Jay Feldman 0:00
Music. Welcome to Episode 36 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and all sorts of other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach and independent health researcher, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition together for quite a while now, and Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode is part two of our two part series discussing the holiday anti diet. In part one, we talked about putting an end to dieting, binging and restriction. So if you haven't listened to that episode, make sure you go check it out. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about fixing our dysfunctional relationship with food, and this includes the process of removing judgment and morality from health and dieting. We'll also be talking about when you might want to consider ice cream as a health food. We'll talk about why losing weight through the mainstream model often comes at the cost of our health. We'll talk about how the diet and nutrition industries have caused us to develop this dysfunctional relationship with food, and we'll also talk about how we can transition away from the eat less and exercise more paradigm of fat loss. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the articles and studies and anything else that we discussed throughout today's episode. And if you are finding that you are stuck in that binging and restriction cycle, the yo yo dieting, the constant hunger and cravings, or if you're dealing with other low energy symptoms, whether that's fatigue or joint pain or gut issues or trouble sleeping or hormonal imbalances, or if you are having trouble losing weight or dealing with any other chronic health conditions, then head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I will walk you through the main things that you want to do as far as nutrition and lifestyle are concerned, so that you can maximize your cellular energy availability, which is the key to getting rid of those chronic cravings and hunger the key to ending the constant yo yo dieting, and also ending the binging and restriction cycle, as well as all of those other low energy symptoms and chronic health conditions. So to sign up for that free energy balance, mini course, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, let's get started.

One thing that I also see a lot as far as a roadblock goes, is the psychological side. The, you know, there's, there's a lot to be said about dealing, you know, experiencing or explaining the physiology and understanding how our bodies work. But so much of it, too, especially when it comes to the holidays, is an emotional situation where, you know it can be tough to make sure that we're eating enough. When you know we're we're around people who we feel like are judging our, you know, our amount of food intake, you know we're not, or when we're judging ourselves, which is normally, you know, the first part, and often a more important part, is that we, you know, we might hear some of these things and, you know, feel like, oh, I probably should eat more. But then still, every time we go to eat some food, we're keeping this restriction mindset where, you know, we shouldn't be eating too much of it, or we don't let ourselves have a lot of those foods, because we're still stuck in that, in that mindset, which can be pretty tough to work through and get over. And it's not only the people around us during the holidays, but every advertisement, or, you know, all over and people are talking about their New Year's resolutions to eat less and exercise more and join the gym and go on whatever diet. I mean, it just further drives these, these beliefs.

Mike 4:06
Yeah, definitely it gets I mean, I know both you and I have experienced it before, because when we were young, we were eating differently than everybody else in our families and stuff like that. So you get a lot of questions, and you get a lot of you do get a lot of hate, even from your family, so we can understand that.

Jay Feldman 4:24
yeah, a lot of judgment.

Mike 4:26
Yeah, I know that for for me, dealing with it was because I know that I assume that's where you want to go, is talking about dealing with it, is it really? I think just comes down to, you know, just accepting what your position is and accepting what you're doing, and then, you know, like, really accepting it. So if you are overweight and your family gives you a hard time about it, if you accept and understand, yeah, I'm overweight, when somebody tells you you're overweight, you're just like, Okay, I'm overweight. When you if you have hair loss, and somebody tells and you're like, Yeah, I'm losing my hair and then somebody tells you you're losing. Hair, and they make it, yeah, I am What? What? When you want to, where do you want to go with it? It is what it is, you know? So the first point is, is the acceptance with it, and then it makes it easier to be okay with doing what you're doing, if you're trying to make a difference for yourself, and you're trying to lose your weight or or stop hair loss, or deal with whatever situation you're going on, and it's going to require you to step out of the normally accepted bounds it. People are going to have a problem with it. Some people are going to give you a hard time about it. Some people are just going to be curious and inquisitive about it. And so you sort of have to root through and see, you know, some people are going to be like, Well, why do you do that? And then you tell them. And then some people are, oh, that's weird. And then some people are going to be like, Oh, it's pretty interesting. So the but the first step to being able to get to to dealing with it is to being able to accept it for yourself. And a lot of situations, from a physiologic level, being overweight is not accepted because there's issues with it. If you people are having extreme obesity or are very heavily overweight, that is signaling a physiologic problem. It is signaling that if something is wrong now, that doesn't mean that you're there's a moral problem with the individual, you know there. I know that there's a stigma with it in this in society, right? Which is weird, because most of American society, statistically, is overweight, and a large portion of American society is over beast. So the fact that there's such a stigma. Stigma against it doesn't really make any sense when it's the norm.

Jay Feldman 6:24
And there's no stigma against other health conditions and other health symptoms.

Which, and the thing is, that's all. They are obesity and and gaining weight are health problems to a large extent, yeah, yeah. It then it really depends on what you know. It depends on, like, because, again, we also, to some extent, for a while here we have, we had a skewed body image in the country that's, there's, there's no doubt about the skewed body image, the images that people get flashed all the time. I mean, for men, it's the idea of being like, you know, 200 pounds of pure muscle and, like, 5% body fat, when, in reality, you know, the that's only obtainable through steroid use. For most people. There may be some random specimens out there. I'm not going to discount that, but I think for the majority of people, the idea of what men are supposed to look like in the modern image is completely unobtainable. Unrealistic. Doesn't make any sense. Probably isn't healthy for for most people, and is going to require the use of drugs. And a lot of the people who are displaying these pictures require drugs. And then for women, you have this idea. I mean, for a while it was the skinny look, and that was done by starving yourself. And the women who were doing it were doing it by the starving themselves. And then now, then, I guess the new fad with all the Instagram stuff is having an extremely large butt and a really tiny waist, for which, for a lot of people, and even on Instagram stuff, it's completely manufactured. It's completely photoshopped. A lot of the girls who are who are doing stuff like that, are touching up the pictures, or they're wearing their clothes a certain way, or they have corsets on, and then they're working out an excessive amount, and they have so a lot of them are maintaining low body fats that are causing issues with their cycles. So there's just the images that we get in general for for how we're supposed to look are obviously set at unobtainable levels for the vast majority of people, and then and on healthy levels, and on exactly and at unhealthy levels. And then even more than that there. So with that said, there also is an issue with being very overweight or obese. There's definitely health implications with that. So there's not necessarily a moral issue. Would be both there can there often is especially obesity, there often is, but and so there can be health issues with that, and most times there is. And the same thing is, there is physiologically there. In a lot of cases, there is something wrong with that. It doesn't make it a moral judgment. But at the same time, the end of the day, it comes down to accepting it as, okay, I'm in this situation, okay? I have hair loss. Okay? And it is, it is a medical condition. I have hair loss. I have or a physiologic issue, whatever you want to call it, hair loss and autoimmune disease, being overweight, heart disease, whatever they're all, they're all under the same umbrella. It's the there's no separation between those. It's not like being overweight or being obese is some sort of moral problem of gluttony. And all the other medical conditions are, you know, purely medical, physiologic where it feels we're so sorry that you have this condition, right? Overweight and obesity falls within the same category of you have a medical situation. Your body's just everybody's body has a predisposition to handling different stressors differently, some people will start building adipose tissue. And in a lot, in some studies, being overweight or being obese is actually protective and compared to other um, it's like the obesity paradox in the literature, where certain certain levels of obesity are protective to large extent, against certain diseases, because the way the bodies. Handling those issues is depositing it in fat tissue to sort of store it. So we're just going to put it over here. We're just going to keep putting it over here. That's essentially, that's the, I guess, the shorthand mentality is, we have this problem, we're going to shove it over here so we don't have the issue like in our functioning areas. So it's, it's important to to realize that it is a medical issue and it's not a moral issue, and that for a lot of people, the first step with that said, is to accept what it is and understand that there is a stigma in society against it and but it's based on ideals that are insane. Now, at the same time, I don't think the idea of accepting this as a norm, I don't think is a good idea either. So I want to create the there's a point of balance.

Let's use a different word. And so, like, there's a difference between accepting it, as far as not having a moral judgment, but also acknowledging it as a reality, or wanting to..

Mike 10:52
What I'm saying about it. There's an there's an idea within society now to accept it like the as a norm. It's like a normal in the sense of, it's this is what. This is okay, like, this is normally. This is what the new normal is. This is what everybody it's like, it's okay to be in this area, and it's like, there is a physiologic problem with it. It's not a moral question, but there's a physiologic issue with it. Because it's like, if most people are becoming diabetic, you don't want to just say, Okay, well, it's just normal to be diabetic. No, there's a physiologic problem with that, and most people have heart disease, so it's just normal. It's not normal, and it's not right, right? It doesn't mean it's a moral problem. It just means that there's a physiologic issue. And the question is, well, why are all these people becoming diabetic and having heart disease and becoming obese? It's all the same question. They're they're literally, in the research is linked together as metabolic syndrome. It's not a it's they're not sitting I mean, the idea, some researchers try and break it out as calories, and calories out, we just hashed all that out. So I'm not going to go into that. But in a lot of it, it's like, no, you there's a metabolic issue, like, there's an actual physiologic medical issue underlying the situation that has nothing to do with gluttony.

Jay Feldman 12:03
Right, It may be a good a good term for it, or like a good language distinction would be acceptance versus normalization, where these things are prevalent and that shouldn't be normalized, like we shouldn't we shouldn't consider that as normal as or as natural or healthy, or whatever you want to call it, but, but that doesn't mean that we want that there's a moral problem with people, or that that people who are experiencing any of these conditions, whether it is whether they are overweight or obese or they're dealing with heart disease or cancer or infertility or any other issue, there's no moral judgment there. They aren't worse people. They aren't of less value. But it also doesn't mean that those things are normal, or that those are things that we don't want to work on or try to improve.

Mike 12:47
Or those, yeah, or that those things aren't like a physiologic problem, right? I mean, the thing is, for a lot of people who are diabetic too, there is a moral judgment. It's like, Oh, why can't you stop eating sugar? It's like, oh, yeah, that's not the problem. That's not why people are. It's not like people are, oh, you know, he's been drinking too much juice his whole life. That's why he became a diabetic. He should have stopped drinking that orange juice. It's not the problem. There's some there's something underlying going on. I think for most people, the problem is a lack of knowledge around the situation, a lack of understanding. And that's not there. That's that's done on purpose. That's the system itself. That's the industry itself creating that, the idea of calories in, calories out, and enforcing a moral judgment. And that's, that's the system. That's not the people, the people, I mean, you come you've been bombarded with it your entire life, and your family bombard you with it, and they're bombarded with it. So they're automatic. Well, if, if this is what the doctor says. If this is what people keep saying it is, then that's must be what it is, especially if you haven't read any research on it, why would you think any different? But the thing is, is that's not what it is. It's not overeating. Diabetes isn't because you ate too much sugar and cholesterol, and heart disease isn't because you ate too much cholesterol. None of those are true. All of those are straight false statements. There's there's underlying conditions of those that are related to and so those are propagated lies by industry to a large extent, to basically fool people into taking a blame on themselves. Is the problem when it's the industry that's the problem, right?

Jay Feldman 14:17
And and that's ubiquitous. That is not specific to nutrition, either. You see that, and virtually every agenda that's pushed is this idea that the problem is the people, the problem is each other, and as opposed to the problem being, you know, larger systems.

Mike 14:33
It's the same all over the place.

Jay Feldman 14:35
Right.

Mike 14:35
Literally, the same everywhere.

Jay Feldman 14:36
Right.

And it's, I think it's really important to point out this, in this case, specific to dieting, that that it is not anybody's individual fault for the health state that they're in, and that doesn't mean there's nothing they can do about it, but there's no blame or judgment there, and there, there shouldn't be it. It's not a moral issue, and it's not a glut issue of gluttony or people being too weak willed, and as you're saying, it's just a mechanism or a way to blame each other. Opposed to blaming the systems that are encouraging people to be that way, they're harming people directly, right? Yeah? And I don't when it comes to health and nutrition, there's a lot of really harmful, damaging, like false systems like that, yeah and false Yeah, systems and ideas that are put out there that have the same effect. I don't know if any is more damaging than the dieting cycle. And eat less, exercise more. I mean, I think that's got to be, I mean...

Mike 15:28
And we talk for heart disease, the vegetable oil, heart healthy stuff.

Jay Feldman 15:32
Yeah, that's up there too. I don't, I don't know. I mean, you, you mentioned it where I don't know if there's, if I've really ever seen anybody who I would say is eating enough before, like, you know anyone who I'm working with, or not even you know, not even clients, just people who I see. I mean, I don't, yeah, I virtually never see it.

Mike 15:49
And when you read old studies too, it's kind of weird because they, like, say young men were maintained on a 3500 calorie diet. You won't see that now, that's considered like you're going to get fat if you eat.

That's like, 160 pound men. That's not like.

I know it's not even like men who are 200 pounds. It's like, it's like smaller guys eating 3500 calories, they're like, this is what it took to maintain their weight. Even in the Minnesota starvation experiments, they needed like, 3000 or three 500 calories to maintain their weight. And then we're gonna cut that to 1800 which is only 200 less than the recommended intake.

Jay Feldman 16:24
Yeah, what I mean...

Mike 16:27
And that was the starvation level.

Jay Feldman 16:29
Yeah. I don't know where the 2020 500 calorie idea diet came out, but I that's terrible. I mean, there's, it's, it's as bad as all this other stuff, but that that just needs to be, obviously...

Thrown out there's thrown in the garbage. Absolutely. The idea that you can standardize an amount of calories, which we already talked about, is almost a worthless measure to for most situations, as this is the amount of calories everybody needs to eat. And if you're a man, is 2500 and if you're a woman, it's 2000 is absurdity. It's literally what if I have a six foot, six foot 200 pound woman versus a five foot, five 120 pound woman, they're gonna both eat 2000 calories. That doesn't make any sense. What if one's What if one's an Olympic athlete and the other one works on a desk, are they still gonna eat the same amount of calories like i? That doesn't make any sense. To even make a broad arching recommendation like that as almost a waste of time, especially if you're going to use it in terms of calories,

Yeah, yeah. And I, and we see it also like directly. I mean, I've seen clients who are under 130 pounds and eat 3000 calories a day, and I've seen clients who weigh 100 pounds and are eating 2000 calories or more per day. And so, when, then, when? How can you apply these same things as someone who's 150 or 170 or 180 pounds? What 200 pounds? These, these, I don't know, these numbers are. They're also kind of just come up, you know, they come up with them out of thin air, and there's no rhyme or support for them.

Mike 17:56
A lot of it is just the nutrition advice is just, is insanity. And again, it's kind of hard now because there's a lot of misinformation and marketing and this and that. I mean, if every time you go to the store, you broadcast it all day long, cholesterol and but you stay away from those eggs and that butter and then every single vegetable oil carton has heart health on it, it's just like and then when you look at the research, that's not the case. It's just, this is it's insanity. It's absolute insanity. Your corn oil is heart healthy, and all the research, it's causing issues. But you can't touch, you can't touch eggs and butter. Yeah, you know. So that I understand that it's hard, but I just, I think, I personally, and I don't know you may not feel the same, but I personally see a direct issue as somebody who's, I'm overweight, I don't like it, I have a problem with it, but I'm just not going to do anything about it. Like I think that that is a problem. I think that part of the process of getting better is taking responsibility for your health, taking responsibility for yourself, and making a determination to try and figure it out. Some extent it's gonna it's not gonna be easy. I don't, and there are gonna be times that you're gonna be like, I want this is too hard. I want to give up. And I, and I felt that way as well. It's just like, ah. And that's where, then when you start getting the ideas of, well, if I just eat everything in moderation, maybe I'll be okay, you know, if I just take the middle of the road on everything, then I won't get too much of one thing, so I'll be all right. And I mean, I don't subscribe to that strategy, but I can understand where people want to go with that. But I still think, at the end of the day, part of the the part of the process of taking, taking getting better and healing yourself, is taking that responsibility, I think people and and, but it's within, it's within the context of understanding that there are forces directly working against us in terms of information that's out there, and it's not going to be easy, so it's and if you're feeling like it's difficult to find proper information and to find strategies that work, then you would be correct. You weren't right that there isn't, there is an entire industry. Working against it and, and I can't stress that enough. I just think that it's really important that people, you know, they start, they take responsibility for themselves in the situation, with the caveat that there, there are factors working against them outside of their control. So again, it's, I'm gonna I need to make changes for myself, and if I want to make a difference for what's going on. If I'm not happy where I am, I'm gonna have to make some changes to what I'm doing in my life so that I can get out of this situation, so I can move on to the situation I accept where I am, but I'm want to get to, I want to get out of where I am because I'm not happy with it, so I need to make some changes. That's the responsibility, that's the acceptance that I see, that I think is important. And then also, there's things working against me, and I don't, I may or may not know what they are right now. And so it's not entirely my fault, because responsibility for me is different than fault. And I think that that's, that's I know that's where the semantics of the situation is, where you have a slight issue with because I know people can take it the wrong way. So I just, I want to clarify it that way. It's not a radical my fault type of thing. It's I need to take responsibility for my stuff. Now, the problem is just, if somebody goes and says, I don't like where I am and and I accept that, I that I'm this or that, and I don't like where I am, but I'm just not going to do anything about it, because whatever I don't that I think is problematic and is direct impediment to people getting to a better place?

Jay Feldman 21:21
Of course, yeah, as you said, there's a lot of factors that might cause someone to feel that way. But yeah, so in terms of dieting and and, you know, the I want to make it clear also that, you know, we're talking about not fighting against our bodies and not falling into the or kind of working our way out of this, this idea that we just need to eat less and exercise more, and that we need to, you know, like we're gonna, we're gonna feast for these holidays, and then we're and we're gonna gain some weight. But, you know, come January 1, we're gonna join the gym, we're gonna work out, we're gonna start dieting, we're gonna be, you know, we're gonna lose all that holiday weight, as opposed, you know, as opposed to finding long term solutions, going through everything that we talk about, you know, and improving things metabolically. It's, it's a tough transition. And I want to make it clear also that it's not black and white or an immediate switch. It's not like, you know, there's, there's no, at least from what I see with with people who are trying to implement these things, it's normally, it's normally a bit of a process to work through the emotional side of all of this where, you know, where, when somebody is thought for so long that the things that they're putting into their bodies, like the food that they're eating, is harming them, and that they need to reduce it, and they need to eat less of it, it's really difficult to all of a sudden switch that and be like, Oh, this is actually nourishing me, and this is actually supporting me, and I need this to fuel myself. I need this for my brain to work. I need this for my reproductive system or to work for my digestive system to work, for my immune system to work. It's, it's not a, it's not like a an easy flip to an easy switch to flip, you know, and it's really along with that too. It's really tough to trust cravings and hunger and intuition, even when you know, as we've acknowledged, we can't trust these things. When it comes to donuts or honey buns, as you said, you know, or kind of these, these foods that have all these industrial components. But even when it comes to the foods that we would consider to be healthy, even if they're processed, you know, we think that there's a lot of still healthy processed foods, as long as you know, depending on what's in them. What's that? Chocolate being one? Yeah, chocolate or, like, coconut oil, potato chips, or even ice cream, that is good ingredients. All, you know, all those sorts of things can be good, but..

Mike 23:30
It's potato chips with good ingredients too. Just to clarify, because I use that as an example of a junk food previously.

Jay Feldman 23:37
Right, right. Yeah, yeah. And so there's a lot of these processed foods that can be totally fine and healthy from our perspective, but even then it can still be really you know, in juice, we talk about a lot fruits, things that you know are sugary, that a lot of people are saying are causing all these issues, saturated fats, butter, red meat, whatever, all those things, there are still a lot of hurdles to jump through in order to get to the idea that you can actually trust your intuition for these things, and you can trust your cravings for these things, because it's so deeply ingrained that eating these types of foods will cause weight gain or will cause metabolic issues, and eating more of these foods will definitely cause those things. And so I see that a lot with people where it's, you know, the farthest thing from just a switch. It's a process of of not only just trial and error, but part of its experimentation and seeing, seeing how these things go, making adjustments, noticing how you feel, working through this all very slowly, as opposed, you know, what I'm not saying is just go free for all, and as soon as you've kind of come across these things, start chugging juice and milk and, you know, potato chips, even if they're cooked in coconut oil, like, you know, transition. Do these things slowly and start to start to try to get your diet, like, get consistent meals and snacks throughout the throughout the day. Try to get enough fat and carbs in those meals and protein as well. Like, you know, slowly changing the types of foods that you're eating, and slowly working away from some of those more harmful foods, not that they can't ever be eaten, but at least working your way away from them so that they aren't a mainstay of the diet, and eventually where they're a very small part of the diet, if at all, depending on, you know, your circumstances. But yeah, I mean, and also be gentle with yourself, like recognize that you might go through a stressful experience, whether it's something with work or with family or with friends, whether you're whether it is related to the holidays, and you might slip back into some of those ideas that you know you need to restrict and that you can't continue eating this much because it will cause all these problems. And as you said, when you have media and the people around you telling you all this, it can be pretty tough to stick to it, and that's okay, like that's part of it. But the more that we can be aware from aware of these things and work on removing the judgment from ourselves, and then also removing the judgment from how we feel and our hunger cravings and our intuition, the easier it'll be, and just remembering also that it's a process, and that's part of what this episode is meant to be, too, is it's just a reminder of those things. You know, I know we talk about, we've taught, you know, had several episodes talking about weight loss before, and part of that's because it's a really common question that we have, but also because of how important it is to be eating enough. It's, it's important to have these reminders, and to remember that, especially at a time when a lot of these, you know, there might be a lot of triggering situations when it comes to family and food. You know, we want to remember that food is, you know, ideally, when we're talking about good quality, food is a way to support everything that our bodies are trying to do for ourselves, and nourish them and allow them to function better and allow you to feel better. You know, our bodies are not fighting against us. They want us to be eating the foods that are healthy for them. They want to be healthy. And it's a matter of of supporting them by giving them what they're what they need and and that's a process, too, as you said, as far as kind of unlearning what those things are that we don't need and the, you know, and relearning the things that we do need. And that's okay, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's not an immediate, it's not going to be an immediate switch. And that's, you know, that's fine.

Mike 27:09
It definitely takes time. Yeah, it definitely takes time. And the other thing I want to add is that you can replace foods, comfort foods and things like that, with better options. I mean, you can, instead of eating Costco, chocolate chip cookies cooked with soybean oil and what 100 list of ingredients. I mean, back in the day, cookies was a baking soda, flour, egg, sugar and chocolate chips. I mean, yes, go back to that. Yeah, it's, it can be that easy. It can just be switching it over into using something a little, using better ingredients, because that's the large that's the largest part of the problem is a lot of the ingredients are crap. A lot of the foods are completely they're complete crap. At this point, it's a bunch of it's a bunch of ingredients that we don't even know when, when did they start adding gums to ice cream? Ice cream was salt, sugar, cream, butter, and, or, or, yeah, eggs. I was gonna say eggs, um, and egg yolks. So that's what it was back in the day. What? When do we start getting all these 100 different ingredients on the label? It used to be like five or six ingredients. That's foods like that are still fine. Now some of them, if you having weight, like a weight issue or something like that, eating loss of ice cream, can add weight. That's something that, for some people, can put on weight. So and the thing is, is, the other thing that this comes into is having some body fat on is not necessary. I mean, and no one current research or current ideas like, if you have any body fat like you need to be shredded, you need to be but a degree of body fat is healthy. I mean, body fat has a function. It's not just a pure storage like it has signaling function. It has survival functions. It's adaptive. There's a reason why, in other primitive cultures, having more body fat was seen as better, because you were healthier, instead of just being excessively lean or skinny, which is what we currently have now, which is doesn't mean, doesn't really make too much sense. But as far as, like, the goal, you know that most as far as the goal, yeah, this doesn't being below 8% body fat year round. I mean, even in bodybuilding circles, is accepted as not healthy, and a lot of people maintain that using drugs, um, something to consider. But at the end of the day, having a decent amount of body fat, or a decent having some body fat, is healthy. Some of these foods will can induce body fat, like a lot of ice cream. Can put some fat on, um, that's something to consider. But in general, you can, like, if you're going to have a Thanksgiving dinner, you can have cook for dessert. You can have cookies that are made well. You can have pie that is made correctly, like it really comes down to what the ingredients of the food are, that's what. And you can have having turkeys and, you know, collard greens or whatever green cooked with bacon and stuff like that. Or if it's beef bacon or whatever, because the fatty, the fatty acids are better there. Or it's cooked with butter. And bacon bits, things like that, and then having, like, uh, mashed sweet potatoes with a with a solid source of cream in there. Those are all fine. Those are all fine options. Those are all healthy options. And they, I mean, my mouth was water thinking about it right now, but they're all, you know, they're all fine. And they're, they're delicious options. It's, it really comes down to what is in the food. And you can make a lot of these cookies, and back in the day where a genius invention, you have fat, you have sugar, you have salt, you have a starch, and you have an easily carryable food that can last a decent amount of time without being needing to be refrigerated. It just makes sense. You know, it's not only does it taste good, but it has a bunch of utility, utilitarian functions. So same thing with bread, same thing with with beef jerky, all these different types of things. They the difference between now and then is the quality of the food, the quality of the food and the source of the food. And I think that that's really a really important point to put out. It's not that you have to only eat, um, what do some of these diets say you have to? It's just like, I don't know, raw vegetables and lean meats and you can't have fat and you can't, does not the point? The point is whole grains. Yeah, these like, there's austerity diets. They're like, what Pete called them like, what did he say at one point, he was mentioning them as, as, like, uh, they're like, poverty diets. Like, when people were, were poor, this, these, these were like, the food, the subsistence foods that they turn to. It's like, now that has been created as the new healthy. And it's like, clearly, everybody wants butter. Most people love butter. My baby sister puts butter on my dad puts butter on the crackers, and she just eats the butter off the cracker and she throws out the cracker. I mean this, there's clear, um, there's clear, uh, taste or desire for sweet things, for fatty things, for meat. A lot of people like red meat. A lot of people don't really like super fatty fish and things like that, the and so the preferences are for these things. It's just what? What's going on now is that people are meeting these preferences with these, these industrial foods that are just complete garbage. And it's so you can, you can just make the those foods correctly, right? You just, you just make them with the right? If you had French fries fried in beef tallow, or you fried them in coconut oil, and you didn't, like, really deep fry them, it makes a big difference in the food, and it makes a difference in the food quality, and it makes a difference on the effect on the body. So those are important things to remember. You can have a lot of these different foods. You can make it work for a lot of people. A lot of people that I work with eat taste cookies. They eat the gluten free taste cookies every day. They eat chocolate every day. They don't have a weight issue with that. They're not gaining weight from that. A lot of people lost weight with that because they started eating more, they started increasing their metabolism, and they removed the problematic foods. So that's I want people to realize that it can be like, it doesn't have to be an austerity diet as well, right? You know, you can enjoy these things then. Just went for Thanksgiving Make, make quality foods. Sweet potatoes with a with a solid you mashed. Sweet potatoes with a solid cream and either some maple syrup or something. That's great. It's delicious.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, when we're looking at the holiday foods, a lot of them are, are not too bad, um, you know, except when you try to modify them and make them conventionally healthy, as they become a lot more problematic. And you see that too. And as far as, like, holiday diet tips, so much of it is basically how you can make these foods so much worse for you by trying to make them diet friendly and taste worse, yes, and taste worse, yeah. And that's kind of what we're talking about, too, is there's a reason why we have tastes for for these things. And you had mentioned, you know, weight gain with ice cream, for example. And I just want to come back to that for a couple reasons. One is that, and I know you you know this, I just want to make it clear that so much of this is context dependent, where I have actually seen directly with ice cream, with clients, where there's one client in particular who added an extra 500 calories a day in ice cream that didn't gain any weight at all, yeah, if anything like became leaner at the same weight. And so the yes, if somebody is coming from, I think what the bigger concern is that, if someone is coming from very low calorie diet and a lot of dieting, and then they add in a ton of extra food, and ice cream being one of those as something that's really easy to eat a lot of, then that can be a problem. But it's not the ice cream itself. It's not the milk and cream and eggs and salt and sugar that are in there. It's the it's the transition from the extreme diet to eating enough which the body takes. You know, our bodies take a while to adapt to those things, and so there's ways to do it that are going to result, typically in less weight gain. But yeah, and that's, and that's kind of a, like, a more intricate situation, but the point being, the larger point is that, at the very least, change the types of foods you eating. So if you're eating, as you were saying, like if you're eating bad quality. Unquote dessert foods, good quality. Ice cream is a great alternative. You were just making a caveat that again, for somebody who's metabolically compromised at dieting, yeah.

Yeah. I just don't want people to come and start eating because I see this happen on with some people who start seeing some of Ray's work, they start eating a lot of ice cream, or they start drinking a lot of whole milk. And they're coming from a place where they're going to put on weight just in the start because they've been starving for a long time, and then they put on a ton of weight, and then they get discouraged, and then they just think that the whole paradigm doesn't work. I think that, you know, it's I like to put out the caveat for that stuff, because some foods are easier to put on weight depending on your context and other foods and and that's why I also said having some weight for people is not a bad thing. There is a having some body fat, if the fat is from saturated sources, if you're putting on some body fat and and for a lot of people, dairy is meant to be a weight gainer, just so people understand that. I mean, it's meant to put in not just fat, like it's a tissue builder in general. In general, the idea of dairy for young, for especially calves and whatnot, is how many, how much weight does a calf put on when it's when it's, uh, when it's drinking milk from the mom? Like, a couple 100 pounds. That's the point of the milk. It's and it's not all fat it, but it has like a tissue building effect. So for some people, depending on what your metabolic context is, some different foods might put on weight gain, and that's why. And the thing is, the weight may not be bad, it may not be terrible weight or anything like that. It's just, if I want people to understand that there is some foods that can put on more weight than others, whether it's a combination of fat and muscle. I mean, when I was drinking a lot of goat milk, I was extremely strong in the gym, and I was 215 pounds, but I had, I was, I was probably like 16 to 20% body fat, whereas now without milk, and part of it is that I do have a dairy allergy. But besides that, and the allergies, again, that can change things as well, that can seriously change things. But when I when I dropped it, now I'm 190 pounds, and I'm a lot less body fat, but I'm also weaker than when I was in the gym and that. And that's just the effect of the dairy. It has a very potent tissue building effect.

Jay Feldman 37:12
Yeah, well, and that was an only dairy, and there's a lot that happened between now and then, just to make that clear.

Mike 37:17
No, but it's for me as well dairy, just because I do have the allergy. I don't respond well to it in general, and it does affect me differently, because for you, you tolerate it just fine. And that's why I say there's there is an individual context that needs to be considered. And if something is even if we give a principle or a category of food, and it's just not working for you, then it's time. You have to play around with it a little bit. And that's why you say to adjust it slow. I just don't want people to come right away and see that you can, oh, I can have ice cream, and then they just because everybody loves ice cream. I even though i Even though I have the allergy, if you give me ice cream, I still like ice cream. You know, who's not gonna like ice cream? I still love butter. Use it every day. So it's just you have to find your context. I just don't want people to it's like, because, again, you get the free range automatically, and you're like, ice cream every day, 500 calories worth. Sign me up. And then they people, they start to gain a lot of weight if, and if they're not paying attention, maybe they're not reacting to it well, or whatever the meta ball context is, and, oh, this. This doesn't work. This isn't right. I need to go back to my austerity measures. And it's just like, you just need to find, you need to maneuver the principles a little bit and find your own context within that. And I just want, that's why I put the caveat for some things, because I have seen people come and they start eating a ton of ice cream, and they start putting on weight, and they're like, I lost my six pack. I'm did it. And it's just like, yes, but you, you don't, you? Like, just started drinking a gallon of milk a day. You know? What did you expect off the bat? Like you coming from starving, and now you just went to a gallon of milk a day, and you just automatically assume that you're going to maintain the same weight. It the body takes time to adapt, and you all the body has its own individual context, and you have to figure out what works for you.

Jay Feldman 39:00
Which is right. And that's why we end up going on these tangents, because so much of it is is individual, and we have to individual. We keep making we have to keep making caveats and, you know, notes, as far as different situations. But, yeah.

Mike 39:15
I just don't want people to go back to an austerity measure, because it doesn't work out initially. And that's my worry, because I've seen people, oh, well, I cut out all polyunsaturated fats from my diet, all the vegetable oil, but I also added in a gallon of milk and a gallon of orange juice and a pint of ice cream at night, and I gained all this weight. So therefore, PUFAs are actually good for you. It's just like, I've seen that a lot, and I it's a delicate line that I like to balance, and by adding the idea of context and nuance and figuring out what works for the individual.

Jay Feldman 39:49
And again, just to make it clear, also, some people context dependent. Some people may gain weight with dairy. Some people may lose weight with dairy. Yeah, it also might matter if it's a gallon versus a couple of. Cups. And then also, as you're saying, so much of it depends on whether someone's coming from a lot of really extreme dieting, and they're eating very low calories, and then they happen to eating very little food, and then they happen to start eating a ton of food. That there's also a time lag of adaptation, and adaptation lag, where it takes time and to dig out of the hole, right? And so much of that isn't only determined by how much we're eating, but also how well we're using that food. And if you've got a lot of PUFA stored, you're deficient in various nutrients, you've got a lot of endotoxin from gut issues. That makes that a lot tougher. So it's a process, step by step, sort of situation. One other thing I want to point out, and this is maybe a little less relevant for the people who are really, you know, on low calorie diets. But more the people who might be coming from, like a paleo type eating, or something like that, where they might be eating a decent amount of calories, probably still under eating. But something I see pretty often is, you know, they'll look at something like orange juice, you know, which is which has a lot of sugar in it, which we consider to be a good thing, you know, looking at that as kind of like a pure, purely toxic sort of thing, yet at the same time, and we experience this ourselves, they'll then, every once in a while, go through crazy binges of eating things that are definitely not ideal, yet, they're comparing that to eating a regular amount of good quality foods all the time, and it ends up being like the ideas that we're suggesting end up being a lot better when you consider it over the long term, as opposed to these people who are, you know, on a really strict diet six days a week, and then that seventh day have a crazy cheat day. Yet they're telling us that orange juice is the problem when on that cheat day, you know, it's, it's French fries fried and, you know, vegetable oils, and, you know, fried chicken or whatever else. So it's just, you know, a matter of shifting that mindset a little bit. And and another one that I see a lot there is alcohol, where people will talk about sugar being so bad, and yet it won't, you know, and yet they'll have a few beers, you know, each night, on the weekend, and then they're saying that, you know, having a cup of orange juice every day is like, terrible for you, and it's going to cause fatty liver disease. Not to say that, like, a few beers will do that on its own, but I'm just, it's just completely contradictory. So.

Mike 42:07
I mean, my dad does that. My dad, literally, he's, he's somebody who he doesn't say fatty liver disease, but he'll be like, I'll try and get him to, you know, get some more calories in and, like, some nutrition. I'll be like, Why don't you try having a glass of juice with your meal? Because he'll he severely undereats. He's severely, severely undereats Sometimes. And it's easy to get calories in his juice, especially because, you know, and with older people, if digestion is impaired or slowed down, things that digest easier, like juice or better. So I'll just be like, he really likes red wine. So I'll be like, so why don't you just have a glass of, you know, red grape juice with each meal. And he's like, because it has all that sugar. And then it just be like, but you're drinking red wine, which is grape juice, except the sugar is now alcohol, which is severely worse than the sugar. And he's just like, Yeah, but red wine has been shown in all these studies, and then it's like, well, grape juice has been shown in all these studies to do better than red wine. So there's just like, there's all these it's it's like, it's like cognitive distances, or some hypocrisies that are just and the thing is, there's this, and that's part of the media stuff. That's part of the advertising thing, where, for him, you see all these articles all day long, bombarded. A glass of orange juice has just as much sugar as a coke.

Jay Feldman 43:20
And it's more dangerous than cigarettes or whatever.

Mike 43:23
Yeah, or something like that. And it's just like, because in one study they sugar, they singled out that granulated sugar has a problem. Therefore, since juice has sugar, it also has a problem this. And it's just like, Okay, well, what's the context? All of your cells use sugar. All of your cells use sugar to function, to some extent, they can oxidize sugar. It's one of the primary oxidants that's used, and then it's like it's the same thing with the fructose studies. When we give rats a ton of free fructose, they develop issues. But so since fructose is bad and there's fructose in fruit juice, then it must be bad. Yet we don't see any negative effects of people drinking fruit juice in any studies, and we don't see negative effects with animals. It's good for them, and yet the media wants to sit there and claim that fruit juice causes diabetes and sugars, and because this has so much sugar and it's the equivalent of drinking X number of sodas a day, and it's just like, it's all this conflation, like massive amounts of conflation, with zero evidence to back it up. And in poor people, yeah, and yeah, almost nothing, almost it's so poor, it's almost zero. And then people, and then people, they get bombarded with it all day long. So it's just like, well, if it's bad here, then it must be bad there. And it's like, well, there's a again. And this is why we always go on these tangents, because context is important. If you're having a bunch of Sprite, and it's the sprite is high fructose corn syrup and a bunch of other preservatives and whatnot, and not to mention, if you're having the zero calories, zero sugar sprites, even worse, and then you're comparing that to a glass of juice with a ton of sugar and a ton of nutrients, it's like, and all the different plant compounds and everything else you. Like, it's a non comparison. It's a complete non comparison. And why are we even going there?

Jay Feldman 45:05
Yeah, I mean, it's about as bad as the same study that he, you know, or article he saw, saying that red wine, you know, a glass of red wine, equals an hour of exercise, because they were looking at resveratrol in whatever mice and completely misinterpreting the effects and saying that they were the equivalent of exercise, and then, because there's resveratrol in red wine, red wine then equals exercise. It's just as bad as..

Mike 45:27
It's all conflation. It's it doesn't make any sense. It's not but the point of the statement is that people are bombarded all day long with these message and they they wouldn't know. You couldn't, you know, they couldn't even tell you the hippo the hypocrisy in the statement. It's not known because you get bombarded all day long every year. Email box gets census all the time. New study finds drinking X number of cups of red wine a day. And you know, people love red wine. People love their people tend to like their alcohol so and especially, like, if you can get, like, sweet alcohols or things like that, they every a lot of people like it. So, you know, it's if it's Well, it's good for me, according to these studies, and I like it. And you get bombarded with it every day, then you start to create this mental framework that's based on advertising and not based on reality. And I think that's a lot. And then we even see that with all the different models, they're not reality, but people accept them as reality because of how often it's seen, how often it's bombarded. And I mean, that's part of why we're doing this podcast, is to because, for you and I, you know, a lot of times we would do do things, and we wouldn't be feeling good doing them, like when we went low carb for a while, and then for me, it was just like, you know, I was like, Well, maybe if I started eating carbs, and then we would just do it, and then we would just binge, then we would feel better, but we wouldn't allow ourselves to continue to do that, because we had this model that carbs and insulin are so bad. But when we started seeing when we started one of the things that opened our eyes is when we found the different works, like when we found some of peace work and stuff like that. And then we started looking at some of the studies, and you started looking at some of the people, well, they're eating a lot of carbs, and they don't have all these problems. It sort of like gives you permission to try. And so I think one of the important things about what we're talking about here is it gives people permission to experiment and say, Well, maybe I'm not going to die if I have a glass of orange juice in the morning. Maybe I'm not going to get fat if I drink juice with every meal. Or if I, you know, if I eat a really good quality chocolate or something like that.

Jay Feldman 45:28
So, or if you eat 600 grams of carbs in a day, or 4000 calories.

Mike 47:38
Or if I eat enough calories, or if I maybe, if I stop running on the treadmill, because I hate it, and, you know, I just, all I did was my weight workout. And then I, you know, maybe it's a little hungry for carbs after, and I allowed myself to have that white rice with butter, and, wow, I felt so much better that, you know that you can do that. They go, Well, I can do these things. And again, this context is for people who are trying to be healthy and things like that. If you're gonna, if you're trying to go for a bodybuilding show and you want to cut down super hard and get to ridiculous body fat levels, a lot, some of this stuff may not be helpful for that. It can help you be metabolically healthy, but and for some situations, depending on what your goals are, can compromise like you have to make compromises if you want to be 2% body fat, which is, you know, your body does not want to be 2% body fat, especially women, especially and even men. Then you're gonna have to compromise in some areas. You're gonna have to do some some extreme things.

Jay Feldman 48:31
When most people don't recognize that, you know, most like talking about the diet industry and the advertisements and the the marketing people aren't recognizing that all these things that they're being told from the dieting standpoint, is not equivalent with health, and that often it does mean that you're compromising health. So just sorry, I know I interrupted you. I just want to make a clarification that that most people aren't aware that there's compromise of their health there, whether it's trying to become really lean for a bodybuilding competition, or it's trying to, you know, look really good in a bathing suit by going on a 1000 calorie or 1500 calorie a day diet, or whatever it is, those things are often compromising our health. And, you know, so, yeah, you can go ahead with with what you're saying.

Mike 49:13
No, it's just, and a point to that is, and I think I remember reading a study about this, because I've known a few people who were very, very overweight, and they went on extreme weight loss diets, and they lost, like, hundreds of pounds, 100 pounds, and then after they did that, and I've seen this, and I've seen this in real life with quite a few people, family, friends, patients that I've worked with, they wound up developing issues after that. So I have a cousin, she got MS after she lost 100 pounds. And I, I've known multiple people who've who've patients that I've worked with who went on extreme weight loss and then wound up getting something like MS or or one of the guys who know when it had like, some heart failure or something like that, he started his legs and stuff, started swelling, and he started to felt kidney. Problems and things like that. So and I don't think that those are coincidences, and I'm gonna, I'll see if I can send you the study later, but I don't think that those are coincidences, because the methods that they use to employ these, these drastic weight loss protocols, oftentimes, were starvation. A lot of they just starved themselves down. They ate three meals a day, and all eight was meat and greens. That was it, and they were at zero carbs, and they didn't have a lot of fat. It was just straight protein. And I've seen and that, and these are the protocols that I've seen people go to. They lose the weight, and then when they start to eat carbs or anything, again, their body puts it right back on as fat, and they actually balloon over the weight that over the weight that they supposedly were previously at. And then I then I have a really hard time trying to help them get it off. And then sometimes they develop they develop issues. They develop health issues. And I mean, when you run those protocols of extremely low calories, again, as a measure of food quantity, and an extremely low amount of carbs and extremely low amount of fats, and you're just eating protein, you're you're strongly shutting down your metabolic function, and you're relying on basically catabolizing Your own tissues. And to do that, you have to strongly elevate the adaptive stress hormones. Yeah, so I think that again, I I just, I've seen a lot of people get hurt by doing that. So I think that's then the pathways are like, and this goes, this goes with the whole idea of what's healthy. You know, if they did it out of, oh, I just need to lose the weight, and then I'm gonna be healthy. And then they lose the weight, and then they develop an issue, and it's like, Well, it matters. How you lose the weight, right? You can't just starve yourself down and completely deplete your body and then, okay, now you lost. It's as if the weight is the only indicator of their health. It's like there's much more going on besides, you can, you can be overweight and still be relatively healthy, right? You can, you can still be healthy overweight.

Jay Feldman 51:59
So, yeah, yeah, and yeah, that's, I mean, a really important point to make that I wanted to mention earlier and I forgot, but yeah, when we were talking about, you know, being overweight or obese as a symptom, it definitely is typically a symptom of dysfunction. But also you can be in those scenarios and be relatively healthy metabolically, depending on the context. And yeah. And so that's kind of what you're mentioning now, and also just the the idea of shifting that perspective from weight to health and from short term result to long term result and and the reason why I'm pairing those together is because the focus on health does tend, you know, over time, will lead to long term weight loss, assuming that it's, it's done properly, but it is a longer process, and it's not linear, but it's not going to lead to what you're talking about with that, you know, short term weight loss, and then you end up gaining the weight back and more that yo yo dieting, which is really just dieting, because any diet is really that, and, and then also, you know, and one thing that might be helpful in shifting from the short term to long term is just trying to take a minute to look back at, you know, previous years, decades, whatever it is, and seeing that cycle in yourself. And I think so often people are motivated by, you know, they'll look at older pictures and the big oh so overweight there. Look how overweight I am now, and I really need to just get rid of it. And yet, they keep doing that every five years or 10 years or three years or every year, whatever it is where it's like, oh, look at how I was. Then I either need to get back to that, or I look at how I am now. I need to get back to what I was, you know, at a at a prior time. And people then do that for their whole lives. They end up that on that same dieting cycle until, until, you know, 80 years down the line, and continuing that same process of losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight, and not recognizing that everybody who does that the graph, while it does go up and down, always ends up going up in the long term. It's always ends up like averaging as a pretty good line that just trends up, you know, and you gain more, and you lose weight again, wait again, and you don't get quite to where you were. And then you gain more, and you just keep you have that, you know, little stair climber up. And, yeah, it's, it's, that's, that's a result of that short term mindset. And so trying to shift away from wanting to wanting to change your diet and lifestyle just to look how, you know, look the way that you did at a prior time, or fit into something, as you said earlier, instead shifting towards wanting to get you know, wanting to become healthy in all sorts of other ways, focusing a lot on various symptoms, whether it's sleep or various chronic health conditions, or, you know, Hormonal Health or skin health or gut health, you know, focusing on all those things as really good indicators of health, including metabolic health, and still using weight as an indicator, as a symptom, but just looking for looking for that as typically, one of the things that shifts. This much later on, after, after improving a lot of these things from the metabolic standpoint, and yeah, and I think just maybe a couple of kind of summarizing points, or just looking back, you know, the focus on accepting where you're at, not judging yourself, starting to work on listening to your own intuition, your cravings, your hunger, focusing on the health, on the health markers, focusing on long term health, as opposed to the short term things you know, working on trying not you know, trying not to fall into that dieting mindset, trying to be aware of those things, especially when it comes to the holidays, not Doing all you know, not trying to do all these things to limit your portions and limit how hungry you are and fill up on the protein and water. And, you know, trying to really shift away from from the idea that food is harming us and that food is a problem, and instead considering it as something that's really helping us, nourishing us, supporting us, again, assuming it's..

Mike 55:59
it's right foods.

Jay Feldman 56:01
yeah. What we would say is the right foods or

Mike 56:03
The right categories or groups or principles or whatever, right?

Jay Feldman 56:07
Yeah. And one thing that I always like to go back to, too, is starting to work with our bodies as opposed to fighting against them. And a lot of that comes from this idea of recognizing that our bodies are not out to get us. They're not trying to make us overweight or unhealthy. And instead, those signals are all there for are all there for a reason, and as long as we're listening to them in the right context, you know, we we end up in a much better place, physiologically, health wise.

Mike 56:30
And I would like to add that you're not a genetic your genetic you don't have a genetic destiny to be this or to be that. There's a predisposition for some people, but it doesn't have to be how it is, and sometimes it's going to be harder for some people than others. People are going to especially with weight loss, people are going to have different compensation strategies. And so to just keep that in mind, it's not because I hear it a lot. I hear it a lot from some from patients that I work with. It's like, oh, I have diabetes, but it's genetic, and it's just like, it's not genetic, you know, I can't say that, because it doesn't jive with the general model that's accepted, especially in the hospital. You have to sort of stick to the script. But at the same time, you know, a lot of it's, there's something that can be done. It's not just genetic. It's not a destiny. It's, it's not it's, it's not set in stone. Oh well, my mom had heart disease so, and you know, you talk to people too, I talk to them too, and they'll say, my grandma lived to 97 and she didn't have any disease, but my mom had congestive heart failure, and, well, now I have congestive heart failure. So it's genetic, and it's just like, Well, what happened to your grandma? You didn't have any diseases and, well, it just and the difference, in my opinion, is change in generational diet. Grandma was in this this particular individual was from the Philippines. Grandma owned a coconut farm, so her entire diet was coconut products, fish and fatty pork and whatever vegetables and stuff they grew in on the farm. So but her mom didn't live on the farm. Her mom grew up on the farm, and her mom still died of congestive heart failure in her 90s. And grandma didn't even have congestive heart failure. But her her her her mom lived, didn't live. She grew up on the farm, but she moved towards like the cities, and started changing up her diet, along with what was going on in the city. And then her daughter moved to United States, and she has congestive heart failure, and she's 50, so you can see the generational decline, and when you can. And again, this is anecdotal, which when you can start to piece together the picture. And well, Grandma grew up on the food that she was growing in the Philippines, which consisted mainly of coconuts, fish and fatty pork. And then the mom grew up on those foods, and then moved to the city, and then changed her diet up in the city, and they started using vegetable oil and whatever else to cook, because that was, you know, healthy. And then she got it. She got a chronic disease. And then the the youngest daughter, who I'm the daughter who I'm talking to is in the United States, who has that problem that mom developed in the 90s and 80s and 90s at 50, and she didn't grow up on the farm, and she didn't grow up eating those foods. You got to start to start to think, well, where's the difference? Yeah, and if, where's the genetics there? Where? Maybe there, we see a predisposition. If they're going to be sick, we can see the the heart failure predisposition. But what? Why did all of a sudden, from one generation to the next, we have a 50 year difference, a 40 year difference in development of a disease and from the and then from one generation to the next, the development of disease versus not having a disease at all.

Jay Feldman 59:47
Right? Well, I think two things I want to point out. One is that that fatty pork that you're mentioning was probably more saturated than typical pork. Well, they were eating coconuts, right? Exactly. So it doesn't have the PUFA problem. But the other thing. Two is part of why we're seeing these things escalate so quickly, really, you know, exponentially is because, not only do you have continually worse and worse environment, continually worse and worse food supply, worse and worse food supply and other environmental factors that there's a ton you also then do have some of that being passed down, some of that susceptibility being passed down epigenetically, as you said, or kind of as we've as we've discussed. So even if mother and daughter were in the exact same scenario, which is not the case that you're presenting, but even if they were, if mother's situation was suboptimal, then daughters is, she's going to be experiencing it even worse, because she's starting from a worse place.

Mike 1:00:42
Well, it's, yeah, spiraling down because you have the damage from you have the damage from Mom's lifespan in happening with the daughter, and then the environment getting worse, so then you have a synergistic negativity, negative effect, right?

Jay Feldman 1:00:55
Yeah, when we're talking about adaptation, it's happening within each individual all the time. But it also happens down, like, a non genetic, down a genetic, yeah, yeah, yeah. But happens down a family line, like, the adaptation doesn't stop at the individual. It's passed on those same..

Mike 1:01:11
what was that rat study that showed like effects 14 generations down the line, or something like that?

Jay Feldman 1:01:16
Well, and there's pottingers cats as well, which was, I mean, they saw differences in one generation that lasted, I think, for what, five generations, even when the effect was only on the first generation. So, and that's with, and that's kind of what I was alluding to, where there was no, you know, you had a change in environment initially, and that changed, that one change lasted five generations down. So, yeah, but it can be changed, right? It could be changed back, yeah.

Mike 1:01:43
Exactly as assuming one of those generations takes the onus, essentially, and makes the change in what they have available to them. Obviously, for cats and rats, it's a little bit different they're given their environment in the studies. But for humans, we have the capacity to make a change in that environment to some extent, and manipulate the variables to our benefit.

Jay Feldman 1:02:03
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, that's going to wrap up the holiday anti diet series. If you did enjoy these episodes, please leave a review, a like a comment or a five star rating on iTunes. All of those things really do a lot to help support the podcast. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at anything that we referenced throughout today's episode, and if you are still struggling to break out of the yo yo dieting and binging and restriction cycle, and if you're dealing with constant cravings and hunger. Or if you're dealing with any other low energy symptoms, whether that's fatigue or joint pain or gut symptoms, trouble, sleeping insomnia, hormonal imbalances, brain fog, any other low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy where you can sign up for free energy balance mini course, where I'll walk you through the main things that you'll want to do, some of the most important foundational things that you can do, as far as nutrition and lifestyle are concerned, so that you can optimize your cellular energy availability, so that you can correct all of these low Energy symptoms and get rid of the constant hunger and cravings and also feel your best. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, I will see you in the next episode.