Eat Ancestrally with Robb Wolf

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I give you the latest cutting edge intel to help you look, feel and think better. Now, today's show, you know, it's just, it started out as talking about how you're wired to eat. And then I went into this myth busting mode with our guest and asked to find out like, what's the real deal on cheating and high fat or low fat or carbs or ketosis and fasting and all this. So we just got through everything and it's a super cool interview, especially when we kind of crack through what, what it means to eat ancestrally, you know, what's, what makes sense there, what's different now. So, like, this is really one of those myth busting interviews that I am super excited to share with you because I have an awesome guest. You probably have heard of him, Rob Wolf. He's known for his New York Times bestseller the Paleo Solution and now his next New York Times bestseller just out Wired to Eat. He is a total science goober. That's all I have to say. When you talk to him, he's super, super cool guy. Totally dig him and just reminds me of my son a lot. Just science geek, I always have to say. Okay, now we're going to take that into English. So he's a health expert and I've been talking to him a lot lately because he's doing some really interesting work with some of the Navy Seals. And so we've been talking a lot about brain injuries. He's actually gotten me some really good connections there. He lives in Reno, Nevada with his wife Nikki. And wait till you hear what he and his wife and his kids, what they do to help prepare. Prepare for bed. I'm not telling you what it is. All right, a little bit more about Rob. He's been a review editor for the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism and the Journal of Evolutionary Health. He serves on the board of directors, Specialty Health Medical Clinic in Reno, Nevada. He's a consultant for the Naval Special Warfare Resilience Program. He's done a lot of really Amazing stuff. He's a former California state powerlifting champion and he's a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu jitsu. And you can learn more@robwolf.com that's r o b b wolf w o l f dot com. All right, so we are going to talk about how you're wired to eat today with Rob Wolf. All right, let's do it. Rob Wolfe, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Huge honor to be here. Thank you.

Yeah, now you're known as like a paleo guy and now you've got this book, Wired to Eat. So, like, what's, what's the deal with Wired Eat? What is it? Is it another paleo book?

What is is and it's not? It is in that I definitely use this ancestral health template to ask questions. You know, how is our sleep and photo period changed? How is our nutrition changed? How has community and exercise changed, you know, relative to the environment that forged the genetics of our ancestors? But I'm using this thing to ask some questions about the neuroregulation of appetite, like why under certain circumstances we are able to eat in a way that supports our activity level, a good healthy body composition, and why in other situations, when we get the highly processed, hyper palatable foods and if we're under stress, if we have altered circadian rhythm or sleep patterns, why do those things end up leading us to overeat? And so I use this again, this ancestral template to ask questions and I think that that's the best use of that model to start our investigation. But unfortunately, or unfortunately, a lot of folks kind of took the paleo concepts and wrote them into stone tablets. Isn't it ridiculous religion around it? Yeah. Because I am kind of the guy that cracked all that open. Thanks a lot, Rob. I know, I know.

You know, what's crazy is I keep looking at all this going, okay, there's a lot of great clues in all of that, but we don't live there anymore.

Yeah, but the fact that we don't live there is a good, you know, it's an insight, you know, and just because things have changed, it doesn't necessarily make it bad. You know, like, sanitation and hygiene are clearly a really good thing for public health. But interestingly now, as we learn things about like the human gut microbiome, we're discovering that there is a trade off with that. Like, we may be so clean and we may overuse antibiotics in such a way that there may be some negative health consequences to it. And so this, this kind of evolutionary template, if folks can get into it, and I mean, it really depends on who you're trying to talk to. If you have somebody who's just desperate to lose weight or, you know, make a lifestyle change, then they don't want to get bogged down with the details. If you have somebody that's really geeked out on this stuff, then the geek stuff becomes more important. But if you can understand this notion that a change in our environment in various ways could have positives and it could also have negatives. And so a lot also of what I try to cover in the book is instead of moralizing everything, just taking it for what it is. Is junk food good or bad? Well, it depends. You know, if you like myself, I'm not that fired up by sweet things. But if you have a bag of salt, you know, sea salt and vinegar.

Potato chips, oh, I know I'm going.

To push you down to get, to get to it. And so what do I do about that? Well, I, you know, if we have a dinner party and I know a bunch of people are coming over, then I'll get some sea salt and vinegar potato chips, and I will have some of them and then the rest of my house guests will have some of them, and I don't end up eating the whole bag at 11 o' clock at night after I put the kids to bed. So, you know, that's where understanding some of these mechanisms can really help folks set themselves up for success.

Well, and that's a great segue because what I love that you've done in this book is you really get into the idea of personalized nutrition, which I know now is kind of getting like thrown around. But, like, let's get into what really that is, what that really means and why it really matters.

Yeah. You know, so folks react differently to different foods. And that, that probably isn't the most profound thing that's ever been said on anybody's podcast, but the degree of that difference is really kind of jaw dropping. And this can be true in two basic ways. The first is kind of the immunogenic response to foods. Like, I am highly reactive to gluten. You don't want me anywhere near your bathroom after I've had a gluten. It would be bricked over and need a priest and exorcism after that. And different people have different immunogenic reactions to foods, and then different folks have varying degrees of response to the blood glucose in response to the carbohydrate load with these Foods. And my wife and I just did a really interesting experiment where we each checked our blood sugar after eating a battery of the same meals. And we had 50 grams of effective carbohydrates. And we did things like gluten free bread and white rice and lentils. And my wife is 30, 35 pounds lighter than I am, smaller than I am, and God bless her little pancreas, but man, she can just kick my fanny up one side and down the other on blood glucose resistance.

Oh, I'm jealous. Blood sugar envy over there.

Oh, man, she's like Wolverine. Like you could literally drop her off the building, she'd pop her arm back in and just keep going. Whereas, you know, for myself, some foods like white rice and white potatoes, if I have just a modest portion of that, my blood sugars get into diabetic ranges. And I've known that on an instinctual level for a long time. I would have blurry vision. I would get hungry after the meal, foggy headed, and I would ask my wife, hey, did you have any, you know, kind of carb head after that? And she's like, yeah, for like five minutes. And for me, I'm ruined for three days. And so there was some really fascinating research that came out of the Weizmann Institute in Israel about two years ago. And that was really kind of the anchor point for me in deciding to write this book because I had a different angle on this neuroregulation of appetite. And then we really had some deep insights into the need for talking about personalized nutrition. And you know this story as well as I do, it's tough because you have a need to give people as simple a story as you can to get folks moving in a good direction. But the story, because it's simple, is only going to apply to a certain number of folks. And so we need to be able to get them generally going in a good direction, not turn that stuff into religious dogma and then be able to shift gears and say, okay, is this working as, as written to your best benefit, or do we need to make some tweaks and modifications on this and that? That's really what we do with Wired to Eat.

Oh, I love that. That is fantastic.

Now let's get into some controversy.

Yeah, Cheating.

Oh, man.

Cheating. Food cheating. Rob.

You know, I, I, the, the term cheat is really problematic for me and I go into great detail in the book and usually when I talk about this, I wax eloquent about primates and, and the conserved emotional content of, you know, all primates. But the, the basic story here is that the idea that you could cheat on food is kind of silly. We have responses to food, we have consequences to food. The word cheat means to gain an unfair advantage against someone or something. And whether you're following paleo or vegan or macrobiotic or what have you, if you decide to have something that's not in that meal plan, you didn't gain an unfair advantage on anyone. You didn't take unfair advantage of anyone. You just had a meal that you're only one meal away from being back on track if you want to be. And what I've found is that when people moralize their eating, particularly with this notion of cheating, they get the same emotional content as if we cheated in a situation, as if we took unfair advantage of someone. But it's misplaced. It's just applied to a process that is fundamental to our survival. Eating is survival. You know, we don't really recognize that so often in the modern world because fortunately we all generally live in plenty. But there's a reality that we still eat to survive. And so applying this morality about cheating to our food really sets folks up to for a lot of challenges because it's going to kind of release this emotional trigger that then we just say, well, I'm a failure, I cheated. I'll just abandon all the success that I've already had instead of just saying, well, I had one off the rails meal. The next meal is going to be back on track and no harm, no foul.

All right, next one. Low fat, high fat.

It depends. It depends. When we look at the literature, we see examples of lots of folks who do well at both ends of the spectrum. We also something like the Zone, which is kind of a balanced macronutrient ratio. We see people that do well there. And again, this is where this personalized nutrition story comes in. I will say this though. In our modern westernized world, a lot of people are insulin resistant. And there's a whole host of factors that goes into this. Sleep, gut, microbiome, inflammation. And if one is insulin resistant, they do tend to do better on a lower carb diet. And the science is just really, really quite good on that. But not everybody who's overweight is insulin resistant. Not everybody who's skinny is insulin sensitive. As a counterpoint, there are some folks running around out there that look quite skinny, but are actually pre diabetic or even diabetic. And they don't even know it because we usually associate diabetes with obesity and overweight. But there's a reality that we see different folks benefit from the whole spectrum of nutritional intake. And this is a little bit of the work that we need to do. We have a little bit of lifting to figure out where we are in this story. But in the book I have a really pretty slick triage process where we figure out where we are on this insulin sensitivity, insulin resistance spectrum. We use a 30 day reset to help heal the gut, reduce inflammation. Then we use this 7 day carb test to really map out precisely what our responses are to a battery of our preferred carbohydrate foods. And like for myself I've figured out that some things like white rice and white potatoes, I either have to have very, very modest portions or I maybe stick some of it in my post workout period or I just don't have them. And otherwise I stick more with like squash and beets and carrots, maybe some lentils. I actually do really well with lentils, but yet black beans I don't do so well with. So this is some of the mapping that I've done to look at both my, my kind of immunogenic response, like do I get gas and bloating and foggy headed and then also my blood sugar response.

I love that. That actually is what virgin diet was about. Like your immune system and food intolerance and sugar impact diet was on blood sugar response and how many carbs you should eat. So I'm like listening to this going, yay, this is so good. It's awesome.

At some point, you know, whether if you invent a car on one planet versus another, it's probably going to have two or, you know, two to four wheels, there's going to be a transmission, there's going to be an accelerator, there's going to be a brake. Like it's kind of a convergent evolution. And you know, yourself, folks like David Perlmutter, I think that there's just this. If you're going to speak on this topic to any degree at this point, you've got to understand the gut microbiome, you've got to put some effort into understanding the blood sugar response. And all of those things weave together.

Yeah. And what's interesting is when we all get together and start to talk to each other and go, oh, you know, I remember when I first started to realize early on that and it was like there were no articles about this and I was like, why are people that are bloated can't lose weight? And what was going like I didn't understand the whole bacterial overgrowth because no one was talking about it.

Right.

I just knew it was so. All right, let's, let's throw one more at you. Fasting.

I'm a huge fan of fasting, but for the right person, I have a chapter at the end of the book. It's called Hammers, Drills and ketosis, the one tool your doctor will never use. And fortunately, that story is changing. More and more healthcare providers are aware of the incredible therapeutic potential of fasting and ketosis. But I will say this, there are populations that are really not well suited for fasting. If. And the people that I found that are really willing to do like intermittent fasting, like have their last meal at 5 o' clock and not eat again until noon or 10 o' clock the next day, these tend to be the same folks that do CrossFit six days a week, and they do Ashtanga yoga five days a week, and they're just kind of type A, over the top people. And that fasting, maybe it's a stress and it can be a good stress for some folks. Like if you're kind of a type B, laid back computer programmer that, you know, doesn't do a lot of activity. Intermittent fasting could be amazing for a person like that. For someone that's really tightly wound in type A, intermittent fasting may be too much. It may kind of, you know, hit those adrenals in a way that we don't like. It can disorder the thyroid. So I look at it like saws and hammers and screwdrivers, you know, the right tool for the right job.

Mm, that makes a ton of sense. And then the final, the final one, ketosis, because you just, you just flipped it up there. So I have to, I have to address thoughts on that.

Yeah, ketosis, I tend to do best at or around a ketogenic level of carbohydrate intake. And for people that aren't familiar with the term ketosis, if we fast for two to three days, we tend to deplete the sugar out of our liver called glycogen. And, and our brain and our body needs a consistent fuel source to run on. And what it does is pretty slick. It starts converting body fat into these things called ketone bodies, which the brain, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys run really, really well on these ketone bodies. And it's a survival mechanism for times of scarcity. And it's really very slick. And there's been a remarkable amount of research looking at ketogenic diets for neurodegenerative diseases, for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, epilepsy. It's been used in epilepsy in children for over 100 years. And it's just an incredibly powerful tool. It's particularly beneficial for folks that are really out there on the insulin resistance spectrum. It can oftentimes really bring folks back from those diabetic type blood sugar swings. But again, it's not the right answer for every single person. I've found. You know, certain people who seem to be more just naturally carb sensitive, more insulin sensitive, they may not feel particularly good on ketosis, but it's a pretty easy experiment to do. You can play around with that intervention, which I have a basic kind of paleo oriented diet plan, an autoimmune diet plan, a transitional ketosis plan, which is a low glycemic load approach with added MCT oil to help get you into ketosis and, and then a ketogenic diet plan. And the kind of cool thing again about the book is that I walk folks through a triage or discovery process so that they can figure out, oh, this one looks like the best fit for me. I'm going to ignore this other stuff. And so I definitely help folks figure out if ketosis and or fasting looks like a good option for them.

So I'm going to throw a curveball at you here because I could go on and on with like this good or bad.

Right, Right.

But I love that. One of the biggest things I like to bring to everybody is science plus action. And like every single thing, you had the science back and then, okay, well, you could do this. So I. That's just awesome. Now kind of switching gears, taking it over to you. What's the one thing you do every day that you feel makes the biggest difference in your life?

Protecting my sleep by hook or by crook, at gunpoint, any way that I can do it. So what? We just remodeled our house last summer and we installed dimmer switches in, like everywhere. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous. Everything that ended up with a dimmer switch. And then we also use these blue blocker glasses in the evening. So once the sun sets, we dim all the lights in the house and the kidlets put on their blue blocker glasses and the parents put on their blue blocker glasses. And I tell you what, the Wolf household winds down pretty rapidly when that happens.

I hope you've done some video on everybody in there.

We haven't yet. It's kind of funny because people mention that I'm like, really? You want to see us sitting around in our blue blockers but we do need to do it because at least my kids are cute. So. Yeah. But, you know, to the degree that I protect that sleep, it really buys me much more latitude in the rest of my life. And, you know, Americans in general are hardworking. They're industrious, they're go, go, go. You know, there's this sense that I'll sleep when I'm dead. Sleep is for the weak. And. And even though this book is mainly about nutrition, one of my four pillars, the first of the four pillars, is sleep and photoperiod. Basically, when it's sunny, we need to be outside more and getting that sun on our person. And then in the evening, when the sun goes down, we need to dial down the light intensity because the blue wavelengths of light that come into our eyes suppress melatonin production and it allows us to stay up later. And it's pretty clear that any type of disordered or shortened sleep dramatically impacts our insulin sensitivity, our hormonal function, our inflammation, and, I mean, it should be really as easy as selling sex to sell people on sleep. Like, it feels good. It makes you look better.

I know if it was. If it was like a face cream or a supplement, it would be a gazillion dollars.

Oh, yeah.

It's like the number one. If I had to pick one thing, that's the one thing.

Yeah, that really is the one thing. And, you know, it's interesting, if you feel reticent about really changing your nutrition, if you change your sleep patterns for the better, it's going to buy you a lot of latitude on the nutrition. But if you are staying up super late, if you're messing around on your computer and your iPhones and everything into the wee hours of the morning, and you have a diet that would make a cockroach kind of take pause, then you've got a real problem brewing there. The body is very adaptable, but the sleep deprivation, plus the poor diet, is just a huge recipe for disaster.

Amen. All right, now I know you've got something cool because you had something that was going to be put into your Wired to Eat book that was, like, probably just too much too hot for the book.

So, yeah, it was a chapter that really lays out the historical story about how our food system and our political system arrived where it is. And it's called Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics. And it really does in accounting from about the 1940s all the way forward to modern day and looks at how kind of collusion between academia, politics, and kind of the economic scene created this modern junk food industry, which is what is pretty much preying upon us now. But it's a pretty good read. Folks have generally said that they find the book pretty funny, but I have to pat myself on the back with that first chapter. I think some of my pithiest writing pieces are in that first chapter. So it's pretty engaging and it definitely sets the stage for how we find ourselves at the place that we are today.

Awesome. And you're going to give everybody that for free. All they have to do is go to jjvirgin.com forward/rob. And that's Rob with two Bs, R O, B, B. And you will get that super cool, sneaky chapter that they kept out.

Yeah. Get it.

I love that.

All right. Thank you so much for joining me today, Rob. I so appreciate it.

Huge honor to be here. Thank you. And thank you for all the hard work that you've done. You've just been an incredible inspiration and trailblazer for a long time. So thank you for all your hard work.

I know a long.

Well, we're both getting long in the tube with this, but they keep calling us back, so we keep doing it.

Yeah. You know, well, thank God this is an anti aging diet, all of this. Right, Right. Or a de aging. All right, so after the break, I'm going to be answering listeners questions, so stick with me.

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Hey, it's JJ. Welcome back. This is the best time of the show because this is when I go dive in and answer your questions. And I always go over to my JJ Virgin official page over on Facebook. You can tell you're there with the little blue check and look for questions that fit the topic. And like, nailed it today with Jeanne from Naples who says, jj, how do I know how many carbs I should be eating? So I was really excited to hear Rob talk about carbs and figuring out how many carbs you should eat. And this is where we can say some broad based things like, you know, find your hidden food intolerances, eat more deep green leafy vegetables, drink more water. I mean, there's some things that are fairly universal, but then things are going to vary a bit. And you know, today he was talking about ketosis and low carb. I can tell you that I can't fast and I can't do ketosis. I feel like crap on both of those. It just trashes my adrenals. And so when I take people through the sugar impact diet, I actually designed that diet to help answer the question how many carbs and how much sugar should I eat? Because it's going to be different for everyone. Now what I found, kind of, if you can generalize this, is that people have more insulin, are more prone to insulin resistance, tend to do better on a lower carb diet, people with adrenal issues, chronic stress, tend to do better on a moderate carb diet. I don't think anyone does well on a high carb diet. Not a fan. But that range varies based especially on those things. And some of that is determined by your genetics. So when you do the sugar impact diet program, I actually take you through a program process so that you can start to connect the dots between how you feel and when you're eating carbohydrates. You can really know how many should I have and what level. Because you can eat more of low sugar impact carbohydrate foods because they aren't going to have the same blood sugar response as medium and high sugar impact foods. So it's really about personalizing your nutrition, going through your own personal discovery process to find out what works for you and what doesn't. All right, again, if you'd like to submit a question, pop on over to my Facebook page@jbirgeonofficial. And now for the gratitude portion of the show. Like every week now, I'm going to be reviewing, highlighting a review of the week. I read all these reviews. I just love these reviews. They make me so happy. So I'm going to. Let's see today, today, today I think I will just read this one by fitkat5 says mind blown. Finally, an explanation for why I don't look as slim as I think I should, given how much I exercise. The last podcast on why muscle mass becomes crucial was exactly what I needed to know. I thought I knew a lot about nutrition and exercise, but this podcast has taught me so much more. Thanks for podcasting and thank you for that. So these things are the things that keep me going and I'm grateful for all of these reviews and each week I'm looking forward to showcasing one, hopefully yours. So pop on over to itunes and leave a review. I hugely appreciate it. Okay, thank you so much for joining me today and I strive to give you the best cutting edge information backed by science with simple actionable steps. Which means when you hear it, you've got things that you can put into immediate action. And that's the big thing that I'm going to impress upon you, is that this stuff's all cool, but it becomes amazing when you actually take action with it. So grab something that inspired you today. Take inspired, courageous action. Go for it, and I will see you on the next podcast. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I check all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.