Dhru Purohit Show - 4-Steps to Balance Your Blood Sugar and Increase Longevity with Kelly LeVeque

Starting point is 00:00:00 They are having fun with food and they don't realize that their fasting blood sugar number is no longer in the 70s or the 80s. It's now in the high 90s. And what they don't realize is their doctors not telling them that they're pre-diabetic yet, but they've already doubled their chances for Alzheimer's. Hi everyone, Drew Brod here. Today we have Kelly Levec, holistic nutritionist and celebrity health coach talking about her four-step process to simplify your diet, balance your blood sugar, increase your longevity, and improve your overall health. Stay tuned. I want to talk to you about a groundbreaking flagship bacterial strain

Starting point is 00:00:36 that's been linked in thousands of scientific publications from everything from weight loss and better blood sugar control to lowering overall levels of inflammation. So what's this strain called? It's called acrimansia and it's made by the company pendulum. So why the heck do you want acrimandcy and what does it do for our overall gut health and microbiome? So acrimancia feeds on our intestines. mucosal layer and modulates its thickness. That's a good thing. In exchange for providing Acrimancia with the house and food, it pays us back by producing short chain fatty acids like propionate and enabling other strains to produce puterate, which is super important for healing a leaky gut, supporting the immune system, and maintaining overall health. I first heard about

Starting point is 00:01:23 acrimancia for my business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman, when he got really sick a few years ago and his gut help took a turn for the worse. He said that building up his acrimancia was critical for helping him heal and support his overall gut restoration and getting his health back on track. Because acrimancia can only survive in an oxygen-free environment like your gut, it has been difficult for scientists to formulate it into a probiotic until now. Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of acrimancia

Starting point is 00:01:57 in a probiotic capsule, which is why I've been taking the probiotic daily ever since I got introduced to the company. Right now, if you're interested in Acrimancia, this flagship bacterial strain, Pendulum is offering my community 20% off your first purchase of their pendulum acrimancia probiotic supplement. All you have to do is go to their website, pendulum Life.com, that's Pendulum, P-E-L-U-L-U-M-L-U-M-L-I-F-E.com, and use the code Drew 20, spelled D-H-R-U-T-R-U-T, for 20% off your first purchase. Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds and wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Kelly Kelly Leveck is a holistic nutritionist, wellness expert, celebrity health coach, and she's the best

Starting point is 00:02:57 selling author of Body Love and Body Love Every Day. Kelly's clients, there's a lot of them that are out there that are very notable and famous, work with her because she has a serious knack for making the complicated simple. And that's what we've invited her to do today on our podcast. She'll be walking us through her four-step methodology. for balancing our blood sugar, reducing chronic inflammation, increasing longevity,

Starting point is 00:03:28 and most importantly, taking health, which can sometimes seem so complicated and making it simple. Simple is better. Simple is easier. Regardless of what dietary philosophy you follow, there's a way to integrate

Starting point is 00:03:43 her FAB4 method to simplify your life. If you're curious about that topic, this episode is for you. Stay tuned. Kelly, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for making the drive out. Oh, well, this is my old stomping ground.

Starting point is 00:03:58 So it's good to be back and it's good to see you, Drew. Let's do a little bit of background. Okay. Give us the foundation of a little bit of like if we had a pair of glasses and we gave it to our listener and we said, here's how Kelly looks at the world, right? Less of the bio, but kind of key points that you think that define your approach to how you approach healthy living and how you pass it on to your clients. Well, I want to eat.

Starting point is 00:04:20 love and so do my clients but I want those foods to balance my blood sugar, improve my nutrient density, ensure that I'm getting all the vitamins and minerals that I need, the essential amino acids and fatty acids that I need, and that I feel satisfied. And I think that last point is the most important. Growing up in the 80s and around yo-yo dieters and growing up in a time where you'd read Self Magazine or Women's Health and it was how to get fit, skinny, and look like the person on the front of a magazine, dieting just makes you think about food. And so for me, I wanted to understand the biochemistry of hunger hormones and what makes us feel the most full so that I didn't have to think about food, that I could eat what I loved, that it would support my blood sugar,

Starting point is 00:05:07 and that I wouldn't think about food for a few hours. When did the idea, because it's such a through line and you're an advisor and an investor to levels and we love those guys and have him on the podcast, but when did the idea of like bloodshed? sugar being one of the foundational principles of how we look at a diet in addition to enjoying the food that we love and having it be nutrient dense. When did that come into your world? What were some of the experiences that shaped that? Well, then I have to take you back to USC. I was a senior at USC and I was a business finance major. I was following my dad's footsteps, maybe going to go into real estate finance. And I took nature of human health and disease. And I got a perfect score in

Starting point is 00:05:47 a class. And my thesis was on type 2 diabetes. And I called my dad in tears and I said, I should be pre-med. I should go back for kinesiology. I should go back to be an RD. I should stay in school. And he said, you know, luckily my dad supported me through college. But he said, I'm sorry, honey, you know, the buck stops here. The day you graduate, you're on your own. So figure out how to make it work. And I ended up getting a concentration in nature of human health and disease. and focusing on moving my career into pharma and medical device from the business standpoint, ultimately ending in cancer and genetics. So I spent a lot of time in that space, but knew that I loved blood sugar at 21 years old.

Starting point is 00:06:36 When you talk to your clients now, who we were chit-chatting a little bit before the podcast got started, and most people don't want to be necessarily in the weeds of all this. They're just trying to live their life. So in the most simplistic form, when you talk to the clients you work with who are high performance individuals and different sort of industries, how do you explain to them why they should care about the topic of blood sugar? Well, what I explain is that your body wants to maintain balanced blood sugar, this homeostatic state.

Starting point is 00:07:05 And what you eat impacts your blood sugar. So a lot of times I break down the science. And I explain that carbohydrates, sugar and starch, break down to blood sugar. blood sugar. So what you eat is absorbed into your body and skyrockets blood sugar depending on, you know, depending on what you eat, it would dictate how high that spike would go. And when you explain that your energy and your cravings and the way that you feel, the way that you're able to communicate, the way that you're able to learn and perceive your world is all influenced by blood sugar, they listen up. So it's really more about how is how is this science.

Starting point is 00:07:45 impacting their life. So a lot of times I just break down how macronutrients are digested and I give them the science so that they're motivated by the science because handing a client and eat and do not eat list or a PDF of what's allowed and what's not allowed just makes me a diet. My job is to inform and educate my clients so that they're internally motivated and they can learn how to tweak their favorite meals or order at a restaurant or grab a snack on to go, knowing that they're going to support their blood sugar balance. And I think it's a mindset thing. Like a lot of times when it comes to dieting and being restrictive, we want what we can't have. So I give my clients a short general, I give them what I call the FAB 4, which are general

Starting point is 00:08:29 categories that support blood sugar balance when these food groups are mixed. So the FAB 4 is protein, fat, fiber, and greens. And I say, to the best of your ability, put these things on your plate because not only do they regulate your hunger hormones, but they slow down the digestion of your meal and make you feel full, thus elongating your blood sugar curve and allowing for you to go a few hours without thinking about food. People are always curious, anytime the topic of blood sugar comes up, what are the go-to snacks? You just talked about snacks? Yeah. When you talk about it with clients, how do you help them think about what is available for them to eat, but also how to maybe think differently about the topic of snacking as a whole. Right. Well, back in the day, the science used to say

Starting point is 00:09:19 that five to six small meals a day supported your metabolism and helped balance your blood sugar. But that science was flawed because we were looking at how, you know, someone would eat a meal. And on average, your blood sugar goes up for 90 minutes. And then insulin is released to support that blood sugar to move into your cells and your blood sugar starts to crash. And at about the three-hour mark, you might be a little bit shaky, high-bloodiac, high-blood. Also, they just said, well, let's just throw another meal or a snack there, and we'll take that blood sugar roller coaster right back up. And so we weren't really balancing blood sugar back in the day. All we were doing was preventing that hypoglycemic crash, those cravings that

Starting point is 00:09:57 happened three hours after a high sugar, processed food type of a meal. And when you think back to the 90s, for example, it's, you know, whole wheat bread and rice and chicken or strawberry yogurt, all of those things are actually full of sugar and starch, and they're taking you up that roller coaster and you're crashing down. So instead of thinking about how you spike and crash every three hours and eating a meal to take yourself back up so you don't feel that way, we need to talk about how to elongate that curve. So protein doesn't break down to blood sugar, fat doesn't break down to blood sugar, fiber present in your carbohydrates doesn't break down to blood sugar. And when you pick vegetables or leafy greens, vegetables deep in color, there's so much

Starting point is 00:10:44 fiber and very little starch. They're non-starchy in nature. They're not causing a big spike in blood sugar. So you can have the freedom to have protein, fat, and fibrous foods for snacks. So that might be a handful of nuts, protein fat and fiber. That might be hard-boiled eggs, great source of protein and fat. I love a grass-fed beef stick. I love I love fruit too, especially, you know, the fiber-rich berries. But when we think about having that kind of a snack on its own, like a cup of berries, thinking, this is great. This is great for me.

Starting point is 00:11:19 This is great for my toddler. It is. But there's nothing holding that back. That's all being broken down to blood sugar. The glucose inside, you know, the glucose present in those berries is being metabolized to blood sugar and the fructose is being metabolized in your liver. But nothing's holding it back. So when I talk to my clients, I say, how can you balance this snack or how can you add to your plate to create blood sugar balance and support blood sugar balance?

Starting point is 00:11:46 Well, if you add protein, that slows down digestion. It also regulates hunger hormones. If you add fat, let's say you had strawberries. Well, I'll give my son a side of almond butter to dip those strawberries in, like chocolate covered strawberries, but it's almond butter covered strawberries. So I'm slowing down the digestion of that sugar and ensuring that he has what it takes. what he needs to feel satisfied and full. So whether that's the protein, the fat, or the fiber, pairing those three things with a processed or sugary carbohydrate snack really supports the elongation of your blood sugar curve.

Starting point is 00:12:21 Can you talk a little more about your health journey? And were you ever on the opposite side of that spectrum? Were you caught up in some of the fads, the trends, the other stuff that was out there? Of course I was. I think, you know, growing up in the 80s, growing up in Southern California, You know, people are at the beach all the time. They're in bathing suits all the time. And as a young woman, we get caught up in vanity and we care about our gene size.

Starting point is 00:12:46 And it was interesting. I loved the science. So I remember reading the Atkins diet and protein power and the Mediterranean diet and South Beach. I would read these books with a side of goldfish. Like, I would read them. I was an active soccer player. But I loved the science. So I'd read it.

Starting point is 00:13:06 but I could never do it for more than two or three days. And they made it so convoluted and confusing. It wasn't, they weren't giving me the education to go apply to my own life. And there's that layer. Things need to be simply explained to our clients so that they can understand them, understand it, digest it, and then go improve their life. When you talk to and you work with your clients right now in this world where it feels like there's a ton of information, which I think is a great thing,

Starting point is 00:13:36 like increasing access to information. Now, actually sometimes that can also lead to confusion. Even lack of information leads to confusion too. And people start to feel like they're not sure what's real and what's not real. So let's take the topic of fruit. I'd love to talk on that a little bit before we come back to your story. You have these extreme sometimes in the world of health and wellness where especially if people start to start to track their blood sugar.

Starting point is 00:14:06 I'm wearing a CGM. I know you are too. They get a little bit, they get hyper worried about things like fruit. And they think, like, I got to be super, super careful about that. And they develop even sometimes maybe some fruit phobia. And on the other extreme, there still exist out there, people that recommend that people should be having, you know, most of their diet. That's based in fruit.

Starting point is 00:14:26 You know, I don't know if you call them fruitarians, but they're close to that, that sort of aspect. As somebody who's a nutritionist who also works with people who have maybe different ideologies of how they want to eat. Take the topic of a fruit. How do you help them understand what is the right amount of fruit for them to have in their diet and still not feel like they're being incredibly restrictive? Well, first, I'd like to say that blood sugar is non-discriminating. I have clients who are fruititarians, raw vegans, vegetarians, paleo-keto, carnivore, you name it. And what blood sugar, blood sugar is so interesting because

Starting point is 00:15:05 what we eat, we're all individually impacted differently. So someone may be able to have an apple and only see their blood sugar go up 10 milligrams per deciliter. Someone else might have an apple and see their blood sugar spike 30 milligrams per deciliter, which is a lot higher than, say, a 10 milligram spike. And so that person who spikes up 30 milligrams per decilator, that apple might have them crashing, craving more sugar, more carbohydrates, and impacting all the of the meals that they eat the rest of the day. So when it comes to fruit, I talk to my clients about eating foods like fruit in their cellular form. So cellular carbohydrates or carbohydrates that are wrapped in their fiber cell. So we wouldn't drink orange juice, but we may have an

Starting point is 00:15:50 orange. We wouldn't drink apple juice, but we'd have an apple because the fiber needs to be digest. You need to masticate or chew through that fiber, and you need to digest it with hydrochloric acid and enzymes to then release it, you know, have it move through your epithelial lining and make its way into your blood sugar. So what's interesting is nature, I just think it's beautiful that nature does this amazing job of wrapping up sugar and starch and making us work for it. So when it comes to fruit, it's in a serving size, and there are definitely blood sugar hacks that support balance in our body. And I gave you one. We're pairing fruit with protein and fat and fiber. Another would be having your fruit after a meal. You know, there's a lot on the internet

Starting point is 00:16:37 has had fruit on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. But when we look at that, I might talk to my client about, hey, does that work for you? If you have a banana by itself first thing in the morning, how do you feel 90 minutes later? How do you feel three hours later? Because everything, everything that we eat affects each of us individually. And I'll take a theory or an idea from the internet and I'll talk to my clients. They may say, I want to just do fruit first thing in the morning, like I said. We might look at how that affects their energy, how that affects their cravings. And the same goes for blood sugar. Like a levels continuous glucose monitor is going to tell them exactly how it's affecting them. Not everyone can get their hands on a CGM. So you need to

Starting point is 00:17:20 check in with yourself and use strategies like pairing your food with things that slow down digestion and elongate a blood sugar curve. Or pick you. a lower glycemic fruit option like berries or keeping it in a serving size. One thing you'll notice, you know, it's funny, when I came out with my first book, Body Love, I shared the Fab Four smoothie, which is a smoothie formula. You know, you pick your protein powder that you love, you pick a fat source that you love, fiber like chia, flax, you could use even cauliflower rice or cucumber, throw some leafy greens in there.

Starting point is 00:17:54 And then when it comes to fruit, I suggest keeping it to a fourth to a half a cup. And that's because a blender is obliterating that fiber. It is pulling that, it's making that sugar accessible to our bloodstream. And it's easier to digest and faster to digest. So it's going to spike our blood sugar faster. And on the heels of making those recommendations, people are like, Kelly's anti-fruit. I am not anti-fruit. I have so much fruit in my house right now.

Starting point is 00:18:21 And I serve my kids a bunch of, you know, we go to a farm near our house and we fill up our basket. and we have it every day. But we have it strategically. And I suggest that to my clients as well because we all, depending on who you are and your metabolic health, fruit can impact you differently. Let's talk about kids a little bit. Okay. You're very vocal on social media and your family is incorporated into a lot of your content.

Starting point is 00:18:46 You've written about it. How do you think about this topic when it comes to kids and the realities of doing your best and being a mom and being an entrepreneur and all the things that you're balancing? out. So it would love to get your approach and maybe how that approach has changed over the years when it comes to setting the right environment for kids. I was definitely more rigid when it was just me and I didn't have children yet. Having children, one, the science is, I mean, really impactful for me. Just understanding that so many children, it used to be that 5% of kids were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and now 20% of the diabetes diagnoses in terms.

Starting point is 00:19:27 children are type 2 diabetes and that is food induced it's too much sugar and it's coming from liquid sugars juice gatorade sodas and our children are inundated it's in everything so that i i do beat my little drum on social media to encourage moms and dads aunts and uncles grandparents to try their best to keep sugar to a minimum but i'm really i'm realistic my toddler is in preschool. You know, I see the snacks that are served up. It's juice and cheese, it's, it's fruit and milk. And a lot of times they don't realize it, but it's a little bit of a blood sugar disaster.

Starting point is 00:20:11 It's multiple carbohydrate-based foods and drinks being served up to these kids. And we know that dysregulated blood sugar impacts learning. It impacts mood, increases tantrums. And they're so vulnerable in those first five years of life, there is the most amount of brain growth and a neural connection that ever happens in our life in those first five years. And so for me, I really try to protect Sebastian as much as possible. But there are times when he's at a birthday party or at school where I'm not going to intervene and say that he's not allowed to have X, Y, or Z. You know, I do make suggestions, and I'm the mom who calls a meeting and wants to talk to the teachers in the school or, you know, the caterer of the school lunch and snack. But I control the controllable at home more often than not. And I do keep desserts to the weekend and a lot of screen time to the weekend.

Starting point is 00:21:17 But Sebastian has free reign if he's hungry to open his own snack drawer, which has seaweed snacks and olive packs. from Thrive Market and Serenity pouches. And he, I like to give him that control over whether he thinks he's hungry. And then we talk about, what are you going to have? And I like to empower him with education. You know, I'm not saying something is good for him or bad for him. I'm telling him that the carrots are great for his eyes and that the meatball he's eating makes his muscles strong.

Starting point is 00:21:50 And it's really cute at three years old. to have your son, you know, he's three years old, he turns around and tells me what the foods I'm eating are doing from my body. And that makes me feel good, you know, and so when we do celebrate, when we do get ice cream and watch a movie together on the weekend, or it's a birthday celebration and he has the dessert, if he's having a hard time after, you know, 90 minutes or two hours after and there's a little bit of a big feelings and large emotions and maybe tears or a tantrum, we'll talk about it. How do you feel in your body right now? Did you just have a lot of fun and did you get, do you feel like you got worked up and energized by the food you just ate? Okay, great. Well,

Starting point is 00:22:34 are you feeling like you might be a little bit hungry right now? You want to calm your body down. And so we might have a handful of nuts and talk about who we saw at the birthday party and how fun it was. But we talk about grounding our body a lot in our house. Like, we'll go outside and we'll lay on the grass and we'll ground our body with specific types of food too. because toddlers are feeling a lot of things, but they need help articulating it. And if they have the language for it, they're able to then articulate it back to you

Starting point is 00:23:04 and what they need a little bit better. So, I mean, it's real life in our house. He goes to birthday parties with pizza. He gets cheeses at school, sometimes for snack. The one rule I did do have in that I asked his teachers, I asked his teachers that he not have liquid sugar at school. So we don't do juice if they give the kids Gatorade, if there's any type of like soda or lemonade. I take a picture of the snack calendar and send him with lemons in his, we either make homemade lemonade or I send him with lemons in his water or occasionally I'll let him have element, which is an electrolyte drink without sugar.

Starting point is 00:23:43 So I'm looking for alternatives, but I'm definitely, I know what's coming in elementary school and junior high. You control the controllable in your home and you try your best to set the foundation and make sure your kids are fed. I think that's another thing that, you know, coaching parents. I wrote a kid's course on how to balance your kids plate, which thus balances their blood sugar. But for me, when it comes to kids, ensuring that they have that first meal of the day where they break a fast, we know from research, adult research, that if you break your fast with a high glycemic meal, you have, you know, your blood markers of inflammation and your lukin 6, since you reactive protein are higher. And we know that the impact it has on your glucose or your blood sugar is higher. So that first meal, that break fast whenever it is for you, whether it's six in the morning

Starting point is 00:24:36 with your kids or 11 in the morning, that meal is so critical to the rest of your day. Because it can either be a huge spike in a crash and then you're just rebounding, you're on that roller coaster, or it can be a meal that supports blood sugar balance. And we know that enough protein first thing in the morning is really going to regulate blood sugar. And if that first meal is balanced, you're less reactive. And it's completely impacting the cravings that you have around three or four in the afternoon and how your appetite, how hungry you are. So for me, knowing that snack might not be ideal at preschool, I don't want my son arriving to that meal.

Starting point is 00:25:16 And I don't want my clients or my, you know, on set or my, you know, even myself, I don't want to roll into mid-morning really hungry, not roll, crash into mid-morning really hungry, because there's only so much self-control we all have, especially if you're a toddler. They're not intuitively, really intuitively eating at that age. If given the opportunity to have a cupcake at 10 a.m., they'd have it most of the time. So. Feels like the greatest biological hack, right? To their system, it's like, wow, I found all these concentrated calories and the sweetness and this fat together. Basically, it's like replicating breast milk. It's fat and sweetness together, which my understanding is like, I mean, that's

Starting point is 00:25:57 breast milk, right? Brain explosion. It ensures that you survive. You know, all these, all of these mechanisms that are built into our biology, we don't really need when there's a fridge and a pantry full of food, grocery stores on every corner, restaurants and DoorDash. But, you I do care about breakfast, and I really ensure that there's some form of protein in Bash's body before he goes to school to the best of my ability, because then I know he's set up to have a balanced mood, balanced blood sugar, and learn at his highest capacity. I want to switch back to adults and on the topic of breakfast because as fasting has become more popular, I think there was originally a lot of people thought of as like a one-size-fits-

Starting point is 00:26:46 all, right? Here's the best way to fast. Everybody skips breakfast and then goes about doing their thing. I think a lot more conversations have been happening. We've done a bunch of this podcast here about personalizing fasting. That approach may work for some people, and that approach may be completely devastating. What have you found with your clients? And if there's any trends that you've seen, whether it be based on if there's gender trends,

Starting point is 00:27:10 if there's personality trends or types of, like, roles that people play, like some people are, like, you know, very active first thing in the morning, using a lot of brain power. When it comes to the topic of fasting and who really could benefit from eating maybe a meal of protein and fat and fiber earlier versus like who might have more leeway, I'd love to get your thoughts on that. Yeah. So we do know that time restricted eating is healthy for everyone. We shouldn't be eating 14 hours a day.

Starting point is 00:27:38 Say you wake up at 6 and you eat until 8 p.m. And you've been eating that whole time. Like, that's not healthy for anyone. my recommendation to clients is always to maintain a 12-hour fast. So if you wake up and you start eating it at 8 a.m., I want you to be completely done with your last meal by 8 p.m. Just so that the natural balance and detoxification, glymphatic cleansing of the brain,

Starting point is 00:28:02 all the things that our body is trying to do to set us up for the next day, happen so we feel our best. What I don't want to have happen is that my clients, you know, eat a highly processed diet. They eat for long periods of time, longer than 12 hours, and then all of a sudden we see their fasting blood sugar go up over time year over year, right? That's unhealthy. That's leading to potentially a chronic lifestyle disease.

Starting point is 00:28:24 Anurman fasting, it is a really amazing tool. So we need to talk about who it works for and who it doesn't work for. You know, if someone is pregnant or breastfeeding or they're highly sensitive to caffeine, or they are highly sensitive to their caloric intake on their menstrual. cycle, then waiting until 2 p.m. to eat may not be the right option for them. And so I think when intermittent fasting first came out, people thought, oh, well, I'll just skip breakfast. I'll wait as long as I can. I'll white knuckle it until one or two in the afternoon. But what I've seen in my practice is that specifically with females in those different stages of life, you know, breastfeeding, pregnant,

Starting point is 00:29:04 menstruating or even with a history of an eating disorder or restricted eating, that type of fasting backfires. And it turns into the floodgates open at 2 p.m. when they have their first meal and they eat more than they would have eaten if they ate over, say, an 8 to 10 hour period from 9 a.m. on. And so when I sit down with a client, it's always asking them, you know, going through a health history and then going through day in the life of them and a lot of times a client will say this is day and the life of me when I'm being good and this is day in the life of me when I'm being bad and I'm like okay let's just talk about when you feel your best or let's have some flexibility between that good and bad but when when do you feel hungry because if someone wakes up and they don't feel hungry

Starting point is 00:29:54 and generally can easily go until noon or one without eating my male clients do really well at this you know they can have a cup of coffee and they may not feel as impacted. I have female clients who are very sensitive to caffeine, and people don't realize caffeine can affect blood sugar. So when you're drinking caffeine, you have a spike of adrenaline and cortisol that releases stored sugar or glucose. It's glycogen being broken down to glucose from your liver. Your blood sugar spiked, you've eaten nothing.

Starting point is 00:30:25 Insulin's release to bring blood sugar down. And we have a crash from stress. and the stress is being caused from caffeine. So any type of stress can actually impact your blood sugar, and that can be caffeine. That can be a really hard workout, so not eating after a really hard workout. Or say you're presenting. You have to give a big presentation at work on a Zoom call or in person,

Starting point is 00:30:49 and that makes you feel stressed out. You have that adrenaline and cortisol that's causing the release of stored sugar into your bloodstream. Blood sugar is being affected without any food on that crash. People trying too fast can feel irritable. They can have cravings. They can have an inability to focus and learn. And so it's constantly asking my clients what their job and life requires of them and whether this tool works for them and if so, when.

Starting point is 00:31:18 So a client who maybe does a hit training workout and then is coming off of that sort of, what you want to call it, adrenaline high and all of that strong, you know, lifting and running or whatever they're doing, they may need to fuel after that. And so it really is looking at all the tools out there. I mean, you can think about people who love the Fab Four smoothie or intermittent fasting or the bulletproof coffee. Bulletproof coffee. Like there are all these green juice, wellness hacks and tools. But it's actually taking the science of what's happening to you when you implement that into your life. And and then taking it and saying, how does it work for me?

Starting point is 00:32:03 How does it work in my life? Does it make sense for my lifestyle? Or is it easier for me to eat dinner with my kids at 5 or 6 o'clock at night and be done for the day? I'll tell you with a lot of my young mom clients and even some dad clients, getting home and having family meals together at 6 o'clock at night, it's easier for many of them to just be done eating from then on. But if you get done with work at 7 p.m. at night and have to eat dinner after that,

Starting point is 00:32:32 it becomes really difficult to stop eating or eat earlier, eat at work at your desk. Like, that's not fun for anyone. So you have to take these tools and apply them to your life and ask yourself, can I do this for longer than a week? Is it taking a lot of mental energy to control this behavior or is it easy? And I think if a wellness tool naturally fits into your life and supports you and you can see it ripple into other parts of your health, wellness, and lifestyle, then great. Implement it and implement it your way. Yeah, it's interesting about the fasting because you say you were at USC, right?

Starting point is 00:33:15 And Walter Longo being at USC, he was, we were chatting with some of his team and they were sharing that, you know, we did a survey and looked at, you know, most of the. societies around the world that implement fasting to some degree. And they all have breakfast, right? They all eat. It doesn't mean that they're eating a ton, but they all have a little bit of something, maybe some olives and some cheese, a little bit of something in the morning, some fat, some protein. And we use a lot of our brain power early in the morning. And so I think one hack for anybody, because we've done so many great episodes on fasting, and we've done a lot of really incredible episodes on personalizing fasting, especially for those, you know, different scenarios that you talked about, especially for people at different life stages and especially

Starting point is 00:33:57 women, I think that if you have been something that's been skipping breakfast and you think that it works for you, just try for a couple weeks. Try eating something a little bit in the morning. And one hack that's there for people who are like, my wife says, I'm not hungry in the morning. I literally, the idea of eating an avocado or some eggs and olive oil, like disgust me. And then I said, okay, well, let's try something. You may not be hungry because you have all this free-floating melatonin in your body, right? Let's go outside. Let's get a little sunlight.

Starting point is 00:34:27 Take a quick lap around the block. And it's so funny because we'll do a little walk around the block. We'll come back and she's hungry now of a sudden, right? Because that melatonin is not circulating, at least at the level that it's at. So I think trying to have, I'm so much more effective as a CEO, podcast host, everything in my life when I eat just even a little bit in the morning. And then if I want to do some extended fasting later on the day, that's what works for me. But again, going back to your point, everybody's got to tweak a little

Starting point is 00:34:54 bit and figure out what works for them. Yeah. Well, I would, I would just have to say that, you know, it's not a peer-reviewed study, but I have 10 years of working with clients, whether a client's getting ready for, they have a short-term goal that we need to improve, like, their blood tests, whatever the case may be, they're having a really hard time sticking to something. I get better results when clients eat breakfast. And it doesn't have to be at 6 a.m. It may be at 9. But in my practice, I see the metabolic changes they're looking for, the physical changes they're looking for, the energetic changes they're looking for, easier when they're fueled. And coming, especially women who are used to yo-yo dieting or being restrictive, what normally

Starting point is 00:35:43 the eating patterns that normally happen is they keep that breakfast really small or they don't have anything. They just have, you know, a large venti coffee, ice coffee or something. And they're trying so hard to not eat until the end of the day. And again, that backfire, you know, that whole day of restricting backfires on them. And what they end up overeating is mostly higher sugar, higher carbohydrate, processed food type meals, more of like the snacking crackers. And they never feel satisfied. And I really like to put that on its head with my clients.

Starting point is 00:36:22 and make them feel satisfied, to show them what it feels like, to feel satisfied. Not Thanksgiving full where you can't focus and you're tired and you want to go back to bed, but really strategically focusing on the fat for protein, fat, fiber, greens, if you can, really focusing on that and showing them that they can metabolize food without feeling really tired, that it doesn't have to be gross like your wife or make them feel disgusted, but that they will feel energized and fueled. And they may turn around at one or two in the afternoon and have thought, forgot about lunch.

Starting point is 00:36:59 And previously in their previous life would have been counting down the hours or minutes to when it was time for lunch. Yeah, a lot of people don't have the experience of what does it look like to live without food being the primary focus. We'll always think about food. And I look forward to my meals that are there.

Starting point is 00:37:14 I'm like, great, you know, what am I going to have later on or what am I going to make? I enjoy making food. but it's like there's a lot of folks that live in a place and my heart goes out to them where the constant struggle of feeling like what is the next thing that I have to eat and again all that stuff comes back to blood sugar with a few tweaks we can evolve it let's piggyback over to pregnancy what's unique about that time in a woman's life and thinking about just the trends that we see with an increase

Starting point is 00:37:48 in gestational diabetes. And I actually learned a few weeks ago on a podcast episode that pregnancy is one of two periods in a human being's life where the body's actually trying to induce insulin resistance. So pregnancy and then puberty is the other one. I learned that from Dr. Ben Dickman. Shout out to him. And so yeah, you've written about this. Take this lens of blood sugar, apply it to that time period of pregnancy. Well, first when you're pregnant, it's no longer just about you. You're growing a human being inside your body and you feel responsible for their health and well-being. And I don't think women realize, but how they're, when they control their blood sugar, they're actually setting up their child's metabolic health

Starting point is 00:38:37 right there in utero. So when you have elevated blood sugar and diabetes when you're pregnant, gestational diabetes is what it's called. You mentioned that. You're actually, doubling your child's risk of type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. So that impact is huge. And not only that, but when we eat a high glycemic or processed food diet, our blood sugar is dysregulated, the average weight gain for the mom is an extra 20 pounds versus having blood sugar balance. And someone might say, weight doesn't matter when you're pregnant. But what's interesting is that that's going to impact your child's weight, and that's going to impact a healthy delivery, and that's impacting your whole, I mean, not only is it impacting your whole pregnancy and how

Starting point is 00:39:28 you feel, but it is impacting how your body will perform metabolically after pregnancy as well. So when it comes to pregnancy, not only do we need to be thinking about critical nutrients for baby, like iron and folate and zinc, and calcium, vitamin K, vitamin D, vitamin A. But our ability to eat those nutrient-dense foods and balanced blood sugar is lowered. As you mentioned from Dr. Ben Bickman, our body is in a hormonal state of insulin resistance so that we're redirecting our nutrition to our baby. And it makes it hard for our muscles to absorb glucose, giving us energy to move our body.

Starting point is 00:40:14 and when you're pregnant, a lot of times, especially in your first trimester, you're nauseous. You don't feel good. You're really tired and fatigued. And we use food in pregnancy to increase energy. So what makes us feel energized? Sugar. And when you have natural food aversions when you're pregnant, a lot of women have food aversions to protein, for example.

Starting point is 00:40:34 They don't feel like eating beef or chicken or fish. And so what's left are the foods that make us feel good when we're nauseous, a piece of toast. a yogurt, protein bar, and a lot of times those are almost all carbohydrates. And that starts this blood sugar roller coaster because not only are we insulin resistant and not able to absorb that blood sugar, but we're really leaning on those foods because it's all we feel like eating. So your blood sugar spikes up really high. And then you crash and that actually increases our nausea.

Starting point is 00:41:09 So whenever I can, I work with a client prior to getting pregnant for what would be trimester zero, those three months leading up, we ensure that they have high quality prenatal. We ensure that they don't have elevated fasting blood glucose, that they're working on balancing their meals leading up to pregnancy because if a client goes into pregnancy with a more balanced blood sugar state, they're less likely to have nausea. And also B6 impacts a deficiency in B6 increases nausea as well. So we're looking at nutrient status and then we're looking at blood sugar balance and their ability to, you know, teaching them how to balance their blood sugar by adding to their plate and filling up on those nutrient-dense foods. Did you have any protein aversion?

Starting point is 00:41:57 I did. Yeah. That's a tough one. That's a really tough one. Even a lot of women that are very healthy, my sister, my younger sister Kea just had a baby in October of last year and lives a very healthy lifestyle, very mindful of all that, you know, And for the first time in her life, it was her first baby because she wasn't getting a lot of that protein, had an aversion to it. Naturally, she found herself and there was no judgment around it for her. It's just like, okay, this is my body, other stuff, you know, just I understand this going on.

Starting point is 00:42:26 But it definitely had her eating a lot of foods that she typically wouldn't eat just to make sure she has the energy that she has. So curious if you had any hacks around that for anybody listening. I do. So my pregnancy course goes through the first trimester. but what's really important is just that you're getting a source of protein. So if you're having that piece of toast, can you slather on some peanut butter or some almond butter or even some avocado to slow down the digestion of that toast to balance your blood sugar a little bit better?

Starting point is 00:42:55 And then when it comes to protein, cold proteins are really helpful. So if you can get away with eating a whole fat cottage cheese or whole fat Greek yogurt, Dairy is one of those things during pregnancy that supports blood sugar balance. It supports nutrient density. It has iodine in it and vitamin D and calcium. And it's a great source of protein. It's also bland. So it's easier to eat.

Starting point is 00:43:24 The Favre smoothie really supported me. I have clients who are plant-based and they may use a pea protein or rice protein. I have clients who are animal-based and they may use a grass-fed way or a grass-fed beef isolate protein or collagen. All of these sources are great as long as you find a clean source with minimal ingredients and you can make that smoothie again. You can make it taste like chocolate almond butter or give it a berry flavor that doesn't feel like you're ingesting protein.

Starting point is 00:44:01 That's really helpful. And then eggs. It can be one of those proteins that's a little more bland and easier to eat, whether you're having eggs on a little bit of toast or wrapped in an almond flour tortilla that's not going to have a major impact on glucose. That really helps people get the protein, pregnant women get the protein in that they need. And then it's not to say that it's hiding it, but it's pairing it with other things and not making it the main piece, you know, the main part of your meal.

Starting point is 00:44:31 So that might be, you know, a chicken burger or there's other things on there and kind of masking that you're having a thinly pounded piece of chicken breast, something like that. Do you still make smoothies today? Do you start your day off with a smoothie or do you throw in a smoothie like a midday snack? I make a smoothie every single day. What's your go-to base? What's your base that you use and are any brands if you use any kind of like alternative milks that you want to give a shout out to? Yeah. So I love alternative milks that are minimal. So I love mulk. It's just almonds and water. I love Malibu milk, which is flax and water, a little ennulin and pink Himalian Sea Salt. I love three trees. That's an almond milk company. Again, looking for nut milks without fillers, emulsifiers. When it comes to coconut milk, I just take a can of organic coconut milk and mix it with water in a pitcher in my fridge. Or I'll just splash in a little bit of coconut milk and add filtered water just because it's, It's a simple, more affordable, easy way to ensure that I'm having coconut milk without all the added junk. And it saves a penny or two. So I do that.

Starting point is 00:45:41 And then after I fill my blender with liquid, then I'll pick a protein powder. I came out with a grass-fed beef isolate from Sweden. It has three ingredients. Grass-fed beef isolate, which is basically like making bone broth, it's fleshy bones, and you stew them down. Skim the fat, dehydrate the water, and there you go. complete protein naturally occurring collagen. It has organic cacao or organic vanilla and then monk fruit, organic mung fruit. So really minimal, something I feel comfortable drinking pregnant because it's not chemically

Starting point is 00:46:10 extracted. So proteins that aren't chemically extracted include bone broth protein, weigh protein, grain, grass-fed beef isolate. And then there are some plant-based proteins that are made via fermentation or an enzymatic process. But the kind of behind the curtain stuff in protein powder is that proteins from plants and some animals like collagen can be extracted via the harsh chemical hexane that we know is a known neurotoxin. So I'm, I always, when it comes to protein powder, I feel like I'm a bit of a Somalié, and I like your protein powder.

Starting point is 00:46:42 It's delicious. But it's minimal ingredients. It doesn't need to be the whole kitchen sink, vitamins, probiotics, added things because then we have to identify where all those things coming from, where they tested for heavy metals, pesticides. mold, you name it. So the whole goal is to make a whole food smoothie. So find the protein powder that you love, clean, minimal ingredients that taste good, needs to taste good. And then you go a little bit of fat, so that could be avocado, it could be a handful of nuts,

Starting point is 00:47:15 two tablespoons of nut butter, olive oil. You could do a chocolate olive oil, sea salt smoothie. So you need to have a little bit of fat. That's going to slow down the digestion of that smoothie. Then you add the fiber, chia, flax, like I said, you could use. non-starchy vegetables, and then some leafy greens. And then if you add fruit, go for it. If you don't, it's up to you.

Starting point is 00:47:34 I have clients who do fruit-free smoothies every day. I make a big picture. I put a lot more in. As long as it's balanced with the fat for, you're good. But I'll fill my whole blender, blend it up, and pour my boys, you know, even just a small half-cup serving. And if they have a few sips of it, I know that that's increasing the diversity of plant-based foods in their diet.

Starting point is 00:47:55 And we know from the Sondbergs up at Stanford, that that variety and quantity really impacts their microbiome. And going back to pregnancy, like I used the Fab Four smoothie throughout my whole pregnancy. There was a really amazing research article that was published in Cell that showed that, no, sorry, it was in nature that showed that a woman's throughout her pregnancy by her third trimester, her microbiome looks like that of someone with metabolic syndrome. So really inflammatory. And the research, the authors of that study, they hypothesize that it's because of this hormonal change that happens, the hormonal change that induces insulin resistance. But it's also interesting that when you're pregnant, you're more likely to eat things like your sister.

Starting point is 00:48:47 And me, if you're not feeling well, you're more likely to eat things that are processed, that are more Fodmaps-type food. the processed, sugary, starchy foods that feed some of those inflammatory microbes. So it's kind of like, is it the kitchen or the egg? Like, what's causing this inflammatory microbiome in the third trimester? It's probably a little bit of both. It's the hormonal changes that happen. It's the dietary patterns that have changed because we don't feel our best. So whenever I have a client who's pregnant, I do check in with them when they start to feel better

Starting point is 00:49:25 at that second trimester mark. Hopefully they feel better by them. And we just have a check-in. Like, are you eating a bunch of plant-based foods? Would it be supportive to bring in a fab for a smoothie or to have a smoothie for an afternoon snack or just, you know, in the morning? Because it does support, you know, the prevention of dysbiosis and that metabolic style microbiome.

Starting point is 00:49:51 So we, if it's hormonally induced, there's not, much you can do about it. But we absolutely are influencing the composition of our microbiome by the foods that we eat every single day. In the current landscape that we're in, are there things that you see? Again, you're pretty active. You have a pretty good idea of the way of the world and where things are going. Are there trends that your clients come to you and ask you about and, hey, what do you think on this? Your hot take, Kelly's hot take on different things that are out there. And in particular, any kind of trends that there might be some nuanced thinking to or a few layers in approaching them. So let's talk about, let's throw one out,

Starting point is 00:50:35 which is the ketogenic diet, right? Put your layered take on it where it works, where it doesn't, and what you would want your clients to know about exploring it if it's something that they wanted to explore. Right. Well, I always take it back to what do we need. We need, amino acids from protein. We need fatty acids from our from fat and you know a carnivore might disagree with me, but our microbiome needs plant-based foods, prebiotics, resistant starches to proliferate and be healthy. So when it comes to a ketogenic diet, I take the fab four framework and I lay it right over the ketogenic diet and I say, well, if you want to have a higher fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate diet, You can do that with fatty proteins like salmon and red meats like bison or lamb,

Starting point is 00:51:30 pairing that with an olive oil and some non-starchy vegetables. Maybe you're having a salad and a little bit of asparagus. But what we see, it's human nature to want the really grindy delicious foods. And so the trends of cheese turning into some crispy tortilla and a, block of filly cream cheese being turned into some type of bread product on Pinterest or the internet or, you know, wherever you get your recipes, TikTok, Instagram, that in my opinion is not healthy. Even if you are supporting blood sugar balance, you're supporting your mitochondria to be fat adapted, we're missing some of those key components, whether that's the plant-based foods that

Starting point is 00:52:21 support the proliferation of the microbiome or whether it's the omega-3s we need from wild fish. It really, it goes back to nature. There's no cheating it. You have to, the closer you eat to real wild whole foods, the healthier you will be. And I think it's nice that someone can get sneaky and make a decadent chocolate brownie out of, a bunch of fat-based products and call it keto. But that shouldn't be their whole diet. It shouldn't comprise every meal that they eat. You can have a keto diet and eat a really processed packaged food diet,

Starting point is 00:53:05 especially now today with all of the options that are available. Food marketers, they saw that trend coming and they came out with a bunch of snacks. But what we know from CGMs is that a lot of those keto labeled food, foods actually have an impact on blood sugar. Can you talk a little bit more about that? We've written a little bit about that, but what are some of the common examples or some of the ingredients that you're looking for that even if something is being called keto, it, and you don't have a CGM, there can still be things inside of there that

Starting point is 00:53:38 acting nothing like what keto is trying to intend to do inside of your body? Yeah. So grain, grain-free flowers, cassava flour, almond flour, coconut flour. it's about the density of how much carbohydrates are in that serving. So, and how many of those servings you're going to eat. So I always tell my clients, if you're having a keto package snack, you really need to look at the serving. If the cereal box has eight servings of keto cereal and you eat the whole box,

Starting point is 00:54:12 it's probably going to have an impact on your blood sugar. And then we look at keto-based and keto, that we can look at fiber-based sugars, like allulose, there are certain people that have, that alulose has an impact on their blood sugar. So there is some bio-individuality when it comes to how specific flowers and sugars impact our biology, our blood sugar. And so I always tell my clients, those are a plus one. They're not the main part of your meal. It's something that makes it fun to eat, but isn't necessarily providing.

Starting point is 00:54:50 the nutrition of your day. Did you ever go through a bout or a period of your life where you were exclusively plant-based? I've never been exclusively plant-based. I did have a period of time where prior, I think it was the end of, I mean, 2008, 2009, when juice cleansing was really all the rage, where I dabbled in doing five-day or seven-day juice cleanses. But on the heels of that, I always went back to eating animal protein. But it's funny looking back now that, you know, I practice teaching my clients now every

Starting point is 00:55:32 day how to manipulate meals to balance in support blood sugar. Looking back on some of those juices, green juice with pineapple, green juice with apple, it was a roller coaster the whole time. I couldn't wait for that next juice to bring myself back up. Totally. And, you know, all sorts of trends that we've all participated in. I used to run like one of the largest websites with like raw food recipes when that was a big deal back in the day. So we live and we learn and we teach people along the way, right? I was asking about the plant base because I think one of the really cool things and, you know, we've had a mutual friend on the podcast just last week, Casey from levels, Dr. Casey means. And we chat with her a little bit about this. And I know you feel the same. You hinted towards it earlier, which is, you know, CGMs and other data that people can get, you can do anything the right way, you can do anything the wrong way. So people can live whatever way that they want to. I grew up for my first 22, 23 years of my life, I was vegetarian. That was my background from India, part of the Hindu Vedic tradition. And I just kind of

Starting point is 00:56:38 did that. Even my parents said, you can eat anything you want to. And I kind of did that. Now, the first 18 years was all processed food vegetarian, right? A lot of my lunches. at school because they didn't have anything for me. It was Gatorades and honey buns, if anybody is familiar with those. They're kind of like a twinkie dessert type thing. And I was eating that for lunch, like every single day and then maybe a bag of Doritos. At night, for dinner, it was nice because I had a home-cooked meal from my parents. And they made very well, like, good Indian food and not like the commercialized sort of Indian food that we have today.

Starting point is 00:57:15 They would make, like, very healthy, a lot of vegetables and other stuff. stuff. So anybody can do anything right. Anybody can do anything wrong. And that's why I'm really excited about things like CGMs to how people walk down that pathway. But I ask because a lot of times people will try a particular diet. And I'm sure you have a lot of clients that have tried different things. Just like we talked about how keto will be the signs that maybe it's not working for somebody or how you don't want to base your diet around something. If you were talking to a client of yours that was like, hey, listen, I really feel motivated for could be moral reasons, could be their own on what they think about the environmental reasons.

Starting point is 00:57:50 There's some debate that's there. I want to do plant-based. Obviously, you support anybody in their decision-making. If they were asking you, what would be some things, if I'm going to do this for a year, what would be some things that I might look at to see if I want to maybe reconsider and start adding some protein back into my diet?

Starting point is 00:58:10 If I want to be watching out for how I feel or what I'd be looking at, you know, just paying attention as I'm trying this experiment. How would you answer that? Well, first and foremost, I love a Nutraval with clients because that's going to look at their their amino acid status, their fatty acid status, their vitamin status, and there are critical vitamins and minerals that can impact a vegan or vegetarian's life, plant-based person's life, if they're deficient.

Starting point is 00:58:38 And just to clear up, a Nutraval is a test. For those that are not familiar, we'll put some links in the show notes, but it's a test that gives comprehensive nutritional analysis. Exactly. And you run it with your clients. And I run it with my clients. So things that I look out for, B vitamin deficiencies like B12, that B vitamins impact our ability to burn glucose. So when I explain that the mitochondria is a powerhouse of the cell, right?

Starting point is 00:59:04 That's the little engine. I like to say that B vitamins are the oil. And they really support that process. And then iron. Iron is critically important for delivering oxygen and nutrients to every cell in our body. and low iron can impact energy and mood and vitamin D status. So we'll look. And if they look great and they're committed to, it's just like the keto diet.

Starting point is 00:59:30 If you're committed to be plant-based, great. Let's also commit to our nutrients, like making sure that we're never deficient or in a suboptimal place with our nutrients and that our blood sugar is balanced. Those are just the two things that I know will make my clients feel the best. So you had Casey on the podcast. She is the founder of levels and a phenomenal resource when it comes to balancing your blood sugar with a vegetarian diet. And so finding for me, it's ensuring that my clients are getting a source of protein, whether that's beans like chickpeas or white beans, black beans, lentils. And I do really rely on a fab four smoothie for those clients if they are vegan and not vegetarian because in that case they may not be even having eggs for.

Starting point is 01:00:16 breakfast, for example. So it really depends on what they're committed to. If they're committed to being vegan, then we rely on the fab for smoothie. And sometimes that means they're making a big batch and they're having three quarters of it for breakfast and they're saving a quarter or a half for that three or four o'clock hour. And they wear a plant or where a protein-based client that eats animal protein may be able to go four to six hours between meals, between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner, a plant-based client may need to have four meals.

Starting point is 01:00:50 And so we'll break that up, breakfast, lunch, mid-afternoon, and dinner just to ensure that they're getting a source of protein and fat to support their blood sugar balance, their energy, their mood, and that we are keeping them from those suboptimal levels when it comes to nutrients. Let's talk about emotional health. How do you navigate that and the mental, physical side of this, you know, diet gets a lot of attention and of course how we feel and our mental health is a major part of this in addition to sleep, working out, you know, a few other categories we can go into. How do you talk about that, whether it's in your courses or just as you, how you approach

Starting point is 01:01:28 life and the content that you put out there? Well, it is really interesting when you look at research. Blood sugar impacts, dysregulation of blood sugar increases anxiety and depression symptoms. And so the basics are really important when it comes to your mental health. the basics of taking care of yourself, like you mentioned, getting a good night's sleep, making sure we aren't nutrient deficient and that we feel good throughout the day and we have a base level of nutrition. And then it's, I'm a resource for my clients.

Starting point is 01:02:00 Sometimes what's driving my clients to crave certain foods or eat certain foods has a lot to do with what they're going through. They may have been through a trauma. they may, you know, have a really stressful job. They may be in a bad relationship. And a lot of times when I sit down with clients, especially on a first, with a first session, they can go two to three hours where I'm getting a health history and putting myself in their body and seeing like what would it be like to live this life and what's the low hanging

Starting point is 01:02:32 fruit? Where can I help them? And where do I need to outsource help? And so, you know, I have breathwork coaches. I have meditation coaches. I have a trauma release therapist that I lean on. You know, I think of myself as a consultant and a resource for building a healthy life. And but we just, we basically, what we eat, how we sleep and how we move is going to impact mental health.

Starting point is 01:03:04 And we can't, we just, we have to focus on that first so that any type of healing can't. and get to that root cause. You ever have clients that you're like, hey, I think it's actually time to maybe not pay as much attention to your diet right now. And let's just put that on pause and leave that for a minute. It's adding too much stress. And let's focus on, let's go focus on something else. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:03:31 If someone is, if someone is dealing with depression and is having suicidal thoughts or feels really down and out, adding things to their plate is going to overwhelm them. It's going to make, they have to do one thing at a time, one change at a time. And in that case, the number one thing that they should be focusing on is some type of therapy that's going to support them moving through that period in their life. And especially if a client is type A and likes to control everything, focusing on the food is distracting.

Starting point is 01:04:08 They're focusing on the food instead of focusing on working through. through the problem or the issue that's really affecting their life. I had a client that came to me wanting to lose a little bit of weight. And after we sat down together, what I realized is that what she really wanted was to quit her job, to work closer to home, to move into the wellness or health, to have a career in wellness or health. She was driving an hour from South Bay, an hour to Pasadena every single day to work as a director in marketing for a furniture company because her sister worked there and she got that

Starting point is 01:04:48 job 10 years ago with three little kids. She spent two and a half hours in the car. And when she first came to me, the goals were give me the meal plan. How much should I be working out to lose the few pounds I need to lose when really it was never about the meal plan and the hour workout that she needed to do? It was that she needed to set her life up so that she could live it the way she wanted and she had a degree to look for a job in and around her neighborhood. But we need to look at our life and say, what is impacting our ability to change? I mean, there was no consistency that was going to happen, whether it be food or working out with that type of commute and that type of a life where she didn't feel passionate about her job. It didn't make her feel like she had a purpose. And by the

Starting point is 01:05:39 end of our session, it was clear that she had a lot of passion, a lot of passion to be a mom, a lot of motivation to move her body. She really wanted to make homemade meals. She didn't really love this job, but it was the bottleneck to this beautiful, healthy life that she could have. But we can feel scared to change big things. But if you're not willing to change big things, you may not get big results. I think that's a good place to reflect. for folks that are listening because there's so many things that we're driving towards just goals in general forget just about health it could be monetary goals could be social status could be whatever there's things that we're driving for but really we're looking for something else and if we could

Starting point is 01:06:23 take a step back and say you know with a little bit of introspection what do I actually care about what do I actually want and what is stopping me from doing the things that I naturally am drawn towards. Maybe it's the implicit expectations of the folks around you. Maybe it's not setting boundaries with the people who love you and are well-intentioned or think that by chiming it on your life, they're doing you a favor, but it's actually maybe too constrictive because all that ends up getting played out through the rest of your, you know, your rest of your life. Like food is actually like eating the right foods that make you feel good. And it's like straightforward. Right. It's straightforward. But there's all these other layers that are added on top of that.

Starting point is 01:07:06 And sometimes it's like I almost feel that I wonder sometimes how many people who are optimizing and looking for that perfect way of eating or living and get too caught up in that actually just pulling back a little bit and focusing on something else could help them take a massive leap forward in their life. I absolutely can. You know, one of the things that I do when I work with clients is an intake form of what makes them feel passionate, what makes them feel joy. if they had an unlimited budget, what would day in the life of them look like? And then we look at how close that is to their reality. And we talk about ways that we can live on purpose and create space and have boundaries so that we can live the life that we want, whether that be spending more time with our children or working closer to home so that we can work out and can make clean, you know, make homemade meals for our family

Starting point is 01:08:04 and be present. You know, it's when people are restricting and they're controlling their food to a degree that seems a little bit unhealthy for me, like I have clients who control their food way more than I ever will. And I always ask about how happy and they are and if they feel like they're living a purposeful life. because it's a place where we can control and feel like its purpose to be as healthy as we can be. But a lot of times eating healthy and moving our body, just even spontaneously, feeling like you want to go for a hike or walk outside and see the sun with your wife or be in nature.

Starting point is 01:08:50 Like we want those things when we're living a purposeful life, when we've made space for them. like we crave them. What's one shift you've made in your own life, especially in the context of the last couple years in the state of the world that we've been in? What's one shift you've made in your life, no matter how big or small, literally could be the smallest thing,

Starting point is 01:09:12 anything you want to share, but it significantly increased your overall sense of joy and happiness. I'd have to say being a mom and living a life with my boys, like passing on the knowledge and passing on the tradition and passing on the joy. You know, Chris is my husband, and we are constantly looking for ways to show our children the world.

Starting point is 01:09:37 Take them to the beach, take them on a hike, bring Bash in the kitchen. He has a kitchen helper stool, and he climbs up in it, and we make meals together, and I get him involved. He has his own little set of plastic knives, but they slow you down.

Starting point is 01:09:52 So to talk about the food that we're eating, to smell it, to get him involved in coming to the farmer, the farmer's market at the grocery store and picking things. I'm so glad to hopefully see that we're on the other end of the pandemic. I'm hoping it's an endemic soon and that the world opens back up fully. But just being outside and passing on our family traditions of eating around a table together, I mean, if the pandemic really taught me anything, it's that it's the simple moments and it's the small moments. those are the things that make up our day.

Starting point is 01:10:27 It's the interactions that we have together as a family and with our friends that make up our life. Those 10 days of vacation or, you know, the big TV spot or the big project launch, they're all little moments in comparison to what's really happening in our lives every day. And so really squeezing the sponge is important for us. And children change the game when it comes to wanting to do that. You just feel this drive to explore again and learn again and experience in a whole new way. Any practical practical tips that you and your husband or things that you guys do to a lot of people have the intention that they would love to do those things.

Starting point is 01:11:08 And they find themselves looking back and saying, where did the week go? Where did the time go? Are there rituals, methodologies, ways that you think about? And I'm also asking because I'm not a father yet, but I want to have kids. and I imagine that we probably will in the next couple years, are the things you guys intentionally do to say, we're going to design this on purpose? So we're going to create that space that allows us to happen.

Starting point is 01:11:33 So I'm thinking like literally on like a week-to-week basis. Do you guys have a meeting? Do you sit down on weekends and plan? How do you think about navigating and creating that space in your life for that? Yeah. Thanks to the Instagram account and therapist, my love thinks. I had her on my podcast, actually, a few years ago. and she said the number one thing that healthy couples do is they have a 20-minute check-in weekly.

Starting point is 01:11:58 So Sunday nights, Chris and I have a check-in, and we start with something good. What went well this week? What do we want to do next week? We never set aside time to be intentional, and we have a calendar invite for it. It doesn't go very long. It doesn't turn into an hour and a half conversation. It's 20 to 30 minutes of what do we want to do. And one of the things that I also recommend to families is to read the family firm.

Starting point is 01:12:21 It's a book that as a couple and as a family, you write down your mission statement and you write down priorities. So a priority for me and our family is that our children eat homemade meals and we eat as a family. And that might not be able to happen every single night, but it is important that it happens for our family on Sunday night non-negotiable. We can have friends over to do that too, but we're all together. And we make Bashan and I, Sebastian and I will talk. about what recipe we want to make, and I get him involved in going to the grocery store with me over that weekend to not only get our groceries or have them delivered, or like I said, we're lucky to have this little farm by us, but we make that meal together. And that's a family

Starting point is 01:13:06 tradition that I'm so happy that we have. I mean, there's been so many conversations and lessons and exploration of food that's happened over that Sunday dinner table. And my advice, to families just getting started is don't try to change everything. It's the same when I sit down with a client who wants to change the way that they eat. You don't have to have a perfect day or a perfect week. It's about getting really good at one habit at time. So with a client, it's the first and foremost is how do you break your fast if you want to change your nutrition? With a family, it's how do you create a tradition around food or if you, if your priority, if your priority, are to educate your kids. Look at your calendar and look at the museums in your area and write down

Starting point is 01:13:58 the short list of museums and maybe you do a Thursday afternoon or a Saturday morning museum. That's the thing that you do with your family. Create a tradition that's expected. It's really easy when we have something scheduled on our calendar. People know like when you get a trainer, it's a lot easier to make it to the gym. So sometimes it takes support. And if you have a family, spouse, a partner, sit down, write down your mission statement. What do you care about in your family? What are the priorities that your family has? And Chris prioritizes education.

Starting point is 01:14:31 So one of the things that we do, and I've moved my schedule around to make this work, is Thursday afternoons we go explore a museum or a science center or even like an art gallery. That's the way that we're teaching our kids to experience the world because what I care about is food and what he cares about is education and, you know, being well-rounded. So find the time and schedule it and don't try to change the whole week. Just pick a few anchors on your calendar that are going to keep you consistent week over week. I'm not the food guy, but a lot of people write in with, like, food-type related questions. And since we're talking about families, one that I often get, whether people have kids or they don't have kids,

Starting point is 01:15:14 is that one person in the relationship might be on board with this lifestyle, and another person is not so much. And it's always a question of, how do I navigate this? It feels very draining when I have a partner that's not necessarily like into this way. What advice would you give to those folks? Well, it's especially important if you have children because exposure and modeling are the two key factors in a child growing up, open to eating a bunch of different foods and being a healthier eater. So for me, if you are parents, my husband Chris, he loves fried food, he loves takeout,

Starting point is 01:15:57 he loves DoorDash. So for him, and he doesn't really love sitting down at 5 o'clock to eat. He's not really hungry yet. He'd rather eat at 7 when our kids are down and he can have a calm meal and he's not eating really quickly like a toddler. So we have a pact. I might make protein and veggies of some sort and a salad, and he'll always sit with us and have the vegetables and the salad because the research tells us that it's that modeling and specifically a father's modeling of eating produce and vegetables that increases the acceptance and love of those types of food by their children. So he knows I take that research and I make him sit at the table and at least eat the veggies and the salad with them.

Starting point is 01:16:43 us. And I explained to him how great it is for his microbiome and what a positive influence he's making on his children. And so that that's just a compromise that we've made as a couple that he may not sit down for his meat and potatoes at five o'clock, but he'll sit down with us and model that behavior. I love it. All right. I'm going to take it back to blood sugar as we start to wind down the interview with the time that I have. And this has been great. Thank you, by the way, for coming on the podcast and chatting a little bit. Talk about some of your experimentations. You know, people are always curious, even if they don't have a CGM, what are, as they're

Starting point is 01:17:19 starting to think about blood sugar, what are some of the things across the board that you've seen yourself? And they might have not been the base of your diet, but they were things that you were having maybe occasionally that throw your blood sugar for a loop. Yeah, I have some things that I expected to really throw my blood sugar and something, and they didn't, and then the opposite is true too. A kombucha will wreck my blood sugar. And I don't think people realize that because when you turn the bottle around,

Starting point is 01:17:49 they're zero sugar. But when you make kombucha, it's a scobie, which is this symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast and tea, which is not going to have an effect on your blood sugar. But to feed the scobie, you pour cups and cups of sugar. And then it's fermented. but those are liquid carbohydrates. So they can drive up blood sugar and cause a crash, especially if you're not having it with a meal.

Starting point is 01:18:16 So for me, I do like a kombucha. I think it's the effervescence and it's fun, and especially because there's this really big sober curious moment and I'm a mom whose kids wake up really early. Like, I rarely drink if ever now. So that's a fun thing to have or a sparkling water or something. But kombucha is a little more fun. I don't have it alone. I'll have it with a meal to support that, you know, to blunt the absorption of that liquid sugar.

Starting point is 01:18:44 And then on the other hand, I used to think that adding a little bit of honey or maple syrup to a dressing, because it's liquid, would skyrocket blood sugar. And what's been really fun, actually, is the flip side of what's destroying. It's what can I get away with? So I love adding a little honey to, you know, a vinegaret, like a lemon vinegaret with olive oil and lemon and garlic and salt and maybe a little grainy mustard. And that little bit of honey that just makes it taste like you're having a delicious salad at a restaurant versus a tart lemon dressing. And if you pair it with fermented, with a fermented vinegar, like an apple cider vinegar,

Starting point is 01:19:27 or something acidic, like even a little bit of lemon, and you, emulsify it with fat and lock up that sugar in the fat, it doesn't spike my blood sugar. So I may go up only a few milligrams per decilator. So that's the fun of learning to pair foods because by pairing fat with something, you can slow down the digestion of that sugar. And interestingly enough, fermented foods like sauerkraut, like vinegars like apple cider vinegar or vinegar of any form. When you have vinegar before a meal, it's supportive of blood sugar. And it's the acetic acid that supports blood sugar balance.

Starting point is 01:20:10 And so it's something that I've been incorporating with a starter salad and a vinaigrette. But it gives me a little more flexibility to have some fun with my dressings. And that's what it's all about, right? It's having fun and sort of expanding out and tapping that metabolic flexibility. Because other component, too, is that if you're getting all your other blood work done, and we have some links to like optimal levels and things like that that people can look at below from some articles in the past. And because there is some variance in blood sugar, you know, some people have, you know,

Starting point is 01:20:44 their average blood sugar is a little bit higher. Some people average blood sugar is a little bit lower. But you can pair that and the variability with also your fasting insulin and a few other key markers. And if those numbers are in good shape, you're like, you're golden, right? keep doing what you're what you're doing if they're in the truly you know like the optimal range and everything like that versus what um you know modern medicine says is is is you know normal most of the population is sick so of course you know normal is going to look unhealthy but i think when you combine those things together it's just like food and and and the joy that we get in it it's

Starting point is 01:21:21 like it should feel joyful it should feel fun it should feel like it's adding to our life not that it feels that it's some weight that we have to walk around with. And I often found that even if people are not going to wear a CGM forever or they don't care about this topic, you practice a few of these things. You implement them as the base of what you're up to. And then you just go and live your life and you go put attention on everything else you care about. You don't have to think about food. It's like how much do I really think about food? Like never, right? I really don't have to think about it. I just live my life. I get the stuff that I need. I eat the way that I want to and I feel good and it tastes good. And so I'm not paying all this extra attention to a topic

Starting point is 01:22:01 that maybe previously I would pay a lot of attention to before I felt as great as I do right now. Absolutely. CGMs give me flexibility and they give my client's flexibility and you don't need to wear them forever in maybe one month or three months. But that trial period allows for you to say, hey, if I have, let's say you did decide to have a fun food weekend and you had a, a donut. I know that a donut's going to raise my blood sugar and I'm going to crash down, but it takes me on average, let's say, 14 or 16 hours and a sleep overnight to get back down to a good fasting blood sugar number. Or someone else might see that that type of, of, I know, a treat doesn't affect them because they have high testosterone and strong muscles

Starting point is 01:22:51 and they're able to manage it. I love knowing. and watching if I have some fun with my food, how to get my blood sugar back down to that healthy range because I think that's what people are missing. They are having fun with food and they don't realize that their fasting blood sugar number is no longer in the 70s or the 80s. It's now in the high 90s. And what they don't realize is their doctor's not telling them

Starting point is 01:23:17 that they're pre-diabetic yet, but they've already doubled their chances for Alzheimer's and most likely going to end up with metabolic lifestyle type diseases, whether that be type 2 diabetes or hypertension, but no one's flagging that for them. And a CGM allows you to flag it for yourself and say, oh, wow. And it's also so great if I have clients who have body composition goals because it isn't, we're not focused on the body composition. We're not focused on the scale. We have, we're focused on metabolic health. Like, they're preventing Alzheimer's. They're feeling great. They're decreasing cravings. And oh, by the way, the side effect,

Starting point is 01:23:55 is that your waist circumference goes down. I love it. Kelly, this has been great. I want to run through just some of the stuff that you're up to. All the projects that you mentioned, things like that, courses, products, anything that you want to mention. I would love to give the lay of the land for anybody who's listening today. Thanks, Drew.

Starting point is 01:24:13 Well, I love blood sugar. So my first book, Body Love, and my second book, Body Love Every Day, goes through the science of blood sugar, how to balance it, how to pair your meals and use the fat for as light structure. Use it to eat out. You can use it to make meals at home. And it's proactive. It changes the mindset, right?

Starting point is 01:24:33 It's, what do I add to my plate? Not what can I have. And then I did create some courses because in my personal experience and working with clients who are pregnant or moms and dads who have young children, blood sugar is critically important for the health of your future child and for the health of your young children and their ability to learn and perform at their best. So those courses go into specific life stages that are critical for blood sugar balance and that need support. And then I came out with a protein powder, a grass-fed beef isolate from Sweden last year. And this year I'm really

Starting point is 01:25:09 excited I'll be coming out with a vegan protein in about six weeks. That's great. Yeah. So I really, really like meeting clients where they are and I love that blood sugar is well it's important for anyone no matter what lifestyle they lead and so empowering yourself and educating yourself on how your food choices impact your blood sugar is the best thing you can do for long-term health absolutely we'll have a link to all those and we'll also have a link if uh if you want to sign up for the cgm we'll put your link below so people can can find that and uh check out levels um in addition to all the courses and the protein patterns and everything else that's coming. The vegan protein, is it a secret?

Starting point is 01:25:50 No, you can talk about what kind of like protein you're going to be using inside? Yeah. It has taken me seven months to get a supplier. I'm using the cho cho-cho bean, which is the lupini bean. It is a lectin-free complete protein. It is regenerative because it sequesters carbon. And it is not hexane extracted. So it's the whole bean.

Starting point is 01:26:15 It's just the bean powder, which means that it's coming with a little bit of fat. But it is keto in nature. It's a low carbohydrate bean. So I'm really, really excited about it. And it follows the same principles of my beef protein, which we're using an organic cacao and an organic vanilla bean and then organic monk fruit to sweeten it. So I have an unflavored that's just the chocho bean powder, can be thrown into baked goods and whatever you want, and then the vanilla and the chocolate.

Starting point is 01:26:44 So I'm thrilled. I can't wait. And I love it, which that's like the most important. I have a hard time with really chalky or not great tasting protein. No one's going to drink a protein shake if they don't like it. So it's minimal ingredients and exactly what I was looking for. So it just took me a long time to do it. Well, when it's ready, let us know.

Starting point is 01:27:08 We'll link up to it. Yeah. To the show notes below. Kelly, thank you for coming on the podcast. Oh, and you have your podcast. We didn't mention that. And I'm trying to get you to be a guest. It'd be well by Kelly podcast.

Starting point is 01:27:19 Yeah, we have, we drop episodes on Wednesdays with doctors and researchers and Fridays with entrepreneurial friends. And I just love having the conversations. Amazing. Well, everybody tune in, please. That would be great. We'd love you to support Kelly podcast. Kelly, thank you for coming on the show.

Starting point is 01:27:37 Thanks for having me.

Dhru Purohit Show - 4-Steps to Balance Your Blood Sugar and Increase Longevity with Kelly LeVeque

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