68. How Meal Timing Can Reverse Fatigue and Hormonal Chaos with Dr. Rupy Aujla

Foreign. Welcome to Rooted in Wellness with me, wellness advocate and holistic nutritionist, Mona Sharma. Together, we will take a journey to discover natural healing practices, from imbalance to balance, guided by ancient wisdom and modern scientific insights. I was raised living summers on an ashram, so I learned early on that food is medicine and and your kitchen is your greatest source of healthcare and prevention. After facing two heart surgeries, anxiety and weight challenges, I discovered that just because your symptoms are common, doesn't mean that they are normal. Together with some incredible guests, we will explore the power of our mind, body and soul connection, returning to our roots to rediscover our greatest wellbeing. What if your energy and hormones had less to do with willpower and more to do with your daily rhythm? In this episode of Rooted in Wellness, I sit down with Dr. Rupi Aushla, a medical doctor and founder of the Doctor's Kitchen, to explore how the timing of your meals, your exposure to light and even your breath can deeply influence your metabolic health, your mood, and long term vitality. We unpack the silent drivers of burnout that most people miss. It's not just about what you eat, but when. It's not just about rest, but the quality of your recovery. And it's not just about doing more. It's about syncing with the rhythms of your body that it was designed for. We also discussed the science of circadian health, the connection between inflammation and fatigue, and why your kitchen might be the most powerful place to begin healing. He reminds us that true wellness is less about restriction and more about joyful, sustainable habits that connect us to food, nature, and ourselves. Dr. Rupi Aujila is a medical doctor, bestselling author and founder of the Doctor's Kitchen, who discovered the power of food as medicine after facing his own health scare in his early 20s. His journey led him to bridge the gap between nutrition and conventional medicine, showing that lifestyle is isn't just supportive, it is foundational. Hi, everyone who's joining us live. Welcome to Rooted in Wellness. I've got a very special guest who's traveled from far. I've been waiting to meet you for a long time. Welcome, Dr. Rupee.

Thank you so much. This is awesome. I don't know where I'm looking for the live, but is it over there or there?

Over here. You can land a point whenever you look at a camera.

This is amazing. This is so cool.

Yeah, it's so cool to be able to connect with people, maybe a new audience live and typically who might not listen to a podcast.

Yeah, so.

So we're going to dive into so many things. You and I have so much in common. I followed you for so long and just so inspired, not only by your ethnic background and, you know, our synergy there, but the foods that you cook and the way that you speak about food as medicine is always inspiring. So as we were kind of talking about before the podcast, this podcast is really about ancient wisdom in our modern world and how we can all become more rooted in ourselves, but also in our inner wisdom to heal. So the first question I typically ask people is like, tell me two or three things that help you feel more rooted in who you are.

Well, I think a lot's changed for me over the last year because of what my wife gave birth to, our son. I've got an eight month old and I think prior to my son I would have said, you know, it's my morning routine. It's like getting sun in the morning. It's like. But actually I think it's starting the day with calm energy before the chaos begins. And so just getting, getting up before he's awake and actually just going in with a really strong intention that I'm going to be super calm today and I'm gonna not be rocked by, you know, the sort of, the things that just come from left field. Whether that's because of, you know, having a newborn, whether it's because of an email, whether it's because of something at work, whatever it might be, I'm just not going to be disrupted. I'm just going to get into a flow state and I've, I'm honing this skill out of the sort of chaos that comes with having a newborn for the first time. So it's like a privileged position to be and I'm just trying to reframe my experience for it to be a lot more positive and a lot more learning for me. So I would say that's definitely something that keeps me rooted. It's starting the day with an intention to be super calm and to take ownership of exactly what I want to experience in this day, no matter what comes to mind, whether it's a traffic jam like I experienced on the way here, for example. Instead of getting robbed by that, I'm sort of like, I'm rooted.

It's a superpower in la.

Yeah, you have to deal with it. The second thing I think that keeps me rooted is my diet. It's my food. It's not just the power of nutrients and ingredients and sourcing the best possible food. It's the pleasure of cooking and enjoying food. And I think sometimes in the conversation around well being and biohacking, it becomes much more of a functional tool. And I think it should be as flavorful as it is functional. And so what I like to do with the way I talk about food and I prepare food is actually sort of blend the two together. So I'm not just talking about the functional benefits of food. I'm also talking about the flavorful elements, the pleasure sharing of food. This is all medicinal in its nature. So saying that, that would be the second thing. And the third thing has to be movement for me. So on this trip, so I've been here for three weeks, my routine of going to the gym and getting out and exercising has been somewhat disrupted because, you know, traveling with a baby, traveling with my wife, lots of things going on. I got ill in the first week, as you know, so that has been like a bit of a. An issue that I've been dealing with over the last couple of weeks. But generally movement in the morning, whether it is yoga, stretching, some sort of movement that just gets me energized for the day. I like, honestly, I have to have that. I feel that in my. This might be tmi. I don't know what the audience is.

Like about bowel movements every day.

Oh, yeah, okay, great. So, you know, if I don't exercise and I don't have a healthy dose of exercise during the week, I get constipated. And it's like a signal to me. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm constipated because I haven't moved. So, you know, movement for me is very much part of my life. I have to do some sort of strength training or stretching or aerobic exercise. Zone 2 training is something that I'm really getting into over the last couple of years as I just turned 40. You know, there's tons of science around mitochondrial health and, and how it's important to ensure that you're stressing your muscle in different ways. So it's not just about bulking or muscle quality. It's also about the efficiency of the muscle. So, yeah, so that I would say those would be my three things. I mean, I could talk to you about loads of other things, but those are the three things that I would say come to mind when it comes to the strongest pillars for me in terms of keeping my health on track.

I love asking that question to people especially who've gone through any type of a healing journey, because everyone always comes back to changing the state of their body first. Like they understand their internal ecosystem needs to be in a certain functioning, calm state of being in order for everything else to work. And you did something beautiful there, which I don't want to miss. For people who you connected movement with lack of bowel movement, where most people today were so accustomed, partially because of society and doctors. Symptom fix, symptom fix instead of not symptom. What's the cause? What could be the issue behind it? And doing that investigation, that needs to be part of our languaging today.

Yeah. And you know what? I think that was part of my functional medicine, lifestyle medicine training, because I didn't think I was taught how to make that connection at medical school. No. No disrespect to the medical schooling system. I think it serves a very good purpose. But I don't think I learned the basics of root cause medicine or really thinking wider and just increasing the aperture of the lens that I look at patients. If it wasn't for thinking about upstream causes of things like constipation. Because like you alluded to, we think of diagnosis, solution, guideline, take this drug, do this intervention. Okay, that didn't work. Let's go to the next one. Rather than thinking about all the wider causes and the differentials behind constipation itself as an example, let's dive into that.

And I have to say that's probably what excited me most about finding your page, is that you're a medical trained doctor. Right. But you have this beautiful Instagram platform called the Doctor's Kitchen.

Yeah.

So can you talk to us about your background as a medical doctor and like seeing firsthand that disconnection that you mentioned?

Yeah, absolutely.

And what got you here?

Yeah. So I've been a doctor for over 15 years, trained in general practice, but I've also done emergency medicine ITU whilst I was in Sydney and the uk. I've done a nutrition degree. I have a master's in nutrition. It was nutritional medicine. I did that a few years ago now. And I've done functional medicine training as well. But my origin story is very similar to yours. So your audience will know, like how you took yourself to a Nash room after having multiple cardiac interventions. My origin story was when I became a junior doctor. So this is back in 2009, three months into the job, you can imagine high stress lifestyle, night shifts, eating terrible food, tons of learning on the job. So the stress of that was. Was humongous. During a long stint of shifts, I started suffering from palpitations. Lo and behold, bleep taken off me I told my, my registrar at the time, my boss, I said, would you mind filling my pulse? Like, I think I'm going a bit fast. And she, you know, to her credit, straight away, like I was admitted, I was taken to the cardiac ward. I put a cardiac monitor attached to me. It was barn door atrial fibrillation. Exactly the same arrhythmia that you had.

Wow.

Going at 200 beats per minute, up and down. Luckily, I wasn't having an ischemic event. I didn't have any issues that required me to have an electrocardioversion, which is what you see in the movies and the series where they put the panels on. My blood pressure was stable, I was fine. I wasn't having chest pain. But what I thought was going to be a one off actually led to me having these episodes two to three times per week with no obvious triggers, no obvious cause. My weight was fine. I was previously unwell, I wasn't a drug taker, I wasn't having excessive alcohol. I wasn't even drinking caffeine back then, actually, so. Or coffee or tea. So my journey actually right at the start of my medical career as a junior doctor also sort of paralleled with me being a patient and actually having that sort of this, this weird scenario where I was both a patient and a doctor. And so I got to experience what it was like, like the embarrassment, the indecision, the, just the, the, the misunderstanding of like what was going on in my body. And I, you know, I was chatting to some of the world's best cardiologists. No one could figure this out.

And the fear behind it too. Like, it's your heart. You're so young, you're dealing with this.

Yeah. And as a, you know, as a trained medic, I knew what their risks were. You know, when your blood, when you're, when your heart is pumping irregularly, your blood becomes sticky, for want of a better term. And the stickiness can throw off clots. And these clots can go anywhere. They can go to your brain, causing a stroke and go to your gut, causing gut ischemia. It can, you can have a heart attack. There's loads of issues that can go wrong. And then when they're offering you the procedure, which is relatively safe to be fair, and that was a low risk of recurrence, although actually the recurrence is a lot higher than we previously thought 15 years ago, it's. Therein lies a whole bunch of potential issues, side effects. You can perforate the heart, you can cause death. Like there's loads of issues with loads of potential side effects. And at no point on my journey did anyone address lifestyle, diet. And even as a conventional trained medic, I thought anyone who suggested that was completely out of their mind. And the person who did was my mum, who isn't a medic, isn't, you know, in any way sort of scientific. She's just an Indian mum and she was the one who suggested I should really think about my diet and lifestyle before I entertain having an ablation, which is what you ultimately had. And just for the, for the listener and viewers, an ablation is where you put a guide wire through a large vessel, it goes into the heart and then you burn an area on the palm revane to stop these misfiring cells, which was the potential cause of what was going on. Although every single test that I had was completely negative and normal. So it was just sort of like, okay, finger in the air, let's do this and let's see if it sort of stops it. But I was on all the drugs, like similar drugs to you, I think a beta blocker, an anti arrhythmic to use when I was having these episodes. And so, sorry, I'll get off this long story.

My life, really the guests that I've been searching for. Thank you.

So I started doing the diet and lifestyle stuff. So out when series in the morning, in came sort of leftovers and, and quick breakfast that I would make from, from scratch. I stopped eating from the hostel canteen which was just like baked beans and cheese and, you know, all this kind of stuff and I started bringing in my, my own lunches. I would cook from scratch instead of just grabbing a pasta on my way from work. I tried to optimize my sleep as best as I could, given that I was doing night shifts and all the rest of it. I started doing yoga and a bit more breath work and within about a year, because I was fastidiously tracking when and what potential triggers there might have been for my AF episodes which were lasting anywhere between 24 and 36 hours. So really long episodes and you know, it's like you just feel like you're going to pass out. You feel like you've got a headache, you feel like, you know, super unwell and then you take the medications, you.

Feel even worse, you feel completely lethargic. Yeah. Do you feel lie down and not move.

And I'll never forget that frustration of being a patient, being given the solution and still being dissatisfied because as a doctor I knew this is the right thing to do quote unquote, the right thing to do. But as a patient, I was like, this is horrible. This isn't the way to live. I was 24. All my colleagues are fine. They're all doing night shifts. They're all like, you know, dealing with the stresses. I just felt very vulnerable and like, not like I didn't belong in this covert profession of being a medicine. So my identity was having a bit of crisis as well. But over this period of making these changes, my AF episodes went from 2 to 3 per week to 0. And therein lies sort of the questions as a conventionally trained scientist, like, why on earth is this possible? Why wasn't I taught this in medical school? And then I just started learning from there on, so I maintained my sort of medical practice. So I went into general practice and I. Which is what you guys call family medicine over here. I was going to specialize in surgery, but then I opted to, to do this instead because I wanted to learn about lifestyle medicine and the gut microbiota and inflammation and why breath work has its impact on our nervous system and, you know, leaning into some of the principles of ancient medicine that you've since learned about. And I probably was privy to with my parents growing up because they were watching the, you know, the, the, the guru, the ashram on tv doing breath. What are these guys doing? This is complete rubbish. But now I'm like, oh, no, there's a lot of science behind this now we're just sort of getting up to speed with things that theologically, over generations, over millennia, cultures from all over the world have come to. And so I just love looking at modern medicine through the lens of traditional practices. And to be clear, there are some practices that can definitely be left alone in the sort of traditions of, of bygone. But there are also lots that we can explore that are aligned with how we've evolved as human beings. And I just think applying an evolutionary lens and a traditional lens to modern medicine is a really good exercise because there are some, some absolute gems in there.

Absolutely. What a powerful story. Who could have thought all of that synergy. And we were the same age also.

Yeah.

And how incredible of your mother. What a gift for her to just have that insight. For you is my mom, who's doing the same thing too, because of her arthritis.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And like you, my understanding and, you know, all these ancient rituals, we would go see these gurus in basements and do these, like, hour long breathwork situations, like, yeah, yeah, enough. I don't want to do that anymore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But now, you know, like, so many. We need those backed by science, and there's more of an understanding there, and I just want to own in. So you did not have the ablation. You got off the beta blocker medication through these, and it took you some time at self discovery, right?

Yeah, definitely. Like, I felt better along the way, but I was definitely fearful of actually having an episode and then throwing off a clot. And then. So I did this with a lot of trepidation. I remember I was seeing someone at the time who was very conventionally minded, and she just thought I was absolutely crazy. You know, I remember her marching me down to the anticoagulation clinic, which I don't know if you were anticoagulated before your ablation, but it's where you. You're loaded up on warfarin, which is quite an old medication. Yeah, yeah. So back in the day when you probably had your ablation, we were doing a procedure that required patients to be anticoagulated because the procedure itself can lead to clots forming. We have newer techniques now and newer methods which use more modern anticoagulants that don't require that. But I remember, like, just the disappointment from her and some of my other medics when I was going against conventional wisdom. And, you know, even throughout my journey doing the Doctor's Kitchen, which was never meant to be a brand, by the way, it was just a cute name that I was like, oh, well, we're gonna do these recipes. I'll call it the Doctor's Kitchen. I'm sure it'll be fine. And then now it's become my identity, my brand. So that was never, like, the plan for me. But I remember, even throughout my whole career, this idea of talking about food as medicine and sort of creating a parallel to traditional medicine and Eastern medicine, even talking about ayurvedic medicine has been very uncomfortable for all my colleagues to see. And I've definitely had a lot of backlash around that. But I think now, you know, in this 2025, a lot more people are coming around to it, and there's a lot of friends of, you know, mutual friends of ours that are talking about this, who are both medics, and they understand that the power and the. And the wisdom of previous teachers and scholars.

Yeah, it's a very slow transition, and I'm always shocked today. And here's the beauty about what's happening right now, is we're putting all the science around these ancient rituals and even something around stress management. Right And I think that a lot of people, and maybe perhaps a lot of the colleagues that you had who are just so. Right. Brain.

Yeah.

They need data, data, data, data stat, stat. Proof, proof. Like maybe by the time we hit that threshold, they'll finally come around.

Yeah.

Because you didn't have any nutrition training at that time. Right. So thank goodness your mom's background. She just had insight around that. Right. It's probably something that she had grown up with.

Yeah, yeah.

And I know that kind of do friend that you're speaking to, that same type, and it still exists today. So every year I'll go in for like an annual cardiovascular checkup. And this last time at a big organization here in the U.S. the cardiologist said, well, Mona, you know, the drugs that we have today are different than the drugs that you were on when you were in your 20s. And it's like, no, well, Mona, if it gets worse, then the surgery that we have today is still very different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like you're still pushing this. I just told you a whole story around how I healed myself.

Help. Yeah, yeah.

The, the takeaway for that is for listeners to really just ask questions because the person on the other end, God bless them, this isn't ever about hitting people in that kind of modern healthcare system. But there's education that's still based on a very antiquated point of view. And I think it's just profound having a doctor like you out in the world who's like, hey, you know, I, I have the same training as you and here's what I'm seeing, here's what I'm learning.

And you know, I, I love actually being able to play both role. So it's like I love leaning into the sort of intuition and the n of one experimentation and, you know, figuring out what works best for me as an individual. Because the last thing that I would want to insinuate is if you just do these things, then you can get rid of anything. You can get rid of your type 2 diabetes, you can reverse cancer, you can reverse your ablation. I think work for what worked for me was through self discovery in the same way will work for you as well. And I would encourage people to think about that through that lens rather than the traditional conventional lens, which is you have this diagnosis, ergo, you need to take these drugs or do these interventions, whether it be surgery or otherwise, and this is how we fix you. And that's a very sort of, A very sort of narrow, naive way of looking at how we treat conditions and how we ultimately get people to experience healing if they need to, or protect their health, which I think is another area which we traditionally haven't done well within conventional medicine. So yeah, no, I, I love playing this both roles because especially when I did my nutrition masters that I recently completed in nutritional and it's called nutritional medicine. It's where you go into the, the big studies and the data and you look at the quality of evidence stuff. And I think it's really important to have a handle on that but not be completely beholden to that because otherwise you just wouldn't do anything. Because there isn't studies looking at, you know, green chlorophyll water for example, or like, you know, the exact dose of caffeine. Oh, actually caffeine is probably a different. Because there's 20, 000 studies on coffee. Yeah, yeah. But you know, other sorts of teas or mushrooms for example, which I think there's, there's a lot of evidence for at the moment, but nowhere near as, as much as coffee. But you know, there's definitely potential for these different things. And also the ancient healing practices that we haven't got any studies for, you know, like third eye massage or certain types of Ayurvedic practices or tcm, like it's, it's really, really interesting. And also this concept of the belief effect, so we know how strong the placebo effect is and the nocebo effect. So you know, if you were to tell me, okay, oh, by the way, I forgot there's cyanide in here, I might immediately start having symptoms because of what you've just suggested to me. And it's a very well recognized phenomen. The same thing could be said of the belief effect of like how we feel a certain pill or treatment or food or dietary pattern is going to have the impact on us. This needs to be studied even more so because it's super powerful. It is really powerful. Whether you're looking at this from the lens of a scientist who's beholden by evidence based medicine, or whether you're looking at this from someone who believes in traditional healing methods, this practice, this sort of idea of belief effects is massive and it could be revolutionary for a lot of people.

Oh, I couldn't agree with that more. And again, I think if we were to look back at, you know, ancient Buddhist temples and monks and stuff like that, they understood the power of the mind. Whether they were fasting for extended periods of time or surviving on air, or focusing on a guru or Whatever it was, I think that what they were trying to prove is the power of the mind over the physical body.

Right, yeah.

So with this insight and, you know, obviously the education that you do for the people who might be finding you, who are western trained and you've got this education, we have courses like nutritional science and people getting their master's in nutrition. And yet we still see nutrition as sort of soft science still. Right. And I'm with you, like even becoming a nutritionist myself. And I wish if I could go back in time, all of those doctors, it's never that linear approach that you were mentioning. You know, I can imagine for both you and I, maybe it had something to do with our nervous system regulation. I know for me, it had a lot to do with my blood sugar regulation. At the same time, my life, lifestyle, my circadian rhythm, the fact that I was completely off my side. Like there was so many things that was contributing to that. And for listeners, like whatever symptom you're suffering from, if it's heart palpitations or whatever imbalance or dis ease, they never show up overnight. Right. We've got to do the investigation to see, like, what were the symptoms that were or the systems in the body that were being compromised. So do you see an evolution of this soft science becoming more.

I definitely see that. I definitely see this. This sort of soft signs becoming a lot harder, particularly with people recognizing the impact of the microbiota, because you can think about this through the lens of drugs as well. So the reason why some people are sensitive to a very typical pharmaceutical like paracetamol, I think you guys call it acetaminophen here, or even a blood pressure medication can be in part explained by genetics, but it can also be in part be explained by the composition of your gut microbiota. And this is something that no one was really thinking about 10, 15 years ago, certainly not in the sort of practicing conventional medicine space, that there was actually a difference in effects because of someone's microbiota composition. And when I think, think about my own experience of reversing atrial fibrillation, I. I ponder the similar sort of ideas as you as to what system was I optimizing or which systems was I optimizing that actually led to resolution of my. Of my condition. And in, in a, in a way, it was multiple. So by doing breath work and trying to optimize my sleep, I was optimizing my cortisol system. I was living more in alignment with my circadian rhythm, which is this rough 24 hour cycle by which all biological systems operate on. And you know, your body has its own secondary rhythms, your pancreas cell, your gut cell, your brain, it's usually sort of master regulated by an area in the brain called the scn, the suprachiasmatic nuclei. But you know, it can, you can have shifts, particularly if you do night shifts, which I was doing.

Right.

So there's one side of the issue, the microbiota. So because I was having a largely refined carbohydrate diet with cereals and sandwiches and pasta, I probably wasn't feeding my microbiota to the best of my ability, which meant that the bacteria population was out of balance. And even though we have pathogenic bacteria and our gut, they can live there and thrive and actually contribute to the community as long as they don't overpopulate. And, and unfortunately they tend to overpopulate when we have refined starches and sugars in our diet, which I was having a lot of. So when I started eating more fiber was I, and I have no way of testing this because I wasn't doing my gut microbiota testing then, but did I create a more balanced and favorable gut microbiota picture by having fruits and legumes and nuts and seeds and all the rest of it? Probably by virtue of doing that, I was probably reducing my inflammation levels because my gut barrier was probably more intact. I had less leakiness, I had less activation of my immune system, that was inappropriate. And so my inflammation levels probably improved. The axis that links my gut to my brain probably helped me with my stress levels whilst I was doing, you know, these crazy shifts and all the rest of it, while I was learning on the job, my blood glucose regulation was probably improved as well. Was I flooding my body with more phytonutrients that actually have a direct anti inflammatory effect like we know, you know, things like seaweed as an example, dark green leafy vegetables that was consuming a lot more of nuts and seeds that have fatty acids, I was having fatty fish a lot more often. These contain resolvins that are anti inflammatory. So definitely that as well. And then I was consuming less products that would have been damaging to my gut barrier in the form of ultra processed foods that have additives and emulsifiers that we know now through the lens of modern science, a net negative for us. So there's so many ways in which you can, I can sort of look back at my own experience and explain and you know, my detoxification was probably improved as well because I was having Lots more Brassica vegetables. So there's so many ways in which I can explain my own experience. I think ultimately it comes back to putting your body in the best environment you can. And the, the, you know, the four pillars that come to mind are nutrition, sleep, emotional health and exercise. And if you just align those, I mean, there's definitely community and purpose, which I think are also just as important as those pillars. But if when you align those, your body has this like innate intelligence, it just knows what to do. Give it the right nutrients, give it the right fuel, put it in the right environment, and it can create a sense of balance or homeostasis in its internal environment such that your symptoms can improve. That's my sort of thesis of my experience and also what I see as a, what I did see as a practicing physician and you know, my reading of the literature thus far in nutrition.

No more silent suffering. It's like a lot of the symptoms that you're talking about, I think a lot of people out there are still suffering with. But it's funny, no matter the type of doctor that comes in here, we're kind of learning that there's some foundational truths when it comes to healing, right? Setting an internal ecosystem to optimize what's happening within us or the harmony, I guess, that we can say, to awaken that intelligence. You know, it's funny, we're still so lost in this world of health and wellness, but we're talking about feeling a little bit more of a sense of peace, optimizing your sleep, taking in nutrient dense foods, more fiber, more phytonutrients and phytochemicals. Whether we're talking about heart palpitations or cardiovascular disease or diabetes or cancers, the foundation really is like this foundational truth. Would you agree?

100%. I mean, I say this, this over and over again because people ask me, what do I eat for pcos or do I eat for menopause or what do I eat for? I'm like, I'm going to tell you the same thing. It's really optimizing the nutrients that you're lacking and introducing the nutrients that you know, you're just not providing your body with. And I mean, the reason why I wrote the book Healthy High Protein is because I feel a lot of people are actually lacking good quality sources of protein in their diet. And that becomes even more important as we get older and even more important postmenopausally. And if you exercise regularly, which I imagine a lot of your community do, but also like the fats the distribution of fiber, the distribution of different sort of phytonutrient rich ingredients. These are all things that we all need to be consuming and most people just aren't getting enough. And that's the sort of problem that I'm trying to address with making healthy eating easier, like more enjoyable, pleasurable. Like this is what we need to be leaning to. And that's why I try and make it fun by just doing cooking shows, you know, and just doing cooking books. And rather than it being like really heavy nutrition dense, like academic focused work, which I love doing as well. Like, I do that on my podcast and we just talk to researchers all day long about nutrition. But when it comes to the practical element, I think that's what we need to lean into. I've just saying, like, the science is complex, the solutions are simple. The implementation, that's the hard stuff.

Absolutely.

Because the science of the microbiota and mitochondrial health and all kinds of super, super complex, you know, I don't, I can't pretend to understand half of it. The solution is really simple. It's like, eat more fruits and vegetables, have nuts and seeds, eat on time exercise, go to bed. The implementation of that, given how careful lives are, the access to food, financial insecurity, all these different things, this is what makes it really hard. And this is where I want to spend most of my time.

Oh, I love it. Let's make it just go viral. Right? And really it's an issue of modernization. Right. When I work with people, the greatest obstacle is the sense of stress that they feel or the lack of time, which is just a reallocation that needs to happen. And if we see that this is something that's consistent throughout society, and gosh, if it was amplified by doctors and the medical community and stuff like that, then I think we're on track for it becoming the new norm. And just remember the culture that you come from, you and I come from this beautiful South Asian, even my Danish side, actually, whatever culture, there's more of an emphasis around gathering for food and nourishment and the time that it took to cook and the ritual around sitting with your neighbors and your family and stuff like that. We're really breaking away from that when food keeps us alive, people.

Totally. Yeah.

Right. There's so much more wisdom behind it beyond the intelligence of what you're consuming.

Absolutely. And I think a lot of people forget because the Mediterranean diet is sort of heralded as one of the most impactful diets. It's like the healthiest in terms of cardiometabolic health. And when I say cardiometabolic, I'm talking about reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and improving one's metabolic health, such that you have a lean body mass and you maintain muscle health as you age. But a real core tenant of the Mediterranean way of eating, which is the way I describe it, is not the food itself. It's not even Mediterranean flavored. It's not that element. It's actually the act of sitting and eating together as part of a community.

Yeah.

And it's very hard to adjust for that and to capture that in trials, particularly randomized controlled trials, looking at the Mediterranean diet, because it's hard enough to get them to eat the food, let alone eat it with someone. But I think it's a real core tenant of the observational studies where they look at Mediterranean diets and Mediterranean style eating patterns, particularly in places like Spain and Greece and, you know, Italy, where it's just the part of the culture. And I think we're unfortunately eroding that because of the attractiveness of convenience. So the fact that you can get food and it's healthy food delivered to your door, you don't have to cook it, you have to do anything, you save time. Everything's about saving time. These are hacks, like, to make your cooking. Part of the beauty of food is actually the cooking process. It's the, the dopamine release that you get when you cook a healthy, hopefully nourishing and delicious meal for your family. Like, part of the enjoyment for me isn't just cooking the food is actually. I actually cooked with a friend of mine yesterday who's, who's in LA as well. And part of the enjoyment was just, literally just seeing the smile on her face, you know, and just eating with my wife and one of her friends was there and like that's, that's nourishment in itself. It's not just the fact that I cooked a really good salad, some proteins on the side and some roasted white beans. It was like the setting environment, you know, the, the set scene. And what is it? I think there's a saying within the psychedelic mushroom community where it's about the. The setting and the intention and the scene that actually is very important for the experience itself. Yeah, exactly. So. So I think it's really important. Important to bring that to everything, whether it's exercise or nutrition or. Yeah, the emotional connection piece of it.

It's a full in love language.

Yeah, right.

Just being nourished that way from something that you love. I Can't wait for the day. I have a feeling this is my memory of the ashram. When we go to eat at the ashram, there's no screens, you're sitting in a really calm setting outside in nature, with other people connecting.

Yeah.

And everyone takes in a moment to just like, acknowledge the effort that went into the food, where it comes from, how it was cook the prayer and the blessing that was given to it also, and you literally digest that. So I can't wait for the day where even, you know, with the medical community, we can kind of understand what your vibration is or your frequency in that state. And I'm sure that with practice, you can get to a point where whether you're having your morning gratitude practice or sitting in stillness with loved one eating, the state of your body can actually be put into that same frequency, which is healing in and of itself.

Yeah, yeah. I think the biomarkers that we currently have today are fairly crude to explain the magnitude of effect of something that we colloquially call energy or vibration. Right. And, you know, if I was to think about it with my sort of like medical hat on, what happens when you take screens away and you are doing breath work or you're doing prayers before you start eating? Well, a lot of things are happening, so your cortisol level is definitely lower. Your attention is very much on the texture and the enjoyment of the food. Everything slows down. You're not having dopamine effects from, you know, being stimulated by a digital device whilst you're consuming food, for example, your eating rate would slow, which means that your gastric emptying will. Would. Would improve. You're chewing, your chewing increases, which means that you're going to actually extract more nutrients from whatever you're consuming. So when you think about it from that perspective, you could measure the cortisol level, you could measure your blood glucose level, you can measure your HSCRP in that moment, you can measure other markers of inflammation. But I don't think we've got to the point where we can actually measure vibration or energy and stuff. And I think it's more of a feeling that you have, and I think you want to put yourself in that right state, particularly when you're doing something as important as nourishment.

You got it. So important. I have to pause this episode to share something that's completely transformed how I feel every single day. And it all starts in my gut. I'm talking about pendulums metabolic daily and I'm genuinely obsessed. 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy and so much of that comes down to our gut microbiome. If you're constantly battling afternoon energy crashes, sugar cravings and that sluggish feeling after meals, Metabolic Daily can change everything. This isn't your typical probiotic. It contains live Akkermansia municiphila. It's an incredible next generation strain that most of us are deficient in. It literally strengthens your gut lining and helps your body metabolize sugars and carbs so much more efficiently. What I love most is how it makes me feel. My energy is sustained throughout the day. I'm not constantly thinking about my next snack and I actually feel a little bit more full faster. It's like my body finally learned how to work with the food instead of against it. Plus my digestion has never been better. What sets Pendulum apart is the science. They were founded by PhD scientists and doctors with the Mayo Clinic as their first investor. They're the first company in the US to bring live Akkermansia to market using DNA sequencing in an oxygen free facility. I'm so selective about supplements that I recommend and Metabolic Daily has earned a permanent spot in my routine and recommendation to my clients. Go to pendulumlife.com and use code Mona M O N A for 20% off all Pendulum membership first orders. That's pendulumlife.com with code Mona. Your gut and your energy levels will thank you.

Foreign.

Let's go back to your journey. The concept that fascinates me is this concept of culinary medicine. Okay. And this is a big part of. You've written a few books now.

Yeah, this is my fifth book.

So talk to us about the evolution when you recognize that, you know, it is about the information of the food but also the enjoyment. And I want to call out for people who haven't seen Dr. Rupee's page. You really do make cooking and eating and food combining and using herbs and spices as something that is quite simple. And we really complicated. Right. We think that it takes a lot of effort, a lot of time that gotta be looking up recipes and you know, for a lot of my clients introducing one new recipe a month is like a big deal to them because again it's just breaking down a belief that they have it has to be complicated in those things. So do you see this as being part of an evolution that people are going to get to instead of just eating clean like they're going to understand the nourishment and the medicine that comes with it?

I really hope so. I think like I like to break it down. I Think when I started my career and I wrote my first couple of books, I was over complicating the already over complicated science. So I started talking about food through the lens of mitochondrial health and chrono nutrition and epigenetics or nutrigenomics, which is how like food can switch on and off certain genes. And I think whilst that's all fascinating, people just want the basics and they want to understand like how they can actually put that complex nutrition into practice easily and conveniently. Which is why I think my focus on Instagram and YouTube and through my newsletter and the Doctor's Kitchen app is just making it as simple as possible. So introducing new ingredients, things like things that are in seasonal because they obviously have a lot more phytonutrients, things that are organic because there is a difference in the thousands of chemicals that make up all these different ingredients as much as you can afford. So yeah, my focus is definitely trying to simplify and just getting people to not be scared of recipes and actually introducing things into repertoire. We did some, some interviews with customers of the, of the app and one of the things that really surprised me because I thought people were downloading and using the app because they love the education and the science and the fact this got proof and actually most people are just like, it's because it just gives me healthy eating inspiration. Like I can go on the app, I can choose a recipe and that looks nice and like everyone loves it. Even like my husband who doesn't eat meat and like we, we cook a vegetarian meal and I'm like, yeah, that's what it's about. That's actually what it's about. So I love like that aspect of it and I think that's what I need to lean into more and like instead of satisfying my ego of like knowing as much as I can about nutritional medicine, it's actually just about being as helpful as possible to the end user or the consumer of the content that's out there that we put out. And then culinary medicine is a concept that was actually pioneered in the US So I made contact with some of the medical schools that had started a culinary medicine, culinary medicine program as part of the medical curricula at Tulane, Columbia and Harvard. I think this in like 40American medical schools in the UK we had zero. Like there was no concept of culinary medicine. And the, the, you know, to even dare call it culinary medicine is pretty phenomenal. So I remember early in my career, it was around 2017, 2018, I was like, I'm just going to Bring it to the uk. So I met with all the, the directors and stuff. We learned all about their curricula. We tried to get it like, like for, like in the uk didn't work. So we basically had to build the curricula from scratch. I worked with dietitians, chefs, a bunch of medical schools. We're currently in three medical schools, which is, I want to say, 10 of all medical schools. Yeah. So we've got a long way to go. Like a huge sort of uphill battle. But we get medical students relatively early in their medical career to cook alongside culinary students. Dietitians, they learn about food, they learn how to start conversations about food in their clinical practice. Because I can't be the only doctor talking about this in the uk and thankfully I'm not anymore. But it felt really much at the start of my career that I was literally the only one talking about it. So I wanted this to evolve beyond me where it's not just Dr. Rupam, the doctor's kitchen is actually most doctors in the UK can have an evidence based, practical conversation about improving someone's nutrition for the persons opposite them in clinic.

What a great lesson to go through. So you understand, you know, the information overload. So people are getting all this information about food when it's like another thing to kind of roll their eyes at, but then take it from a different approach to go through the partnership through medical association, which is ultimately the dream.

Right.

Like find one person who walks into the cafe at a hospital and look at the foods that they're serving.

Right.

And just think, like, how is this going to help people heal?

Yeah.

Right. And have that be the future.

And that's still happening. Unfortunately, the canteens in the UK are terrible. I'm not what they're like in the us, but I can't imagine they're much better. Yeah.

You'll have the, the fruit and the veggies right next to two bags of Doritos.

Yeah.

So your willpower better be good that day.

100%. This is the thing so we've architected. And this is another really important point about choice architecture, because I think there are certain things that unfortunately make the default option, the processed option that is at the detriment of our health. And we need to be really intentional about actually curating environments, particularly in hospitals, but also in supermarke markets and communities, to be. To have health as the default option. So water instead of the fizzy drinks. We actually tried to do this a couple of years ago. I got the opportunity to work with one of the biggest caterers in the UK and they operated, I think 40% of all hospitals. So we did pop ups of doctor's kitchen food for the canteen in the hospital and the staff, we did it in five different hospitals, completely took out all their food and it was all my food. We did like curries, we did a live salad bar, we did like this vegetable casserole with like loads of like veggies in it and stuff. And it was, it did really well. Like we did a week in each hospital but they just couldn't get buy in from the management. And unfortunately it's just like potatoes and beans and chips and all the horrible stuff that unfortunately a lot of medical professionals themselves consume every single day out of need. And you can understand that person as well. Like I was that person 15 years ago. If I didn't have a health condition and I didn't realize that my threshold for illness was a lot lower than my colleagues, I wouldn't be sat here today. I'd probably be overweight, overworked, over stressed.

Yeah.

Eating crap food and just wondering to myself, why do I feel so bad all the time? So, yeah, it's almost like I used, I've been definitely 11 on an evolution of my journey because right at the start when I had my health condition, I used to feel really frustrated that like, why me? Yeah, like, you know, it almost felt like a, you know, I was picked on or I was, I was, I. I'd done all the quote unquote right things. I was previously fit and well, like why, why am I having this condition? And now I'm like super grateful for it because it's changed the, the trajectory of my career such that I actually have lent into my passion. I developed a passion and I get to practice it. Which is really cool, isn't it?

Cool? Yeah, totally. Like total purpose and passion and you know, we have to amplify these stories because unfortunately for people like us, it took hitting rock bottom before we understood or made any shifts.

Yeah.

And nothing matters when you don't have your health. When you're sitting at an operating table, you will do, do anything it takes just to change things around. And this is why I think it's so important today in a world where there is such a rise of symptoms and suffering that people don't ignore their symptoms anymore before it really gets to a place of being so much harder to turn around.

It's a good point because I think a lot of people have just sort of surrendered to the fact that they feel A certain way and it becomes normality. It's almost like hedonic adaptation. But the other way it's like you just adapt to like, like feeling achy and tired and you know, in pain most days. And like I'm thankful in that when I wake up I have tons of energy and like I've just adapted to that. That's my norm. And I only really feel what it's like to be in the shoes of like some of my colleagues when I have a poor night's sleep or I don't eat right for a couple of days. And I was like, oh yeah, this is what it used to feel like. So I think people need to recognize their symptoms and there are lots of ways in which you can do that using a functional medicine approach, actually being quite objective about what symptoms you have in this area. Maybe there's something I need to optimize. Looking at the very basics that I mentioned earlier, nutrition, movement, emotional health and sleep optimization. And then just see how you, how you take a data driven approach to this. See how you improve over the next couple of weeks by making some consistent changes. Because consistency is super important in this.

And this is what I love about your approach, is that it's revolutionary in its simplicity and that's what's so key because people are so overwhelmed. Right. You and I both know in our world, even through the colleagues that we work with, there's a lot of information and approaches that out there. But I think you and I are talking about some foundational basics here. So we talked a lot about the broken aspects of the system and the suffering and stuff like that. Let's walk through your approach. So we're going to get to protein, but before we get to that, I know you talk about not only an anti inflammatory diet, but other modalities that help to lower inflammation to the body, like fasting.

Yeah.

Right. So take us through a little bit of what the protocol and that evolution for you as you merged everything together.

Definitely. So the three pillars that I've sort of, sort of like try to condense all my information into are every time you sit down to eat, to have a meal, are you a getting enough protein? We can talk about that later. Is there enough protein in this meal to satisfy my unique needs? And everyone should know the number. We can get to that in a second. Number two, are there ingredients in this meal that are supporting my gut health, fiber and other phytonutrients and diversity? And number three, is the net effect of this meal going to be pro or Anti inflammatory. And if you can answer positively to those three questions, you're looking at a really healthy plate that's going to support your brain, it's going to support your metabolic health, going to support your menstrual health, whatever your system might be. These are the three pillars and it's influenced by, you know, mitochondrial health and chronic nutrition, all that kind of stuff and nutrigenomics. But let's just break it down. These are the three things. So what is an anti inflammatory diet? So there are a number of different ways in which you can measure inflammation levels, one of which is a research technique called the dietary inflammation Index. It ranks certain ingredients according to the inflammation lowering or inflammation raising potential of a food. The inflammation lowering potential of food is most in herbs and spices because they are super concentrated in phytonutrients. So things like clove and cinnamon and turmeric, but even the sort of like basic culinary herbs like oregano and basil and sorrel, those basic green herbs are just as impressive as some of the more exotic ones. So you don't always need to have cardamom and clove, even though like I'm sure me and you both love those. You, you can lean into like simple herbs and spices that you're more accustomed to, whether it's fennel or cumin or black pepper, rosemary. Yeah, these are all great. So you want to try and get herbs and spices into your diet as much as possible. You want to try and get anti inflammatory fats into your diet as well. So things like nuts and seeds, you can sprout them, you can soak them overnight to make them a lot more digestible. That actually increases the protein and the amino acid availability of, of those ingredients. But definitely not being fearful of fats and making sure that you get the right type of fats in your diet. Basically anything from the nuts and seeds category is, is fair game for me and looking at particular types of oils as well. So I'm a big fan of extra virgin olive oil. I love the fact that we get so many different varieties from Tunisia, Greece, even Australia has got some high polyphenol olive oils now, which is brilliant. And then drinks, you can drink your way to an anti inflammatory lifestyle. What we're drinking right now is likely going to be anti inflammatory. The coffee has got, like I said, 20,000 studies looking at the inflammation potential of coffee. As long as you're not consuming too much that's disrupting your sleep. Quality teas, Matcha hibiscus, these are all great ingredients that we should be sipping away during the day as a source of polyphenols that reduce inflammation. And then the other one sort of like it kind of coincides with the gut health. So I'll stop there. But there I have a little sort of. Is it an anagram? Yeah, it's like basically like a heuristic. It's BBGS every single day.

I love it.

So beans, berries, greens, seeds and nuts every day. So I always think to myself, have I had my BBGs today? Have I had like a handful of cooked beans or lentils? About a handful of frozen or fresh berries. Have I had a handful of nuts and seeds and have I had a couple of handfuls of cooked greens? And they can be any greens, Swiss chard or kale or cavolo nero, spinach, whatever you like. Greens for the wind. They're anti inflammatory, they're full of fiber. They have these other detoxifying properties because they, they have glucosinolates in and they can activate certain enzymes in your liver. So this is sort of like, like in my head I'm like okay, have I had my BBGs today?

So well it's way easier. So if you're preparing a meal, I'm just thinking everyone's going to go to their fridge and throw things together. You literally can ask do I have a protein, do I have a good quality fiber? And it's something that's going to be anti inflammatory.

Yeah, right, absolutely.

And I have to say we're going to have around this in a bit too, adding beans. So beans and lentils daily, which is key. I'm a big fan. Berries, your good quality fats and greens. It's pretty simple. Build your plate however you want. Just check off those categories and yeah, I think that something like teas and herbs, that's like the free medicinal giveaway.

Oh yeah.

Fill up your spice cabinet like it's your medicine cabinet. That's how I see it, especially through Ayurveda. My clients always send me pictures of like the amount of teas and herbs that they have. Like you know you're working with Mona when. Yeah, because it's such an easy anti inflammatory approach. You can take them just like we're sitting here right now wherever you go.

Yeah.

Do you grow fresh herbs at home?

You know I try to. I'm really not green fingered but the easiest thing to grow on your windowsill are broccoli sprouts.

Yes.

They're so easy to make and like, you know every time I do it it's super simple. You Just put it in some soil, put it in the window. You know, you can grow it in like a cardboard package or whatever and then they, they sprout within like, I know, three, four days or so. You harvest them at like seven days. So you get like the highest amount of sulfur fame, which is this really interesting phytonutrient chemical that you find in Brassica vegetables like broccoli and brussels sprouts in kale, which is why they are, you know, related to or associated with lower rates of cancer. And the broccoli sprouts are the highest source of these sulfur molecules. So yeah, I mean, and we try and, you know, try and do our mint and all basil and stuff. Because mint I don't know about here, but in the UK there's mint growing everywhere.

Oh, so.

And nettle as well. So popular. And it's growing literally everywhere. I mean the dogs pee on it in the parks and stuff. You've got to be really careful about where you source it from. So go to the back of the bush. But nettle a really good source of B vitamins and you gotta, you gotta harvest them with gloves because they'll sting you. But you put them into boiling water and so you wilt them and you can eat it like, you know the Greek dish horta. It's like one of my favorite dishes. So you just, you just wilt it and then you throw loads of good, good quality extra virgin olive oil and bit of salt, bit of lemon and you've got a really good anti inflammatory green which is one of your BBGs for the day.

So simple.

Yeah, I really want BBGs.

Seriously, we're gonna make this viral. Okay.

BBG's, BBGs every day, beans, berries, greens, seeds and nuts every single day. Just, just hit that and you're hitting your gut goals and you're hitting your anti inflammatory goals. Forget anything else before that. As long as you've got to hit your BBG's before you buy any more supplements, before you buy anyone's laundry.

Forget dieting, forget any of that.

Exactly. Just PBGs every day.

So looking out in the world, it's like again, the simplicity in this. Looking out into the world, there's a lot of obesity, there's a lot of inflammation to the point where it's even like, you can just see it in people's faces and in their bodies. And I think a lot of people, despite their best efforts are going out there. But we live in a world where a lot of these foods, they're being marketed as Healthy or gluten free or they're hitting one of the trends around keto or paleo and stuff like that. But what you're describing is really the antithesis of that. And if I were to put the ancient wisdom lens on it, the foods that you're describing have life force to them. There's this like energetic prana to them, which is so important. And if we were to go to beans for a second with everything that you mentioned, the gut microbiome, you know, living in this paleo keto world, I don't know if it's the same in the uk, but right now, you know, beans are being villainized, lentils are being villainized because you have to eat steak and animal protein for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But then we're looking at these studies of the gut microbiome and the diversity of fiber that you get from these amazing vegetables from the earth and how they diversify the gut and microbes that help us fuel our energy and our immune system. Right, so talk to us about how did you land on that? Well, that's a good segue into the protein conversation.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, like, like I think we have to balance our ideas around what dietary pattern we prefer with the evidence based first and foremost, but also like, we gotta remind ourselves of the fact that our modern eating habits are so, so far removed from what they were. And if you just think about beans and lentils, when you go to your typical supermarket, it's so limited in terms of what is potentially edible out in the world. There are things, thousands of different cultivars of these different legumes that we just do not use anymore. And that would have provided our gut microbiota with so much diversity. So when I talk about the gut microbiome, I want people to on the gut microbiota, the gut microbiome refers to the genetic material of all these different microbes. What we're referring to are the micro bacteria, but also viruses, nematodes, fungi, so many different types of microbes. We largely talk about bacteria, but there's a whole other world there that we haven't even fully explored. And it's largely concentrated in what's called the, the colon of the large intestine, which is the latter part of the digestive tract. You have microbes all over us, on our skin, our eyes and our, like, even our bloodstream. But the majority of our microbes are situated there and they feed on diversity and they feed on interesting different subtypes of fiber. Again, another thing that kind of annoys Me, But I also say the same thing is like I. You said the soluble fiber and there's insoluble fiber. There are multiple different types of fibers. There's so many subtypes of fiber, in fact, we haven't even researched most of these different fibers. I had a gut microbiota researcher on my podcast and I was like, I can't even find the data set that allows me to determine what types of prebiotic fibers and polysaccharides, these sugar molecules are found in different types of beans. We don't have the data. It's so frustrating that no one's thought to actually do that work and actually look at the sub fractions of all these different molecules. So the best answer I have to anyone who's looking to look after their gut microbiota is just diversity, because that's all the evidence is saying to us right now. But beans and lentils are a great sure fire way of getting enough fiber. They're also going to provide you with a little bit of protein. And I would supplement that protein with different sources of protein. So, you know, you can use soy, you can use edamame, you can use tofu, tempeh, and you can also use lean meats and lean fish as well, or oily fish. So this is where I think we need to move away from dogma, actually lean into the science of the gut microbiota, which is all pointing in the direction of making sure you're getting enough fiber and also you're getting diversity as well.

I get so excited about talking about fiber. Like, I feel like so silly. You know, you're a nutritionist wanting to get goosebumps over fiber. I really think that fiber is the future. And when you see BBGs, I'm like, oh, diversity and variety of different fibers for the gut. That's exactly what I saw.

Yeah.

So get your BBGs. Another reason to get your BBGs.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Okay, so lentils and protein. Let's talk about that evolution. So you have a book called Healthy High Protein on perfect timing with what's happening in the world. But I want to really call it the story around the story you're trying to tell, which is really around healthspan and the future. Yes, it's about the here and the now and what our body needs. But you really paint a lens of this protein is to ensure the health of your future self when you're 80, 90 or 100.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think most people think about protein through the lens of meat and muscle and Actually, I want people to think about protein in a completely different way. So the analogy I always come back to is Lego. And the beauty of LEGO when we used to play with Lego is even if you had 20 different types of LEGO pieces, as long as you had enough, you could build yourself like a toy Ferrari or like a massive spaceship, all from the same building blocks of lego. So LEGO are like the building blocks in the world of toys, where proteins are the building blocks in the world of biological materials. So when I think about proteins, you get simple lines of proteins just strung together and you create DNA. You go a little bit more complicated, you fold it in a certain way, then you can create, you know, collagen, which are big, sort of like helixes mashed together. You can create like slightly more 3D shapes that are small and then you've got enzymes. You can create hormones like insulin, for example. You can create bone. There are so many use cases for protein outside of just building skeletal muscle. And when you realize that a lot of your body is made up of protein, you understand why when you consume protein, 25 goes to your muscles, only 25. The vast majority is going to building all these different biological materials. And so this is what I want people to understand when I think about protein. Now obviously building a skeletal muscle is very important for aging. It improves your metabolic health, it improves your ability to consume calories and not put it on as fat. It increases your energy burn, so your caloric burn. But it's also about providing the raw materials so you can actually regenerate your liver and your organs and your gut, etc. So I, I think about protein through that lens. And the other realization I had during my masters was that I was actually under consuming protein myself. I used to think having a BBG like diet was enough because I was getting enough protein from beans and lentils. And whilst that is true and they do contain protein, they don't contain that much protein. And when you break down the nutritional value, it's kind of like like 10 grams per 100 gram of cooked beans. So if I was just getting my protein from these products, I'd have to consume quite a bit. That might be actually detrimental for my gut and my digestive system just because of the sheer amount of fiber that I'd have to consume to satisfy my needs. The other realization I had was that the recommended daily allowance for protein currently, which is set at 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per 24 hours, is shockingly low and is based on outdated studies looking at Nitrogen balance. So when you look at the more modern techniques of determining protein turnover, which is the balance of protein building versus protein degradation, actually we need to be consuming close to 1.2, which is 50% higher than the current recommendations. But then if you're postmenopausal, you're over the age of 50, you exercise regularly, you should really be looking at 1.26, which is double the recommended amount. And so when you start breaking that down, you're like, okay, I need to eat a good amount of protein at breakfast, at lunch, and at dinner. Now, it's possible to do that on whatever diet you prefer, whether it's omnivorous, whether it's paleo, whether it's vegetarian or vegan. It is entirely possible. But I would say for the vegans and vegetarians, you need to be a lot more cognizant of where you're getting your protein from. Because I have a plant forward diet. I had a previous plant for diet. One was low protein. My current one, which is still plant forward, is higher protein, but it's healthy, high protein. So tofu, tempeh, which. And tempeh is a process, so it doesn't always have to involve soybeans. You can make tempeh from whatever legume you like. You can make it from chickpeas. So it's fermented legume that actually improves the. The amino acid biorability to your body when you consume it. But then you can also get it from, obviously, lean me, you can get it from red meat, you can get it from fish. I prefer to get it from fish, personally. And as long as you're combining that with other sources of nutrients, whether it's vegetables and grains, then like, happy days. These all contain proteins, but just in much smaller amounts.

Right. There's so much to unpack in that. My gosh. So let's take this back because people, if we think about just the recommended daily allowance for people, you know, with 0.8 grams per kilo, so if someone is 150 pounds, that's like, what, 50 something? 54, 55.

I don't know. I don't do the math very well.

Yeah.

Because pounds I'm gonna stay with.

Kilos I'm in pounds, I'm like, yeah, yeah.

So. So for pounds, I think it's like. Or my math is gonna be really wrong.

Nutrition.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's only like it's under 60 grams is what I remember.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

And I remember that being significant. Like, that's, that's Way too low.

Yeah, it's quite low.

And I think that another lens that we can add to this is just the modernization of today's world.

Yeah.

And what we're exposed to and the amount of effort and output that we have every single day, which has also increased our demands for protein.

Yeah, yeah.

So let's break it down into how we're going to get this. And I really want to make the vegans happy, the vegetarians happy. I've lived on both lenses and perhaps like you, I try everything that I tell my clients to do. I feel really great on a plant forward diet. When I'm at the ashram, I feel like I thrive. And the vegetarians that I work with, the vegans actually that I'm working with this year, they have come back with the most stellar blood labs like I've never seen before. But it's not what we expect. Right. Like they're being so villainized and in the world of wellness. But I will say that working with them, we're supplementing, we're supplementing with like a really high quality protein powder. They're taking a couple, a really high quality spirulina. They're doing a lot of sprouting and stuff like that also. So I need to put that lens over it.

These are really good points, I would say. And I try and heighten people's awareness of that, just like you have, because sprouting, fermenting, combining, these are all really important techniques to ensure that you're getting that lovely amino acid profile that enables people who are on vegetarian and vegan diets, which are restrictive, and I think we should refer to them as restrictive because it's just, just, it's harder to get everything you need from those diets, but it enables them to do it in a way that's super convenient and easy.

Okay, I love that. And I wonder too, as you're saying, I'm thinking our ancestors would have had a predominantly vegetarian diet, but all of their lentils and sprouts would have been cooked very differently than how we cook them today. So maybe that was a bonus for them also. Right. Fermenting, cooking slower.

And I reckon, you know, the current mono cultivars that we have today are probably lower in protein for a number of different reasons. The nitrogen that we have in our soil has changed, the growing conditions have changed, how we consume them has changed. You know, a lot of lentils that we buy and that I buy, like, no judgment to myself here, but like, you know, I'll get them in packets I'll get them pre cooked because it's just super convenient. But back in the day we would have sourced it from the market, we would have soaked it overnight, we would have dehulled it, got rid of any like odd lentils that, that weren't able to be cooked and then we would have slowly cooked them for like hours and then probably combine them with grains to get that, you know, lovely amino acid profile because that would have been a teleological condition that like led to the tradition of always having grains and lentils which is something you've seen across all different cultures. So yeah, absolutely. I, I think the protein content of our food has drastically reduced and also ultra processed food is very low in protein. The reason being is because it's been engineered that way so it's less satiating and hyper palatable. So you just eat and eat and eat and it's just, you know, they've done these studies where they've looked at the bliss point and the, the perfect sort of food that is cheap, easily transportable, very high shelf life, low protein. So you don't, you get that signal to your brain that I've had enough food, right. So you just continue to consume, you continue to consume. So unfortunately this is the environment that we live in and we need to engineer techniques and rules of thumb to, to ensure that our health isn't the detriment.

I love that lens too, looking at protein intake as a form of satiety and fullness and keeping you satiated until the next meal instead of the number. So let's break down the animal protein concept because I agree with you, protein is so essential and important, but I don't know if it's any better in the uk, but the protein quality here tends to be fairly poor and now that people are wanting to eat more protein, maybe they're even going for the trend of eating a gram of protein per pound of body weight also, which could be a lot of protein for some people. But if you're not getting higher quality sources of animal protein, do you want to talk about that then? Like the benefits of, you know, the protein that we know of an animal that's outside and has a life and perhaps that's grass fed, you know, in nature versus the factory farm meat.

Totally, yeah. I mean if we're looking specifically at protein quality and amino acid profile, speaking very honestly, there doesn't appear to be a difference between the worst kept and the worst welfare conditions of let's say a chicken versus a free range chicken. If you just look at it under the microscope and you just look at the amino acid profile and you look at the sort of nutrition basics and the macros pretty much identical. Does that mean that you should be just choosing the cheapest one? I don't think so because I think there's an environmental concern, obviously there is. What else is coming with that? Like pesticides and antibiotics and hormones and all the other things. There's probably more to that that we haven't even appreciated. And I think there's still, you know, speaks to the sort of traditional lens by which we should also be treating our food in terms of respect and you know, the fact that there is a life that has, you know, been sacrificed for our nourishment. So I think from that perspective, yeah, there's definitely a big difference. But looking at the amino acid profile of these different foods, very, very little difference. Even the studies looking at grass fed beef versus grain fed beef, there is slightly more omega 3, for example, in some of the grass fed beef. But the amount of omega 3 in that grass would be so small you couldn't, you couldn't get that. You couldn't satisfy your needs for omega 3 from beef alone. You'd have to get it from either fish or supplementation. And I personally supplement because it's just very easy to get. Yeah, I highly recommend you get a clean supplement, you know, algae based or, you know, clean fish based, whatever your choice. So, so yeah, I think from the amino acid profile, very, very similar. And I think when we talk about protein quality with the my nutrition hat on, we're looking at the digestibility and the availability of certain amino acids and we're looking at nine essential amino acids and different proteins. And if we focus way too much on quality in terms of those metrics, all roads lead to whey protein because, you know, and this is what the bodybuilding community and the exercise and athlete community just, you know, they're very fastidious about. Okay, it's got to be whey protein or lean chicken breast. That is the easiest way to stimulate muscle protein since synthesis, which is important for protein growth. And it's like you need to look at this with a different lens because those metrics are measuring quality by looking at the digestibility of the weakest amino acid. And so by looking at those metrics, beans and lentils, and they're always going to be super low down the list. But that isn't to say that you can't get your protein requirements from those foods. In fact, when you look at the protein sub fractions of potato and corn and certain types of wheat. They're really high in these different amino acids. We just can't consume enough of it to satisfy our needs. Which is why, you know, through cultures we've developed these different techniques of fermenting and sprouting and combining to meet our amino acid requirements.

So in your book, how are you advising for people who they want to be part of this? They understand the connection between regeneration and the body and protein intake.

Yeah.

How are they figuring out the quantity that they need?

It's a really good question. So I would say there's a protein calculator that's free and that you. That is a QR code in the code on the book and there's also one on the doctorskitchen.com website. I think I would encourage everyone to know their number. So my number is relatively high and I'm only like 75 kilos. But I've got to eat in the range of 130 to 140 grams of protein every single day, which means I need to be consuming around 4,40,45 grams of protein at every single meal time. When I eat that way, I feel great. Like I don't have hunger, I don't, I don't snack in between meals. I feel more energized. I feel, and this is like the big revelation for me is when I started eating according to my body's requirements for protein, I felt so much better and like more recovery and all the rest of it, which I hadn't realized that I wasn't having prior to that. For women, particularly, because we tend to have less protein in our diet or it's not like the, the focus, like it can be quite hard. It's a bit of a, a bit of a change in mindset. But I would always aim for the lower threshold of protein before you start going to a gram of protein per pound, because that's like at 2, 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per 24 hours, which is really high. And then I think a, the, the benefits of going higher than 1.6 to 2.2 are marginal. And they're mostly for the bodybuilding community who are really into their composition. But the other big impact is if you're going for that much protein and you're getting from animal based product, you're probably going to be in an energy surplus which is going to lead you to put on weight. And I think a lot of people who are going for that, putting themselves in a situation where they're putting Too much weight on. And that's not good for any of the things that we've discussed, dementia, cardiometabolic health, etc. So there's a gray area there and I don't think the benefits of going high are worth the. The potential trade off and the negative effects. So I'd always aim for 1.2 to 1.6 and do the math for yourself and figure out what your number is and divide it according to the number of meals that you prefer to consume.

No one's talking about the impact of excess stored protein long term. And can we just say there has not been one study on what's going to happen and your longevity if you eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. There's not one study that has been done. There's studies on protein consumption against things like sarcopenia, longevity and musculoskeletal health and stuff like that. I think the regeneration approach is something that needs to be talked about way more. It's actually quite special. But I really want that to be a takeaway in the protein calculator then. Are you assessing your daily energetic outputs and do you take into consideration like ethnicity and stuff like that?

Do you know what ethnicity is? A really good idea, but I haven't come across much research looking at the different culture and different ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, it's a real big caveat with ever interpreting any nutrition studies. There's hardly any information on Indian or people of South Asian descent. The Africa Caribbean community is underrepresented in a lot of these different studies. So. And, and also there's different ancestry as well, like when you're comparing European studies to North American to South American. So. So we didn't introduce the cultural element in our protein calculator because there just isn't enough evidence base for us to suggest that. Bar we have introduced gender differences whether you're pregnant or lactating, because that does require a lot more protein and activity levels. So these are the things that we can like lean on the science a bit more of. But outside of that, it's very hard to pinpoint exactly how much protein you require, which is why, you know, going back to the start of this conversation, I think it's really important for you to get a hold on intuitively what feels right for them. If you start eating 1.6 grams of protein and you feel full all the time or you feel sluggish, go down like, change your. Don't, don't be beholden to a specific number just because Dr. Ruby told you to you should really try and like intuitively figure out yourself. But I think it's good to understand generally what your number is so you can be a good guesstimator of having enough protein at every single meal time.

That's important too. You said intuition. In Ayurveda we talk about the foundation of digestion having to be optimized first. So a lot of people theoretically switching to a diet BBGs protein, getting their anti inflammatory foods, but they're not digesting properly and they might notice an issue with processing all that protein to begin with. So I would say like, it doesn't mean that it's not working for you, but this is one that beautiful concept of can you just like personalize your own nutrition plan based on what you need in the season of life that you're in? Which might be very different in the next season of life. Like from a woman perspective, when we're pregnant versus not or breastfeeding versus not, we've really understood that evolution of like, wow, the demands of my body are so different. Or maybe for athletes who are training, they really are so in tune with how their demands change and they'll take ownership of having to customize instead of thinking that oh, I've arrived. This is the diet for life. This is the way of eating for life. When it should diversify.

Absolutely. Our diet and our exercise and our routine should always be in flux because we're at so many different stages of life. Like I'm in a big stage of life at the moment with a newborn and my sleep is all over the place and my exercise routine, everything has just been like, you know, super chaotic. So I'm having to adapt and I'm, I'm sort of reframing that in a way to, you know, to be a learning opportunity for me to you know, to sort of adapt according to what is actually achievable for me. And I have to be, I have to sort of be like a bit gentler with myself because I think the expectations are that I put myself like, you need to eat a certain way, you need to exercise a certain way. But actually I just have to be, you know, respective of the fact that I'm in a different phase of life right now.

It goes by fast. You're gonna miss it. Yeah, I picked up on the Lego. I'm like, yeah, he's yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where that came from.

Yeah.

So can you talk to us about. I love the concept of how you build a plate. So you talk to us about the protein the fiber, the anti inflammatory foods, the BBGs. In terms of protein though, are you diversifying your protein in the same way that you are your plant focusing food?

Yeah, totally, yeah. I think it's really important to make sure that you're getting diversity of everything on your plate. So I mean I will go through lean meats, lean red meat as well, which I have more of a, as a luxury item, oily fish, so herring, mackerel, salmon, anchovies, sardines, like my wife's Italian. So we have all these different foods here, which is great. But I'll have a healthy amount of tofu from an organic source, tempeh, edamame, even Greek yogurt that's strained and prepared in a certain way that gives you a good amount of protein. And then I will supplement with a plant based protein as well. So whether that's chickpeas or adzuki beans or black beans. And then I'll use a topper. So something like tahini in the dressing or mixed nuts and seeds or sesame or whatever it might be. So that way you know, you've got your core protein source, you have a plant based protein partner and you have a topper. So that way it's easier to get to your protein requirement rather than like, okay, I need to eat 200 grams of chicken breasts because that's going to give me 60 grams of protein, which is exactly what I need. Diversify. Have a little bit of chicken breast if you want or tempeh, have a little bit of your plant based partner, chickpeas or beans, whatever it might be, they're relatively high in protein and have your nuts and seeds, you know, as a, as always introduce texture but also some extra protein as well. And they're a very effective means of, of getting to that total amount.

Absolutely. And again, it's just like a new habit, right. It's like a new muscle that you have to build to, to get used to them.

Totally.

Can we maybe. Can I ask you just because you've got the science behind this.

Yeah.

We were so concerned and it's the craziest thing living in Los Angeles and not having access to clean fish. Whether it's, you know, we're fearful of our oceans or even some of the bigger kind of more exclusive grocery stores here.

Yeah.

It's all farmed fish.

Yeah. Yeah.

You must have access to a lot more wild fish where you are.

We do. So we, we have fish from Scotland and Cornwall. Those are the biggest areas and we're really lucky, actually. It's funny, was Having this conversation yesterday with someone who lives in la, who's French and I was like, where are your fishmongers? And she said we don't have any fishmongers. They don't have like for me it's so alien because we have fishmongers where they get the fish directly from the fish market that morning there's a queue outside the door and people are generally buying, you know, cod or salmon or whatever which has been, you know, wild caught scallops and langoustines that we get in, in Scotland. We don't eat enough fish in the uk. A lot of it gets sent to Spain and Italy where they actually appreciate it as well. Particularly like the crustaceans. Like this is gorgeous fish and we, so, so we have a better, it's not great, it's not as good as Europeans but we definitely have a better handle on fish than you guys over here. But we also have farm fish in the UK or some of the waters around the UK and there are good farming practices and there are bad farming practices. There are some really good farming practices where they use clean water. They don't overpopulate the water is, is, you know, tested to be free of some of these. Or we've got an issue with sewage in the water, which is a whole other conversation. But you know, it's tested to be clean and of course as much as you can do with any wild sources of water. So there are definitely better farming practices. But I know the ones that you're referring to and they're not great. So we, yeah, it's definitely an issue with, with fish I would say another.

Point of empowerment to really just take. Yeah, just when you're being conscious about making these choices.

Yeah.

And like with any other food. And I'm sure you went through this process too, the second you know who to buy from. Yeah, the trusted resource, the reputable brand. You, you, you know, you have to do a little bit of research first. But yeah, I really love that. We were in Denmark last summer and like the fisherman goes door to door. There is like a truck that's fresh delivery every two days or something like that.

Isn't that amazing?

So good, right? You're supporting local and all this.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean it's very hard to lean a leader. Completely toxin free lifestyle and environmentally environmental pollutant free lifestyle. And it can be really scary because everything is just packaged, you know, plastics that leach into the food. You know, whether you're buying meat or red meat or wherever at some point in the along its journey. Unless you've literally been there. From the moment that an animal has been sacrificed, it's gonna come into contact with some environment. I mean even during its life, it's going to be breathing in. If you test the fat, it's going to have tons of different chemicals in that are, you know, not natural. So it can be quite overwhelming. You just got to do the best you can. And for some people that means avoiding fishing and me, and that's, that's fine. I don't have an issue with that. If you have environmental or ethical concerns about that. It is still very, very possible to consume enough protein. You just have to be quite cognizant about it. And this is where, sorry, you're talking about the protein blends and this is a really important point. These protein blends are often labeled as like inferior to whey protein. Actually they're really good. So they tend to have things like pumpkin seed and pea and even soy from a clean source. When you combine these, they've got really good levels of the different amino acids. And the one of, of concern is with this couple, one's leucine, a branch chain amino acid and the other one's methionine. These are really important because leucine triggers a number of different cascades in the cell. You know, it hits the sister in two and then it activates mtor. And so what this leads to is like muscle protein synthesis.

Do you know that that's the one amino acids that I've seen the most deficiencies in this year?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because in vegans and vegetarians.

No, in media results.

Oh, just generally. Oh, there you go. Maybe it's just because people aren't consuming enough protein in general. Because leucine is very, very important. We need to be consuming ourselves. I think it's around like three or four. I have to be careful exactly what number it is, but I know it's a high amount and we tend to have lower amounts of leucine in plant based sources, which is where I think plant based protein shakes are convenient and good, good options for folks. But when you combine that, yeah, you're getting really good doses of leucine, which triggers muscle protein synthesis. And the other thing, methionine, which is unfortunately tends to be deficient in things like beans and grains, is really important for detoxification. Your immune system is a precursor for things like glutamine and glutathione. So these are things that you know, would help people thrive in, in a world that is Quite stressful and polluted. And again, you can get that in good amounts from these pea protein shakes. So pick your, you know, plant based protein, make sure it's unflavored. I just think the flavorings that a lot of these have.

And the gums.

Yeah, and the gums. And like the thing. Because that's the, this is why I have the three pillars. Because it's like, it's got to be high protein, but it's also good for your gut and it's also going to be anti inflammatory because if you just go high protein then people fall in the trap of like, okay, they go to the, you know, the supermarket, they're like, that's this high protein, that's got 20 grams and great, I'll grab that. But then when you flip it over and you read the ingredients like, okay, there's no fiber in it, there's all these gums and thickeners. This is pro inflammatory. So you cross the boxes for that. So that's why the whole concept around the book, healthy high protein is the marriage between these three pillars. It's getting enough protein, ensuring that you're supporting your gut. And it's anti inflammatory.

I love it. It's so simple because yeah, to your point, a pound of bacon or a burger, you might be getting your protein but you're certainly not getting the nutrients that you need or the anti inflammatory aspect also. So do you talk about amino acids in your book?

Do you go into specific detail on the 20amino acids? Non essential, some non essential. In fact, there's discrepancy as to whether it's 20 or 21. But yeah, that goes in the weeds. But no, I try to keep it super simple in my book. Just talking about total protein requirements, gut health overall and anti inflammatory. But we could definitely talk about different amino acids.

I'm such a fan of food first always. It's just, it's another one of those trends here now is to supplement with an amino acid powder every single day.

Like I said, your amino acids, you got it.

Which I understand if you're exercising and stuff like that. But again it's looking at the source and where they come from and where they source in the ingredients and what are the other ingredients. They tend to taste really delicious because of all the other additives that are in it also.

So definitely. Yeah, yeah. I've tried a lot of like creamers recently because there's a bit of a trend for having functional creamers.

That's true.

I'm chief science officer for a coffee company and we're thinking about coming up with a cream. And we're doing this taste test with, like, just coconut flour and raw cacao and a few others. And we were looking at some others, like really big brands, and we tasted it, like, why does this taste so sweet? We look at the ingredients. It's just coconut flour and, like, cacao. Like, how have they made it so sweet? Turns out you can put maltodextrin in it and you don't need to put it on the label. And the food scientists know and the food sciences we're working with, she was like, guaranteed they put more Dexter in it, but they're legally allowed to not put that on the packet if it's below a certain threshold. I was like, this is crazy how we've allowed this loophole to exist.

Oh, yeah.

So you got to be really. Even when you read ingredients, you got to be really careful that it's actually gut healthy. Absolutely, yeah.

So many hidden loopholes. Profit system.

So, yeah. The essential amino acids. I can understand that if you're an acid athlete or you're worried about your amino acid profile, but if you can get it from whole food sources, like a pumpkin seed or rice or corn in a protein powder, like, that's. That's better. Or obviously whole foods, preferably.

Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Gosh. I could talk to you for hours about food. I would love to be in your brain just on the nutritional science part of things, but would you say the people who've been reaching out to you online, you obviously are impacting lives. What would you say is the biggest challenge in the conversion to eating this way?

Oh, there's so many, Mona. Like, I would say it's time education, knowledge around cooking, lack of confidence in the kitchen. I think busyness comes in with the time aspect. Yeah. And also just because, as we've alluded to, it's really confusing. Like, it's really complicated. You can go to, like, like the nicest supermarket. There's a bunch of nice supermarkets in LA. It's 80 full of crap. Like, it's terrible. Like, it's really, really bad. And so it's no wonder, like, even when you have the means and the. The ability to invest in it financially, and you end up buying, like, ultra processed food that's just heavily marketed and overpriced, you should just be sticking to the. The sort of grocery aisle section, the fresh produce section, and that's it, and just find the best you can. Which is why I'm a big fan of farmers markets, because that's when you're going to have the relationship with the direct, with the farmers, and you're going to find the best produce as well. So, yeah, it's really hard. I think it's a time and busyness and lack of culinary knowledge and.

Yeah, yeah, you've touched on a few. So just for listeners, like, tune into what to what of those challenges are your biggest obstacle and just start there. Just start to problem solve from that standpoint.

Totally. Yeah.

And I want to know from your lens then, because I agree with you, you go into the most beautiful grocery stores here and I'll just. At Whole Foods, for example. Yeah, you think that you're picking up these organic cashews, for example, but then you turn the label over and the second ingredient is canola oil. Yeah, right. Are there key ingredients that you really want your listeners to just avoid? Put the product back down.

Yeah, I would say if it's got a mix of different sugars in, I would definitely put it down because there are so many different names for sugar as well. This is high fructose corn syrup, which I think a lot more people are becoming aware of. But there's, you know, malt extra and there's agave, you know, brown sugar. And when it's got multiple different types of sugars in, you're just like, what? It doesn't need to have that many different types of sugars in. So that's like telltale number. Number one. I would say emulsifiers are pretty. Well, I would say they're unnecessary in a lot of products and they're mainly there from a texture point of view. So I'd avoid those, particularly like polysorbate 80 and some of the dyes as well, that I think a lot more people are becoming aware of in the States. Additives, E numbers, we call them E numbers in the, In Europe, those are the ones I would say. Okay, my rule of thumb is these are luxury items that you eat like, you know, once every quarter. Not a weekly staple. Certainly not a daily staple. So I'd put those back for sure and stick around. Like the fresh food. Are that. That's, that's the, like the area that you spend the most time in. Absolutely.

I love it.

Yeah.

And you and I come from a culture where seed oils were actually used therapeutically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Are there, are they being demonized as much as they are?

And I don't know if they're being demonized as much. I think the US have more of a problem with them. So oils like canola because they're, you know, they're refined, they're bleached and they're deodorized. Right. So I can understand sort of the argument behind why these are unnatural and they shouldn't be in our food system. They tend to be associated with ultra processed foods as well because they're cheap oils and they're just added there. And again, it's more of a texture thing. The human evidence looking at seed oils doesn't suggest as much of a villain picture as a lot of people make out. So when you look at like canola oil and corn oil studies and other vegetable studies, they seem to lower inflammation and they seem to lower cholesterol in certain human trials, whereas in rat studies they tend to have the opposite effect. So there is a bit of discordance there. I would just say the healthiest oils that we are aware of, extra virgin olive oil. I think that's the brilliant oil. Sesame oil is great because it's, you know, processed in a very similar way. Avocado oil is great if you want to use like a high saturated fat one. You could use coconut oil in moderate amounts. The same thing with ghee and butter. I don't have any issues with those. As long as you're not like putting it in your coffee and all the rest of it. I don't think. I think it's pretty unnecessary to do it to consume fats in that way because it is essentially refined. But I tend to not have seed oils in my diet because A, I don't like the taste of them and B, they're great for frying. But I don't have a lot of deep fried food in my diet anyway. Am I going to worry if I'm going out and I'm getting some french fries? Do I care whether this is cooked in beef tallow versus seed oils? @ the end of the day, I'm eating refined, starchy food that's taken up to a very high temperature and it's going to be introducing advanced glycemic end products into my bloodstream. Regardless of what oil is going to be, it's going to be bad for me. So I don't care as much. But when I'm at home, the oils that I use are the highest quality oils.

I couldn't agree more. And I think that, you know, adopting the style of living and eating that you're mentioning, the second you get over that hump, and I know you know this just with your nutrition background of losing food addiction.

Yeah.

You open up a whole new world of flavor and taste and food cravings and everything. It really is just getting over that initial hump. And I think that obviously in our circle it's a no brainer. But for a lot of the people who might not be used to our type of languaging. Do you have any advice for somebody who is, you know, the way they were in, in medical school?

Yeah.

Eating the takeout, eating the processed food every single day, they really want to feel better. But do you have kind of like an entry point so that they can start to adopt the steps for long term health?

Totally. You know my entry point, I didn't change everything overnight. I started with one meal and that meal for me was breakfast. And I think it was fortuitous that I actually started with breakfast because I think how you start your day and how you break your fast is really important because it sets the rest of your day, sets your focus, your energy. You know, the fact that I have a high protein, high fiber breakfast means that my energy levels are nice and steady. My glucose levels aren't going up and down. I'm not on a roller coaster, I'm not craving mid morning. So I would say to anyone listening to this who's starting to get, you know, who wants to start, it's like master one meal. And if that meal is breakfast or lunch or dinner, it doesn't matter. Just master one meal and make that your rock. And like everything else can, can go to the wayside, it doesn't matter at the start. Like if you have to eat lunch on the go, you have to eat something ultra processed and for dinner that's fine, but you own one meal if that's the only thing that you can take control of. For me, that was breakfast. I recommend breakfast, but it's completely up to you. And then the more you get into the habit of like, okay, this is something that I'm making from scratch or I'm preparing the day before or making sure that is clean as high protein and high fiber and anti inflammatory. The more confidence you're going to get, the more that will seep into your lunch, the more that will seep into your diet decisions when you're outside of your kitchen environment. The more that will seep into the pattern of your weekly diet to the point where you're going to be thinking and eating like us, where it's like greens at every meal, adding more fruits and vegetables and having BBGs every single day.

Beautiful. You need that hashtag master1meal.

Yeah, yeah. Master1meal.

Yeah. Seriously, that would be so Impactful.

One meal. Yeah. Next book.

Next book. Okay, Dr. Rupi, just a couple questions for rapid fire questions.

Okay.

But first, where can people find you? How do you like to communicate with your audience?

Oh, on Instagram, on YouTube, on the Doctor's Kitchen podcast, on our newsletter, thedoctorian.com and then download the app as well. There's a free tier. We've got hundreds of recipes for free. You can have a conversation with virtual Dr. Rupi as well. Because it's trained on my voice, we have a chat function. So if you're stuck on a recipe and like, oh, I don't have this, you just say, what can I have as a swap? And the virtual Dr. Rupee will tell you. So. Yeah, very cool.

Our AI versions are going to have conversations with each other.

Yeah, I know. Do you have one at all?

I do. I show you afterwards.

They should definitely have a conversation.

We'll master the nutrition world. All right, go get your copy of Healthy High Protein. Your Instagram page is just the most inspiring page out there, so.

Oh, thank you.

To wrap things up, what's one ancient healing remedy that that you love?

Oh, that's a really good one. I would say it's probably breath work. For me. It's, you know, getting in tune with your nervous system, breathing in through each nostril and then breathing out, doing that for a few minutes. I would say that's probably. Definitely one of my favorites.

Yeah, I love it. And if you were to think about one way in which people are making healing and health too complicated, what is it?

I would say probably the conversation about seed oil.

Seed oils? Yeah.

Seriously, you're going to think about the bigger picture. And the bigger picture isn't the oils. I think of the bigger picture is the things that we've been talking about today like protein, fiber and anti inflammatory ingredients.

And if you were to pick one thing about modern medicine that excites you, what would it be?

Oh, I would say preventative cardiology. I think the scans that we have available to us, the importance of getting your lipoproteins checked, this is all sort of coalescing into a nice picture where we can actually really prevent cardiovascular disease down the road that also has ramifications for brain health as well.

I couldn't agree more. Right. All preventable. Especially just knowledge is everything.

Absolutely.

Thank you for being here today.

Thank you. It was a pleasure. Can we make this happen?

Another few hours of dinner. And thank you so much not only for the work that you do, the connection that you give people to food again is really inspiring, but also for sharing the light around protein and regeneration within your body. That to me, feels like light and motivation. That inspires me to look at protein outside of the trend and what's trending online and stuff like that. So thank you. Really great work.

Very cool.

Sam.