May 3, 2025 • 56 mins
What happens when two former colleagues discover they've independently solved their health problems through the same radical diet change? In this inaugural episode of Lessons from the Ketoverse, hosts Graham and Stephen reveal how they reconnected after years apart only to find they'd both transformed their health through ketogenic living.
Graham shares his powerful story of receiving troubling blood work results that showed he was headed toward diabetes. Taking matters into his own hands, he spent countless hours researching nutrition and challenging conventional wisdom about healthy eating. The results were nothing short of remarkable—over 50 pounds lost, body fat percentage cut in half, and blood work that went from concerning to "excellent" in just over a year. His doctor's stunned reaction? This type of natural health reversal is "extremely rare."
Beyond weight loss, Graham describes unexpected benefits that transformed his entire life: mental clarity replacing brain fog, emotional resilience during major life changes, and complete freedom from constant hunger and cravings. "I don't remember the last time my stomach growled," he reveals, explaining how nutrient-dense, high-satiety foods naturally led him to intermittent fasting without effort or discomfort.
The conversation dives into controversial nutritional myths, particularly around red meat consumption, exposing how flawed research and special interests have shaped dietary guidelines for decades. Graham's meticulous approach—tracking every bite for six months to ensure proper nutrition—demonstrates the thoughtful, science-based foundation of their methods.
Both hosts share their frustration with medical professionals who showed little interest in learning how they achieved these remarkable results without medication. This experience crystallized their mission: to create a podcast where they could share their knowledge and help others find their own path to better health through ketogenic eating.
Ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about nutrition? Subscribe now and join Graham and Stephen as they continue sharing their evidence-based approach to transforming health through the power of food.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Lessons from the Keto-Verse.
Join Stephen and Graham as theyexplore the keto lifestyle with
tips, science and stories toboost your health.
This podcast isn't medicaladvice.
Consult your healthcare advisorfor any health-related issues.
Get ready to fuel your primalpower.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hello everybody and welcome to the first episode of
Lessons from the Ketoverse,which is a podcast that my
friend Stephen and I have beenworking on to just discuss
everything related to theketogenic diet and a little bit
of our personal journey.
We hope you find it interesting.
One of the things that we wanteveryone to keep in mind is the
(00:41):
opinions on the lessons from theKetoverse podcast should not be
considered medical advice.
You should consult your medicaldoctors and nutritionists to
find a pathway to the healthcare that works for you.
We certainly hope that you findour opinions interesting enough
to subscribe and listen tofuture podcasts, and I wanted to
take a moment to introduce myfriend Stephen.
(01:01):
Stephen, say hello.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Graham, hi everyone, thanks very much for the invite
and the great introduction.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, so a little background between Stephen and I
.
So we actually work together,side by side, literally in
booths next to each other in theoffice of a major startup.
It was actually a billiondollar startup with an excellent
experience, and it was awireless startup, so very
interesting.
My job was to build the contactcenter operations from a blank
(01:30):
sheet of paper and Stephen's jobwas to design the logistics for
the entire country to make surethat all of the equipment the
phones and everything related tothe phones would get to the
right stores or get to people'shomes on time.
I learned a heck of a lot fromStephen, Always enjoyed a little
bit of banter back and forthand we worked hard and we had a
(01:53):
lot of fun while we were doingthat.
So, Stephen, do you want to leteveryone know how we ended up
working on this podcast?
Speaker 3 (02:01):
together.
Yeah, sure, and again, that's agreat point, graham.
Launching a national telecomfor the first time in over a
century is no small feat, and Ithink part of the reason we
bonded wasn't just because wewere sitting adjacently, but our
responsibility, our shared workethic when it came to doing the
right thing at the right time,whether anyone was looking, was
(02:22):
kind of crafted, that bondbetween the two of us.
And, completely independently,as you moved on and I moved on
to our respective work, and Ithink we can both agree.
At the time when I was workingwith you at this company, we
were gaining weight, we weren'teating well, we were working
extremely long hours.
And then fast forward severalyears later, you and I reconnect
and find out that we're bothunwell.
(02:44):
You know, it might beappropriate to say that perhaps
my health was worse off thanyours in that, you know, at the
age of 50, approximately sevenyears ago, I was diagnosed with
diabetes and I believe thestress from the work environment
, the food that I was consuming,again reinforcing the stress of
the environment, and justhaving to cope with very, very
long days it was not uncommon todo 13 hour days, five days a
(03:07):
week and also cover overweekends and, yes, I too am very
proud of what we accomplished.
But in retrospect, you know, Iput us in a position where,
independent of one another, wewent down a path to try to
figure out what the solution was.
And when we reconnected,because of our friendship and
our respect for one another,neither one of us had any idea
that we had found a similar pathto health recovery and
(03:32):
improving our health spancompletely independently, but
arrived at the same conclusions,which is candidly, no surprise
given how well we collaboratedtogether in our work
collaborated together in ourwork.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, there's a couple of things that are, I
think, so critical that youmentioned.
One is that we were both sortof generally headed in the same
direction, health wise.
We probably had similar eatinghabits and we, at the almost
exactly the same time we'retalking about a 18 month, two
year journey we ended up sort ofstarting this at a very similar
time and ending up where we arewith very similar knowledge.
(04:13):
The conversations that we'vehad over the last couple of
months have been so interestingto me because I learn a heck of
a lot from you.
Every time I, every time we havea chat, there's always
something new I hear orsomething new that you share
that I should listen to or read,and it's just made the journey
not only more fulfilling from aknowledge point of view, but
(04:42):
also knowing that somebody else,who you admire and like very
much, is sort of experiencingthe same thing.
It makes the journey a littleless stressful, let's say, is
sort of experiencing the samething.
It makes the journey a littleless stressful, let's say.
And so what we're going toattempt to do for our first
podcast here is Stephen's goingto interview me just to give
people sort of a bit of abackground as to who we are and
how we got here.
At the next podcast, I'm goingto be interviewing Stephen to do
a very similar sort ofbackground, to learn about
(05:03):
Stephen's journey and who he isas a person.
I know you're going to enjoygetting to know him as well.
So, stephen, why don't we startoff?
I know you've got a bunch ofquestions that you have for me
and I'll do my best to answerthem for you.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, and perhaps we begin at the end, so to speak,
and perhaps my first questionwould be what inspired you, at
the age that we both are,respectively, middle-aged
Canadian men, what inspired youto go sort of tangentially to
your expertise, which isglobally renowned in the area of
call centers, to pursuing a newcareer, dropping everything,
(05:38):
taking the financial risks thatare associated with that, to
then become an expert innutrition?
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, so I don't know if I'd label myself an expert,
but certainly I know a lot moretoday than I did a couple of
years ago, and you know I'veapplied some of those learnings
and they've certainly had apretty profound effect on my
health and the current state.
So call centers, contactcenters, is something that I've
always been interested in,especially the customer
experience side of things.
I sort of always felt that Iunderstood the balance between
(06:07):
the needs of the customer aswell as the needs of the
operation, the company.
And understanding that balancemeans that you can put in things
that not only work from acustomer experience point of
view but also work from a bottomline point of view, and both of
those things are necessary tohave a successful company.
You know we've left thatwireless startup but it is still
(06:29):
very successful today, 16 yearslater.
It's always nice to see thosesigns and know that you had a
hand in making that work.
More recently, the experiencethat I had around going to the
doctor a couple of years agogetting some blood work done and
him saying you know, graham,you're headed in the wrong
(06:49):
direction from a health point ofview.
My A1c triglycerides were high.
You know it was clear that myblood sugar levels were not
being managed properly.
Insulin response was although Ididn't have it checked, likely
becoming insulin resistant andheading towards that diabetes.
That inevitably means you endup on medication, likely for the
(07:10):
rest of your life if you don'tmake any changes.
And I think the big differencebetween past visits and this one
was I actually got the bloodresults.
I'm a bit of a techie.
I like data and I got theactual blood results.
So I wasn't sitting therelistening to a doctor interpret
those blood results.
I was able to go in and seeexactly what my A1C is, hdl, ldl
, triglycerides and a number ofother blood metrics, and then
(07:35):
sort of dig in to that bigrabbit hole around what actually
causes these particular metricsto change for the worse.
And the more I got into it, themore I realized that the way I
was eating which I thought was ahealthy way of eating, you know
I'd look for the heart healthysymbol on the box before buying
it wasn't a healthy way ofeating.
(07:56):
And I started to understand howto read food labels, the actual
ingredient list on the back,and over time slowly but surely
removed, you know, one afteranother, after another,
different kinds of foods that Ihad been snacking on or eating
in the past.
The more changes I made, thebetter I felt.
You know, the more pounds weredropping, the more energy I had,
(08:19):
the more I wanted to exercise,as opposed to sort of struggling
to do that in the past and themore I realized that I could
make a difference in otherpeople's lives if I was able to
help even one person.
My wife's a psychotherapist.
She's very good at what shedoes and she profoundly has an
(08:40):
impact on people's lives,whereas, you know, in business
there's only so much you can do.
You can be, you know, try andbe a great leader.
You can try and inspire people.
You can try and help them learnto do whatever they want to do
better, but there's a limit towhat you can actually do to have
an impact on people's lives.
That's meaningful and I feltthat with our stage in life that
it may make sense to go backand go back to school, study to
(09:05):
be a health nutrition coach bothdiploma and certification and
see if I couldn't make adifference in other people's
lives.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah, that's absolutely great.
So, in summary, your aha momentwas your own blood results,
which resonates with me as well,and I'll tell you more about
that when we do my interview andthe fact that that was very
typical for us working together,because I know that the same is
.
Yes, it was never asufficiently deep enough
response for you.
You had to go deeper and try tounderstand and, to that end,
(09:35):
were there any call it?
You know, as you progresstowards your certifications and
working as a coach full time,who were your coaches, who
inspired you along the way?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah.
So the I'm not sure you knowwhere that all starts.
I know that there were peoplelike Dr Ken Berry and Anthony
Chafee, dr Baker, Georgie Eadepeople along the way that
obviously, if you start tolisten to one, they start to
interview others and you startto listen to them.
So you know, had somebody toldme two years ago that I'd be on
(10:07):
this sort of ketogenic journeywhere I'm, you know, getting rid
of all the ultra processedfoods and sticking to a low carb
diet with, you know, fattyprotein, that I would have
called them crazy.
But the more I eliminated foodand the more I listened to
people and their advice and themore that advice made sense to
me, the more changes I made.
(10:28):
The more changes I made, themore energy I had.
The more energy I had, the moreI wanted to listen to podcasts
and go for walks.
You know, I remember startingoff with sort of struggling
maybe two, three times a week togo for a walk, even a walk
around the block, and throughoutthat 18 months I ended up
(10:50):
walking sort of 18,000 steps aday.
And with all that walking I wasable to listen to more podcasts
and there is actually a lot ofcontent out there.
Even though it's a relativelysmall space, there's still a lot
of content for people to absorb.
So the more I was able to go onthose walks, the more I was
able to listen to people thatwere smarter than me about this
(11:11):
journey.
The more I listened, the morechanges I was able to make.
The more changes I made, themore energy I had, the farther I
would go for those walks andthe more I'd listen to.
So it was a self-fulfillingprophecy where, along the
journey, as I'm eliminatingthings that aren't working for
me and adding things in that areworking for me, I was building
a knowledge base that allowed meto sort of feel comfortable
(11:34):
that this was something that Iwanted to try, and I think one
of the big aha moments along theway was the fact that I track
every single thing that I atefor about six months, and I did
that for a number of reasons.
Obviously, I wanted to make surethat I wasn't causing any
damage.
I wanted to make sure that Iwas getting the nutrients in my
body that I needed.
I was starting to learn moreabout the fact that what we
(11:55):
should be focused on isnutrition, not necessarily food.
You know, food can come in abox and food can come from the
ground, certain, are gonna bemore nutritious than others, and
tracking every single thingthat I ate or that six months,
and not only showed Me what Iwas taking in, it also showed me
, you know, whether I wasgetting the right nutrients or
not.
If there was something that Ineeded to add, I was able to add
(12:18):
it with the full knowledge thatyou know.
If I added it, I would get thatcertain nutrient metric up and
just understanding the macros ofthe micronutrients, the
vitamins, the minerals.
You know things likeelectrolytes and the importance
of those to really make surethat the body is nourished in a
way that it can function at itsoptimal level.
So I think there are a numberof inputs along the way.
(12:46):
Inputs along the way, certainly,you know the medical doctors
that have their own podcaststhat are incredibly well versed
in the subject, as well as justyou know going down any rabbit
hole that I could to understandthe benefits of.
You know, for example, aketogenic diet and then being
able to watch the actual impactover time.
You know losing 50, a littleover 50 pounds in call it.
(13:07):
You know about a year, maybe alittle less, and you know, the
biggest satisfaction I guess forlack of a better word or the
biggest satisfying moment, waswhen I went back to the doctor
about 14 months after that firstblood work visit, months after
that first blood work visit, andI was pretty confident that
things had turned around.
You know, again down 50 pounds,tons of energy, exercising a
(13:34):
lot, eating the nutritiousrequirements that my body needed
, I was pretty confident that myblood work was going to come
back, you know, as improved.
I was really surprised that itactually came back as excellent.
The doctor said whatever you'redoing, keep doing it.
It's working.
It's a clean bill of health.
And one of the reallyinteresting things about that
(13:55):
conversation is I asked him howoften that happens.
How often does somebody turnthis around?
And he said, you know you meanwithout some medical
intervention or drugs.
And I said yes, and he said,unfortunately it's extremely,
extremely rare.
And I took that to mean he maynot have seen many examples at
(14:19):
all, if any.
And I remember asking himbecause I've known him for, you
know, 15, 18 years.
I remember asking him would youlike me to come in and just
spend, you know, 10 or 15minutes sharing what I did?
I've got some information thatI picked up along the way
because it might help somebodyelse, and he really wasn't
interested in having thatconversation and I was a little
(14:41):
let down by that because Ithought I'm sure doctors get
into this with the feeling thatthey want to make a difference
with people.
I also understand that he'sextremely busy and probably very
stressed out, and I do thinkhe's a good doctor, but I was a
little taken aback that hewasn't really interested in what
I had to say about how I turnthings around.
So it is what it is.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I'm happy to talk to others who will listen, and
there's plenty of those wise butyou used the method of science
of observation in terms of yourown results, and you proved out
(15:27):
your hypothesis that what it wasthat you were doing wasn't just
a fact of losing 50 plus poundswhich is pretty extraordinary
over the course of a year, andthat's healthy loss.
We're talking about healthyloss of weight and not induced
by stress or some otherunderlying condition, and as a
result you ended up getting anexcellent status and sadly, I'm
not surprised at all.
(15:47):
But your comment concerning theunwillingness for the medical
community to embrace you is kindof a rarity, the unicorn that
essentially you would be in bytheir definition and not take
advantage of that in a positiveway for the patients.
Again, we'll talk about thismore.
I had exactly the sameexperience, but I tangled more
with the dietician than I didthe doctor.
(16:08):
The doctor was on board.
The dietician viewed that I wasessentially a heretic because I
wasn't taking anything for mydiabetes and had the same
results as you, almost down tothe pound.
So it's interesting that you'resharing this and it's's
disappointing that these, thesecredentialed experts that you
know we um have a tendency to toovershadow and repeat the same
(16:31):
verbiage without actuallyproviding a solution.
They just want to put you onmetformin if you have diabetes.
They want to do all thesethings and, um, as you
highlighted, you went fullnatural.
You were managing your entireintake through an approach that
was both holistic and verytactical, as it related to micro
(16:51):
and macronutrients, and you gotresults and you wanted to share
the results.
Unfortunately, the only way wecan do that now is through these
kinds of forums, where we caninform people about what we did
and encourage them to do theirown research and follow their
own evidence.
Did at any point when you werespeaking, you know, with the
medical community, did you?
(17:12):
Think did you have.
Maybe you feel like you're beinggaslighted?
Did you feel like perhaps youwere just lucky and that it
wasn't something you were goingto be able to maintain?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah.
So obviously you know food andnutrition is an incredibly
complex subject.
Everybody's got an opinionabout it.
You know some of those opinionsare going to be less
informative than others and Icertainly don't pretend that I
have all the information.
Just the opposite.
I'm always open to learning andlistening and I think the
(17:43):
medical community, you know oneof the challenges that doctors
have is they don't have a lot oftime with patients.
The way the systems are set upthey're sort of you know in and
out in 10 minutes and obviouslythe quickest way to turn
something around, often, whethersuccessful or not, is through
medicine and prescribing of, youknow, whatever medicines might
be recommended for the healthchallenge that you're
(18:06):
experiencing.
And also those are the boardrecommendations.
So the doctors in a lot ofcases have to follow those
requirements, whether they'reset up by the medical board or
the government.
The interesting thing my wifehad some blood work done very
recently.
Interesting thing that my wifehad some blood work done very
(18:28):
recently and she had mentionedto the doctor when she went back
and sorry, she had the bloodwork results.
The blood work results cameback as excellent.
She's eating very, very similarto me and she's been sort of
very supportive in my journeyand as she saw changes happening
, she was sort of you know, amonth or two behind and a
certain caught up to me prettyquickly, and so I wasn't
surprised that her blood workhad come back the way it did.
(18:48):
And the doctor said whateveryou're doing, keep doing it.
And my wife said you know, I amon sort of this ketogenic
carnivore diet.
And the doctor said oh, yes,yes, yes, so you're getting, you
know, high fat, high, highprotein, you're running on
ketones.
And she was very encouragingand I thought that was you know.
(19:08):
Now, this is a young doctor,she may be open to new ideas.
You know, we all get set in ourways the older we get.
But I was really encouragedthat this doctor actually was
not only not shocked at what I'ddone but also knew about it and
also had suggested that shekeep going it and also had
suggested that she keep going.
A second story that gives mesome hope is I had a torn
(19:29):
rotator cuff from a baseballinjury.
I, you know, in my late 30s,thought I could still throw a
baseball from the fence all theway to home plate, like I used
to be able to do, and of course,tore my rotator cuff and that
was the last time I playedRecently and now that everything
else is feeling better and myrotator cuff feels significantly
, that was the last time Iplayed recently.
And now that everything else isfeeling better and my rotator
cuffs feel significantly betterafter changing the diet, I've
got almost full range of motionnow.
(19:51):
And this, uh uh.
The surgeon that I met hadconsulted with me, looked at my
MRI.
Um, I had let him know thateverything was feeling
significantly better than it wastwo years ago, where I couldn't
really lift my arm very high.
And he said what have you donedifferently?
And I said well, I've tried notto put a lot of pressure on it
(20:11):
or strain it because I don'twant to make it worse.
That's why I wanted to get theMRI done to see how far I could
push it.
But the main difference ismoving to a more ketogenic diet.
And his response was yeah,that's the right thing to do to
repair the muscles and give theprotein that the body needs to
repair itself.
And he said it's extremely hardto get anyone else to actually
(20:33):
switch to that kind of diet.
So those two things give mesome encouragement that you know
slowly but surely, andsometimes these things can take
a decade.
But once you start to see theresults that people are getting
overwhelmingly I mean you knowif there's enough anecdotes at
some point you have to say thisis a thing that the medical
community will catch up andmaybe that bodes well for the
(20:55):
future for people who arelooking for a more natural way
to heal.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yeah, no that's great , absolutely a great response.
So, as opposed to just simplygiving up and taking the results
as a final outcome, youobviously changed your entire
lifestyle and stuck with it, sothat's great, since we're both
(21:22):
90s era students.
So what was the biggest thingthat surprised you the most when
you returned, to call itclassical style classroom
setting in the area of nutrition?
What so far has surprised youthe most, graham?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, so I think I'll start with something that
didn't surprise me.
The recommended carbs for both,I believe, the US and Canada
are very similar 45 to 65, 50plus pounds that I had lost, or
would go back to my you knoworiginal weight and feel 20
(21:56):
years older and have no energyleft.
So I wasn't surprised that youknow they were pushing plant
based diets.
I wasn't surprised that theywere telling us that red meat's
bad for you, even though I'ddone enough investigating to
(22:18):
understand that.
You know there was no actualrandomized control study trials
to back that up.
It was all epidemiologicalresults from studies over the
years and there were somestudies that actually were
buried, like the Minnesota HeartHealth Study, that showed that
actually a ketogenic diet can bevery much a part of a healthy
lifestyle.
(22:39):
The two things that I was kindof surprised about was that they
were finally admitting thatsaturated fat doesn't cause
heart disease.
So this is in the actual course.
I was surprised because mostpeople think saturated fat is
harmful to us and causes heartdisease because we've been told
that for 50 years.
I think it was only in 2015that the American Heart
(23:02):
Association I could be wrongwith the year, but the American
Heart Association finallyadmitted that saturated fat does
not cause heart disease andactually is quite necessary,
Learned that saturated fat wasnot only not bad for you but
also necessary.
That was number one.
And number two was the factthat in the past people felt
that mental illness could andwould cause some kind of
(23:26):
metabolic disease, so problemswith the gut and the metabolism
and the gut microbiome.
In this course what I'velearned, or at least what
they're teaching, is that it'sturning out to be the other way
around, that actually a poormetabolic health can contribute
to mental health issues.
Georgia Ede has a fantasticbook called Curb your Mind
(23:47):
Absolutely fantastic book,highly recommended for anybody
who's interested inunderstanding how food connects
to mental health and how changesin what you eat can actually
improve mental health.
Obviously, everybody'sdifferent, but to me that's well
worth a try.
And, if I'm not mistaken, theketogenic diet was originally
put together to try and treatParkinson's and I think they had
(24:09):
actually had some success withParkinson's up until a drug was
found and then the drug wasactually the recommended way to
treat Parkinson's.
So I think there's growingbodies of evidence.
There's a lot of studies thatare being done these days about
the impact of a ketogenic diet.
On mental health, there seems tobe a ton of anecdotes from
(24:30):
people who are feeling mentallymuch healthier than they were in
the past with a standardAmerican diet, and I've
certainly noticed that as wellthat you know I had terrible
brain fog a couple of years ago.
Wasn't sure what it was, youknow, was it the virus that was
causing that?
Was it something else?
Hard to say.
But one of the biggest surprisesof going to this way of eating
(24:54):
is the mental clarity.
My brain works better.
I'm sure it's because it'srunning on ketones, not glucose.
It's able to run moreefficiently.
In my experience, I'm able tothink more clearly, certainly
much more energy, and the otherthing that I've found is I'm
much more resilient.
I'm less stressed than I usedto be.
Things don't bother me nearlyas much as they have in the past
(25:15):
.
I've gone through a house moveand a change in career and
things that would normallystress people out, and I just
found that it didn't affect menearly as much as it did in the
past.
So knowing that the schools arenow teaching that food can
actually impact mental healthconditions to me is very, very
encouraging.
(25:35):
Not something we probably wouldhave heard a couple of years
ago.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
And by chance you had mentioned earlier that your
wife is a psychotherapist.
Has she taken any of thosemethodologies or approaches to
sustained health, includingsuggesting an improvement in
DIVE for people that suffer fromanxiety and depression?
And I pick on those two becausethe latest studies that I've
read strongly corroborate theymay even be the same ones that
(26:01):
you looked at that certain formsof anxiety and depression can
be directly attributed to, or atleast causal from, a poor diet.
Has your wife employed that,perhaps in her practice, in any
way?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, great question.
She's a psychotherapist and nota nutritionist.
She's unable to give nutritionadvice, but she certainly has
sort of tried to point people inthe direction of understanding,
you know, the link between themental health issues that her
clients are experiencing andunderstanding how food could be
(26:36):
impacting that.
So she is a big believer.
She also thinks Change yourDiet, change your Mind by Dr
Georgia Ede is one of the bestbooks of the year to read.
There's a ton of evidence inthere as to the link between
mental illness, stress, anxiety,depression and the foods we eat
(26:56):
.
But she also recognizes thatthere is a need for this.
So she has on a number ofoccasions and she's very busy,
her practice is usually bookedthree or four weeks out that she
doesn't have the time to goback and add that to her
repertoire.
We've talked about perhaps meadding that to the repertoire of
(27:17):
the company that we builttogether.
She certainly did all the heavylifting.
I just did the stuff in thebackground to make things work
as smoothly as possible for her,and so she's certainly
recognizing that that issomething that is going to be a
major part of psychotherapy,psychology, psychiatry practices
in the future, anything that'ssort of trying to help people
(27:37):
improve their mental health, andso she's a big believer that
that is an area that is going tohave to, in one way or another,
be combined with, you know,psychotherapy practices that
have been proven in the past.
All of a sudden, now diet can beadded to that repertoire, so
she certainly understands theimportance of it.
She's got a bit of an anecdotewhere when she was on her
(27:58):
standard American diet, shewould struggle to get through
five sessions with people, whichis a lot in a day, you know 50
minutes each and she's able todo six or seven without any
stress now.
So she's personally seen themajor improvements in the way
she eats, to her mental clarityand her strength and her
resilience, which has actually,you know, actually benefited the
(28:21):
practice too, and in turn she'sable to see more people and, as
I said, she's very good at whatshe does, and so she's able to
see more people and help morepeople.
That can only be a good thing.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yeah, if you think back, that's a very good point.
If you think back to when youand I were working in telecom
together, we didn't realize atthe time, because we were so
focused on work If we hadimproved our diet we might have
been able to avoid some of theseoutcomes, but certainly within
the period in which we had madebetter food choices, we would
(28:52):
have had more energy, we wouldhave had more clarity and we
would have been able to handlethe stress better.
We would not have got the samestress response, the cortisol
increase in our bloodstream, etcetera, and once again, that
would have shown up in our bloodresults.
But clearly it did not.
You and I both, probably aroundthe same time, got the same
uncomfortable results.
(29:13):
So I think it's a great thingthat she's recognized it, that
you both are talking aboutsomething I think is pretty
unique.
I mean, you started thisconversation by saying your
doctor wasn't interested indoing anything, and this was
before you were trained.
You know, with your trainingyou're still the same person.
You just have validation andverification of data that you
were looking at previously.
(29:34):
So I think that's a great startand in that practice of what
you were doing previously, didyou explore at any time the
impacts of intermittent fasting,for instance, as an approach?
Because so far we've talkedabout keto carnivore, we've
talked about you gettingexercise, so did you look into
that at all?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yes, so this may just be an inevitable place to end
up when changing the diet.
So I think people have ageneral understanding about
sugar and insulin.
Carbs turn into sugar in thebody, glucose and fructose, and
some turn into sugar quickerthan others.
Ultra-processed foods are goingto be quicker than vegetables
(30:13):
or fruits, for example, in mostcases, and so one of the
problems with this and this isthe thing that I try to explain
to people who are going throughhealth issues is when you do
have a high carb diet whetherthat comes in the form of ultra
processed foods or just carbs ingeneral rice potatoes or the
box in the middle of the grocerystore your body is going to
(30:36):
have to deal with that sugar.
We haven't got a lot of sugarin our body, and if we have
another teaspoon of sugar, itcan be potentially deadly, and
so the body has to be very goodat dealing with that sugar.
And so my understanding of theprocess is when sugar levels go
up in the body, whether that'sthrough direct sugar intake or
(30:57):
carbs converted into glucosethrough direct sugar intake or
carbs converted into glucose,the body needs to store that
glucose.
It can't have that glucoserunning through the bloodstream,
and so what insulin does is itknocks on the cell wall and says
, hey, let this glucose in so itcan be stored as energy.
Well, of course, if you do thattoo many times, not only are
those cells going to get larger,and that's where you know
(31:19):
gaining weight.
That 50 pounds that I lost,almost all of it was fat.
I've got to scale thedifference between water, fat
and muscle, and so the vastmajority was fat.
I think I went from 27% bodyfat to something like 13% over
that sort of 12 to 16 months,and so what happens is, over
(31:41):
time, your cells get insulinresistant.
They just don't have theability to store that glucose
anymore, and so what happens isthat glucose ends up in the
bloodstream, which is not goodfor us.
Inevitable end result to that ispotentially being diagnosed
with diabetes, but certainly anumber of other autoimmune
disorders.
It's not limited to diabetes.
(32:02):
There's all sorts of autoimmunedisorders that can be caused by
excess glucose, and I'mcertainly not here to give any
medical advice, but one of thethings that I do know is when I
have a high carb diet, I have aninsulin spike.
It certainly is stressful, bothhyperglycemia, which is too
(32:22):
much sugar in the body,hypoglycemia, which is not
enough.
You're all of a sudden hungry.
I would get hungry two hourslater.
And so you know, you eat thechips and you're quote unquote
full.
You're not actually fullbecause you didn't have any
actual food that your body needs.
And your body says two hourslater I'm starving, you got to
(32:43):
get out there, and that's astressor.
It's, you know, releasingstressors like cortisol into the
body to say you need,essentially, to say you need to
go hunt, because that's the waypeople ate for hundreds of
thousands of years before youknow our new sort of standard
American diet, and so it'ssending stresses to the body
that the body is in trouble, itneeds to eat, and so this
(33:06):
becomes a vicious cycle whereyou're eating food that's not
nutritious, the body doesn'thave the nutrition that it needs
to repair itself and to feelsatiated, and so two hours later
you're eating more, andoftentimes that comes from a box
or a bag or something veryquick.
My go-to is peanut buttersandwiches or whatever else I
can get my hands on when Iswitch to more high satiety
(33:27):
foods.
Take a steak, for example,because that's an easy one.
When I ate a steak, I wouldn'tfeel hungry for a long time.
My buddies and I would go to aKorean barbecue, for example,
and they were very interested inmy journey.
They thought I was a bit weird,but they were interested in
kind of what I'd learned and Isaid well, you know, here's an
example we're having Koreanbarbecue, which is, you know,
(33:48):
you sort of cook the meat thatthey bring to the table in a
fire in the middle of the table,and it's a great way to have a
conversation and be able to sortof cook around the campfire,
for lack of a better description.
And so I said you know, one ofthe things that's going to
happen is we're going to eat alot of this beef or meat and we
(34:09):
will likely not be hungry untilmaybe noon tomorrow.
And you know they're the onesthat would get up in the morning
and, you know, be starving andwant to eat right away, and
often that would be a breakfastcereal or something like that.
And I said so you know, payattention to your gut and your
brain.
Your brain is going to, youknow, want those carbs because
it craves it, and maybe becausethe gut microbiome is
(34:32):
communicating from the vagusnerve that that's what they want
.
But your body has actually gotthe nutrients that it needs from
that meal, and not only thenutrients but the building
blocks to fixing the, repairingthe body.
And the secret here is, then,because you can intermittent
fast.
So I'll eat at 6 pm and I won'teat until maybe noon the next
(34:53):
day.
That's an 18-hour fast.
And so with that 18-hour fastmy body has time to repair
itself.
It's got all the nutrition itneeds.
It's not telling me that I'mhungry, it's not telling me to
go, you know, eat that peanutbutter sandwich or anything else
I can get my hands on.
And so the intermittent fastingjust comes naturally.
(35:14):
So now I might eat late morning.
I'll eat sort of an earlydinner, 5 to 6 pm, and those are
the only two meals that I eat aday.
And, stephen, one of the biggestthings that has been a surprise
to me is I'm never hungryanymore.
You know, the tummy growlingwas a common thing for me.
I don't remember the last timemy stomach growled.
I just I feel I don't feelhungry.
(35:36):
Oftentimes, when it'smealaltime I sort of will almost
forget and go.
Okay, maybe I should have somedinner.
There have been days where Ijust haven't been hungry and
skipped dinner and have felttotally fine.
Most days I don't.
Most days I'll eat enough toget the nutrients that I need
and the macros that I need tokeep going.
But the fact that I don't feelhungry also means that I don't
(36:00):
have those stressor signals andbecause I don't have those
stressor signals, my body's notscreaming to me to go do
something, to go feed itself,and because of that I think I've
been significantly calmer thanI have in the past.
So the intermittent fastingthing has come naturally, but it
is something that I havepracticed daily for the last 18
months or so.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah, that's a great approach and that's where
there's a good contrast, becauseDr Fung pretty much is
considered one of the pioneers,if not the pioneer, for
intermittent fasting.
They call him the diet doctor.
But his story, graham, he talksabout people coming in getting
(36:44):
sicker and sicker with theinsulin injections that they
were getting.
Their kidneys were failing.
They were still 400 pounds.
I mean, his story is amazing.
His was one of the first books Iread, certainly another
(37:07):
resource to consider how youengage in dealing with the keto
flu, how you start cutting yourcalories in a very tactical way
and not unlike how you werecounting calories, which in
essence, he's doing through theprocess of restrictive eating in
a particular window called the16-8, where you fast for 16
hours.
And it's interesting perhapsbecause you weren't focused on
it, it was a consequence of yourapproach rather than the
central theme.
(37:28):
You didn't experience whatprobably I did when I employed
intermittent fasting, where youdo get these cravings and you're
dealing with shedding the sugarin your body.
That is, you know, many peoplecall an addiction.
It's a form of addictionbecause your body's dysbiotic
bacteria will be attracted tothese sugars and we know that
there are plenty of contentthat's out there that suggests
(37:51):
that other problems beyondmetabolic syndrome cancer, in my
case, type 2 diabetes these areall things that are
contributing that stem back tothe same point of inception, and
that point of inception is thequality of food that we're
consuming and the way in whichwe do it.
And I point of inception is thequality of food that we're
consuming and the way in whichwe do it, and I think it's
really insightful that you'vehad this experience.
Your journey is different thanmine and what's super cool about
(38:13):
that is, you know you foundyour way up to the peak of
health and my path is somewhatdifferent, but the main
ingredients are there, you knowthe ice pick, the proper hiking
shoes, the commitment to hit thesummit.
They're effectively the same,and I mean you really began this
program by saying that.
You know everyone has to findtheir own path and, if we use
the analogy of the mountain, youhave your path, I have my path.
(38:36):
They're all valid and I thinkyou would probably agree that
one of the challenges that ourlisteners may find and maybe you
can answer this yourself fromyour own perspective but how
difficult did you finddetermining what was true and
what was either amisrepresentation or a
misunderstanding, either basedon antiquated mindsets.
(38:57):
Like you know, just as afootnote, in Canada we were
still using the same food guidefrom the Second World War up
until a few years ago, so theywere still telling you how big
your plate needed to be withpotatoes and other starches.
So, with that in mind, how didyou I think you touched on
earlier that you know you'veemployed these methods and then
seen the results through yourblood work and other factors but
when you were initially runninginto, as I did, contradictory
(39:20):
information, how did youdetermine what was right and
what was wrong?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, I think that is part of why this is so
difficult is the amount of timethat's required to do the
research to you know, to end upwith the truth, or at least what
I believe the truth to be.
And so, for example, I rememberGoogling is red meat bad for
you?
So, for example, I rememberGoogling is red meat bad for you
(39:46):
?
And I'm listening to people sayit's not, and I've always
believed that it can causeproblems.
I don't know to the extent, butwe've certainly been told for a
long time, ever since I was akid, not to eat red meat.
So I Googled this and, sureenough, it comes up saying red
meat can cause heart disease.
And so I actually clicked onthe link.
And then I clicked on the study, and then I read the study,
(40:09):
which is not something that Iwould have done in the past.
I just would have believedwhatever the Google doctor told
me.
And so, as I'm reading thestudy, I get to the conclusions,
and the conclusions sayprocessed meat, not red meat,
may cause heart disease.
And this was an eye-opener forme, because the Google results
(40:30):
said it did cause heart disease.
Now the results may havechanged.
I haven't checked them in thelast you know 18 months or so,
but at the time the results saidyes, red meat was bad for you.
When I read the study, it saidit wasn't.
And I thought, okay, what'sgoing on?
And the more I listened, themore I was able to separate what
was science-based, based onactual studies.
(40:52):
And when I say actual studies,I mean randomized control
studies, not the epidemiologicalstudies where you're asked you
know what have you eaten for thelast year?
And you can see all sorts offlaws with these epidemiological
studies based on opinions.
You know healthy user bias.
Most people don't remember whatthey did eat, you know a week
(41:13):
ago, much less six months ago,and what they were associating.
So they would call pizza meator they would call a hamburger
meat versus the French fries,the pop, the condiments which
are full of sugar and the bun.
Um, you know, maybe it wasn'tthe red meat, maybe it was
everything else that, uh, thatthey were packing me in on on
that meal.
And just over time I started tolisten to things that made sense
(41:37):
, that I was finally able tounderstand the, that the
full-backed science was verydifferent than the belief system
that we have out there.
And I remember there was amoment where I heard the story
or the background to why webelieve that red meat is bad for
(41:58):
us.
And this was the story of twopeople Ellen G White and Ansel
Keys.
Ellen G White I believe thiswas in the late 1800s.
She was a Seventh-day Adventist.
Certainly I don't know a lotabout the Seventh-day Adventists
, but she had an epiphany, Ibelieve, when she was 18, where
she was told by somebody perhapsGod that red meat caused lust
(42:21):
in men and it was herresponsibility to stop men from
consuming or people fromconsuming red meat.
And so she wrote a book aboutthis, and her typesetter the
person who actually put theletters on the printing press,
was a young man named Kellogg.
I believe he was 12 years oldat the time, so of course, he
(42:43):
understood this book extremelywell because he was one of the
people who had actually got itinto print.
Well, he ended up being DrKellogg, who had an interesting
career, and certainly is a bigreason why people eat breakfast
cereals today.
Graham was another person,graham Cracker, who had
recommended that we don't eatred meat anymore.
(43:03):
Even to this day, theSeventh-day Adventists are one
of the biggest funders of foodresearch and, coincidentally,
their food research always tellsus that red meat's bad for us
without any basis for makingthat claim.
The second person, ansel Keyes,was, and of course, battle
(43:24):
Creek, michigan, is where a hugemajority of the breakfast
cereals come out today, and Ipersonally don't believe that
breakfast cereals are healthyfor me, but it's certainly a
major part of people's dietstoday.
With Ansel Keys, I started tolook into him.
This was in the 50s and 60s.
He was sort of had a verysimilar role to Anthony Fauci
(43:47):
does today, or at least he diduntil he retired and he came up
with.
His theory was that red meatcauses heart disease and he
looked at countries that hadrising rates of heart disease
and rising rates of red meatconsumption and he was
(44:09):
absolutely convinced that redmeat causes heart disease and he
wanted to prove this.
He set out to prove it, so hecame out with something called
the Seven Country Study.
That Seven Country Study showeda correlation between red meat
consumption and heart disease,between red meat consumption and
heart disease.
The problem was there wereactually around 21 countries
that he studied and he left 14or 15 of those countries off the
(44:35):
list and only showed thecountries that showed a
correlation.
And again, just a correlation,no study for causation.
He went to the NationalInstitute of Health or a similar
body to that at the time and hesaid we should be recommending
that we ban red meat.
And there was a lot ofreluctance, is my understanding,
with the scientists and doctorsaround this panel saying we
(44:56):
need to study this first.
Well, shortly after that,eisenhower had a heart attack
and Ancel Keys said see, youknow it is causing heart disease
and very quickly people movedto recommend that they don't eat
red meat anymore.
So there was no basis formaking this claim, other than
somebody wanted to show this.
Now my understanding is,interestingly, when Ancel Keys
(45:18):
was in his 90s, so you know,many, many, many years later he
finally admitted that it doesnot cause heart disease.
But the so-called damage wasdone.
So people absolutely believethat it did.
Red meat consumption has beenfor my entire life, has been on
the decline and health problemshave increased over that same
amount of time.
And so you know, there was thatmoment I guess that's a long
(45:42):
way of saying there was thatmoment where I realized that
what I believed about food wasno longer true and at the same
time I was very frustrated withwhat I'd been told in the past,
whether it's through messagingfrom recommended guidelines or
whether it's messaging on thefront of the box with the Heart
Healthy logo.
I was realizing the whole timeI was believing something that
(46:05):
wasn't true and I had to find myown truth out.
And once I had that claritywhere I wasn't going to listen
to the sort of public domain ofeducation and I was going to do
my own research and I was goingto figure out what worked for me
, it was at that moment where Irealized I can do this, I can
take responsibility for this, Ican take a leadership role in my
(46:27):
own health.
I don't need to listen toanybody else.
I'm going to get to the bottomof it.
And sure it took well over athousand hours of research,
reading reports, readingresearch articles, getting to
the bottom of some of thesetruths or lack of truths and
getting to a point where I wastotally satisfied that red meat
is not only not bad for us butactually has probably the most
(46:49):
nutritious food that we caningest in our bodies the perfect
nutrition to not only keep ussatiated, give us all the
building blocks that we need tobe healthy.
And I think the journey reallystarted to become more fun from
there, when I was able to findmy own truths about these
different foods and the factthat you know eggs are not only
(47:10):
not bad for us but an excellentsource of nutrients.
Once you get to the bottom ofthe nutrients and you start to
track them and you're satisfiedthat what you're ingesting gives
you everything that you need, Ithink that's the point where
you start to feel like you're incontrol again.
No-transcript on.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
Yeah, I think that's very interesting and there's a
few things I'd like to highlightfrom your comments, and I'm
really glad that you spoke tothe fact that you know, this is
an era when people smoke torelax.
I mean the commercials, even inthat period suggested as such.
So when you're doing theseepidemiological studies, which
are essentially opinions of whatpeople may or may not remember
(48:14):
they're not double blind studies, so not particularly valid and
you're using, or they could bequestionable, they may be valid,
but that's probably morecoincidence than it is anything
else.
But when you look at that era,they would not have taken those
factors under consideration.
And you know, years later welearned that there was lead in
the water.
There was other factors thatcontributed to the decline in
(48:36):
their health that could havecaused the same medical outcome.
So that's one Number two.
What's interesting too is itclearly highlights something
that you and I talked aboutoffline before, is it clearly
highlights something that youand I talked about offline
before, and that is you know,you can't say, well, I'm going
to eat a little bit of this andonly a little bit of that, and
that little thing that's not sogood for me, it's not a big deal
because I'm eating mostly this,and those kinds of comparisons
(48:58):
don't work because you just, asyou pointed out, they're having
the hamburger, which thehamburger in and of itself is
not an issue.
It's the bun that causes thesugar spike, with the condiments
that are full of sugar, thatexceed the entire amount of
sugar that's in your body inthat tiny little packet that
your body doesn't require.
That ends up with a net resultin statistics saying well, the
(49:19):
guy had a hamburger or the galand they ate red meat, so ergo,
red meat's bad.
It doesn't cover the fact thatthat person may be chain smoking
, may be consuming large amountsof alcohol, etc.
And that's really, I think, animportant distinction that you
were able to graph from thatanalysis is that there's
comparison bias there.
You know they're assuming thatlet's go prove that meat is bad
(49:40):
and you know any number ofimportant factors are being
outright ignored because itdoesn't fit the hypothesis and
that's not a standard scientificapproach.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yeah, it's interesting you bring up the
smoking.
I believe Eisenhower was a twoor three pack a day smoker, but
of course they didn't blame theheart attack on smoking, but
they found another reason toblame.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Same with FDR.
Same with FDR.
I mean, as you know, he was aprolific smoker.
I mean they even show movies tothis day, when he always had a
cigarette in his hand and hadall kinds of pulmonary issues.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Right, you know, I think we're about the age where
we can last remember the doctorsrecommending a certain kind of
cigarette brand on TV, and thatwas quickly scrapped.
What's interesting and I highlyrecommend people look into this
is those cigarette companiesrealized that the gig was up and
(50:40):
their business model was.
You know, their product wasactually causing health concerns
.
Their business model was atrisk, and what did these
cigarette companies do?
They bought up the big foodcompanies, and so you can do the
math from there.
We now are as sick as we've everbeen with the foods we eat, and
(51:01):
, of course, the same companiesare claiming that it's not their
food.
It must be something else, likered meat, when red meat has
never been consumed less.
And so I wonder if the foodcompanies are now looking at
this, saying there's a limitedamount of time before people
understand that carbs arecausing the problems that people
(51:22):
are experiencing.
Most of the people that I knowthat have gone to low-carb diets
have all seen improvements intheir health At some point.
You just can't ignore those,and no question, one of the
biggest problems is they areaddictive.
Sugars, you know, some claimmore addictive than cigarettes.
I have no doubt that that isthe case for some or for many,
(51:44):
and so you're not only dealingwith an addiction like sugar,
but you're dealing with an issue, unlike cigarettes, where
people need food.
They don't need cigarettes oralcohol.
So in many cases it's going tobe more difficult for people to
give up their food habits,because not only is food
required for us to live, butmost of the center of the
(52:04):
grocery store is going to feedthat addiction.
Speaker 3 (52:08):
That's a really good point because you know, as you
and I've learned and we talkedabout this offline as well is
when you go to the grocery storeand you see what people have in
their cars, it's soul crushingbecause you know that they would
probably make the same choicesyou're making if they were
better informed and had theopportunity to do their own
research.
And I mean, I really thinkthat's where you and I decided
(52:29):
to do this podcast is to get theword out and say, hey, this is
what's working for us.
You might want to try it.
We don't have any bias.
We don't have anyrepresentations that are coming
through purveyors of red meat orpoultry or dairy products at
all.
It's just two guys that foundthemselves where a lot of
Canadians and Americans arefinding themselves quite sick
(52:52):
and going, okay, what do I do?
And when they turn to theirdoctor in some cases not all,
because we pointed to some thatwere quite good it's worthy to
point out that a doctor goes toschool for four years of medical
training and only here inCanada at least only gets one
week of nutritional training.
And now you're focusingentirely on nutritional training
in order to generate betteroutcomes and help people
(53:15):
maneuver around the quality ofthe food that they're consuming,
not just the type, and I thinkthat's an important distinction
we need to make is are youcomparing, as you said,
ultra-processed meat?
That's very different than agrass-fed, grain-finished steak
that's coming from your localbutcher as opposed to an
industrial farm.
So these are certainly thingsthat we can get into and we're
(53:37):
going to continue to talk aboutyou and I over the coming weeks
and months, and I think we're at60 minutes and I don't know,
graham, if you wanted to stop itthere.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Yeah, I'll just say one last thing, because you
brought up such an excellentpoint.
I was sitting around with somefriends I'm lucky enough to have
some good friends that I'veknown for, you know, 35 plus
years, in one case 42 years, andI was sitting around with five
of them and of course, you know,we rib each other, we know each
other better than anybody.
And I remember eating thehamburger patties, just the
(54:12):
hamburger patties, and everyoneelse was eating, you know, fries
, whatever, and I don't carewhat people eat.
But of course somebody said youknow, graham, that is a really
weird way to eat.
And you know, tongue in cheek,I had to remind them that two of
them were diabetic and onOzempic, one was pre-diabetic on
Ozempic and one was.
(54:32):
The other one was having realautoimmune disorder, like a
really experiencing anautoimmune disorder, and I
pointed this out and I said,guys, my blood work is excellent
, I just got it, had it done,you know, a month or two ago at
the time.
And what was interesting isthey all knew that the food they
ate was causing the problems.
But they all said I couldn'tgive up this or I couldn't give
(54:56):
up that, whatever it is icecream, some particular food.
And I think one of the thingsthat is eye-opening to me is, in
the past, if there was a bag ofchips in front of me, I would
eat them, almost any flavor andyou name it.
Whatever snack it was, if itwas sitting in front of me, I
would eat it.
And the difference today is,with a change in the way that I
eat, I don't actually considerthose foods food anymore.
(55:18):
When I look at it, I don'tthink of it as food and it's a
very strange thing to explain topeople.
I'm sure a bit of it is.
You know, the gut's not cravingthat stuff anymore.
It's craving high satiety foods.
But one of the things about thisjourney is by adjusting the way
you eat, it can actually changethe cravings.
And if you can change thecravings, then that thing that
you thought you can't give upyou don't need to give up
(55:40):
anymore or you've given up.
You know most of the foods thatcan be a problem and you just
haven't given up that one thing.
And keto is all about keepingyour carbs down to a certain
amount.
It doesn't mean eliminating thecarbs altogether.
Just wanted to touch on thatbecause it certainly was an
eye-opener to me that now ifsomebody's eating a bag of chips
next to me.
I don't even want one.
(56:01):
It's just not something that Ithink about and that's not
something that I expected.
So, yes, let's wrap it up there, stephen, always a pleasure.
We will see you in the nextepisode, where you are going to
be the one interviewing, and Ican't wait.
Speaker 3 (56:15):
That sounds great.
Yeah, thank you, all right.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
Thanks for tuning into Lessons from the Ketoverse.
Join Stephen and Graham nexttime for more keto tips and
stories to fuel your health.
Subscribe, share and let's keepthe keto vibes going.
Welcome to Lessons from the Keto-Verse.
Join Stephen and Graham as theyexplore the keto lifestyle with
tips, science and stories toboost your health.
This podcast isn't medicaladvice.
Consult your healthcare advisorfor any health-related issues.
Get ready to fuel your primalpower.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hello everybody and welcome to the first episode of
Lessons from the Ketoverse,which is a podcast that my
friend Stephen and I have beenworking on to just discuss
everything related to theketogenic diet and a little bit
of our personal journey.
We hope you find it interesting.
One of the things that we wanteveryone to keep in mind is the
(00:41):
opinions on the lessons from theKetoverse podcast should not be
considered medical advice.
You should consult your medicaldoctors and nutritionists to
find a pathway to the healthcare that works for you.
We certainly hope that you findour opinions interesting enough
to subscribe and listen tofuture podcasts, and I wanted to
take a moment to introduce myfriend Stephen.
(01:01):
Stephen, say hello.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Graham, hi everyone, thanks very much for the invite
and the great introduction.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, so a little background between Stephen and I
.
So we actually work together,side by side, literally in
booths next to each other in theoffice of a major startup.
It was actually a billiondollar startup with an excellent
experience, and it was awireless startup, so very
interesting.
My job was to build the contactcenter operations from a blank
(01:30):
sheet of paper and Stephen's jobwas to design the logistics for
the entire country to make surethat all of the equipment the
phones and everything related tothe phones would get to the
right stores or get to people'shomes on time.
I learned a heck of a lot fromStephen, Always enjoyed a little
bit of banter back and forthand we worked hard and we had a
(01:53):
lot of fun while we were doingthat.
So, Stephen, do you want to leteveryone know how we ended up
working on this podcast?
Speaker 3 (02:01):
together.
Yeah, sure, and again, that's agreat point, graham.
Launching a national telecomfor the first time in over a
century is no small feat, and Ithink part of the reason we
bonded wasn't just because wewere sitting adjacently, but our
responsibility, our shared workethic when it came to doing the
right thing at the right time,whether anyone was looking, was
(02:22):
kind of crafted, that bondbetween the two of us.
And, completely independently,as you moved on and I moved on
to our respective work, and Ithink we can both agree.
At the time when I was workingwith you at this company, we
were gaining weight, we weren'teating well, we were working
extremely long hours.
And then fast forward severalyears later, you and I reconnect
and find out that we're bothunwell.
(02:44):
You know, it might beappropriate to say that perhaps
my health was worse off thanyours in that, you know, at the
age of 50, approximately sevenyears ago, I was diagnosed with
diabetes and I believe thestress from the work environment
, the food that I was consuming,again reinforcing the stress of
the environment, and justhaving to cope with very, very
long days it was not uncommon todo 13 hour days, five days a
(03:07):
week and also cover overweekends and, yes, I too am very
proud of what we accomplished.
But in retrospect, you know, Iput us in a position where,
independent of one another, wewent down a path to try to
figure out what the solution was.
And when we reconnected,because of our friendship and
our respect for one another,neither one of us had any idea
that we had found a similar pathto health recovery and
(03:32):
improving our health spancompletely independently, but
arrived at the same conclusions,which is candidly, no surprise
given how well we collaboratedtogether in our work
collaborated together in ourwork.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, there's a couple of things that are, I
think, so critical that youmentioned.
One is that we were both sortof generally headed in the same
direction, health wise.
We probably had similar eatinghabits and we, at the almost
exactly the same time we'retalking about a 18 month, two
year journey we ended up sort ofstarting this at a very similar
time and ending up where we arewith very similar knowledge.
(04:13):
The conversations that we'vehad over the last couple of
months have been so interestingto me because I learn a heck of
a lot from you.
Every time I, every time we havea chat, there's always
something new I hear orsomething new that you share
that I should listen to or read,and it's just made the journey
not only more fulfilling from aknowledge point of view, but
(04:42):
also knowing that somebody else,who you admire and like very
much, is sort of experiencingthe same thing.
It makes the journey a littleless stressful, let's say, is
sort of experiencing the samething.
It makes the journey a littleless stressful, let's say.
And so what we're going toattempt to do for our first
podcast here is Stephen's goingto interview me just to give
people sort of a bit of abackground as to who we are and
how we got here.
At the next podcast, I'm goingto be interviewing Stephen to do
a very similar sort ofbackground, to learn about
(05:03):
Stephen's journey and who he isas a person.
I know you're going to enjoygetting to know him as well.
So, stephen, why don't we startoff?
I know you've got a bunch ofquestions that you have for me
and I'll do my best to answerthem for you.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, and perhaps we begin at the end, so to speak,
and perhaps my first questionwould be what inspired you, at
the age that we both are,respectively, middle-aged
Canadian men, what inspired youto go sort of tangentially to
your expertise, which isglobally renowned in the area of
call centers, to pursuing a newcareer, dropping everything,
(05:38):
taking the financial risks thatare associated with that, to
then become an expert innutrition?
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, so I don't know if I'd label myself an expert,
but certainly I know a lot moretoday than I did a couple of
years ago, and you know I'veapplied some of those learnings
and they've certainly had apretty profound effect on my
health and the current state.
So call centers, contactcenters, is something that I've
always been interested in,especially the customer
experience side of things.
I sort of always felt that Iunderstood the balance between
(06:07):
the needs of the customer aswell as the needs of the
operation, the company.
And understanding that balancemeans that you can put in things
that not only work from acustomer experience point of
view but also work from a bottomline point of view, and both of
those things are necessary tohave a successful company.
You know we've left thatwireless startup but it is still
(06:29):
very successful today, 16 yearslater.
It's always nice to see thosesigns and know that you had a
hand in making that work.
More recently, the experiencethat I had around going to the
doctor a couple of years agogetting some blood work done and
him saying you know, graham,you're headed in the wrong
(06:49):
direction from a health point ofview.
My A1c triglycerides were high.
You know it was clear that myblood sugar levels were not
being managed properly.
Insulin response was although Ididn't have it checked, likely
becoming insulin resistant andheading towards that diabetes.
That inevitably means you endup on medication, likely for the
(07:10):
rest of your life if you don'tmake any changes.
And I think the big differencebetween past visits and this one
was I actually got the bloodresults.
I'm a bit of a techie.
I like data and I got theactual blood results.
So I wasn't sitting therelistening to a doctor interpret
those blood results.
I was able to go in and seeexactly what my A1C is, hdl, ldl
, triglycerides and a number ofother blood metrics, and then
(07:35):
sort of dig in to that bigrabbit hole around what actually
causes these particular metricsto change for the worse.
And the more I got into it, themore I realized that the way I
was eating which I thought was ahealthy way of eating, you know
I'd look for the heart healthysymbol on the box before buying
it wasn't a healthy way ofeating.
(07:56):
And I started to understand howto read food labels, the actual
ingredient list on the back,and over time slowly but surely
removed, you know, one afteranother, after another,
different kinds of foods that Ihad been snacking on or eating
in the past.
The more changes I made, thebetter I felt.
You know, the more pounds weredropping, the more energy I had,
(08:19):
the more I wanted to exercise,as opposed to sort of struggling
to do that in the past and themore I realized that I could
make a difference in otherpeople's lives if I was able to
help even one person.
My wife's a psychotherapist.
She's very good at what shedoes and she profoundly has an
(08:40):
impact on people's lives,whereas, you know, in business
there's only so much you can do.
You can be, you know, try andbe a great leader.
You can try and inspire people.
You can try and help them learnto do whatever they want to do
better, but there's a limit towhat you can actually do to have
an impact on people's lives.
That's meaningful and I feltthat with our stage in life that
it may make sense to go backand go back to school, study to
(09:05):
be a health nutrition coach bothdiploma and certification and
see if I couldn't make adifference in other people's
lives.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah, that's absolutely great.
So, in summary, your aha momentwas your own blood results,
which resonates with me as well,and I'll tell you more about
that when we do my interview andthe fact that that was very
typical for us working together,because I know that the same is
.
Yes, it was never asufficiently deep enough
response for you.
You had to go deeper and try tounderstand and, to that end,
(09:35):
were there any call it?
You know, as you progresstowards your certifications and
working as a coach full time,who were your coaches, who
inspired you along the way?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah.
So the I'm not sure you knowwhere that all starts.
I know that there were peoplelike Dr Ken Berry and Anthony
Chafee, dr Baker, Georgie Eadepeople along the way that
obviously, if you start tolisten to one, they start to
interview others and you startto listen to them.
So you know, had somebody toldme two years ago that I'd be on
(10:07):
this sort of ketogenic journeywhere I'm, you know, getting rid
of all the ultra processedfoods and sticking to a low carb
diet with, you know, fattyprotein, that I would have
called them crazy.
But the more I eliminated foodand the more I listened to
people and their advice and themore that advice made sense to
me, the more changes I made.
(10:28):
The more changes I made, themore energy I had.
The more energy I had, the moreI wanted to listen to podcasts
and go for walks.
You know, I remember startingoff with sort of struggling
maybe two, three times a week togo for a walk, even a walk
around the block, and throughoutthat 18 months I ended up
(10:50):
walking sort of 18,000 steps aday.
And with all that walking I wasable to listen to more podcasts
and there is actually a lot ofcontent out there.
Even though it's a relativelysmall space, there's still a lot
of content for people to absorb.
So the more I was able to go onthose walks, the more I was
able to listen to people thatwere smarter than me about this
(11:11):
journey.
The more I listened, the morechanges I was able to make.
The more changes I made, themore energy I had, the farther I
would go for those walks andthe more I'd listen to.
So it was a self-fulfillingprophecy where, along the
journey, as I'm eliminatingthings that aren't working for
me and adding things in that areworking for me, I was building
a knowledge base that allowed meto sort of feel comfortable
(11:34):
that this was something that Iwanted to try, and I think one
of the big aha moments along theway was the fact that I track
every single thing that I atefor about six months, and I did
that for a number of reasons.
Obviously, I wanted to make surethat I wasn't causing any
damage.
I wanted to make sure that Iwas getting the nutrients in my
body that I needed.
I was starting to learn moreabout the fact that what we
(11:55):
should be focused on isnutrition, not necessarily food.
You know, food can come in abox and food can come from the
ground, certain, are gonna bemore nutritious than others, and
tracking every single thingthat I ate or that six months,
and not only showed Me what Iwas taking in, it also showed me
, you know, whether I wasgetting the right nutrients or
not.
If there was something that Ineeded to add, I was able to add
(12:18):
it with the full knowledge thatyou know.
If I added it, I would get thatcertain nutrient metric up and
just understanding the macros ofthe micronutrients, the
vitamins, the minerals.
You know things likeelectrolytes and the importance
of those to really make surethat the body is nourished in a
way that it can function at itsoptimal level.
So I think there are a numberof inputs along the way.
(12:46):
Inputs along the way, certainly,you know the medical doctors
that have their own podcaststhat are incredibly well versed
in the subject, as well as justyou know going down any rabbit
hole that I could to understandthe benefits of.
You know, for example, aketogenic diet and then being
able to watch the actual impactover time.
You know losing 50, a littleover 50 pounds in call it.
(13:07):
You know about a year, maybe alittle less, and you know, the
biggest satisfaction I guess forlack of a better word or the
biggest satisfying moment, waswhen I went back to the doctor
about 14 months after that firstblood work visit, months after
that first blood work visit, andI was pretty confident that
things had turned around.
You know, again down 50 pounds,tons of energy, exercising a
(13:34):
lot, eating the nutritiousrequirements that my body needed
, I was pretty confident that myblood work was going to come
back, you know, as improved.
I was really surprised that itactually came back as excellent.
The doctor said whatever you'redoing, keep doing it.
It's working.
It's a clean bill of health.
And one of the reallyinteresting things about that
(13:55):
conversation is I asked him howoften that happens.
How often does somebody turnthis around?
And he said, you know you meanwithout some medical
intervention or drugs.
And I said yes, and he said,unfortunately it's extremely,
extremely rare.
And I took that to mean he maynot have seen many examples at
(14:19):
all, if any.
And I remember asking himbecause I've known him for, you
know, 15, 18 years.
I remember asking him would youlike me to come in and just
spend, you know, 10 or 15minutes sharing what I did?
I've got some information thatI picked up along the way
because it might help somebodyelse, and he really wasn't
interested in having thatconversation and I was a little
(14:41):
let down by that because Ithought I'm sure doctors get
into this with the feeling thatthey want to make a difference
with people.
I also understand that he'sextremely busy and probably very
stressed out, and I do thinkhe's a good doctor, but I was a
little taken aback that hewasn't really interested in what
I had to say about how I turnthings around.
So it is what it is.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I'm happy to talk to others who will listen, and
there's plenty of those wise butyou used the method of science
of observation in terms of yourown results, and you proved out
(15:27):
your hypothesis that what it wasthat you were doing wasn't just
a fact of losing 50 plus poundswhich is pretty extraordinary
over the course of a year, andthat's healthy loss.
We're talking about healthyloss of weight and not induced
by stress or some otherunderlying condition, and as a
result you ended up getting anexcellent status and sadly, I'm
not surprised at all.
(15:47):
But your comment concerning theunwillingness for the medical
community to embrace you is kindof a rarity, the unicorn that
essentially you would be in bytheir definition and not take
advantage of that in a positiveway for the patients.
Again, we'll talk about thismore.
I had exactly the sameexperience, but I tangled more
with the dietician than I didthe doctor.
(16:08):
The doctor was on board.
The dietician viewed that I wasessentially a heretic because I
wasn't taking anything for mydiabetes and had the same
results as you, almost down tothe pound.
So it's interesting that you'resharing this and it's's
disappointing that these, thesecredentialed experts that you
know we um have a tendency to toovershadow and repeat the same
(16:31):
verbiage without actuallyproviding a solution.
They just want to put you onmetformin if you have diabetes.
They want to do all thesethings and, um, as you
highlighted, you went fullnatural.
You were managing your entireintake through an approach that
was both holistic and verytactical, as it related to micro
(16:51):
and macronutrients, and you gotresults and you wanted to share
the results.
Unfortunately, the only way wecan do that now is through these
kinds of forums, where we caninform people about what we did
and encourage them to do theirown research and follow their
own evidence.
Did at any point when you werespeaking, you know, with the
medical community, did you?
(17:12):
Think did you have.
Maybe you feel like you're beinggaslighted?
Did you feel like perhaps youwere just lucky and that it
wasn't something you were goingto be able to maintain?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah.
So obviously you know food andnutrition is an incredibly
complex subject.
Everybody's got an opinionabout it.
You know some of those opinionsare going to be less
informative than others and Icertainly don't pretend that I
have all the information.
Just the opposite.
I'm always open to learning andlistening and I think the
(17:43):
medical community, you know oneof the challenges that doctors
have is they don't have a lot oftime with patients.
The way the systems are set upthey're sort of you know in and
out in 10 minutes and obviouslythe quickest way to turn
something around, often, whethersuccessful or not, is through
medicine and prescribing of, youknow, whatever medicines might
be recommended for the healthchallenge that you're
(18:06):
experiencing.
And also those are the boardrecommendations.
So the doctors in a lot ofcases have to follow those
requirements, whether they'reset up by the medical board or
the government.
The interesting thing my wifehad some blood work done very
recently.
Interesting thing that my wifehad some blood work done very
(18:28):
recently and she had mentionedto the doctor when she went back
and sorry, she had the bloodwork results.
The blood work results cameback as excellent.
She's eating very, very similarto me and she's been sort of
very supportive in my journeyand as she saw changes happening
, she was sort of you know, amonth or two behind and a
certain caught up to me prettyquickly, and so I wasn't
surprised that her blood workhad come back the way it did.
(18:48):
And the doctor said whateveryou're doing, keep doing it.
And my wife said you know, I amon sort of this ketogenic
carnivore diet.
And the doctor said oh, yes,yes, yes, so you're getting, you
know, high fat, high, highprotein, you're running on
ketones.
And she was very encouragingand I thought that was you know.
(19:08):
Now, this is a young doctor,she may be open to new ideas.
You know, we all get set in ourways the older we get.
But I was really encouragedthat this doctor actually was
not only not shocked at what I'ddone but also knew about it and
also had suggested that shekeep going it and also had
suggested that she keep going.
A second story that gives mesome hope is I had a torn
(19:29):
rotator cuff from a baseballinjury.
I, you know, in my late 30s,thought I could still throw a
baseball from the fence all theway to home plate, like I used
to be able to do, and of course,tore my rotator cuff and that
was the last time I playedRecently and now that everything
else is feeling better and myrotator cuff feels significantly
, that was the last time Iplayed recently.
And now that everything else isfeeling better and my rotator
cuffs feel significantly betterafter changing the diet, I've
got almost full range of motionnow.
(19:51):
And this, uh uh.
The surgeon that I met hadconsulted with me, looked at my
MRI.
Um, I had let him know thateverything was feeling
significantly better than it wastwo years ago, where I couldn't
really lift my arm very high.
And he said what have you donedifferently?
And I said well, I've tried notto put a lot of pressure on it
(20:11):
or strain it because I don'twant to make it worse.
That's why I wanted to get theMRI done to see how far I could
push it.
But the main difference ismoving to a more ketogenic diet.
And his response was yeah,that's the right thing to do to
repair the muscles and give theprotein that the body needs to
repair itself.
And he said it's extremely hardto get anyone else to actually
(20:33):
switch to that kind of diet.
So those two things give mesome encouragement that you know
slowly but surely, andsometimes these things can take
a decade.
But once you start to see theresults that people are getting
overwhelmingly I mean you knowif there's enough anecdotes at
some point you have to say thisis a thing that the medical
community will catch up andmaybe that bodes well for the
(20:55):
future for people who arelooking for a more natural way
to heal.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yeah, no that's great , absolutely a great response.
So, as opposed to just simplygiving up and taking the results
as a final outcome, youobviously changed your entire
lifestyle and stuck with it, sothat's great, since we're both
(21:22):
90s era students.
So what was the biggest thingthat surprised you the most when
you returned, to call itclassical style classroom
setting in the area of nutrition?
What so far has surprised youthe most, graham?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, so I think I'll start with something that
didn't surprise me.
The recommended carbs for both,I believe, the US and Canada
are very similar 45 to 65, 50plus pounds that I had lost, or
would go back to my you knoworiginal weight and feel 20
(21:56):
years older and have no energyleft.
So I wasn't surprised that youknow they were pushing plant
based diets.
I wasn't surprised that theywere telling us that red meat's
bad for you, even though I'ddone enough investigating to
(22:18):
understand that.
You know there was no actualrandomized control study trials
to back that up.
It was all epidemiologicalresults from studies over the
years and there were somestudies that actually were
buried, like the Minnesota HeartHealth Study, that showed that
actually a ketogenic diet can bevery much a part of a healthy
lifestyle.
(22:39):
The two things that I was kindof surprised about was that they
were finally admitting thatsaturated fat doesn't cause
heart disease.
So this is in the actual course.
I was surprised because mostpeople think saturated fat is
harmful to us and causes heartdisease because we've been told
that for 50 years.
I think it was only in 2015that the American Heart
(23:02):
Association I could be wrongwith the year, but the American
Heart Association finallyadmitted that saturated fat does
not cause heart disease andactually is quite necessary,
Learned that saturated fat wasnot only not bad for you but
also necessary.
That was number one.
And number two was the factthat in the past people felt
that mental illness could andwould cause some kind of
(23:26):
metabolic disease, so problemswith the gut and the metabolism
and the gut microbiome.
In this course what I'velearned, or at least what
they're teaching, is that it'sturning out to be the other way
around, that actually a poormetabolic health can contribute
to mental health issues.
Georgia Ede has a fantasticbook called Curb your Mind
(23:47):
Absolutely fantastic book,highly recommended for anybody
who's interested inunderstanding how food connects
to mental health and how changesin what you eat can actually
improve mental health.
Obviously, everybody'sdifferent, but to me that's well
worth a try.
And, if I'm not mistaken, theketogenic diet was originally
put together to try and treatParkinson's and I think they had
(24:09):
actually had some success withParkinson's up until a drug was
found and then the drug wasactually the recommended way to
treat Parkinson's.
So I think there's growingbodies of evidence.
There's a lot of studies thatare being done these days about
the impact of a ketogenic diet.
On mental health, there seems tobe a ton of anecdotes from
(24:30):
people who are feeling mentallymuch healthier than they were in
the past with a standardAmerican diet, and I've
certainly noticed that as wellthat you know I had terrible
brain fog a couple of years ago.
Wasn't sure what it was, youknow, was it the virus that was
causing that?
Was it something else?
Hard to say.
But one of the biggest surprisesof going to this way of eating
(24:54):
is the mental clarity.
My brain works better.
I'm sure it's because it'srunning on ketones, not glucose.
It's able to run moreefficiently.
In my experience, I'm able tothink more clearly, certainly
much more energy, and the otherthing that I've found is I'm
much more resilient.
I'm less stressed than I usedto be.
Things don't bother me nearlyas much as they have in the past
(25:15):
.
I've gone through a house moveand a change in career and
things that would normallystress people out, and I just
found that it didn't affect menearly as much as it did in the
past.
So knowing that the schools arenow teaching that food can
actually impact mental healthconditions to me is very, very
encouraging.
(25:35):
Not something we probably wouldhave heard a couple of years
ago.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
And by chance you had mentioned earlier that your
wife is a psychotherapist.
Has she taken any of thosemethodologies or approaches to
sustained health, includingsuggesting an improvement in
DIVE for people that suffer fromanxiety and depression?
And I pick on those two becausethe latest studies that I've
read strongly corroborate theymay even be the same ones that
(26:01):
you looked at that certain formsof anxiety and depression can
be directly attributed to, or atleast causal from, a poor diet.
Has your wife employed that,perhaps in her practice, in any
way?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, great question.
She's a psychotherapist and nota nutritionist.
She's unable to give nutritionadvice, but she certainly has
sort of tried to point people inthe direction of understanding,
you know, the link between themental health issues that her
clients are experiencing andunderstanding how food could be
(26:36):
impacting that.
So she is a big believer.
She also thinks Change yourDiet, change your Mind by Dr
Georgia Ede is one of the bestbooks of the year to read.
There's a ton of evidence inthere as to the link between
mental illness, stress, anxiety,depression and the foods we eat
(26:56):
.
But she also recognizes thatthere is a need for this.
So she has on a number ofoccasions and she's very busy,
her practice is usually bookedthree or four weeks out that she
doesn't have the time to goback and add that to her
repertoire.
We've talked about perhaps meadding that to the repertoire of
(27:17):
the company that we builttogether.
She certainly did all the heavylifting.
I just did the stuff in thebackground to make things work
as smoothly as possible for her,and so she's certainly
recognizing that that issomething that is going to be a
major part of psychotherapy,psychology, psychiatry practices
in the future, anything that'ssort of trying to help people
(27:37):
improve their mental health, andso she's a big believer that
that is an area that is going tohave to, in one way or another,
be combined with, you know,psychotherapy practices that
have been proven in the past.
All of a sudden, now diet can beadded to that repertoire, so
she certainly understands theimportance of it.
She's got a bit of an anecdotewhere when she was on her
(27:58):
standard American diet, shewould struggle to get through
five sessions with people, whichis a lot in a day, you know 50
minutes each and she's able todo six or seven without any
stress now.
So she's personally seen themajor improvements in the way
she eats, to her mental clarityand her strength and her
resilience, which has actually,you know, actually benefited the
(28:21):
practice too, and in turn she'sable to see more people and, as
I said, she's very good at whatshe does, and so she's able to
see more people and help morepeople.
That can only be a good thing.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yeah, if you think back, that's a very good point.
If you think back to when youand I were working in telecom
together, we didn't realize atthe time, because we were so
focused on work If we hadimproved our diet we might have
been able to avoid some of theseoutcomes, but certainly within
the period in which we had madebetter food choices, we would
(28:52):
have had more energy, we wouldhave had more clarity and we
would have been able to handlethe stress better.
We would not have got the samestress response, the cortisol
increase in our bloodstream, etcetera, and once again, that
would have shown up in our bloodresults.
But clearly it did not.
You and I both, probably aroundthe same time, got the same
uncomfortable results.
(29:13):
So I think it's a great thingthat she's recognized it, that
you both are talking aboutsomething I think is pretty
unique.
I mean, you started thisconversation by saying your
doctor wasn't interested indoing anything, and this was
before you were trained.
You know, with your trainingyou're still the same person.
You just have validation andverification of data that you
were looking at previously.
(29:34):
So I think that's a great startand in that practice of what
you were doing previously, didyou explore at any time the
impacts of intermittent fasting,for instance, as an approach?
Because so far we've talkedabout keto carnivore, we've
talked about you gettingexercise, so did you look into
that at all?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yes, so this may just be an inevitable place to end
up when changing the diet.
So I think people have ageneral understanding about
sugar and insulin.
Carbs turn into sugar in thebody, glucose and fructose, and
some turn into sugar quickerthan others.
Ultra-processed foods are goingto be quicker than vegetables
(30:13):
or fruits, for example, in mostcases, and so one of the
problems with this and this isthe thing that I try to explain
to people who are going throughhealth issues is when you do
have a high carb diet whetherthat comes in the form of ultra
processed foods or just carbs ingeneral rice potatoes or the
box in the middle of the grocerystore your body is going to
(30:36):
have to deal with that sugar.
We haven't got a lot of sugarin our body, and if we have
another teaspoon of sugar, itcan be potentially deadly, and
so the body has to be very goodat dealing with that sugar.
And so my understanding of theprocess is when sugar levels go
up in the body, whether that'sthrough direct sugar intake or
(30:57):
carbs converted into glucosethrough direct sugar intake or
carbs converted into glucose,the body needs to store that
glucose.
It can't have that glucoserunning through the bloodstream,
and so what insulin does is itknocks on the cell wall and says
, hey, let this glucose in so itcan be stored as energy.
Well, of course, if you do thattoo many times, not only are
those cells going to get larger,and that's where you know
(31:19):
gaining weight.
That 50 pounds that I lost,almost all of it was fat.
I've got to scale thedifference between water, fat
and muscle, and so the vastmajority was fat.
I think I went from 27% bodyfat to something like 13% over
that sort of 12 to 16 months,and so what happens is, over
(31:41):
time, your cells get insulinresistant.
They just don't have theability to store that glucose
anymore, and so what happens isthat glucose ends up in the
bloodstream, which is not goodfor us.
Inevitable end result to that ispotentially being diagnosed
with diabetes, but certainly anumber of other autoimmune
disorders.
It's not limited to diabetes.
(32:02):
There's all sorts of autoimmunedisorders that can be caused by
excess glucose, and I'mcertainly not here to give any
medical advice, but one of thethings that I do know is when I
have a high carb diet, I have aninsulin spike.
It certainly is stressful, bothhyperglycemia, which is too
(32:22):
much sugar in the body,hypoglycemia, which is not
enough.
You're all of a sudden hungry.
I would get hungry two hourslater.
And so you know, you eat thechips and you're quote unquote
full.
You're not actually fullbecause you didn't have any
actual food that your body needs.
And your body says two hourslater I'm starving, you got to
(32:43):
get out there, and that's astressor.
It's, you know, releasingstressors like cortisol into the
body to say you need,essentially, to say you need to
go hunt, because that's the waypeople ate for hundreds of
thousands of years before youknow our new sort of standard
American diet, and so it'ssending stresses to the body
that the body is in trouble, itneeds to eat, and so this
(33:06):
becomes a vicious cycle whereyou're eating food that's not
nutritious, the body doesn'thave the nutrition that it needs
to repair itself and to feelsatiated, and so two hours later
you're eating more, andoftentimes that comes from a box
or a bag or something veryquick.
My go-to is peanut buttersandwiches or whatever else I
can get my hands on when Iswitch to more high satiety
(33:27):
foods.
Take a steak, for example,because that's an easy one.
When I ate a steak, I wouldn'tfeel hungry for a long time.
My buddies and I would go to aKorean barbecue, for example,
and they were very interested inmy journey.
They thought I was a bit weird,but they were interested in
kind of what I'd learned and Isaid well, you know, here's an
example we're having Koreanbarbecue, which is, you know,
(33:48):
you sort of cook the meat thatthey bring to the table in a
fire in the middle of the table,and it's a great way to have a
conversation and be able to sortof cook around the campfire,
for lack of a better description.
And so I said you know, one ofthe things that's going to
happen is we're going to eat alot of this beef or meat and we
(34:09):
will likely not be hungry untilmaybe noon tomorrow.
And you know they're the onesthat would get up in the morning
and, you know, be starving andwant to eat right away, and
often that would be a breakfastcereal or something like that.
And I said so you know, payattention to your gut and your
brain.
Your brain is going to, youknow, want those carbs because
it craves it, and maybe becausethe gut microbiome is
(34:32):
communicating from the vagusnerve that that's what they want
.
But your body has actually gotthe nutrients that it needs from
that meal, and not only thenutrients but the building
blocks to fixing the, repairingthe body.
And the secret here is, then,because you can intermittent
fast.
So I'll eat at 6 pm and I won'teat until maybe noon the next
(34:53):
day.
That's an 18-hour fast.
And so with that 18-hour fastmy body has time to repair
itself.
It's got all the nutrition itneeds.
It's not telling me that I'mhungry, it's not telling me to
go, you know, eat that peanutbutter sandwich or anything else
I can get my hands on.
And so the intermittent fastingjust comes naturally.
(35:14):
So now I might eat late morning.
I'll eat sort of an earlydinner, 5 to 6 pm, and those are
the only two meals that I eat aday.
And, stephen, one of the biggestthings that has been a surprise
to me is I'm never hungryanymore.
You know, the tummy growlingwas a common thing for me.
I don't remember the last timemy stomach growled.
I just I feel I don't feelhungry.
(35:36):
Oftentimes, when it'smealaltime I sort of will almost
forget and go.
Okay, maybe I should have somedinner.
There have been days where Ijust haven't been hungry and
skipped dinner and have felttotally fine.
Most days I don't.
Most days I'll eat enough toget the nutrients that I need
and the macros that I need tokeep going.
But the fact that I don't feelhungry also means that I don't
(36:00):
have those stressor signals andbecause I don't have those
stressor signals, my body's notscreaming to me to go do
something, to go feed itself,and because of that I think I've
been significantly calmer thanI have in the past.
So the intermittent fastingthing has come naturally, but it
is something that I havepracticed daily for the last 18
months or so.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah, that's a great approach and that's where
there's a good contrast, becauseDr Fung pretty much is
considered one of the pioneers,if not the pioneer, for
intermittent fasting.
They call him the diet doctor.
But his story, graham, he talksabout people coming in getting
(36:44):
sicker and sicker with theinsulin injections that they
were getting.
Their kidneys were failing.
They were still 400 pounds.
I mean, his story is amazing.
His was one of the first books Iread, certainly another
(37:07):
resource to consider how youengage in dealing with the keto
flu, how you start cutting yourcalories in a very tactical way
and not unlike how you werecounting calories, which in
essence, he's doing through theprocess of restrictive eating in
a particular window called the16-8, where you fast for 16
hours.
And it's interesting perhapsbecause you weren't focused on
it, it was a consequence of yourapproach rather than the
central theme.
(37:28):
You didn't experience whatprobably I did when I employed
intermittent fasting, where youdo get these cravings and you're
dealing with shedding the sugarin your body.
That is, you know, many peoplecall an addiction.
It's a form of addictionbecause your body's dysbiotic
bacteria will be attracted tothese sugars and we know that
there are plenty of contentthat's out there that suggests
(37:51):
that other problems beyondmetabolic syndrome cancer, in my
case, type 2 diabetes these areall things that are
contributing that stem back tothe same point of inception, and
that point of inception is thequality of food that we're
consuming and the way in whichwe do it.
And I point of inception is thequality of food that we're
consuming and the way in whichwe do it, and I think it's
really insightful that you'vehad this experience.
Your journey is different thanmine and what's super cool about
(38:13):
that is, you know you foundyour way up to the peak of
health and my path is somewhatdifferent, but the main
ingredients are there, you knowthe ice pick, the proper hiking
shoes, the commitment to hit thesummit.
They're effectively the same,and I mean you really began this
program by saying that.
You know everyone has to findtheir own path and, if we use
the analogy of the mountain, youhave your path, I have my path.
(38:36):
They're all valid and I thinkyou would probably agree that
one of the challenges that ourlisteners may find and maybe you
can answer this yourself fromyour own perspective but how
difficult did you finddetermining what was true and
what was either amisrepresentation or a
misunderstanding, either basedon antiquated mindsets.
(38:57):
Like you know, just as afootnote, in Canada we were
still using the same food guidefrom the Second World War up
until a few years ago, so theywere still telling you how big
your plate needed to be withpotatoes and other starches.
So, with that in mind, how didyou I think you touched on
earlier that you know you'veemployed these methods and then
seen the results through yourblood work and other factors but
when you were initially runninginto, as I did, contradictory
(39:20):
information, how did youdetermine what was right and
what was wrong?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, I think that is part of why this is so
difficult is the amount of timethat's required to do the
research to you know, to end upwith the truth, or at least what
I believe the truth to be.
And so, for example, I rememberGoogling is red meat bad for
you?
So, for example, I rememberGoogling is red meat bad for you
(39:46):
?
And I'm listening to people sayit's not, and I've always
believed that it can causeproblems.
I don't know to the extent, butwe've certainly been told for a
long time, ever since I was akid, not to eat red meat.
So I Googled this and, sureenough, it comes up saying red
meat can cause heart disease.
And so I actually clicked onthe link.
And then I clicked on the study, and then I read the study,
(40:09):
which is not something that Iwould have done in the past.
I just would have believedwhatever the Google doctor told
me.
And so, as I'm reading thestudy, I get to the conclusions,
and the conclusions sayprocessed meat, not red meat,
may cause heart disease.
And this was an eye-opener forme, because the Google results
(40:30):
said it did cause heart disease.
Now the results may havechanged.
I haven't checked them in thelast you know 18 months or so,
but at the time the results saidyes, red meat was bad for you.
When I read the study, it saidit wasn't.
And I thought, okay, what'sgoing on?
And the more I listened, themore I was able to separate what
was science-based, based onactual studies.
(40:52):
And when I say actual studies,I mean randomized control
studies, not the epidemiologicalstudies where you're asked you
know what have you eaten for thelast year?
And you can see all sorts offlaws with these epidemiological
studies based on opinions.
You know healthy user bias.
Most people don't remember whatthey did eat, you know a week
(41:13):
ago, much less six months ago,and what they were associating.
So they would call pizza meator they would call a hamburger
meat versus the French fries,the pop, the condiments which
are full of sugar and the bun.
Um, you know, maybe it wasn'tthe red meat, maybe it was
everything else that, uh, thatthey were packing me in on on
that meal.
And just over time I started tolisten to things that made sense
(41:37):
, that I was finally able tounderstand the, that the
full-backed science was verydifferent than the belief system
that we have out there.
And I remember there was amoment where I heard the story
or the background to why webelieve that red meat is bad for
(41:58):
us.
And this was the story of twopeople Ellen G White and Ansel
Keys.
Ellen G White I believe thiswas in the late 1800s.
She was a Seventh-day Adventist.
Certainly I don't know a lotabout the Seventh-day Adventists
, but she had an epiphany, Ibelieve, when she was 18, where
she was told by somebody perhapsGod that red meat caused lust
(42:21):
in men and it was herresponsibility to stop men from
consuming or people fromconsuming red meat.
And so she wrote a book aboutthis, and her typesetter the
person who actually put theletters on the printing press,
was a young man named Kellogg.
I believe he was 12 years oldat the time, so of course, he
(42:43):
understood this book extremelywell because he was one of the
people who had actually got itinto print.
Well, he ended up being DrKellogg, who had an interesting
career, and certainly is a bigreason why people eat breakfast
cereals today.
Graham was another person,graham Cracker, who had
recommended that we don't eatred meat anymore.
(43:03):
Even to this day, theSeventh-day Adventists are one
of the biggest funders of foodresearch and, coincidentally,
their food research always tellsus that red meat's bad for us
without any basis for makingthat claim.
The second person, ansel Keyes,was, and of course, battle
(43:24):
Creek, michigan, is where a hugemajority of the breakfast
cereals come out today, and Ipersonally don't believe that
breakfast cereals are healthyfor me, but it's certainly a
major part of people's dietstoday.
With Ansel Keys, I started tolook into him.
This was in the 50s and 60s.
He was sort of had a verysimilar role to Anthony Fauci
(43:47):
does today, or at least he diduntil he retired and he came up
with.
His theory was that red meatcauses heart disease and he
looked at countries that hadrising rates of heart disease
and rising rates of red meatconsumption and he was
(44:09):
absolutely convinced that redmeat causes heart disease and he
wanted to prove this.
He set out to prove it, so hecame out with something called
the Seven Country Study.
That Seven Country Study showeda correlation between red meat
consumption and heart disease,between red meat consumption and
heart disease.
The problem was there wereactually around 21 countries
that he studied and he left 14or 15 of those countries off the
(44:35):
list and only showed thecountries that showed a
correlation.
And again, just a correlation,no study for causation.
He went to the NationalInstitute of Health or a similar
body to that at the time and hesaid we should be recommending
that we ban red meat.
And there was a lot ofreluctance, is my understanding,
with the scientists and doctorsaround this panel saying we
(44:56):
need to study this first.
Well, shortly after that,eisenhower had a heart attack
and Ancel Keys said see, youknow it is causing heart disease
and very quickly people movedto recommend that they don't eat
red meat anymore.
So there was no basis formaking this claim, other than
somebody wanted to show this.
Now my understanding is,interestingly, when Ancel Keys
(45:18):
was in his 90s, so you know,many, many, many years later he
finally admitted that it doesnot cause heart disease.
But the so-called damage wasdone.
So people absolutely believethat it did.
Red meat consumption has beenfor my entire life, has been on
the decline and health problemshave increased over that same
amount of time.
And so you know, there was thatmoment I guess that's a long
(45:42):
way of saying there was thatmoment where I realized that
what I believed about food wasno longer true and at the same
time I was very frustrated withwhat I'd been told in the past,
whether it's through messagingfrom recommended guidelines or
whether it's messaging on thefront of the box with the Heart
Healthy logo.
I was realizing the whole timeI was believing something that
(46:05):
wasn't true and I had to find myown truth out.
And once I had that claritywhere I wasn't going to listen
to the sort of public domain ofeducation and I was going to do
my own research and I was goingto figure out what worked for me
, it was at that moment where Irealized I can do this, I can
take responsibility for this, Ican take a leadership role in my
(46:27):
own health.
I don't need to listen toanybody else.
I'm going to get to the bottomof it.
And sure it took well over athousand hours of research,
reading reports, readingresearch articles, getting to
the bottom of some of thesetruths or lack of truths and
getting to a point where I wastotally satisfied that red meat
is not only not bad for us butactually has probably the most
(46:49):
nutritious food that we caningest in our bodies the perfect
nutrition to not only keep ussatiated, give us all the
building blocks that we need tobe healthy.
And I think the journey reallystarted to become more fun from
there, when I was able to findmy own truths about these
different foods and the factthat you know eggs are not only
(47:10):
not bad for us but an excellentsource of nutrients.
Once you get to the bottom ofthe nutrients and you start to
track them and you're satisfiedthat what you're ingesting gives
you everything that you need, Ithink that's the point where
you start to feel like you're incontrol again.
No-transcript on.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
Yeah, I think that's very interesting and there's a
few things I'd like to highlightfrom your comments, and I'm
really glad that you spoke tothe fact that you know, this is
an era when people smoke torelax.
I mean the commercials, even inthat period suggested as such.
So when you're doing theseepidemiological studies, which
are essentially opinions of whatpeople may or may not remember
(48:14):
they're not double blind studies, so not particularly valid and
you're using, or they could bequestionable, they may be valid,
but that's probably morecoincidence than it is anything
else.
But when you look at that era,they would not have taken those
factors under consideration.
And you know, years later welearned that there was lead in
the water.
There was other factors thatcontributed to the decline in
(48:36):
their health that could havecaused the same medical outcome.
So that's one Number two.
What's interesting too is itclearly highlights something
that you and I talked aboutoffline before, is it clearly
highlights something that youand I talked about offline
before, and that is you know,you can't say, well, I'm going
to eat a little bit of this andonly a little bit of that, and
that little thing that's not sogood for me, it's not a big deal
because I'm eating mostly this,and those kinds of comparisons
(48:58):
don't work because you just, asyou pointed out, they're having
the hamburger, which thehamburger in and of itself is
not an issue.
It's the bun that causes thesugar spike, with the condiments
that are full of sugar, thatexceed the entire amount of
sugar that's in your body inthat tiny little packet that
your body doesn't require.
That ends up with a net resultin statistics saying well, the
(49:19):
guy had a hamburger or the galand they ate red meat, so ergo,
red meat's bad.
It doesn't cover the fact thatthat person may be chain smoking
, may be consuming large amountsof alcohol, etc.
And that's really, I think, animportant distinction that you
were able to graph from thatanalysis is that there's
comparison bias there.
You know they're assuming thatlet's go prove that meat is bad
(49:40):
and you know any number ofimportant factors are being
outright ignored because itdoesn't fit the hypothesis and
that's not a standard scientificapproach.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yeah, it's interesting you bring up the
smoking.
I believe Eisenhower was a twoor three pack a day smoker, but
of course they didn't blame theheart attack on smoking, but
they found another reason toblame.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Same with FDR.
Same with FDR.
I mean, as you know, he was aprolific smoker.
I mean they even show movies tothis day, when he always had a
cigarette in his hand and hadall kinds of pulmonary issues.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Right, you know, I think we're about the age where
we can last remember the doctorsrecommending a certain kind of
cigarette brand on TV, and thatwas quickly scrapped.
What's interesting and I highlyrecommend people look into this
is those cigarette companiesrealized that the gig was up and
(50:40):
their business model was.
You know, their product wasactually causing health concerns
.
Their business model was atrisk, and what did these
cigarette companies do?
They bought up the big foodcompanies, and so you can do the
math from there.
We now are as sick as we've everbeen with the foods we eat, and
(51:01):
, of course, the same companiesare claiming that it's not their
food.
It must be something else, likered meat, when red meat has
never been consumed less.
And so I wonder if the foodcompanies are now looking at
this, saying there's a limitedamount of time before people
understand that carbs arecausing the problems that people
(51:22):
are experiencing.
Most of the people that I knowthat have gone to low-carb diets
have all seen improvements intheir health At some point.
You just can't ignore those,and no question, one of the
biggest problems is they areaddictive.
Sugars, you know, some claimmore addictive than cigarettes.
I have no doubt that that isthe case for some or for many,
(51:44):
and so you're not only dealingwith an addiction like sugar,
but you're dealing with an issue, unlike cigarettes, where
people need food.
They don't need cigarettes oralcohol.
So in many cases it's going tobe more difficult for people to
give up their food habits,because not only is food
required for us to live, butmost of the center of the
(52:04):
grocery store is going to feedthat addiction.
Speaker 3 (52:08):
That's a really good point because you know, as you
and I've learned and we talkedabout this offline as well is
when you go to the grocery storeand you see what people have in
their cars, it's soul crushingbecause you know that they would
probably make the same choicesyou're making if they were
better informed and had theopportunity to do their own
research.
And I mean, I really thinkthat's where you and I decided
(52:29):
to do this podcast is to get theword out and say, hey, this is
what's working for us.
You might want to try it.
We don't have any bias.
We don't have anyrepresentations that are coming
through purveyors of red meat orpoultry or dairy products at
all.
It's just two guys that foundthemselves where a lot of
Canadians and Americans arefinding themselves quite sick
(52:52):
and going, okay, what do I do?
And when they turn to theirdoctor in some cases not all,
because we pointed to some thatwere quite good it's worthy to
point out that a doctor goes toschool for four years of medical
training and only here inCanada at least only gets one
week of nutritional training.
And now you're focusingentirely on nutritional training
in order to generate betteroutcomes and help people
(53:15):
maneuver around the quality ofthe food that they're consuming,
not just the type, and I thinkthat's an important distinction
we need to make is are youcomparing, as you said,
ultra-processed meat?
That's very different than agrass-fed, grain-finished steak
that's coming from your localbutcher as opposed to an
industrial farm.
So these are certainly thingsthat we can get into and we're
(53:37):
going to continue to talk aboutyou and I over the coming weeks
and months, and I think we're at60 minutes and I don't know,
graham, if you wanted to stop itthere.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Yeah, I'll just say one last thing, because you
brought up such an excellentpoint.
I was sitting around with somefriends I'm lucky enough to have
some good friends that I'veknown for, you know, 35 plus
years, in one case 42 years, andI was sitting around with five
of them and of course, you know,we rib each other, we know each
other better than anybody.
And I remember eating thehamburger patties, just the
(54:12):
hamburger patties, and everyoneelse was eating, you know, fries
, whatever, and I don't carewhat people eat.
But of course somebody said youknow, graham, that is a really
weird way to eat.
And you know, tongue in cheek,I had to remind them that two of
them were diabetic and onOzempic, one was pre-diabetic on
Ozempic and one was.
(54:32):
The other one was having realautoimmune disorder, like a
really experiencing anautoimmune disorder, and I
pointed this out and I said,guys, my blood work is excellent
, I just got it, had it done,you know, a month or two ago at
the time.
And what was interesting isthey all knew that the food they
ate was causing the problems.
But they all said I couldn'tgive up this or I couldn't give
(54:56):
up that, whatever it is icecream, some particular food.
And I think one of the thingsthat is eye-opening to me is, in
the past, if there was a bag ofchips in front of me, I would
eat them, almost any flavor andyou name it.
Whatever snack it was, if itwas sitting in front of me, I
would eat it.
And the difference today is,with a change in the way that I
eat, I don't actually considerthose foods food anymore.
(55:18):
When I look at it, I don'tthink of it as food and it's a
very strange thing to explain topeople.
I'm sure a bit of it is.
You know, the gut's not cravingthat stuff anymore.
It's craving high satiety foods.
But one of the things about thisjourney is by adjusting the way
you eat, it can actually changethe cravings.
And if you can change thecravings, then that thing that
you thought you can't give upyou don't need to give up
(55:40):
anymore or you've given up.
You know most of the foods thatcan be a problem and you just
haven't given up that one thing.
And keto is all about keepingyour carbs down to a certain
amount.
It doesn't mean eliminating thecarbs altogether.
Just wanted to touch on thatbecause it certainly was an
eye-opener to me that now ifsomebody's eating a bag of chips
next to me.
I don't even want one.
(56:01):
It's just not something that Ithink about and that's not
something that I expected.
So, yes, let's wrap it up there, stephen, always a pleasure.
We will see you in the nextepisode, where you are going to
be the one interviewing, and Ican't wait.
Speaker 3 (56:15):
That sounds great.
Yeah, thank you, all right.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
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