One Tweak a Week: The Simple Path to Metabolic Freedom

Introduction to Vitamin G and the Podcast 0:00

Then vitamin G must be so expensive. It does so many good things, right? I mean, can we even afford it? Can we afford it? How much does it cost? Do they sponsor the show? Vitamin G is gratitude. It is the feeling of gratitude. Vitamin, gratitude. To Debbie's point, it's not expensive. It is free. There's no toxicity limit. You can take as much as you want. There's no negative feedback loop, meaning you can take as much as you want and your body still gets the same benefits even if you take more, different than a hormone.

And it really is, all the studies are on gratitude. And here's the thing, I was very intentional when I said it's the feeling of gratitude. I didn't say it's the practice of gratitude. There's a difference. You could practice gratitude and you'll get benefits. But if you treat it like a practice and an intellectual exercise, you won't get all the benefits that I want you to get. Gratitude is a feeling, not a practice. Gratitude is strained training for your soul. This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

Welcome to Vitality Made Simple. This is the podcast that equips you to feel better, look better, and to enjoy better relationships. I'm Dr. Debbie Osmit, your host, and it is a joy to have Ben Azadi with us. Welcome, Ben. Hi, Debbie. Nice to be with you. Love what you're doing and it's an honor to be on your podcast today. Well, it's an honor to have you because you're so good at relationships. I met you in Austin at a medical conference that you conducted called KetoCon originally, Hack Your Health, and you had such a relational feel there,

Ben Azadi's Health Transformation Story 1:32

Ben. You made everybody feel welcome. You made it like a big family. It was a large conference, but I was just so impressed with just the way you ran the whole thing. It was super. Thank you for that. Well, it wasn't my conference. I was a part of it, but no, that's Robin Switzer's conference that you're referring to. I was a keynote and a big part of it, but credit goes to Robin because she's the one who runs it. But I remember the conference. I remember meeting you. It was so much fun. I have the keynote and the book signing, but it's one of those conferences, Debbie, that When I speak at an event, I'll speak and maybe hang out for a little bit and then I'm gone.

For KetoCon, which is no hack or health, I stay throughout the entire time. So that's probably why you thought it was like my conference, but it's Robin's amazing conference. Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing. And I have, you know, KetoFlex, I have a signed copy, bragging or anything, but I have a signed copy by you. And then your new book that just came out, Metabolic Freedom. I see it so timely and I want our listeners to get excited about it like I am and potentially give it to their loved ones and just benefit from it.

So Ben, your adventure started in 2008. Tell our listeners what was the spark that started this change in your life. Thank you for getting my books. I'm very grateful. In 2008, I was very unhealthy. I had a metabolism that I felt like was just working against me no matter what I tried to do. I was 23 years old, 24 years old, and I was physically obese. I was mentally obese. I was depressed. I was suicidal. Of course, I was following a standard American diet, which we know very, very toxic, processed food-like substances.

I ate a lot of fast food, addicted to sugar back then, addicted to video games and drugs, very, very bad lifestyle. When I was 24 back in 2008, I wanted to give up. That was my first thought. I'm tired of being depressed. I'm tired of being inflamed. I'm tired of feeling the way that I feel. I had so many symptoms. I had high blood sugar levels. I had high blood pressure levels. I had erectile dysfunction. I had joint pain, gut issues, brain fog. And I went to my doctor, like so many people who are feeling unhealthy and having symptoms, they'll make their appointment with their doctor and they'll list the symptoms.

And for me, I was listing my symptoms, but my doctor never asked me the question, what are you eating, Ben? Let's discuss your lifestyle, Ben. How's your sleep, Ben? It was more of what can I prescribe for this 23, 24 year old man? and I didn't want to go on a medication back then because I felt I was too young and I knew I wasn't going to take my life because I kept thinking about my mother and I didn't want to cause that devastation and pain for her. So it forced me to figure things out and it started with changing my premise on getting healthy because my premise before that was more of a victim mindset.

I was saying I'm overweight because of my slow metabolism, bad genetics, enabling family members. And I had to take ownership and responsibility, which was the first step. And my premise also was I needed to lose weight to get healthy. And that's actually not how it works. We don't lose weight to get healthy. We get healthy to lose weight. And I realized I never even had a weight problem. Those listening right now, if you're overweight, you don't have a weight problem. It's a weight symptom. And once I understood that, then I focused on Getting healthy, then I focused on your topic area of expertise, chronic inflammation.

And as I started to remove the interference and interferences, my body started to heal, the weight started to come off, the brain fog started to go away, the symptoms started to go away.

Why the 30-Day Metabolic Reset Works 5:36

So that was 17 years ago. I'm now 41 and I feel the healthiest I've felt in my entire life. And it's just a testament to the way God made the human body. God made the body to be self-healing as long as we do our job, which is to remove the interference. And that's what I did. And that's hopefully what we inspire your audience to do today. Yes, our bodies are designed to heal and we just have to figure out what the design manual looks like. Now, I think one of your superpowers, Ben, is that you have the ability to make things simple.

And so in KetoFlex, you talk about a flexible way to get into ketosis. Now in metabolic freedom, you give people a 30-day plan. And I think anybody listening who's frustrated could think, okay, I can do anything for 30 days. Just whatever it is, you know there's gonna be an end to it. Why 30 days? Why is that a magic number? For most people who do something for 30 days, they start to reprogram their subconscious mind, their paradigms, as it's called. And everything that we do, all of our habits, our behaviors, are a result of something called paradigms.

Paradigms are a set of habits deep in your subconscious mind. It's why you do what you do. All of your behaviors are pretty much because of your paradigm. So if you are getting, bad results in your life, you're not healthy, you have symptoms, whatever it is, it's because that's the way you're currently programmed. So if you could start to apply what's called repetition, if you start to apply something day after day, week after week for 30 days, now you've done it enough times where the old paradigm is replaced with a new idea.

So this 30-day protocol helps you reprogram that paradigm. It's a very easy to follow sort of approach. We're taking you from burning sugar to burning fat, then we're increasing your fasting window, then we're mixing things up. But it's not where I'm throwing all these different things at you and you're like, oh my gosh, there's just so much and overwhelming people. No, that's not what I wanted to do. The philosophy is one tweak a week, a couple tweaks a week, and we start building momentum. And then if you do it for 30 days, Now it's pretty much going to stack where you're going to do most of it moving forward.

And that's why I wanted to make it 30 days versus 60 or 90 or even longer. Well, and I think it really works for people to have that flexibility. I mean, things build on each other. It reminds me, Ben, of the Hebbian law. Donald Hebb is one of my favorite dead guys, and he talks about neurons that fire together, wire together. So you're actually, through your program, helping people rewire those old thought patterns, build new thought patterns. in meeting you and following you, I can't imagine that you were ever not fit.

Reading Labels and Avoiding Processed Foods 8:40

You know, it doesn't even compute. So when you see people getting started on your program, what are some of the typical mistakes or incorrect thoughts that they typically have initially? They don't really review the ingredients of what they're eating. And then I think that's important. We hear it all the time, read the labels, eat whole food. It makes a lot of sense, right? Single ingredient food. So if you skip that and you're just buying foods that say like low carb or keto friendly or gluten-free organic, doesn't necessarily mean it's healthy.

There's a lot of dollars behind the marketing of these companies to make it look very healthy, but The mistake a lot of people make is they're not reading the actual ingredient list. And I'll give you an example of what I mean by a processed food versus a single ingredient whole food. When we go to the supermarket, we all see it. We are in the perimeter and we see the produce section. And if we pick up a potato and look at the ingredient list, it's just one ingredient, potato. Same thing with avocado, same thing with eggs, same thing with beef.

These are single ingredient whole foods. But if we get the processed version of the potato, which of course is the potato chip, which is in the inner aisle, and we look at the ingredient list, even though it might say organic, whatever buzzwords that are out there right now. But if you look at the ingredients list of that packaged processed food, now there's going to be 15, 20 ingredients that are going to be inflammatory. That's going to spike your glucose and spike your insulin. So, you know, the first step is to start with single ingredient foods and read the ingredients list and don't fall for the really clever, brilliant marketing that these companies have out there because it fools a lot of people.

Oh, it's super tricky. I just got that little olive app and, uh, you know, you can scan so, so-called healthy foods. You know, it's always the snack foods, like you say though, that have, you know, it's, it's not natural foods that God made, but, uh, even among those, Ben, it can vary so much on, you know, the rating of quality. It's shocking. Wow. I don't know about that olive app is so you scan it and it gives you a rating on unprocessed foods. It does but the good thing about this one and I mean I'm new to it.

I literally just downloaded it last week. They don't take any money from anybody. So it's like five dollars a month. And you know a lot of the other food apps are actually sponsored. And you'll get information that you know is not accurate on fats. I mean, this app seems to understand the difference between good fats and bad fats. And of course, that's something you bring out so well in your book. Tell our listeners how to discern good fats and bad fats. Yeah, thanks, Debbie. This is very important because these bad fats, as you call it, I agree, they're in 80% of our food supply in the United States.

They're everywhere. They're at your healthy, I'm putting that in quotation marks, healthy restaurants, high-end restaurants. They're at your whole food supermarket, hot food bar. and they're processed fats. They're also called seed oils, vegetable oils, omega-6 fats, linoleic acid. These are all the same name for these processed fats. And the reason why they're so inflammatory is because when you consume them, before you even consume them, excuse me, before you even consume them, they're already oxidized because of the processing of them.

They're called polyunsaturated fatty acids, and the word poly means many. So these fats contain many double bonds. The more double bonds a fat contains, the more reactive and unstable they are to things like oxygen, pressure, heat. And how do they process them? Oxygen, pressure, heat, the three things that it reacts to. So as it is processed in this industrialized process, they're adding chemical agents and detergents to cover up their acidity. And then they're putting it in a bottle and saying it's heart healthy and canola oil or American Heart Association stamp of approval.

Seed Oils, Inflammation, and Better Fats 12:40

It's far from being healthy. They're inflammatory before you even consume them, but we buy them and then we fry them again over and over and over. And I remember, Debbie, when I was a kid, My mom worked for Kentucky Fried Chicken and she would bring me home Kentucky Fried Chicken. Of course, they fried in vegetable oil and some days she didn't bring anything home and I would be an angry little fat kid saying, where's my chicken? And she would say, well, they haven't changed the oil in 14 days. And I'm like, so what?

And she said, well, it's supposed to be pretty clear. And this oil was pitch black. It's like motor oil. So they would fry it. with it over and over and over. And when it gets into your body, you might think, okay, I know they're inflammatory, but my body has these detox systems in place that could get rid of it in hours or days or maybe weeks. No, the half life of these bad fats It's 680 days, meaning if you stop eating them today, 680 days later, half of them will still be in your cells, creating inflammation, low-grade chronic inflammation.

And on top of that, there was a study that I put in metabolic freedom from Dr. Martin Grutfeld, who's a toxicologist. who analyzed toxins produced from frying French fries in vegetable oil, and he was measuring the aldehyde contents, and aldehydes are carcinogenic. When we smoke tobacco cigarettes, the reason why tobacco cigarettes are linked to a higher chance of cancer is because of the aldehydes that are produced. Well, he saw in his study that about 20 to 25 French fries that were cooked in vegetable oil produced the same amount of aldehydes as 20 to 25 tobacco cigarettes smoked.

That means one French fry is a tobacco cigarette smoke. So it's a problem. So I'll give your audience a whole list of the ones we want to remove and then a list of the ones we want to consume that are actually healthy. So the ones to remove are canola, corn, and cottonseed oil. soybean, safflower, sunflower oil, rice bran, and grape seed oil. These are highly unstable, inflammatory fats, and they're everywhere. Do an audit. Make sure you're not consuming them. Instead, we want stable fats, like saturated fats.

I was talking about the double bonds earlier. There are zero double bonds in a saturated fat, making it very stable. So saturated fats are going to be coconut oil, butter, ghee, beef tallow, duck fat, oils or fats to cook with, very, very stable. And then even fats like monounsaturated fats are pretty safe too. These contain a single double bond, and these are going to be avocado oil and olive oil, and those are going to be better for salad dressings and dips. So this is very important. Just this one swap right here will lower inflammation in your body.

Yeah, and inflammation is the key. So what do you see? Of course, you know my area. My interest is the sneaky oral inflammation from the oral microbiome that makes people old faster. You know, comment on just chronic inflammation, Ben, and different sources in the body and how that's going to impact blood sugar, insulin resistance, just all the things you talk about in the book. Yeah, it's everything to your point. I mean, inflammation, there's two primary types of inflammation. There's acute inflammation, which for example, if you sprain your ankle or have a sore shoulder from lifting too many weights, this is short-term inflammation where your body sends the proper signals and nutrients to heal that area.

And maybe in a couple of days that inflammation and pain is gone. Nothing really dangerous about that. The real boogeyman is the chronic low-grade cell inflammation. That's when your cells are inflamed. Every symptom that you have is a result of your cells being inflamed. And to your working point, a lot of it starts in the mouth for sure. But what happens is we have about 50 to 70 trillion cells inside of the body. Every cell has these, they have these receptor sites integrated into them called the integral membrane proteins.

And there's about 30,000 on one cell, 70 trillion cells. There's a lot of these receptor sites and these receptor sites are essentially like cell phone antennas receiving a signal. They're receiving signals from your hormones, your nutrients, oxygen, thoughts. These are substrates your cells and metabolism need to produce energy, burn fat, feel good. But when there's inflammation on that cell membrane, the communication is blocked. If I hit mute on my mic here, There's going to be frustration. I could be screaming at you, but you're not going to hear me, Debbie.

My message is not going to be communicated. There's going to be dysfunction. It's the same thing when you have inflammation. Your hormones can't communicate to your cells. There's a mute button on your cells. It's locked. So we want to reduce inflammation to open up those receptor sites so communication is restored. Otherwise we have this, what I call metabolic blackout. And when that happens, you could take all the supplements in the world, you could take all the hormones in the world, you could do all the exercise in the world that you want.

You're still not going to feel well. It isn't until you lower cell inflammation. Once you lower cell inflammation, then the symptoms start to go away because the symptom is not the actual problem. Your symptoms are actually a gift from God. It's your body's way of communicating to your check engine light that something in your environment, maybe something in your mouth, something you're eating and thinking is causing a blockage. And your body will show you a symptom to kind of alert you like a check engine light.

But we look at those symptoms as something we hate. Let's go get a medication and a mask kit. But no, those symptoms are actually your body's way of communicating to you.

Chronic Inflammation and Cellular Communication 18:30

So it's really important to address cell inflammation because that is the root cause of pretty much every disease and every symptom out there. Yes, and you know, that is sort of the relationship of your cells to everything else. I mean, you have to correct that relationship. You mentioned a couple of times, Ben, our thoughts. So the main thing I remember about you when I when I hear you speak, I've heard you speak several times, was about a vitamin we, you know, not many people have heard of. We know about the fat soluble vitamins, A, D, E, and K.

We know about vitamin C. You know, we know about the B vitamins, but tell husband about vitamin G. Yeah, great lead up. I love it. I love it. I love that you didn't give it away too. So yeah, vitamin G is the bee's knees. It's like the greatest, most powerful supplement out there. Speaking of inflammation, like once you take vitamin G, there's a reduction in cell inflammation. There's numerous studies on vitamin G. UC Davis, I have a study in the book from UC Davis showing that those who take vitamin G have healthier blood pressure levels, healthier blood sugar levels.

I know Dr. Joe Dispenza has done brain scans on individuals who take vitamin G and he's seen cortisol drop and their IgA levels and their immune system increase, showing their immune system is more supported. He also has seen 1200 chemical reactions take place in the brain simultaneously to taking vitamin G. He noticed dopamine, GABA, serotonin, and oxytocin, these feel-good chemicals that flood your system. There's also a really, really amazing study that was done from Harvard. published in JAMA that I also put in Chapter 10 of Metabolic Freedom, where they looked at 49,275 nurses.

What a study. And what the study concluded with was the nurses who took vitamin G had a 9% reduction in dying from all-cause mortality versus nurses who didn't take vitamin G and a 15% reduction in dying from cardiovascular disease compared to the nurses who didn't take vitamin G. And one more study before I reveal where to get vitamin G. One more study looked at mitochondrial health, and that is the name of the game, healthy mitochondria. And it measured the mitochondria through something called MHI, Mitochondrial Health Index, and they looked at caregivers.

Okay, caregivers live a very stressful life. It's a very tough job. And what they did is they measured the mitochondrial health of caregivers who took vitamin G at night versus the caregivers who didn't take vitamin G and showed that the next morning in the caregivers who are taking vitamin G at night, that following morning, they had healthier mitochondrial levels, mitochondrial function. Now, Ben, vitamin G must be so expensive. It does so many good things, right? I mean, can we even afford it?

Can we afford it? How much does it cost? Do they sponsor the show? Vitamin G is gratitude. It is the feeling of gratitude, vitamin gratitude. To Debbie's point, it's not expensive. It is free. There's no toxicity limit. You can take as much as you want. There's no negative feedback loop, meaning you can take as much as you want and your body still gets the same benefits even if you take more, different than a hormone. And it really is, all those studies are on gratitude. And here's the thing, I was very intentional when I said it's the feeling of gratitude.

I didn't say it's the practice of gratitude. There's a difference. You could practice gratitude and you'll get benefits. But if you treat it like a practice and an intellectual exercise, you won't get all the benefits that I want you to get. Gratitude is a feeling, not a practice. Gratitude is strain training for your soul. So what I mean by that, many people who started doing gratitude, and this was me for many, many years when I started doing gratitude, I was just doing it as a checklist. All right.

I did it. 10 things I'm grateful for. I'm on to the next thing. And there's benefits to that. Don't get me wrong. But once I started to actually feel it, and instead of choosing 10 things, maybe I chose one or two things and spent like a minute on each thing,

Vitamin G: Gratitude as a Health Practice 22:40

that's where I started to notice more benefits. That's where you'll start to notice more benefits. So when you get your vitamin G, feel it. Don't just treat it like a intellectual practice. I have never, you know, heard that distinction explained. I know you talk about that. Um, that's really great. Feel it. Let, let yourself have a relationship with what, you know, not just not make it a relational thing, not a transactional thing is what you're saying. That's right. Well said. Exactly. That's fantastic.

Um, so, so this leads me to want to ask you about how your faith, um, integrates into your health practices, Ben? Well, that's where the premise comes in, right? We said it earlier, God built the body to be self-healing. And I have a strong faith, strong relationship with God, and I talk to God every day. through my challenges that I go through, through obstacles. If I start to get away from that relationship, that's where I start to feel it as a challenge, feel it as a frustration. But when I come back to God, it's a sense of relief.

In the grand scheme of things, like our problems are really, really small. You know, we're on this planet for maybe 80 years, 100 years, 120 years, if you're really going for it. But that's the physical part, right? Our soul, we are the offspring of a deathless soul. So our soul lives on forever, right? This is just the journey of it right now in this human body. So that's why we want to take care of this body so we can enjoy it as much as possible. But beyond this, you know, death, life and death are both the same thing.

They're transitions. the transition of the soul. So for me, it's everything. I always tell my, you know, my community that, that we are all masterpieces because we are all pieces of the master. And, you know, once you really like just think about how incredible the human body is, like it's just, it's so remarkable. It really is. You're going to want to treat your body better. You're going to want to remove the interference. You're going to want to do all the things you enjoy because God wants to do those things through you, not for you, but through you.

So faith is huge. Faith is something that I talk about all the time. I'm also respectful and I also respect anybody who has a different faith or no faith or whatever it is. That's just my faith and I love it. I appreciate it. So every morning I read Jesus Calling. I read a passage from Jesus Calling. Every day I'm in prayer. Like I said, I always go to God when I'm going through challenges, but I also go to God when I'm just grateful. And the more gratitude I have, the more God shows up for me in really, really beautiful ways.

And I don't believe in luck, by the way. I don't think there's a God that says, okay, let's give Debbie a chance or, okay, let's give Ben a chance now. I don't believe in that. Voltaire once said, luck, chance are words we invented to explain the known causes of, the known effects, excuse me, of unknown causes. So I don't believe in luck. I believe in law. I believe everything was designed this way. So I know that's a long answer, but I have a strong faith and I know you do as well. And I, and I lost.

No, that's a wonderful answer. And I think gratitude is so much living by design. I think, you know, that's all through the Bible. And in that verse, I think, I don't know if I'm right on the address, but I might be it's in Ephesians, you know, we're his masterpiece created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which he prepared in advance for us to do. And I just love that word masterpiece, Ben, because, you know, any masterpiece you want to take good care of and there's a reason for it. And I feel like if people can really get your premise of, you know, what do you want to do in your life?

Why do you want to be healthy? Why do you want to feel good? What's important to you? Then that's the driving force. Then it's easy to make these changes. It's easy to do your 30 day reset. and keep it going and be committed and rewire your brain. It's so good. And of course, these bodies were designed to move. So tell our listeners how resistance training is part of your program. Yeah, that's really important because the more muscle mass we have, the more insulin sensitive we're going to be. And when I say muscle mass, I'm not saying to become a bodybuilder or to be like this performance, fitness performance.

No, I'm saying to put on lean muscle mass. There's a really interesting study that I put in the book that's relevant to this conversation, this topic right here, on the metabolism. Because so many people over the years, I'm sure you've heard it too, Debbie, there's an excuse that we hear. The excuse is that As soon as I hit 40 or as soon as I hit 50, my metabolism just slowed down.

Faith, Purpose, and the Body's Design 27:40

It's because of age. A lot of people blame age. Well, this study was from Duke University, and it was published in 2022. I put it in the book. It was probably the best study ever done on the metabolism that I've seen. It looked at over 6,600 people, and it was a cross-country study, so it involved the United States and other countries. And the cool thing about the study, they used a gold standard for measuring the metabolism, which was a urine test. But the age range of these participants in the study were between age one and age 95 and everybody in between.

Like, what a range of people. And they were measuring the differences in their metabolism. And here's what the study concluded with. It said this. They've noticed between the ages of 20 years old and 60 years old, the study said there are no significant measurable changes in the metabolism whatsoever between 20 and 60. So your excuse that it's because you're 40 and 50, your metabolism slowed down and nothing you can do, that's not true. It's because of inflammation. So the study also went on to say, once you hit age 60, they notice about a 0.7% decline in the metabolism every year after age 60. That might sound like a bad thing.

Okay, age, nothing we can do about it, but here's what the study also said. It said the reason why they saw that decline was because of loss of muscle mass. Yeah. That's why the strength training is so important because if you build lean muscle mass now in your 40s and 50s, or even if you're over 60 and 70 and you're working on it, you could be 95 years old with the same metabolism as when you were 25 years old, right? So that's important. So strength training is important. It doesn't mean you spend an hour at the gym every day.

It means you build your way up. this progressive overload. It could start with body weight. It could be this three times a week, 30 minutes each time, but you want to create a resistance where you're forcing a demand, your body has to adapt, and then it builds lean muscle. You pair that with high quality protein, and you start to build the lean muscle mass. Now you have more muscle, so now you have more of a sponge for glucose, so less insulin is produced. You can actually process more carbs if you eat carbs and have less of a glucose spike.

You burn more fat. You have more energy. The more muscle mass you have, the more mitochondria you have. So it's all good things. So strength training fits right into all of that. That's so inspiring. I'm, I'm 66. Um, Wow. You, you look great. You look freaking awesome. That filter on my cat. No, I appreciate that. I feel great, Ben. I feel great. Yeah. And, and I thank God for that. And I think, you know, I thank God for just being in this area to know people like you that are so inspirational because, um, It takes intentionality to lift weights and you can do it at home.

You can, like you said, you can do your own body weight. There's just so many ways, but it's essential. You know, and once again, back to the Bible, you know, Caleb. was robust at 85. I mean, people, I don't, I hate that excuse of I'm just getting old. That again is mindset. So I really like how you address that in your book. Now you did talk about in your book that people can overdo cardio, right? Yeah, it happens all the time. And I was guilty of that too. And I was trying to lose weight. A lot of people think it's all about chronic cardio to lose weight and burn fat.

So jogging, running, marathon running. It's actually one of the causes of visceral fat and belly fat is chronic cardio. We're not designed to run like that. This is different than sprinting. Sprinting is great. Short bursts of intensity. great, but chronic cardio like jogging and running on a consistent basis, that's chronic cortisol, chronic stress, chronic inflammation. It's actually not going to help you lose belly fat. It's actually going to contribute to more visceral fat because of the cortisol response.

And that's actually great news because you don't have to spend an hour on the treadmill. You don't have to run a 5k all the time.

Strength Training, Age, and Metabolism 31:50

When I say chronic cardio, this is different than walking. Walking is amazing for you. Walking is great for fat loss. Walking is great for longevity. Walking is different than chronic cardio. Chronic cardio is jogging and running at long distance. Walking is amazing for you. I think walking is like the king, the queen and everything in between when it comes to fat loss. If your audience did nothing else, but started to increase their step count each day throughout the day and walking after your biggest meal of the day, which is really important, you'll start to have more energy.

You'll start to burn fat. You'll start to feel better just doing that. And it doesn't have to be that many steps. I mean, studies are showing that just five to 7,000 steps a day gets you some amazing benefits in terms of extending your lifespan. But if you really wanted to ramp it up for fat loss, then you want to go between 10 and 14,000 steps a day. But most important here, after your biggest meal of the day, go for a 30 minute walk. It does great for digestion, great for that postprandial glucose, great because you produce less insulin and now some of it's been absorbed by your muscle and liver cells.

So walking is great. Chronic cardio, not so great. Well, you know, in my practice of helping people with their gut health, I'll see this J curve. And so think of the J folks, you know, the bottom of the J is where you want to be. That's when you're feeling good. The top of the J is, are the people who don't do anything. And you know, of course their guts are not healthy. And then the, the other little piece of the J that's those people that Ben's talking about that are marathon runners. And I mean, they, often don't have a healthy gut microbiome because, you know, they're creating inflammation and all kinds of problems from overdoing it.

Yeah, exactly. So we don't want to be extreme on any side. We don't want to be completely sedentary and we don't want to be extreme and do marathons all the time. We want to be right in that Goldilocks zone to your point. Yeah, so good. And then if you walk outside, you even get that extra benefit of, of nature in here and the birds sing and, you know. Yeah, that vitamin, are you calling it vitamin N, nature? Vitamin N is good. Yeah. So vitamin N, vitamin G, all those vitamins. Yep. You get it all.

If you go outside with nature and you see a deer and you're like, Ooh, vitamin N. And I'm so thankful Lord for these deer and that they're in our neighborhood. And yeah, you can, you just get all this vitamin content with, um, with no monthly subscription, right Ben? Right. It's free. So good. Well, tell us about, um, prioritizing protein. I know that's part of your program. Yeah, it goes hand in hand with the conversation we just had about building lean muscle. Protein helps you do that. And a lot of people, they under eat protein.

A lot of women, I work with a lot of women who under eat protein. And especially as you get older, over 40, 50, 60 and beyond, you want to make sure you're really prioritizing protein. Protein does a lot of great things. It acts like a GLP-1. It helps with satiety. So when you eat High quality protein, when I say high quality protein, ideally animal-based protein, but whole food protein is what I'm referring to. It activates hormones like cholecystokinin, leptin, peptide YY, similar to what Ozemp can do.

It helps with hunger and cravings. Protein also helps build lean muscle mass. You have your essential amino acids that are really important. for your muscle mass. And when you have enough protein, it's easier to lower your carbs and do something like keto or low carb. When you have enough protein, it's easy to practice things like fasting. It helps with your satiety. It's very difficult to overeat protein. It's almost impossible to overeat it because it's just so filling. But carbs are very easy to over even fats in some cases, but protein is a different story.

So the general recommendation that I give is one gram of protein per pound of your ideal body weight. So if you're 185 pounds, but you're ideal body weight, your goal weight is 135 pounds, then on most days you want to aim to consume 135 grams of protein. And if you do that, you're going to notice no snacking in between meals. You're going to notice it's easier to fast, easier to do keto. So yeah, prioritize protein first. That's what I would recommend. Yeah, that's terrific. How do you recommend people monitor their blood glucose?

What tracking devices do you like? There's a couple ways to do it, right? A keto mojo is a great option where you prick your finger, put it on the strip, put the strip into the machine and you get your glucose. You could also test your ketones with that same blood on a different strip. So if you're looking at glucose and ketones, a keto mojo is a great option.

Cardio, Walking, and Protein Priorities 36:40

The drawback is you got to prick your finger every time. Then there are continuous glucose monitors, which are a phenomenal idea where you wear a device typically behind your tricep, but you can put on other areas and it stays there for 14 days and it's tracking your glucose 24-7 and where you simply just scan it on your phone and the app shows your levels of glucose and it gives you a real-time update of your glucose levels without pricking your finger. That's the benefit, but it's not giving you ketones, so it's only giving you glucose.

But it's a great idea to look at your blood sugar levels when you're fasted, postprandial, after a poor night of sleep. It gives you an idea of what your lifestyle is doing to improve your blood sugar or to actually make it worse. then you'd be surprised when you start tracking that there are foods you thought were healthy for you, but something in your gut microbiome, you know this, you didn't break it down and you didn't process it well and it will spike your glucose. Even though I could eat it, maybe I have the bacteria to break it down, but you don't.

And you wouldn't know that unless you look at your glucose level. So I'm a big fan of looking at blood glucose. Yes it's super interesting a patient that was in last week said that if she just takes a 10 minute walk after she eats for her it was like year on you know her her blood glucose just plummeted. I mean it was you know in real time you can see what's happening. That's cool. I see that with a lot of people too, that 10 minute walk. And it's not even a long walk. And yeah, studies show that it actually, that 10 minute walk after a meal works even more efficiently for those who are diabetic or pre-diabetic.

So that's really cool. Really good. Now in metabolic freedom, you have some really good recipes. What are some of your favorite recipes? Personally, mine are anything that has to do with meat. I love more of a carnivore-based diet. Like 90% of everything I eat is like meat, carnivore-based. I'm not 100% carnivore, but I'm mostly carnivore. So anything with red meat, anything with eggs, anything with avocados, that's not carnivore, it's a fruit, but anything with avocados is great. Anything that's simple to make, like for example, this is not in the book because those books require, the recipes in the book require like preparation, ingredients, time to make, which people love to do that.

Some people do. I don't personally. I like quick, easy, delicious meals. So I just cooked a bunch of like grass-fed, grass-finished burger patties. I put some sea salt and some, some seasoning in it. And like, that was it. Like that was my lunch. That was going to be my dinner as well. Right. So I like easy, delicious, healthy foods like meat, steak, patties, avocado. That's usually eggs. Those are usually my go-to meals. Yeah, it's so good. And the quality of meat varies so much. Joel Salatin was on the podcast recently and we talked about how good this, you know, meat that's raised, you know, on real grass and finished on real grass is so much more delicious.

I mean, you can really tell the difference. You can. It looks different, tastes different. You're also supporting healthier animals, healthier environment. I know it's more expensive and I know you can't always have access to it. And sometimes when I'm at a restaurant, a lot of times when I'm at a restaurant, they don't have grass-fed grass-finished organic. I'm still getting the steak. But when you are buying your own meat, I get mine shipped to me from a regenerative farm. I want to support those farmers.

So for the most part, I'm eating this high quality organic pasture raised meat. Sometimes when you're out, you can't get that and that's okay. But for the most part, you want to aim to get it. You do. And when you cook at home, it's always less expensive. I mean, the difference in eating out and eating at home is so great that you can buy better food at cooking at home. So, so in closing, what words of wisdom do you have for our listeners to boost their vitality? You're the health detective, Ben, and have that reputation.

So what would you tell people? Thank you. Yeah. I would say, you know, just keep, keep reminding yourself of that premise. My body, God built my body to be self-healing. God built my body to be self-healing. One of the things that I recommend everybody do is to grab like an index card.

Glucose Tracking, Recipes, and Closing Advice 41:00

And, um, this is kind of a laminated index card, but you grab an index card and you write on it the words, I am so happy and grateful now that. and then write your future victories. Write something that you're looking to accomplish. Maybe it's a weight that you want to get to, like, I'm so happy and grateful now that I'm at my high school weight of 135 pounds, or maybe it's a financial goal, or maybe it's a relationship goal. But you write it down in present tense as if it's done, and you read it every day.

You read it for 30 days. We talked about why that's important. And I've done this with many things, but two things this year that like when I wrote it, I was like, there's no way this is going to happen. I have no idea how to do this, but I kept reading it and I accomplished two of those things. I'm about to accomplish the third thing. So that would be my word of words of wisdom, whether it's a health goal, a business goal, a relationship goal, whatever the goal is, write it down in present tense.

I'm so happy and grateful now that write it down. And then at the end of it, I give glory to God. I say glory to God for helping me achieve this. So I would recommend you do the same thing. And then you read it every day for 30 days. It'll change your life. That is incredible. I mean, the power of life and death is in the tongue. And so you're, you're declaring that and, and your actions move that way and God blesses that. And thank you for that, Ben. is incredible. Thank you so much. This has been such a fun interview and thank you listeners for joining us.

And thank you for subscribing and sharing Vitality Made Simple. I appreciate it so much. I just appreciate having the relationship with people like Ben and people like you all who listen and want to live a life of purpose with more vitality. Blessings until next time. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com.

Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.