I had the honor of reconnecting with Chris Irvin today! (He was with me once before, on Episode 175.)
Chris is a nutrition researcher, writer, and educator specializing in low-carb dieting for metabolic health and human performance. He is the author of Keto Answers, The Carnivore Diet for Beginners, and Mommy, Do I Have to Eat This? He is also the Chief Marketing officer at BioCoach, a company dedicated to taking down prediabetes and diabetes.
Chris is an incredible resource on the value of keto and low-carb diets! His book, Keto Answers, is one of my favorite keto resources to recommend to clients! In this episode, Chris and I get into the differences between micro and macronutrients. We talk about the therapeutic uses of keto, low-carb, hormesis, and carnivore diets, the role of metabolic health, the value of protein, balancing longevity and sarcopenia, and the results of over-fasting, over-restricting, and creating too much stress on the body. We also dive into questions from listeners about the impact of low-carb and ketogenic diets on cholesterol panels and endurance, how to troubleshoot digestive distress, protein excess, and Chris’s favorite gadgets and supplements.
I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast as much as I did recording it! Stay tuned for more!
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
The therapeutic benefits of keto, carnivore, low-carb diets, and fasting.
The value of protein.
How much protein should you eat?
The importance of having muscle.
The benefits of eating grass-fed red meat.
The problem with over-restricting, over-exercising, and over-fasting.
Changing things up occasionally and using reverse dieting for optimum health.
Adding more protein to your diet will make you feel better, and you won't gain weight.
How will a low-carb or keto diet impact your overall cholesterol?
Chris explains how a low-carb or keto diet affects the performance of endurance athletes.
Products you can use to optimize endurance performance.
Chris explains why digestive distress could occur with keto and shares his recommendations for overcoming it.
The impact of a low-carb diet on thyroid function.
“When it comes to low-carb diets, the weight-loss portion is a big piece of the puzzle, but it’s not the only piece.”
-Chris Irvin
Connect with Cynthia Thurlow
Follow on Twitter
Check out Cynthia’s website
Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Chris Irvin
On his website
On Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheKetologist
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I'm your host nurse practitioner, Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent, is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.
Cynthia Thurlow: Today, I’d the honor reconnecting with Chris Irvin. We recorded earlier last year on Episode 175. He's a nutrition researcher, writer and educator, specializing in low-carb dieting for metabolic health and human performance. He's the author of Keto Answers, one of my favorite keto resources to recommend to clients, and he's also the chief marketing officer at BioCoach. Today, we dove into differences between micro and macronutrients, therapeutic uses of keto, low carb, hormesis, and carnivore diets, the role of metabolic health, the value of protein, balancing longevity and sarcopenia. What happens when you over fast, over restrict and create too much stress on the body? We dove deep into listeners’ questions including answering the role of low carb and ketogenic diets and then the impact on cholesterol panels, low-carb keto and endurance. How to troubleshoot with digestive distress? The role of protein excess, his favorite gadgets and supplements. I hope you will enjoy this podcast as much as I did recording it.
Cynthia Thurlow: Chris, it's so nice to reconnect with you on the podcast.
Chris Irvin: Yeah. Thanks for having me on today, Cynthia. Well, I think the last time we spoke was like right before your book launch, that was the last time.
Cynthia Thurlow: Yeah, it's hard to believe that book has been out for two and a half months. And the last six months have been so wonderfully chaotically busy that I'm excited to be going on vacation with my family in exactly two weeks from tomorrow.
Chris Irvin: Oh great.
Cynthia Thurlow: I'm going to just disconnect. [laughs] I'm forewarning my team, completely disconnecting. But I wanted to bring you back because you're such an incredible resource, talking about the value of keto and low-carb diets. And I know last year, you had a carnivore cookbook that came out. I'd love to kind of start our conversation today talking about some of the therapeutic benefits, because I think a lot of people when they think about carnivore as an example, they're like, “Oh, I know it's anti-inflammatory and I know it can be beneficial.” And obviously, I did straight carnivore for nine months after being hospitalized because my body literally could not handle anything else. But really starting the conversation and talking kind of broadly about some of the therapeutic benefits of these diets, because it's not just about weight loss, I think that's unfortunate where people like focus their energies, but there's so much beyond the obvious that really can be very, very therapeutic.
Chris Irvin: Totally, yeah. I guess to start we can go a little bit broader and just say like low-carb diets as a broad category and then we can get down into the specifics of like keto and carnivore, because each one of them does offer its own unique benefit, especially therapeutically. I think when it comes to low-carb diets, the weight loss portion, it is a big piece of the puzzle, but it's not the only piece, but we do know that body weight and body fat, I guess I should say is a really big predictor of a metabolic disease, it's a big predictor of a lot of different chronic diseases, so if you're losing weight, you're inherently going to be reducing your risk of a lot of chronic disease. But I think a lot of times that's a little bit too reductionist of a view on things. There're obviously different ways you can lose weight, some are much better than others. You can go super low calorie and essentially no nutrients and lose a ton of weight and also lose a ton of muscle and not be healthier or you can do it the right way, maintain muscle, burn body fat, have a really micronutrient rich diet, and be healthy with the weight loss.
The weight loss, I really look at it as almost a side effect of a low-carb diet. When you're following any sort of low-carb diet, you are restoring your metabolic health and that's really where it comes in, as it relates to chronic disease and the therapeutic application of it. If you look at all of our most common chronic diseases, we're looking at cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cancer, and then even some of these neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and things like that, all of these diseases are, if not, directly caused by, they’re at least rooted in metabolic dysfunction or impaired metabolic health, which really breaks down if you really want to simplify, its blood sugar being out of whack, it's chronically high insulin levels, triglycerides being all over the place and our cholesterol not being at the right ratio or with the right type. All the hallmarks that you think about when people say metabolic syndrome, which is a little bit too broad. All of those things are what's roped into the metabolic health.
When you look at any of these diseases, you see that something's off. Usually, blood sugar and insulin I think are the two biggest ones. Especially if you look at diseases like type 2 diabetes, where it's very common for people to-- if they start off with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, it's very common for them to get secondary, third, fourth, fifth chronic diseases that will kind of add on to the type 2 diabetes. It's really common for cardiovascular disease to come into play. It's really no secret anymore that these areas are really important when it comes to our health and that's where a low-carb diet shines is that, if you are not metabolically healthy, if you're insulin resistant, your blood sugar levels are always high, you have chronically high insulin levels, then you don't metabolize carbohydrates very well. And in fact, if you continue to consume them, you further exacerbate these problems, you continue this cycle of spiking blood sugar and raising insulin and all of the downstream effects of that.
So simply put, when you follow any low-carb diet, you're cutting out the main problem. And it is only one of the problems, we can get into some of the other things too, but you're cutting out a major problem. And a lot of people like to argue that and say, “Okay, it's not carbs that cause--” we'll take diabetes, for instance, or just insulin resistance, more generally speaking, they'll say carbs don't cause insulin resistance, it's X, Y, or Z. And all of that may be true, but I think rather than getting wrapped up into the chicken or the egg, it's like, what actually works for these people and what doesn't work. And we know that putting people on a carbohydrate-based diet, when they're dealing with metabolic disorder, it's setting them up for failure. They don't see progress very quickly. If they do see progress, it usually means that they had to calories back really far, they're consuming a really low-calorie, low-protein diet, which inherently is going to be lower in micronutrients, you're just not getting as much opportunity to get those things in. It just doesn't really make sense to go that route, low carb, it gets a catch of for a lot of these issues. At least at the start, I don't think that anybody dealing with a chronic disease has to necessarily go low carb forever, but it's a great way to kind of get things kicked off, get that blood sugar back in check, get those insulin levels back in check and then from there, you can adjust the diet and go different directions. Maybe you go even stricter into something like keto or carnivore or maybe you go like carb cycling, or you do a little bit-- I'm big fan of Jessie Inchauspe, with her new book that just came out. Where she talks a lot about just different hacks that you can use to even while you're consuming carbohydrates to reduce your blood sugar spike, those can all be great things. But if you're kind of like that peak of insulin resistance, none of those things are going to be all that effective until you get that back in check with a low-carb diet.
The thing that's fascinating and most interesting and encouraging for people is that you can see dramatic improvements in a really short period of time with fasting, with keto, with carnivore, you can see improvements in your fasting blood sugar which is a huge marker that we use. Maybe not as important as we make it out to be, but it is a really big marker of metabolic health, you can see improvements in a couple of weeks in that area. Same thing with insulin, A1c is the number that we see improvements in a very short period of time. To me that's exciting, because I know a lot of times people either think that, A, it's going to be really quick and easy to solve this problem or it's going to take forever. It's not quick and easy, but it is a lot quicker than what some people let on. So that's why I always like to take that approach. I think most times if you're dealing with some sort of chronic issue, if you're able to start with cutting out carbs, you're going to be able to create space within your health and within your lifestyle to start making continuing improvements. I really like that to be the baseline for a lot of people who are trying to use nutrition as a remedy for chronic disease.
Cynthia Thurlow: Well, I think you bring up some really excellent points. I mean obviously, my whole background is in cardiology and I got to a point where I had prescription fatigue, because so many of the issues I saw in my patient's, worsening diabetes, increasing vascular disease, etc. Yeah, maybe I could control symptoms, but we weren't really fixing the problem. In a lot of ways, we've led patients to believe that every symptom necessitates a prescription medication. We've also not prioritized talking about nutrition with our patients. My mindset has always been it all starts with food and yet food can be such a therapeutic modality. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people fear when you say low carb, they're talking really like under 30 grams of total carbs and I always say, "Listen, if the average Americans consuming 200 to 300 grams of carbs a day, average, getting you under 100 is going to be an effort, but it's not something that's not going to then not be sustainable."
When people start eating more nutrient dense whole foods, and by that I mean, whether you're going lower carb as a starting point, you're getting carbohydrates from non-starchy vegetables and low glycemic berries and maybe you are carb cycling and so maybe you have squash or sweet potato, you're getting away from the processed carbs, the ones that get us into trouble, because even with as diligent as I am, when someone gives me gluten free bread at a restaurant, I have to work very hard not to eat it because one piece becomes two and you slather it with butter and all of a sudden, you're derailing all the hard work that you do, which is not to suggest, we're not encouraging people to find some degree of moderation.
Chris Irvin: Yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: I think it's also important to identify that each one of us may do something a little bit differently, but moving towards a lower carbohydrate diet. Especially with the degree of rampant metabolic inflexibility and poor metabolic health that we're seeing and certainly. I presented at an event in Salt Lake in April and when I was looking at the statistics over how much weight people have gained during the pandemic, it was pretty significant. Most people gained anywhere from 15 to 20 pounds, but there was even a fairly good percentage of people that had gained more than 50, because it was a time when a lot of people felt powerless and there were many people that were finding solace in foods.
Chris Irvin: Yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: Certainly, a really important starting point for our conversation. You touched on protein, and I think this is probably for me, the macronutrient I talk about the most, probably secondary to carbs, but really emphasizing for people not to fear protein. Now, when you have people that come to you because your moniker as The Ketologist, and I think there's this misnomer or misrepresentation that if you're eating keto, you're not eating enough protein and that really hasn't been the case for me. What I typically see is people eating too much fat, because fat is delicious. Right?
Chris Irvin: Right.
Cynthia Thurlow: Whether it's avocado or nuts or cheese or whatever it is that people are indulging in. Let's touch on the value of protein, why that's so important and then maybe we can dovetail into talking about some of the research. We're not all in agreement on this about longevity versus sarcopenia, that muscle loss with aging that I find really fascinating and how we can bridge the gaps conceptually on these topics.
Chris Irvin: Yeah. It's a great question, because ever since I've been in the low carb space, this protein conversation just keeps coming up and there's a lot of disagreement. Actually, just the other day I had a friend from back home text me and he just started a keto diet and he was saying, "Oh, I'm having a really hard time hitting my macros." I knew when he said that, I knew what the problem was, I knew that he thought he needs to eat a lot less protein, because he's a guy, he hunts, his fridge is stocked up with all kinds of deer and local beef and everything like that. So, I asked him, I said, “What's going on with the macros? What are you having a hard time with?” He goes, "I'm just not getting enough fat, and I'm getting too much protein?" I was like, “Well, send me what your numbers are,” because I knew he was tracking. And he was like 30% to 35% protein, and like 60% to 65% fat. I'm like, “Dude, you're perfect, don't change a thing. You're crushing it.” He's also a guy who works out a lot, there's just a demand for it.
The fear of protein I think it is twofold. Generally speaking, I think there's a fear of protein from-- well, a bigger picture and we'll get into this later is the longevity standpoint. But that's not really why most people feared so we'll talk about that separately. But I know there's this general assumption that protein is bad for our kidneys. I remember when I was growing up going to my pediatrician and wanting to start drinking protein shakes and her saying, "Oh, you don't want to have too much protein, it'll be damaging to your kidneys." I was never really one to take the standard advice on things, so it didn't really stop me, but it's this idea that it's bad. And if you look at the research on, it's very clear that even if you have damaged kidneys, you can still tolerate a good amount of protein. You do have to be a little bit more careful if you have like a kidney disease, or if you're suffering from something in that area. But for somebody who's healthy that's this fear of protein for that sake, there's no reason for it.
Then the bigger reason why I think there's a lot of fear of protein in this low carb, keto space, keto especially is this idea that if we have too much protein, that we're going to be converting that protein into sugar. Gluconeogenesis is the famous sciency word that people like to throw around. It's a real thing, it's a process that does exist in our body, it's a process that takes amino acids which are what’s found in protein, and it converts them to glucose. I think the idea because logically it makes sense that if we consume too much protein, that we will then have too much amino acids in our blood and that those amino acids will have to be shuttled to something and that it will get converted to glucose. I think a reason why people who tests their numbers, they'll test in a way that almost agrees with this, because they'll test right after they eat food and they'll say, "Oh, that was a pretty protein heavy meal, I saw an increase in blood sugar, what's going on there." But if we look at the research, it's also pretty clear and I love this phrase gets thrown around all the time, but it's a really great way to look at is that it's a demand driven process and not a supply driven process.
So, just providing more amino acids from a supply perspective is not going to increase the rate in which we convert it to glucose. But if there's a demand for it, it will. This is the reason why your blood sugar doesn't go to zero if you don't consume carbs, you can consume a zero-carb diet your blood sugar never goes to zero and there's a reason for this. We need to have certain cells in our bodies like our red blood cells and even portions of our brain that are better on glucose, we need to have glucose available for those. We also need to have glucose available as a reserve for in case there's the fight or flight like we need energy right now, our body is way at quicker metabolizing glucose or sugar versus like fat and ketones. So, we take it in and we can use it really quickly, say, this is a little bit more evolutionarily speaking, but if we need to run from something, run for our lives. But even in our lives today, if we're really stressed about something, be having a glucose source to pull from, so we don't go hypoglycemic and start getting the shakes in a stressful situation.
It's a good thing that we have this, but the research is very clear that even in the most metabolically damaged people, so you look at like diagnosed type 2 diabetics and their studies where they give them massive amounts of protein, like 50, 60, 70 grams of protein per feeding which is a lot. If you consider eight ounces of meat is somewhere between 40 and 50 grams, that's a lot of protein. And even with them we only see maybe a modest increase in blood sugar, in a group that we would expect to see some blood sugar dysregulation. The feared really doesn't match up. For anybody who is testing, they're testing their blood sugar right after they're eating, you're going to get some sort of postprandial blood glucose response with most things that you consume. Even if you were to just have a ribeye steak that's super fatty, just protein and fat, you're going to see some response there. Unless you have a really small amount of fat, you're going to see some sort of increase in blood sugar typically from consuming anything.
I think a lot of times we kind of test in a way that makes us think that, hey, this actually is going on, we're seeing this increase from it. So, putting those two things aside, those are the reason why we have this fear of protein. That's why so many folks are eating 15-20% which is also kind of what's recommended on a keto diet. If you so go on most of the major websites, we're seeing protein at 15 to 20% and a lot of physicians will say, "Well, hey, that's actually really high protein compared to the original version of keto, which was like a 10% protein." But then what we have to think about is what's the application of this, so the original application of keto was for pediatric epilepsy. They really need to be in a deep state of ketosis, there wasn't as much of maybe a need for protein and they just knew that that worked right being at 10% protein was effective for that. But then this 20% to 25% recommendation didn't really come from anything too much. There wasn't like somebody sat down and did a big randomized control trial and said, “Hey, 20% to 25% is like where we should be for a keto diet when it comes to protein.” But for some reason this is taken on and if you go on online you see this everywhere. And really, I think it's a problem because one, we'll talk about the benefits of protein. Protein is so beneficial, but a generalized recommendation like 20% to 25% doesn't take into consideration what somebody's goals are for somebody who's exercising and there was a great study published a couple of years ago on this where they had men and women resistance training, following a standard keto diet, I think it was 25% protein and they were resistance training a few times a week, and they lost muscle especially the men in the group they lost muscle and this is something we don't want.
Like you mentioned sarcopenia, we'll get into that a little bit later, but muscle is really important even for somebody who thinks you don't want to gain muscle; you do want to gain muscle. Everybody needs to have muscle, it's metabolically active tissue. We talked about metabolic health at the beginning of this that makes you metabolically healthy. Getting enough protein is essential for this. We don't want to be losing protein and for somebody who maybe you're living a sedentary lifestyle, you're not eating, you're not getting a lot of exercise, and you're not putting a lot of physical strain on your body, maybe the 20% to 25% protein may work for you. That may be something that would align with what your goals are, but since most people should be exercising, and I think everybody can benefit from resistance training, then that just really isn't going to cut it. Outside of the muscle loss, you're also talking about poor recovery from the gym, so maybe you go into the gym one day and now you have a hard time getting back the next day because you're so sore. But then even outside, we're talking about performance but then there's the just lifestyle component, I can't tell you how many times I've talked to usually this one with women, because it's kind of a double where it would be low protein and low calorie. They'll say, "Oh, their mood is just really bad, and they're having really bad anxiety, and they don't know why” and You look at their protein intake, it's like why were you consuming about 60 grams of protein a day, let's bump that up a little bit and see what happens."
So often, I see just that small change alleviating a lot of those issues. Then I think the other thing too, if you look at a little bit more practically, if you're consuming a quality source of protein which in my eyes is red meat, I think fatty fish is good too and then there's some white meat it has its pros and cons, but I think, the kind of the gold standard best is red meat from things like bison and beef and elk, any ruminant animal like that. This is also really nutrient dense, so when you prioritize that food not only are you getting protein, but you're getting everything that comes with that protein, which is all of the micronutrients, the quality fat, cholesterol, saturated fat, things that we're all so afraid of but that we need, and you're getting them in a form that is more natural, it's kind of in a form that like the ratios are beneficial to one another, and you're getting it in a form that's more bioavailable or more easy for you to digest as human, it's kind of more aligned with our biochemistry.
There's also that side of it too that if you're eating low protein and it's not just that that one macronutrient protein is low, it's also likely that all of your micronutrients are going to be low and your quality fat intake is going to be low. This is where you see a low-carb diet, where they're doing a lot of added fat, you're putting a lot of oils and stuff like that on to your salads or anything like that. Some of those things are fine, but that's not going to bring as much benefit as like a fatty ribeye that has all of these micronutrients in it. So, you're much better off getting all of that from a whole food protein source versus adding it in, other ways.
Cynthia Thurlow: I think you bring up a lot of really good points. One thing that I really want to eliminate is the kind of phenotypic and this is just a woman north of 35 who is over restricting her calories, likely overexercising, probably over fasting. And I'm starting to see this type of woman so consistently, that I'm literally every guest, I just spoke with Robb Wolf last week, and we had a conversation about it too. Because it's such a problem because these women are developing these really broken metabolisms. I've now taken on co-hosting duties of the IF Podcast with Melanie Avalon, which has been great because it's a totally different format and a lot of the questions that are coming in it's evident, these are women who don't even realize they're chronically undereating, they're over fasting, they're probably overexercising, I'm not sure what's going on with their sleep.
So, are you seeing the same phenotype with greater frequency, I think it's people who are well intentioned, but they just don't realize over time, you can't be in a deficit all the time, like you actually, whether its carb cycling or I use the word refeeding. But it's not like you eat everything in the world on that day. But maybe you're having a wider feeding window, but I'm starting to see this happening more with women, because they're a little more open. They're not hungry for a second meal that's what I hear or I'd like my OMAD and I don't want to deviate from that. I always go back to the same thing, can you get your macros in, in your feeding window and I can't think of any women that can have one meal and get 100 grams of protein.
Chris Irvin: Totally.
Cynthia Thurlow: They're chronically kind of in this state of deprivation in a negative way, not in a positive way. Okay, I've reduced my caloric intake, I've adjusted my macros, I'm not overexercising, but when I'm starting to see these women that are living in this chronic state of deprivation.
Chris Irvin: Yeah, and I am seeing it a ton too. I think the reason why it happens too is I think for the longest time the talk was calories. It was all about calories, cut your calories low, eat less, move more, make sure you're exercising a ton and I think a lot of women took this advice. But at their baseline they're already exercising a ton, probably doing a lot of cardio, probably not doing a lot of resistance training and then they're also eating low calorie and then what ends up happening is that it doesn't work. Surprisingly, this calories in versus calories out soul approach isn't really all that effective. And you see a lot of women who, “Hey, they're not eating, they're eating super low calorie, they're exercising a ton, and they're still not reaching their health goals, they’re still not reaching their weight loss goals.” So, then something like intermittent fasting comes along, and they say, okay, well, let me try intermittent fasting. They add intermittent fasting to the mix and now they're eating even less calories. And to be honest, our bodies are super adaptive. We will adapt to, like-- it's not, if you eat really low calorie for a day, yeah, you might be really hungry, but if you eat really low calorie for months, you will adjust and your body really won't have a lot of hunger, and you'll end up being somebody that can do OMAD and it's really easy for you to do and that may make it feel natural.
Now, you've added fasting to the mix and then somebody tells you the fasted exercise is great. So now you're doing those two things together and then somebody says that keto is also great, so maybe I should do that, and then OMAD’s even better than fasting so I'll cut it back to even just one meal a day. It's just a cycle that gets worse and worse. And to your point, yeah, you end up with this. You are super calorie restricted, which is a massive stressor on the body. If you look at the research on calorie restriction, we know there's absolutely benefits of calorie restriction. There's plenty of good to come from it, but chronically doing it is where the problem really arises and the micronutrients side, I think is the biggest reason why I like energy. Yeah, energy is a big component, but our bodies are pretty darn good at tapping into our own energy sources even if you were consuming a higher carbohydrate diet that was really low in calories. We would still expect you to be tapping into your body fat and producing some ketones a little bit just due to the calorie restriction. And we know even the leanest people out there have like 20 to 25,000 calories stored away in fat. So, from an energy perspective like we can get away with it, but like you said can you get your macros, can you get your micros in during this time, when you're doing OMAD or fasting or just calorie restriction.
I think what's happening is, is not only are your calorie restricted, but your micronutrient restricted, because you just can't possibly get enough in right and maybe you use supplements and things like that. But we know that one supplements maybe depending on the supplement aren't as well absorbed as or well utilized in our bodies as they are consumed in the whole food form. I think that's obviously an issue or they're just completely useless in general, like some synthetic vitamins and things like that are just nowhere close to being what we would find them in the whole food form. I think that's kind of the biggest issue with it. I think it's important for us to-- we don't want throw the baby out with the bathwater, like calorie restriction can be beneficial. And if you want to calorie restrict for a couple of weeks, I think that's fantastic. But what you need to do is you need to know that there is a period where now I need to go into a maintenance, not maintenance-- I think a lot of people hear maintenance and they think "Oh, that means I'm not losing any more weight or I'm not going to be progressing towards my goal."
Maintenance just means bringing up your calories out of being restricted. There's a lot of studies, there was a really cool study years ago that showed after a keto diet coming into like a Mediterranean style diet where they increased calories a little bit, and they actually continued to lose weight even during that phase. Now, they did lose it at a slower rate, but they were still losing weight during that phase, so maintenance doesn't mean that you're stopping your progress. It just means that you're coming out of that calorie restricted state. And then I think even eating in a surplus is beneficial for folks at certain time. Especially surplus means consuming quality food, like a surplus of doughnuts is not great, a surplus of steak and organs and eggs and things like that is fantastic. I think that's another thing to take into consideration, but besides-- So, you know you have the micronutrients, you have the lack of macronutrients, you are calorie restricted. But then, it's the stress that gets put on the body too. So, all of these things are acute stressors. Even a low-carb diet can be an acute stress, ketosis can be an acute stressor and it's a stressor in a way like we talked about hormesis. That's another popular word that's being thrown around now. Hormesis it's kind of like the stress that you experience during exercise. If you're lifting weights, it's stressful but it’s a good stress because your body adapts. That same kind of thing is happening with calorie restriction, with low-carb dieting, with any of those diets, where your kind of restricting some aspect of your nutrition.
This is a good thing because our body adapts, but we can't do it all the time. Just like you can't exercise all the time. If you were to just lift weights every single day, all day, you would get to a point where it wouldn't be beneficial, it would actually be harmful to you. And this is what's happening on the nutrition side too. I just recommend for like anybody out there who's doing it, just know that you don't have to go that far to see progress. I think that most women if they would, instead of even thinking about calories, if they were to just focus on quality protein intake, eating whole foods. The fasting thing, I'm a little bit torn on. I think fasting can be great from a lifestyle perspective. I love fasting for the mental boost. But I realized a couple years ago, when I was fasting and not tracking that, I was eating really low calorie for a long time and I didn't know that. I had to kind of decide when it was appropriate for me to fast and when not too fast. Because my size, I can't be eating 1500 calories a day for a year straight, that's going to be harmful to my health at some point. I think if you were to just focus on those things intermittent fast, as far as it allows you to be able to still get an appropriate amount of calories and get an appropriate amount of micronutrients and hit your protein, everything like that, then that can be beneficial. But we don't have to hit everything, we don't have to do all of the things and put all the stress on our body, you'd be surprised what your body would feel like if you put it in a state of abundance. And you actually provided it with all of the fuel that it needs to perform optimally and then you may notice that, “Hey, I'm actually crushing it in the gym, a lot of these other symptoms that I thought were kind of a symptom of my body composition or other things were actually just related to my nutrition intake and all these things start fixing it themselves and you realize wow, I was able to do this without having to hate my life,” which I think is pretty important. [chuckles]
Cynthia Thurlow: No, I have to agree. The term hormesis which I talk about a lot, beneficial stress in the right amount at the right time. This is why I've started doing more conversations like this where each one of us are bio-individuals and even myself, I have a minimum threshold of 50 grams of protein when I eat a meal. I just had a very large chicken breast., I don't eat a lot of chicken, but we grilled chicken over the weekend and I had that with a bunch of peppers and onions and I had some homemade Guac and that was my lunch. But it's also the understanding that for me the threshold is always 100 grams of protein a day. However, I have to get that in but I also acknowledge I have at least one day a week where I will have a 12-hour feeding window and my kids think it's bizarre. But I will sit with them and have breakfast and we may or may not eat lunch together, but we all eat dinner together on the weekends. It's reminding my body I'm not starving so if you're listening to this, and you've been doing fasting 24/7 for several years, you probably need to take your foot off the accelerator and you may need to do some degree of I hate using the word refeeding, because it gives this negative connotation.
Chris Irvin: Yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: Even you talked about maintenance mode, but I think about reverse dieting and really it could be that you're having 100 additional calories per day of protein. It's really a small amount, but it's slowly kind of monitoring. And for anyone that's interested, I did a podcast with Amanda Nighbert, earlier this year talking about reverse dieting. But I think it's important for us to know, we don't want to be in ketosis 24/7, we don't want to be rigidly dogmatic, because I think if people have success with one particular paradigm, whether it's keto, low carb, carnivore, pescatarian, whatever it is, people assume that's the only thing that they can do. And I encourage people to change things up, like whether it's exercise or how you're managing your stress or your eating schedule. You definitely don't want to be doing the same thing or the fasting schedule all the time. You want variety in your life, it's very important, our bodies are very smart and they need to have some variety, because that's actually how you get stronger, you don't get stronger by doing the same thing every single day.
Chris Irvin: Yeah. I think too to add to that is, when we think about nutrition, I think we always just think about what we cut out of our diets, it's like don't eat this, don't do that, don't eat during this time. But what we put into our bodies is equally important right. That's where some of these more extreme OMAD and things like that can be difficult, because you're not allowing yourself sufficient space to be able to provide yourself with enough of those nutrients. I think that's kind of something that we need to think about and then on the refeeding side too, I think you brought up a good point there adding in the protein. Because I think this one component to calories, especially for people who have restricted calories for a long time. It's a mental barrier to increase them, if you've been restricting them for a long time, and you're tracking them and you know, “Hey, I typically only eat 1300 calories, and that's all I've been doing. There can be a mental barrier for a lot of folks where it's like, "Wow, even going to 1500 calories, that seems I'm going to gain weight, I'm going to get fat, I can't do this." If you're kind of dealing with that start with protein specifically, because one the protein is, we need more of it anyway and if you're calorie restricted, you're probably not getting enough so that's important.
The other side of that too is that there were some studies done earlier, probably been about 10 years or so ago now where they did massive overfeeding of protein, where they were just crazy amounts like past what somebody's like calorie limit would be where you would expect them to gain fat and they didn't gain fat, which I think is super interesting. One of the things, we see about proteins is it’s really hard to gain weight on when you just add protein and even if you're consuming more calories than what you're used to. So, I think for a lot of people, if you're kind of dealing with that mental barrier, you're not sure, “Hey, if I increase this, I'm worried that I'm going to gain fat,” Start with the protein increase it there and then kind of see that, “Hey, I actually think you'll notice that you feel better, but then also, you'll just kind of see they're like, hey, adding another 100, 200, 300 calories into my diet is not going to cause me to get fat.” Then now maybe you can kind of start to add in some other, maybe it's more fat, maybe it is a little bit more carbohydrates too depending on what your goal is.
Cynthia Thurlow: I think it's such an important point and it's really a degree of experimentation. As much as I'm someone that doesn't purport that people be a slave to the scale, if you are going through a refeeding, you probably want to be doing measurements kind of staying on track or staying attune to changes that you're seeing in your body. Now, I got a lot of questions from people on Instagram when they knew that we were connecting. And one that I heard multiple times was there's a fear of eating low carb or keto because they have “high cholesterol” and I wasn't able to get them to delineate it. Did they have elevated triglycerides or HDL, but I suspect it's the total overall cholesterol. And for anyone that's listening working in cardiology, a lot of the medications that I was prescribing were very strong, specifically to addressing cholesterol and we don't want our cholesterol to be too low. It's actually a predictor of morbidity and mortality. I want you to think high level. When we're talking about cholesterol, what gets cleaved from cholesterol, what is created from cholesterol, we're talking sex hormone. So, all of the men that were on these really high max doses of statins that had a total cholesterol of 100 to get their LDLs really low release within this specific range, all ended up having issues with erectile dysfunction and just not feeling very motivated and they were sarcopenic and we're wondering where all these things come from. So, what are your thoughts when someone expresses concerns about being on a ketogenic or a low-carb diet and noticing that their total cholesterol goes up.
Chris Irvin: Yeah. It's a great question. I think this is one of those other most common fears against the diet. Because the whole reason why keto was crazy in the first place is that it was a high-fat diet and there's this assumption that consuming dietary fat is going to increase your cholesterol. I think there's a few important things to point out. You pointed out one of them, which is that most times