Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Ask Me Anything Keto & Fasting - With Ben Azadi

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts, go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep127/. To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership, go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. In this episode, we cover everything you have ever wanted to know about keto, ketosis, and fasting.  In 2008, Ben Azadi went through a personal health transformation of shredding 80 pounds of pure fat. Ever since, Ben Azadi, FDN-P, has been on a mission to help 1 billion people live a healthier lifestyle.  For more than a decade, Keto Kamp founder Ben Azadi has shared his unique point of view and expertise to help others become the healthiest versions of themselves. From understanding the ketogenic diet, intermittent fasting, and other ancient healing strategies, Ben's followers look to him for his take on the most effective techniques to become healthier at the cellular level. Ben Azadi has been practicing ketosis and fasting strategies for years, long before it gained widespread popularity, and if you're looking for ways to calm inflammation so that your body can heal, you've come to the right place. Ben is the author of three best-selling books, The Perfect Health Booklet, The Intermittent Fasting Cheat Sheet, and The Power of Sleep. Ben has been the go-to source for intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet.  He is known as 'The Health Detective' because he investigates dysfunction, and he educates, not medicates, to bring the body back to normal function.  Ben is the founder of Keto Kamp; a global brand bringing awareness to ancient healing strategies such as the keto diet and fasting.  Ben is the host of a top 15 podcast, The Keto Kamp Podcast; and the fast-growing Keto Kamp YouTube channel with over 120,000 subscribers.  Please see our medical disclaimer.

And I always say if you treat your health casually, you end up a casual tea. So we don't want to be casual about the health. We want to be very intentional. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here. And I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe in yourself again. Let's jump in. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you more.

my dear friend Ben Azadi. Now, I know a lot of you follow his keto information, and I just love that. We have a lot of similarities in his community and my community. So he's just, he's a beautiful human. He's so knowledgeable and such an incredible student of the human body, especially when it comes to the ketogenic diet, getting into ketosis, everything you ever wanted to know about ketosis. Ben has probably not only discovered but analyzed and tested on himself.

He is such a wealth of information. If you are not familiar with Ben and his podcast, go check out the Keto Camp podcast. He has a book called KetoFlex, which is amazing about metabolic switching. He has a great TikTok channel, YouTube channel. He's on Instagram and he's a ton of fun. So what we did in this podcast is very similar to what I've done in, other podcasts with other experts, health experts, and that is really answer your questions. So Ben and I did ask me anything, and it's specifically around the ketosis, the ketogenic diet,

and fasting. And I'm not joking to what I say that we got done with this podcast and we both looked at each other and went, whoa, that was good information. And a large part of it is because we answer so many of your. questions on a daily basis and we see the trends of what you all are wanting to know, needing to know in order to succeed with the ketogenic diet and with fasting. It was just really fun to put our minds together and to be able to help you all thrive being in ketosis and thrive with fasting.

So a couple questions that we answered that I'll give you an insight into what we talked about, we talked about varying in and out of ketosis. How do you know when you should stay in and when you should get out? We talked about what happens if you don't want to lose weight. Should you still do the ketogenic diet? Should you still fast? We talked about the fastest way to get into ketosis. What do you do if you don't get into ketosis? What's the sweet spot for ketosis? What liver do we need to nourish to get into ketosis? How do you be a better fat burner? what kind of foods are the best to lean into if you want to burn more fat. I mean, the list was endless.

We just went down one by one by one. This is such a good podcast interview for those of you that are looking to build what I call a fasting lifestyle. Remember that ketosis, ketones are a byproduct of your body burning fat. and your body burning fat is a part of what you need to build a fasting lifestyle. So it's a piece of the ketogenic puzzle, whether you are a ketogenic diet fan or not. If you are trying to make more ketones, you're trying to use fasting, you're trying to get into that healing state of ketosis, I hope we have answered the questions that have been burning on your mind. This was so fun. Enjoy it.

And if you like it, please leave both of us a review. It's super helpful to get the message out to the world. And if you have more questions and want a part two, let us know. Ben Azadi, the keto camp podcast and keto camp expert. Here you all go. Okay, resetters and keto campers, do we have an episode for you? Both Ben and I get so many questions that are really vital for you. thriving with your ketogenic lifestyle, your fasting lifestyle, and really basically your overall

health, that what we wanted to do is try to take some of the most prominent questions and put them here on one podcast. So you guys sent in your questions. Who knows where we'll go? We may go down some interesting paths, but I just want to say welcome to not only Ben, thank you for doing this with me. So let's start there. Yeah, thank you, Mindy. And good to have the. Keto campers and the resetters and our group is amazing. So it's good to have this combined together for an amazing conversation. So we're going to have some fun. Yeah. Thank you. And you guys, you know, I can speak only to my audience in the sense if they don't follow you, they need to go

follow you because you know what's really beautiful. And hopefully you guys will see in this conversation is that Ben and I share the same value system when it comes to health. So the lens in which we look at this is always empowering and giving you the power back. It's not in, you know, we can look at keto as like, oh, this magic exogenous keto, ketone drink changed your life. We don't think like that. We think that you're the miracle. You have the power in you.

And I can only speak for myself. and then I'll let you comment on this, Ben, that the ketogenic diet and fasting, at the core, what it's doing is it is tapping in to your own innate power that nobody taught you even existed. Would you agree? Exactly right. Yeah, you're right. And we both share that same premise that the body is capable of healing itself. We just got to do our part.

So what I believe you do, what I know you do really well is you offer hope to so many people who have felt hopeless. not only that, it's not just giving them hope, but also giving them practical and research-based tools like these ancient healing strategies, ketosis, fasting, et cetera, so that when they apply it, they notice a difference right away. But it's not that one tool that's going to change your life. It's a combination of many tools apply the right way for a right amount of time, which we'll get into. And keto is one of those tools. So is fasting. So I love that. It's the premise that we follow. There's no shortcuts to health. And I always say, if you treat your health casually,

you end up a casual tea. So we don't want to be casual about the health. We want to be very intentional. Oh, I love that. That was good. I haven't heard you say that yet. That's good. That's quotable.

That's going on a square on Instagram. I love it. Boom. Okay. So let's start up. We've chunked these questions down into keto questions, fasting questions, and then I love the bottom as fun questions. Hopefully some of the other ones will be fun.

But let's start with this one. This is such a good one. Should I do keto if I don't want to lose weight? Yeah, I'll start with that. Yeah, go ahead. You start. I believe the answer is yes. I do keto not because I want to lose weight.

I've gone through my transformation already. I do it because of so many other reasons. Number one, what it does for my brain cognitive performance. I want to be productive. I want to be resilient. And ketones have that ability to cross the blood and blood brain barrier and give you that alternate fuel source. But also the longevity, anti-aging benefits, what it does.

to just lower inflammation in your body. So it's a great tool, whether you want to lose weight or not. So many people that come to keto primarily do it for weight loss, but I would say they stick with it for the health benefits. So the answer, in short, is yes, I think you should still do keto even if you're not looking for weight loss. What do you think, Mindy? Yeah, I think this is a common question. I get a lot, which is, okay, I'm at my ideal weight. What should I do? And the new way I've been looking at this is that if we look at just the metabolism in general, we've got our sugar burner and our fat burner systems. And if all you're doing is working on your nutrition, which is phenomenal and you're eating, you know, all day long, or you're choosing to eat, you know, a higher carb diet,

and you're never making ketones, you are literally depriving your cells in your body of 50% of its fuel source. So when we go and we say, well, I'm not feeling so good or, you know, I'm aging, all the things that we label, is it possible that all we're doing is we haven't tapped into this other 50 percent? So I think that's the first thing that I want to say is you need glucose, you need ketones, doesn't matter your weight. And so you need it for anti-aging. you need it for to be able to perform well. It is that important. And this is personally why I want everybody to get ketones.

What are your thoughts on that? No, you're right. It's metabolic flexibility. And there's two ways to become metabolically inflexible. You could be a sugar burner and only burn sugar. That's the most common way that most people are metabolically inflexible. Or you could do the opposite and only burn ketones and use ketones, which we'll talk about later.

There's a question about that. So the goal, like you said, to use both pathways. We have these amazing pathways that are there for a reason to use. And if you don't use it, you'll lose it. And this is the case for this process as well, burning sugar and burning ketone. So you're right. The goal is metabolic flexibility and freedom and using keto and burning sugar is the way to do that. Yeah. Awesome. Love it. Okay. Second question. Can't get my ketones above point five. What am I doing wrong? You know, that's such a common question. A lot of people will, not only the part about getting the ketones up, that's common,

but the statement that what am I doing wrong, right? Yes, thank you. Yes, that's what I was thinking. I was like, we got to address that statement first. Yeah, there's nothing you're doing wrong. You know, everything is on the way, not in the way. It's always a learning opportunity, first and foremost. There's nothing you're doing wrong.

Now, can you change your approach? Maybe. But when it comes to ketones, it's not all about the higher the ketones, the better. the more fat loss, the more results. That's not the case. Just like we don't want high glucose, why would we want high ketones? So 0.5 is amazing. Yeah. Congratulations. Celebrate that. You're officially in ketosis. Exactly. So you're burning fat instead of sugar. Your body is using some ketones. Now, how can we get it higher if that's something you want to do, which I have seen. People do feel better. And there's a good sweet spot between 0.8 and 2.8, beta hydroxybutyrate.

that's a good sweet spot I've seen most people feel well. So what can you do? Well, fasting is a great way to get those ketones up, which I'm sure Mindy will talk more about. And MCT oil also has been proven specifically caprylic acid, which is the C8 type, has been the most research in terms of ketone production. So you might want to add some MCT oil to your coffee, to your tea. And then also there's about 30% of MCTs in goat dairy and sheep dairy. So if you're eating, you might want to incorporate when you're eating, you might want to incorporate sheep and goat dairy as a way to bump up the ketones as well. Ooh, I love that.

Yeah, you know what I always think is that we can't go from chasing a number on the scale to chasing ketones. So once you're in, you're in. And so, yay, be in, be excited. You know, I think you and I, I don't know if you remember that conference we were at with Dominic Degostino. And he, it was just our group in a separate room. and we were talking about what's the number that everybody should be in for ketosis.

And he said, like, his sweet spot was like 1.0. Do you remember that? Yeah, I do. Do you have a sweet spot? Yeah. Do you have a ketone sweet spot? Yeah, mine's around the same thing. Because here's why he said that.

And here's why I'm saying the same thing. Because once you've been doing keto long enough and going into out of ketosis, you're actually going to have lower ketones because your body is actually using the ketones, which is great. when your cells are metabolizing it, which is what you want, you won't get 3.04 put on unless you do a long fast. So like you said, with Dominic Di Augustino, 1.0 is great. That's where he feels great for me too. 1.1, 1.2, I feel amazing. What about you? Do you have a sweet spot? So sweet spot for me, yeah, it's like 1.0, 1.5. I would say 1.5.

when I go on a longer water fast and I get it up into like two and three, I love how calm I feel. But it's the, on the day to day, I really am looking for that energy and that focus and I can get that any type thing above point five. Yeah. And if you're point five, like that's something to celebrate. You've done some work. Congratulations. Now, if you want to get it higher and maybe experience more results, you can do that with the MCTs, the fasting, etc. But 0.5 is awesome.

Congratulate yourself and celebrate that. And is there anything you want to say about when they said, what am I doing wrong? What would you say to somebody if they're like, I'm doing everything, but what am I doing wrong? I can't get this right. It must be me. Yeah, it's nothing you're doing wrong. I mean, it's amazing that you're exploring different avenues and you're taking so much action

and you're studying and applying all this information. And all of it is a learning opportunity. it's all growth. It's all, you're making changes and that's the beautiful thing about it. And everybody's journey is different. And so many people are fixated on the result, achieving the goal, right, achieving that 1.5 key tone reading or whatever the goal is. But goals are not for getting goals or for growing. It's not about hitting the goal. It's about the things you do and the lessons you learn and the experiences along the way. So I would just say, celebrate the journey. You're not doing anything wrong. It's all part of it. And I know you

share a similar philosophy. So what would you add to that, Mindy? Yeah, I think that's like our big, again, another place that you and I unite is the thing about the ketogenic diet, the thing about fasting is this is how the human body was meant to be treated. You just have been living in this modern world that has you living a life that's in 180 degree opposition of how the human body wants to be taken care of. So if you can't sleep, it's not like, you know, sleeping is a healing state, fasting is a healing state, keto is a healing state. When we struggle in these moments, there is nothing you're doing wrong. There is an interference to your own internal powers. So I think a more powerful question to ask yourself is what is interfering? What is blocking me from getting into a deeper ketosis?

because then when you ask that empowering question, you will find the answer. But we have been around the diet culture, we have been shamed, we have been guilted, we have been, we've beaten ourselves up, we've, we're trying to attain pictures of supermodels on, on magazines, and all of that has us outwardly looking. And then when we see our friends do keto really well, we see them fast really well, we assume it must be us and that we must be wrong. So I really don't want that to go away, that comment to be missed because there's nothing you're doing wrong. There's just some interference. If you're trying to get into a deeper ketosis and you're not getting there, there's just an interference. It's physical, emotional, or chemical. Let's figure it out. It's a beautiful reframe instead of saying,

what am I doing wrong? What's the interference? And that will get you in the right direction. It always points you right. Yeah. It does. And it's, and people think they're, they're failures because they don't hit the numbers that their friends are getting. But no human being is a failure. Failure is more of an event. But when you reframe that, what am I doing wrong to what's the interference? Then there's no such thing as failure in that scenario. It's just changing things up and exploring that avenue, which is fun. It's exciting. Yeah. You know, the thing on failure, if I look at everything in my life that is amazing, it all started with a failure. I hit a wall and then I went and looked for solutions.

And then those solutions appeared and now my life is in a whole other level. I feel like we could do the same thing with that comment you just made. It's like, yes, it's an event, but it's an event that has an opportunity. If you ask the right question, you keep hanging in there looking for solutions that will take you to a whole other level. So I welcome failures now. Yeah, I'm with you 100%. And you know what? I believe failure doesn't even exist unless you quit and give up.

So you never gave up. There you go. You hit the failure, he hit the wall and then you made a pivot. And then the failure went away. You learned the failure turned into a lesson. And that's what we want. We want the lesson. So everything we share here is to, you know, help you pivot, help you make changes and then

overcome that. And the lesson is found in that. Yeah, 100%. Okay. What if I am in ketosis, but I'm not. not losing weight. Oh, yes. This is very common.

I know you get it a lot. I know. You go. I'm going to let you take this one first. Yeah. So, I mean, weight loss is a worthy goal for sure. You know, if you want to lose 50 pounds, 100 pounds, I'm with you. We want you to get healthy.

And if part of that is getting to your goal weight, I support that. However, the human body is amazing. And it doesn't really focus and prioritize weight loss. As a matter of fact, losing weight is anti-survival. and the body actually needs to get healthy, optimize our hormones, inflammation, and as a result, as a side effect, the weight comes off. So if you've been doing a lot of the things that you're learning between Mindy and I and you feel like you're just struggling to hit that weight loss on the scale,

one thing you can do is just throw away the scale first and foremost, like put it away for a couple of months and focus on what I call NSVs, non-scale victories, right? Are your energy levels improving? is a huge win. Skin complexion getting better, clothes fitting better, getting some body fat done, body fat percentage. That's a great metrics. Taking photos, the number on the scale is a liar, first and foremost, because that scale will fluctuate for so many reasons, as you know, Mindy, if a woman has her menstrual cycle, she'll routine more water and that'll bump up the number

on the scale, right? If you're sore from a workout, you might get a higher number on the scale. So that'll just frustrate people when they just are so fixed-dated on that. So pay attention to the non-scale victories, just keep doing the work. And the last thing I'll share here and then I'll send it your way, go back to the fundamentals. Like, is your sleep top notch? Are you getting quality of REM sleep, deep sleep? Are you getting enough restorative sleep? Are you moving your body throughout the day? You know, the fundamentals of health, how are your thoughts? Do you have a gratitude practice? Revisit the fundamentals. Make sure that's down pat. And then you could explore different fasting schedules and eating plans and all that. But make sure those fundamentals are

on Pat and take your attention away from the scale and focus on those non-scale victories. What would you add to that? Yeah, super well said. You know what I like to do in those situations is I like to ask, crawl into my body and go, okay, what is my body trying to do? And I think what we have lost sight of is that the number one priority for the body is to stay alive. So what is fat?

Fat is your body's way of keeping you alive. It is storing toxins and extra sugars, extra hormones. It's had to find a place to put it in order to make sure that your survival increased. It didn't put it around your heart and lungs. It will put it around the liver. That is a place. But instead of packing fat and toxins around your organs, it put it around your belly, your glute, you know, your arms, all the places you don't want.

So let's work with the body. If you're coming to fasting or ketogenic diet and you're not getting the weight loss results that you want, what's the next level? What else could be stored in fat? Well, we know hormones. So run a Dutch test on yourself. Find out where your hormones are at. We know toxins.

What do you know about your toxic load? Have you looked into heavy metals? There's a lot of other questions to ask yourself. But the fat is there for a reason, not to annoy you. It is there to protect you. So your job becomes, how do you line yourself up with your body and say, okay, body, I'm ready to drop this now. What else do I need to know how to do? And what else do I need to let go of?

That's so good. The toxin part is a big play here, as you know and teach very, very well because the solution to pollution is dilution, right? So the body is very smart. And when toxins into your body, it will want to dilute that by putting it into your fat cells and fat storage. And if you're doing all these things, the lower glucose and insulin, keto, intermittent fasting, but you have all these toxins and your innate intelligence knows when you start burning those fat cells, those toxins get released. Whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't want that.

So it'll slow down the fat loss effort. So it's important to explore those avenues, heavy metals, doing a Dutch test, changing things up, changing up the routine, like all personal trainers that are really good at their job. They always change up the workout routine. You always want to change up your routine. So there's several things you can do. but toxicity is a big one that I would explore as well. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Okay. Oh, this is a good one. Can you gain weight by doing the ketogenic diet? And I'm going to add, and if so, what do you do about it? Yes, absolutely you can. You could do a protein, a prioritize your protein on keto approach and a caloric surplus. So you want to increase your protein intake. dietary protein intake and healthy fats.

So you're increasing by increasing your protein in fat, of course, you're increasing your calories, which is going to help put you in this growth phase. Combine that with working on your gut because you're able to assimilate all these nutrients and now build muscle, build protein, combine that with strength training and combine that with quality sleep. Like that right there, absolutely, you could put on some healthy weight. I mean, there are CrossFit, Ketogenic CrossFit athletes, Ketogenic Bodybuilders. I interviewed Robert Sykes on my podcast, who is a natural keto bodybuilder, like the guy's super

fit. And he does keto, 100%. And he puts on a lot of muscle. So it can be done. You just have to be more strategic and maybe look at your caloric intake, protein intake, making sure you're getting enough protein, working on the gut, lifting weights, and quality sleep. And you'll definitely do it.

If you want to gain weight, you'll definitely do it, is what you're saying. If you want to put on weight, which is not talked about enough. We get this a lot in our community where people are like, well, should I fat, you know, it's kind of what we said in the beginning. If I, should I be going down this path? If I, if I don't, if I, if I, if I don't want to lose weight, I actually want to gain weight. So, and what if you're concerned, like, let's go to the person who has tried everything to lose weight. Just, I mean, like, doesn't want another pound or two on their body has high cholesterol. And their doctor has said, you should never do the ketogenic diet. what would you say to that person as far as what do they need to think about before they go into

the ketogenic diet? Yeah, you know, that's tough because a lot of doctors do say that. And it's hard because the doctors have the white coats and they have a lot of authority and it's hard to go against that. So I would make sure you're doing your own research. And to your point, so can you, the question, I wasn't sure if the question was about can you add weight like intentionally with ketosis or can you add weight like unintentionally? It's two pronged. And you know, we don't know because it's social media. You grab one question.

But I think it's a two pronged that I wanted to make sure we highlight. Yeah. So the opposite end. Can you gain weight if that's not your goal on keto? It can happen. And here's how it happens. And here's how you could slow down your weight loss efforts. Too many fats. You know, a lot of people who do keto, they're adding in their butter, their bacon, their cheese. They're putting the excessive amount of oils on. there are salads and foods and all that. So fat is great, quality fat is great, but your body does need to burn the dietary fat before it goes to your body fat. So in the beginning of doing keto, I think it's very important to increase your healthy fats to really teach your body

to start utilizing fatty acids. But it gets up to a point where now your fat adapted, usually 14, 21 days in, you could dial down that fat, let your body get into your own body fat. So that's where a lot of people get things a little mixed up because their goal is to lose weight, but they're adding in all this fat because here's the problem. When somebody goes on Dr. Google and they look for what are the macro nutrient percentages for keto and they'll see, you know, a common chart is 70% fat, 15% protein and what, 5% carbs. I think I did the math right, something like that. And they see 70% fat and they're like, oh, you know, they're looking at their app and they're only at like, I don't know, 46% fat and they still have dinner to go.

So they eat an abundance of fat to get to that percentage. But here's the deal. Your body could get that fat from your dietary fat, the plate of food or from your butt, your hips, and your thighs. So once you understand that, you can dial down the fat and let your body tap into its own fat stores. And that's where fasting, when you teach what you teach and how you do fasting, is such an amazing tool because you allow your body to do that the right way. Well, I like that analogy that you can choose to get into ketosis through two different versions.

of fat, the one you ingest or the one you burn. Right. Which way do you want to go? Because this has been a big myth that I think has permeated the ketogenic culture, which is the ketogenic diet is a high fat diet. I don't agree. I agree that you need to lean into good fats. And I agree that we have villainized fat.

But if I want to get more ketones, I actually go into fasting and use that as a tool to get more ketones. Would you do the same? It's exactly right. And that's the better way to do it. It's way better. It's not a high fat diet unless you make it one. It doesn't have to be a high fat diet. It's a low carb diet. Very different. And there's two ways to do that. Fasting or increasing your fat. And if you want to burn body fat, fasting is probably the better way to do it. It's way better. And then the other thing I would say to this question that really goes into a lot of different ones. In fact, I'm going to tie it into the next question, which is about high cholesterol, all is that we have lost sight of the fact the liver is your fat burning organ.

But I'm going to say that I get like the liver is your fat burning organ. It's not your thyroid. We have, we think the thyroid is all about weight loss. It's the liver that is all about weight loss. I'm not saying the thyroid shouldn't be addressed. But if your liver is congested, when you go into fasting, when you go into the ketogenic lifestyle, what's going to happen is you may gain weight. if your liver has got a problem, you might not, your cholesterol might go up and you might get more

bloated. You might have more detox reactions. And the way the culture has taught you is that if that happens, this is the wrong diet for you. The body doesn't work like that. The body has a way of telling you there's a problem. And one of the ways it does that is through symptoms. So I would say we can't lose sight of the fact of how important the liver is. And you have some good, like, bitter foods. I love it when you tell the story of the bitter foods and how many bitter foods. I never remember them until you say them again. But talk a little bit about the importance of bitter foods and what people can do to really

love on the liver so that they can get the weight loss. They can bring down cholesterol. What can we do for the liver to support it? Yeah, no, what you said is so valuable and so important to understand that amazing liver. the soccer mom organ that's what dr dog's okay because it does everything including helping you burn fat and then the second thing you said about the symptoms it was spot on mindy symptoms are such a blessing and a gift from the body it tells you something needs to change or you need to something's going on that there's interference that we have to deal with it's not a matter of just ignoring the

symptoms or putting a band-aid on the symptoms it's exploring it and your body's giving you these amazing clues so look at your symptoms it's a blessing it's such a cool thing that you're innate intelligence is doing. So I love that you share that. And yeah, when it comes to the liver in regards to keto, it's important for many reasons, detoxification, burning fat, but also it produces bile. That bile is not only needed for detoxification, but also the bile helps break down the fat. And when you're increasing your healthy fats on keto, but your liver is sluggish, it's been beat up through medications and toxins and processed foods and excessive alcohol, then you can't produce the proper bile flow to break down the fats, which is one of the most common reasons why

somebody will say, I did keto and I felt worse, the liver needed some love. So to your point, what you were sharing earlier, bitters for the liver, right? Increasing your bitter rich foods can be very simple to do. Applesider vinegar is terrific for the liver, but also for AMPK and for fat loss, but also for glycemic response from a meal. So apple cider vinegar before a meal could be a great tip. Apple Sutter vitter. I do too, Mindy. I hate the taste of it, but I love the benefits. I hear what you're saying.

I have to do a video. I take the capsules, though. What? I take the capsules. Have you tried those before? Oh, from Paleo Valley? That's exactly what I take. Yeah.

Oh, that's a good idea because every time I take it, I'm like, I don't like, like, every cell of my body is like, I hate this. Me too. It's disgusting. I don't know how people do it. So the capsules are the bypass, and Pileo Valley does a great complex. like, so take three of those before a meal. Coffee. Coffee is also bitter. So organic shade grown coffee is great. You also have arugula, dandelion greens, dandeline tea, ginger, ginger tea,

lemons and limes. You could sprinkle, squeeze lemons and limes over your keto meats. It helps break down the fat. So yeah, you want to be very strategic about loving your liver, as you said. Yeah. You know what my new favorite bitter food is? Is radicchio. Yeah. So I, you know, when you're not doing bread, my local farmer's market, they have like a heritage radicchio. And it's, it's like firm. And it works so well.

It's big. It works like bread. So I just wrap up all my meat in it, some raw cheese. And I'm like, look, I'm getting, I'm going keto, but loving on my liver at the same time. That is brilliant. I would love to do that. That sounds super cool. I'll take a picture of the one I get because they, right now they've got it.

And, you know, it'll be gone in a couple of months. but it makes for, you know, one of the problems when you create a wrap, when you're going to ditch the bread is that the whole sandwich falls apart in your hands. But with this radicchio, it doesn't because I roll it up like it's like a burrito and it stays together and I'm getting the bitter benefit for my liver. Brilliant. Ridicchio burrito wrap. I love it.

Yeah, radicchio wrap. I love it. Okay. Oh, this is good. what foods can be eaten to help you stay in ketosis? That outside of radicchio. Right, exactly. And apple cider vinegar.

Are there foods we can eat that will like, once you're in ketosis and you want to stay in ketosis, what can we do to stay there? Yeah, in general, if you track your carbohydrates and you stay under 50 total grams of carbs per day, you should be in ketosis, you know, granted those 50 grams or so from carbs or from non-starchy, green leafy vegetables, et cetera. So most people will remain in ketosis just by tracking that one metric. I do think I do see a value in tracking that in the beginning, but I'm not a fan of like long-term obsessive tracking and all that.

But in the beginning, it might be helpful to get an idea of how many carbs you're having. The MCTs that I mentioned earlier, great way. So add in some goat and or sheep dairy. As I said, 30% of each goat and sheep dairy product has MCTs, which helped your body produce more ketones. And then you pair that with intermittent fasting and you should be on the right path. Anything else who would add to that? What do you think of adding fiber to your coffee?

So one thought that I've had is that we talk so much about our human cells needing ketones, but where do the bacteria play a part in this? And this was actually came from a conversation I had with Dave Asprey a couple years back. And oh, and then Stephen Gundry also talks about this. is that when you feed your microbiome and the fiber that it needs, it's specifically prebiotic fibers, then now you've lined up not only your cells, but the microbiome, to be able to move you into ketosis better. And when you move into ketosis, you kill hunger. That's one of the signs you're moving that you're in there. So I've been experimenting with a couple of things, organifies balance.

It's really easy to take. It's a probiotic with prebiotic fibers in it. So sometimes I'll just put that in my water and drink it throughout the day. Dave believes that you should take like a product like FBR from systemic formulas, like a fiber, pre-fiber, and put it in your coffee and blend it because his feeling is that if we take coffee, MCT oil, and a fiber, and you blend it, that that actually will help you get into a deeper state of ketosis. and I believe it's because you're also working with your microbiome. What do you think of that?

No, I love it. I sometimes have put that in my coffee. The one that I've used in the past was the inner fuel products, but I have the FBR from systemic. So that's going to be something I put in there. Yeah, and I noticed that it doesn't raise glucose and insulin as well, at least when I've tested. So you don't have to worry about that.

And to your point, you're feeding that gut, you're feeding the good bacteria, what it needs to create the building blocks, to produce buterate to produce BHB. So yeah, I think it's a brilliant tip, and I would add that into the mix. Okay, last question before we go into our fasting questions, which may be some overlap.

Is the goal to always be in ketosis? No, it's not. And me and Mindy agree to this. The goal is to use this one tool to reset the metabolism. And why is it important to use ketosis? Because we have a keto deficiency, and there's nothing new about keto. It's not a fad.

It's a fact. It might be new to you or nuance, but it's not new. It's been around just like fasting for as long as humans have existed. That's why they're called ancient healing strategies. When we fast forward to this day and age, the average American is eating 300 or 400 grams of carbs. And they're eating that all day long. And they are experiencing a keto deficiency. And that's where that study came out from the University of North Carolina,

Chapel Hill that you've spoken about. I've spoken about. They looked at over 8,000 people and they have determined that only 12% of American adults. are metabolically healthy. That means 88% of American adults are not. And that was before COVID. That's probably in the 90s right now, 90% plus. So we use ketosis as a way to remind the body,

look, you have this amazing other pathway, the ketogenic energy burning pathway. Let's use that. But we don't stay in there forever because that's not the goal. The goal is not to be dogmatic and put yourself in a box. The goal is metabolic flexibility and freedom.

And if you're in ketosis for too long, there's a whole set of problems, which I won't get into. That's another form of metabolic inflexibility. We want to go back and forth. That makes it sustainable. That makes it much more enjoyable. And that gives you the metabolic freedom. And Dr. Pampa, our mentor calls it diet variation.

I call it keto flexing. So I know you agree with that, Mindy. What can you add to that conversation? Yeah. Yeah, I think that the goal is to be really good at, I like switching, is the word I used in Fast Like a Girl. is there's a whole chapter on why metabolic switching is the key to weight loss, especially for women, because we're meant to switch in and out.

And it's like that little switch of going from sugar burner to fat burner has become so rusty for so many people. So just because we get this switch into fasting and we're like, whoa, I feel good. I'm losing weight. I'm doing amazing. We just want to stay there because that's what we've been taught. We've been taught that once you find your diet, stay on your diet. Once you found your health tool, stay in your health tool.

the hardest thing to get across to people is it's working now. That's awesome. And now let's keep varying it. And let's keep varying it. That is how the human body is designed is through variation. So it's a tough one. It's a tough one because once you feel like superhuman in ketosis and especially with a tool like fasting, you don't ever want to leave, right? Yeah.

I love that. Metabolic switching. That's great. So it was time to switch out is the way my brain says. Okay. Indy, do you want me to read the fat? I think it'll be cool if I'm going to be cool if I'm a fast. Yeah, you can do that.

Yeah, why don't you go for that? That's good. I just do it from the top here. I'm looking at the list. Yep, go for it. So we're transitioning resetters and keto campers to your fasting questions. These questions are so good, by the way. Like kudos to all of you who submitted it.

We appreciate the question. So here's the first one, Mindy. Is there a limit to how much fasting the body can do weekly? That's a handful. What do you think about that? Yeah. Well, okay, so I'm going to go into the nuance. I feel like if you,

your woman, let's start there. Remember, you need to fast your cycle. So that's one of the premises that I've been teaching. So if it was the week before your cycle, you actually wouldn't want to be fasting that week. So any fasting would be too much that way. The second thing is based off of what we just said, which is if you are doing too much, doing like three-day water fast every week or one meal a day all the time and there's no variation, then you're fasting too much. It doesn't matter if it's weekly or monthly. Now, having said that, I don't know if you and I've ever talked about this, but I had a really interesting case a couple of years back of a guy who had lymphoma.

And one of the things that we saw outside of detoxing was that he would do a three-day water fast every week. And the idea was to reproduce Walter Longo's study of getting rid of the senescent cells, rebuilding the white blood cell count. And so he did that every week. Plus he detoxed. And at the end of the year, his numbers were normal. His white blood cell count, all his markers, the cancer markers were normal. Crazy. But that was, he was guided and he had a severe situation. But for the everyday person, we got to vary it. You can't, yeah. And you know you've done too much if your hair is falling out, your anxiety's up.

You're not sleeping. It doesn't matter what the scale says if those things are happening. That's not quality of life. Yeah, well, so that's an amazing story. You're right. There's always nuances of somebody has cancer. They might be more aggressive working with somebody on that. Of course, if you're very much overweight and obese,

you might get away with more fasting versus somebody who is at their goal weight. And like you said, there's always nuances to the women out there. If you have your menstrual cycle, you teach that getting, you know, not doing too much fasting before the week. but too much of a good thing will be a bad thing. And that goes for fasting, that goes for autophagy. I know we fall in love with these tools and then we want to do more of it. Me and Mindy are the same way.

Yeah, you're talking to two all in people. Exactly. We're like, we don't dip our toe. We're like, oh, let's go all in. So we feel the pain when you don't want to switch out. Exactly. We have to balance it out with mTOR, which is the growth pathway. MTOR and spurts super healing.

But if you're always an mTOR always eating, not good. Tophagy is great, but you're always in. an antophagy, you could actually lower your immune system, lose muscle mass, not good. So there's a balance there. And your book, Fast Like a Girl, it's going to teach a lot of those variations, especially for women. All right. Next question, Mindy, is, does eating zero calorie foods mess up the fasting?

For example, pickles, bone broth, and sour trout. Would that mess up my fast? Well, okay. So the first thought is zero calorie. when I hear zero calorie foods, I'm like, what do they do? Like, what do they have to put in that to make it like it's got to be packed with chemicals? So it makes me very nervous when something is low in calories, low in fat, because it's a chemical bomb and that's going to cause you more health problems.

So that's the first thing. But then when you list off what they said, those aren't really zero calorie foods. So pickles, bone broth and sauerkraut, they're all healthy foods. And here's the research that I've seen that I've seen that I've, really, really love. And it's about a fasted snack. And it shows the study that I quote often is that they took two groups of people. One group they had them fast for 13 hours. The other group they had them fast for 15 hours. The 15 hour group at the 13 hour mark got a fasted snack that allowed them to go to the extra two hours. They were very clear on what was in that fasted snack.

it's a fat bomb basically. So it was, and I forget the exact ratios, but it was about 80% fat and 20% protein, no carbohydrates. The protein was extremely low because it didn't want to take you out of autophagy. Now, here's what happened is the people that had the fasted snack, they actually, at the 13th hour, lost more weight. It was purely on weight loss than the people who, said at 13 hours, I'm not going to eat a fast anything, you know, or I'm going to stop and I'm

going to start eating now. They actually didn't lose as much weight. So when we elongate our fast by leaning into a fasted snack, we can actually get some of the fasting results. And I think that is really important. So what is a good fasted snack? Bone broth can work as long as you don't do enough to get kick out of yourself out of atopathy, although you can stay in ketosis and not be an atopagy, which is a whole other discussion. And like I'll do avocados sometimes, a little bit of nut butter, keto cups are like my favorite because they have no protein in them. I'll pop those. So I think you can benefit from fasting and you can go longer if you lean into the fasted snack. Fascinating. Yeah.

I think doing both. Some days you'll extend that fast to whatever, 18 hours and have your water. And some days you'll have a fasted snack like the bone broth or a keto cup or whatever it is. The variation is the variation. It makes it up. I'm with you on that, Mindy. That is the name of the game, flexibility. Okay.

Next question here. Do you work out even high intensity interval training in a fasted state? And I know this is a fasted state is kind of a general term. mean like 30 hour fast, 40 hour fast? Maybe you could explain if you are a fan of intermittent of high intentionary training during an intermittent fast versus like a block fast. Yeah. So I am. And the fasted state is a really good question. It's funny when I wrote fast like a girl, me and the editor went back and forth on explaining what a fasted state is. It was a lot harder maybe in writing to explain what a fasted state is than I realized. So let's start there. One

thing at about eight hours after a meal, your body will start to make that switch. And depending on the quality of the meal and the health of your body, it'll take another, you know, four to five hours to be completely into the fat burning state. When you're in the fat burning state, your body is burning fat from really three main areas. It's burning fat from fat. Yay, we love that. It's taking glucose from skeletal muscle and it's going to take glucose from the liver. So that's where it's going to reach to pull that, to dump that, it's going to start to create ketones. So when you work out in that state, it's like a double stack. You are asking your body not only to put in this performance that releases the stored sugar, moves you to ketosis more,

but you are also building that muscle up strong. So I'm a huge fan of people working out in a fasted state. Here's the caveat. If you don't want to lose muscle, you got to break your fast with protein because you got to go back into mTOR to rebuild everything. And there's a couple of hormonal experts right now that are fitness hormonal experts that are talking about how women specifically should never work out at a fasted state because it breaks muscle down. We're back at the flipping nuance, which is in that moment, she's absolutely right. but if you refeed with protein, you're actually, and specifically like 20 to 30 grams of protein, you're actually going to fuel that muscle even stronger.

So I never work out, I rarely work out after I've eaten. It's always in a fasted state. How about you? That's a great answer. Me too. Most of my 99% of my workouts are in that fasted state. I'm curious to see how you explain it in the book. Yeah.

Appreciate it. When you read that section in the book, just know how many hours I spent trying to solidify that. And you're right, because when people say you're going to lose muscle, you're going to lose protein with the fast, maybe, yeah, maybe they're right, but what happens after? It's like the protein you're losing is the damaged junky protein, but what happens is you rebuild healthier, more robust protein. And that's what they're missing, to your point, maybe. They're not looking at what happens after. Same thing with fasting weakens the immune system. Well, that's the autophagy.

What happens after? It's like the immune system gets more robust and it regenerates. It's like you're missing the whole picture here. So, yeah, I'm with you. When you go into a workout in a fasted state, you're putting this. I like the way Dr. Ben Bickman explains it. He says, if you go into a workout in a fed state, let's say you had protein shake, a banana, whatever it is, then you're putting the calories at the front of this metabolic bus.

The body is going to burn whatever is at the front of the bus first. Eventually, when it burns through that, then it goes to your body fat. Now, when you go into that workout fasted, meaning you didn't have that meal, you're putting your fat stores at the front of this metabolic bus, and you're going to tap right into it like you just explained much more efficiently. So you get more fat loss, more autophagy, and you feel better because, look, it takes a lot of resources in blood flow to digest a meal. But if you're fasted, then you can redirect the blood flow to your bench press, your kettleball swings, whatever your workout is, and you feel better. That's why me and Mindy, we work out fasted because we're

metabolically flexible. Right. And we feel much better in that state. Yeah. Well said. Agreed. I like the Ben Bickman analogy. He's so good at like explaining.

Yeah. Go follow him on Instagram, everybody. I know both you and I have done a lot of podcast interviews with him. Follow him. Dr. Bickman. He's amazing.

Let's go. Should we go to the fun questions? Sorry. I, you know, it's funny. We both love chatting about this. So we probably need a part too.

Yeah. That might be what. So let us know. Yeah. Let us know if you want. Okay, geese, let's do these rapid fire. Gee or better? Taste-wise, butter, health-wise ghee.

You? I actually taste-wise ghee, health-wise ghee. Wow. Who are you dying to interview on your podcast this year? Dr. Joe Dispenza. I'd love to have him. Ooh. Oh my gosh.

I have so many people. Well, I'll tell you who I just am dying to talk to and I just got confirmation. I'll be talking to her because she brought me on her podcast is Danica Patrick. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, she just had explant surgery. So she brought me on to talk about fasting. And I asked her if she'd come chat about her journey with hormones and toxins.

It's quite a journey that everybody needs to know. Wow, that's going to be cool. Yeah. One biohacking device, you would recommend to everyone. All right. This is hard to do rapid fire. I'm going to choose one that you pay for, one that's free and then I'll give it that to you. So paid for, it's going to be between like a CGM

and an aura ring. I'm going to say aura ring, an aura ring because I just, or like a whoop, something that gives you an accurate measurement on the sleep you're getting deep sleep, REM, heart rate variability. So aura ring for paid device. For a free biohack, that's, I think, the greatest biohack in the world. I would say vitamin G gratitude. Just developing a gratitude practice would be my answer. I love that. Okay. Since you pick, since you pick whoop and aura, I'm going to pick CGM. That was the first thing that came to my mind. I think we'd change that 12% number if we slapped a CGM on everybody. Nothing will change your relationship to your food like a CGM. So that's that would be the first one. And a free one, you know, I think that I'm going to go with

something like sunlight, you know, just getting out into sun. And I would also go with community. There are just like gratitude, there are so many things that we do not give enough health credit to. And sunlight, community, gratitude, nothing will change your health more than those three things. And they're all free. They're so powerful and free. Oh my gosh. That's a great tip. Yeah.

Awesome. Okay, Ben. Well, thank you. And you guys, if you're listening to this and you loved it, please go let us know, leave a review on both of our podcasts and let us know. Come find us on Instagram. Both Ben and I are there. quite often answering questions and we'll do a part two. But I feel, I actually feel like I might

be able to rest today because we have given some really good solid answers that I think both of us get asked a lot. We got through a lot of questions. No, this is seriously so fun. We definitely will do a round two. I'm down for that anytime. And Mindy and I are going to be at KetoCon. I know this comes out a couple weeks beforehand. So if you're in Texas, but we're speaking at KetoCon, we're both delivering a Keto lecture, like right next to each other. So we would love to meet you and hang out there. And Minnie, I'm just so appreciative of you and what you've done with your work and your resetters. And it's amazing. And I can't wait for your new book to come out. And I can't wait to see you in a couple weeks. So thank you for allowing me to come on your platform and vice versa coming online.

I think this is amazing. Yeah. Thank you, Ben. Agree. And here's what I say about KetoCon. If you see us there, come give me a hug. I'm missing the extra oxytocin. So come hear us speak from stage and come give me a hug. Same thing. Give me a hug too. Let's do a group hug. A group hug.

It sounds amazing. So appreciate you, Ben. Thank you for doing this. And we'll do it again. Thank you, Mindy. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it.

So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.