it as a reward. Right. And actually, like, what if we actually thought of it, like, for what it is, like a drug? Would you be giving your kids that? You know? And it's something I'm still struggling with, like, how do I change that relationship to food as a reward? But I believe it's along the lines of what you're saying. It's like, we like that it's that drastic. Like, we have to look at it from a totally different perspective and ask a different question.

Yeah, I actually think you do. And I think we have to. Unfortunately, I saw in the hospital setting a lot that we really cuddle on patients. I specifically had a doctor tell me, I'm going to assume that my patient doesn't want to give up sugar and carbs. I'm just immediately making that assumption. I had another dietitian tell me that it was really mean to tell patients to give up sugar because that would make them sad. Well, I'm. Tough shit. We are here to heal. We are here to help. Having been in the hospital, like, I've seen. I've seen amputations. I've seen wounds to the bone. I see rotting teeth. I've seen dementia. I've seen all kinds of things. So it's not like I'm trying to be heartless or whatever, but I've seen the consequences of how people eat over and over and over again, and it's not working. And so I think we need to just have these really honest conversations. And I agree. Sugar is ubiquitous. It's everywhere. You can't even go to Home Depot and buy an air filter without having a candy bar at this checkout. And it's the most socially acceptable thing. You know, we'll give it to our toddlers. We'll throw, you know, granola bars to our animal. Like, it's everywhere. You know, it's at sporting events. It's. It's. You know, you celebrate. You're sad, you have it. It's. It's. And that's the thing with moderation. Most people who say they eat sugar in moderation. What does that mean?

Yeah, it's in everything.

Well, is that once a day, twice a day, once a year, twice a month? Like, nobody knows. But that's the beauty. I mean, that's. It's brilliant marketing, you know, I mean, that people really should get all the processed food to Get a pat on the back for how well they sell stuff, like, because it's totally, you know, it's like, yeah, just have it in moderation. And people, since you can't moderate it, you have it and then you keep. And it's really funny. It's like even mock you in their advertising. Right. Like, hey, once your pop, you can't stop. Bet you can't eat just one. Gotcha.

It's like reverse psychology. So you mentioned you eat liver. I can't help but not focus on organ meats. You know, being with pluck. Tell me, how do you. How do you eat it and how often?

You know, I've actually started to kind of up my liver game. You know, for a while. I was doing about, let's say at least two times a week. Some, most of the time, three. We, my wife and I get a cow share. So we get, you know, like a pretty large four to a half a share of cow at a time. And so we tend to get. They give us lots of free organisms. Nobody wants it. Nobody wants the liver. So you get a ton of the liver. And so, yeah, you know, I cook it really quickly. Like, you know, one of the liver is one of those things you don't want to overcook for sure. And so pretty plain. Little salt, pepper, garlic and yeah, you know, usually first thing in the morning. It certainly isn't my favorite, most delicious thing that I eat, but I really value the nutrition density of it. And I think it's kind of sad. In America, we certainly don't eat the whole animal. You know, most people, they eat beef. It's ground. Ground beef. You know, they're not eating the organs and the tendons and all those other things.

Do you ever get any other organs other than the liver?

We do. You know, we get hearts. We have kidney. Kidney, honestly, isn't my favorite, but because liver is so nutrient dense. But specifically for the iron, for me, from. As for my running, that's the one I focus the most on.

How can people get in touch with you and how would you like people to reach out?

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm most active on Instagram. You can find me at run, eat, meet, repeat. You can find me on Twitter. I'm MichelleHernrd. I don't argue or engage very much on Twitter. TheDietitiansDilemma.net is my website. The book the Dietitian's Dilemma is on Amazon. The paperback and the E book, and we just recorded the audiobook that should be available hopefully by the end of the summer. It's in the editing process right now. But, yeah, I appreciate all the support. I'm happy to answer any questions. And. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Yeah. Well, thank you. And we'll have more. Another conversation. Hopefully we can even dive into some of the stuff we didn't get to dive into. But I'm just grateful. I really appreciate your perspective because it's something that I also share. And I just. I don't find this discussion's happening enough. And so I'm grateful to have it with you. Thanks for. Thanks for talking with me.

You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on.

Yeah. All right. Take care.