#260 How to Know Which Science to Believe About What's Healthy & What's Not??

Rachel Denning (00:10.446)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We are your host, Greg and Rachel Dunning. And today we are going to talk about health and fitness and what to eat and what to believe. Yeah, nutrition. And this whole idea. That's the big one. How to know what to believe. And this whole idea of.

making sure that we feel energized and alive, that we're enjoying health and vitality most of the time, not all the time. It's impossible to have it 100 % of the time, but it's totally possible, ladies and gentlemen, to enjoy phenomenal health and energy, I would say 97, 98 % of the time. Now, for some of you that might be shocking because you look around,

And we're surrounded by people who are just constantly sick and constantly weak and constantly low energy. And maybe you felt that way. You're like, I just dragged myself through life every day. And, Greg, you're so lucky to have so much energy. And today I want to have such good health because you and I are in our mid forties now. And we know plenty of people this age that are dying, sick or dying. And in fact, we're going to talk about this in this.

episode because my own father passed away from cancer at the age of 47. I mean that's one year older than you are now. You are in amazing health. Like he was never in this sort of health that I ever remember. Your health is incredible and you have neither of us have any diseases. Any like I can't even remember the last time I've been to a doctor. We have amazing health. I also want to add though, beside that, at least for me, having the peace of mind,

that knowing what I am eating is good for me because I have gone through this entire journey of worrying and stressing and wondering like, well, this says that's bad and this says fruit's bad and that says milk's bad and this says this and all these, like I get it that it's confusing. I've gone through it. I've stressed through it. I've worried about it. That's true. You have, you have worried. I have. What are we doing? What are we putting our bodies? What are we feeding our children? And you've gone through the whole.

Rachel Denning (02:27.278)
Well, I'm sitting here right now looking at our quick breakfast, which was steak and mango, and I'm looking at this mango. I remember a very specific time when we lived in Guatemala, and I even felt bad eating mangoes because I felt like there was all this research out there about fruit. You shouldn't be eating fruit, and this and that and the other, you know? And so for me to have the peace and confidence to know that what I'm eating now is good and good for me and to not be stressing and worrying about it anymore because of

all of the confusing and conflicting information out there, that's huge. To me, that's like worth gold. So it's not just enjoying the great health, which we do enjoy, it's having that peace of mind as well. Yeah. And this, we'll dive into this and touch on it. Well, and sorry, I just want to add to this. I'll just sit here quietly and listen to you. I'm telling. Besides...

Well, no, this goes hand in hand, but I want to emphasize for any people that are new and don't know and have never seen a picture of us or whatever, we're both trim. We're both slim. We're both like we've never been overweight. I entirely attribute that for me even more than exercise because I've not been great at exercising. I've always been great at being intentional about my diet. And that to me has made all the difference. Well, and for new listeners, we have seven children.

one adopted so Rachel gave birth to six children and she looks like she's never given birth to a child. So like, and I'm, I'm fit. I've always hit my personal standard for those who are new to our podcast. My personal standard is that for my entire life, I want to see my abdominal muscles and I've done that and I'm still doing that.

with seven children and businesses and travel and investments and being busy and having all kinds of stuff going on. I am fit and shredded. And we just did a crazy hard workout with my teens in our home gym. And we eat amazing food. Our rule is delicious and nutritious. Yeah. And nutritious meaning it actually nourishes your body. So we're going to get into all that. We're going to explain.

Rachel Denning (04:48.302)
how we know what is nutritious, how we know how to eat now because it has been a very long journey and what research to listen to because that's part of the question. So, but I think fundamentally I want to say this now and we'll circle back to it. Results don't lie. So at the end of the day, go with the results, right? Results don't lie. So if you can find somebody who is sustainably healthy,

And because I heard somebody say this once and it was genius. You can be fit and unhealthy, but you cannot be healthy and unfit, which is really powerful. So I could work out like crazy and have a body, but be unhealthy because I'm eating poorly. I'm not taking care of my body. And to me, that's what happens when you hear about...

Because people use those arguments like, well, this guy, he ran every day or he worked out every day and he still had a heart attack or this or that. That to me is generally caused by a poor diet. So he's still eating the foods that are unhealthy, seed oils, that kind of stuff, so that he can be fit, but his body's not healthy. So we want holistic health all the way through. We just feel good. Our body's recovering.

In fact, when we're eating very well, because food is medicine, you guys have heard, you've probably heard that, but food is our medicine. And when we're eating well, it also keeps our immune systems in a good state. So we rarely ever get sick. And if we do, we recover quickly. And boy, that was abundantly evident in COVID. Those who suffered the most from COVID were those who were unhealthily.

Which in general, there was a few, you know, obviously there's, there's always outliers, but when I have my outliers, we're talking about the just general masses. Those who suffered the most and died the most were the ones who were generally speaking. And this was, this was ever, this was, you know, there was two camps in that whole thing, but on both camps, they were saying, yeah, the people who are obese or overweight struggled the most. Right. and I think that this, this idea of what you said results don't lie.

Rachel Denning (07:09.87)
ties into part of the answer to the question that's being asked, like how do you know what research to listen to? Part of it comes down to the individuals promoting that research or sharing, you know, because I use the word promoting, but in a way they are promoting. They're believing in and sharing a certain viewpoint. But if the people who are sharing a viewpoint don't have the results I want, meaning they're overweight or they're unhealthy or they have disease, I'm not going to believe them.

That to me is one of the deciding factors. I look at the people who have the results I want, then I believe the things that they are teaching because they have the results. So that is part of the answer, but let me read the whole question first. So, okay. This came from Instagram. I've been listening to your and Greg's Family Life podcast. For context, I know Greg from before. Admittedly though, I'm probably not your target audience.

for the podcast because I'm not religious, I'm gay, and I don't have kids. But I wanted to say that I have been enjoying the podcast because the way you discuss social issues, health, et cetera, helps me understand the other side of the argument. And usually I find that I agree more than I expected. Thank you for that. First of all, I think that's awesome because at least I found in my life that if you get right down to the heart of it, no matter where you are, what you believe in, what you stand, you know, like...

left or right, gay or not gay, like whatever, fill in all those boxes. We're all human beings and a lot of us believe in and want the very same things. And so I think this is very powerful and very beautiful. We should be doing that. We should try to be understanding the other camps side of you, so to say, right? So that we understand that in reality, we're all in the same camp on planet earth. And you know, we need to learn how to get along instead of.

find reasons to not get along. And that approach makes us more makes all of us more temperate and more wise. If we, you know, Rachel alluded to this, that when we were going through our, you know, kind of health journey, trying to figure it out, we weren't afraid to read opposing books, right? Like milk is deadly. Yeah, I read one that was like, basically called that milk is poison or something like that. And then then you read the other side where like, no milk is

Rachel Denning (09:34.158)
Milk does body good, right? Right from those commercials. And so we read extensively, we read the research and the books and we talk to people. And you guys can imagine in our, if you've done any traveling, you realize, okay, wait, let me come back up. If you've done any traveling and you talk to people, because there are some who travel and don't talk. But if you travel and you talk to people, you can't help but come across every conceivable type of lifestyle and philosophy.

And we started traveling. This was in 2007. It blew our minds. We went out of our little bubble. And I would say, I would say if you live in one location and you stay predominantly in that location, it is a bubble. It's the form of a bubble. Even if you are in just one country, and even if you travel around or move around, that still represents a type of a bubble. And it's really hard to get out of bubbles just in life. But the more you move around and bounce around and

expand yourself and get in deep conversations and experiences and live among or with people who believe vastly different things than you do. It just expands your reality. And so of course, we immediately started coming across every kind of food philosophy and eating philosophy and life philosophy from we lived on an organic hippie farm in Costa Rica where like you just ate.

what grew like everything on the farm. I just walked out into the greenhouses. I just I felt like a rabbit man. I just walked through greenhouse every morning eating kale and spinach. And I point that out because now we would not eat kale. We don't classify that as healthy. And if you've been listening to this podcast for a long time, you actually heard me a couple hundred episodes ago, really promoting salads and greens. And I eat salads every single day. I eat

two or three times a day. I absolutely loved it. With salad dressing, which we're going to then talk about because that's one of the reasons why salads are not. I made my own salad dressing. We still made it with, I guess, olive oil, which is better than seed oils and yet still not the best. And it's also funny because I remember when we lived on that farm, when we first moved there, it was so fascinating to us both because...

Rachel Denning (11:53.198)
the very first thing people would, one of the very first things people would say to you, they would, you know, you would meet all these people, these hippies and other people living there and they would say, hi, how do you eat? Yeah. That was their question. Yeah. How do you eat? Which if you think about it on its own, it's just such a strange question. Well, I eat with my mouth. What do you mean? How do I eat? You know, but what they meant is because there were vegans and there were vegetarians and there were raw people that ate.

you know, cause the lady that ran our farm, they, she ate, she raised and ate her own sheep, right? So she had sheep. It was grass fed. And ducks. So she ate meat, but it was all natural. And so there were all these different types of eating going on, right? And we would have these communities. one of my, I don't even know if this fits in, but I'll tell it anyways. Cause one of our favorite stories was we had this friend who was younger and, and he,

We invited him over to this community dinner that they would do every single week. This lady had been doing it every single week and everybody brought these beautiful, fresh salads and you know, I made - Or like vegan brownies. Vegan brownies, right. I remember I made these yuca rolls that were made out of just yuca plant and everybody just thought they were - They were so good. Because not very many of them ate bread.

And so I made these yucca rolls that tasted just like bread and they were like, my gosh, this is amazing. And so we all had this type of food going on and we invited this friend and we're like, hey, bring something for the community dinner. And he shows up and he plops a package of Oreos on the counter. And you could see everybody was just like, my gosh. I can't believe he put Oreos on our sacred altar.

And which I actually agree. I'm like, get that crap out of here. But it was so funny. This was the funny thing. Personally, I felt bad for him. And so I let my kids eat some of the Oreos because I felt bad that nobody was going to touch them. But, you know, so we've we've seen it all. We've experienced it all and tried it. We've experimented with it all. We've got to actually read the rest of her question because so far we just started with her introduction.

Rachel Denning (14:08.302)
because they're gonna be like, why are you going off on all this stuff about food? Here's why. For my question broadly, how do you and Greg decide which scientific research you listen to, particularly when it comes to health related topics like what is healthy to eat and what is not? It seems that there is a pretty consistent message in science and research to avoid highly processed foods and sugar, but on the finer points with things like seed oils, carnivore,

intermittent fasting, coffee, tea, et cetera, it seems that there's just as much research on the opposite side of things that you and Greg believe. For example, I can find research from all kinds of researchers and scientists and doctors saying that coffee and tea is either neutral or slightly beneficial, while you and Greg believe it is unhealthy. The same for how much vegetables and grains should be included in a diet. And there's a lot of gut biome research saying you should be eating a wide variety of plant fiber.

With all the mix of the information, I'm just wondering what your process is for deciding what to listen to. Excellent. So excited. What a great question. Right. So that is partly why we're telling this story is because we've looked at and read and experienced a lot of different approaches to eating in general. And I'll say in that this is a challenging question. It's not black and white like some people like to think.

Like we become, people become very religious around their food. And they're like, I changed my diet and I will never ever be anything ever. Okay, let's talk about that for a minute actually. Let's talk about that. Because one of the things that we have seen in this entire process and one of the reasons I think people get so hung up on that one of their viewpoints is because we have observed. I would say it's.

food fanaticism. It's like religious fanaticism for one particular eating thing and it comes from this observation. We have observed that people, whatever, we all grow up and we're probably eating what we will refer to as the sad diet, the standard American diet, something along those lines. Not 100 % but somewhere along there. I grew up eating margarine because at the time my parents believed it was gold.

Rachel Denning (16:31.406)
Tubs, one gallon tubs of Crisco and you use it on everything. And we ate endless lucky charms and Captain Crunch and Fruity Pebbles. I'm surprised I made it into adult life. So that's how we grew up. And then at some point, well for me, the journey started when my dad was diagnosed with cancer and then ended up passing away from cancer. But for a lot of people, they will come across some sort of food.

change, alteration, a new diet, a new approach, they'll come across something. Maybe it's becoming raw, vegetarian, vegan, fill in the blank, vegan. And because - Well, hold up, I'm gonna just really clarify. So they're eating just a standard diet with lots of processed foods, lots of sugars, lots of soda, lots of Joe. They're probably having some, at least minor health problems, maybe skin issues, rashes.

And they're probably need to lose some weight or something. The vast majority of the time when you meet people like this, they're like, yeah, I wasn't feeling well and I was getting sick. I was a little overweight. So I wanted to say try something and boom. Maybe they go gluten free or they go whatever, all the things you mentioned. And as a result, wow, guess what? They see results. The things clear up, they feel better, they have more energy. And so they're like, my gosh.

This is amazing. It changed my life. This works. And so I am now a raw food advocate forever. Converted to vegetarian or whatever the whatever the thing is. And and I think that that's true no matter which one you choose, whether you go gluten free or raw or vegan or whatever, pick your thing. You're going to see those health benefits. And so you see them and you think this is the answer. Now, the problem that we believe is that when you stay converted to that forever and you think.

Well, no, that's it. Like that's the thing. Even if you personally go through this experience of feeling like you're not nourished and you're lacking things and you're trying to get more and you're having to take all these vitamins. Another thing, we don't take any vitamins. We went through the process of taking vitamins because we thought, well, that's the only way to get all the nutrition you need. You have to take vitamins. Because there was a lack of bioavailable nutrients, which maybe we can get into later.

Rachel Denning (18:46.19)
But you're right, people say converted to that and they're like, well, we'll just take supplements and we'll make up for it. Cause when you ask them, we've done this so many times, like, well, why are you so convicted with that? What's because when I changed my eating, it changed my body. I'm like, well, of course it did. You stopped eating all the garbage. Right. And so I think fundamentally let's, and let's go there. Cause that's how she starts her question. She's like, okay, it's pretty across the board. Like highly processed foods and sugars should be out. And I think, I think all of us can agree.

that highly processed foods, just pure sugar, refined sugar. Yeah. Any cold cereal product, garbage. But let's throw soda in there. I think we can agree that that's not good for your body. So let's do this. And instead of like arguing like this diet or that diet or this philosophy, let's find some common ground. I think across the board, we can agree.

Even if we start getting to a place where it's a little more gray and you're like, I wouldn't argue. I guess what I want to say is there's stuff that's clearly bad for you. And then we move across the scale to stuff that's not good for you. And I think that I have learned to view, like you said before, it's not black and white. It's not, but there's definitely a scale.

or a hierarchy and that's more how I have learned to view it and everything falls on that hierarchy somewhere. So there are things that are definitely at the bottom. Like clearly, I'm sorry, Krispy Kreme donuts, they're pretty close to the bottom. And then there's things that are at the top. And I'm gonna put seed oils down there. We'll get into explaining why that is. Okay. But so, so one thing is to look at it like a scale. It's not like.

a mango, whatever is good or bad, it's just on a scale for how it affects your body. And I think that if you really get into it, that scale could change depending on your individual needs. Like your body needs different things at different times. And sometimes the mango is the perfect thing that it needs. Okay. That's, and that's true for perhaps where you live or your body type.

Rachel Denning (21:01.742)
your age. I think where you live also comes in. I read a book once called Animal Vegetable Miracle that talked all about like the importance of locally sourced foods and the fact that, okay, there's so many things here I don't want to forget but also, you know, not go on too many tangents. One of the ways I have learned to know what research to trust is things that also line up with things that just make sense to me and part of what's helped me with that framework,

I think also came from the fact when I started to believe in evolution because I grew up in a religious I'm still religious still Christian but I grew up in a household that we didn't believe in evolution and I had to go through this process of Learning like no actually I do believe in evolution and you studied that for a long long time But when it's like when I learned to believe in that it kind of opened up my things my mind to other things including health

and eating because when you realize that humans have been eating for a long time and most of what we have been eating have been things that we found locally in our environment in season. Well and that we adapted to and it evolved with so even if you don't believe in full evolution you can't not believe in what's called natural selection where you evolve. Your body responds to

And the human race has evolved with this. And I think, you know, I would say if I just give a straight short answer to how do we, how do you know what to believe? Extensive travel to so many countries and cultures and places combined with extensive reading across time and space, just studying history and all the aspects of physiology and anatomy.

It means on and on and on, setting all those things. The combination of travel and research with a very, very broad spectrum has given us a very different perspective. Well, at least a very wide perspective that includes, that creates a framework that to me makes sense. It's just a framework that makes sense. I'll give one short example. It's a perfect example. We planned a trip to Mongolia. And so we read a biography on Genghis Khan. And the biographer, not...

Rachel Denning (23:22.702)
He had no agenda about nutrition or health or what to eat or anything. He was just telling the story. He's like, this is what they ate and this is what they were able to do. It was astounding the health and stamina and energy they enjoyed. And he made, he made a very great argument. And I think he's spot on that what the Mongols were eating allowed them to conquer coast to coast at that time. They had so much more energy and stamina and vitality and strength. They could just absolutely annihilate other civilizations.

they were just living on grains and their teeth were the people so they went to China and the the Chinese were eating all these grains and their teeth were all missing and they're weak and small and the Mongols had straight beautiful white teeth. Well because another thing that let me just point this out another thing we've learned along the way is that there's a direct connection to the health of your teeth and the health of your body like it's it's directly connected absolutely and so if you have good teeth and no or few cavities you have good

Alternate shape of your jaw and breathing like all of this is coming from food and so we read this biography and then we travel Mongolia and well, I just know what and that was part of our food Education. Yeah, I want to emphasize that that was actually very important in my journey because before that I had been Besides the fact that I grew up in a religion that taught you should eat meat sparingly. I Had been we've been almost vegetarians not quite but you know

kind of close, we just didn't eat a lot of meat. And it was reading that biography on Genghis Khan that really started to shift my thinking about that just because he made that comment in passing about how the Mongols were so much stronger and able to wipe out these civils or at least control these civilizations that were surviving, that were agricultural and living on grains primarily and were smaller and weaker and had worse teeth. He mentioned the teeth, which I thought was fascinating.

and it was because the Mongols were living on a diet of primarily meat and milk, which included fermented milk because fermented foods are very important for you. And then any fruits they would gather, berries, etc. Yeah, that would be the extent. But to this day, like we're going back to Mongolia this July, you went in 2019, the Mongols still don't eat fruit, vegetables. They go and they'll say...

Rachel Denning (25:44.238)
They'll put like carrots or potatoes in their stew that they make and they're like, yeah, we just throw this in for the tourists because we don't eat vegetables, right? They don't eat vegetables and they're very strong and healthy people. They eat everything in the animal. Yes, they eat nose to tail of the animal. The whole thing. And that's important, ladies and gentlemen. That's also important. Very important. So back to this framework of how do I know? Well, for me, I'm like, okay, wait a second. If it makes sense in an evolutionary, through an evolutionary lens.

then to me I'm like, yeah, okay, that makes sense. That to me means it's a more true way of eating because it's a way humans have been eating for 100 ,000 million years, however long humans have been alive. That's what we were eating. We've only had all of these diseases within a short amount of time compared to the expansive human history. And so that - So many of them can be traced to the -

How do you process foods in the garbage? Well, if you look closely and then know what research to actually look at, then yeah, that's where it comes from. So that's one of the lenses I look through to see if it makes sense. Is this what our ancestors would have eaten? And even Michael Pullen has written a book called, he's written The Omnivore's Dilemma, and he has one called Cooked, about the evolution of cooking food, which he believes was directly, he makes an.

argument that was directly connected to the evolution of humans as we now know them that before that, I mean monkeys, they live on raw raw food and they spend all of their day eating and chewing, which is what you have to do. If you live on a raw food diet, and this is true today, you have to spend all of your day eating just to get enough nutrition because there's more nutrition in one steak than like 27 salads. I mean, I'm just guessing. I'm just throwing out a number, but you'd have to eat a lot of salads to get

the same amount of nutrition as you get from one state. And it's important to point out that it's bioavailable, meaning your body can actually digest and use those things. Right. So, and so he talked about that and cooked, and then he also talked about the omnivores dilemma, but he, he said, you know, if it, if it was not in your grandmother's kitchen, and I would say, go back even further, we shouldn't be eating. Like it needs to be farm food. It needs to be food you hunted and gathered. That's the kind of stuff we should be eating. And that's...

Rachel Denning (28:09.294)
why when I look at the research, I look at what matches with that because that's where we came from. That's the history of human humanity. Well, and not, and I think we've already pointed this out. I just want to emphasize it. Not just, not just any section of humanity, but I think the Mongol story is a perfect example where they had so much health and so much strength and so much stamina and vitality. Like it was obviously better.

Right. And so not just, well, this is what our answers have been eating for hundreds of years. Like, yeah, but they were short and missing teeth and unhealthy and dying at a young age. They're like, there's a big difference. That's a good point because not every culture in the world has eaten a diet that's necessarily healthy. Like if you look at, say, the Hindus as an example, they've been vegetarian for a very long time. But if you're looking at pure health, they do have...

more teeth problems and they're obviously smaller and thinner and you know they're not the Mongols that's for sure right. This just happened two days ago. My daughter ordered this book. She wanted to read about these adventures from this just great adventurer True Stories is his autobiography and I was just looking through these black and white pictures in there this was from several decades ago.

And you know, we think we see all these pictures now of like these starving people in Africa and these tribal people. They're just so skinny. Even if you look at the Maasai people, they are very skinny. Just like, wow, this is interesting. And I found this little black and white picture in there. And he's with this super remote tribe Africa. These guys are jacked. I thought I was looking at a picture of like, Navy SEALs that have

been working out in the best gym setup ever. And obviously there was no weights. There was no workouts. These guys were just eating and living. And it was he was took a picture of these warriors. And this first time I don't ever recall having seen a picture, the old old pictures of warriors that looked like this. I mean, these guys, the pectoral muscles in their arms. I mean, they all had six packs, right? They are all shredded. But I've seen that a lot related to skin. But these guys were all muscle.

Rachel Denning (30:24.398)
I mean, they look like this iconic six, four black dude that just walked out of the gym. He's like, that guy is the model of he's the specimen of what I want to look like in the resurrection. Six, four, 240. Whoa. But I'm like, what were they eating? These guys were eating what they could gather and what they hunted. And they, it was phenomenal. He tells the story about that. Well, and then we just watched a movie recently with our family called

boys in a boat and this was during the depression time in the US and about this rowing team that ended up winning the Olympics and everything, a great story. But, and this was true of this time period of the 1930s, let's say. It was just common that men were skinny and they were muscular, women were skinny and the fascinating thing in this story was they had all these people applying to be on the rowing team because it was gonna be a job that paid and you know, they all wanted, they all needed work, they needed a job.

50 young men show up and all of them could do 50 pushups, 50 sit ups run. I mean, they, they grind these guys for hours and hours every single day. And he said, Hey, we're only going to keep eight. Right. And, and they get all the way through. I mean, they just run them through the ringer. If they did that today, like 90 % of people were just talking about, they could all do it. And then I also remember seeing some statistic about the numbers of what was expected for a high school gym class. I think I'm thinking the same time period.

And it was, it was like for a high school student, you were expected to be able to do 50 push -ups, 50 sit -ups. The number of pull -ups and exercise. It is astounding where if you try to put that on, on a high school today, it would be brutal. And so to me, like, okay, that's a sign. Something changed after that time period that has now led to the society we live in. It's not, it's not just like we're different now.

What's interesting is that when I was a kid, and those of you in your 40s or 50s are going to remember this, when I was a kid, we had liver all the time. We were eating animal organs all the time. I remember just hating it. As a kid, we still were eating all the organs. Then as I got into my teens, it just kind of went away. People stopped eating that. Things changed, and it made a big difference.

Rachel Denning (32:52.206)
Couple of things I want to point out real quick as a basis for what we're doing women's body and biochemistry change every week So a woman's body is changing all the time. So it has to be cognizant of that. So it's gonna be a little bit different context for that just because you know, there is a discussion nowadays about men and women's bodies being not being different but and I know we've talked about before but I want to put this in context you and I went to get blood tests done because one of the things you can do to see the

the level of your health, especially if you're trying to be proactive and prevent disease is to go get blood work done. Get a full blood panel. And we were there and it was great. We got blood work done and then we're leaving and they're like, okay, great. Here's your results. And we're like, great. And they gave us testosterone levels, which was pretty good. They thought it was pretty good compared to most men. Yeah. Really good. They're like, wow, this is, this is good. You have good testosterone levels. And then we're like, okay, where's Rachel's blood tests? Like, it'll take at least three days.

And we're like, what? Mine took an hour? Mine took an hour. Where are her? What is blood? Humans are humans. What's going on here? Yeah. Women's bodies are way more complex. It will take us three days to do her blood work. So that right there, like that was one sign that yes, men and women are very different, even if you're looking at their blood. And so, yes, when it comes to eating and diet, there's a lot more complexity going on there that needs to be taken into account. And a woman's biochemistry changes.

Like I was saying every week and so with the moon and she might, she might want to change what she's eating a little bit. Never in that cycle or donuts or Oreos included like, this is what I need today. I need to binge this entire thing of store bought ice cream. Like, Nope. That's not what we're talking about. What you're talking about is because I read a book called fast like a girl. I want to address some of her specific points here and we are going to do that. But so one of the things I read was fast like a girl.

And she talked about in there how during, and I'm sorry, I don't remember the names of all of the phases that women go through hormonally, but there's times when you're producing more progesterone and more estrogen, et cetera, et cetera. And when you're, I think it's when your body is producing more progesterone, it needs, in fact, it requires more carbohydrates. Now that doesn't mean, like you said, I should be eating ice cream and well, store -bought ice cream and.

Rachel Denning (35:15.598)
Donuts what it does mean though is that I need more Squashes maybe or more potatoes or more. I like to include bread because I like bread You know more of those things That that's what it's talking about and that is something that a woman's body needs and so we have to Take all of that into this complex food puzzle that we're putting together remembering there's all of these points

So let me go through some of the specific things. As a foundation, we have to remember that not all food is created equal. Yes, a steak is not a steak is not a steak. Exactly. And we can take a steak and how it was raised, what it was fed, what medications or drugs it was given. Or not given. The state of the animal and its natural environment, like how it's raised.

absolutely changes the quality of the meat. Now, some of you might be like, no, it doesn't. You know, cows are cow. No, it's not a grass fed and different breeds, you know, a grass fed cow in Ireland or New Zealand versus a grain fed cow in a meat lot somewhere in America in a desert. And it is

just give them tons of grains and antibiotics and drugs, just fatten them up. And that's also true for milk. That was something we also learned early on that, you know, when you read a book that says milk is poison and you shouldn't be drinking it, well, it also really depends on where the milk comes from. It's coming from this feedlot or this factory and they're given all of these chemicals and drugs and everything. Yeah, that's very different milk than some grass -fed milk from your neighbor's cow or, you know, or from Poland or whatever. Or Ireland.

And please, please, please understand that if you take a gallon of milk from a little rural grass -fed farm in Give me some Slovenia and you compare that to this just sick Manure field farm. You take a gallon in I don't know like somewhere some state

Rachel Denning (37:31.086)
It's not the same and all the chemicals in there. So if you run all your tests and you're getting all your statistics from that piece of milk or that little bit of milk there, like it's a very, very different outcome. So the same is true with an apple. You go pick an apple and that's where they're doing this. They pick an apple that's under ripe. So it's not all of its nutritional value is not in there. They pick it right. They ship it across the world. They spray it with all kinds of stuff. It's been straight, all kinds of chemicals keep bugs off and fertilizers. I mean, they're putting all kinds of garbage in that thing and then shipping it early.

and then making it perfectly picture perfect. So it sits on a shelf and you go, I want that apple. And then you start running tests on it. You're like, that is like almost no nutritional value as the farmer down the road that feed natural organic fertilizer. I even remember reading something years ago talking about how an apple today does not have the same nutritional value as it did for our great grandparents or whatever.

But okay, so one another one of these frameworks that answers the question of like how do you know what to listen to is I've learned to view it as kind of like a treasure hunt. The same the same is true for for me for eating. Eating healthy food is kind of like a treasure hunt. You really do have to when I go to the grocery store it's like I'm on a treasure hunt because not all the food on the shelf is good for you that's obvious and so you're you have to pick

out the things you have to read the ingredients you have to go through and like you're literally like there could be two things on the shelf and on the outside they could look the same but when you read the ingredients you realize that one is very different than and this one makes me angry because they will say the exact same thing so go to the butter section as a per example and you look at this huge section and they all say butter butter delicious butter natural those a natural butter and all the stuff then you turn it around you look at the ingredients

And one says butter and you look it over and it says, yeah, it's pure butter. That's all it is. It's made from cream and salt. The one right next to it that says all natural butter and has these pictures of cows and grass. And you turn it over and it's mostly seed oil. Right. And this is true. We've seen this in a lot of different countries, especially countries like Turkey and Egypt. They'll sell things that they say are butter. And this is true in the U .S. But if you read the ingredients, the first ingredient is like sunflower oil or.

Rachel Denning (39:53.966)
something like that. So you have to be this detective. Some of them legitimately have no butter in them. They call it butter. No milk or anything. No cream. And you have to find the things that are actually healthy, actually good for you. And it is a treasure hunt and literally is. Now I used to be overwhelmed and depressed by that because I would go to the grocery store and I felt like there's nothing here. I can eat. Leave with an empty cart.

Nothing here is good for me, but now I've learned like no it's there You just have to look for it. You just have to like it takes longer It takes more time, but it's paid off for me. That's made all the difference like that's what I attribute my great health to is because I've I've I wouldn't say never but rarely if ever bought and some bought something fun that work bought something without reading the ingredients don't buy anything that's bad for you, and then of course the the other great rule is like buy things that

are the ingredients. A mango is an ingredient. Milk is an ingredient. Like that's what you should be eating. The things that are the ingredients, right? Okay. Then I also apply that same sort of strategy to finding out what to actually listen to. And I've learned now to be able to recognize it, you know, and see where the falsehoods lie. But when you begin to get these frameworks in the reference of evolution,

and what our ancestors ate and people that are actually getting results, you can start to piece things together where you're like, okay, yeah, I think that that research is actually accurate because of these things. Besides the fact, okay, here's the other thing I want to tie in before we actually get into addressing very specifically some of these things. Besides the fact that we also include in all of this personal experience,

And the experience of having worked with thousands of people. Along with the idea of results don't lie. We now know, we now have experience to know what actually works and what doesn't. Which is important. I'll have my coaching clients, they'll come to me like, man, I'm just tired, I'm overweight, I'm dragging myself to the day I just need energy. And the guys who follow my formula that I give to them, within weeks, usually it's four to six weeks.

Rachel Denning (42:15.47)
They're coming back to me like, I haven't felt this kind of energy and I haven't looked this good, felt this good since I was in high school or since I was a collegiate athlete. Like, this is unbelievable. I didn't know it was possible to feel like this. And you contrast that with the guys that my son was with recently who were also in their forties. And you know, my son's just jacked and he knows, he knows how healthy and strong a fit I am. And these guys are sitting there in their forties like, no, no, once you pass 40, it's all downhill. You just lose energy and health. You lose strength. You just.

And these guys were totally defeated. So like, there's nothing to do about it. You know, overweight or unhealthy and all this stuff. And he said, no, no, my dad's my dad, tons of energy and strength and he's jacked. And they're like, no, your dad's just lying to you. He's just saying that. And these guys just totally bought this, this age thing. Like, no, when you pass 40, it's all downhill and you can't have good health or strength or stamina. And my son was like, you guys are full of crap. And your results.

speak pretty loud. That's another piece of the puzzle for us as well because right, we have seven children. Our oldest are now like they've moved out. They've gone out for periods of time to work and then they've come back and they of their own accord have said things to us. They are the ones that have brought it up of like, I just feel so much better when I'm on our diet, when I'm eating our food. Like that's the thing they mentioned to me.

when they come back home is like, my gosh, I just love our food. I love our way of eating. I feel so much better and so much healthier. There's no like gut ache and you feel like you have a brick in your belly. You just feel terrible when you're eating garbage. Right. And they have noticed the differences. So they know as well. I have to reemphasize though, you guys, we eat delicious food. It is phenomenal. That's so important.

Most people think when I say healthy, it's like, man. We're not sitting here eating kale and tofu and like choking it down. In fact, we just had people over the other day and I'm glad you brought this up because I wanted to emphasize this as well. And they said, your food is just so good. And we've hosted youth retreats where we had 17 youth stay in our house. And one of the top - Well, we did it one time, we had 40. Well, yeah. Okay. So we've done it multiple times, but last time, one of the things the youth always rave about to their parents is how -

Rachel Denning (44:39.246)
how good the food is. I don't serve them junk food. I'm not giving them Cheetos and Doritos and whatever. I'm literally making them delicious meals from whole foods that are healthy. And they are raving about how much they love it. this is so amazing. This is so good. We want the recipes. We want to make this, you know. It makes a difference. And people can tell it is noticeably delicious and nutritious. And they love it.

And it's good for you. Okay. So that being said, let's address specifically. Now that we've introduced the topic. Seriously. Yeah. It only took us 45 minutes to introduce the topic. Okay. Thing, finer points, things like seed oils, carnivore, intermittent fasting, coffee and tea. First of all, seed oils. The very fact that this is, I think where the confusion is in part of the world. And, and I think that not to be a conspiracy theorists or anything like that, but.

I think that there is perhaps some of this going on. A seed oil is a highly processed food. So in one point she's saying avoid highly processed foods and sugar, but then things like seed oils are controversial. No, a seed oil is a highly processed food because it's coming from a seed and it takes, could you make a seed oil in your kitchen? No. Well, I haven't. Well, you might argue that, because coconut oil is good.

Coconut oil is great. Everything we come across, but you couldn't do that in your kitchen. Okay, I have seen people make coconut oil. It's very difficult. Yeah, but it's possible. That's true. The people across from us made it in Costa Rica. Right. So I would say coconut oil is the best and then some olive oil is okay from everything we've read and seen. Although I've recently heard a lot of controversy about there's supposedly the mafia in Italy.

is mixing olive oil with seed oils because you know it's cheaper and they're selling it as these like super fancy expensive olive oils but really it's so again even when you go buy olive oil look in the ingredients because they have to put it on there and if you turn around it's like a little bit of olive oil and a lot of seed oil or even some like they're diluting it my point is there's a big difference between like canola oil and even and you're like well i'm not eating this we're just cook with it.

Rachel Denning (47:06.766)
not getting in your food. So well, besides the huge problem that if when you start reading ingredients, you realize that some form of seed oil is in nearly every single thing you eat and we don't we are putting it everywhere. So if it's in there, we don't it's a huge industry. So the fact to me that there's controversy about whether or not C2Ls are good for you is directly tied to how big of an industry.

the seed oil industry is and that it is in everything. Everything. Breads, cookies, crackers, like salad dressings of course, coming back to the salad, like that's one reason salads aren't good for you because especially if you're putting a salad dressing on it, it's just filled with seed oils and that is literally toxic for you. It's like a toxic sludge now. That's why I call it salad. It's just toxic sludge. So, you know, that's a major problem, but.

And there is a direct connection between seed oils and obesity, heart disease, like all of these things. It's horrible for you. Horrible. Even people who are on the opposite camp than I with the whole COVID thing, even they were saying, yeah, people who consume a lot of seed oils and COVID. Yeah, they were struggling. COVID death specifically. COVID death and the intensity or suffering of the symptoms, severity of the symptoms. So I don't see any, I haven't seen any...

really solid research that I think sea dill is good. I've seen it, I don't know if it's Mayo Clinic or wherever, they're like, no, heart healthy, it's good for you, canola oil, it could be very confusing, but in my mind I'm like, no, it's not. Our ancestors were not eating sea dills. Well, and what you left out, because you said coconut oil is the best, olive oil, what you left out as the very best is actually lard and tallow. The very best thing you could be eating if you want fats.

are the saturated fats, and butter, of course, butter's way up there. Grass -fed butter. That we've been told are bad for you, but actually are not. They are good for you. So tallow, lard, and the difference, tallow comes from beef and lard comes from pigs, and butter. And again, guys, if you go buy it, read the ingredients, make sure it's not seed oils. It's like pure tallow, pure lard, and grass -fed butter.

Rachel Denning (49:27.566)
is the best. And so as far as the research goes, that's what our ancestors were eating. That's what our grandparents on the farm were eating. That's what the Mongols were eating. Like they're going to be eating tallow and lard, not canola oil. Right? So that to me is how I decide about the research going on there. Okay. Carnivore. Wait, hold on. Did you say carnivore next or intermittent fasting? Carnivore was next, but I wanted to say something else about the C. E. O. S. because

When I started my own food journey, it actually started out raw because my dad, he was sick. He got diagnosed with cancer. He went on a raw diet and it did postpone his life by two years. So it was very beneficial. That's where I started with. Postponing his death. I'm sorry. Well, it postponed his life by two years. Prolonged his life. Sorry. Postponed his death. Yeah.

It was beneficial, but again, the reason why, because before that he'd been eating soda and cookies and crackers and all the sad diet. And so it obviously created a positive health benefit or effect. But when we started our life, I, I together, Greg and I, I was reading all the ingredients. And one of the very first things I cut out was sugar and like high fructose corn syrup, basically any form of.

Fructose, corn, right? Yes, anything with corn syrup. I cut that out. And that was a good strategy. I think that worked well in maintaining our health despite everything else that we were doing. But today, I would say if I was to do that strategy again, and part of the reason I didn't do it for so long is because it's really hard because seed oils aren't everything, is I would cut out seed oils. So,

So I went through this time of not buying anything that had high fructose corn syrup or whatever, but I would buy things that had seed oils. Now I would, I don't know if I'd switch it, but I would definitely prioritize that. I would eliminate all seed oils, which when you start looking, you'll realize is very difficult, but that makes a huge difference. And in fact, to this day, if I had to choose, like I was saying, if I had to, I would rather eat sugar than seed oils.

Rachel Denning (51:51.406)
Okay, but don't. I know, I'm just saying. I'm just trying to put this in context because she's saying, yeah, we can all agree on avoiding highly processed foods and sugar. But I'm saying if I had to choose, I would rather eat sugar than seed oils because I feel like the seed oils are that much more damaging and deadly than... Sugar is just as deadly. So the two of them go together. I think those are just deadly ingredients. I would put it in the scale.

differently because of how deadly I think they are. Okay. Okay. Now on to carnivore. The argument for carnivore is that, and I would say grass fed beef, not all beef is equal, not all meat is equal. So you finding your source makes a huge difference in the quality and the health of it. I agree with that, but I also think that even worst case scenario, like you couldn't get good beef, it would still be better to eat beef than it would be salad. Agreed.

And the argument there is that it has bioavailable nutrients, meaning it has the nutrient, it's nutrient dense. And so. And the bioavailability means that your body can easily absorb it and use it way easier than like a salad. You're digesting it and you're getting access to those. So in the greens, are those things available? Yes, they are.

Although they are missing certain things. There's things like K12. There's certain nutrients that you can only get from specifically red meat like K12 or whatever. And yes, while they are in some plants, they're not always bioavailable, meaning your body can't access them. And they're in such small quantities, you'd have to eat so many pounds of this stuff to try to get to it. And that's why you'll see so much vitamin supplementation.

Right, because people literally are not getting enough nutrients. Where did this vitamin grow? What plant does this vitamin peel go on? This came from a lab. It came from a factory. I'm not putting that in my body. Well, it's also not very bioavailable. And people know this. That's why they say you pee out most of your vitamins that you're taking because it's not bioavailable. Now, darn it, I had a very important point. I'm sorry. So keep talking. Carnivore, eat meat, be happy.

Rachel Denning (54:19.086)
That's our thought there. So we eat, we eat a lot of grass fed beef. We prefer beef. We eat a little bit of pork. I don't eat chicken anymore. Well, I like the variety of having chickens. We'll make chicken soup and we'll make some other chicken. I'm to the point now where I just gag that down. I'm like, thank you for making this.

Well, and you're back to your main point here that's because of how much nutrition is available in the steak like you're just getting more bang for your buck when you eat a steak verse or red meat versus eating chicken like there's just more nutrition that which does help me remember what I was going to say because One of the earlier things before I switch to a carnivore diet, which I would say is mostly what we eat now It's not 100 % that's mostly carnivore

Before that, a lot of the things I did study, which were the Weston Price Foundation, which his research is incredible. He, in the 50s, traveled around the world studying teeth. He was a dentist. that's a great one. So that's huge. Start there. There's also another book written by a different dentist that is based on his philosophy and approach, but this own dentist experience called The Dental Diet. But Sally, I think her name was Sally.

Fallon she wrote nourishing tradition. That's what I was trying to think of. And one of the things she emphasized is like yeah, if you're gonna eat vegetables great or fruits even but they should be cooked and they should be included you should always eat them with fats because doing so makes the nutrition in them more bioavailable. Ding ding ding ding. When you cook so take spinach for an example if you're gonna eat raw spinach you would have to eat like a pile of spinach to get

Any sort of nutritional value from it versus if you cook it it cooks down into a little if you ever cook spinach It goes into a little tiny pile you slather butter all over that That's way better for you than if you just ate it raw and so you're combining fats and proteins with that and and I want to emphasize this as much as I possibly can vast majority of people Maybe even perhaps especially women are not getting enough good

Rachel Denning (56:36.558)
fats and proteins. And our bodies operate on fats and proteins. Our muscles, our brains. Your brain operates primarily on fats. So the more butter, tallow, lard you can get, the more clarity you're going to have, the less brain fog you're going to have. Like it really makes a huge difference for your brain because it takes up, it uses like what 20 % of all the nutrition you take in goes to your brain. And basically a low fat diet is...

is not good for the body or the brain. A low fat diet is actually directly connected to depression. Like if you live on a low fat diet, you're going to be experiencing depression. Yeah, so is there anything else we want to say about carnivore? I mean basically, basically we got converted to carnivore because we realized that there's just more nutrition there. You don't have to eat as much, you know, and you don't have to constantly be eating. Like we can eat a steak and it can sustain us.

where if we don't, we can feel the difference. Like there's just a major difference. Maybe it's worth a quick rundown. So we'll eat a late breakfast, often 10, 11, 12 even, and it's steak and eggs. I do want to talk about eggs. Free range eggs, again, where the eggs are raised, what kind of eggs they are, don't get the cheap eggs, get the healthier eggs. There's more nutritional value in them. And so we eat a lot of eggs. And the argument there is like, yeah, but it raises your cholesterol.

and an elevated, there's different types of cholesterol. In one area, an elevated cholesterol, it's fine. It's not as bad as the, you know, kind of - It doesn't cause the heart disease and everything else, you're thinking. And a man's body uses cholesterol to produce testosterone while he's sleeping. So one of the reasons that men today, which is proven, have lower testosterone than their grandparent fathers did is because of lower cholesterol. Like people are eating -

less saturated fats, less eggs. And so they have lower cholesterol. So they have less testosterone. It's all there. So have some eggs and some meat and then some fruit. And usually the fruit goes with some kind of cream. It goes together. So you're getting, you're getting the fats and the proteins with the fruit and the fruit is it in the lower amounts. And there's an excellent book called why we get sick.

Rachel Denning (59:00.206)
by Benjamin Bickman that you should all read, talks about insulin resistance and how that works. So again, it's - Well, the fact that insulin, I need to emphasize this, the fact that insulin resistance is actually causing more disease than we're thinking high cholesterol is causing. And we usually associate insulin resistance with diabetes, but the reality is insulin resistance is causing or contributing to all -

major preventable diseases, not just diabetes, obesity, heart disease, stroke, cancer. With that in mind, I guess that's, you know, if I could recommend one book and like, just start with this as your basis, it would be that one, Why We Get Sick. Because he's just a researcher. He's just observing. He was just observing and he started noticing all these things. They started sharing them and it came out and ultimately his research is in that book. That's the foundation and he backs up everything we...

We were already living and eating this way when I found that book and I read it. I'm like, boom, he just literally confirmed everything we live by. And everything we had personally experienced and learned on. It's all backed up by his observations purely as an observational researcher. He wasn't, he didn't have some agenda. He wasn't working for the milk industry or whatever. He didn't get hired by Kellogg's or Pose or anything. He just, he's just observing and studying. And then his research there.

is the basis. So again, so the person asks a question and we're listening, start there, start with that book, read that book, and then let that observation, that research there be the basis for them what you want and start learning and discovering, which he talks about all these things, including intermittent fasting. Yes, which we'll talk about. But because as far as the pieces of how do you understand or how do you know what research and scientists to listen to, another key for me is when I when something I read or study,

matches up with what I already know to be true from personal or secondhand experience. That could be cognitive bias. It could, right. But if you tie it in with the results don't lie type thing, right? And go across not just your own experience because you're not making a principle out of your own experience. You're looking across time and space and people. Yeah, you're getting a lot of research. It rings true anyway, where I'm like, yeah, that absolutely makes sense because I've seen that.

Rachel Denning (01:01:23.822)
But we've also met people like this is true for me and like, yeah, but look at yourself. Look in the mirror. You're pale and sickly. You look like a bean pole. I don't personally remember meeting any like vegan, vegetarian, raw person that looked strong and healthy and vibrant. They all just kind of look a little malnourished. They have that look. Okay. And I think since we're talking about the corn of art, it's good to tie it in this next part of the question later on about.

how much vegetables and grains should be included in a diet. For me, I did go through a period of time where I was like, nope, in fact I told my kids vegetables are bad for you, like don't eat vegetables, right? And that was kind of an inside joke we had. And we avoided them. Now I'm to a point where I don't think eating some vegetables is that, like it's fine. But if I do eat them, I'm gonna eat them cooked and I'm gonna keep...

put butter all over them or cream or something like it's going to be they're going to be slathered. Now the other thing is here's where people get confused some things we think of vegetables are actually fruits and you are supposed humans are supposed to eat fruits like fruits are meant to be eaten. One of the arguments about carnivore diet and not eating vegetables and whatever is that most vegetables are parts of a plant they're either roots stems or leaves and most plants

have toxins in them because those part of the plants are not meant to be eaten. They're meant to help the plant grow and reproduce so that the plant can perpetuate and survive. Now, fruit is different. Fruit, you can tell a fruit because it contains seeds. So anything that has seeds inside of it is a fruit and fruits are meant to be eaten because that's how seeds are spread to propagate plants. Think cucumbers, zucchini, squash, pumpkins.

Yeah, all of those things are fruits. So all of those, while you think, those are vegetables, no, those are actually fruits. And so those are meant to be eaten. We eat those in abundance. We eat zucchini, squash, all of that. Now we will also eat some other, like we're going to have some cauliflower this week because we want to. Because it's empty, no nutritional value. It doesn't have nutritional value, but if you cook it up with cream and cheese, it's pretty good, you know? And so we'll eat that.

Rachel Denning (01:03:45.582)
Now, one of the reasons I can tell... Like that's once every six months, maybe. Yeah, it's been a long time since we had a colicor. But anyways, one of the ways for me that I can tell that eating more vegetables and grains is not good for me, at least, is how I feel. I can now... Like I just feel it in my body. I'm way more bloated. I feel a little more foggy. Gassy. Gassy. That to me is a sign that what I'm eating is not a grain with me. Like...

it's absolutely possible to live your entire life without being bloated and like, you don't have to have that. People have gotten so used to that that they just think that's a normal way of existing. It's not. Right. And that's not normal. It's all the legumes and the beans and the toxic things you're eating besides everything else. Right. So if I ever feel like that,

I know it's because I've eaten something that doesn't agree with me and that's usually been bread, grains, or vegetables. That's usually when it happens for me. So that's a personal experience, but that's where I go with that. So we go very, very low on grains. But I do also believe that there can be some benefit to eating some of those things. And part of the research I have read says that just in a way like,

if you think about exercising is the example that they used. Technically, exercising is not quote unquote good for you in that it's causing destruction to your muscles. It's stressing your body. It's stressing your body and causing destruction to your muscles, but done in limited amounts, right? If you just exercised all day long, that would be very bad for you. But if you did it limited amounts, it's good for you because it causes repair.

which then builds and strengthens your muscles. The same thing can be true of vegetables. The vegetables stress your body. This is one theory that's presented. The vegetable stresses your body and presents toxins and stuff, which then can help strengthen your body because it's been exposed to those certain toxins and stuff. But that's only if it's done in limited amounts, not if you're eating raw food 24 -7. Well, you can't eat 24 -7, but if that's all you're eating,

Rachel Denning (01:06:08.75)
then you're literally causing ongoing damage to your body, just like if you were to work out all the time. Okay. Intermittent fasting. I haven't heard many good arguments against intermittent fasting. I've heard people say that women may not need to fast as much, again, because their biochemistry is so complex. And even in Fast Like a Girl, she says there's times when you should not fast for women. But overall, the idea of intermittent fasting is that you...

don't eat any food after dinner, and then eat a late breakfast. So you're trying to go 16 hours without food and eat during an eight hour window. And again, those are just targets. It's not, you know, I would be hard -core on that. And I would even, like for me, that's not, to me, that's not the foundation of intermittent fasting. The way I best understand it is that, going back to my foundational viewpoint here, if we look at our ancestors,

including our own grandparents and great grandparents, and then all the way back into human history, humans always had periods of time when they went without food. That was just normal. Like whether you worked on a farm or you were a hunter gatherer, you had period of time when you were fasting. And it's okay to be hungry. Well, not just that it's okay, but that's how the body has evolved to operate. The fact that we now can have food,

24 -7, we have ongoing access. In fact, many of us don't even know what it's like to be hungry because our stomachs have never been empty that long. That's not normal. And that is contributing to disease because one of the things that happens during intermittent fasting is called autophagy where your body, because it's not focusing on digesting food, it now has the time and energy to go and destroy toxic cells in your body, which are preventing diseases.

So your body needs that time. It needs fasting. It's phenomenal. It's what our ancestors have been used to. Humans have evolved to do that. They have evolved to operate best when there are periods of fasting at least, well, it should be every day, but at least every few days, there's a period where you don't have food. That to me is where intermittent fasting is just solid. Like you can't argue against that. Like we know that that happened and that makes sense that our bodies would then...

Rachel Denning (01:08:31.566)
want to operate that way. There's so much healing that the body can do while it's fasting and letting the digestive tract rest. Now that being said, in Fast Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pels, she emphasizes that fasting for a woman is very different than fasting for a man, which also makes sense. If you think about women and reproducing and all of that, if anyone had priority over food, it was going to be the women with good reason. So...

There are periods of times when we shouldn't fast. And she has a whole schedule. In fact, I have a chart that I made off of her book, which if you message me, I will send it to you. Support at extraordinaryfamilylife .com. But it tells you exactly, like on day one of your period, you fast this long, and day 10, and day whatever. It has it all according to your cycle about how many hours you should be fasting. And...

And it also talks about when you should be eating more carbs, like the squashes and potatoes and things like that, based on your cycle. And so that's what I have to say about that. I just feel like it's just a good thing. It is. Agreed. And especially if you do it the right way for women. Okay. Coffee and tea. Some are saying it's neutral or slightly beneficial. I have, I've read all of that. Well, we believe it's unhealthy. Now, I...

Actually don't believe all forms of tea are unhealthy. I think black tea is questionable green tea is actually, you know fairly healthy but from what I've come across and read the green tea Seems to be it has more and neutral or good the black tea whatever the black tea and the coffee are the trouble because of the toxins and the caffeine well the

For me, part of my viewpoint on this change along with me learning about the carnivore and this viewpoint on vegetables and different parts of the plants, because in a lot of ways, if you think about it, what is tea? It's leaves. And coffee, it's seeds, right? Same with chocolate, actually, although I still like chocolate. But technically, those are just different parts of the plants which do have toxins in them. So,

Rachel Denning (01:10:56.366)
I don't know. I mean, I'm still at the viewpoint that yeah, if you wanted to drink coffee or tea once in a while, that's fine. But I don't think it's healthy to drink it every single day. And in fact, when I switch, sorry, I'm still talking. When I, I should stop trying to talk. I know you should, especially when we're talking about one of my favorite topics, which is nutrition. When I started the carnivore diet, before that, I previously was drinking herbal tea every single morning. And when I switched to it, to carnivore,

I thought, well, herbal tea is, it's made from leaves. So I'm gonna cut that out. And I have noticed now if I do drink herbal tea, it does make me bloated and more gassy. So I don't know. I mean, that's just another thing to me where, but I also believe that, you know, at times leaves and different parts of the plants are meant to be say medicinal. And maybe that's true of coffee or whatever. Like there can be medicinal purposes for them.

But medicine isn't something you're meant to take every single day either. Right? So if there are medicinal values to different plants and different parts of the plants, great, let's use it for that. But that doesn't mean I should have it every single day. So for us, that's kind of where we come back to on it. Like, okay, great. You want to have it once in a while? Fine. But it's meant to be more of a treat than part of a staple of your diet. Right. The big one for me with coffee is the caffeine. And again, look at results. The results don't lie. I don't want...

anything in my body that weakens my control. Or that you become dependent on. Or makes me dependent or addicted. And the vast majority of people that I know that drink coffee, they become dependent. Right. They're addicts, man. And they're like, I need my coffee. I can't get going again. Same with drinking wine or whatever. Well, and alcohol obviously weakens your control. And alcohols, again, it's not good for your brain or your body. So it...

I guess fundamentally I'm going to say if it's not and I'm on a I'm further on the on the scales like if it's not good for you if it's only neutral then I'm probably going to skip it. I want I'm going to fuel my body which I view my body as a vehicle to experience life and if I'm going to fuel my vehicle I'm going to put good stuff in there because I have a choice and so not only am I not going to go to the bad side I'm going to stay away from neutral for the most part and just put good things in my body and I don't want to weaken my control.

Rachel Denning (01:13:23.374)
or make myself dependent or addicted. So I'm going to avoid the caffeine because if I can keep caffeine out of my body, then my body naturally produces energy. But if I supply external energy, then my body's like, I don't have to create the energy because it's going to be given to me. Well, Greg, why don't you just become a sun gazer and then stop being addicted to food? I should. That was one of the things we came across in our years of...

that food is just an addiction. There are some people out here and I get where they're saying what they're saying that food's an addiction and we can get all the nutrition we need by gazing at the sun. We've never tried that. That's one thing we have not tried. So I will I will steer clear of coffee. The one main positive argument I heard for coffee, ironically comes from a gentleman who has a very popular coffee brand. I wonder if there's a conflict of interest there.

Potentially, yeah. Well, and it's Bulletproof Coffee and he actually has an approach that I use every single day. He talks about adding butter to coffee, which is brilliant, adding butter to a drink. So I make a drink in the morning. We call it tea in our family, even though it's not really tea. It used to have my herbal tea until I stopped doing that. But it's a...

I drink this almost every morning. It's hot water. I fill my cup one half to a third full. Then I put in a spoonful of butter, depending on how hungry I feel. It might be more or less. And I put in, if I'm fasting, I don't put in any honey. But if I'm not fasting, then I put in a small scoop of honey, like a teaspoon. And then I add cream and milk, unless I'm fasting. Then I only add cream.

It can get complicated here people. But anyways, you're hilarious. You're still doing butter and cream, but you're like, I'm fast. Well, because butter doesn't technically break your fast. It has no, like metaphor, metabolic effect on what I'm sorry. The cream doesn't. And I think the butter too, you'd have to look it up to be sure, but I will add the butter and the cream. If I'm trying to not break my intermittent fasting. Anyways, but.

Rachel Denning (01:15:47.854)
You know, that fuels me and that fuels my brain. And it's super healthy for you. But yeah, that's his big thing comes from the Butterproof Coffee, which has the butter added to it. And sorry, Butterproof. And he got the idea from the Himalayas because the porters and the Nepalese people that live there, they add yak butter to their drinks, whatever they drink. Again, you're getting the fats. It's awesome.

And that's one of the ways they feel their body and have stamina and energy is with that. Okay. I think that's it. I think we, we hit it. We covered it. Okay. So, health is everything, energy and vitality is everything. I want to be just ripped and shredded and fit and strong my entire life. I will be.

looking good and feeling good into my 70s and 80s and 90s. Well, and we want to live a long life. And I think that that's also important because our children were recently talking about how they've met. They were out knocking doors, doing sales in Florida. And our sons met a lot of people who are just like, I'm ready to die. I'm 60 or 70 and I want to die. Or people have told them like, I don't want to live past 70.

And I think the reason why is because if you imagine your life filled with disease and suffering and no energy, well, yeah, who would want to keep living? But the way we feel and the way we plan on continuing to fill, we want to live a long life. We want to do lots of things and contribute and make a difference in the world. And I believe it's possible as long as you fuel your body with the things it needs.

and allow it to do its job to, I mean, we didn't even get into the stuff about aging. Like, you know, there's research out there saying that we don't understand why people age. There's really not a reason to age. And yet it happens, and I think that happens because of the toxins that we're exposing our body to. If we can eliminate and reduce that, we're just gonna, you know, have more longevity and more vitality. That's the goal.

Rachel Denning (01:18:07.982)
Every effort to wake up the vast majority of mornings and feel awake energized and alive have energy vitality feel good because they just think about it if you take energy more energy more vitality clarity of mind and body and everything you do from sleep to sex to Having fun working to making decisions like the condition of your body is literally affecting everything you do

And so some of the outcomes in your life just simply might be because your, your vehicle is just not optimized and it's not feeling good. And in fact, many of the things you're doing, because our bodies are billboards, you're a walking, talking billboard and your body is your business card. And people are assessing the condition of your body and it's affecting everything you do. So it's worth all the effort to make sure our bodies are in peak condition. Most.

of the time. Love you guys. Thanks for listening. If you want more tools and strategies, help to implement all this stuff. Rachel has her 28 day challenge she's doing mostly for moms. And then I have the be the man masterclass and drive. And we dive deep into all this stuff. I've been sharing recipes with the 28 day challenge because they've been asking what sharing recipes. So we're starting to do that.

Okay, thanks, thanks for listening.

Rachel Denning (01:19:47.018)
you