While this was recorded as a New Year’s resolution podcast, there is no better time than the present to make a healthy change in your life. In this episode, Dr. Frederick Schurger and Beth Bagley discuss how to start healthy eating and make your life better in 2023! Tune in as they explore keto diet, slow-carb diet, and why you should cut sugar from any diet. They also cover different eating strategies to make your life easier and more successful while staying healthy.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Eat Healthier This New Year!
Anytime Is A Good Time To Make A New Resolution. Add In Healthy Eating As One Of Them!
This is our first recording of the show for 2023. That’s going to get hard to say.
It’s already. It’s hard to write. I write it and the 2 becomes a 3.
I have a stamper that’s set to ‘23. I’ll get the day wrong about three times a week.
Thank goodness for all the digital stuff that does it on its own, but there are always still a few papers that need it on it, like signatures and that kind of thing.
I hope everyone had a good Christmas and starting the New Year off doing all their resolutions well.
I heard on the radio on the way into the office that only 37% of people make New Year’s goals or resolutions. I find it hard to believe because I’m a big goal-resolution person. We had a conversation between my kids and my husband at dinner and I had to force them to make goals.
My problem with that number is 85% of all statistics on the internet are made up on the spot.
That’s true.
I’ve asked other people, like, “What are you going to do this year?” You’re going to love what I do. I’m going to challenge you to join me with it, but you’re going to be like, “No.” I’m going to do a cold shower every morning before my coffee.
You’re not doing that again, are you? Have you already started?
I’m going to work up to five minutes a day. Here is my successful cold shower. If I get into the cold shower with the water set cold, I’ve got probably about a 30-second moment before all the lukewarm room temperature has come through the house. If I get through that and I’m done, then I’m done. I’ve had a successful cold shower.
That’s until the cold stuff comes from underground.
The cold stuff comes in pretty quickly, and I don’t mind it. I did three minutes so far.
If I do that again, I’m doing it in the summer. I can’t do it in the winter. I call it cold on my insides where my insides are cold. When my insides are cold, I have sadness. I don’t want to do it.
That’s why I do it before I have coffee.
Coffee makes it better for you. I don’t like coffee.
Here’s the other crazy thing. Everyone is going to be worried about it. We’re going to talk a little bit about weight loss and New Year’s resolutions and stuff. Everyone is freaking out about, “I’m going to have cortisol and the cortisol is going to make me fat.” It’s like, “No.” Waking up in the morning is because you have cortisol doing its job. It takes about two hours for cortisol to run its course to do everything it’s supposed to do, including burning that body fat that you’ve got on you. That counters what everyone thinks about all the stress stuff except for, “I want my coffee when I wake up.”
If someone doesn’t know what cortisol is, it’s released by the adrenal gland, right?
Yes.
The adrenal gland sits on top of our kidneys. What is the purpose of cortisol?
It is our stress hormone.
It’s not bad necessarily, but it can be.
Part of the cortisol response in the morning, because there’s a cortisol spike that happens, is to help wake us up and get us moving. For a lot of people who have a hard time getting up for various reasons, their cortisol is not responding the way it’s supposed to. Maybe it’ll spike later on in the day and cause other problems.
Cortisol is a stress hormone, but it’s not all bad. There’s a cortisol spike that happens in the morning to help you wake up and get moving. Share on XThe kicker is cortisol starts here and goes for about two hours. It goes up like this. Let’s say this is a two-hour spike. Let’s say you get up at 6:00 AM because that coffee at 8:00 AM is still not soon enough. If you put them here, you get this four-hour window of fat burning. If you put them here, you are getting this depletion of anything extra. They don’t stack on top. They sit parallel to each other. You weaken your cortisol response. You can’t wake up in the morning without that cup of coffee. I’m doing the cold to stress my body to say, “Use all that cortisol right now.”
I knew that cold showers are supposed to be good for metabolism and things like that, but I honestly hadn’t looked up why. I know that’s a bad doctor thing. Maybe I read it at some point and let it go out of my mind because I hate cold showers. Thank you for explaining why people do that or why people do cold baths or something like that.
I haven’t bought the tub for the cold plunge yet.
I have a bathtub that’s separate from my shower. If I kept water in it in the winter, then it would be the temperature of 70 degrees, 65 degrees, or whatever. I could take some ice, throw it in there, and then I could do a cold dip. I would feel bad wasting the water every day because that’s a lot of water every day. I could leave it in the tub for 2 or 3 days in a row.
You can add some salt to it.
I’d probably put some Epson salt.
Here’s what everyone who does ice baths in their own home tubs misses. You’re better off doing exactly what you’re describing, bringing cold water into the tub, sitting in the tub, and then bringing the ice in. You are already acclimated to the room temperature and the cold water of the tub, but that’s still only going to be 40 to 50 degrees. It’s not going to be subzero. It’s cold. It’s uncomfortable. You add the ice afterward and then you start moving around in it.
That sounds awful.
It’s completely miserable, but it has so many health benefits. It boosts testosterone, which is good for everybody.
I don’t need that much more. Even in women, it boosts testosterone. We’re supposed to have a little bit.
It boosts your mood. It makes you feel better. It’s a feel-good hormone for men and women. That’s my one little thing. I’m setting my bars a little bit lower than I usually have in the past simply because we have to achieve our goals. If I walk in there first thing in the morning, get cold, and then throw my clothes back on and make my coffee, I feel like I’ve succeeded at something. Sometimes, that’s all you need to do. Others have said in the past multiple times that the first thing you do in the morning should be to make your bed. If you’ve got nothing else done in the day, you accomplished one thing.
Testosterone boosts your mood and makes you feel better. It’s a feel-good hormone for both men and women. Share on XThere’s something to that.
There are tons of benefits associated with that. I’ve got so many other habits that I’ve established.
You’re trying to add something that could be beneficial and painful.
As much as I was hurting after my workout, and I’m in the middle of week three, I’m like, “I ache. If I’m cold, I’ll ache less.”
You’re so miserable you forget about the ache, which is probably what it is. One of the conversations I had with a patient was I wouldn’t say he stopped responding, but he plateaued in his response to his symptom changes. He gets symptoms like stenosis in his back. We don’t have confirmation that that’s stenosis. That’s a narrowing of where the nerves should go through. What that can do is cause pain or, if they’re standing for a long period of time, weakness. The other thing he gets is neck pain. We started our normal care plan of checking and adjusting him. He’s not holding very well. I started diving into what his habits are. We talked about work and he’s stressed. I come to find out he has a vice. It’s drinking four sodas a day. When I heard that, I went, “Okay.”
Are these sodas Big Gulps?
I didn’t ask. I don’t think they’re Big Gulps. I’m thinking they’re probably cans of soda, but I did not ask. I probably should have asked that.
That’s a clarifying question that, for most people, they’re like, “I only drink four.”
He knew four was bad. He said, “This is a vice, right?” I was like, “Are you doing it for the caffeine, the flavor, or the sugar? Why is this a vice?” Caffeine is one of them. I’m not anti-caffeine, but it’s the sugar and the flavor. He doesn’t like water. I was like, “You don’t like water. If you’re drinking sugar all the time, your taste buds are acclimated to drinking sugar. We should never drink sugar.”
You won’t like to drink water if you take sugary drinks all the time. Share on XI had the conversation of, “You have a couple of choices here. One of the reasons your body is under such a state of inflammation is because of all of this excess sugar it is having to process through. You can continue down this path, but you know by admitting to me that you do this, you want to stop this.” He goes, “Yeah.” I was like, “It is time to go cold turkey and start drinking water. That’s the best way you can do it.” I don’t recommend a step-down approach where you’re like, “I’m going to drink two sodas instead of four.” Stop.
On a stressful day, you’re going to go for the four.
Have them out of the house or out of the office. You don’t need them in the office anymore. At least he told me he is going to go cold turkey. I’ll check with him soon. I wanted to explain the science behind why soda is not great for us. There are lots of reasons, but I wanted to go more for what happens in the liver. Soda has sugar in it called high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup has fructose as the component. You hear glucose as if you have blood glucose levels. Glucose is typically a part of starches and table sugar, at least.
It is part of high fructose corn syrup, but it’s a lesser component.
It is way less. High fructose corn syrup is mostly fructose. It’s not even 50/50. It’s mostly fructose. I’d have to look it up, but the structure of it is mostly fructose.
This is where it gets into a weird question mark. This is the point that others will make. You’re not wrong. The question is anything above 55% is considered high fructose, but how much do they push that? That’s the big question. Could it be 75%? That’s a problem. Keep going.
It says either 42% or 55% fructose as described by the Food and Drug Administration, but at least. Fructose is a chemical, but it’s a sugar that is naturally occurring in something like fruit. The problem is when we have it in a mass quantity, our body doesn’t process it correctly. What it does is it has to process through the liver. Bread is sugar. If you didn’t want to hear it, it is. If I eat bread, my body starts processing it in the mouth and then in the intestines. It breaks it up into little pieces of glucose. That goes right through the intestinal wall and then my bloodstream. My blood sugar comes up, and then my body has to process that way.
Fructose is a naturally-occurring sugar that you can find in fruits. If we have too much of it, our bodies cannot process it correctly and our blood sugar goes up. Share on XFructose, when my body has to process it, has to go through the blood. It can’t be used by the body. It has to process through the liver to be turned into glucose or stored fat. Where we get into trouble is that we are finding that kids and non-alcoholic people are getting fatty liver. Their livers will be covered in this gross yellow fat. The reason is this fructose that we’re eating either through sodas, this is where we get into the kids drinking juice, it is turning directly into fat as storage.
Typically, if you’re drinking a soda, you’re not necessarily doing it because you need energy. It’s not like you’re going to run a marathon and immediately utilize that energy. People who have four sodas a day will have a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease if they’ve been doing it for a long period of time. That’s scary because that leads to chronic liver problems.
When I was talking to him about this, I didn’t want to scare him, but I wanted to say, “This is serious. If you’re constantly inundating your body with fructose, you are creating liver problems.” He agreed. I’ll keep you updated if he gave it up. I had three babies that came in to get adjusted. A lot of times, parents will think, “I’m going to give my kids juice. Juice is healthy because it comes from fruit.” Our ancestors never meant to drink juice.
It was not the way it’s made now.
If they did, it was like a treat. We squeezed these old apples off of the ground and made a cider. Maybe it had alcohol in it. I don’t know. If it was ever consumed by our ancestors, that’s how it would’ve been consumed. Now we have it on every shelf in every supermarket. They’ve been told that it’s the right thing to do for kids. It is not. Honestly, if it’s never drunk by a kid, you’re not being a bad parent by keeping them away from juice. I assimilate it with, “If I was going to let my kid have a soda, I would let them have a juice.” That is the same thing.
My kids didn’t even know what soda tasted like for many years. They still don’t drink it because they think it’s gross because it tastes too sweet. I love that because it is too sweet. It’s the same thing with juice. They rarely get any sort of juice. If they do, it’s every so often a treat. At Christmas time, we do those sparkling juices that come in bottles. They think that they’re drinking wine and think it’s fun.
That’s why when we have the inundation of all of this sugar, we can create health problems that don’t relate to your liver is probably unhealthy, but you’re now creating toxic levels of inflammation in your body. That might stop you from reacting to chiropractic care or not reacting as fast. I’m hoping that he sees some changes with his reduction in sugar. One of the things that I know you’re into is keto and carnivore. I’ve studied that a lot, but I don’t partake in just eating a meat diet.
You’re missing out.
I know. That’s what I hear. I’d love to hear a synopsis of how that relates to you and your health and how you got into that.
We’ll circle back around. As you were talking about not giving not drinking fruit juice, I was adding something to the slides.
You weren’t paying attention to my talk?
I was, but I’m like, “We got to add this one little part because it’s pertinent to what you’re talking about.” Before we get into that, I was a chronic Coca-Cola consumer back in my college days. In fact, we had a coke vending machine that had Coca-Cola glass bottles.
I might have drank one of that.
It was awesome. Every now and then, I don’t mind trying to get a glass bottle of Coca-Cola. They call it Mexican coke because it’s still made with real sugar. It’s close to the high fructose corn syrup.
If you’re like, “I’m going to drink a soda or I’m going to go crazy,” drink a Mexican Coke. At least it’s got table sugar in it versus the processed grossness.
Pepsi ran an all-natural sugar. Pepsi a while back, too, which I’m curious because if you’re used to drinking those soda pops, try drinking one of those. It’s harder to drink that fast. Getting to your point about the high fructose corn syrup, there are people who are harvesting cane sugar down in probably Central America. I can’t remember the exact region because it blew past when I was listening to the guys talk about it. The people who are down there are chewing on the cane all the time because it’s sweet. It tastes great. How bad do you think their teeth are?
Probably pretty bad.
Their teeth are fine. What they’re chewing on with the cane is a very fibrous material.
They’re cleaning their teeth while they’re chewing it.
There is a factor in that. They have rather healthy teeth, plus they’re getting all the other stuff that’s in the cane that would have been in there.
It’s complete food versus separating out.
It ended up being more of a complete food that happens to have a lot of sugar in it whereas a lot of what we’re getting in juices is much less. When I got off Coca-Cola, I had a cocaine habit. That was back in the day. Don’t even get me started on original Coke and new Coke. That’s a whole other rabbit hole. I don’t want to dive into it.
We’ll do a whole episode on it next time.
We could. It’s very interesting, but we won’t. There are other shows that have covered that.
It’s been taken care of.
Go find those. It’s curious. I started drinking grapefruit juice. It had to be Tropicana. Everything else was wrong because it didn’t taste right. I was drinking about a gallon of that a day. It was healthier. It was full of pulp. I did specify it had to have pulp. Let’s say the weight did not come off as fast as I thought it should have. I was being more active and maybe justifying some of those calories, but not all.
One of the things I want to point out here is to realize where both of us are in our education and how we’ve learned through trial and error on ourselves. What we’re sharing with you is if you’re like, “I’ve never heard that before. I do everything wrong.” We used to do everything wrong, too.
This is why if your doctor is not improving their health along the way, maybe find another doctor. I hate to be that guy and suggest that. I have a short couple of slides here. What I want to do is these are some basic rules for eating healthy. We’re not talking about anything fancy. You want to minimize your intake of wheat and processed grains in your diet. We’re finding that all these refined grains are leading to more inflammation, which might be part of your patient’s problem. The sugars are also leading to more inflammation.
Grains make sugar in your body. It doesn’t taste like sugar when you eat it, but it turns into sugar.
All grains are effectively sugar. These are four major problems for causing more inflammation in the diet. Number four is a caveat, so I’ll hit that one last. Those are all your processed grains and your sugars. I don’t have seed oils on this list.
A seed oil, for someone reading who doesn’t know, is something that’s derived from seed using high, sometimes, temperatures and then also very high force. They’re smooshed hard, and then sometimes, they’re processed with chemicals. We’re talking about cottonseed oil, soybean oil, and canola oil. They call them vegetable oil. Vegetable makes you think that it’s healthy because it is vegetable oil. It is not.
When was the last time you got any oil out of broccoli? Broccoli is a vegetable.
It’s not making oil.
These are all coming from seeds, but there are a few.
There are some good ones.
There are some actual oils, olive oil being an example.
Olive oil is a wonderful oil when it is when correctly harvested.
That’s if you can find real olive oil because there’s ugly olive oil.
We can do a whole episode on that or let somebody else do that one.
You want to minimize your wheat and processed grains because that can cause inflammation. There are processed foods and refined foods. If it has more than five ingredients, it’s processed. Minimize your intake of sugars in all forms. If you are looking for something sweet, that is when you go get a fruit. We’ll address that as I go through my other diets or some of these diet ideas that have gotten me to where I’m for a carnivore. It’s January 4th or 5th, 2023 so we’re in the middle of World Carnivore Month as it is.
How did I miss it? I forgot to get you a present.
I know. All I needed was steak. Avoid the use of any artificial sweeteners. Stevia is a good one.
I use Stevia Glycerite. To me, it has the best taste. You can find it on Amazon.
There are some other sweeteners out there that aren’t so bad. Be careful with how you’re using these.
Use very minimal. You don’t want to trick your brain.
Not only do you not want to trick your brain, but some of these sweeteners that exist out there are in the keto space. I’m going to leave it at that. They can cause gastric distress, which means it’s going to go through your gut way faster than you want. You might be sitting on the toilet and not know why.
You get uncomfortably gassy.
You might feel safer on the toilet because you don’t know.
Let’s not talk about that anymore.
This is a big problem Avoid artificial sweeteners, increase your intake of filtered water, and increase your intake of raw fruits and vegetables. I’m going to tell you when you should and shouldn’t do that. This is raw. We’re not talking cooked. We’re talking raw. Understand what fruits and vegetables need to be cooked. Many of them don’t. Some of them do, though. Eat healthy proteins, not fried. Get away from the deep fryers. I love deep-fried food.
It’s deep-fried in seed oil.
This is a major problem. I would love to get a whole pot of something.
Beef tallow?
You got it. I’d fry everything in there. I would eat more French fries if I had beef tallow.
I do believe the original French fry from McDonald’s was fried in beef tallow.
Ray Kroc said that that was sacrosanct. There are reasons that they only had one size up until the 1990s when they were forced. It wasn’t the FDA, but they were forced to not be frying in beef tallow. We’ve clearly gotten healthier as a society,
Health is all around.
We want to increase our intake of high-quality omega-3 oils. That’s your fish oils. That is probably one of the biggest things that we are lacking in our diet. It’s hard to get good fish oils because fish oils also run the same problem as seed oils. They will go ranted in short order. Oftentimes, the stuff that you’re buying in the mega marts is already going to give you bad. That’s going to give you problems. Get a good reputable product either from a vitamin store, your doctor, or online that you know that they’re fresh. Get a higher quality if you’re getting it online.
Really quickly with fish oils, for some people who do have a burping problem with fish oils, there are two things I do to stop. I will take them at night before I go to bed. That way, if I am going to burp, it’s not so bad. If I can’t do that, I will put my fish oils in the freezer and take them frozen. That way, they get through my stomach before they start breaking open all the way and are stinky.
If you grab your thumb web, and I believe it is your right thumb web, and rub around it, if that’s tender, that’s a gallbladder problem. That might also be part of the problem of digesting fish oils because they’re not bound to food as they would normally have been. There are many back and forths.
There are lots of things. We can do another whole episode on fish oils.
We can do that at another time. When you go to the grocery store, stay on the perimeter on the outside.
That is such a good thing to do.
That was probably the biggest thing I did back when I was still doing engineering. I’m like, “I’m going to do this.” I heard this one thing and I’m like, “That makes sense.” I stayed away from all of the processed foods by doing that because they were all in the refrigerator cases.
Even the middle, like the crackers and candy, all of the stuff in the middle is crap.
They’ve changed it a little bit. I go into my Meijer and they’ve got all the fruits and vegetables right there. There is some processed stuff intermingled with it, but then, all along the wall are the meat aisles. Freezer sections get you into trouble, so be careful. Go around the outside where they’ve got the refrigeration.
The last one for the basic rules is to get to know your local butchers. They have a wealth of knowledge for not only the best cuts of meat, but they’re going to help you save money potentially by buying bundles. I would highly recommend if you don’t own a freezer, buy yourself a freezer. That’s because you could buy a bundle of meat, put it in the freezer, and that might feed you and your family for the better part of a month. You don’t have to go shopping as much. Plus, you might get some good steaks in that.
Your local butcher is also a small business. I’m a big proponent of helping all of our little small businesses grow and continue to thrive.
Let’s go through the three diets that I have explored because they’re probably the easiest to follow once you understand where you’re starting from. This is called the Slow Carb Diet. This is a diet that was made popular by Tim Ferris in his book, The 4-Hour Body. He did three 4-Hour books over the years. He has released a couple of others.
Tim came up with this with help from a couple of friends. He’s got five basic rules. I’m not going to go into the detail of it. You can pick up the book on Amazon. It’s a fantastic book. There are lots of good pointers in there. It’s more of a how-to to the human body than anything else. Rule number one is to avoid white carbohydrates. That’s pretty much anything that is white and considered a carbohydrate. That’s your vegetables. That is your bread. That’s all your sugars, rice, and grains. It’s all of those.
Did you say potatoes?
I didn’t, but potatoes fall into that category as well. You’re right. It’s all of those white carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are anything that’s not fat or protein. We’re going to go into what you can eat. Avoid all those white carbohydrates because those are sugar waiting to happen. Rule number two is really simple. Eat the same few meals over and over again. It seems redundant, but we are creatures of habit.
It’s easier to make several meals if you’re single and living at home or have the same meals every night for a family. It’s not every night, but Monday’s a meal and the next Monday’s the same meal. You might change up the order of the days, but you’re eating the same things. Everyone’s like, “We’re getting roast beef tonight.” That’s a favorite. Meatloaf also was a favorite when I was growing up. Don’t ask how many potatoes were next to my meatloaf.
Watch out. With meatloaf, you have to add breadcrumbs, too, a lot of times. You got to do one without that.
There are some ways you can do it.
You can, but the traditional way is adding breadcrumbs.
My new favorite breadcrumb substitute is called Pork Panko.
Is it pork rinds that are grounded up?
Yeah. It’s as binding as any other breadcrumb.
I’ve done that before when I’ve been keto dieting.
Number three goes back to your point, which is why I was bringing this back in.
Don’t drink calories.
It’s under the don’t eat fruit, but don’t drink calories. People think, “I’m drinking this.” I remember there was this one brand. I’m going to try not to put more brands into what I’m saying because I don’t know if that’ll get us in trouble, quite honestly. There was one brand of smoothie. They would come in this sixteen-ounce bottle. Honestly, the ingredient list was clean. It was fruits grounded up. It was this big old green bottle. That was my breakfast. What I didn’t read was the calories on that thing.
Were there two servings in it?
No. I don’t even remember.
That’s how they trick you, too. They’ll say it’s only 30 grams of something and you’re like, “It’s two servings.”
This one probably was four servings, to be quite honest. It was a lot of calories. Don’t drink your calories. This goes for protein as well. Protein shakes and smoothies, even if you make them yourself, tend to be super high in calories. They are not helping you out. For the purpose of digestion, we need to chew. They are created in the mouth by doing the chewing method that helps prepare the food as well as trigger the stomach for digestion.
It can also trigger satiety, so it helps us feel full. I 100% agree with that. If you’re someone who can’t gain weight and is having problems because you can’t gain enough, that’s where a protein shake might come into play, but we’re not talking about that.
We’re not talking about the guy who’s trying to put on muscle in high school who goes for what they call GOMAD or Gallon Of Milk A Day. That will put on muscle mass, but that’s not the direction you want to go in. Don’t drink your calories. There are too many drinks out there that are empty calories that do not give you any nutrition. Realize that if you want nutrition in your diet, you’ve got to say, “What calories are giving me nutrition?” Rule number four, which comes back to what we were talking about with fruit, is don’t eat fruit. If you’re craving something sweet, go for fruit as a dessert. Don’t make it a meal by any means. Largely, we were not designed for consuming fruit all year round. We’re in the middle of winter here.
There should be no fruit. You might be able to have stored apples or something.
You might have a couple of apples or some dried fruit that you did. Maybe you have something that you canned a couple of months back, but that’s sparing. You’re not going to have that all the time. We don’t need extra fruit this time of year. We should have put on a little bit of extra body fat coming into the holidays. That’s what we’ve always celebrated.
You had your grandma’s pie, the cookies, and the cakes. You have all these extra calories for the winter when we then don’t have all of these calories available. We need those extra calories to keep us, quite honestly, warm at night through the cold, the cold showers, and the cold plunges, which crazy people like us try to do.
You don’t say us. That’s you.
There are other people here who are like, “I’m going to do the cold shower with you.”
I’m sure they will.
Their bar is even lower. They turn the cold water on. They look at it, put their hand in there, and say, “I did enough.” They turn off the water and prepare their coffee. Sometimes, that’s it. We wouldn’t have it. We no longer have a world where we can’t have fruit all year.
It might not be that great this time of year, but it’s there. You can eat canned fruit and put it in syrup.
The best ones to look at are blueberries. There are two things that’ll tell you the blueberries are probably not that great. First is the price tag. Blueberries for a pint are probably $5 a pint from where we are.
Inflation is at 7%.
In the spring, they’ll be plentiful. They’ll maybe be about $2 a pint.
You’ll get two of those for $5 or something.
Here is the crazy part. Start learning to taste what a blueberry tastes like. Get that in your brain so that you know, “That one was awesome.” There is no such thing as an awesome blueberry in the winter.
They’re sour. They’re sometimes squishy.
There is a brightness that is not present in the blueberries that doesn’t taste good. When you finally start getting away from all these processed vegetables or processed meals and foods, you can start tasting your food as opposed to shoving stuff down your gullet.
That’s so true. You can retrain your tongue to taste things that you didn’t even know you were missing.
That is a two-week cycle that you have to take a break from before you realize that’s a problem. The last rule for the slow carb diet. This is one of those where you do this early on as you’re trying to get your feet wet in the diet space and try to say, “I’m going to do this and I’m going to be good.” You are going to take one day off per week and eat whatever you want. They’re often called fatter days in the slow carb community. These are the days when I come on down and visit you and say, “We are going to the Chinese buffet. I’m going to eat everything I can.” In fact, you almost want to overdo it.
You will make yourself feel sick, too, but then it stops you from wanting to do it again.
Oftentimes, you gorge yourself. This is your psychological release valve. A lot of people are like, “I don’t know if I cannot eat fruit all week long.” Eat it on Saturday. They’re like, “I love pizza.” Eat it on Saturday. You got that psychological release valve. Plus, then come Sunday and you’re like, “I don’t want to eat today. I ate too much yesterday.” You can get back to your diet. You’ll see this yo-yo-ing effect.
I probably did this slow carb for maybe 6 to 8 months. If I’m going to eat carbohydrates, I pop in a slow carb. When I do this, I stopped doing the fatter days because I’m like, “I don’t need that anymore.” I didn’t need the psychological release valve out. I realize, “I don’t feel good eating any of that stuff.” Let’s get into the diet. Do you have any questions that you might have as we think about this?
I don’t. I’m looking at our time. The next two things that you’re going to talk about are what you’re passionate about. I’m wondering if we should touch on them. We could spend more time on it in the next episode, too.
Let’s do that, but all I’m going to do to cover here is I’m going to hit what to eat in the slow carb diet, and then what is the difference between the slow carb and keto and what’s the difference between keto and carnivore.
We could talk a lot about both of those other ones.
If you want to search on the internet, there are seventeen different places you can find a slow carb diet eating list. I’m going to go over some of the things that I would preferentially suggest on this list. Tim’s list is from maybe ‘09 or ’10. I want to say it’s been around for over a decade and people are having great success with it still.
As far as protein, that can be egg whites with 1 to 2 whole eggs, chicken breast or thigh, beef, and preferably grass finished I should specify. Those can be fish, pork, and lactose-free unflavored whey protein powder. There’s your protein. Eat as much protein to fill yourself up. Don’t hold back on this. You’re going to focus on higher protein. The slow carb part of this is the legumes. It’s all these beans. Those are lentils, black beans, pinto beans, and red beans. For people who will say, “How do I do this and go eat out?” It is really simple. You go Mexican.
You could go anywhere and get a vegetable. In a lot of places, you can get broccoli and a piece of chicken or broccoli and a steak with some butter on it.
Will that fill you up to not want dessert?
I don’t know. I think it would.
Here is where the beans come into play. The beans are slow-burning carbs that have a higher level of protein that will digest slowly over time. That’s why the beans come in handy. That’s why Mexican is a great choice. You can go sit down at a restaurant and hang out with friends. Don’t eat the chips.
It’s so hard not to eat chips, but don’t eat the chips. What I have done is I have brought in a little bag. I have a purse because I’m a girl. It’s a little bag of chicharrones. Some Mexican restaurants will have those. Those are the pork skins. I will dip that into my salsa. If you are slow carbing, low carbing, or ketoing, you can go to a Mexican restaurant and still partake in the chips, but bring your own little bag of pork rinds.
As far as vegetables, your big vegetables are spinach and all the cruciferous. Those are your broccolis, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and kale. Sauerkraut and kimchi are good for almost any diet. Even for some of the carnivores, you might want to do that to help rebalance your biome.
With sauerkraut, you want to find one that’s in a jar that is a natural one. The bagged ones, a lot of times, are processed.
I’ve not looked into sauerkraut in a while.
You’ll find a jar. A lot of them will say you have to shake it before you open it.
You can make your own. It’s not hard. There are kits to make it.
You don’t even need a kit. You put salt on it. I’ve made it multiple times. It’s super simple.
Asparagus is great. Peas are great. Green beans are great. I would focus on getting these in season. The cruciferous vegetables are in season more even in the winter than the others. For asparagus, peas, green beans, and kale, oftentimes, those things are a little bit earlier. Cook your kale. Cook your cruciferous vegetables. Do not eat those raw. That would be my other point.
As far as fats, butter is great. Get some grass-fed butter. What they call European olive oil is good for low-heat cooking. Avocado oil is good for high-heat cooking. Nuts like almonds are fine. You can have those. Ghee is another good one for high-heat cooking. Creamers are going to be good. Tallow, which is beef fat, and lard are good. If you want to have the best eggs ever, cook with duck fat. Hands down.
You’ve told me about that before.
That is still one of the best ones out there.
Where do you even find duck fat?
EPIC brand had duck fat for a while. I haven’t seen EPIC brand in my stores. If you know where you can find some EPIC brand foods, then you’re going to be good. Creamer is necessary.
You have to have that for your coffee. You can put a little whey protein powder in there. Sometimes, it will give you the creamer effect.
I’ve gone black on my coffee because it is happier, but that’s me. Get good salt. There are a lot of plastics in salts these days. I like Redmond’s Real Salt. Anything that’s coming from a mine versus coming out of the sea is going to be your better choice. Herbs and garlic salt are all fine. From the slow carb diet to keto is a simple step. Get rid of the legumes.
I see why it’s so easy.
The dairy creamers, get rid of that. That would be the other thing. Everything else is fair game. The trick to keto to do it properly is you go ahead and you have to increase your fats and figure out your protein ratio. It is not straight Atkins.
The macros are important.
You got to be able to track stuff a little bit better. As far as what you’re eating, there’s not a huge change. It’s not that difficult. You might be adding a little bit more butter as you’re cooking stuff, but no seed oils. We’re getting rid of all of that. The step to carnivore is even simpler. You get rid of pretty much all the vegetables and all the fats except for your butter, lard, and tallow. Keep to Redmond’s Real Salt. There are some jokes about chickens, the pet that poops eggs. Beef is the best choice for that. I know Shawn Baker, who’s the head of the World Carnivore Month group, is taking a break from eggs. A lot of people get good farm fresh eggs. The chickens simply aren’t laying.
They go through periods where they don’t lay in the winter.
I’m not eating eggs. I’m eating a bunch of beef and I’m very happy that way. Beef Braunschweiger is another story. For the folks who are reading, carnivore is simply eating your eggs. Chicken and pork is a less happy food on carnivore. I don’t know a lot of people who are doing pure fish on carnivore. I haven’t heard about that. Beef and eggs tend to be popular.
Beef, eggs, and butter.
That’s happy. I’m on World Carnivore Month year three. This is my third year into it and I haven’t stopped eating it. I tried it for 30 days. I said, “I’ll give this a shot.” I’m still giving it a shot. It’s working.
I’m glad it works for you. I know it doesn’t work for everyone.
There are reasons for that, which is another episode away.
I’m glad to have an explanation of what they all are. These five rules are a great place for people to start. Avoid the white carbs. Eat similar meals over and over again. Don’t drink your calories and avoid fruit. If you’re going to eat something sweet, eat an apple, especially a berry. Give yourself some grace on a Saturday and say, “I’m going to eat some of the things I love. If I’m doing well most of the time, I’m giving myself a day.” If there’s a wedding you have to go to, that’s your cheat day. That’s a great place to start. You might find out over time you don’t need so many cheat days. That’s a wonderful place to go. You did a great job introducing the slow carb.
Getting back to why are two upper cervical doctors talking about diet, people need to eat. Sometimes, they hit a plateau and they’re not responding to care the way they’re supposed to. This is where they’re like, “I had gout come in this week.” Someone said, “With my finger right here, I know it’s rheumatoid.” I’m like, “Did you eat a bunch of cakes and cookies over the holidays?” She says, “Yes.”
I told her that I had a rash on the inside of these two fingers that I couldn’t figure out what was causing the rash. I’m looking. I’m not overwashing or anything like that. I popped into the slow carb. It might have been even later after I cut out more grains and such that it goes away. If I get bad on my diet or decide I’m going to eat too much sugar or have a good weekend, I’ll see what looks to be a little pimple show up on my finger. I’m like, “It’s time to cut back.”
Listen to your body. Your body will tell you things if you’re listening. If you eat a meal and don’t feel good that next day or that night after eating it, your body told you something.
Your body will tell you things if you’re actually listening to it. Share on XThat’s a good place for us to wrap up. When you’re looking for someone to help you out who’s going to guide you on your health journey, Dr. Bagley and I are more than happy to help. You can find me at KeystoneChiroSPI.com.
You can find me at PrecisionChiropracticSTL.com. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok @DrBethBagley.
Guys, we’ll talk to you soon.
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