Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 569 - Mikhaila Peterson

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

Making her second appearance on the Power Project, this time in studio, the great and gorgeous Mikhaila Peterson! Mikhaila Peterson is a podcast host, blogger, and advocate of the “Lion Diet”, a variation of the Carnivore Diet. Mikhaila grew up with a long history of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, depression, and many other negative chronic health symptoms. After several surgeries bouts of SSRI medications and pain medications, she was able to find relief after transitioning to a carnivore styled diet. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off the Power Project Panel! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Now that's them right there, this black box. Somebody installed that. They're like, don't worry about this. We're like, um, okay, we won't worry about it. So for reals, now we are rolling and we are live. Okay, so no more talk about the Russians. You kept the mic off. Did you guys hear something?

Yeah. I don't. Turn it on and. It's embarrassing. God damn it. It's embarrassing. It's supposed to be a professional show. I apologize.

These guys are savages. Yeah, just us. That's okay. Mark has nothing to do with anything yeah hey great job with your talk yesterday thank you that was phenomenal is it hard to take your life story or a lot of your life story at least your medical story and like shrink it down into five minutes or 15 minutes yeah it actually was i actually forgot a diagnosis yeah so that's how far i had to shrink it down into five minutes or 15 minutes? Yeah, it actually was. I actually forgot a diagnosis. Yeah. So that's how far I had to shrink it. But I was like, four is kind of unnecessary. We can stick with three.

What was the diagnosis that you left out? It wasn't that, it must not have been that important. Lyme disease? That sounds pretty damn important. Yeah, yeah, it's important. That's a big deal. Yeah, a big deal. I forgot that one.

Oh, shit. Let's start off with something really, really simple because we run into a lot of people that have different issues with their skin and different issues with things that they are suspicious might be in regards to like their nutrition or their diet. There's other folks that want to kind of be in denial of it and they just kind of continue to eat whatever they want. There's a lot of people that maybe are just uninformed um and there's a lot of women especially that maybe are less likely to even investigate a carnivore diet for whatever reason i don't know why uh eating meat would be a more manly thing but i guess our society has kind of maybe made it so or something like that along the way um so in your quest and in researching everything that you've gone through and in converting over to primarily only eating meat. Only eating meat.

Only eating meat. What have you found and what can you share with other folks that might be helpful for them to at least explore eliminating some other types of foods from their diet? Well, I would suggest people try at least to eliminate grains and dairy. I know a lot of people in the carnivore area eat a lot of dairy, but I think if you're not having success with carnivore diet or if you have some sort of inflammatory disorder or mood disorder, dairy can be a problem for a lot of people. So I think part of the reason women are less inclined to eat meat is because they think meat will make them fat.

I think a lot of people think that. What does make people fat? Dairy is a really easy way to gain weight. Grains, massively, especially the gluten-containing grains, especially the gluten containing grains and then processed foods and then obviously if you're overeating calories like calories do matter and some of the things we eat like pizza it's so you get 1500 calories in a piece of pizza and no one eats one piece of pizza oh no no oh no it's like two minimum and so 3,000 calories in two pieces of pizza. And in order to get that from steak, you need approximately, what, like 24 ounces of steak,

like solid steak. And that's about, that's more than I eat in a day. About some people that might say, that's not true. Grains and dairy don't make you fat. I mean, there's like. Those are fat people. Probably so. There's actually like some research.

I think there's I've heard people bring up these studies before about, you know, people that eat more calcium and people that do eat dairy. Oftentimes, certain subsets of people that have more dairy are leaner. So can you clarify what would be the danger? Do you really actually think that dairy could potentially make you fat or do you think that dairy is macronutrient dense and it could send you over your allotted calories for the day or the week? Yeah, well, I would say a lot about this is calories. And so it's hard to, for me anyway, it was hard to not eat a lot of cheese it's hard to not eat a lot of pizza so it is about calories but it's pretty hard to overeat steak you eat a certain

amount of steak and you're like i'm done so i would say part of it's about calories but part of it's about how addictive and i don't want to say this like people are going to be annoyed about that but how addictive things like cheese are uh cutting out cheese was one of the saddest and hardest things that I had to cut out. It was way harder than cutting out sugar. I'm getting sad just thinking about it. It was. It was really sad. And I tried.

It's like cheeseburgers. Yeah. How do you eat ground beef without cheese? You can, but it's kind of sad. I don't want to call anybody out, but we know somebody that has fat-free cheese. It's this man over here. His name is Andrew. He's wearing the glasses. He eats fat-free cheese it's this man over here his name is andrew he's wearing the glasses he eats fat-free cheese i can still enjoy cheese and it has low yeah so

it has about like half the calories of like what is it made out of it doesn't matter it doesn't even have a cheesy texture well depends is it squishy if you melt it and you eat it right away it definitely has you have to melt it so like you have to make it so hot and you can't let it stop or else it'll harden no no it doesn't take that much to get it to melt the problem is it's a character flaw it really is as soon as it cools off it you know it you know like the uh like the packs that keep the soda together you know like how you have to like rip it apart yeah you, yeah. So that way you don't get to the turtle and shit. It's just like that.

Kind of tastes like cheese. That weird plastic-y stuff. Oh my God. That doesn't sound that appetizing. It fits my macros. And then so the same- Well, that's something. So the same thing might be true with grains then.

Like it's not necessarily the grains that are like, quote unquote, making you fat. Okay. I disagree a little bit. Okay. So yeah, I think that if you're going to keep things under your calorie level and survive only on grains and cheese or something like that, you'd be skinny for sure. I think you'd be miserable. So much diet. I think you'd be miserable and I think you'd be hungry, but you'd probably be thin.

But I find that people who eat higher carb diets, it depends. You can get away with it sometimes if you're expending a lot of energy and exercising all the time. Like if you're an ultra marathon runner or someone who's working out constantly, then I think you can kind of just fuel yourself and burn it. And there's evidence that muscle burns calories

a little bit differently than if you don't have as much muscle. So ultra athletes apart, I think it can seriously contribute to inflammation and an inclination to make you hungrier. And it's the inflammation that I'm more concerned about. So for people with autoimmune disorders or mood disorders, losing weight is like a plus,

but their main goal isn't to lose weight, it's to not be in pain. And so I'm more focused on trying to talk to people about how to reduce pain and then have the weight loss as kind of a healthy side effect of that. I think that the pain thing you're talking about is a big deal. So I really want us to come on to that. But you've mentioned mood disorders multiple times. And I think you're one of the main people that I've heard really talk about carnivore, the lion diet, and eliminating a lot of those foods that helps with mood disorders because you also not just you yourself having seen that effect but you've had a lot of people

that have talked to you about how it's helped out mood disorders so can we talk a little bit about like specifically what you've seen within that realm mood disorders what type of disorders it's helped with um so we can get an understanding on that. Sure. First, I'll just describe a very briefly what happened to me. And so I had major, I was just, uh, I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder when I was in grade six. Um, and then potentially bipolar type two was dependent on which physician I went to. Uh, so seriously, seriously depressed. What does that mean?

Type two bipolar type two. So bipolar type one is the one that you see in movies kind of where people get manic and are can can be like you know i'm god or god is speaking to me that type of mania very serious mania that leads people like people going to the hospital with that type of mania because it's dangerous bipolar type two is hypomania and so it's elevated mood and elevated energy, but it's not all the way to God's talking to me, and it's mainly severe depression. So it's probably the less fun but more safe version. So that's bipolar type 2.

Yeah, that's what my brother had. Bipolar type. Yeah. That's terrible. Yeah. That's why he's not here any longer i mean he just he it it's not as sad for me when i understand that his disease um i mean the disease itself is sad you know but it's it's a little less sad knowing how difficult each day was for

him to live on this earth how like hard it was to manage um and he often said, I don't want to be here. So in some weird way, it makes it a little easier that I know that he doesn't have to be in that type of pain any longer. We should cover this a little bit if it's okay. So from my experience, I've talked to a lot of people with mental disorders, and I was really mentally ill, and I was suicidal at times. And from what I've seen is people who are on psych meds that increases the risk of suicidality an insane amount and people don't talk about that so you get somebody who's manic or super depressed and they're stabilized with medication and it works for a little bit of

time and then they have suicidal thoughts and people people are like, oh, it's the underlying problem, and then their medication is raised, suicidality goes up. That happened with my dad as a response to psych meds, and the doctors were like, this is the underlying problem, and I was like, no, this is a response to the psych meds because I'd been on some of them. So I think one thing that the medical community isn't aware of and that really needs to be talked about more is these side effects. So you get people who are sick for sure. And I think there are things they can do about that too.

But the medications we're using, I don't think they're effective at all. And if you look at long-term studies on antidepressants or antipsychotics, they don't help. They initially help. And I think they're extremely dangerous. The side effects are extremely dangerous. There's this, there's this kind of side effect called akathisia, which causes people to not stand still very well. So they're like, you know, kind of like this and uncomfortable physically. And it's like crawling under their skin. And it's so physically uncomfortable that people commit suicide on it. It's one of the leading causes of suicide.

And that's a side effect of psych meds. But when you go to a doctor and you're experiencing those symptoms, people like that are often misdiagnosed with things like schizophrenia, put on more medication, and it exacerbates the akathisia more. And it's just this cycle, and it's killing people. I'm not very happy with the medical community about that. Could you imagine, like I'm just thinking for myself, if I had a disorder myself and went and tried to get help,

or if my children had a disorder and I took them to, let's say I take them to Michaela Peterson. Let's say you're a doctor and you have all this experience and you have all this information on a carnivore diet. And, uh, I take my kid to you and I say, you know, I think my kid needs meds. Like he's really depressed or she or whatever. And we go over it and we talk about the symptoms you diagnose. You're like, yep, they certainly do certainly do uh have these tendencies and um instead of drugs you're like uh here's a list of foods i think that your child should eat

and the list of foods just says meat and there's nothing else on there i'm gonna go over i would say you're fucking crazy like what are you talking about what how come you're not prescribing my son medication like he needs i think that he needs a medical intervention what are you talking about what how come you're not prescribing my son medication like he needs i think that he needs a medical intervention what are you talking about how could this be yeah kind of see like how you know someone could you can kind of see you can really see yeah right and also some of these like mood disorders are so severe that by the time you go to a doctor you're desperate you're like i've already tried things i've already been exercising i'm too exhausted to exercise or like i've already tried, I've already tried things. I've already been exercising. I'm too exhausted to exercise. I've already tried swimming.

I've already tried eating less. I've already tried these things. I need help right now, otherwise I wouldn't be here. And the medical community isn't actually educated in nutrition, and the little education they do get is straight from the food guidelines, which clearly aren't working. You can look at America. It's not working, and you can't just say, well, americans are lazy because not everyone looked like that in the 30s and there were no gyms people weren't like i'm gonna go to the gym in the 30s so anyway

sidetrack um if i had to tell people um who are dealing with kids or something knowing full well that i am not a physician, and this is from what I've seen and the people I've spoken with, I would say part of the problems with medications is there are no long-term studies past six to eight weeks, which is unbelievable for me. Psych meds, nothing past six to eight weeks. And the efficacy isn't that high long-term.

So even if you do go on one of those medications, if you're still depressed in a year, they're not going to start working, in my opinion. They didn't work for me. They worked initially, and I was like, this relief is unbelievable, the relief I felt when I took SSRIs. It was life-changing. When I thought they were saving me,

but I found out the hard way when I tried to get off of them that it was a little bitchanging when i thought they were saving me um but i found out the hard way when i tried to get off of them that it was a little bit more complicated than that but i think trying to reduce inflammatory components in your diet and assuming that the reason you're depressed is because you're having an inflammatory response some of it's coupled with autoimmune disorders that makes sense at least instead of just a serotonin deficiency or something so you say okay inflammatory response what can i do to lower my levels of inflammation and simple things could be cutting grains cutting dairy uh switching over to water instead of drinking juice and milk uh and trying to reduce trying to eliminate soy that's a big inflammatory food too, and trying to prioritize meat, whole foods, greens, and that could help a

lot. And I think if I had done something like that as a kid, I probably would have been able to avoid the hip and ankle replacement and a whole bunch of the problems I had with medication later on. Why meat and not vegetables? Aren't vegetables healthy? Well, when I first started experimenting, I ate a lot of vegetables and I was on kind of paleo, autoimmune paleo. That's what it's called now. So it was like a lot of meat, a lot of greens, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips. That was basically it. It was pretty limited, but I loved salad. I didn't have an aversion to salad at all. So I was eating a lot of greens. And initially, that was fine. I felt really good.

I put myself into remission on that diet. So that's arthritis and the mood disorder. It wasn't until I came off of SSRIs and I had SSRI withdrawal terribly that I got super sensitive to carbs. What's SSRI? SSRI is an antidepressant. So that's like Prozac or Celexa, the main antidepressants. And it wasn't until then, but I was sensitive to carbs. So I got sensitive to vegetables. That's why I went to the meat diet. I was sensitive to light and to heat and to touch. It was a lot. So it was everything.

But it wasn't until I came off of SSRIs rapidly, which was a bad idea, that I actually was kind of forced into the meat diet. Before that, salad was A-OK. And then the surgeries that you had, you said hip and ankle. The hip, you said you had as a kid. That one was when you were younger? 17. Okay.

So what caused that? I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis when I was seven. So I had 37 joints affected and I was on immune suppressants and anti-inflammatory medication to try and keep it under control. And the immune suppressants were serious enough that I was injecting myself twice a week, starting at age eight. Those were hardcore immune suppressants. And I was religious about it. And when I was 17, my body destroyed all the cartilage in my right hip and my left ankle. And I had them both replaced the same year.

It was not the highlight of my high school. Yeah. How did you know any of this? Like you were just in like lots of pain and you told your parents that you might need help. Did you break something? Oh, when I was little? Yeah, when you break something? Oh, when I was little? Yeah, when you were seven. Well, when I was two, I started walking funny.

So I was kind of walking with my feet angled outwards. And my mom brought me to the doctor for a number of years. Because she was like, I think she's in pain. Because with little kids, it's really hard to tell. And the doctors were like, oh, no, it's growing pains. And then when I was seven, I started walking down the stairs one foot at a time and complaining my feet, my shoes were too small. So I still wasn't really aware of, you know, my feet hurt or anything.

I just kind of started adapting to it. And I think little kids are inclined to do that. They'll just start moving differently to avoid the pain. So that's what happened. And then I was brought to SickKids in Toronto and diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. And then I was brought to SickKids in Toronto and diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. And now at this point, like how long have you been able to be off of SSRIs and how long? Because, I mean, you've been on this diet for a while.

Yeah. But how long have things been consistent where you're not having to pick something out, take something out, put something in? How long have things been consistent for you now? So I stopped all the medications in 2015 and the next couple years were super rocky um getting off the meds i got off them too rapidly i didn't know that you couldn't do that and that was rough and that was when i went from paleo and slowly went into all beef lamb lion diet carnivore diet style uh that was december 2017 and i improved quite rapidly after that it didn't feel rapid at the time but within five months everything was in remission again and so that was may i remember actually uh it was the arthritis let up after a couple of weeks of going to all beef

and then the depression left let up about six weeks in and then the lingering anxiety which was horrible anxiety that was five months and i remember the day that it just went off it was may 5th um that was 2017 2018 sorry i just remember the day obviously not the year anyway 2018 and since then it's been pretty stable so i've tried um for for two years i didn't do anything i was like oh my god i'm in remission i have a mood disorder i'm not on any drugs i'm happy i've never been happy like let's just not touch anything i didn't touch anything for about two years and then i was like okay maybe i'm less sensitive now like let's start to reintroduce things because two two years of only eating like beef salt and water at that point i

didn't even try lamb and now i eat mostly lamb but i was like i'm not touching anything it's not easy but the alternative was so much worse that that made it easier uh and then i started experimenting a little bit and then since then i've had some flare-ups from reintroducing and then being like oh yeah no i'm still sensitive so i haven't been able to vary the diet at all. I haven't been able to add in greens or even organic pressure cooked berries. I can't do anything without getting arthritis again. My skin gets screwed up. I get bloating.

It's enough for me to be like, nah, can't do it. enough for me to be like, nah, can't do it. So in your, in your story yesterday, um, you talked about how you could deal with a lot of different things and you're like, you know, my ankle hurts, my hip, uh, replacement, um, all these different things that you had to deal with. But once a rash got to your face when you were young, you were like, fuck this. Like I just, that's a very understandable because now it's an outward thing that everybody else can see. Can you kind of explain or describe your childhood to us? I mean, it sounds like, you know, most kids are out, you know, playing with their friends or hopping on a bike and they're going and doing kind of like whatever you want when you're a kid. And it doesn't sound like you had that experience or were able to have that experience.

So when I combine it into a 12 minute Ted talk, it sounds that way but i still did kid things like i had good friends at school when i first went on immune suppressants they put all my uh they got rid of all my pain initially it just didn't hold up but initially i went from being like nearly wheelchair bound to being on all the sports teams in grade five except for volleyball still pisses me off but but like all of them um and I was in a remission until grade eight so from grade five to grade eight I was on antidepressants so I still had the mood disorder and I had fatigue and I had itching I had other symptoms, but the actual arthritis wasn't there until grade nine. And then for whatever reason, it came back. So it wasn't bad. Like my childhood, I didn't think it was bad. I didn't think I had a bad time. Even the year I had my hip and ankle replacement sucked for sure. But I didn't think I had a bad time. It wasn't until I got into my early 20s and I was really, then my mental health took a turn for the worse. Like there's nothing that I've experienced that's as bad as a mental health problem. I'd choose arthritis 10 times over, even with the hip and ankle replacement.

Any idea on why your mental health went south? Yeah. I went to university. This is my theory anyway. I went to university and my diet changed quite a bit. So at home we were on the standard American diet, but we were on the healthy version. We were eating like that horrible bread that's full of seeds that it turns out it's not healthier for you. But my mom was like, you have to eat the seedy bread. So we were eating an organic food. Yeah. It's like always stale too.

God, it's so awful. Yeah. So I was on that at home. And i went to university i was like freedom cinnamon toast crunch beer and pizza yeah yes and and uh ichiban noodles i don't know if you guys have yes i fucking love ichiban chicken ichiban noodles anyway you need to get back to those right oh god those that's anyway that was my diet. I moved out and was like, I'll drink... I don't know what I was thinking. I bought... I can remember going into Shoppers and I got not brand name ginger ale.

And for some reason, I was like, because it's not the brand name, it must not have as many calories. I was just like, I don't know. I was 19. My brain hadn't fully grown in. I don't know what I was thinking. Hadn't fully grown in. That's a great i was thinking so hadn't fully grown in that's a great way there's two gems right there because like the uh the lower end company probably couldn't afford to add all the calories right there was yeah there might be fewer i don't know it wasn't

good but so yeah my mental health took a turn for the worse and looking back it's like well duh but at the time i really didn't think anything i ate mattered i was like calories i get but i don't think anything matters and i'd been told by the medical community since grade two that nothing i ate made any difference to anything they're like exercise they did say like maybe you should exercise there's some evidence that that can help they're like oh yeah no diet doesn't matter at all so when i got there and it was like eating pizza and it's you ban um i it was like a matter of two months and i was so volatile it was absurd i was having cycling hypomanic episodes so it wasn't full mania but i was going like you know full of energy, full of energy, crying, full of energy, crying in like in minutes. Right. And I was I had a couple of doctors that were trying to stabilize me and they tried a few

different medications. One of them gave me a seizure in the library at university. I stopped taking that one. But things got bad rapidly. And later I found out that I have celiac disease, which is the autoimmune disorder associated with eating gluten. So when gluten hits the gut, it just screws up your gut. But I never had gut pain, so I never looked at food. And so when I went to university and started surviving basically on wheat, like it's no wonder that my mental health plummeted. Like, it's no wonder that my mental health plummeted. And when you were going through those bouts like that, where you mentioned you were like had a lot of energy and then you were sad and you're going back and forth. That wasn't necessarily from any particular thing.

It wasn't necessarily from a relationship. It wasn't necessarily from the pressure of school or anything like that. It just it may have been from the foods that you ate, I think. Well, I mean, at the time I was like, my roommate's driving me crazy. So at the time I was like, my roommate's really making me crazy. So for people, at least for me, when I had a mental illness is I was depressed and I was like, sometimes I was like, okay, there's nothing wrong really. But your mind attributes, attributes things. So you're like, if you get depressed and you're kind of depressed, your mind attributes attributes things so you're like if you get depressed and you're kind of depressed your mind's like why am i like this and it'll go to that one relationship that's a little bit off and be like you know what you're causing this

right so which is one of the miserable parts of being mentally ill because you end up pushing people away who love you which is just terrible yeah, I attributed it to my relationship or the fact I was away from my parents or my roommate, but it was solely diet, I'm sure. I'm curious about this because a lot of people, I mean, my Gimme S'mores ice cream from Ben and Jerry's makes me feel happy when I eat it, right? So the thing is, is a lot of people when they're eating certain foods, it makes them in the moment feel better. And that turns into, well, I don't feel so good, so I'm going to go have this and I'll smile and feel good. But you for two years were eating beef,

salt and water and it did help you. But the question is, how did you have and what habits did you form when you had moments where typically most people would turn towards a give me some more as ben and jerry to feel better but instead you couldn't turn towards food what did you develop so that you could have the willpower to eat that plain food because it was so beneficial for you at the time okay that's a good question so initially before i went to carnivore diet and i was on the paleo autoimmune, just this limited diet I was eating, I was also taking Adderall. And so Adderall just, I can't not mention that. Adderall just crushes your appetite.

It's just like everything tastes like cardboard. So I have to say, like I was taking Adderall because I was diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia, which is like chronic fatigue. So I was taking Adderall to wake up. Yeah, it was unpleasant but i would say realistically that first month um i didn't experience as many cravings because i was on adderall so i didn't have like everything tasted bad yeah so but in order to get to the part where i first cut out foods i probably read 1200 articles trying to figure out a link between diet and anything. And the first one I came across was celiac disease.

And so I cut out gluten. And then it wasn't really a habit I formed. It was just, okay, there is scientific evidence that gluten can cause celiac disease. And I have celiac disease. There goes gluten. And then I read another scientific article. And it was like people with celiac disease are also more inclined to have a mental disorder or another autoimmune disorder and be sensitive to dairy. And I was like, oh, okay, well then I'll cut out dairy because there's evidence that dairy might be a problem.

And then when I realized that other foods were impacting me, I didn't, it wasn't, I don't feel like I had some sort of inner strength. I didn't, it wasn't, I don't feel like I had some sort of inner strength. I felt like when I tried to reintroduce them, I felt so awful that I didn't really need any inner strength. I was like, that makes me feel like I want to die. If I eat something and then I want to die after eating it, I don't really want to eat it anymore. So, and then for the cravings, they kind of made me angry at that point because I'd eat something, I'd feel terrible.

I'd have this like month-long autoimmune flare-up mood disorder flare-up and then i'd have cravings for it and i'd just be like fuck you body you already ate my hip and on my ankle now you're telling me to eat the foods that are making me sick fuck you and so at that point when i went to beef salt and water because you eat that for even if you eat it for like four days you get this kind of aversion you're like okay i don't want to eat that anymore um at that point i was just like if you don't want, even if you eat it for like four days, you get this kind of aversion. You're like, okay, I don't want to eat that anymore. At that point, I was just like, if you don't want to eat, then you're not hungry. And so then I'd fast. I was pretty angry at that point.

I was like, fucking don't eat that. Don't eat anything. And then it'd be like 24 hours. And then steak would smell good again. We're like, okay, there we go. Now you're hungry. But I was pretty unhappy with everything. So I think I got some of that like power from

just anger you ever got addicted to any of these uh drugs or they most of them make you feel like shit uh yeah some of the medications i was on yeah so i took oxycontin for a year when i had my hip and ankle replaced and if i hadn't taken oxycontin i don't think i would have made it because the there was no cartilage between both joints and i couldn't actually sleep oh yeah there's pictures it's not there's literally like i have an x-ray and there's a little chunk out of one of my bones in me so i couldn't i couldn't sleep and i couldn't put my hip in a comfortable position to allow me to sleep so if i hadn't had strong enough painkillers i don't think i would have made it so uh that's that's one side of things the problem was getting off of

those can be hard and and doctors don't really from at least my doctor didn't know how to do it so i kind of just did it when i was 17 and i went down and i wanted to get off by my birthday which is a stupid stupid to set a date when you're trying to get off of these things it's like really tempting to be like i'm strong i'll set a date that's a bad idea like what you should do is go down slowly enough so that your body doesn't freak out because it's not your mind it's uh at least for me it wasn't my mind it was like physical withdrawal some drugs you can die if you come off exactly and people are like well i don't want to be on them i don't want to be addicted to something and then they'll come off too quick and they can

die exactly so people have to be careful about that but um i had about six weeks of very unpleasant withdrawal with oxycontin um like skin crawling sweating um and the last week i was completely anhedonic so i had absolutely no emotion. I was like, what the hell is going on? And that made me suicidal. So I remember being in the bathroom being like, why am I even here? Like, why do I bother? And then thinking, okay, maybe this is withdrawal. Just wait a week and see. And I popped out of it in a week. And after six weeks, I felt better, but I could feel cognitive kind of function come back for the next two years. So it was really hard on my brain. But since then, I've had to be, I've had other surgeries. I had to get my ankle replaced

again to fix the first replacement. That was a pain. And I was on morphine and I managed to get off of morphine with no withdrawal, just doing it very slowly, then going to Tylenol 3 and then going to Tylenol 1 and just being very gentle with my body. So yeah, I've definitely had dependence on some of these things. Antidepressants, the worst by far, hands down. Those were way harder to get off of than any opiate I've been on. They ruined my life. Yeah.

For about two and a half years afterwards. Do they make you feel good? Like, do they make you feel good or make you feel high or? Antidepressants? Yeah. Like why? Like, why do you think they're maybe addicting? Not like, they're dependence forming. So it's not even, it's not the same as like if you take an opiate, you kind of get this like relaxed feeling and you can get a high from that and then that can make you feel good.

With antidepressants, when I first went on them, I was little, but I can remember, you know, being really anxious and then relaxing when I first took them. But it didn't feel like a high. It felt like a treatment. So it wasn't the same as Oxycontin. But then I took that every day at a really high dose for age 12 to 23, and my body formed a dependence on it so when i removed it it was very very unhappy and i didn't know that those were dependence forming would it be fair to say that it maybe was like halfway like pulling some problems away from you rather than like making you feel high does that make sense like it's yeah like it felt like a treatment it really did help otherwise i

wouldn't have taken them for so long. I was like, thank God these are around. I didn't know diet had a factor to play or I would have tried that, but we didn't know. But a lot of people who are on these medications don't come off of them because they come down, they feel terrible, and then their doctor is like, oh, it's your underlying problem. And they're like, okay, that makes sense. But when I came off of them, I came off of them in a period of two weeks. And my symptoms were so severe. I went on Rogan and talked about this and was like, I introduced soy and I hallucinated. And I didn't know what was going on at the time.

But we can tell that story too. That was fucked up. Please. Yeah. What happened? Okay. So I was on this paleo diet i'd gotten all my symptoms under control i was in remission for the first time in my entire life and i was in

like i'd gone from i was in heaven that's what it felt like compared to what i'd been living in and i was like i can't believe people could feel like this i didn't even know this reality existed i don't want any of these stupid medications anymore and at that point i'd gotten rid of everything except for antidepressants which i thought i was going to be on forever because i thought i had a genetic family disorder um so i got i weaned down didn't really notice but i only weaned down over a week and then the next week i went off and i thought because i because i'd weaned off of opiates i thought i would be able to feel something coming down if that would you know trigger withdrawal but i didn't feel anything so i just stopped

taking them i was like okay everything's fine i'm on this diet two weeks later i tried to reintroduce soy because i was having massive soy cravings massive like i went out and you get that a lot soy cravings no was that directed at him for a reason was i supposed to understand something you're holding back tears no i'm just thinking like i've never in my life i'm like i could really use it i've never heard soy cravings that's true soy sauce soy sauce soy sauce is great okay so that's what i used to put soy sauce on everything i ate so we're not talking about like oh god no okay oh i should clarify that when i talk about're not talking about soy milk. Oh, God, no. I should clarify that when I talk about this. I want some soy milk.

No, I meant I want some soy sauce. I'll just explain to you what normal people experience. Normal people, they crave chocolate, and they crave pizza, and they crave ice cream. We've never had a guest on the show say that they were craving soy. Sour Patch Kids? I craved Sour Patch Kids

really badly at the beginning. Just trying to make sure you understand that you're weird. Oh, I know. I know. I came over here with my suitcase and I have an air fryer in my bag. Hey! Hey! Oh, okay. Let's talk about this later. We gotta talk about this later because after we talked about the air fryer last episode

we gotta talk about that. But soy, let's go. Okay, back. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Write that down so you can circle back maybe you'll forget probably not but all right soy soy okay so i went out yeah it was soy sauce i went out and i got like homemade miso soup because most miso soup has gluten in it in case people didn't know most soy sauce has gluten in it as well so i had to like source the soy ingredient so i could have a pure experiment and i ate a whole bunch of soy in a whole bunch of different forms i was really craving it um edamame beans miso soup or something else

tofu in the miso soup like all forms of soy i was like fuck if i'm never going to be able to eat this again i might as well go out with a bang that's what i used to do when i reintroduced foods until i realized that was a terrible idea so i had a whole bunch of soy and my body just flipped so i got like i got bloated my stomach was super upset i got super nauseous about three hours later i got covered in this full body itch that i used to get where it's like mosquitoes are biting me and i was like oh okay maybe i don't like soy whatever at least i'm happy and the next morning i woke up and the depression was back with a vengeance and i got into the shower like i remember this vividly because i woke up and i was like oh my god something is wrong i was so happy yesterday something's wrong and i got into the shower and i was leaning against the shower wall crying being like how could i be so arrogant as to think i could control this with

diet how could i have hope um many years when i after i had my hip and ankle replacement i told myself i wouldn't have hope anymore because i kept having my hope crushed so that was a rule i had made for myself and then i'd put myself into remission gotten hopeful and then this depression was back and I was like crying in the shower being like how could I be so stupid and then I was like wait no like let's think about this clearly I like my stomach was upset I got a full body itch I was definitely happy at that point I was taking notes about my health so I had like my mood on a scale, my digestion on a scale, my sleep on a scale, my itch. Like I had lots of symptoms there. Anyway, so that was day one after the soy reaction. I was like, well, maybe it only lasts a few days. So day two, it was worse. Day three was worse. And I went over to my parents and I was like, I can barely like i can barely move um i can barely see like what what is happening and i got my brother to drive me home because i was like i can't drive something's wrong i can't drive and i had this horrible sense of impending doom like something was behind me and i got out of the car and i went to my apartment door and i

i turned around to say goodbye to my brother and he looked at me and he had a demon face he had a demon face and he looked at me and then he looked forward to drive off and then he turned back into my brother and I was at the door and I was like okay I've gone off of all my medication and now I'm insane and I got my key out of my purse and went upstairs and tried not to have a panic attack I smoked as much weed as I could when I got upstairs key out of my purse and went upstairs and tried not to have a panic attack. I smoked as much weed as I could when I got upstairs. I was just like trying to, because I was on the verge. I was like, I just like hallucinated.

Demon face, that didn't exist. I'm crazy. What have I done? Trying to keep things under control. But that was the first experience of trying to introduce something inflammatory after I stopped taking SSRIs. And it was horrifying. So that was completely different than the depression I'd experienced before which was bad but it wasn't that bad and so that kind of went off and on for a year I slowly reduced carbs you know like I said I got light sensitive

I got heat sensitive temperature sensitive I couldn't listen to music because music almost hurt my ears like it just took away everything I loved. So I'm not very happy about not knowing that SSRI dependence was a thing. That was a bit intense. I went to doctors and they were just like, you should go back on your antidepressants. I was like, I'm not touching anything. But it wasn't for another almost two years before I found the beef diet. I didn't know that you could only eat beef.

So I didn't try it. I think if I'd tried it earlier, I wouldn't have had such terrible withdrawal. I heard you yesterday talking to a fan at the TEDx that was done at Acton Academy by our boy Matt. Really, really awesome event. Glad I got a chance to see you talk. You did a great job.

Thank you. The woman was talking to you about like going out to eat. And I know how it can be sometimes when you're talking to fans, you're like, holy fuck, like this is going to, sometimes, you know, a simple question can really take a while to explain to somebody because they don't, they maybe just aren't getting it. And I think she asked a question about like going to like a Thai restaurant. And unfortunately, when I think when you're when you're investigating like maybe a potential disease or something that you have that's really bothering you for some people, it's like on a smaller level, maybe they have a little rash on their arm that they would like

to figure out how they can still annoying, still annoying. You know, it's just something it could be kind of more on the minor end. But I think what people maybe don't realize is, like, this is going to be a real pain in the ass. It's going to be a real disruption of your life. And unfortunately, that favorite Thai restaurant that you're going to, you most likely probably can't go there. Or you have to communicate to them, I cannot have oils. I cannot have. And even then, it's kind of a roll of the dice.

You don't know what they're going to be bringing you. They don't maybe even understand the importance of it. And sometimes the meat that they cook, maybe they cook it in large volume, they cook it all the same, and then they mix and match it with the rice and different things that they have. So to get away from that, Matt told me today that you had an air fryer in your purse. Let's go. What's going on with this portable air fryer?

In your purse sounds better. This is actually really important. This is very important. I actually think it's really attractive, by the way. Thank you. We've talked before on the podcast about how there's girls that we're like, well, she's pretty good looking, right? But then when we see them deadlift or we see them doing something that we like, jujitsu probably kind of works the same, right?

They get a little extra points, you know? So walking around with an air fryer, I mean, you never know. Yeah, I just don't care. One comment before we talk about that, one comment about people. In order to change your diet and get restrictive and fix your health problem you have you you have to be able to do anything you have to be at the point in your life where you're like i will do anything to heal anything i'll give up anything i'll go anywhere i'll do anything so i was at that point because i was so sick i thought i was gonna die i was like i don't care

i'll do anything so it's like i was still mad about things i was i literally cried when i had a reaction to cheese full-on cried like for two days it's like i can't eat cheese ever again i bawled um that was probably part of the reaction but yeah it sucks it's hard and you do have to give up your favorite restaurants my favorite type of food was japanese food like what am I going to eat at a Japanese restaurant now? I don't want to eat raw beef. So anyway, air fryer. This is a really good hack for anyone who has food sensitivities and is traveling.

The only places I can eat at safely are fairly high-end steakhouses. Because even if you go to a lower-end steakhouse, they're kind of like, I don't know what's on the steak. And I almost feel like it's kind of rude to go to a restaurant and be like give them certain instructions so i just don't so steakhouses but i can't eat at a steakhouse every day as much as i would love to so what i was doing was getting an airbnb and buying an air fryer this is like 150 dollars and if you only eat in it actually saves money if you're there for a couple weeks but when i was in dubai i realized that my air fryer fit in one of those large it's a suitcase that has to go underneath but it has like you zip close both sides but if you open the

bottom zippers and you put an air fryer in the bottom and you just close it it fits so i can go to a hotel room now and get steak at a grocery store and just cook in the hotel room with my air fryer. I'm really happy about it. Wow. Quick question. Okay, quick question. Number one, we'll talk more about the air fryer,

but you mentioned that you have to go to high-end steakhouses. Have you ever had Korean barbecue? I haven't been to a Korean barbecue since I went on the diet. I'm sure I could do Korean barbecue and just ask them not to bring any of the marinated stuff. Yeah, because there's this place right by my place. It's called Daikon, and you can legit just order

ribeye after ribeye after ribeye. It's just no nothing on the ribeye, and you can cook it right there on the fire. Whenever I go there, I just get like 10 ribeyes. Literally, I'll eat 10 to 12 ribeyes literally i'll get i'll eat 10 to 12 ribeyes and they're good some of those places yeah that just has like frozen meat and you just put it right on the it's not even it's not frozen it's not frozen they bring it out like it's it's raw no sauce on it and you can instruct them i want this but with no sauce i want this and no

sauce and you can cook it right there and some spots you cook it yourself i think too right yeah you cook it yourself i've looked into those in toronto uh and i haven't found places a lot of the meats there are marinated clean marinated so i haven't found a place that's just like i want all those things that would be fun i could do that yeah yeah it's an option i didn't know it was like that because like stephanie she has celiacs as well and so like we can't do any like awesome restaurants like that but i know you can do that take her to diet com brother we're going yeah and you can instruct them i want this but non-marinated oh my gosh and she's listening so she's fired up right now yeah there we go good why do you think sometimes like i have some people in my life that um they do have some issues. They're unwilling to like investigate their diet.

Why do you think that might be? So do they not maybe understand that the diet could be something that can really help? Like I know quite a few people, I think they're, they're all women. Yeah. They have like rosacea and things like that. And they,

I know, I guess they just don't, I don't even know if they just don't want to try, like it would be too hard or too disruptive. What are your thoughts on that? So I can tell you what happened to me. I'm not sure because people are different. So I'm not sure.

But for me, I went to the medical community in grade two. And so from grade two until I was 22, every single thing I was told from people in places of authority was diet has nothing to do with your health. This is coming from the scientific community. So when somebody came up and was like, you should change some of the things you eat, I was just angry because I was like, first of all, you have no idea how much I'm suffering and how dare you suggest that something like diet could fix it to the scientific community

would have figured it out already. Right. and so that's the place i came from so when i the reason the way i got to diet was through the scientific community and looking at the link between gluten uh and autoimmune disorders and mood disorders now most doctors don't know there's a link but if you can research you can go read those papers and there's a link. So I started through the scientific community, and now I'm so far past, like I don't trust anybody anymore. But I would say most people are suffering, and they've been suffering for a very long time, and they're insulted when you say something as simple as diet could fix it because it takes away from the amount they're suffering. And they're told by the scientific scientific community it doesn't work i think the way around that i think the part

of the reason my stories helped people is because i say this is what happened to me it's not your fault uh you're not lazy there's a lot of sick people are just told they're lazy or there are things that they should do and like adding on something else like change your diet it's like if you tell someone who can't get out of bed they should change something you're like i can't get out of bed i can't even think well enough to change an aspect of my diet so i don't think it's because people i think it's because people aren't educated in it i like what you said there like it can be insulting when somebody uh when somebody is in criticism of the pain that you're going through. Yeah.

Or like you should do something to fix it. And it's like, what the hell do you think I've been doing for the last 10 years? Just being happy about the pain. Like I've, I've tried things and nothing fixes it. It's like, oh,

but you're, there are some things, but you can actually fix a lot of your issues, right? Like people should know people should, people should understand. Yes. Like I'm a big, big proponent and a big believer that you can fix a lot of anxiety. You can fix a lot of depression.

Yeah, me too. I also am, I don't, I've never really suffered from a lot of those things. So I want to point that out. Like, so I don't, I don't pretend to know that I know what it's like to be on that side of things. But I do believe that you can solve a lot of your own problems. And I do believe a lot of it has to do with your nutrition. Telling somebody to exercise is an interesting thing because you've mentioned multiple times kind of being almost debilitated, almost completely paralyzed, not only by the physical pain that you had, but by being like depressed.

And that's a tough situation where there might be some folks that are overweight. They have some depression and we're saying, hey, man, get up, get up off the couch and go for a go for a walk. And they're like, I can't move. They're like, yeah, they're kind of just they're angry. They're like, fuck you. You don't understand. You don't understand why I'm on the couch. You don't get it. Some people don't have that if they're not healthy.

And then usually I don't go after the exercise because it's really hard. I've been the person on the couch and I was exercising and it wasn't helping at all. And so that was pretty disappointing. So usually for those people, I say you can start by cutting things out or at least replacing things in your diet. So at least cut out, try and cut out grains. If you can't do that, which you should be able to do, but if you can't do that, cut out the gluten containing grains, just switch over to like keto crackers or paleo crackers. Just like literally just do these tiny changes. Switch over to drinking water. I was so sick. I didn't like water. was so sick i didn't like water i didn't like the taste of water isn't that crazy yes that's yeah i didn't like the taste of water and

so that was a uh so i was drinking sparkling water i still drink i still have my san pellegrino down here somewhere but i didn't like water so start small and don't start necessarily start with exercise um i would start with diet and then if you can get your inflammation down and have some more energy you're just going to want to exercise a lot of people with autoimmune disorders i've found are so sick that sometimes they need to heal for about a year before they start exercising so they're they're eating more calories than they need uh and their body's just repairing itself before they have enough energy to exercise i was kind of like that but now i'm into the whole exercise thing.

I actually think that you need to be healthy enough to lose weight too. So some people, they try diet and they try a little bit of exercise and they're maybe stuck for a bit, but it's my belief that you need to kind of turn your body to be at least a little bit healthy. To lose it. To lose it. I think otherwise you're kind of, you're kind of stuck. Yeah.

And getting rid of some of the inflammatory foods is the easiest way to do it, to do that. You know, we touched on this a little bit earlier, but I want to get like some really clear, like clarification here, because I want to know how, what your messaging is.

Cause to women specifically to help them be open to eating more meat, because I noticed when I talked to my female friends about this or even family members, there's still this intrinsic like negativity towards meat of all forms. You mentioned that they believe that meat's going to make them fat, et cetera. But it's like there's more there where it's very difficult, especially being a man to, to, to talk to them about how this could actually be very beneficial. So from your experience, like what are some things that maybe they could be looking up or paying more attention to, or even people like yourself that they can go look for more

information from? Because I mean, to be perfectly honest, I can understand how looking at someone like me saying, eat more meat. Yeah. I don't want to look like you yeah exactly right so how can you help us out there um okay so first off what i usually tell people is once you kind of reduce some of the more addictive foods like the processed foods you can kind of start to trust your body so women are pretty intuitive and i was not i didn't i didn't even think intuition

was a thing i was so far in the kind of logical area i ignored all that but women are fairly intuitive and if you eat something and then it makes you bloat don't eat that right that's pretty simple um so start to pay attention to those signs and just because somebody tells you something's healthy and then it makes you feel sick afterwards just because they say it's healthy doesn't mean it's healthy so start listening to these things um some people have a problem with aged meat so that can be tricky but like something like lamb try it see how it makes your body feel if it makes your body feel good that's good if it's sugar and then you feel good that's where things get a little tricky it's like that's not good that's high but uh um for people to follow well you can

follow me of course there's one that most of the people in this space are men so that's a bit tricky um if people listening are interested in following somebody who's a nutritionist there's a woman called judy cho and she wrote the oh my god i don't remember what her book is called but her name is judy judy cho and her book yeah her book's really good she kind of runs people through a similar thing i did she's not as restricted as me but she suggests people start with you know stakes basically for a couple weeks i usually say six weeks she says two but somebody in the space with some credentials i really like her sean baker obviously but that's a dude most people in this space are men what do you also because you probably experienced this

when somebody does let's say they do an elimination diet on a lion diet carnivore, they will experience the runs. Yeah. You mentioned, pay attention to how your body feels, but if you end up pooping water, you're like, my body doesn't feel good. Carnivore cure. There we go. Yeah, that's really good. It's a sick book cover. That is amazing.

Rabbi is coming out of a pill bottle. That's beautiful. Yeah, I like her a lot. Yeah. Okay, yeah, transition symptoms. So this is one out of a pill bottle. That's beautiful. Yeah. I like her a lot. Uh, okay. Yeah. Transition symptoms. So this is one of the, this scared me. So when I went to paleo, when I went to a paleo diet, like I said, meat and greens, basically I just felt better. I had cravings, but I basically just felt better. Now, when I went from meat and greens to just meat, I didn't quite, it wasn't like that. So my itch went away really quickly. So I was like, well, that's a good sign if I'm not itchy everywhere. And my mood improved,

not dramatically, but enough that I could notice quite quickly. But I got diarrhea insanely on about day three. And I was like, I mean, Joe Rogan's talked about this three and i was like i mean joe rogan's talked about this but i was like this was early on right this was 2017 so there there was some information but there wasn't a lot of people being like this is normal this is called the transition period i was just like i'm going to die so so it's like this is this can't possibly be good for me if my body's doing this so i lasted about a week and it didn't go away and i was like that's it i'm done and i had like this wonderfully crunchy salad um and the next day i woke up and my wrists were sore and i cried in the morning i had that like overwhelming sense of doom again i was like are you kidding me so then i had to choose between diarrhea and sanity

and no diarrhea and insanity and arthritis and all that and i was like i prioritize my mental health over everything and so i just stuck with it and was like i don't know what's gonna happen but i'd rather live like this than like this um now i know from talking to like thousands and thousands of people that is called the transition period and i have some theories about why it happens and one when you go super low carb or zero carb your electrolytes get all wonky so part of that is your body's electrolytes being off part of it is you lose the microbiome part that eats carbs so that just happens so part of that's microbiome die off that would be called a herx reaction um and then another thing if you increase your fat a lot some people can't digest the fat properly at the beginning so then that can add to it so they're

fired yeah it's pretty it can be pretty it can be pretty bad it's bad it's bad and it's bad for like it depends on the person if you're a healthy person you know some people don't get it there's like 30 of people who don't get it yeah i don't know how they don't get it but if you're a healthy person it's like two weeks if you're someone with an autoimmune disorder for me it was like a month like it can be intense but i could see the other like i could see the other symptoms going away i was like i don't it was i was not happy i was like i don't like this diet i was still feeling like shit i had diarrhea it was just like fuck me like but this work this bad case scenario was way better than the one with arthritis and a mood disorder. So I waited it out.

Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. My digestion is great now. Like, perfect. Everything is good. I can't tolerate aged meat very well. So if I go to a steakhouse and it's aged, my stomach's upset. So I eat a lot of lamb. A lot of lamb.

Mainly a lamb diet. But I haven't called it a lamb diet because the media would not be happy with that. They're so cute. They're so cute. They're so cute, I know, but they're so tasty. Yes, they are. Yeah. In your experience, have you run into people that you believe have legitimately switched to the diet and really weren't able to get much relief from whatever it was they were trying to get relief from? Did they need to do, because you mentioned earlier, like, yeah, we all are a little different

and maybe they had to do, maybe they had to also eat fruit or yogurt or something. I have no idea. So I'm pretty like, from my experience with the diet, most people who go on it and who stick on it and who are strict get better however if you're on a medication and that's especially a psych med and that's contributing to your symptoms and it's one that you're dependent on so you can't get off of it quickly diet can improve things for sure but you have to slowly and painfully get off this stupid medication that you didn't know was addictive before some of those symptoms go away. So I have seen people have the diet take longer because they're stuck on a medication.

But that's not the diet technically. The diet is just like beef, lamb, salt, and water. If you're on a medication, you're not quite there, but you can't get off the medication. So that's one case. I've seen a lot of people, I used to tell people, oh my God, if you're sick, just get on the diet. Like try to stop suffering as quickly as possible. But after, you know, three and a half years of talking to people about it, a lot of people with autoimmune disorders can't tolerate that coming from the standard American diet. So I don't tell people to switch onto the diet i'm like get on it as soon as you can tolerate it because that's at least what put my autoimmune disorder into remission i'd be super strict no spices no butter like just this

um i didn't even have pills for the first two years because i was reacting to the filler in pills it was i was that sensitive um but now i people, if you're coming from the standard American diet, do meat and salad with olive oil and apple cider vinegar. Keep the salad, carrots maybe, no tomatoes, green salad and honey for the sugar cravings. And if you can do that for a month, you're still going to have cravings. But if you can tolerate that, then going from that to meat is way easier. So yeah, the people I've seen it not work for are people who are stuck on medications or have been injured by medications. And people with autoimmune disorders that try and switch into it too fast and are like, I can't do it. I can't do it because their electrolytes go wonky. They can get faint. Sicker people can have a hard transition time.

So slow and smooth. Other than that, I've seen it work on a ton of different disorders. It's pretty unbelievable. It's pretty rare, right, to be allergic or to have bad reactions to meat in general. Has that been your experience in sharing this with so many people? Okay, so most people, yeah, like the majority of people can eat steak they're like oh a steak doesn't sit well some people are like that doesn't sit well and i could say that well maybe that's a super aged steak i don't know why people decide to i hate aged steak i mean it makes it's like why can you have i'll have it moldy like no what the hell it's more expensive and it's old it just tastes like when i was broke and was like yeah that meat's still good i'll eat it moldy. Like, no. What the hell? It's more expensive and it's old. It just tastes like when I was broke and was like, yeah, that meat's still good.

I'll eat it. Yeah. That's what it tastes like to me. Yeah. It's like been sitting in the fridge for six days. And it like smells weird. It smells weird too. It's like, it's not good.

So my body's like, if it's aged, my body doesn't like it. I don't get an autoimmune flare up, but it upsets my digestion. I'm like, that's not worth it. Lamb is aged a lot less. That's why I'm eating lamb mostly, especially in north america it's hung for a lot less time it was just less aged um i went to croatia where the beef is fresh like they were just like cows on the hills and i was buying three dollars a kilogram beef in the grocery store and i had no reaction to that like no stomach problems at all.

But it was like a little tougher. It was really good though. So it's just aged meat. I don't remember where I was going with that. Yeah, I was just asking like have you run into some people that are like allergic to meat? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

My understanding is like there's some subset of people that have gotten bit by a Lone Star tick. Yeah, I've heard about that. They have a hard time with beef. But for the most part, most of the people that you suggest this to, they may have thought they had an issue with beef. But when they switch over to eating beef and making sure it's not drowning in teriyaki sauce or marinade and stuff, most people have success with it. Yeah, I would say most people have success with it. Autoimmune folks, too.

Yeah, I would say most people have success with it. Autoimmune folks, too. I have seen a couple of people with anaphylaxis to lamb, which is bad. But I also went to Hungary and talked to these doctors that run something called Paleo Medicina, where they actually have a clinic that uses basically the same diet. It's a bit different. They prioritize fat more than I think is necessary, but they use that. And they said people who have allergies, full on allergies to beef heal.

So if they avoid the meat they're allergic to and do it for long enough, that allergy goes away. But that is super, super rare. And most people were like, Oh, I don't eat steak. It doesn't sit well.

They're eating aged meat. Have you ever gotten tested for worms? I have tested everything I could possibly test for. Yeah. So I went down that route first. You never had any of that weird shit? I had a candida overgrowth. Was that a long time ago?

Yeah. It was a long time ago. And I got rid of it with a paleo diet. Meat and greens, I got rid of it with that. But nothing else. The only thing that showed up on any of those tests was Lyme disease. So I think that could have been a problem for my arthritis. But my dad has a bunch of the autoimmune symptoms I have

and he doesn't have Lyme disease. He doesn't have arthritis, but the neurological stuff, like the psych stuff. So it's not just Lyme disease. I tell you this a million times, your dad's had a huge impact on my life. I love the hell out of him. Never had an opportunity to meet him,

but I really appreciate all the work that he's put out. Well, thank you. I appreciate you reaching out over the last couple of years when I've been like, things are fucked. I am not doing well. And you've just been checking in. You're like, how are things? That was really nice.

You're very strong. And I think you have a great message. And I think that more people need to hear it. So I'm like, we need to keep this girl cranking. We need to keep this girl going. We need this message to get out there in a bigger way and continue to get more people open to it. Because I think sometimes, you know, if it's just like men talking about it, sometimes just men will do it. And sometimes we won't get enough females to jump in on it. Yeah. With anxiety and depression, how do you deal with it now like when something kind of hits you now are you like oh shit here we go again i wonder if that's something i ate and you're like no i didn't

that's weird i didn't go off my diet but anxiety and and getting depressed um i believe they're fairly normal i think we all uh get a little bit here and there. We get a little flustered here and there or overwhelmed. How do you deal with it now? So I had a hard time. I had a hard time with that for a number of years, I think because I was medicated for so long that I didn't learn any coping mechanisms.

So for a while after I stopped, even when I went on the diet, it was difficult. Um, I did realize in the last year, one of the things I've been attributing to stress was actually flavored electrolytes I was eating. So I kind of branched out this year, if you could call it branched out, I was like, I'll add in some tea, maybe chicken will be okay. And like these flavored electrolytes that are pretty, you're so wild.

I know, I know. Right. And it turns out I've been minorly reacting to these stupid flavored electrolytes. And I was attributing that to stress. So now that I'm not reacting anymore and actually feel less stressed, even though my life hasn't gotten less stressful, I write. I write to keep things under control if i can't get things out of my head um i try to reduce my phone exposure exercise infrared saunas were a game changer past diet like diet first infrared saunas for mood um especially the ones that don't get too hot inside so that you can stay in there

for like an hour and really sweat those are great that was huge so for people experiencing anxiety depression and have already tried the lion diet what about reading a book like the 12 rules of life well i've heard that really works for some people like uh with with your dad around and some of the things that he shares um or some of the things that he shares you know uh publicly are these things that are kind of like uh are these things that have landed on you like you know uh being his daughter or are they things that like you guys don't really talk about that kind of stuff i mean now you're older i know you probably talk about it a lot but when you were younger we talked about it then too yeah yeah i've like uh we've dad is exactly the same on stage as he is at home basically and that's been going on since i was

born so yes we talk about it so those because you still seem really positive like you still and you had a lot of different shit happen to you but um at least in some of the information you're relaying to me and some of the stuff i've heard from you previously i have never really once heard you say like woe is me or why is this happening to me type of thing and do you think that maybe some of the psychology being around the household had something to do with that yeah for sure like when i was in grade two and i was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, my dad sat me down one day because I was like it was bad. I was sitting on a chair instead of sitting on the carpet at school because I couldn't sit on my knees or cross my legs.

Fortunately, I was like, you plebs just wish you could sit on this chair instead of being embarrassed about sitting on a chair. But still, it's a bit embarrassing. That was just the outward experience. But dad sat me down and was like, never use your illness as an excuse and that was grade two it's like no matter what never use your illness as an excuse because that'll just be your undoing and i took that really really really seriously partly because i was like i don't want to be sick i don't want to be any different from anybody else like i'm not letting this stop me do anything. And I was really sick and it did stop me. And it probably, I don't even know because it's over now, but it probably would have benefited me for a few of those days to be like, maybe I need to spend it in bed sleeping instead of just like pushing and pushing and pushing. just like pushing and pushing and pushing.

But if you're, but that also got me to start researching it for myself. So I don't know how much growing up had to do with that. Because I did snap at one point and I was like, I'm going to do anything I can do or I'm going to die trying. I remember having that thought while I was still sick or I'm going to die trying. And I didn't die. So yay to that.

That's great. You weren't using excuse. You were being proactive. You were doing something. Yeah, and it wasn't my, like one of the things I tell people is it's not your fault. If you have an autoimmune disorder, it's not your fault. Something happened, like genetics, bad luck, definitely bad luck. It's not your fault, but it's on you to get out of it.

And unfortunately there isn't a magic cure. I mean, even this lion diet, which seems to really help help it seems to really work oh i'm out there saying that but seems to really work but it's not like now i only eat steak and everything's happy it's like oh no you're gonna go through with like food withdrawal and cravings and be socially isolated and have to eat at certain restaurants and be super paranoid about anything that touches your food um potentially travel with an air fryer in your suitcase. So it's not easy. But I don't know.

I don't know what the alternative is, just being sick forever and then dying early in pain and misery and ugliness. And I didn't want that. I want to ask you something as I came back from the restroom. I heard you kind of mentioned journaling for mental health. And I've been journaling for a really long time. And whenever friends ask me about something that they can pick up a habit, I'm like, start journaling about stuff. But one thing I've noticed is that some people are like, I don't know what to write about or tell me, like, what should I put down on the page?

So you have been journaling your whole life. I think I've heard you since grade one. Number one, how did you pick up that habit? Like, was it like, did you just start journaling or how'd you pick up that habit like was it like did you just start journaling or how'd you pick that up but how has it helped you through the years because i heard you i think i've heard you mentioned before how it's helped like your memory and just a bunch of things so how's it helped you how could you help people figure out how to use it for themselves okay so i can't tell if my memory is better from journaling or just from having so many horrific experiences that I have PTSD.

Not sure. But past that, I remember going into a bookstore and there was this tiny little journal and it had a puppy on it when I was in grade one. It was like a pink journal with a puppy on it. I was like, I want that. And that's when I started journaling. And at the beginning, I think I was just like, I like Jason Hart. But things got dark after that. Fucking Jason messed everything up.

I would say start with, especially if you're dealing with depression or anxiety and you have that stupid voice inside your head that's just yammering at you all the time. Or if you've experienced a problem or you're angry at someone and your mind is like, then they said that. And then this happened. This happened over and over again. Write that down. So just write. I just expelled all the thoughts I didn't want in my head onto a page. So I used it as just like a get out of my head type of thing.

That was part of it. Especially if I had fights with my brother when I was little or my family. That's usually who you fight with. It's like, oh, mom did this. I'm so angry about this. Like, I can't believe I'm this mad um so I just wrote what the what my brain was saying um and then I also did like to-do lists because then it's fun to cross things off that you achieve uh and I wrote down things I wanted in the future and how I wanted my life to be it was pretty random though it wasn't super super organized. And a lot of it, when I was depressed,

a lot of it was anger. And I wrote with whatever. I can remember running into my room. I wrote with whatever was closest. There are some journal entries and it's all in charcoal. Oh yeah, I was just like, grab, write, because I was so angry. So just start with whatever's in your head,

whatever that voice is saying. And if you don't have that maybe write what you want your future to look like or a to-do list including things that you want to do in the next couple of days there's some ideas the thing you mentioned right there about uh what your future would look like um i i did the self-authoring thing years ago when i learned about i was like wow this is massively useful um I think you and your dad are maybe doing an updated version of something like that. I'm not sure. But can you tell people or can you talk to us about maybe like, did he help you figure that kind of stuff out or help you think in that way when you were younger to now?

Probably. We talked about all this stuff all the time. Yeah. And he taught, like he told me that writing was helpful. So you can't grow up with that kind of information being thrown around and then just be like, no, it was all me. Like, so I don't know. I learned about self-authoring, which is, and planning out for the future when I was really little. And I think we had conversations about five years down the road, what do you want it to look like?

I think that happened when I was little. So that definitely contributed. We're working on an app now called AIM, and it's about building resilience. That's the goal. And so we have Victor, one of my dad's grad students, he has a PhD working on it. There's a lot of scientific evidence about how to build resilience in it. But the gist of it is it runs you're not happy and then zeroes in on that and it guides you along steps to make a plan and then to break each one of those actions down into

steps and then to prod you about the steps and then if you don't do the steps you're like why are you not doing the steps is the step too big like maybe this step needs to be broken down yeah uh so that's cool and i'm making it because there are definitely areas in my life I need to work on. And I'm like, that would be really helpful, I think. Just having something easy to be like, yeah, you know,

I should really be paying attention to this. And here's, it breaks it down into the smallest step that you're willing to take. So it's like if it's just, yeah, drink one glass of water today. Like super small,

just whatever you're willing to do. I'm excited though. I think that's great. Cause there's like a lot of stuff that we hear about and we're like, Oh, that would probably be a good idea for me. And then you hear about it again. You're like, that would probably be a good idea for me. And you hear about it and this happens over and over again, but you never get yourself around to doing it. Something like meditation or, or things of that nature would be simple to incorporate, especially if you got a reminder, like, Hey, you uh why don't you take three minutes to go do that yeah yeah there's a bunch of things that could be helpful i've wanted to start making a morning routine app or habit stacker app like all these little tricks you can have to be super

useful i want to drill into listeners real quick though how useful that the self-authoring and probably what aim is going to be because self-authoring like that's a lot of work took a lot of hours to do god yeah it took a lot of hours to do it so whenever i talk to friends about it they're they look at it and they're like bro i don't know it's work hours and energy hours crying oh my god when i did the past authoring that shit made me get emotional like it really because it really has you dig into certain aspects of your past etc that is so important though it is yeah but the funny thing is i read it like uh like i don't know eight or nine months ago i was like looking about looking at what i read when i was 24 and i was like that's cool oh shit this is

fucking dope because i'm doing a majority of the stuff that i said i wanted to do right because it really has you plan things out in specifics, you know? Yeah. It's sick. I love self-authoring. The past, so part of, I finished my book, but it's not going to be out until maybe February. What's the name of the book? Could be worse.

I got a little bit of hell from that. You get hell on social media, but it was like, your life isn't so bad. I was like, do you still have all your joints? It was not great. Yeah, it could have been worse. That's the point of the book. There you go. But self-authoring passed.

Part of the reason I wrote the book was because I had so many of these bad things happen to me that it was like, got to get them out of my head. many of these bad things happened to me that was like gotta get them out of my head like if you one of dad's like lessons is if a memory still makes you cry write it out fully that's like bastardized version of how he would eloquently put it but write out memories that make you cry or that make you emotional and get that out of your body because if it still makes you emotional there's like trauma stuck in there somewhere or something that you have to work your mind around so had the past authoring part of self-authoring so it has past present and future the past authoring that makes you write out your past that can be very intense my book helped with that a lot i think because it

was all my past and i've rewritten it so many times that I can write that it doesn't make me cry anymore. Yeah, so that's cool. Why do you think that infrared sauna is effective for you? Do you think it's kind of like meditation, or do you think literally just like getting that sweat out is helpful in some way? Yeah, I think it's that. I literally think it's getting sweat out. When I used to have really horrible food reactions and had that feeling, feeling it was specific impending doom in the morning horrible impending doom if i got into a sauna and sweated for like 30 or 40 minutes and that's one like i said it's not too hot it's just

the kind that really makes you sweat about 30 minutes after i got out i would have a significant mood boost so it wasn't meditation it was me in there being like, I can't think, you know, brain fog and things. And now I'm clearer afterwards. I think there's some evidence that when you sweat, you get rid of some toxins that you're building up. And I think especially people with autoimmune disorders or sensitivities can get in, use that and just help their body get rid of these things so that's my theory i don't know i mean there's like heat shock proteins people talk about that

too but this was really intense really quickly and so i think that was just kind of helping my body detox yeah it makes some sense and i think it's like almost even like a form of exercise for some people that maybe aren't currently yeah you get some of the benefits you're burning calories and that's a good point i wanted to touch you get some of the benefits. Yeah, you're burning calories. That's a good point. I wanted to touch on that earlier. If you're so sick that you're on the couch, a good place to start for some of the benefits of exercise

and the benefits of getting some of the stuff out of your body is a sauna. Because all you have to do is sit in the sauna. So even if you're not feeling well, you can move to a sauna and not feel well in there. And that's usually what I recommend. and diet and then just wait and you're gonna feel like exercising when you get the energy um yeah i've talked to some people who are like no start the end start the exercise but i'm talking about really sick people that like have joint like damn physical damage and sometimes exercising i think might just add on to that damage and then their

body's just like nope too damaged to heal a little bit and then you're just going to want to exercise i think do you do anything specific to kind of like handle your sleep because we know like you know with a lot of things that may happen here some people may not be able to sleep well and a couple not being able to sleep at night with mood disorders and all that like you're just perpetually feeling like shit yeah right so for you did you have sleep issues is there anything that is unique that you've utilized to help get better sleep at night so you could recover better so my sleep was totally fucked up i had so i was diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia i was taking aural to stay awake because i was exhausted all the time um i was like twitching around at night it was not good um when i fixed my diet and went to paleo i slept like a baby so things just worked out for me in the last year and a half because of

all the health problems my dad's been having and my mom's been having, I got super stressed and I stopped being able to sleep. I was like, oh shit, now I'm just awake. This is, what is this? I'm tired, but I'm awake. And I tried everything, but it's okay now. Like it's back. One of the things I was eating, those flavored electrolytes were actually impacting my sleep negatively for about a year i was wired at night it turns out i was reacting to the freaking electrolytes and i was like really there's such a tiny little bit of stuff in there i didn't pay attention but sleep hacks diet for me diet's my only hack so i'm sleeping fine now on the diet if people are having leg cramps or something at night then i suggest they look at their electrolytes because that can be an electrolyte

imbalance magnesium maybe maybe sodium it's hard to say um cold showers before bed if you like a cold dip or a cold shower that can really relax you turns out i do have some sleep hacks wim hof breathing yeah if you do some rounds of wim hof breathing and really get into it, I can hold my breath for three and a half minutes now. What? Yeah, if I do three rounds. So you do 30 breaths in and out and then you hold your breath for a minute and then two minutes and then three minutes. You don't even

oh man, that'll put you to sleep. It's kind of unpleasant but it's so great after. Those are my sleep hacks. That's a hell of a sleep hack. What are you doing for exercise? What are you doing for, you were mentioning that you're starting to get a little bit more into exercise. Yeah, so this year is the first year.

I had arthritis really badly in this wrist. And then I had my ankle replaced again in 2019, January. So I had some healing to do still. But this year I've actually been able to put my hands on the floor so what have i started doing i started pretty slow like i'm still really weak my left leg is way weaker than my right leg because of the recent ankle replacement and 10 years of ankle replacements before that um but i found this machine on amazon your listeners are gonna be like what but it's the squat machine because of my ankle. Actually, you showed me a trick with that. The slant board. The slant board and I'm going to use that now.

But I haven't been able to squat because I didn't have a slant board because of my ankle. And I found this machine on Amazon that was like $150 and you just hold on to the bars and it has a seat and it has pedals and you just go down like this and up but i can do i can go all the way down on that yeah um because it has kind of pedals and you're holding on to something and you're holding on to something so it's really good for people who are super weight weak or older or just starting and i've just started doing that more and more and more as much as i can but it's like going up and down it's a full-on squat it's a

full body workout with the bars too. It's like a rowing machine type of thing and squat. So that's what I've been doing. Isn't that? Yes. The Humper. I cannot. It's similar. I cannot.

You should have just told us the Humper. Is that, do you guys talk about that? We've heard of the Humper. Yeah. That is the best machine I've ever used. I don't know what we're watching. I don't think I have that one. Yeah, that's the Humper.

Yep. That is full-on what I have. That is the greatest thing. It's right by my bed. I love it. That's an old-school Humper machine. Okay, we need to have Slantboard Guy send you a Slantboard. Yeah.

Slantboard Guy. I don't know if it's going to beat the Humper. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's good. It good it's good anyway that's really helped that's really helped me that's really helped me get get stronger so people people gotta understand like because i don't think they realize like the surgery had like that was on your foot what exactly was it okay so they take um the bottom part of the leg bone. I'm going to simplify it down here. Bottom part of the leg bone. Yeah. Cut that off.

And then the top part of the ankle bone here, cut that off. And then they put a piece of metal here and a piece of metal here. And then they also take the side leg bone and put two screws into it and attach it to the main leg bone. Yeah. So this is like intense so i had the surgery except they didn't fuse my bones when i was 17 so just uh this the surgery part when i was 17 but

they installed the ankle replacement crooked just a little crooked so i was in chronic pain for 10 years and i had to get that replaced um but the surgeon, Dr. Hinterman from Switzerland, I flew to Switzerland because I went to five different surgeons. I went to two in Canada and three in America, and I was like, can you fix my ankle? And one of them said, well, remove it and fuse it, which means you just can't move your ankle anymore. One of them, they all had vastly different suggestions and i

was like this is my foot that's a problem five different people all say something different a couple of surgeons here top surgeons wanted to remove all the components and put in the joints they had designed one of them this was the top surgeon ankle surgeon in america he went in and he said we're gonna have to remove both components. We're going to have to fuse some of the bones. It'll probably wear out by the time you're 45. And then you're looking at an amputation because you won't have any bone left to work with. Yeah. I went with my mom and I've been to so many surgeons that I left. And I was just like, I was obviously that was not fun, but I was like, you know, fuck that guy. I'll just go find somebody who knows what they're doing.

But my mom was just green. I had to go out and give her a hug. I was like, I'll just keep looking. So I spent two and a half years and a year before that. So it was more like three years in chronic pain looking for a surgeon. And I flew to the guy who made the joint I have, which is called the Hintegra, total ankle replacement. And I went to Switzerland and I got there and I have, which is called the Hintegra, total ankle replacement. And I went to Switzerland. And I got there and he goes, why is, you know, this German guy or Swiss guy, it's like, why is your ankle scar so big?

It was like, yeah, we don't do that here. It's not so big here. And he said all he had to do was replace the top component that was crooked and fuse the two bone, the bone on the side to give me more stability. And it would last forever and i was like oh hmm okay so this is why if you need surgery you don't just go to the local surgeon you go to a surgeon that says we can fix you you don't go to the surgeon that goes there's a 50 chance yeah 50 chance with you i'll go find somebody where there's a 90 chance he fixed it i was jumping on a trampoline yesterday for the first time since I was 16.

But it took almost realistically two years to fully heal all the soft tissue and everything. So exercise was just like, if I pushed myself, I just injured myself. I've just been taking it easy. But now I'm using the Humper. Have you ever gotten so frustrated with the whole food situation that you ended up with maybe like an eating disorder of some kind? I was worried at the beginning. Like when I first went on to the paleo diet, I lost weight quite rapidly.

So in the first month, I went down three pant sizes. I probably lost 10 pounds, and I was like, okay. And then when I started having food reactions where I was adding it in and having autoimmune flare-ups, I was on mushrooms one time, like six or seven months in, and i was still riddled with anxiety and not feeling well and i looked in the mirror and i was like am i too thin is this an eating disorder like what am i doing because there wasn't there weren't a lot of facebook groups this was really it's fringe now it was it was really fringe then nobody was talking about it and i well maybe you guys were talking then. Nobody was talking about it. And I, well, maybe you guys were talking about it.

I wasn't talking about it. And I thought maybe it was an eating disorder. But I was like, no, like it correlates. I was keeping such strict notes about my symptoms. Twice a day, all my symptoms. I could see the patterns and the flare-ups. And I was like, it's not in my head. But it's hard if you're going to doctors and they're like, it's in your head.

But I'm not worried about it. It's not an eating head, but it's hard if you're going to doctors and they're like, it's in your head, but I'm not worried about it. It's not an eating disorder now for sure. Um, but, uh, yeah, for, for when I wasn't feeling well,

I was a bit concerned. Your body's going to look a lot different when you start to find the protocol that's best for you. And if you're somebody that's not really, you know, really pounding down like lots of food, then, um,

you are going to, you are going to lose weight. There is potential to where you may look thin, but hopefully you don't get frail. Hopefully you don't take it so far that someone wouldn't take it so far that they get frail or something like that. Have you utilized any intermittent fasting? You did mention sometimes you eat meat, and then you don't really feel like eating it,

and it might be 24 hours later that you get to it again. Do you intentionally use any intermittent fasting? Not intentionally. So when I first went to the meat diet, I was eating three times a day and then I was like, oh, I'm full eating three steaks a day. So then I went to two steaks a day because I just wasn't as hungry. So that was intermittent fasting. It was basically lunch and dinner and that would be intermittent fasting.

That just happened naturally. Then I still had, because I'd eaten so much at the beginning when I first went on the diet, I'd had a baby and I was like carrying some extra weight and I was like, why? I'm only eating meat. Why am I carrying extra weight? So I started doing some extended fasting also because I was like, maybe like, I don't know what my body can do now that I'm only eating meat. Anything's possible. What does that feel like? So I did some serious extended fasting. Also because I was stressed and it was beneficial to stress tolerance. But I was playing around with it. I don't do that anymore. And now, yeah, I eat about once or twice a day.

But it's not forced. It's just I'm not hungry. We, we actually do that quite a bit. I do a bit of fasting. Mark does quite a bit of fasting too. And I'm curious because like I'm a lot of like woman message and they're like fasting is hard and we've had some professionals. Exactly.

Exactly. So, so do you have any advice for maybe women that want to add some fasting into what they're doing? But precautions, things that maybe they can supplementation that could help make it a little easier.. What could you do? I don't know about supplements. I don't take any supplements, so I can't do supplements. But I would say the faster you do things to your body, even going low carb or going keto or going to the lion diet or going to the carnivore diet,

the faster you do it, the harder it is on your body, even though you might heal faster in the long run. So that can upset women's cycles. So I've had a lot of people reach out to me and go, oh, I haven't had my period when I just switched over. Like, I'm feeling better, but I don't have my period. And that's usually with, like, rapid weight loss as well. And so I think that's just something your body kind of does. If you're rapidly losing weight, I can understand why your body would be like am i starving like what's happening um no period for a while for i think if you do things slowly it shouldn't be a problem like i'm eating like once or twice a day everything's regular super healthy so i think it depends most people who switch over to keto or something and have

problems some of them get better adding some honey into their diet i've also heard that yeah i haven't done that and i'm fine so i think it depends on the person but honey seems to be pretty easy on people if they need some sort of carb you know i'm curious about this you mentioned your daughter and i've also heard you met like i want to like know a lot of people who have kids um a lot of them are like oh i have this in my house because my kid eats it right feed the poison to your children feed the poison to your children but obviously you're on this diet um parents when they're here this they're like i would never just have my kid just eat meat uh but i'm guessing like you feed your child in a healthy way how has what first off what protocols do you give to feed your daughter in a healthy way? And secondly, yeah, what do you have her avoid?

How do you help her be healthy? This is a good one. This is a good one. So initially, she was breastfed until she was about 13 months old, and I started incorporating like meat fat, because breast milk's full of fat. It's very similar to meat fat. Babies love meat fat. So I was taking the, This was such a spoiled baby.

I was taking the ribeye fat part and just giving her that. She was just like, oh! That was kind of the transition into solid food. Then I started with steaks. Technically, even

according to at least the Canadian Food Guide at the moment, baby's first food should be meat. they finally switched that because it used to be iron fortified cereal and then they're like wait a minute we have one of those but it's a whole food meat so i switched over her over to meat and i was super paranoid about giving her food because i was so sensitive and was like there doesn't seem to be a genetic component, but like, what if there is, and I can't let my daughter go through anything like I went through. So I was really scared, really scared. And I was scared when babysitters came over. Cause I was like, I swear to God, if this woman gives my child a cookie, like her body's going to end up somewhere. It was like, it was like intense. So we were really slow and really

careful. And I kind of thought of thought okay you introduce a new food wait three or four days and just see a lot of babies will have something like you know eczema or like bumps or rashes so i was like if anything pops up after foods reintroduced we're taking the food out so we were pretty slow with that she doesn't need any grains she doesn't need dairy she doesn't need soy she she's had sugar one time when it was in a sausage my mom gave her and she screamed all day like one of those like one of those kids walking through the airport that are screaming and you're like what's wrong with her parents it was that noise and i was like holy shit that's horrifying and it was like two days of that she's but other than

that she's perfect uh she goes to a Montessori school right now and I took a month communicating back and forth being like this is what she can have um so right now she eats I would say like 80% meat um she kind of picks she'll be like I want lamb I want beef I want chicken so that's 80%. And then she'll eat fruit. Don't have any citrus fruit, but she eats fruit, like a lot of berries. And then she'll have carrots and parsnips.

It's pretty like compared to the normal child. It's pretty limited. Yeah. But she's also old enough. I figured that if she got to about five, she'd probably be able to figure it out herself. Like if you give a two year old a cookie and they, they're like sugar high or something and screaming, they're not going to be able to figure it out herself like if you give a two-year-old a cookie and they they're like sugar high or something and screaming they're not going to

be able to know but if you're a five-year-old i figure if you eat something that hurts your stomach you can be like that gave me a stomach ache so i so i'm just trying to get her to an age where she can kind of eat intuitively but she's unbelievably stable um we've been like we've traveled around the world, gone into different time zones. She's never screamed on a plane. She's a little tiny angel. And I attribute a lot of that to diet. Oh, the food is huge, especially with a little tiny kid. And a lot of times the kid will suck down 40 grams of sugar from a little- Give a two-year-old cupcake that's like as big as their head holy shit and it's like man what is that doing to that kid's liver to have that high fructose corn syrup and what does it do to their mood and things

like that yeah i got to spend some time with uh dr gabrielle lion when i went to the east coast and she stayed over our house uh for a night and she just like whipped out these hamburger patties and started feeding it to her kids. Her kids are both under the age of like four. Yeah. And the kids just like gnawing on this burger and I'm like, oh, the kid doesn't need to heat it up or anything. And she's like Yes, Scarlett doesn't either. She's like, she doesn't know. She doesn't know. She's like, this is the way I feed her. So she doesn't know any different. So she just eats it this way. You know whatlet likes actually just chowing down on burger yeah well good um

carnivore bars you know the carnivore bar company yeah i've seen them before yeah yeah so we have a bunch of carnivore bars which is just it's pemmican it was like meat salt and water that is the best baby food I have ever seen. Now, personally, I don't, I don't eat them very much because they made a honey version actually that I really like their honey versions. Awesome. But the regular version, I don't really eat.

Scarlett eats maybe two of those a day. Like she has one in her backpack. She brings them like after she goes to Montessori, she eats one. They're the equivalent of an eight ounce steak and they are yeah these guys yeah they're very good yeah that is so healthy and if you need like a quick kid food kids especially if they haven't been taught to want these really sugary foods scarlet's obsessed with these if she wants dinner she'll be like can i have a bar and i'll be like no that's like, but it's still really healthy. But like, no, you have to eat a steak.

Like, but she prefers those over steaks. It's crazy. So I wish like they need to market as a baby food because that would be so easy to give little kids. It's an interesting thing when you start to eat meat, how it automatically puts you in a position to be able to like lose body fat and to do a lot of great things with your health because sometimes you're hungry and it's kind of inconvenient to get to something and even if you could get to something that's something that you could get to would be something like that which would still be healthy like yesterday i think i saw you i ate one actually eating some i had a honey one of those yesterday carnivore crisps carnivore crisps too those are good also

great company yeah their brisket is so good it's got a big old layer of fat it's so good carnivore crisps but carnivore crisps too those are good also great company yeah their brisket is so good it's got a big old layer of fat carnivore crisps are bomb have you ever had pete monti's beef i haven't but chris brought some and it's frozen and i'm gonna take it back and try it which cut did he give you he gave me ribeye but a lean one do you like fatty ones do you like fatty meats? Yeah. Okay. Shoot. Okay.

We have to get you some of those 10 ounce ribeyes too because Piedmontese they're a company that we work with but the cool thing is that they have

really good cuts of steak amazing cuts of steak that taste good they're super tender but they're lower fat and then they have other cuts like their ribeyes

etc. that have a really good amount of fat so like no matter what if you want a lower like what's the flat iron? I wanted to try the low one yeah so like just to see yeah the flat iron delicious yeah the flat iron by itself it's just like i think it's a six or eight ounce steak but it has like 84 grams of protein only four grams of fat which if you don't know what like if you've never experienced it

sounds like oh that's gonna taste like a shoe but it's the best steak that you're ever going to have. It's ridiculous. Yeah, they're very good. It's like super tender. So yeah. I'm going to eat that today. I'm going to drive home and I'm going to grab one of the 10 ounce ribeyes and I'll come back. If you guys are still here, you'll have one of those too.

They're good. Okay. Yeah. That'll be sick. Awesome. Yeah. My wife was actually asking because our son's six months old, so she's still breastfeeding and she was curious.

Did you stay carnivore all the way through post-pregnancy as well or no so i okay i would have given my symptoms because my pregnancy was miserable miserable and i was only eating meat and greens i was getting so much hell from my in-laws particularly being like you're gonna like die of nutrient deficiencies and i was like die of an autoimmune disorder before i die of nutrient deficiencies um my body screw off what was going on during your pregnancy that you said well okay so i put myself into remission with this paleo diet stopped taking ssris which exacerbated all my symptoms i was going in and out of food reintroductions having these autoimmune flare-ups and after about a year

I was like i'm just not going to introduce anything screw it. I'll be stuck on this I was eating like 17 foods, which is a hell of a lot more than two 17 foods and I was like, I just want to be happy So I stopped introducing everything and maybe a month after that I got pregnant and my autoimmune symptoms came back even on the same diet and I was like What the hell is this just pregnancy like you diet. And I was like, what the hell? Is this just pregnancy? Like you Google pregnancy and they're like, oh yeah, you feel like you're about to die.

It's normal. Like everything's normal for pregnancy. And I was like, well, I'm itchy. Should I really be itchy? Like, isn't that a kind of an immune response? I was like, no, that's also normal. It's like, okay. So I waited throughout the pregnancy.

And then with breastfeeding, I still didn't get better so it wasn't the pregnancy I'm still stuck here so it was 4 months into breastfeeding where I was like I'm itchy my arthritis was back enough it wasn't as bad as pre-diet but it was back enough that I was worried I was going to drop scarlet

I was waking up to breastfeed at night and my right wrist would buckle when I pushed myself out of bed and i was like i can't live like this and that's when i went to the beef diet so four months into breastfeeding um even and i was like well if i'm healthier the baby's gonna be healthier it's got to be that and at that point it was so absurd scarlet like if i ate too many i really like collard greens if i had too many collard greens scarlet would appear as if she had a stomach ache after she breastfed and so i cut the collard greens out like i cut some of these things that i was like is that giving her a stomach ache is

that possible and that improved things but when i got rid of salad her stomach aches went away and she had cradle cap and that went away but i would have done it earlier i've seen i've seen people have perfectly healthy pregnancies on the carnivore diet um i would have done it earlier and i will do it next time but i didn't know about it and then what about fasting by any chance just curious i wouldn't i usually tell people i don't know okay like eat intuitively but i wouldn't force intermittent fasting or fasting on anyone breastfeeding or pregnant because your body's using so much energy like uh when i was breastfeeding i i was eating i might have been eating 3 000 calories a day instead of like what i eat now

which is maybe 1800 just because i was hungry so if you're like well i'm trying to lose pregnancy weight i'd change what you eat and not try an intermittent fast or anything i don't think i think your body burns more you burn more calories breastfeeding than you do when you're pregnant from what i've heard yeah i've heard that too they estimate like four or five hundred calories extra for being pregnant yes you have to eat a lot versus when you're breastfeeding which is like a thousand calories or something like that. Yeah. By the way, Andrew, real quick, tell people the code for Piedmontese. Oh, sorry.

Yeah. So we've been raving about Piedmontese beef. Make sure you guys check the link down in the description below. But if you guys are listening to it, just head over to piedmontese.com. It's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. At checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $150 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Again, pedmontes.com, Promo Code Power Project. Can I throw a code in there, too?

Go. Whatever you want. If people want to check out the Carnivore Bar and the Carnivore Crisps, they can use code MP10. There you go. But if you have kids, Carnivore Bar. I'm definitely going to get on that yeah see see what happens because if i had known about i just didn't kind of i didn't put two and two together or they didn't exist i probably would have tried to use that for scarlet's when she was really little

because i use beef fat but that's annoying this is if you like if you need a food i'd try that let me know what let me know what happens. I'll definitely do the meat fat. Oh yeah, they will scarf that down. That sounds like it's right up his alley because as I'm cooking steak, he's just like reaching for it too now. So it's been pretty cool, but to be able to

just cut a little slab here, that little guy. He'd like that. I'll put links down to the Carnivore Bar and Carnivore Chris in the description if people want to check that out. Your kids are about to be so little guy he's like yeah i'll put links down to the carnivore bar and carnivore carnivore chris in the description if people want to check that out your kids are about to be so jacked guys yeah yeah can't wait yeah i was actually gonna say you know the fact that you're eating 1800 calories you're not that like you that's quite a bit of calories for somebody your size and you don't do much resistance training right now that's awesome i i assume that's what like i'll tell you you can

tell me you probably know calories pretty well um if i'm eating twice a day i might eat maybe 12 lamb chops 12 lamb chops yeah or like yesterday what yesterday i ate um i would say four double lamb chops and half of a lamb shank but that that was yesterday that's definitely in that zone because there's probably quite a bit of fat in it too yeah just have to put in my fitness model but it's like that's that's close to that area and you eat a lot of meat that isn't like that is pretty fatty right yeah yeah so that's what i was going to ask. I've never really heard anybody talk too much about lamb. I ate a lot of lamb and goat growing up.

I know. Goat's totally fine, too. That's in the same category. Goat's so good. Might have to check out some lamb. Get a really good goat meat. If people are super sensitive and they're on the carnivore diet and they're still experiencing diet, especially if they have Crohn's or something and they're on the carnivore diet and they're still experiencing diet especially if they have crones or something and they're still experiencing digestive problems it took me almost two years to figure out oh i actually respond better to lamb than to steak and it and it's not

the beef that's the problem it's the aging so when i went to like i said i went to croatia and it was fresh beef totally fine but everything in america is aged and canada too europe is a little bit easier but if people are like it it's not sitting well, try switching over to lamb because it's not aged as much. When you were mentioning about your pregnancy, what exactly were you eating on your pregnancy? And do you only switch to eating some other stuff just because heat you were getting from family members or social media? Oh, I didn't switch.

Okay. Yeah. I think you mentioned eating some vegetables yeah yeah so that was so i was on the paleo diet and then when i got pregnant and that stopped working so the paleo diet i was eating i was drinking this type of brickworks apple cider like alcoholic apple cider it doesn't have sugar anything in it um like i had some apples i had some peaches i Those were the kind of safe fruit. I was eating greens, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, and meat, obviously, beef and chicken mostly. That was totally fine. I was asymptomatic. And then I got pregnant, and I started reacting to things. And so I cut out sweet potatoes because

they were carbier. I cut out honey. I cut out fruit it's about four minutes four months into the pregnancy i cut out all and i went to meat and greens four months into the pregnancy so what i was eating for the beginning was meat and greens plus sweet potatoes and honey and apples right it was pretty limited and then i dropped those and went to meat and greens um and i was eating a lot of salad, but I didn't add foods back in. I was like, I'm not going to add something in that makes me feel like I'm some horrible monster is about to jump me. No, that's not healthy. Yeah, I didn't add things in that would have made me sick.

And just curious, I'm going to get some clarification because maybe I think you pretty much mentioned what you eat now, but through like, you know you know these past few years like the past two years has there been any small new additions that you were like okay my body can actually handle this now or is it still mainly meat um salt maybe honey i don't know if you do honey at all but like yeah okay so um for the first two years of the diet i didn't do anything because i was scared and then for the last year and a half yeah i started just testing things out and i tried reintroducing fruit and i can't eat any fruit for sure no um just berries like organic berries didn't work out um but then i started adding in chicken like can i eat chicken um it turns out i can't really eat chicken it doesn't have i don't get these huge

autoimmune flare-ups that were really obvious that i usually get now i'm like i'm kind of physically uncomfortable i'm a little bit sleepier than usual my skin will break out a little bit um what i did incorporate into my diet that i thought was okay were flavored electrolytes for the last year and it took me until about two weeks ago and i was like oh my god that's what's been upsetting my sleep i've had this like stuffy nose it's been stuffy enough that i've been sleeping kind of sitting up but i got covid like a year ago and i i had a stuffy nose since covid so i thought it was covid like or something but no it was these electrolytes my skin's been breaking out a bit but i was like maybe it's the vodka i'm drinking a little bit of like that makes sense and i haven't been able to sleep and

i was like well maybe that's the overwhelming stress of having like a sick parent um and i removed these stupid electrolytes and i was like oh i can breathe through my nose and my skin is clearing up it's still bit irritated from like it's been two weeks now i can sleep again for the first time in a year so to answer your question i am back to beef lamb salt and water and it's with the occasional vodka that i don't react to and to clarify why it's made from greens i didn't drink for a while like i didn't drink for about a year and a half and then i just tested it out and i i first tested out with gin and i had a really bad reaction and i was like alcohol's out but they add botanicals to gin

just like little flavorings and things afterwards bee feeders they actually add almond extract so when i had bee feeders i had a full-on nut allergy reaction was like wow can you put that on the bottle for people like me i don't know how many people there are like me but vodka and bourbon because they're distilled multiple times and distillation is like a serious serious chemical process so there isn't any grain left if i can drink those if there's nothing added after so vodka in russia i was reacting to vodka in russia and i was like what is happening and they add sugar to vodka which is why it tastes so good but so yeah i can add that but no i'm back to the strict diet,

which was frustrating a couple weeks ago. I was like, really? I was hoping if I was on this, I've been on it for three and a half years, I thought I'd get some resilience. Because my idea is, I've seen people go on it and heal and then add things back in.

I've seen that happen. And that was my goal, but not quite yet. Although I may have been aggravating my system for the last year with the electrolytes. You travel a ton or have traveled a ton. What are some of your favorite spots to visit? I've done so much traveling in the last while, even with COVID. I thought Belgrade and Serbia, it's not expensive to go travel to.

People don't really know about it. Almost everyone there speaks English. It's super easy to travel to and it's people don't really know about it almost everyone there speaks english it's super easy to travel to it's really pretty uh the nightlife is really good they have a whole bunch of clubs i think it's on the danube uh that are on the water and it's cheap people are super friendly women are gorgeous men are but women are really hot Belgrade, Croatia is awesome what was that wink for? there was a wink

what? what? what was next trip? hot women Belgrade, Croatia maybe even more Croatia is really nice but it's more expensive and then I went to Dubai

which was wild it was wild I've never been to a place where there were so many people obsessed with how they looked like I was in the area that's full of influencers and things

the hotel I was staying at was wild i went down there and i was like i can't like this is not a relaxing place to lay down it's full of like there are a lot of russians there and so those russian women they have like they've got they've got everything down it was like this beach isn't for beaching it's for like looking hot everybody there was hot particularly the women so dubai was that was the most wild part of it i was like this is crazy people here are like nines everywhere and so if you're an eight you're like ah fuck this is my place is there a different area for me to go to you know yeah yeah direct me you know that's crazy that was cool those uh but croatia and serbia were really nice all right cool good to know you mentioned a

hangover pill earlier oh yeah yeah okay yeah yes okay people should know about this so it's called dihydromyricetin which isn't very catchy nobody can spell but it's this compound and when i was 23 i had this 20 no i was younger i was probably 19 because i was in university and i had this horrible hangover and i was in bed and i was like oh we're in like we're past the 2000s like we have to have something to deal with hangovers and so i looked up some studies and there's this compound called dihydromyricetin and there are studies done on rats so what they'll do is they'll pump rats full of alcohol get them drunk and then they'll do things like swim tests that see when they stop swimming wow yes i don't

know about the ethics boards for rats but like these are serious um did you test like hold them up from their tail to see for anxiety to see how long they anyway that poor rats but they so dihydromyuricin if you take enough of this stuff while after just after you're drinking i find it reduces my hangovers by maybe 70 and i don't drink unless i take. And the other thing that can reduce hangovers are electrolytes, like massively. So part of the hangover is dehydration. So especially if you're taking shots, those things will dehydrate you like crazy. So when I drink, I have vodka or bourbon with electrolytes and soda water. So I'm having like a cup of water per shot.

If I have a shot, especially with zero carbs, I'm having like a cup of water per shot if i have a shot especially with zero carbs i turn into a like a different human it's so i can't take shots um but stay hydrated use electrolytes for hydration and i wouldn't drink without taking dihydromyricin there's evidence that it helps break down acetaldehyde which is one of the like toxins you kind of produce when you're drinking which which makes you feel terrible the next day. There's evidence it weakly works on GABA. And because alcohol is a GABA drug, you get a GABA crash the next day. So it's kind of anti-anxiety that way.

And there's evidence it can be used for anxiety and depression too. This is a pretty nice supplement, dihydromyricetin. And I'm going to be white labeling a product at some point. I'm not telling you about the product because I'm going to white label it, but it's good. I would use it. Awesome. Thank you. Oh, go ahead.

Poop story? Oh, yeah. I feel like I did a poop story with the carnivore diet. I can tell you when I was in... Yeah, Russia. I didn't mention... i was in in russia yeah russia okay so i didn't i didn't mention uh so i was in russia this year and it's it was hard for me to find meat i could eat there because a lot of the meat there is sprayed with a preservative which took me a long time to figure

out because i was like why is this making me feel terrible it's like feels like a preservative i know my body reactions like feels like a preservative. I know my body reaction feels like a preservative reaction. It was a preservative reaction. So we found a farmer. Andre tried super hard to locate a farmer and to get meat. We had this farmer. We had this cow. They weren't going to hang it for too many days, so it wasn't aged.

This was like a huge thing. And so we got meat delivered, and we had the steak for dinner and woke up in the middle of night with food poisoning at like four in the morning and this is a poop story so food poisoning bottom down terrible andre was actually throwing up as well like serious i didn't get that sick but he got sicker than me serious food poisoning and they're like oh it must have been a mistake and i was like no those fuckers were trying to steal my cow they're like we called them we called them and they were like oh sorry we um the guy picked up the wrong meat that was supposed to go to a restaurant

and i was like what restaurant are you kidding me like we just woke up in the middle of the night anyway that's my poop story they tried to steal my cow i'm sure andre's like it's probably mistakes no it wasn't they just think i thought we wouldn't notice like we noticed badly it's a good one there you go your dad's healthy dad's having a rough time right now oh no i thought he got he seemed like he was getting healthier for a bit right yeah he was doing better and better and better and then we added in these electrolytes this was he's really sensitive neurologically. He has neurological damage.

It looks like an autoimmune disorder that attacks nerve sheets. It's not good. Him and I have very similar symptoms. And we added in these electrolytes and he had a worse response. And it was hard to tell what was going on because it was like, we just didn't think about it. Like it was like, that can't be about it like it was like that can't be it and so that kind of worsened things and then he was making the slushy with the electrolytes and adding citric acid to it to make it sour that made things worse it's it's it's easier to look

back on going backwards and then he went off the diet a bit it was like berries and things just simple things it's like let the poor man have some berries like but that worsened symptoms so he's back on the diet super strict but he's recovering slowly but it's been really rough like the last couple of months have been pretty rough so he's gonna get there but he's having a rough time right now to get there, but he's having a rough time right now. Unfortunately. Damn. I hope he can come out of it okay. Yeah, me too. And sooner rather than later. Andrew, want to take us on out of here, buddy? Absolutely. Shout out and thank you to PiedmonteseBee for sponsoring today's episode. Again, links to them down in the description below. Promo code

PowerProject to save 25% off. Please follow the podcast at MarkBell's PowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. I actually did forget it for a second there. Nsima, where are you at? At NsimaYinYang on Instagram and YouTube, at NsimaYinYang on TikTok and Twitter. Don't forget, go on

Apple Podcasts and give us a review. It helps us out. Mikayla, where can people find you? Mikayla Peterson on Instagram. Uh, my podcast is Michaela Peterson podcast on YouTube. Michaela Alexis on Twitter. Peterson doesn't fit. Michaela Peterson is one letter too long.

Oh, wow. Yeah. All right. It's a great to have you on the show today. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you for inviting me. That was fun. These guys kind of heard me recently. I was like, um, you know, we need to have some girls on the show today. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. That was fun. These guys kind of heard me recently. I was like, um, you know, we need to have some girls on the show. We do a terrible job representing women. We were talking about influencers one day and we, uh, people on YouTube and different people that we listened to. And I'm like, we barely said anything about any ladies. So I don't have very many women on my podcast. I think we need more women like you that are out there. If you have any suggestions for us, please let us know.

Yeah, leading the charge, you know? Okay. Okay. Yes. I'll think on it. We need more. Okay. Nicole Arbor is fun.

There we go. Yeah, that's fun. Let's get her. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Catch you guys later. Bing.