1 Mar 2019 · 7 min
Yuri Elkaim, a fitness expert and New York Times bestselling author, argues that diet and exercise need to fit the individual. Chronic carb restriction can suppress thyroid function and slow metabolism. Women especially often hit hormonal problems on very low-carb diets, which were mostly studied in men.
This is Five Minute Friday. Welcome, everyone, back to the podcast. Very excited about our guest today. He's been on before, and he's coming back again. Now, Yuri is a New York Times bestselling author and renowned fitness and nutrition expert who's helped more than 500, 000 people. That's right, a half a million people to Great health and fitness. At 17, he developed an autoimmune condition called alopecia, which attacked all of his hair on his body. He played professional soccer. He was a head strength and conditioning coach for men's soccer at the University of Toronto. He's also a father of three boys, and his new book is out called the All Day Fat Burning Diet. This podcast is sponsored by Northwestern Mutual. Everyone wants to feel good about their finances. Right? Well, that's why I've had life insurance with Northwestern Mutual for years. Their financial professionals ask the right questions, truly listen, and help uncover opportunities most people miss. I've seen it firsthand. Northwestern Mutual has been a part of my journey from the very beginning, providing the security and peace of mind I need as a human and an entrepreneur. Find a better way to money@nm.com, the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, paid testimonial by a Northwestern Mutual policy owner.
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The same approach we want to have to to health and diets and exercises, find that path that's going to work best for you. I'm not a fan of CrossFit, but that's just for me. Other people, they're like gung-ho into it and that works for them. Awesome. So you need to find what's going to work best for you and your lifestyle.
So how do we know how to find that?
I think you really just have to try things. So for instance, if you've tried one approach, a dietary approach that has worked really well for you, and assuming that it has health benefits. For instance, let me give you an example. So a lot of people have done Atkins. Actually, this is crazy. In the 1990s, we had this huge surge, this huge surge in the low-carb craze. And at one point, it was said that in that decade, at any given point, 18% of Americans were on a low-carb diet. That's including the population of kids and teenagers who for the most part, don't diet. So that percentage is usually probably a bit higher considering it's mostly for adults. So a low carb diet will help you lose weight, but it has serious long term ramifications on your metabolism. For instance, it's going to suppress your thyroid function and our thyroid is our master metabolism gland. So if that goes down over time, maybe it doesn't hit you right away, but in a couple months, couple years, you just start slowing down. Your body has a tough time losing weight and you're thinking like, what did I do? What's going on here? And that could be part of the problem. The other thing with low carb diets is that, yes, you'll lose weight, but it's mostly water weight because for every gram of carbohydrates, your body's going to hold on to four grams of water. So as soon as you lose the bread and the pasta and so forth, you're going to lose a lot of that water. So you have to be able to distinguish between, okay, this result is what I want, but is it giving me, is it hurting my health in the process? So I think there's a little bit of sophistication that has to come into that as well in terms of whether it's, you know, checkups with your naturopathic doctor or just kind of looking at, if you're a little more knowledgeable about your body, symptomatically looking at like, are things working? Do I feel good? And, and, and maybe doing, you know, occasional blood tests just to make sure that everything's okay, you know, if you.
Wanted to really get kind of granular. Gotcha. And if people don't have the, you know, they're not wanting to do a blood test, but they want to try something else, so they want to see what works and what feels right for them, what are some of those steps?
It's tough. I mean, you want to model people that emulate you, right? So for instance, if you know other menopausal women who've done well on this specific diet, then maybe that's something you want to consider if you're a menopausal woman. For instance, a lot of the paleo research, not that there's really been a lot of research, but the research scientifically on Paleo has mostly been done on men. And what we found, and this has been confirmed with a lot of naturopathic doctors that I've worked with, is that what they've seen in their practice is a lot of women who go Paleo end up having a very tough time and do a lot of damage to their hormone because, into their hormonal makeup, because for them they need in some cases higher levels of carbohydrates. For instance, women are a little bit more susceptible to thyroid issues. So if we cut out carbohydrates or keep them at a very low level, then that might work for some men, but for women, maybe not the best idea. So you want to do a little bit of research in terms of what has worked for other people, for instance, in my shoes, and is this validated by science or is this just another gimmick that's just put up on the bookshelf?
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