https://www.listennotes.com/e/6ebbbce002934f1b8d41bc45b5373d43

The premise is that we need to lose weight to get healthy, but that is not how the metabolism works. We don't lose weight to get healthy, we get healthy to lose weight. When we get healthy, it might not happen as fast as an extreme calorie cut, but it happens over time and the weight stays off.

If you want to live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great, and feel Freaking amazing. You're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo.

And I'm Dr. Ed Levitan. Welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast.

Where we empower you to live a vibrant and healthy life by optimizing your structural, chemical, emotional, social and spiritual lives.

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Hello and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. We don't have a star sighting of Ed Levitan today. Couldn't make it. But our guest today is Ben Azadi, who's one of my favorite humans to interview. He's been on the podcast before. He's the founder of Keto Camp. He has over 17 years of experience in the health industry and he's the author of four best selling books, including his latest, Keto Flex. He's also the author of Metabolic Freedom, which is being published this week so you can get your early copies. And it's through Hay House. He's been the go to source for Intermittent Fasting and the Ketogenic World and diet since 2013. So, Ben, welcome. I'm so excited we could talk about your book and Metabolic Freedom today. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. Wendy, loved your work. I had so much fun with you the first time. So let's make round two. Let's make Edward jealous of this conversation. How about that?

Seriously, he's always like, why didn't I get to play on the cool ones? So what happens with grains? Can you talk to me? Because it feels like a lot of people don't do well with grains, whether that's gluten or whether that's rice or oatmeal. Talk to me about how popular whole foods throw us off metabolically.

Yeah, there's a lot of what we consider healthy whole grain and whole wheat products. I'm putting a lot of quotation here that are not actually going to contribute to fat loss, especially in, in the United States, we know that our food supply is loaded with glyphosate. Loaded with it. I mean, studies Show like almost 97, 98 of our urine that was tested has trace amounts of glyphosate. It's in like 80, excuse me, 60% of our rainfall. And it's in a lot of these grains, a lot of these wheat products, soy products, corn products, even coffee. And when you look at Italy, and I talk about Italy in the book, not just Italy, but Europe as well. But Italy has banned or have strict regulations for a lot of these toxins, including glyphosate and red dyes. And they don't have the obesity and diabetes like Italy has a longer lifespan than us. We're around 77 years on average. Italy's over 80, 81, 82. They have less obesity, less diabetes. Okay, do they work out more? No, they have less gyms than us. Maybe they walk more. But they banned or have high, strict regulations for these toxins in our food supply, including the grains. I mean, I'm sure you've heard this before. Maybe you've experienced this wende, where you could go to Italy and have sourdough bread, wheat bread, pizza, pasta, and not feel inflamed. But if you had the same thing here, you feel inflamed and you gain weight. Has that ever happened to you, Wendy?

Well, in all honesty, if I ate bread here, I'd probably wind up in the hospital. So I never, ever do it. But what I have found is that the food. So I never eat gluten just because I have celiac disease. And so I don't consider European gluten to be safe, even though it's better. It's not as bad, but no, I don't eat gluten. But what I have found is that when I go to Europe, I'm not as sick universally from, you know, if I go eat out four days in a row, I'm a quivering puddle on the floor by the fourth day. In Europe, it's fine. The quality is so much better and so the cross contamination is less. The quality of gluten is better, it's less reactive, and the quality of the food is better. So I won't ever eat the sourdough in Italy, but I know what you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I hear a lot of people report that where they can't have it here, but they go there. They don't have celiac like you, so it's a different story. But you know, the whole grains, if you're part of that, 93% of Americans that are metabolically unhealthy, whole grains right now, whole wheat bread, oatmeal, oat milk, that's not going to help you out here right now. That's something that you want to remove because there's going to be a blood sugar response from eating those foods and essentially an insulin response. And Dr. William Davis, who actually endorsed the book, he has several books, but Wheat Belly is one of his books. And he showed in the book two slices of whole grain heart healthy wheat bread will spike blood sugar as much as a 12 ounce can of soda or a Snickers bar. Right. Because it's turning into sugar. And if you're metabolically unhealthy, that's something you want to get rid of right now. We want to eat more protein and fat. The things that you've been told not to eat. The saturated fat, the cholesterol, that's what you want to do. You want to teach your body to burn fat, not sugar. So you're not doing yourself any favors if you're overweight. Metabolically unhealthy right now, and you're having a ton of whole grains, having a ton of oatmeal. Oatmeal, um, eventually, yeah, you could bring some of that in if it's organic and you tolerate it. Well, I could do it some from time to time. But you want to first work on your metabolism.

Well, okay, I have a question on this because weirdly enough, two birthdays ago, I was sick, I didn't feel well, and I didn't really want to eat dinner. So. Okay. It's a weird dinner I ate that night. We made cheese pox like we did. Made those crispy cheese things out of Manchego cheese. And my mom made me chop liver, and that's all I ate for dinner. And then I had birthday cake, and I happened to be wearing a CGM at the time, a continuous glucose monitor, because I was in the. Like, I want to know what my body responds to and what I found. And I'd like you to talk about this, if you can, is order matters, that if you eat your protein first, it sort of distracts your body and distracts the pancreas from producing too much insulin.

So.

So you can tolerate some carbs towards the end, but if the protein comes first, it can stabilize you. Do you have the research on this? Have you? Like, how do you fold that in with Metabolic freedom in your book? Because I know that you tend mostly towards not so much carbs, but in the real world, in life, people are gonna eat them. So how do we set them up for success?

Yeah, that's interesting that you saw that, because I've seen it too, testing it on myself, and also the studies show that's a meal pairing is what it's called meal sequencing. So yeah, I have actually a section in the book that talks about that. In the section on biohacks, I consider that a biohack for blood glucose, postprandial blood glucose and yes, the order in which you eat your food. And there's a Japanese study and several other studies that show this makes a big difference when you have protein, fat and fiber first. So let's say it's like steak and broccoli or fish and broccoli or Brussels sprouts and steak and then your potato or in your case the cake after, there's going to be less of this postprandial glucose spike versus the opposite when you had the potato first or the cake first, which you wouldn't do, and then the steak. Well, might, yeah, might if you're ambitious a little bit. And that's because it slows digestion when you eat protein and fat. So and it activates the satiety hormones closest to kinin, leptin, peptide yy. So you will see a better response. So I know that I'm a keto guy and I love keto, I love the low carbohydrate approach, but I'm not a dogmatic keto guy. And in the 30 day plan in the book I talk about the importance of metabolic flexing and this is especially important for postmenopausal women. Nobody should be doing long term ketosis. Nobody. Men, women? No, I mean, I shouldn't say nobody. There are some exceptions, those who have epileptic seizures and for medical reasons, but for the most part, most people should not need to do it forever. We want these metabolic flex days where like you just said, it's just, it's, it's socially more adaptable to have carbohydrates from time to time. And I put it into the plan. And if you do something like that, where you have the protein, the fat, the fiber first, then the carbs, you will mitigate a lot of that postprandial glucose, get you back into a fat burning state much faster. You could also go for a walk. It's one of the best things you can do. I talk about it in the book 30 Minute Walk Postprandial glucose. There are studies that show with diabetics, even after a high carbohydrate meal, without doing the meal sequencing we're talking about here, there was about a 30% reduction in postprandial glucose versus those who didn't go for a 30 minute walk. So going for a walk after a meal is one of the best things you can do for fat loss and for your metabolic health as well.

You know, I feel like I really can't work any longer. I just need to go take care of my health. It feels like it's a full time job. That's. But I do. It's. I don't. You. I don't usually say a 30 minute walk because it's very hard for the women who work to get a 30 minute walk in after lunch. But I will say a 10 minute walk. Just get yourself moving because everything's better than nothing. So do something. As opposed to. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be in the game.

You could do. Yeah, ten minutes is amazing. And you, you don't have to walk after every meal. It could be after dinner when you're home and you want to go for a walk with your family and use it as a social experiment or experience. Or here's something else you can do. You could actually do. What are they called? They're called calf raises, but there's a special name for them. Well, you can actually work at your desk and do calf raises for like three minutes as you work. Some people will do it and it actually reduces postprandial glucose just by doing that. Calf raises. Right. So there's things you can do. But yeah, you're right, Wendy. You know, we all have our schedule, we have our lives and do 30 minute walk after every meal. It's not realistic. 10 minutes will suffice. Or just choose the biggest meal of the day, maybe dinner, and go for a walk after that meal.

Yeah. Tell me something. Have you found that there's mistakes people make when they're trying to eat clean or they're trying to lose weight? Are there sort of top three things that you want to say? Watch out for this. If you're on the path to metabolic freedom or you're not yet in the metabolic freedom and you're on your way there.

Yeah. The first one is they're consuming too much fruit and fruit juices.

Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but one of my favorite patients showed up in my office and she's like 82 years old. She's so cute and super spry. Shows up in my office and had a hemoglobin A1C of 5.9 and blood glucose of 105 and insulin of like 9 or 10. And I was like, what's going on here? She's this big soaking wet. She's tiny. And I was kind of probing and I was like, what are you eating? She said, I love mandarins. I was like, me too. She said, I'm eating 10 pounds a day. I said, oh, well, if two mandarins has about 25 grams of sugar and there's about 10 mandarins in a bag, then you're eating 20 mandarins. That's 10 servings. You're eating 250 grams of sugar in a day. And she went, oh, no. I said, oh, yes. So one of the first things we did was ditch the two bags of mandarins in a day and got her. I was like, you can have two mandarins and a package of blueberries. Start there. And you know, we've been working together for a number of years and I'm really pleased to say her hemoglobin A1C is totally normal. Her blood glucose is totally normal. And now she no longer eats ten pounds. Ten pounds, Benny.

Wow, that is wild. Did you test her liver enzymes at all altasd?

They were fine. She didn't have any fatty liver.

Interesting. Sometimes those things.

Yeah. But she also happened to have one of the lowest B12 and one of the lowest folates I have ever seen and one of the highest homocysteines. She was just. I was like, I'm not a fan of saying to someone, you need to take this for life, because that's kind of intimidating. But I said to her, you need your B12 and folate for life. Because her folate was like 5, which I was like, I've never seen it that low. And her B12 was in double digits and we like to see it around 750. And she was. She was like, I think it was like 85. And I was like, I've never seen anything this low.

Wow, that makes sense why her homocysteine was so high. What Was her homocysteine?

65.

65. I've never seen it that high. Wow.

I've seen it higher, but with someone who is an end stage liver failure who ultimately died of alcoholism, but, you know. Yeah, no, it was crazy. So now her homocysteine is normal. It's like 6.8.

Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, that's awesome.

So I'm sorry to interrupt you, but when you said eating too much fruit, I was like, I have someone for you.

No, exactly right. I mean, I'm sure that happens all the time. And it's not just the fruit in excess, in this case 10 pounds of Mandarin, but the fruit juices as well. A lot of people think, you know, they're having these smoothies and juices, that it's healthy, free, all these antioxidants. If you're metabolically unhealthy, it's not going to be healthy for you. You're going to have a big glucose spike. It strips the fiber away. If you're going to have fruit, fruit is better in the whole fruit versus the juice. Don't have 10 pounds of mandarin, but fruit in excess is just too much fructose. And the liver has to metabolize about 90% of that fructose. And Richard Johnson, Dr. Richard Johnson has a great book called why Nature Wants us to be Fat. And it talks all about. And of course, drop acid from David. Dr. Perlmutter as well. Not David. Is it? David Perlmutter? Is that his name? Yeah, David. I was thinking of his son for a second. Yeah, David Perlmutter.

Austin. You're thinking of Austin. No, David was drop acid.

I was thinking of Austin. Yeah, Yeah. I thought I had it confused. Yeah, David. Promoter, drop acid. They talk about uric acid and how it leads to, of course, gout. Fatty liver. Fructose is one of the primary drivers of that. I remember when I had a conversation with Dr. Perlmutter. I asked him, okay, give me the top five reasons why we have high uric acid levels. He said, here are the top five. Fructose from fruit, fructose from fruit, fructose from fruit, alcohol, and then hypurine foods. I'm like, oh, okay. Okay, then, yeah, okay, it's fructose from fruit. High fructose corn syrup being the worst, but excess fructose is not good. Go ahead.

Well, the high fructose corn syrup also gives you a little side of mercury, so that's the devil.

Fun times.

Yeah, seriously, like. And then you're going to drink alcohol with it, so you're really. Your poor little liver is quivering on the floor. Okay, we said the top three things of trying to eat clean. You said one was sugar. And then there were two other things. What were they?

The second thing is eating the wrong types of fats. These fats that are processed are arguably even worse than. Than sugar and in some cases, worse than cigarettes. These are these adulterated seed oils, and there's a whole discussion on seed oils. Are they good for you? Are they bad for you? Well, when I talk about the dangers of seed oils, I'm referring to the processed seed oils, the damaged omega 6 fats. I want to make it clear that not all seed oils are bad for you, not all omega 6 fats are bad for you. They're actually really healthy for you if they're unprocessed. But the majority of them are processed, they're adulterated. And there's a couple of studies I put in the book. One of them is from Dr. Martin Grutfeld and he did a study analyzing french fries that were fried in vegetable oil seed oils. And he looked at the aldehyde contents produced from that frying process of french fries. And he showed in 5 ounces of french fries, which is about 25 french fries, it produces the same amount of aldehydes as 25 tobacco cigarettes, which is essentially one French fry is one tobacco cigarette smoked. Right? Crazy. They're so inflammatory because they're unstable. The half life for these linoleic acid fats are two years, 680 days. And they're an 80% of our food supply. So we want to get rid of canola, corn, cottonseed, soybean, safflower, sunflower, rice bran, grapeseed. If it's the processed variety, we want healthy saturated and monounsaturated fats, butter, ghee, beef tallow, coconut oil, olive oil and avocado oil. That's the second thing I would recommend.

How would you know it was processed? I mean, is it by definition processed if you get it from the store and it's in a bottle? Or is there some way that you could say, oh, it's not actually processed, it's a better version of sunflower seed oil.

If you're buying it at the store, it's going to be processed. There are some companies that make really high quality organic cold pressed sunflower oil, safflower oil. There's also PC oil from Body Bio, which is a omega 6 fat, but it's also cold. Really great for you. So there are some specialty companies that make them the right way, but they're rare to find. So to your point, if you get it at the supermarket, if they're cooking with it at the restaurant, it's going to be the processed variety.

Okay, and what's the third thing that people want to watch out for? Common mistakes. When they're trying to lose weight or.

Eat cleaner, the common mistake is that they treat the body like a calculator or a math equation and they simply think it's all about eating less and moving more. And you made the point that earlier with postmenopausal women, it doesn't work for them. It doesn't work for anybody. Well, I shouldn't say that it Works for everybody. Actually, short term it does, but long term, it fails. It doesn't work long term. And the reason why so many people still believe in this approach, and I was teaching this for so many years, is because the premise is that we need to lose weight to get healthy. That's the premise of calories in versus calories out. I'm going to teach you to lose weight to get healthy. But that is not how the metabolism works. We don't lose weight to get healthy. We get healthy to lose weight. When we get healthy, by lowering our stress bucket, getting rid of these toxins, cleaning up our food supply, we lower inflammation, we balance our hormones, and a side effect, the weight comes off. And when you do it this way, it might not happen as fast as an extreme calorie cut, but it happens over time, and the weight stays off. So we need to get away from the old thinking that it's just about calories in versus calories out. Calories matter, but they're not important. They're a distraction. We need to get away from that old concept.

Okay, where can people get your book, and where can they find out more about you?

So you could get the book over@metabolicfreedombook.com and if you order it on that page, we have a free gift that we're giving away, which is an entire course I built out on the metabolism. 12 lessons that you get for free. And we did some exclusive interviews that I put in the course with Dr. Daniel Pompa, Gary Breca, Dr. Jason Fung, Megan Ramos, and Cynthia Thurlow. All of that is in the course, and it's for free. You could get the book. It's available on hardcover, Kindle, Audible. I narrated the audible. So metablogfreedombook.com, once you order it there, you just put your name, email, order number, and then you're automatically sent that course with the exclusive interviews.

That's great, Ben. Okay, we'll put all that in the show notes. This has been awesome, Ben. I'm very grateful you're here. And I can't wait to read the book. I'm, like, super psyched. I'm gonna get a copy.

I can't wait for you to read it. Yeah, I'll get you a copy. And by the way, chapter 10. Chapter 10. I'll plant the seed. That's my favorite chapter in the book. I think it's the best chapter in the book, so I can't wait for you to read that chapter.

Thank you. All right. All right, Ben. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast, listeners. Go read the book. He's amazing. He's an expert. You can see he can quote studies at, like, no one's tomorrow. And, Ben, it's been a pleasure having you on. I hope you hit the New York Times bestseller list with this one, because this is a knock it out of the park one.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your work.

Wende, my pleasure. Right back at you.

Ben, were you inspired and empowered today?

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Until next time.