The KETO DIET & Intermittent Fasting - Interview with Ben Azadi [Keto Kamp] - Dr. Joy Kong Podcast

Keto is not a fad. It's a fact. It's a metabolic process that every single one of our ancestors went through. And how do I know that? Because our ancestors didn't have food readily available to them, so they were forced to intermittent fast. Your nutrition could be perfect. Your intermittent fasting schedule could be perfect. Your exercise routine could be perfect. But if you don't do the inner work, what I call the inner sizing, none of that will work to the point that you want it to work. Because you can't heal a body that has hate and has hate for yourself, has hate for others. It's not a healing environment.

Hello, Ben, thank you so much for coming on. I am so excited for this conversation. You are such an expert in ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. I think those are subjects of great, great interest. Not only myself have been doing intermittent fasting for some time and also trying to adhere to a ketogenic diet. But I want to hear from you. You know, been the expert. And you've written books about these subjects, right? You've had four books. So I'm really excited for you to shed some light on these subjects.

Oh, thank you, Joy. It's a pleasure being here with you. I had a great conversation with you on my podcast when I interviewed you, and you gave such great nuggets of information and your story. So I'm grateful to come on your show now and reciprocate.

Yeah, and I was impressed by you. You were such a good host. So anyhow, I hope I can do as good of a job. So I understand that you had gone through your own personal journey, that there was a transformation that happened to you. So starting in 2008. What happened in 2008?

Yeah, exactly. 2008 was a rock bottom for me. And I'm sure a lot of people have been there or they might be going through it right now. So I was depressed, I was suicidal. I was physically obese. At that time, I was 24 years old and I weighed 250 pounds. 250 pounds. I followed a standard American diet, as, you know, very toxic diet. And it showed in my health. Physically obese, but also mentally obese with really toxic thoughts. And I wanted to give up on my life. I was searching for ways to give up because I was tired of hurting. And thankfully, I never really went through with that because I kept thinking about my mom and the devastation she would have to deal with, and it kept stopping me in my tracks. So I knew I had to figure things out. So I opened up a book and I started to read one book, which led to five books, and it just kept. I just became obsessed with understanding how the mind works and how our thoughts create our reality. And I started to get really better at my thoughts. And I took ownership and responsibility. And I believe that word responsibilities, such an important word. Our greatest ability is our responsibility. And up until that point, Joy, my responsibility to life was really poor. I was blaming my genetics, I was blaming my enabling family members, my slow metabolism. I was being the victim of my history. But after taking ownership and responsibility, I stopped playing the victim card. I stopped being the victim of my history, and I started to take ownership and I became the victor of my destiny. I and I started to exercise, started to eat better, I started to change my thoughts, and I went through this incredible transformation where I lost 80 pounds. I went from 34% body fat down to 6% body fat, carved out this physical transformation, a physical six pack. But the most important thing I believe I achieved was a mental six pack. And I started to really get good with your 60,000 thoughts that we have every single day. And that's what got me started in the health space. That was in 2008. I've been in the space for 13, 14 years now. And eventually I started to really understand cellular health, a lot of the things that you teach. And in 2014 is where I discovered the amazing powers, I should say, healing capabilities, of these ancient healing strategies like ketosis and fasting. So I just love teaching it. I love helping people understand how amazing their body is and how capable their body is of healing itself.

Wow, that's so fantastic. I mean, the desire to live and to thrive is what drove you to figuring everything out. And you did. And you came out, like you said, a victor. And you said the mental six pack included controlling your thoughts. And that has some kind of transformative power for you.

Absolutely, to this day. And I believe this, you could do. Your nutrition could be perfect, your intermittent fasting schedule could be perfect, your exercise routine could be perfect. But if you don't do the inner work, what I call the inner sizing, none of that will work to the point that you want it to work, because you can't heal a body that has hate and has hate for yourself, has hate for others. It's not a healing environment. But when you do the opposite and you start practicing what I call vitamin G, gratitude, the strongest vitamin in the world, changes everything, because there's 60,000 thoughts that we have every single day, according to studies done by psychiatrists, 60,000 thoughts. And they estimate that 90% of the thoughts that we're going to have today are the same thoughts that we had yesterday. And they're typically negative thoughts. They are what is called stinking thinking thoughts. And that was me. I had stinking, thinking thoughts. And I always say, if you are thinking is thinking, your dreams are shrinking. Health dreams, financial dreams, relationship dreams. So I started to become aware of those 60,000 thoughts. And whenever I had a negative thought, I would change it to a positive thought. And I started to practice gratitude. And I still work on it till this day. And gratitude in particular, it's one of the greatest things that we could develop in our practice because Dr. Joe Dispenza did all these MRI scans on people who are going through his trainings and his seminars. And he showed that through these MRI scans and these brain scans that when somebody is in a State of Gratitude, 1200 Chemical reactions take place in the body, in the brain, that are healing the body. That's why I think it's a big component. So when you get really good at mastering your thoughts, then everything else that you're doing upgrades by default.

Wow. Wow. Yeah, I, I've started to work on that myself, definitely. And definitely a lot of critical thoughts to my, you know, toward myself and toward other people. I think I grew up in a very judgmental culture. In China, the competition is so high. There's 1 billion people that are competing with you, and the judgment between, you know, just be between everybody. It's. It's so prevalent. So I have to reprogram my thoughts. And of course, you know, you know, when you're judgmental toward other people, you're very judgmental towards yourself. It just, they come hand in hand. So anyhow. But you mentioned something about ancient therapies. And so you're saying that ketogenic diet is actually ancient.

Yeah. And intermittent fasting. They're both ancient healing strategies, or ancient therapies is a good term as well. They have both been around since humans have existed. There's nothing new about keto. Yeah, it's trending now. And the keto diet, and people say, oh, it's a fad, it's a weight loss fad. But that's not accurate. Keto is not a fad. It's a fact. It's a metabolic process that every single one of our ancestors went through. And how do I know that? Because our ancestors didn't have food readily available to them, so they were forced to intermittent fast. Sometimes it was an intermittent fast. Sometimes it was a three day fast. And what happens when you fast? Well, you drop glucose and insulin and your brain needs some sort of energy. Your cells need another sort of form of energy. So that's where ketones are produced. The body starts mobilizing fat stores and fatty acids, which is then shuttled to your liver. Your liver starts burning that and then it produces ketones, which fuels the brain, it fuels the mitochondria. So there's nothing new about it. It's been around for a long time, it's just nuanced. So, yeah, that's an ancient healing strategy that if we use, be super powerful for ourselves.

Yeah. So. So how do you think, how did this ketogenic diet fad come about? What, what, where did it come from?

Well, kind of Dr. Atkins was kind of like a, maybe the leader in the 1980s with the Atkins diet. But his, it was kind of keto, but he didn't really focus on the quality of fats. It was a little bit high in protein, but there were some keto components to it. And he got results. A lot of people did, like the south beach diet and different Atkins diets. And then in the early 2000s, I shouldn't say 2012 or so, people started to experiment with a very high fat, low carbohydrate diet to get into ketosis. And people started to lose a lot of weight and get off of their insulin medication and blood sugar reducing medication. And then it really just took off to the point where it became one of the top search terms on Dr. Google, which was the ketogenic diet. And now it's, it's, it's very popular, it's mainstream. And you know, it's mainstream because when you go to the supermarket, there's keto approved products and keto bars and keto breads. So when you see that happen in your supermarket, like it did with Paleo, you know, it's mainstream, but there's really nothing new about it. It's one tool. It's not the only tool. I don't believe in, like staying in ketosis forever, but I do believe in tapping into it and going in and out, which is what I call keto flexing. And that's metabolic flexibility.

Right. I think the first time I really heard about it was in the context of epilepsy. So a lot of kids suffer from epilepsy. And then a doctor realized that when he put these kids on a keto diet, you know, in some kind of ketosis and their epilepsy was going away. And so, so that was, but that was still limited for. Oh, okay. Only for these kids, you know, for these medical conditions. But then it became like an anti aging kind of strategy. What have you seen? Do you give consultations to patients as well?

Right, yeah. So just to your point, in the 1920s is when they discovered ketogenic as a diet to apply to children with epilepsy, they started to give them a ketogenic diet. Their seizures went away and then they developed a medication and they forgot about the nutrition part because you're like, we got a medication for this. But even before that, joy, in the ancient Romans, long time ago, ancient Romans accidentally discovered the power of ketones. You see, back then when individuals would have seizures, epileptic seizures, back then they had no idea what a seizure was. What they thought was that these individuals were actually being possessed by. They thought it was the demons that are being expressed through seizures. And what they did, they would take these individuals and lock them into a room, isolate them, no food, no water, so they forced them to fast, which generated ketones. And then they would come back a few hours later and their seizures would be gone, the demons would be gone. But it was the ketones that we now know were helping with the seizures. So there's nothing new about it. And then to answer your question, yeah, so I do one on one coaching, but I primarily do my keto camp academy where I have thousands and thousands of students who go through my pillars and yeah, we look at lab work, we look at what's working, and I can tell you that so many of these students who have gone into the program on their insulin, their metformin, their high blood pressure medication have gotten off of it. They've been able to drop a 1Cs from over 11 or 8 down to 5.1, 5.2. And it's been such an amazing journey to see that. And it works. It works when you do it the right way.

Yeah, but what about this idea that, you know, as a human species, I'm sure no one was thinking that, oh, we need to avoid carbs. So, you know, as a species, we've just been eating whatever that's available and a lot of it is just, you know, plant sources and grains and so now if we're sticking to something that's pretty different from how people were eating before with the grain as part of the picture, roots and grain, how do you think that's going to impact our health, really? Because we're kind of deviating from how we ate before.

Well, our ancestors valued the animal protein, the Most, which is protein and fat. Carbohydrates were not as valued as organ meat and carcass from an animal that they killed. But yeah, to your point, they did have carbohydrates. They had it seasonally. So when fruit was in season, they had fruit. When grains were in season, they had grain. So that's where the metabolic flexibility comes into play. There's a time and place where we want to enter ketosis and use ketones and I could get into what it does to uncouple the mitochondria and all that which is beneficial, but we don't stay there for a long time term. I'm not a fan of that, which is surprising because I'm a keto guy and I love keto. But I don't think we should do long term ketosis. There's some dangers in that. So the goal is to go back and forth between both of these energy systems, the sugar burning energy system, the glucose burning energy system, and the ketosis, the ketogenic energy system.

Well, I guess that's where the word carb loading came about. Right. So yeah, that's part of it I think is really nice to get. You know, I can do ketogenic, but you know, to just get even the satisfaction of having certain carbs. And it's not when I do that I don't gain weight. I almost think that there's, you're propelling weight loss. What are your thoughts on this carb loading concept?

I like it. It's, it's, it's a part of my keto flex approach. But I don't implement the carb loading. I call it keto flexing, which is carb cycling. A high carb day to get out of ketosis. I don't implement it in the beginning. I like for people to experience ketosis, the amazing benefits of it, the anti inflammatory benefits, the brain benefits, and then we start flexing after about eight to 12 weeks when they become what's called keto adapted. That's when the mitochondria now prefer ketones as an energy source. But then at that point you could start carb loading and having extra carbs. But here's the, here's the problem. In America, there was a study that came out, I don't know if you saw it, it was 2018, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The study showed that only 12% of adults in America are metabolically healthy, meaning 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. And they categorize that looking at triglycerides blood pressure, A1C, insulin. Are they on medication, off medication? Only 12% fit the bill for that. So 88% of people need to experience a lower glucose and insulin sort of diet, which is keto. And then when you've done the work, you could start flexing in and out. And you have the flexibility to do that. And you're not going to gain weight. It's actually going to support you. It's going to help make hormonal conversions. For example, the thyroid, T4 inactive form of thyroid needs to be converted to T3. Insulin actually helps make that conversion. So insulin is not the bad guy. But the problem is we have an excess of high insulin with most Americans. So I like for them to experience ketosis, lower insulin, and then strategically bump up insulin and flex in and out of ketosis.

Okay. Yeah. I guess one reason I asked about the carb thing is because I grew up in an Asian culture, right? So Chinese culture, the Japanese culture is carb heavy. You know, you are eating your rice and that rice, it may be a big bowl of rice and a little bit of veggie and maybe a few floating pieces of meat. I mean, that was probably what most people have been eating, eating, you know, how they've been eating for, you know, a few thousand years. So. So this is why, you know, maybe in other cultures a little different. But, you know, the Chinese and Japanese, you know, have been known to have pretty good, you know, health span. You mean lifespan?

Right.

They've done pretty good. Of course there's Chinese medicine. But, you know, good luck convincing my dad or my mom, you know, to eat a low carb diet. They're like, how can you eat low carb? You need it, you need rice, you need the grains. There's even Chinese saying, there's Chinese saying for everything. So, yeah, the Chinese saying, basically, the five grains are the foundation. You don't get rid of the foundation. And then good luck convincing them to do intermittent fasting. There's another saying that you need three meals a day. So I said, maybe try, dad, let's enhance your longevity. Maybe try to eat, shrink your eating window. Oh, no, no, no, no. Know, you need. So. So I have no luck. So what are your thoughts on these cultures? The fact that they have been carb heavy, you know, even Okinawans, I'm sure that they is carb heavy and they're doing great.

It's, you know, it's hard to extrapolate that data and then compare it to America, right? Because first of all, number one, the Grains in America are not the grains they were eating back in the day or that there might be eating in China or Japanese or other countries. We have grains that are loaded with pesticides and herbicides. We have hybridized wheat, so that's different. But also, most Americans are sedentary. They're sitting on their butt. There's also a toxicity component with other heavy metals and mold spores and other things to consider. So the society we live in now, the day and age we live in now in America, is a very toxic environment. We know that there's a lot of toxins and we're sitting on our butt in general and we're not moving. There's not that social component that I'm sure your parents had or your ancestors had. The social component is very important. A lot of the blue zones have that social component. They're also moving. So there's a lot of things that are similarities, but then there's a lot of things that are that are different. So I speak from the lens of what's happening right now in America with so many people being overweight or obese, and how we can apply this tool to them. If somebody is having rice and they're not fasting, but their lipids look great, their inflammatory markers look great, they feel great, then keep doing it. But for the most part, that's not what we're seeing here in America.

That's true. That's true. So do you feel that intermittent fasting and ketogenic diet, they are best to be utilized together and, and they help.

Each other, they go hand in hand because they both do a good job at lowering glucose and insulin and most people need to do that. And, but also fasting, the great thing about fasting, intermittent fasting, is that you could kind of plug it into any dietary philosophy that you follow. It could be plugged into a vegan diet, a vegetarian diet, a paleo diet, a keto diet, a carnivore diet, because it's, it's not really, you're not eating and you could plug into any, into any diet that you follow. And fasting has amazing benefits. So the way that I teach it with my approach is first I get the person in ketosis and burning fat instead of sugar. And then I pair intermittent fasting. And I've, I've noticed doing it that way by lowering glucose and insulin and then pairing fasting makes it much more bearable. They're able to do 18 hour fast, sometimes 24 hour fast, and achieve more results and feel better during the fast. But yeah, to answer your question, Joy, they go hand in hand and they work really well together. Fasting and ketosis.

Okay, so I do have a question. I'm wondering about people who fast maybe 16 hours a day, but during the eight hours that they're not fasting, if they're eating continuously and they're eating a lot, what are your thoughts on that?

It's not ideal, but if you're going to do it, if you're going to do it that way, by having an eating window and a fasting window, you're still going to benefit. Having a shorter eating window versus snacking all day long. Because at least for those eight hours, yeah, they're raising glucose and insulin throughout the eight hours, but at least for 16 hours, they're allowing glucose and insulin to drop. They're allowing their digestive system to take a break. Potentially getting into autophagy or some autophagy might be occurring in that 16 hours. So there's benefits to it. So if you're going to have, if you're going to eat a standard American diet and you're going to snack, it's better to do that within a certain window versus all day long. So there's still benefits to it, but it's not ideal.

Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think is the ideal eating window and from what time to what time? Is there something that you recommend to people?

I like rotating the schedule. For most people, an 186 works really well, meaning 18 hours in a fasted state and then a six hour eating window with about two or three meals in that window and no snacking in between those meals. And then that would be like 12pm to 6pm eating window and then 6pm to 12pm the next day. Fasting window. That works well. But some people do better. And I've noticed some women actually do better having breakfast and skipping dinner. So they could kind of rotate that schedule around. But even with that, if you find yourself doing an 186 every day or a 168 every single day for months, I like mixing it up. For example, a woman who has a menstrual cycle doesn't want to do too much fasting the week before her period or even do keto that week because you want to build progesterone that week to help with that monthly cycle. And when you fast and do ketosis, it doesn't help build progesterone, which leads to more cravings and an irregular period with heavy pains and even more cravings. So that would be a week where you shorten your fasting window. Till 14 hours and you get out of ketosis and carb load and do more carbohydrates. So it's going to be different for everybody. But 18, six in general is a good schedule and I like that eating window between 12 and 6pm yeah.

And it's interesting. No one wants people to eat after 8:00pm that's the consensus.

That's true.

It'll be ideal for six. So, you know, I went, you know, to learn from this Ayurvedic doctor and he was talking about how after 10pm your body goes through a different kind of cycle where it's trying to assimilate different nutrients and your cells are becoming more active and that's how you get hungry and that's really. You should be in bed at that time. So.

Agreed. Yeah. And that's where you get the biggest growth hormone spike and you know all about growth hormones. So if you're eating, you're not going to get that big growth hormone spike.

Yeah. What about ketogenic diet? I see people who are doing it and they're doing it so animal protein heavy that I'm concerned that what they're ingesting with all the animal fat and protein that they're actually promoting cancer. So that's one thing that I'm concerned about.

Yeah, you're referring to getting too much mtor, Is that what you're referring to?

That's probably one of the mechanisms.

Yeah. Yeah, me too. I mean, it could be a problem. So the balancing act, as you teach very, very well, is balancing MTOR with autophagy. To your point, if somebody is doing a heavy protein rich diet on keto and they're not practicing intermittent fasting, they're not exercising, they're not getting these synolytics to stimulate autophagy, then it could be problematic. It could be leading to high IGF1 levels and MTOR and growth and it could be aging the person faster. Perfect example is a bodybuilder. Right. A bodybuild. Bodybuilders in general age faster because they're constantly mtor protein, protein, protein. So I like to balance it out with fasting and exercise to get more of the autophagy. I'm not so concerned with eating animal products if the animal products are quality animals. And I've done personal experiments with like a carnivore diet where I've done 40 days straight of carnivore, just animal fat and pro and protein for 40 days. And I tested, I did a whole bunch of lab markers on day one. You'll find this interesting. So I did high sensitivity C reactive protein. I did fibrinogen homocysteine, A1C, full thyroid panel, everything, a lot of things. And then I did it again on day 40 and all of my panels improved. My, my C reactive protein went from 1.1 to 0.5. My homocysteine went from like 8.2 to 6.2. My fibrinogen dropped, my A1C dropped, my insulin dropped and I felt amazing. But I paired it with intermittent fasting. So I wasn't eating protein all day long. But NIA quality animal based protein. So I'm not too concerned with the, with the quality of the protein unless you're eating, you know, dirty animals that are having been treated. Right. But to your point, there, there needs to be a balancing act of protein autophagy and mtor.

Yeah, probably the source of the protein is really important because I had a good friend and I, you know, she unfortunately I lost her and, and she was doing ketogenic diet. She was so happy about it because she lost 30 pounds. But I was concerned with just how little plant, just I guess plant source of what she's eating and maybe all the cheese, all the processed meat and everything she seemed to put in her body. I think it ended up promoting tumor that was in her body eventually even though she was feeling amazing, but I think she was lacking important nutrients and then probably also putting in some certain toxins from the protein source.

Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that about your friend. And there's not one way to do keto, unfortunately there's so many ways. So anytime that I teach keto, it's from the view of health, not weight loss. Teach it as a weight loss tool. And a lot of people unfortunately who do keto, they're doing a lot of cheese, a lot of processed meats, they're doing a lot of grain fed meat as well. And even worse than all of that, they're doing a lot of these vegetable oils, these polyunsaturated fats which really could create inflammation and a buildup of a free radical for H and E. And they're all keto friendly. So I'm always explaining we want to avoid the rancid fats and equality fats and the right protein from the right source and the right amount and balance it out with fasting. And we preach heavily on green leafy vegetables and getting in your potassium, magnesium, the bitter supporting the liver. So I'm teaching it very different than the way most people teach it. But A lot of those studies that show a high fat ketogenic diet promotes cancer in rats or mice, it's because of the feed that was given to them or inflammatory fats in excess. So that's the, the challenge out there with keto.

So do you get, because you have a lot of followers, you know, social media, do you get people who are countering, countering your views or really trying to have an argument, a debate with you about ketogenic diet?

Oh, yeah, all the time. I'm always open to having a nice friendly debate unless they're being, you know, jerks about it. But yeah, what are some of the.

Objections that you think may be maybe helpful to share and you know, and your response?

Yeah, the biggest one is the ketogenic diet is not sustainable. You shouldn't do that long term. And my response is, you're right, you shouldn't do it long term. We don't teach that. We want to flex in and out. But you don't neglect this amazing pathway which has been shown. I mean, I could reference so many studies that show what ketones do to lower free radicals in the mitochondria, to uncouple the mitochondria and lower free radicals and produce more ATP at the same time, which is amazing. But you don't. So I say, I agree, we don't do keto long term. Fruits are not bad, carbs are not bad for you, but maybe for a certain point in time we lower those. So that's one argument. Another argument might be, well, we just had the, you know, you're eating animal protein. Well, not all proteins created equal. What about if it's grass fed, grass finished, quality animals? I don't see a problem with that if you're balancing it out with fasting. That's another argument. Another argument I see is, yeah, you can't, you know, you're eating too much bacon and cheese and that's going to cause issues. And I agree. So we don't focus on that. It's not necessarily the way we teach. Keto is not necessarily eating a whole bunch of fat. It's really lowering your carbs, practicing intermittent fasting. And that's another way to get into ketosis. You don't have to eat a whole bunch of fat to get into ketosis. You could do it with intermittent fasting and by lowering your carbohydrate intake. So there's different ways to view it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great point. So, so with intermittent fasting, pretty much you always couple it with the, with the ketogenic diet. I mean that, that's, that's how you're, you're. Although people, even when they're not doing ketogenic diet, they're still getting a lot of benefit from just shrinking the eating. Eating.

Absolutely. You benefit from intermittent fasting whether you do keto or not. The thing with keto is that when you eat more healthy fat and protein, it's so satiating that you naturally begin to intermittent fast. You naturally start, stop snacking in between your meals. Protein, you know, quality protein activates hormones and chemicals in the body. Cholecystokin, leptin, peptide, yy, which just signal to your brain, put down the fork, you're full. So naturally people are going to begin to pick up intermittent fasting when they do keto the right way.

Yeah. So what are your thoughts? I'm curious about this whole carnivore diet craze. So that definitely has an overlap with ketogenic diet, but some people definitely take it to the extreme. Any thoughts on that?

I think it's a great tool. I think it's a great tool, but I'm not a fan of long term Carnivore. It's just not something I think we should do. I've interviewed Dr. Paul Saladino, the carnivore MD a couple of times. He's a buddy of mine and when I interviewed him two and a half years ago, his book just came out, the Carnivore quote. He was like, carnivore, only carnivore, carnivore for the rest of your life. And we kind of had a friendly discussion on the podcast. I was like, yeah, but our ancestors didn't do that long term. They always had different vegetables and fruits to your point, Joy, when they had the opportunity. And he's like, yeah, but you know it's going to benefit the gut, the gut autoimmune. And I see that, but it's not something I think we should do long term. Now fast forward to the interview I just did with him again three months ago. He's now having over 100 grams of fruit per day with his carnivore. So he's not technically the same carnivore guy he was three years ago because his health started to have some issues. Right. So he saw the change there. So Carnivore could be amazing for somebody, especially somebody with leaky gut autoimmune disease. But you don't stand Carnivore forever. You maybe use it as an elimination diet, work on the gut, find out what's affecting that gut. And then you start bringing back the vegetables, the carbs. So I throw in carnivore a couple times per year where I'll do 30 days of carnivore, kind of reset the gut. I feel really great with it. And then I incorporate the veggies and the plants and the fruits. So I like it as a tool but not a long term solution.

That's really interesting. Yeah. Because I didn't buy the argument of plants don't want to be eaten. So, so you know, they, they have all these toxins to prevent, you know, to try to harm animals. But you know, do animals want to be eaten? No animals want to be eaten by another animal either. I mean, it makes no sense. So, so anyhow, so I want to ask you about strategies to help people to, to do better in intermittent fasting. So there must be various things you can do, different tricks. What can you share with us?

Yeah. And you know, just real quick the argument about the plant toxins. It's true, they do have defense mechanisms and anti nutrients doesn't necessarily mean they're bad for you. You could create like a hormetic response where your body has to adapt and your digestive system has to adap stronger. So those plant toxins could actually benefit you. Unless you have just severe leaky gut and you know, eliminating them short term would be a wise idea. Animals do have defense mechanisms with their feet and their claws. Like they could protect themselves that way. Plants don't. So I see that argument, but I also am with you with, we shouldn't just avoid them. That's not the solution. We ate them forever. It's just a matter of your digestive system being able to adapt to it and create a hormetic response. So there's a lot of back and forth in that community. But either way, there's a lot that we, me and you agree on there with intermittent fasting. Yeah. Some strategies would be to look at fasting like a muscle. Similar to if you started to. Let's say you heard about CrossFit, right. And you're like, oh my gosh, this CrossFit sounds amazing. Just like you hear about fasting, it sounds amazing. But you wouldn't just go to your CrossFit gym and do a full CrossFit workout. If you've been a couch potato for 10 years, that would look ugly. You'd probably hurt yourself. Similar to fasting, if you've been eating every two to three hours, high carbohydrates and you go and you do an 18 hour fast tomorrow, that'll look ugly. You might even hurt yourself. So you got to build up this fasting muscle. Maybe you start with a 12 hour fast and you just go 12 hours with not eating, just having water and some electrolytes. And then you start bumping back the breakfast from 8am to 9am so you go 13 hour fast and then 14 hour fast. That would be a great tip for beginners. And then keeping your electrolytes up are very important because you do. When you start to lower glucose and insulin with fasting, you start to release excess water weight, which is great because you start to look lighter and feel lighter. But there's also this diuresis that occurs with the kidneys releasing electrolytes and minerals. So you got to replenish that, otherwise you might not feel that great. So keeping the minerals up and then you can utilize.

What do you recommend for keeping electrolytes up?

High quality sea salt is great. Just having some sea salt with water. Cream of tartar is also great. It has some good amount of potassium and then apple cider vinegar. So I always recommend what I call the keto camp cocktail, which is water, 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, a teaspoon of cream of tartar and then a pinch of salt in the morning in your fast as a way to kind of replenish that. Or you could just take like a mineral supplement. Either one of those work.

Great tip.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. And then, and then there's also fasting crutches, right? So if you feel like you're having a challenge going from a 14 hour fast to an 18 hour fast. But in the four hours that you're having a challenge with, you want to have maybe some coffee with some butter, like a bulletproof coffee or coffee with some healthy fat as a way to get you to that 18 hours. I think that's a great tip. I think it's a great crutch, right? It's something that you.

So you don't think that break, that breaks the fast. Do you feel that breaks the fast at all?

Well, I think you won't get as many benefits doing that, but I think you'll get a lot of the benefits. So if your goal is to raise glucose and, excuse me, to lower glucose and insulin, then you could still do that with the fat because fat's not going to raise glucose and insulin. So it's a crutch. But you will not get the most, you'll get the most benefits if you did a water fast. For sure. But as a crutch, I think you could still get most of the benefits. There's also an argument to be made. If you keep your, your protein under 20 grams, you could still potentially get some autophagy because you're not really spiking too much mtor. That could be something you do. There's also bone broth fasting and partial fasting. There's the prolon fast. So those are great crutches and tools, but they're not going to give you as much benefits as a straight up water fast. That's the best way to really anti age your body.

Yeah, yeah. So I guess what about if someone says, okay, I've done this fast, you know, for so, you know, for 16 hours and then I'm just, I'm famished. And then they may end up eating everything in sight and that may kind of, I guess hurt the overall results in a sense. What do you tell these people, you know, how do they reign that in?

I see that a lot with people who do fasting without lowering their insulin. So eating more of an insulin friendly diet, it doesn't have to be keto. If keto intimidates you. Even doing something like low carb paleo, bringing your carbs this, the average American is eating 300 grams of carbs per day, which I think we could both agree it's pretty damn high. It's not something we should be doing. So even if you don't drop it low enough to enter ketosis, which is 50 grams or less, dropping that down to like 150 grams or 100 grams first for a week or so and then doing fasting, which will be much more bearable for you. Because the reason why a lot of people get those cravings during a fast and just eat whatever when they break the fast is because their brain is not used to having lower glucose levels. So the brain starts to panic and they eat whatever they want. So doing that will help. But also breaking your fast with, with protein to start will, will help prevent the overeating with carbohydrates because I mentioned what it does to activate the satiety hormone. So break the fast with the protein or implement the crutches. You might need some more crutches right now as you're building up your fasting muscle. If you're getting those intense cravings and you're breaking your fast, Cheetos and donuts and all these processed foods, you haven't built up your fasting muscle efficiently yet. So shorten your fasting window from 16 hours to maybe 13 hours and then build back up slowly. That will make a big difference for you.

Okay, great advice. Yeah, this is fantastic. I think there's so many nuggets and give people a great perspective just on where these, you know, the diet came from and what it can do for people. So any, any, any other advice you have for, you know, listeners?

Yeah, it's been great. You're a great interviewer. So you did a good job, Joy.

Oh, gosh, thank you.

It's easy to talk to you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, goes back to the first thing I shared. Gratitude. Have a gratitude practice. It doesn't matter if you do your fasting right. If you don't have gratitude and love in your life, please don't neglect that. I know it's, it's easy to do and it's easy not to do. That's the problem with it. But gratitude will change your life. So if you don't have a gratitude practice, develop a gratitude practice. Become really aware of your thoughts. Do the inner work, the inner sizing and everything else will help. You'll reduce inflammation. Your thoughts do have the ability to communicate with your DNA, and that has been proven by Dr. Bruce Lipton, World renowned cell biologist. He has shown that thoughts are frequencies that connect to your integral membrane proteins. These receptor sites that are integrated into your membranes and then they send signals to your DNA nucleus. And if it's a really hateful thought, a negative thought, the signal sent to your DNA nucleus produces inflammatory proteins versus a grateful, loving, abundant thought. The DNA nucleus then produces anti inflammatory proteins. So if you think about that, it's really amazing. 60,000 thoughts per day means 60,000 thoughts. Opportunities to put your body in a healing state every single day. So that would be my. The biggest advice I could give anybody. Practice gratitude.

Tremendous. Yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing. To link thoughts to cellular activity and then to translate into inflammation in the body. That's. That's really cool.

It's really cool. I agree.

Yeah. And where can people find you?

You can find me my website, benazotti.com on there. You can find my socials. We have our YouTube channel. You know, we also have a podcast, the Keto Camp podcast. Joy was on there a couple months ago. We also posted that on our YouTube channel, Keto Camp on YouTube. And if you want to get my book, it's over on ketoflexbook.com. it's available on paperback, Kindle and as of yesterday, just came out on audible as well. And I narrated, I narrated it myself, so you can find it over@ketoflexbook.com Nice.

Good job. That's really wonderful. Yeah. Everyone wants different formats, so I'm sure, I'm sure there's lots of wisdom to, you know, to enjoy and. Yeah. So I want to thank you for being here with us, and I've learned a lot, and I'm sure this is going to help a lot of people. So thank you for all your great work.

Thank you, Joy. It's been a pleasure. I love your work as well.

Oh, thank you so much.

Sam.