Introduction to Metabolic Flexibility

Well, welcome back to the Longevity Summit. I'm your host, doctor David Jockers. And today we're talking about how to unlock your metabolic flexibility so you never have to die it again.

Metabolic flexibility is your ability to burn both sugar and fat for fuel. You want to be really good at burning sugar for short periods of time, but you also want to be really good at burning fat for fuel.

And most people are not good at burning fat for fuel. My guests here are going to be doctor Rob Vasquez and Doctor Randy Johns from The Happy Healthy Life.

You find their website, TheHappyHealthy life.com. And I've known doctor Rob and doctor Randy for, gosh, probably 20 years. They are seasoned, holistic health and metabolic experts with a remarkable journey.

Randy overcame late stage cancer while Rob conquered metabolic illness. These life altering experiences ignited their mission to empower others. With over 25 years of dedicated service in the health and wellness industry, they are driven by a profound passion to transform lives.

And again, you can find them at the happy, healthy Life. They also have a great metabolism score that's free and you can access. Just go to Metabolismscore.com and you'll fill out a questionnaire and I'll give you a score on how your metabolism is functioning.

So check that out. Without further ado, let's go into the interview. Well doctor Rob Vasquez doctor Randy Johns, we go way back. I was just saying how I got known you guys for 20 years.

And you guys remember me when I first got into the natural health world, and you guys have interesting stories as well? I mean, you were running very successful natural health clinics and then ran into some different health issues.

Like many of us that were running health, health industry, you know, were driven and were hardworking. And sometimes, you know, we can neglect our own health, particularly sleep and a lot of different factors.

And so you guys have your own interesting stories and would love for you to share that. Yeah. No, thanks for having us on, David. What a huge privilege.

And it's kind of cool how, you know, we were kind of mentoring you on some level back in the day. The young Cairo student who was so inquisitive and curious and now come full circle, we're learning from you and how to help reach more people in the online space.

So isn't that funny how God works so good, good to be here. But yeah, just really quick. Let's dive in. Like you said, man, we were running crazy busy practices.

We were taught, you know, that's what you do. You put your 80 hours in and you almost sacrifice your own health to go help others. I don't know if that's the best strategy, but my story, my cautionary tale is I was in the practice eight years into practice.

This was July of 2010, and I get diagnosed with late stage cancer. And you probably know a little bit about my story. You were kind of there as I was going through a lot of that.

But I got to be honest, you know, that diagnosis really caught me off guard because, you know, I was the guy helping everybody else be healthy. And I was I was very ashamed.

I was very embarrassed.

Randy's Cancer Journey and Healing Mindset

In fact, I lost my father to the complications of cancer just two years earlier. So here I am, and all my ego and splendor can't save my dad, can't save myself.

And I'm starting to question everything that I've ever believed. But you really find out what you believe when you're thrown directly into the fire. It's easy to say something, but what are you going to do when it really when all the proverbial crap hits hits the fan? So.

So there I was. And you know, everybody really wants to know kind of what I did, because obviously I'm not dead. Being alive is a great clinical outcome, I got to tell you.

But it's not really what I did. And we can talk about that if you want to. But it's really more why I did what I did, and this is where I really saved my life.

I always say outside of my relationship with Jesus Christ, this is the second most important thing that God ever gave me. He gave me a faith and a confidence and a belief.

And here's what I knew to be true, even in my worst moment, is that, number one, God doesn't make junk, all right? We're fearfully, wonderfully made. And that health really is the normal.

And diseases like cancer are really the abnormal. Cancer wasn't making me sick. I was already sick. And that's why I was expressing cancer. So when I get this diagnosis and I'm telling you, it had spread everywhere, was in my lymphatic chain into my liver, had even metastasized into my stomach.

And they're giving me two months, maybe two years to live. You know, even in that moment, chiropractic in that principle that above down, inside out principle, believing that first John four four to be true, that the greatest doctrine, the world is really inside of me.

That gave me the strength and the courage to ask the questions that I needed to ask to get real answers. So my my questions led me into Spain. I'd heard about a doctor there.

He was, a medical doctor from Lebanon, Doctor Raymond Helou. You may even know Doctor Helu or had some interactions with him. I'm not sure. Sounds like you have.

Yeah, yeah. He's incredible guy. In fact, we spent time with him this last summer, and I still just doing incredible helping so many people. But he's a cellular biologist and of all people, Greg Lohman is who told me about this doctor.

So when he found out that I had this diagnosis, he had taken his wife, Mary Ella, over there. But when she had lives disease and she had gotten well, and so he said, I don't know if he can help you, but he's not going to do anything that's going to kill you.

And I think you'll like his philosophy, because it really aligns with ours, because he's not going to want to treat the condition. He's going to want to treat the person who has the condition getting to the cause.

So on his advice and a lot of support end up going over there. And so I remember I'd never left the country at the time. So I'm over in Spain. Spanish is a little rusty.

I got to, you know, so to Rob came over there to help me speak a little Spanish, support me, pray for me, keep me adjusted. But I'd gone over there first by myself.

And I remember sitting in the waiting room waiting to meet this doctor. They ran their blood work, and I'm really second guessing everything. You know, I'm fighting these demons in my head.

Like, are you going to make it? Are you going to die? Did you make a mistake? And about that time, the door busts open and this doctor looks at me and he goes, I'll do nothing that will kill you.

And I'm like, well, the first thing he said, that's what he said. That's how he started the console. In fact, I get a 22nd console for $30,000. I'll just go ahead and give it to you since it's so short.

So probably people want to know what that. Did he say to you? So he points to me and he says, I'll do nothing, that we will kill you. And I'm thinking, well, thank God, because they couldn't offer me that in America.

Right? You know, they're giving me like, no chance. And he goes now, but you might die. He goes, But I'll do everything that I can do to get your body adapting again, chemically, physically and emotionally.

I think it's your best chance to get well and for the cancer not to come back. Now, here's the best part, David. He goes, Randy, there's no need for it.

Theatrics. Are you ready to get started? Consult over. That's it. So I'm not I'm not asking him, you know, what's this going to cost? You know, how long is it going to take?

I don't need more research, because I believe I had found the man who is really aligning with my values. That was really the guy could, you know, really, literally live or die with.

And so obviously I said yes, jumped in full steam. Long story short, of the next 30, 60 and 90 days as begin to work on detoxing my body, cleaning up my blood, really getting my cell strong again, and looking at my body holistically, I was able to overcome this devastating diagnosis.

And that was, you know, almost 15 years ago. But pretty quickly as my spending time there with this doctrine, then doctor Rob coming over, I'm starting to realize that this isn't just about not dying, that God was doing something way bigger.

And a lot of times in life, and I think you would agree, you really can't see those things when you're in the moment of your own crisis. And I think now looking back on it, not I don't think that I know I can see what was being orchestrated there.

So started connecting the dots, really looking at metabolic health because cancer, like so many other chronic illnesses, they're really the same thing.

They're really just all downstream of poor metabolic function. And I knew if I could overcome late stage cancer and treat it as a metabolic condition, not as a disease, but as a dis hyphen ease, where we know that God does not need help healing us, he just needs no interference.

That I knew that if I could do that, there was something bigger that maybe I could do to help more people. So that's really how the ball got rolling with happy healthy.

And I gotta tell you, man, it's good to be alive. I'm stronger now than I've ever been. I've learned so much and God's really blessed that obedience there.

And I feel so thankful. So that's kind of how happy, healthy that's the origin and the genesis of the story. Yeah, that's an amazing story. Randy and I you know, one thing I've always loved about you is your strong faith and your passion.

And, you know, just for your enthusiasm. Right? It's real contagious. And so I can tell, you know, I think all of our listeners can tell, hey, you're loving life.

You're you're you're you're you're happy, healthy guys. You and Rob. Right. And so but sometimes we got to go through those crisis and take inventory of our life and kind of see where we're at and what things need to change.

And so the greatest setback can be the greatest blessing. And God can God, you know, he can make beauty out of ashes just like he's done here. Amen to that.

No doubt about it. And you know, I and what I love about my experience at that time was, you know, I had this belief and I'm still kind of early into practice, if you think about it.

Eight years is that's a really young career. I'm still building my philosophy and building my faith and confidence and what I'm teaching patients and clients and the things that I took very seriously.

So I had this belief that if I could find out what was interfering with this process and why I wasn't adapting, that I really believe my body would get well.

So when I put that belief to the test and it proved to be right now the belief comes a conviction. So at this point in my life, I'm very convicted and very passionate more than ever before.

Because really, I just don't know that I can be shaken at this point because I have so much faith, belief and confidence that our body really is hard wired to heal and that we don't need to pray for more healing.

The healing has already been done. Let's really be more responsible and look for all the things we're doing to get in the way of that healing process, and I believe that has served me well in many areas of my life.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, that's what attracted me to chiropractic, was the idea that God needs no help, just no interference. And so chiropractic is about removing interference from the nervous system.

And then when we look at functional health, right, we need to remove interference from other areas like our metabolism, which is you know, what we're going to talk about today.

So Rob, tell me more about your story as well and challenges you had. Yeah, absolutely. Be happy to. So so yeah. So while, you know, Randy was going through what it is that he was going through, also running a busy chiropractic practice as well, you know what a lot of people really didn't know about me, even in practice, because it's not like I just came out and would always say this is that I really struggled with trying to maintain a healthy weight, even in practice.

So as I was teaching other people how to be able to lose weight, how to have better nutrition, how to do those things, I was really struggling and I had to be perfect with my diet.

I had to be perfect with my exercise just to maintain what I thought back then was a healthy weight. So it was really hard. And that started when I was a young kid.

Even when I was 13 years old, I was 210 pounds when I was 13 and only five foot four. I probably was about as wide as I was tall, and I was doing what everybody else was doing back then, which was looking for a solution.

And the only solution at that time was what I learned from my mom, who was chronically, always on a diet. So she would go on these crazy diets.

Rob's Weight Struggles and Metabolic Recovery

It seemed like every Monday she was going on a new diet, and it would be like the boiled egg diet or the, you know, the South Beach diet, the Hollywood Beach Juice diet, whatever it was, it all had the same thing in common, which was reduce calories, starve.

You know, starve the body and then move more. And so that's what I started doing, because of course, at 13 years old and being a boy, I was motivated to lose the weight, but not for health reason.

I was motivated to lose weight because you know what? The really cute girls at school didn't like the chubby, fat little kid. So I'm like, all right, if a little is good, then a lot has got to be better.

And so if I reduce my little calories and lose a little bit of weight, what if I reduce by a lot of calories? I can lose a lot of weight. And so I just wouldn't eat for sometimes five, six, seven days and just drink water in order to be able to lose weight quickly.

And I did so at 13 years old in the eighth grade. I started my ninth grade year probably about six months later. First day of school I entered in at 124 pounds.

Wow. And so looking back on it, because of starving myself like that, I would say I would have been diagnosed as being anorexic. And so you know what?

Yeah, I lost the weight, but I wasn't healthy. And you can imagine by starving yourselves of the nutrients that they need, what I did to my own bodies metabolism and that was kill it.

And so because of that, that literally began my struggle with weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight all the way until I was about 38 years old.

When I was 38 years old, I had an injury where I fell off a fence. I injured my lower back to the point where I could hardly walk anymore. It was hard even to practice at that time.

I would go and adjust people, and then I'd go and lay in my office just to be able to get through the day. And again, like Randy was saying, you know, I had a lot of shame in that because at that same time, not being able to exercise, I was gaining weight like crazy.

And so I gained almost 65 pounds in a very short time. So by the time he was in Spain with cancer and calls me 911 to get to Spain, I jump on an airplane.

I get there, one of those miserable plane rides of my life because I could hardly even sit up. So we get there. I'm 65 pounds overweight. He's got cancer. We were not the Happy Hill.

The guys that you see behind us at that time. No, we were the fat, sick, depressed and riddled with cancer. Almost dead. Guys, what a title, right? I want us on that podcast.

No, but like you said, you know, we go through these different challenges in life. And just like it's even biblically where the man brings his son to Jesus to get the evil spirits out of him.

And Jesus asks him, do you believe? And like, like Randy was saying, he really find out what you believe when you've been thrown in the fire. But the next thing that man says, he says, yes, I believe, help me in my unbelief.

So it's like, okay, God's going to go, I'm going to help you in your unbelief so that you can strengthen your conviction and your belief. And that's what was happening.

So by learning from this cellular biologist there in Spain that, yes, all metabolic health has what lives downstream, a chronic condition associated with it, whether it be high blood pressure, which yes, I was experiencing, I didn't tell anybody about it.

I remember going to a dentist and they checked my blood pressure. At that time in my blood pressure was 170 over one, 25. And I was like, you know what? I'm a doctor.

I'm okay. It must just because be because I'm at the dentist office and I'm like, going to the dentist, right? So I kind of just ignored it. But that right there is one of those signs of poor metabolic health that we don't ever think about because people associate metabolism with.

Well, that's associated with either you have a good metabolism and you're skinny or you have a bad metabolism and you're fat. I said I had a bad metabolism and I was fat.

So when I started really learning about metabolism and started applying the principles and the science that we were learning from what Randy was going through, all of a sudden the scale started dropping really rapidly.

Not only did that happen, but the inflammation in my lower back that was keeping me from being able to walk. It was gone pretty rapidly as well. And now something happened that had never happened to me in my entire life is I was going through these protocols.

I was losing weight, and instead of getting stuck at the 185 pounds that I always get stuck at, I continue to keep on losing the wait until I was at my ideal weight, which is what all the charts said that I could never, ever get to by just using diet and exercise alone.

And so it's been 14 years now. I'm walking, I'm able to run, I'm able to do all of the things that I love to do at my ideal weight, and I have never gained that weight back.

And so it's because of going through that. Then my patients started asking me, hey, doctor Rob, what are you doing? We've never seen you this then before and you're keeping the weight off.

Can you help me with that? So we started helping our patients with that. And the next thing you know, we were opening up offices doing that. It literally took on a life of its own.

Could have never imagined that I would be in the metabolic health space. If you would have told me that 15 years ago when I was in my chiropractic office, I would have told you you were absolutely insane and crazy.

And you know what God said? I've got other plans for you. And here we are today. And like we were talking about just a few minutes ago. We're just with clients this last week that came to see us at a retreat that we had into Mexico from all over the world, so where we couldn't help these people in the four walls of our clinic here, we're now able to help people all over the world, which has been a huge blessing.

It's really humbling to even be having this conversation with you about it. And it's just like, I have to pinch myself every day going, wow, we just talked to somebody that was in Italy, and we're helping them to be able to have a better metabolic health.

So that's, that's that's how I came about this whole thing. And then doing it with your best friend is pretty cool, man. 21 years. My brother here, man from another mother, he totally is.

Yeah. So we were like, why are we doing this separate? Let's let's go all in. Let's sell the clinics. Let's go all in. Let's do something together. And looking back on that now, that was clearly the right decision.

Yeah that's great. And you know obviously we're talking about metabolism today. And we have a metabolic epidemic in our society. I think it's something like over 40% of our children are overweight or obese.

Right? I mean, and every year it's just going up and, you know, it's increasing, right? It's not getting better. And so we've got to do something about that.

And you know really education is where it starts. And so let's start with this idea of metabolic flexibility. It's a term I like to use. And I know that's something you guys really specialize in.

So what is metabolic flexibility. Yeah great question. It's kind of that buzzword. It's been around for a little bit now. I don't know that people fully understand what that even means.

I think a lot of people maybe confuse metabolic flexibility. Would just never eating a carbohydrate again or some specialty diet program really. You know, metabolic flexibility is the body's ability to not only use fat for fuel, but to also use glucose for fuel.

And a lot of people who are maybe they're getting fat adapted, but they never really get carb adapted. And I think it's a big mistake a lot of health care practitioners make because obviously carbohydrates and ultimately glucose is a very important part of the metabolic process.

So real flexibility is the body's ability to use both of those for fuel whenever it needs to, whatever the environment they're in or they find themselves in, and not being in a stress response where the body goes, no, I can use fat, no, I can use glucose.

And I'm not actually raising cortisol by using one or the other. So I think that's probably a from an oversimplification, but I think it's important for people to understand that real metabolic flexibility is not just burning fat, it's the ability to burn glucose as well.

Yeah. So you got to be a good sugar burner, but also a good fat burner. Most people in our society are not burning fat effectively for fuel. But like you said, I mean, there's kind of a flip side where a lot of people doing very low carb diets for long periods of time, where they lose the ability to burn sugar for fuel as well.

And so both can be problematic. But we need to be able to switch back and forth. And when is when should we be burning sugar and when should we be burning fat?

Yeah. Great question. Going back to then I'll pass it back to you Rob. But yeah. So I think that's important what you said there because yeah a lot of people they can't burn fat.

But if you go on these high fat, low carb diets for a long time, we already know you're going to create some level of physiological insulin resistance.

So a lot of times that person trusted put carbohydrates back in. Maybe they just eat a banana and they gained 2 pounds because they never fully got carb adapted.

So I think just when you think about just basic physiology, you know, at rest, you know, our, our heart and our muscles really are using fat. And so that's a powerful thing.

However, if you're going to engage in any type of resistance training or any type of stress to the body, your body is going to prefer using glucose for fuel.

So I like to for me personally, I know if I'm going to go through a resistance training or hard exercise, I'm going to make sure I give my body plenty of high quality carbohydrates sometime after that workout to give my body what it's preferring at that time.

But if I'm not working out that day, or maybe I'm going to fast that day, maybe a 24 hour fast or some tight window, I'm probably going to eat more fats and probably eat less carbohydrate, because I know my body's already craving that and wants to use that for energy.

So hopefully that makes sense. How I kind of think about what I'm eating and how I'm feeling my body. I kind of always eat to the protein and eat to the nutrients, and then I play around with my carbs or my fat based off my activity levels.

Or maybe how my that day with maybe some type of a wearable or an HR assessment. But that's kind of how I'm looking at it. But I'm always choosing quality.

All carbohydrates and not all fats are created equal, as we know. Yeah, let's talk about that. What are some of your favorite foods like what kinds of foods are you focusing on?

Yeah. So so we always that's one of the things that we always say. And that's one of the things that we teach. The people that work with us in our clients is stopped counting calories and start counting counting nutrients.

What Metabolic Flexibility Means

And so nutrient dense foods, for example, like even like last night, I had a grass fed green grass fed by steak. And one of my favorite things to use for that is utilizing, as you know, and you're familiar with well, which is a short chain triglyceride to be able to cook that steak, which is delicious with it.

So I know I'm getting my short chain fats, I'm getting my good fats. And especially doing that as part of my dinner, because like he was saying, depending on what it is that you're going to do, I'm not going to, you know, wasn't going to work out after dinner.

I knew that as I was going to be resting, my body needs to be able to heal and to repair so it can be able to utilize that fat, burn that fat while I'm sleeping.

And that also ensures that I'm not going to also then wake up hungry. And I think a lot of people, when they are not carb adapted or they're not even fat adapted, they end up waking up first thing in the morning and their stomach is growling and they're hungry and then they've been taught then, okay, I'm going to feed myself first thing in the morning.

And the first thing that they're feeding themselves is like a sugary cereal or something like that, which is, you know, those those empty. Again, calories are not all created equally. Right?

And so they're going to reach for those empty calories that don't have any nutrient value to them. So, you know, we just want to make sure that we're eating real food.

And so one of the acronyms that we always use is simply eat real food or surf for your food. And so what does that mean? Well, if you set something on your account or and you come back to it two weeks from now.

Well, and it looks the same as when you put it there two weeks ago, that's not real food. And that's going to be a food that I'm going to stay away from.

And I think that's really important for people to understand, because true metabolic health and metabolic flexibility is it starts at a cellular level.

So when somebody is struggling with being able to lose weight, when somebody is not able to maintain a healthy weight, that's actually a symptom. That's not the problem.

And I think one of the challenges that people have is the belief that the weight gain is the problem or the cause. It's not. It's the symptom. So what is it a symptom of?

So we really have to look at going, okay, what's disrupting my cells, what's disrupting me at a cellular level. And when we can be able to see that, it can really help us be able to choose the right nutrients to put into our body that are going to help, to be able to heal that cell and get to the cause and not continue to keep on treating the symptom, which typically ends up being calories in, calories out.

Yeah, absolutely. And so many people are going on different diets like you talked about. And they're like, I remember growing up, I was extremely metabolically inflexible.

So I would have, you know, my mom was into health. She was actually studying to become a natural path. But this was in the 90s. And so and also my dad was he really rebelled against my mom.

So she thought the best diet was a macrobiotic diet, which was really bland. It was like tofu, Lima beans and steamed kale. So like as a teenager, I was like, I'm not gonna eat this.

But, you know, for Siri, for her breakfast, she wouldn't get me what I wanted, which was like Froot Loops, but I would eat Cheerios, right? And of course, we had skim milk because we wanted to stay away from the fat or like, soy milk or something like that.

And then we'd have banana because, you know, that's fruit, and then maybe some orange juice because that's vitamin C, right. And so I would have that which, you know, your average cardiologist, especially in the 90s, would say that is a heart healthy breakfast.

Okay. And if I told my teacher what I have for breakfast, they say, wow, you guys really eat healthy. But two hours later I was falling asleep in my class, right?

I couldn't pay attention. I was extremely thirsty. I had a brain fog, and so I was not able, you know, I had a reactive hypoglycemia. So let's talk about that and what people are doing wrong there.

In a typical American diet. Yeah. I think, you know, there's there's been a huge shift. They've kind of moved us away from really what our ancestors used to do.

I remember my great grandmother, David. She lived to be 100 years old. And I remember when she died, I was probably like five years old. And she was on, you know, talking to my mom.

Now, she was on no medication. I think she even dipped a little stuff here and there. But the way she lived, they she had a hog farm, so they rendered animal fats.

They had dairy cows, so they milk cows. They drank raw milk, they churned butter. They had chickens that were outside. They were cooped up in a cage that were getting sunlight and eating insects.

So they were really eating more of an ancestral way off the land that was not processed. And once again, she went to 100 years old. I remember as a little boy thinking, I want to live to be 100 years old.

I don't know what that meant. Maybe that was the first thing that God plugged into me that maybe drove me into this health arena. But I think it's getting back to really what our ancestors did.

We've we've replaced all the healthy animal fats because they've been vilified. They've been we've been told that they cause heart disease and cause stroke, you know, move away from animal meat, stay away from red meat.

So now we're eating less red meat. We're not eating as much butter. And they've replaced all of that with all the fake process, hyper palatable foods that are void of nutrition and nutrients.

And they're just like these empty energy calories, which your body really can't use and really gum up the mitochondria and don't even allow us to even create ATP any longer.

So I think for me, I really love the fact that eating real food makes the most sense. And you can look at it because you didn't see heart disease 100 years ago.

You didn't see this obesity epidemic 100 years ago. Children. My God, I remember going back, you know, I was I was born in the 70s. And I remember thinking back when I was in elementary school, even in middle school, I don't remember there was like five kids that were overweight.

You go to a school now, like you said, you've got 30, 40, even 50% of these kids that are obese that are on medication, that aren't not doing well, who have no ability to concentrate and focus and thrive.

So I think that really is where it starts getting back to foundational ancestral nutrition, reconnecting with nature. Get your feet on the ground. Get outside.

Food Quality, Reactive Hypoglycemia, and Symptoms of Poor Metabolism

We're sitting here under artificial light, looking at computer screens, and we've got to get back to what really God created, which is really all free and not even that expensive.

I love all the expensive biohacking equipment, but what I really love is just getting outside, being reconnected with nature, eating real foods, and really thinking about how do I honor God with my body.

And it doesn't have to be as complicated as maybe we've made it. Yeah, it's so key. And so let's talk about some signs and symptoms that somebody might have if they're metabolically flexible versus metabolically inflexible.

Right. So if they have a metabolism problem. What are some signs and symptoms they may be experiencing. Yeah. So one of the ones like I said, you know, a few minutes ago was you wake up in the morning and immediately you're hungry or you feel like you've got, you know, you eat your breakfast, you make it to work.

And then all of a sudden you feel that blood sugar crash, where now I've got to have a cup of coffee in order to be able to get my energy, or I need to eat, or you have that person that's like, I got to get a snack before I even make it to lunch, or I'm going to starve to death.

So it's when you're feeling like, you know what, I've got to have that meal in order to be able to keep my energy levels up throughout the day. And then another sign would be even brain fog.

People. When they start like that, you can't remember what it is that you had for breakfast this morning, or you can't remember if somebody was going to give you directions to be able to get from point A to point B, and you can't remember all of the directions, and next thing you know, you're having to look at your phone to be able to figure out all of all of those directions.

And I know one of the ones for me was always, this is if I was eating a meal at any time of day. I always craved something sweet after, you know, to eat after that meal or with that meal, or even craving the carbohydrates like the breads, and then having those, having those sweets after.

And I remember I was always teased because everybody always said to me, you know, Rob, you've got the biggest sweet tooth. I said, no, I don't have a sweet tooth.

I actually have many sweet heat in my entire mouth. So if you feel like you have sweet teeth, that's another sign that you're not metabolically healthy.

Yeah, I one of the ones and we see this now is you look at all these autoimmune conditions and probably what the number one diagnosed condition now is Hashimoto's thyroiditis. So you start seeing a lot of hormone issues when you're metabolically inflexible.

And you know, the health practitioners and the medical community God bless them. But you end up going there and they just start looking at your sex hormones.

And we already know you can't even balance testosterone or estrogen or progesterone if you don't balance your metabolic hormones. Insulin, glucagon, leptin, cortisol, adrenaline, adiponectin.

I mean, we could just keep naming them all off. So I think when you see a hormone issue and you start seeing different organ systems that are out of balance, even like a congested liver, you know, gut dysbiosis where you've got a poor unhealthy microbiome, those are all signs and symptoms of a real crappy metabolism, for lack of a better word.

Yeah for sure. Now what does it look like if you have good metabolic flexibility? Man that's called freedom. That's what that looks. That's called metabolic freedom. Freedom.

And no longer being a slave to or living in a calorie prison. You know, food doesn't control you anymore, right? Because you really look at food as something that you nourish your body with versus just something that you eat because it tastes good.

And come to find out, all the healthiest foods in the world are all the ones that satisfy that taste amazing and that nourish your body. So when you're metabolically flexible, when your metabolism strong, it's amazing.

You can really eat as much real food as you want and you never gain any weight. You know, we've worked with so many clients now we've actually been able to see this where we will see people come in.

David, and I know you've seen this. They're like, maybe, you know, 500 calories, 800 calories, 1200 calories. They can't even lose weight. No joke, because they're in such a low energy state.

And then once you get their metabolism working for them, you get them that metabolic flexibility, you get them fat adapted, you get them insulin sensitive.

Now they're burning 2000 calories, 3000 calories. They're burning so many more calories, which is really normal because most people are probably carrying around maybe 20, 30, 40 pounds of fat on their body.

They've got hundreds of thousands of calories that are available to them, but they're not able to get them. And so when you're metabolically strong, you're more lean.

You don't put fat in weird areas, right? You just have more energy. You sleep better, and when you sleep better and you have more energy, you're just a better person.

So metabolically healthy people, those are my kind of people because they're fun to hang out with. Yeah. And you can also go on trips or you can go on vacation, and you don't have to worry about avoiding all of those foods that you really want to eat.

Like, you know, last year we were in Italy and it was great being able to be in Italy. Enjoy the food, eat the pastas, have some of the wine, and then be able to get back and not have gained any weight.

That was really great. And it wasn't just us, because we had many of our clients that were there with us and we were getting messages back from them where they're like, wow, we are blown away.

We were eating all of the good food, doing all these wonderful things. And next thing you know, we got back and we actually lost weight. There was we had a client that had lost 4 pounds and other that lost 2 pounds from the retreat that we just had.

One of them just sent us a message this morning saying, thank you so much. She's like, I lost a pound hanging out with you guys. Over the last five weeks. And we weren't starving them.

We were eating three times a day, every day. So great sign of a healthy metabolism. Yeah, yeah. And when you're metabolically healthy, too, you don't look at eating as, like, a sin.

You know, it's eating is not a problem. It's actually really essential. And so I think he's just create a whole different relationship with the food. And you lose the guilt and the shame and you really look at things completely different.

You know, eating is not a sin. It's really a key part of life. And I love the the flexibility you get when you have a strong metabolism. You don't have to be perfect anymore, because we already know if you're trying to be perfect and just use willpower, it will let you down.

And it's just not a strategy to succeed long term. Yeah, absolutely. And what are some strategies people can start taking to improve their metabolic flexibility?

Yeah. You know some of the steps number one is going going to what we were talking about as far as eating nutrient dense food. It's simply eating real food.

That's a great first step. Something else that people can do is stay away from the ultra processed food or the number one ultra processed food. To stay away from that is absolutely an endocrine disruptors.

We believe it's worse that even cigarette smoke is seed oil is so industrial that right there will clog up the cell. The cell won't to get the nutrients that it needs.

No matter what kind of great nutrients you put into your body when you're putting that in there. Because it has, what, like over a 600 day half life, when we're putting these or these polyunsaturated fatty acids into the body.

So 680 from now it's still there. So you got to figure out also then how to then detox your system of those seed oil because they will continue to keep on disrupting your metabolism.

And it's nearly impossible to be able to have that metabolic flexibility when you have that in your system. Yeah. No doubt. I mean, like Cornwall soybean, safflower, cotton seed, peanut oil.

You guys, you find this in all kinds of stuff, processed foods. But even if you're health conscious and you go and you buy the organic salad dressing at Whole Foods, you watch out because a lot of times got canola oil.

It's got one of these you have to read labels. Yeah. And that's probably where people make the biggest mistake. It's really not maybe cooking at home because you can control that.

It really is going out to eat and even and you go to really nice restaurants and we travel a lot. You really have to ask, what are they cooking the food in?

And you'd be shocked in some of the nicest restaurants, not only here in America, but all over the world. They're using these inflammatory URLs, and so you have to let them know, don't be scared to say listen when they ask you.

Now restaurants really ask you at the table. Hey. Are there any food allergies? I'm like absolutely allergic to industrial seed oil. And everybody is every it's a it's a metabolic poison.

And the chef will come out. They'll make sure they prepare it properly. So you have to be very aware of that. And that was one of the strategies that we implemented.

David, when we started looking at people metabolically, we were getting stuck in some areas. And I think that was the area we were probably getting stuck in is like, okay, stop eating it.

But how do you safely remove it from your body and get it out of your system quick, fast and in a hurry? A great strategy to help do that, because of the thermogenic benefit of detoxing from seed oil or doing fasted workouts, I really enjoy doing those and it doesn't take very long, but a nice little short hit training session can really create thermogenesis at the tissue level and help burn off.

And that way you're you're avoiding that first pass through the liver as you're getting rid of the seed oil. But you've got to be careful by dumping too much seed oil into your system.

It can be very toxic. So you really have to know what you're doing there. But stop eating those for sure. And then I like to do this too. I like to do a 24 hour fast once a week.

Not too often because I think that can be abused, and it is a stressful response on the body that you may not be adapting to. But I like once a week to give my body a break, let a top do its magic, work its magic, and then, you know, re feed that next day.

But that's been a huge thing for me because I always talk about my life b c and a C. So before cancer and after cancer and this was a mistake I was making metabolically is I was eating five, six, seven times per day.

And because I was trying to be 185 pounds, I'm six feet tall and now away about 168 pounds. Why was I forcing my body to be that big?

Strategies for Better Metabolic Health

I really believe all those insulin hits are pretty metabolically devastating, and you really never give your body a chance to actually take a break. Key in other hormones.

Use a topic and get your body into a healthy metabolic state. So I like time restricted eating on occasion. I eat when I'm hungry, not when I'm forcing myself to.

A little more intuition there. If your body's not hungry. Why are you eating? Those are all things. I think if we work more with our body and listen to it versus being so scripted, I think that's a good metabolic strategy as well.

Yeah, I think those are great strategies. And you know, you mentioned obviously the seed oil. So one thing people can do is bring their own butter or I know you guys have the CT that you can bring.

A lot of times a lot of restaurants will actually use what you want them to use. Like if you bring it in, say, hey, I can't eat here unless you cook in, you know this, right?

And they'll happy to do it. Yeah. And I think that's an important thing too, if we're going to make any real change, you know, how powerful would it be that if you had, you know, a hundred people in a restaurant all say we don't want seed oil in our food?

So a lot of times we avoid that conversation. I think we can no longer be quiet. So we are part of that solution. And when you understand the dangers and what's happening to us metabolically in our country and across the world, when we stand up and actually, you know, ask for these things, I think that is how we get the change.

Usually we're the only people in the restaurant asking this question, but I can promise you, if the server keeps going back to the chef in the kitchen going, hey, every table I'm going to says, we don't want to eat any of this crappy seed oil.

I can promise you they're going to make the change. So I would encourage everybody to let's all speak up about this and do our part. Yeah, absolutely. Now, 24 hour fasting.

That's something I do as well once a week. I think it's just amazing for your body and it activates. It really lowers insulin and insulin here. It blocks fat burning.

But it's this key hormone that takes sugar, puts it into the cells, but it also blocks fat burning. And it also will drive up inflammation if it's high.

And so when your insulin goes down and now your body starts to break down, old damaged cellular organelles starts to repair the mitochondria within the cell and literally recycles itself from the inside out.

We call that autophagy, which you had mentioned is so powerful. And so I think that's a really great strategy that a lot of people are concerned about hunger, cravings, things like that.

If they start doing intermittent fasting or even a, you know, a larger kind of a larger fast, a 24 hour fast. So what do you do to help people overcome that?

You know, I think it's one of those things where rather than just also going cold turkey. So we even have when we work with people, we take them through a week.

There's a process before they would even start even any of our programs that we do. So they're not doing it cold turkey. But the first place to start would be like like doctor Randy was saying was eating nutrient dense foods.

So you could even start, for example, if we were going to have somebody do a 24 hour fast, we could say, okay, so the day before you do that 24 hour fast, let's go ahead and get you some.

And we would use our short chain triglyceride in there. Get them some healthy fats into their body the day before. So we would have them do up to four tablespoons throughout the day of that short chain triglyceride so that their body has the faceted needs.

It's going to have the fuels that it needs to be able to go into doing that 24 hour fast. And so then that's getting them used to it. And I know once upon a time, that's what I would do in order to be able to get my body used to that 24 hour fast because like doctor Randy, I do want every single week as well.

So for me, it's kind of like part of my routine that every Sunday from Sunday evening at 7 p.m., then all the way to Monday at 7 p.m. every single week.

That's how I really just love to start my week off that way. There's it's almost like there's something my body's not quite right if I don't do that. But that's what we recommend to our clients going into doing a 24 hour fast like that.

Yeah. And I think a lot of people struggle because like what you said, it's you're going into something you're not prepared to do. So that's why I do like more of the time restricted eating or some of those shorter windows.

Maybe it's just you're not eating breakfast, right? And then maybe you're moving your feeding window into maybe a 12 or a ten or maybe an eight, and slowly working up there as you're incorporating more nutrient dense real food, because, you know, hunger is a good thing to it is telling you to give your body nutrients.

But I think that's the problem. When you're eating nutrient depleted fake food, you don't you don't get the satiety. You're not going to you're going to still crave food because your body is needing nutrients.

And if it needs more nutrients, it's going to tell you that you're hungry and you've got to get more food. So I think eating real food, going into it slowly, maybe doing some shorter feeding windows before you go into the 24 hour fast, I think is vital.

But man, once you can get to that point where you can do a 24 hour and not like feel like you're about to die, that's a pretty powerful metabolic state.

And as you were mentioning, not only the G. What does the research show? I believe women are getting like a 1,300% increase in growth hormone. Gods are getting maybe a 200 0% hit, the holy grail of anti-aging, muscle building, fat burning.

And at 50 years old, David, I want to make sure I keep my growth hormone high and my body fat low, so it feels like a pretty solid strategy fasting. And, you know, it's we didn't invent this.

It has it it didn't just pop up 30 years ago. Fasting has been around for a very, very long time. In fact, I think if I was ever and God forbid, if I was ever, you know, back in the day when I was diagnosed with this cancer, I probably would have started off and just done a I would have probably done a ten day fast right out of the gate.

I think it's that powerful. Yeah. So powerful. Drive up that autophagy. Yeah. A lot of people will say especially, you know, there's a lot of ideas out there on the internet.

And people say, well, women for sure should not fast because it increases cortisol, messes up your hormones. And I would say, you know, fasting does increase cortisol, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I, I actually have a theory that it's really about your HGH to cortisol ratio. So if you're fasting and you're drinking tons of caffeine, you're living in a moldy home, you have a stressful relationship and job, you probably aren't getting good results.

You're probably more catabolic, breaking down muscle tissue because you're not getting to HGH release. You're getting too much cortisol. But when you're fasting, you're enjoying your life.

You typically have blood sugar stability. So if you're like you were talking about eating real foods, right? Prioritizing good healthy proteins and fats so you don't have these blood sugar imbalances on a regular basis. You're sleeping well at night.

In that case, your cortisol, you will go up. But that actually gives you more wakefulness, actually helps you with more mental alertness. And it doesn't go up high enough to have this negative effect.

And your HGH goes up. So you have this HGH to cortisol ratio that makes it very anti-aging and actually puts you in a high performance state. No, I love what you just said there.

That's that's brilliant. And it's so true. I agree. That's why I love in the mornings. Take advantage of that higher cortisol that you have in the morning that don phenomenon where now your body is actually using the glucose from your liver, and then you're also getting all those catecholamines that's being kicked out, the adrenaline to go hunt, to go gather.

I love taking advantage of that window, which is one of the reasons I don't like to wake up and eat first thing in the morning. Give your body a little bit of a break, optimize and use that hormonal window there to maximize fat burning and to get the most out of your morning.

So I love that. Yeah. And I think and you just said it with a stress as well. I think it's very important, even outside of fasting, that people also do have some type of a mindful practice, whether it's prayer or meditation or what we learned from our friend Ben is vitamin G, to start your day in gratitude, right?

Because all those things help to be able to reduce those stress hormones or that cortisol. And I also think too, though, is that something that people rarely talk about is as important as it is to prepare yourself to go into this fast?

I would say it's equally as important as to what it is that you're breaking your fast with. You know, when we've been taught about fasting before, it used to be more of a of a biblical thing, like, I know what my church they always did.

Like the first part of the year, you would do do a fast at the Daniel Fast, Daniel fast, or just not eating. And the pastor would always talk about, you know, he's like, oh, I'm just going to drink water.

And, you know, you go 40 days not drinking water. And then they would talk about the, the McDonald's that he ate the first thing, you know, the first thing after completing this fast and or the snicker bar, the ice cream and all those different things.

And so, you know, that's counter, you know, that's counterproductive. So you got to be careful about that. You want to make sure that you are eating your nutrient dense proteins, nutrient dense carbohydrates and fats when you're breaking that fast so that you know your body has a really good response to it and your body's not telling you.

Hey, don't ever do that again, because then that person is not going to ever want to do that again. So I think that's equally as important as well. Yeah, I, I noticed to David, don't know what you think about this.

I really noticed too that I'm able to fast easier when I'm also getting more sun exposure, especially early in the morning, just because it's so important.

Fasting, Recovery, and the Metabolism Score

You know, two thirds of the mitochondrial energy needs come from light. So full spectrum light getting sun in your eyes, getting your feet on the ground, getting outside even just 1020 minutes a day.

If you've got the ability to do that, you know, coming out of our retreat this last week in Mexico, it was so powerful. I feel I felt so amazing being by a beach, feet in the sand, getting sun on your face, getting sun in your eyes.

You just can't replace reconnecting with nature. And so I can tell a huge difference. Now I'm back in the Dallas Fort Worth area that feet are not in the sand and not as much sunlight as I was getting, and I can already feel that difference.

So I think that can play a huge role in increasing mitochondrial integrity, but able to burn create more energy outside of having to always eat to get it.

That if you have to always eat to have energy, something's wrong. Metabolically. Yeah for sure. You're absolutely right. And, you know, probably the hardest demographic to get doing some level of fasting.

And oftentimes they have a poor experience because they don't know how to do it right. Is your young menstruating females that have a very stressful light?

Maybe they have got kids. They've got, you know, career. They're working out. You know, they're doing CrossFit and they're really gung ho. They want to be healthy, right?

And so they want to do everything that they're hearing, but they're releasing too much stress hormone because they're in a sense they're overwhelmed. They're they're driving too hard.

And so that's where doing things like gratitude, like you were talking about a prayer practice, gratitude, grounding, getting in the sun. All those things are going to help stimulate endorphins, oxytocin, these hormones that help bring down cortisol.

Right. And it kind of balance and stabilize your stress hormones and put you in a state where now you can handle, you know, because fasting we call a medic stressor.

It's a stressor, but it's a stressor that our ancestors encountered regularly. And it's a stressor our body knows exactly what to do with. But if our system is already stacked up with stress, like we're overloaded with stress already, it can push us over the top and cause issues.

And so we've got to get the stress down first, right? In general, you know, start with that whole food based nutrition like you were talking about creating blood sugar stability there.

And then fasting could be such a powerful tool. Yeah. And probably on a 24 hour fast I probably wouldn't do a cold plunge. I probably wouldn't do an hour sauna session and do a, you know, do an hour workout in the gym.

Probably hold off on those that will also help you with your fast. Just let that be the stress of the day, right? Exactly. Yeah. I would say you got to pick.

You got to pick at least one thing that's uncomfortable each day. Right. But you don't necessarily. And as you build resilience you might be able to handle 2 or 3, you know.

But you got to find something. And fasting could be that it could be a cold plunge like you talked about. Could be a sauna, could be exercise. Right. But as your body adapts to that one stressor, it may be able to handle more stressors as long as you're recovering.

Well. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. That's great. Now you guys have a metabolism score. So a lot of people are wondering if they're metabolically flexible and they can just go to metabolism score.

And they can also find you guys at the Happy Healthy life.com. And tell us more about the metabolism score and what you guys do with your clients. Yeah, with the metabolism score, we just created a really easy quiz that people could be able to take to be able to figure out, hey, do I have a metabolism problem?

Or maybe it's something else, you know, going on. But by and large, if somebody is really struggling to lose weight and they've been trying to do it utilizing just diet or exercise, this is an easy way for them to see, hey, you know what?

Maybe there is something else going on. It is my metabolism. And then once they take that quiz, it's going to give them some steps of things that they can do in order to be able to improve their metabolism based on what that score is.

And so it's a really easy way for somebody to be able to get started. And then with the happy, healthy light that's got all of our stuff on there, it has a link to products that we have.

It's also got a link on there to our podcast if they want to hear more information from us. And so it's just our way to be able to continue to keep on giving as much value as we possibly can to people.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, you guys are doing great work. Keep it up. And, you know, love our conversation here guys. You can find them the happy healthy guys and for sure.

Check out the metabolism score if you want to see where you're scoring on your metabolism. Just metabolismscore.com and we'll see you all in the future.

Be blessed.

Rob Vasquez

Never Diet Again: Master The Art Of Metabolic Flexibility