I am delighted to reconnect with my good friend, Vinnie Tortorich, today, who was a guest on episodes 133 and 191. For those who may not be familiar with Vinnie, he is a truth-teller and disrupter who prompts people to think outside of their comfort zones in an easy and non-confrontational way. He is host of the Fitness Confidential Podcast, author of Fitness Confidential, and documentary film expert. His most recent documentary is Dirty Keto.
In our conversation today, Vinnie and I dive into the impact of the processed food industry on metabolic health, looking at the issue with net carbs, the dangers of sugar and artificial sweeteners, and their role in the ongoing metabolic health crisis. We discuss the consequences of instant gratification, sedentary lifestyles, and the addictive nature of processed sugars and grains, also exploring various medical therapies, including GLP-1s.
I am confident you will enjoy this discussion with Vinnie Tortorich as much as I did.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
How the processed food industry created the term net carbs to make processed foods appear healthier
The importance of addressing sugar addiction
The lack of discussion around the health risks associated with society celebrating obesity
How instant gratification has impacted people’s food choices and health
The importance of recognizing true hunger versus boredom or stress-induced cravings
How uncomfortable feelings can lead to food addiction
Why it is essential to make exercise a daily habit
Why it is crucial to avoid non-vegetable carbohydrates for metabolic health
A strategy for enjoying sweet treats while maintaining a ketogenic diet
How food influences metabolism and brain function
Weighing up the risks and benefits of GLP-1 therapies for metabolic health
“You need to make exercise the same type of habit as brushing your teeth.”
-Vinnie Tortorich
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Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Vinnie Tortorich
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] 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.
[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of reconnecting with my good friend Vinnie Tortorich. He has previously joined me on Episodes 133 and 191. And if you're not familiarized with him, he is a truth teller and disruptor. He encourages you to think outside of your comfort zones in an informational yet non-confrontational way. He is the host of the Fitness Confidential podcast, author of Fitness Confidential, and three-time documentary film expert, most recently with Dirty Keto.
[00:01:05] Today, we spoke at length about the role of the processed food industry and poor metabolic health, why net carbs are problematic, why sugar and fake sugars are not benign and add to the metabolic health crisis, problems related to instant gratification, lack of physical activity, the need for understanding that processed sugars and grains can become hugely problematic and addictive, how our food influences our metabolism as well as fuel sources. And lastly, discussing medical therapies including GLP-1s. I know you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did recording it.
[00:01:47] Well, Vinnie, always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. And I'm looking forward to talking about your new movie.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:01:52] Oh, thanks for having me on. This is great.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:55] For listeners, we've been chatting for no less than 30 minutes prior to recordings. We're totally warmed up and ready to go. Let's talk about the processed food industry. Let's talk about how this has contributed to a generation and a population that is becoming less and less healthy. And I actually pulled up some statistics because, for example, I thought this would be relevant, timely. So according to the Fortune 500, the top five processed food companies are PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, General Mills, Land O’Lakes, and PepsiCo’s profits in 2023 were $91 billion.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:02:44] Yeah, I didn’t know it was that high. But when you think of PepsiCo, well, just take one of the companies and we could just spread this amongst the five companies you just mentioned. When people hear PepsiCo, you go, “Oh, that’s a lot of soft drink.” But what they don’t realize is that PepsiCo, they have their hands in everything. Fast food companies, they own several fast-food chains that you would recognize, and [chuckles] you can just go on and on and on. That company alone can represent why we have a problem. You don't even have to get into the other four companies, but they're all like that. They don't just own the product you think they're selling. They're selling a lot of other products. And I don't blame them. I said that in my first documentary, Fat: A Documentary. I don't blame those companies. They're doing what companies do. They're trying to create profit. We have to better than them and it's difficult, I get it, but we have to better than them and just not put up with what they're selling and force them to make better products, which they will never do.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:03:57] Well, and it's interesting to me. I was prepping for the week for multiple podcasts, and there's a physician that's going to come on on Tuesday, and she was talking about, we need to hold the processed food industry accountable, like we held big tobacco accountable years ago. And that was so refreshing to hear that we're starting to make these comparisons between the tobacco industry, which was probably at that time as profitable as these processed food companies, and yet they tried everything they could do to suppress information and suppress the connections to cancers and emphysema and all these other health issues.
[00:04:39] And I think in the same light, the processed food industries don't want to be held accountable. They don't want to try to create healthier options. And it's interesting, your wife is British. And if you look at some of these processed foods, like as an example, whether it's a Pop-Tart or some of the cereals in the EU or the UK, they're required to have different ingredients than they have here in the United States? So, why is it that the United States is not advocating for its constituents like other countries are, and holding these companies accountable for the ingredients that they choose to use in their processed foods?
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:05:20] Well, there's an easy answer to that. Woodward and Bernstein said it way back in the 70s when they were investigating Watergate. Follow the money. So, I'm going to give kind of a kindergarten approach to following that money. So, let's start with tobacco companies, R.J. Reynolds and the sort, right? Okay. They were suppressing information. You said they were trying to-- No, they suppressed information for a long time and said that tobacco use just wasn't dangerous. When you think of that now, it just sounds archaic at best. But they were able to do that for a long time. But when the chips were down, they ended up losing, because we don't need tobacco to sustain life. You need food. So at some point you were able-- even though they had a very strong lobby, at some point these politicians had to crumble and go, all right, the jig is up, we're moving on. That was an easier thing to do even though there was so much money behind it.
[00:06:26] Now, let’s look at the food companies. When these food companies give so much money, like the aforementioned PepsiCo, to the AHA, the American Heart Association and ADA, the American Diabetes Association and so on and so forth, they give tons and tons of money to these things to go, “Hey, yeah, it's heart healthy.” They're literally getting the people, the Heart Association, to say that things that are really bad for your health are heart healthy, and telling people that have diabetes to eat more grains and sugar because it's good for you, you need it, right? Okay, when you start doing that, when the prisoners are running the asylum, you're never going to get ahead. And then the same food company, they're not just tied to having large lobbies in Washington, they're also tied to the drug companies. So, “Hey, don't worry, if you get sick, keep eating the food, because we got these guys over here on the drug is so intertwined that we will never get out of it.”
[00:07:33] So I think, I can't remember the exact words you just used I think you said accountable. “How do we hold them accountable?” We will never hold them accountable unless we hold them accountable with our wallets. If we don't buy the food, so now, I just became a charlatan because guess what's never going to happen. People are never going to be able to hold them accountable. If you take a guy that's working his butt off, making $60,000 a year working day and night, and his wife is working day and night, and they're trying to raise a family of four on that or even less money, $30,000 or $40,000 a year, how do you explain to that person, go out and buy good, healthy, wholesome meat and vegetables from the grocery store when you can get that whole family to eat at Taco Bell for a portion of that, just a small percentage of that, you will never be able to hold them accountable because they keep these foods so cheap.
[00:08:38] And how do they keep them cheap? Well, grains are subsidized by the government. You see, I can go step by step and explain why this will never change. So, the only way you can change things is by doing it yourself. Because they're never going to change. Did I make sense or did I just go too far around it, Cynthia, because sometimes I go off on a tangent.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:09:00] No, no. I think it's helpful for people to understand that there are certain subsidies that the US government supports, whether it's sugar beet production, whether it's corn in particular, thinking about soy as another, and what proliferates in these processed foods, it's exactly these foods. If you look through a processed food list, and I mean, this is almost everything has, one if not multiples, of those ingredients. And then also the dairy industry is also heavily subsidized. And that's why we see so much dairy in our processed foods as well. There's a surplus of cheese as an example, and cheese intrinsically isn't a bad thing. I'm not saying that, but when you start going down this proverbial rabbit hole, looking at what are the things that are contributing to the processed food industry, there's a lot more to it than just the processed food industry companies.
[00:09:59] There is involvement with USDA, there's involvement with multiple organizations within the federal government. And what I find interesting is throughout all of this, even movements that are relatively healthy, whether it's keto, whether it's paleo, whether it's primal, we get into things like dirty keto, dirty paleo. And you and I talk about this a lot when we see each other at events. So, let's pivot a little bit and talk about how the processed food industry has also tried to capitalize on these interests and on these nutritional philosophies. Now, when we're looking at traditional low carb or paleo, or primal or ketogenic diets, they're not intrinsically bad. But the processed food industry has made it easy for people to buy into their bars, their shakes, these products that they technically, maybe on paper, look like they are healthier options, but they are devil's, it's almost like the wolf and sheep's clothing that is convincing us to purchase more of these processed foods.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:11:08] I couldn't agree more. I knew that was going to come around as soon as ketogenic became a thing. And it was taken down to keto. And once you do that, I was kind of waiting for it. I couldn't have imagined that these industries, they're going to have to create ketogenic food, but what are they going to do? Because they have to make it processed. They need to make it shelf stable. What can they possibly do? And what they did was nothing except use the keto brand, right? So, you could put a piece of bread on the shelf and just call it bread. And you could put another packaging around the same bread and call it keto bread. You and I look at the ingredients and go, “This is exactly the same.” But in order to call it keto bread, they have to figure something out. And all they did was created a term called net carbs. And I’ll never forget the first time I saw net carbs, because I’ve been in this industry for 40 years and never saw the term net carbs, just did not exist.
[00:12:14] Industry comes in and creates this thing, net carbs. What's a net carb? How is it that I have never heard? I would talk to people like you whenever we end up at conventions and we're saying, “You know what a net carb is? No, I have no idea.” [Cynthia laughs] But what it is they said that you can magically subtract fiber from the total number of carbohydrates, “Okay, who came up with that?” Well, they did. “Is that true?” No, it's not, but that’s what they said. So if something has 20 g of carbohydrates and it has 15 g of fiber, they’ll say subtract 15 from 20 and you have net carb of 5. Now, the same bread in a different package looks healthy. That was made up out of whole cloth. You didn’t have to go to the FDA or anywhere else to get that done, right? Usually, they got to run it through committee, as I like to say. You know, Rich Men North of Richmond, as they say in the song. [Cynthia laughs] They didn't even have to do that. They just, whole cloth, here you go. And then they did similar things with sugar, right? Oh, well, we're using allulose and we're using erythritol, we're using monk fruit. We're going to say net carbs and that too. The things they do to get it to where they squint just enough to have people believe it, they just make it up.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:43] Well, I find it interesting. I know that I've had Dr. Ken on multiple times kind of talking about how there's this fuzzy math as it pertains to food labeling and how he too is also not a fan of net carbs. He said net carbs is a cheat.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:14:01] Yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:14:02] Ultimately, what it comes down to is it's deflecting attention from greater awareness around what you're actually eating. Thinking that, “Oh, I'm supposed to be eating a ketogenic diet, so I should be under 30 g of net carbs a day with the realization that you're probably consuming way more than that, and you're wondering why your weight loss resistant or the scale is stuck. And it's with this realization that the fuzzy math is designed to deflect attention from the greater issue. And I know for you and I, having spoken at an event where you were asked this question very directly, someone asked you, “What are your thoughts on insert whatever sugar substitute they had mentioned, whether it was stevia, monk fruit, or erythritol, etc.” And you said, “No, I don't think there's any acceptable sugar substitute, because again it is taking the emphasis off of an existing problem.” If someone has an addiction to sugar, and many people do this, I'm not saying this pejoratively. I'm just trying to bring greater awareness to this. Coming up with another sugar alternative is not the solution to the problem. I think for so many people, our palates are so sensitized to sugar that we just don't realize that we get far too much of it on a daily basis.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:15:17] Yeah. Take it a step further not only is it not a solution to the problem, it adds to the problem. And literally, we're going in the wrong direction just all the way around. One of the earliest things-- I wish, Cynthia, that I have some of the old tapes of my radio show that I had back in 1989. We're going back well over 33 years, 35 years, I guess. I had a radio show, and I had learned, because I was the guy, I used to study the you know, where it says nutrition facts, same thing I do today, same thing I talk about today. I look at the ingredients versus the facts. And my girlfriend was a news reporter for NBC at the time in New Orleans, and I had information from people. They had a health and science reporter on that station named Leslie Cardea and we were talking. She would give me information and I would talk about this on my radio show where I would say, “The government allows a margin of error and these companies take advantage.” I was yelling about this into a mic, into public radio on AM radio in New Orleans back 35 years ago, and everyone was like, “Oh, he needs a tinfoil hat. He's making that stuff.” I was like, “No, no.”
[00:16:38] And we know that to be true now. Now we can look deeper into it, right? So, I wish people can hear what I was talking about 35 years ago, because they would go, “This guy has not changed his tune one bit.” All I've been able to do over the years is prove that what I was talking about then is still correct and pretty much on steroids now. We're running down this track faster and faster and faster. It's kind of crazy.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:04] It's interesting how the themes have been consistent and yet metabolic health has continued to worsen. There was an interesting article that came out. It was talking about the cost of diabetes. As an example, in the United States in 2022, costs $412.9 billion to treat, including over $300 billion in direct medical costs. And one in four healthcare dollars spent right now is on diabetes management. And yet we say and we as a collective, do a really poor job helping build awareness about how nutrition and nutritional choices actually will drive metabolic health issues. I think there's clearly, we're in a crisis, very clearly lifestyle is a contributory factor. And when I look at how things have changed over the last 25 years as a clinician, first as an ER nurse, then as an NP in cardiology, now kind of pivoting and really looking at lifestyle as medicine, we are absolutely, positively heading in the wrong direction.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:18:11] Well, if you want to go back 25 years, look at what commercials and everything taught us 25 years ago. A Special K had a, this is 30 something years ago, had an ad out, “if you could pinch one inch, you're too fat.” That was a big commercial from the Kellogg's company. Think about that today, if you can pinch an inch, you're too fat. And they were showing people now that we would call athletic, grabbing one little inch on their side and going, “Oh, look. Oh, honey, you need to pay attention to this.” And if you would go back, let's go 10 years past that, let's go 20 years back from today, we would see ads, even those guys in jail now. But Jared would hold up a pair of pants saying, “Hey, I used to be this big. Now I can fit three of me into these pants.” We used to celebrate when someone lost a great amount of weight. That's the message we were getting 20 years ago. Well, just two days ago, a beautiful and I do mean beautiful young lady became the beauty queen of Alabama. And not taking anything away from that, I think, I don't know what her talents were. I'm sure she should have won because she's a beautiful girl, right? But she's morbidly obese.
[00:19:37] Now we're celebrating that it's okay to be obese. Now, in my opinion, it's not. This is just my opinion. Whatever fat shame, I don't believe fat shaming is the way to ever go, and it's kind of the third rail in our business. You're not supposed to say anything about it, but I'm sorry, this beautiful young lady is going to have-- When girls are doing those competitions, they're what, 18, 19, 20 something like that. She's morbidly obese. The word morbid is in the title of what she is. By definition, she may or may not have fatty liver disease already. She probably suffers from sleep apnea. And I'm sure that she's metabolically broken four or five different ways, yet no one's talking about that. And again, if anyone's fat shaming this kid, shame on you. She should not be fat shamed. But to celebrate it and go, “Hey, look what we did. And this is an F you to everyone else. I think that's wrong. If that third rail is something I have touch, I'm sorry.
[00:20:45] I said the same thing about Lizzo. Talented young lady, can play the flute like no other, and I've seen her stage presence she can dance and everything else, but to pretend she's healthy is wrong. So, we've gone from pinch an inch to Lizzo and the young lady who just became the queen of Alabama. What happened? What happened in between, right? And it's a rhetorical question, I'm sure you don't have answer, but what happened?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:21:15] Well, I feel like the pendulum swings, really far one direction swings the other direction and then tends to come back towards center. And I think, from my perspective, what I have seen change is the volume of processed foods. You talk about in Dirty Keto about we have a society that loves instant gratification. And unlike back in the day, when you and I were growing up, there was no Uber Eats. There was no direct accessibility to food 24/7. Now we have this instant gratification, I didn't even realize during the pandemic when we were all at home, myself, my husband, and my teenagers, my kids would-- Uber Eats at 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock at night because they thought it was funny. They're like, “This is great. I can order anything I want 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock at night. Mom and dad have absolutely no idea. “But there's Uber Eats and DoorDash, and we've lost the ability to understand that we actually need a period of time of not eating during the day. I'm not talking about fasting, I'm just talking about good old digestive rest like our grandparents did and our great grandparents, because we were not in a food surplus.
[00:22:28] And so there's so many different things that I believe are contributing to the challenges that we're dealing with right now. And one of them is the over accessibility to food 24/7. And then the other crux of that issue, I truly believe is the quality of the food is so diminished, whether it's the seed oils, whether it's the overemphasis of processed carbohydrates, the lack of protein, the wrong types of fats, many things contribute. But I do think the instant gratification piece plays a large role.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:23:00] It does. And we also put this other thing on food. You're a parent and you still have kids playing sports. So, let's go back a few years with your kids right, when they were 9, 10, 11, and just getting into whatever soccer I think your kid plays at lacrosse or whatever. I used to watch these parents because my daughter was in California at the time, afternoon sports there was always a parent bringing cupcakes and muffins and everything else, and they weren't kicking that soccer ball around very hard or very much, half an hour, 45 minutes and that was it. And I would think back to-- I would say something about this and they were low, they need the energy, they need the carbs. How do you say they're out there kicking that ball around? And I would think back to when I played high school football, we would eat at noontime in the cafeteria, so no one brought their meal, it was cafeteria meal.
[00:23:56] So there was a protein, a vegetable and a starch on the plate, those meals. And as football players, we would tell all the friends around us, especially the girls, “Hey, whatever you're not eating when you get up, just shovel it on.” [Cynthia chuckles] You know, they have those trays with all the-- Whatever you have, just shovel it onto my plate because we needed to eat more. But the only thing we had to eat was at around noon time. School would end at 03:15 PM. We were on the practice field at 03:45 PM, mind you, no one ate anything else. There was no eating junk food or anything. No one even thought of that, right? We would get on the practice field by 03:45 PM and practice for 2.5, 3 hours of football, which is much more difficult than kicking a soccer ball around.
[00:24:45] The amount of energy we put out every day and by the time you get back to the locker room and shower up and whole thing and get home, it's 7 o’clock. You've gone from noon time. You did something for 2.5 to 3 hours that was very strenuous and made it to 7 o’clock without eating a bite of food. So again, I ask you, “Why do these kids need cupcakes and muffins and Gatorade and all of this crap in between meals? It makes absolutely no sense.” Yet we do this day in and day out, and then you talk about DoorDash coming at 10 o’clock at night. Can you imagine eating crap at 10 o’clock at night? It was unheard of.
Cynthia Thurlow: No, yeah. Well, and it's interesting. So my older son, yes, plays lacrosse and at the start of the season, he's a very, very healthy, very fit young man. But when he plays lacrosse, he loses 10 or 15 pounds. That's almost all of his muscle because he's running constantly and then he puts it back on when he finishes. But he can't eat enough food when he's at home. That's why we have the two dinners. I mean, it becomes two meals for every meal and he just can't-- the food ends replace what he's burned, but that's a unique circumstance. But I was always that parent when my kids played football and baseball. I mean, insert whatever swim meets, I was the parent that almost always brought water and a piece of fruit and it would embarrass my kids.
[00:26:09] But inevitably, I would say maybe 25% of the kids would grab the orange or grab the banana and the parents would actually say thank you, as opposed to the Cheetos and the drink boxes and I agree with you. At that age, they didn’t need 50 g of processed carbohydrates at 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock in the morning. And I think we’ve just gotten conditioned to thinking that everyone needs to be eating all the time. Well, I've driven back and forth to the northern part of our state multiple times over the past two weeks. And every time I had to stop off at a gas station to fill my gas tank up, I was always amazed at the amount of food people were eating and ordering just to sit in their cars.
[00:26:49] And let me be clear, sometimes maybe that's the only thing you can eat. Maybe you're on the road and you're under duress and that's the one time you get to eat. But more often than not, we're just conditioned to be eating all the time. I think Ben Azadi told me about a statistic where the average American was consuming sugar sweetened beverages or food 10 to 15 times a day when our ancestors were eating two or three times a day. And so, it's just helping people understand, to build awareness to, “Are you really hungry or is it this kind of influxive thought process of, oh, it's noon, I should be eating, but I'm not actually hungry.” And trying to distinguish between true intrinsic hunger, which is very different than, let's be clear, bored, stressed. You know, I just went through something super stressful. And even myself, I found myself some nights I was like, “Oh, did I actually eat enough food today?” Because now I'm craving brownies, cookies, which I don't keep in my house.
[00:27:48] And I'm realizing it's really because my body is looking for a quick source of food. I haven't hit my protein macros for the day. Maybe what I need to do is go have a piece of chicken, a piece of fish, some beef jerky, something that's going to be protein centric. And then if I'm still hungry, which I wasn't with that realization, but I think for so many of us, we have just gotten really disconnected from feeling in our bodies what is it that we truly need as opposed to just being bored, hungry, stressed. And again, I'm saying that non-pejoratively because I am just as guilty as the next person. But I try to be very conscientious about admitting, like, “How did I eat today? Did I not eat enough food and that's why I'm starving and I'm craving junk or am I really hungry? And I should probably think thoughtfully about what the next meal is going to be.”
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:28:36] It is a difficult thing. I'm a driver. I love to drive. I've often said if I can ever get rich enough to give up what I'm doing now, I would not want to do this for a living. I would drive a truck and just drive back and forth across country. I love to drive. And I notice when I'm out on the road and when I stop it to get gas and everything else, people are loading up and people are, “What do you eat when you drive?” It's like, “I might bring a handful of nuts with me. If I'm going to Louisiana from where I live now, it's exactly 1000 miles. I'll boil a couple of eggs to have in a car with me and this sort of thing.” And I get it. I'm the exception. I'm not the rule. You know, I have a hammer, so everything becomes a nail. But to me, driving is the thing, right? Everyone else that's eating in their car, they're bored and it's mouth hunger, it's not real hunger it's just mouth hunger.
[00:29:36] What can I do now, I'm bored? Let me put something in my mouth. And if you start eating chips or anything else, you’re just going to want more and more chips. And because that’s what carbohydrates do to us. So, yeah, I see it when I stop at stations and people are sitting there in their cars eating and just filling up. Look, I see it at the grocery store. I’ll go down the street to Harris Teeter and buy food and ill notice people jumping into their car and reaching into a bag and putting something in their mouth. They can’t even get home. If that's not addiction, I don't know what is.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:30:10] Yeah, it is definitely problematic. And I think that food addiction and binge eating is a real thing. I've had multiple specialists and experts on talking about this, but I think for a lot of people, it's the acknowledgement of, “Do I have a problem?” Like I had a wonderful expert on, and she was talking about how carbohydrates for a lot of people are just incredibly soothing. It's these hyper-processed carbs that make people feel good. It's comfort in a bag or comfort in a package or comfort in a half gallon of ice cream. And just the acknowledgement of dealing with uncomfortable feelings that for a lot of people-- and certainly this is not my area of expertise. For a lot of people, it's very challenging because they've been able to cultivate a relationship with “insert whatever that food product” is that's allowing them to self soothe.
[00:31:03] And I think it is challenging, if not nearly impossible, for many people to understand that interrelationship. It certainly is possible, but I think that that is certainly one of the challenges. I think another thing that I see with greater awareness is just this lack of physical activity. You and I were talking about this before we started recording that a lot of people, it has nothing to do with age. I think it is people as they navigate their 20s into their 30s and maybe they have children, maybe they've gotten married, maybe they have less time to be able to be physically active. People just naturally can become less committed to physical activity. And I'm not even talking about going to the gym. I'm just saying trying to get a certain amount of steps a day or trying to ensure that you are moving throughout the day. I think that for a lot of people, understanding that just tracking steps per day can be helpful if that's a starting point.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:32:02] Yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:32:02] I always say, “If you do nothing else, just track and find where is the awareness? Like, I work from home and one thing I'm very cognizant of is, if I have a day where I'm not as physically active, it's like, “Okay, I'm going to take a break every 30 minutes and we have very steep steps in my house. We'll go up and down two or three sets of stairs, go, maybe go out to the mailbox, do a couple of things and I can get more steps in.” But parking farther out when you go to the grocery store or if you’re at a store, helping people understand that this changes in physical activity don’t have to be your destiny.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:32:33] You’re absolutely right. Look, I find myself, even though I’m sitting in the middle of my gym right now, I’m pretty diligent about getting on the spinner and the rowing machine and pumping iron the whole deal. But when you're working on documentaries or you have to get something out and I'm sitting at this desk, you can't really see it from here, but right behind that red thing right there, there's a jump rope right there. And if I notice that I'm sitting for longer than 45 minutes humping the computer, I'll grab it and stand right next to the desk, literally 2ft from where I'm sitting right now, five minutes with the jump rope and you'll go, “Okay, what does that do? Number one, it wakes you up like 20 cups of espresso and you feel energized and vibrant. It literally does things to you that you couldn't imagine. Just five minutes on the jump rope and I sit back down and if I'm here for another hour, I'll get-- and by the way, you get stuck in your thoughts, “What was I trying to do? What was I trying to do?” Hit that jump rope for a couple of minutes and you'll go, “Oh, come on, man, that's ridiculous. Can't bring jump rope to work.” I get that.
[00:33:42] But when you go to work, you do get to take bathroom breaks, right? And I'm sure if you work in an office building, in a cubicle just like you, there's a stairway. Nobody would notice if you got up, it would look perfectly normal and did, I don't know, 10 flights of stairs up and down or whatever, and came right back to, it's the same exact thing I'm doing with my jump rope. And by the way, I've done it with the rowing machine too. Five minutes in a rowing machine is working 80% of your muscles, so your heart rate goes up. Okay, you're being ridiculous. Yes, I'm being ridiculous. But you have that, you can walk up and down stairs at work, you can walk outside the building. They let people have smoking breaks. Why can't you have a quick walk break? What's the difference?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:34:23] Well, I think for a lot of people that maybe don't have the time to do 30, 60 plus minutes of exercise. These little exercise snacks, if you will, I think, can add up over time to be quite significant. Now, when you were still training your clients, what were some of the workarounds for you talking to them about? And I don’t want to use the word excuse, but what are some of the challenges that your clients would identify for why they weren’t more physically active? Or, you know and it could be men or women. I think women sometimes can be so focused on their families that they don’t invest in themselves. I think sometimes men can be so invested in their occupation that they won’t make the time for themselves. But how did you help them with workarounds?
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:35:07] I was weirdly fortunate for most of my career that everyone I trained had a goal. I was in Hollywood working with celebrities and I think people think celebrities are Prima Donnas. So, let's take people out. I'm going to take people I've never worked with. Let's take like a J.Lo, right? And you would say, “Oh, J.Lo man, woman's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And what a Prima Donnas-- rolls around in big fancy cars and has helicopter money.” Those type of people are type A personalities. You almost have to slow them down. When they hire you, they're hiring you to push them to a level. So, I was working with that kind of clientele and the only other clientele I had was the managers and the agents of those people and their type A personalities.
[00:36:00] So when they hire you, they're already fit. They want you to take them to a different level. Now I see more of it because I do these online, people can sign up for phone calls and everything. I hear every excuse in the world as to why I say, “Oh, I have a wife, and we got three kids, and they're in school and I wake up at 5 and I can't do this and I can't do that.” And when you start interviewing them and you find out how much time they're wasting in their day, that's when you start telling them, “Well, you said you take a smoke break, right?” That's why I use the smoke break thing. “How about you stop smoking and start doing this?” And a lot of times it's-- at the beginning, I’m trying to get them off of diet soft drinks or whatever. You're not even talking about physical activity. You have to get them to break those habits first and then recreate other habits. And as I've always said about exercise, it's literally like wiping your butt and brushing your teeth.
[00:36:59] And people always go, that's so crass, but it's really not because we don't have to wipe our butts. But would you ever consider not doing it, right? [Cynthia laughs] I mean, if there was no toilet paper left, you will take a piece of clothing or something to wipe your butt. If you got stuck without-- okay, we would never consider not doing that. We would never consider not leaving the house without brushing our teeth. We could be offensive to someone else. So those are two habits you would never consider. And by the way, neither are necessary. People are going to sit here and go, “No, it's necessary.” No, it's not. I've been to third world countries. You'll walk into a bathroom, there is no toilet paper. There are third world countries in this world where there is no toilet paper. But we would never not consider that. So, you need to make exercise the same type of habit that you make, brushing your teeth or wiping your butt where you wouldn’t consider not doing it. And I know that sounds archaic. And you say, “Oh, this guy is out of his mind, but why not make it that?”
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:38:06] Well, I think that you bring up some really good points. We need to think about physical activity in a very proactive manner. Just like when we get up in the morning, we reflect and say, “Okay, I brush my teeth, I wash my face, etc., etc.” Finding ways to become more physically active. Now, when you're traveling or if you're talking to a client or making a recommendation, what are the things you suggest they do? Are you a fan of bands? Are you a fan of lightweights? If someone's in a hotel, and let's be clear, some hotels have great gyms and some hotels have lousy gyms. What are the things that you recommend or suggest as people are traveling, because I know days I'm traveling out to the west coast because you and I live in a part of the state where very rarely can you fly direct anywhere. What are some of the things that you suggest to them to do in order to ensure that they're more physically active amongst the travel?
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:38:58] Look, I'll show you. You mentioned bands, right? I could probably grab them from where I'm sitting. I don't know if you can see this, but I have a gazillion bands right where I can get them and throw them in a suitcase and also use them here at home. So having exercise bands are a great way to move around. The aforementioned jump rope, it takes up no space in luggage and you can put it in there. There's a thing I started doing. You mentioned getting your steps in every day. And I started doing this years ago, but I didn't realize the impact it had until I had. Not this smartwatch. It was the one before this one, because I broke the first smartwatch. Don't ask me how, but all of a sudden, I had a watch. My wife says, “Here's, I got you this watch and I put it on my wrist, and I noticed that it was set to steps per day.” And boy, I do get a lot of steps every day. I walk two dogs, I do this and that, the steps get in there. But I've been doing something since the 90s and, well, not since the 90s I'm lying, since the early 2000s after 9/11.
[00:40:10] So, for all of young people before 9/11, you would get to the airport at the very last minute. You ran through TSA, which almost didn't exist. And then you went to the gate right before it was closing, and you got on the plane, and that's the way everyone was rushing. You can watch old movies where people are rushing through the airport and you go, “Wait, how did they do that? They just went right--” That's the way it used to be. But after 9/11, and we started taking off shoes and everything, and they started demanding that people get to the airport hours before your flight leaves. So, at first, I would get to the airport and go, “Okay, I'm now here an hour and a half early. I'm sitting waiting for a plane.” And like every other human being, “Umm, there's a restaurant over there.” And these restaurants never really have great food in them. You might find a piece of fish or a piece of chicken or something, but there's nothing but crap. And now they have every-- you want to talk about PepsiCo again? They have every fast-food chain in there.
[00:41:18] So it's set up to make you fail. Airports have everything from Cinnabon’s in them to muffin shops to candy shops and you name it, it's all there, and you have nothing but time on your hands. So at some point, I decided long before my smartwatch, “When I get to the terminal and see where my plane is taking off from, I'm going to then start taking walks around the airport. Walk, walk, walk, walk.” And what I figured out was, I didn't figure this out until I had a smartwatch. I could walk more than 15,000 steps before my plane comes. And what are they talking about, 10,000 steps a day or whatever? If you're walking 15,000 steps, you're walking way past 5 miles in an airport. And you know what I noticed after a while? Sometimes I would see other people, women always tend to have the leggings on, the tights and the running shoes. I would still have my jeans and maybe cowboy boots or whatever I was wearing doing it. But I noticed other people have picked up on this, and Cynthia, you would never notice this unless you were doing it yourself.
[00:42:31] Because you would walk to the farthest part of the terminal at some of these airports and turn around and walk back, and you start to notice the same people coming and going. And after two or three laps, you start waving to each other because you realize that they're doing the same thing that you're doing. So, there are other people doing it, and you would never know that if you're sitting there stuffing your face with a Cinnabon. But can you imagine getting between 10,000 and 15,000 steps in before your plane gets there? And believe it or not, when you get on the plane, you feel energetic, you feel relaxed, you feel all of those things, and you're able to have a good flight. So, when people go, “Hey, I'm at the airport, I'm stuck in airports and there's crappy food and all this different kind of stuff.” You don’t have to eat it and in fact, you can get some exercise in.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:43:19] I love that. That you’re making such good use of the time that you have in the airport. And I think for everyone listening, with the exception of, when you’re running to a gate like I seem to be doing lately, flights get in late and you’re racing for connections in either Chicago O'Hare or Atlanta airport, which is not fun. I think for anyone else, what a great way, instead of streaming something to your iPad or watching something on your iPhone, having that ability to get up and be physically active. Now when we’re looking at food, I know you have some fail safe ways to kind of look at what needs to be eliminated from our diets, what has the greatest value? And it goes without saying that sugar is not benign. And it’s interesting, I was looking at statistics and it was saying in excess of 70 to 80 g of sugar a day is what is the norm. And I know in your documentary you talk about this as well. What are some of the non-negotiables for you when you're helping to counsel people about nutrition, and I'm not even talking about rigid dogmatism, whether it's vegan, carnivore, keto, paleo, what are some absolutes that you think are critically important for our health to eliminate from our lives?
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:44:35] Well, you're never going to eliminate all sugar, right? And Georgia Ede and I, we both-- "Do you ever have Georgia on your show?”
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:44:43] I have her on the schedule. I'm really excited. I have her new book.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:44:47] I love her, love her.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:44:49] Lovely.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:44:49] I can't wait to hear that interview. As many times as I've had her on and she was in my first documentary, I would have her on every week. I can't wait to hear your interview. But you know carbohydrates, there’s nothing essential about a carbohydrate. We have three macronutrients and we call them all essential macronutrients. But you don’t really need carbohydrate. Now is that a non-starter? No, because I like vegetables. I like particularly cruciferous vegetables. And I notice carnivores out there and I’m good friends with Shawn and all these different people. Oh, you just, all you need is meat and that’s fine. If you just want to go eat meat all day long, knock yourself out. But when it comes to carbohydrates, the only ones I agree with come from vegetables. So for me, everything else is kind of non-negotiable.
[00:45:43] Now should you never eat another grain or piece of bread? That's crazy to think that people's going to do that. But if you're metabolically broken and you want to fix the problem, the further away you can stay from that stuff the better. And by and large, not just the sugar in the grains but the fake sugars because erythritol leads to allulose leads to monk fruit leads to-- before you’re eating honey and it’s all the same thing. So, I think all of this stuff is non-negotiable, especially when you’re trying to get that taste out of your mouth. And people say, “Well, I'm never going to eat ice cream again.” No. But if you can go a couple of good months without doing that before you try it and after you try it's very difficult because it's like telling an alcoholic, “Oh, you can go clean for two months and then have a beer.” It's just not going to work.
[00:46:40] So, you have to be careful with it when you do have it and set yourself up not to fail. People ask me if I ever have anything sweet. I live on a pretty tight ketogenic diet because I have leukemia. And I kept it at bay for 17 years. They told me it was going to come back in five years. I just went through chemo again 17 years later and I’ll take that over five years. So, I live on a pretty tight ketogenic diet. But when I do have something like ice cream, which I love, it happens a few times a year. But I have something set up, I have a cup of espresso ready to go, something bitter, something to get that taste out of my mouth so that I’m going to go, “Hmm, that scoop was good.” I’m going to go have another scoop and, “Oh, we got some in the freezer, I’m going to have more.” Once I do it, I figure out I set myself up for success while I’m doing it. Have that cup of espresso, get that sugar taste out of my mouth, go brush my teeth and move on. Because if you don't do that, you're more apt to go, “Hmm, what else is there?” Does that make sense? Did I answer your question or--
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:52] No, you did a great job. And I think it's both validating to understand that limiting some of these foods can be very beneficial and then also having a solution. Like you mentioned, you might have that ice cream, but you're going to buffer it with something bitter. And for anyone that's listening, it's understanding that, sugar lights up specific receptors in our brains. We get these dopamine surges, which is what oftentimes can drive persistent cravings. And I think having something bitter afterwards can kind of, nullify or interrupt that desire to continue having sugar-laden foods. I know for myself what I typically do is I'll have a good-sized dinner, like a steak dinner with some vegetables and lots of water. And if I decide to have something sweet, for me, everyone knows I love dark chocolate, but I'm deciding to have something sweet. Having a good-sized meal already on board buffers the blood sugar response, which is important. But also, I'm usually at a point where I'm too full to continue eating.
[00:48:55] So if I'm going to indulge in something, it's going to be small. I'm going to move on. I'm going to ensure that I walk afterwards, because we know that's one of the most potent ways to help lower blood glucose, because many people on this podcast know that the first site in the body where we actually become insulin resistant is in our muscles. So, helping our muscles kind of scavenge up that extra glucose and dispose of it is a really good way to set in motion things that are going to negate or nullify some of the occasionally splurges that we have. Now I think, it goes without saying that you've touched on the ketogenic diet. We've talked about in many ways why keto can be therapeutic, why for so many people that is one of many ways that they've been able to harness their metabolic health. But I think maybe backing up a little bit and talking about how our food influences our metabolism and also the way that our body utilizes stored fat or stored carbohydrates for fuel source and how that impacts brain function. Because I know even in the documentary; you talk a great deal about specific types of beneficial fats for brain function. And I think this is really interesting and something that would interest listeners as well.
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:50:11] Yeah. By the way, before I get into that, the reason I know so much about addiction and sugar is because I'm a sugar addict, and I know I have to keep it at bay. People go, “You seem to know exactly how I feel. [Cynthia chuckles] It's like, “Yeah, because I feel the same way when I have sugar.” It affects our metabolic system in different ways. And as you mentioned, it lights up our brain, but we can also-- I had Dr. Mary Newport in the documentary talking about medium chain triglycerides and how sugar affects the brain and now is being linked to Alzheimer's and everything else. And I'm not the one to speak on that. I mean, these other people can tell you more about it, but it's amazing how when you take sugar out of the diet-- I was doing Dr. Drew Pinsky's show a year or two ago, and I was talking about the frontal cortex and really things I don't really understand to be honest. It's like, “Drew, I read a study that said that sugar lights up in the frontal cortex the same way as cocaine and all.” And Drew is an addiction medicine specialist. And he goes, “Well, yes, close but it's not exactly the same because heroin does this and cocaine does that and it's much more than sugar.” And I said, “Yeah, but we’re not giving cocaine and heroin to kids at birthday parties and telling them its okay.” Thats the difference.
[00:51:32] And he said, “Yeah, you’re right.” So, sugar will light up your brain the way different drugs will. And we tell people it’s okay to have these sugars and then before you know it, we have the contestant winning the Alabama beauty contest. I mean, it’s just, we see what’s going on and what’s happening. But the way it’s affecting our brain and the fact that we know that our brain prefers ketones as a source of energy and that it will readily and love to use ketones the same way it uses sugar. And you didn’t ask this question, but I’m going to go ahead and answer it anyway. There’s been a lot of talk lately, it’s “Oh, ketogenic diet is not good for your body and your brain and the whole thing.” I’ve been living pretty strictly on a ketogenic diet for 17 years. I’m as sharp if not sharper than I was 17 years ago. I run three companies and make documentaries on the side.
[00:52:31] Thats not a guy that’s suffering from any kind of [chuckles] cognitive decline at 61. So, I don’t want to hear that it’s not good for you. There was some study that ketogenic diets are bad for you. A small clinical study was done. They did it on rats. And we learned that they were feeding these rats 90% Crisco, 90% of the fat was coming from Crisco, from a hydrogenated seed oil of that. It was like “Yeah, yeah, we gave these rats this Crisco. 90% of the diet was Crisco. They didn't do so well.” Well, duh. [laughs] You know, again, I don't know if I answered the question, but there you have it.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:53:16] Well, I appreciate your transparency because I think that for a lot of listeners when guest experts come on and they talk about abstaining from sugar or other types of macronutrients, it allows for listeners to understand that you yourself admit that at some point you had an unhealthy relationship with sugar and how you successfully have been able to navigate the last 17 years in very good health and have been able to abstain and occasionally indulge but abstain for the most part and really focus on nutrient density. And I think that more often than not, that degree of transparency, I think, is so important. I mean, I jokingly say this, but I mean this. My one last vice in life is dark chocolate. And I try to navigate every day being conscientious about not overindulging because it's very easy. And the things that I can't abstain from eating or I feel like they beckon me like a siren or gluten-free brownies and cookies. And I just don't have them in the house because there's no good that comes out of that other than I feel bad, I feel good while I'm indulging, and then I feel bad afterwards physically. And so, then it reinforces why I don't do it with any frequency whatsoever.
[00:54:31] Now, I would be remiss if we didn't talk about a very hot subject right now. There's a lot of medical therapies that are being utilized for metabolic health, probably more so than any other drugs right now are the GLP-1 agonists. And so, these are the semaglutide, the Wegovy, there're some newer agents coming out with two or three different incretins that are in them. We know that they have some side effects. I think for some individuals, if they're used very judiciously, there can benefit. What are your thoughts on GLP-1 therapies? I know you have Dr. Ben Bikman in the documentary addressing this specifically, but for you personally, as you've been able to kind of watch over the last, gosh, I think the first GLP-1 came out in 2005. So, over the last 19 years, but really, it's probably the last five that they've become very in vogue. What are your thoughts on these?
Vinnie Tortorich: [00:55:23] I have mixed opinions on it. I have a loved one very close to me, a female that's been north of 500 pounds for years, loved this woman to death. I think because I have relatives who are morbidly obese, that's where my passion is. She's been using GLP-1 once, in no time she's dropped 100 pounds. So, there's that. Because the fact of the matter is she was barely able to move or walk anymore. And I saw her not long ago and she's now walking. She hasn't slept in a bed in 25 years. So, I have someone close to me who has to sleep sitting up in a lounge chair and all this. And she's losing weight on a GLP-1. And I have a lot of people who I talk to on a daily basis who are losing weight on it so there's that side of it, but there's this other side where especially people, and this sounds crazy, who only have 50 or 60 pounds, that used to be a lot of weight for people to lose, but now we look at that as being like only have 10 pounds to lose. I think those people who can still move around normally should not be on these things.
[00:56:38] Ben Bikman and some of these doctors who understand GLP-1s who were there from the beginning with them, understand what they're doing. Ben Bikman will talk about how for the first time since adolescence, you can actually gain more fat cells. Your body will start making fat cells, not just filling the cells you have with fat, but actually making more fat cells based on GLP-1s, I think that's a scary thing. The boomerang effect of going off of these things are catastrophic. You have another study for your audience and I'm sure you've talked about this a thousand times because I listened to your show and you educate more than anyone else on any-- You educate more than I do on my podcast and probably more than people like Ken Berry do. If you lose a massive amount of weight, let’s say you have 100 pounds to lose, and you do it naturally by curbing your eating habits and eating less carbohydrates and exercising more. If you lose 100 pounds, 20% of that. So around 20 pounds will be muscle loss. You cannot lose fat without losing some muscle.
[00:57:48] That's why I tell people, once you start losing weight, go get a gym membership and show up, and you don't have to get into some bodybuilding program, but start moving heavy things so that you don't lose as much of your muscle. Muscle sparing is very, very important to longevity. We talked about that. Maybe it was off the air about your father and this type of thing. Very important as you get older not to have as much sarcopenia, you can't stop it, but you can certainly retard the effects of sarcopenia. Losing 20% of your muscle mass naturally is what you're going to get. With GLP-1s at first, they were saying 40%, which is a staggering amount. Then a study came out and said 50% of your weight loss comes from muscle, which is stupefying. And then now there's a study I said, it shows 60% of it is muscle. I'm hoping that number is not right. I'm hoping that number was confused somehow in the study, but losing that much muscle is not good. I think we're going to look back on GLP-1s the same way as we look back on a lot of things and go, “That was not really a good idea, just overall.” But then my brain goes right back to my relative. So, I'm so conflicted on GLP-1s that I can't see straight. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:59:17] No, no. I think you have a personal connection and that in and of itself, because you're seeing that she's getting clinical benefit from it. I think that I have really tried to form a balanced opinion. I'm actually bringing a female physician on this week, and she very judiciously uses GLP-1s and has kind of a unique perspective. I think that she's having great success because she is so adamant that her patients concurrently are doing strength training. Because to her, you can't use a GLP-1 and not be talking about strength training. You were alluding to that as well. And helping our communities understand that muscle mass is critically important, especially as we're getting older. We know sarcopenia is not an if, but a when phenomenon, and what precedes the loss of muscle is the loss of strength. So, I used to hand off a jar to my husband or my boys, and I would say, “Can you open this for me?” I don't do that anymore because it is so important that we're preserving strength as we're getting older. I think that there's probably a place for them, but I think it has to be done judiciously with a great deal of patient education. And I think in many ways, making sure that if you are choosing to take GLP-1s, that you're working with a practitioner that is going to do lifestyle medicine as well, they're not just doling out these drugs and not giving proper and appropriate counseling. Because one of the things that Ben talks about in your documentary is that after two years, more often than not, the cravings return for food, and that loss of muscle and the loss of insulin sensitivity can also exacerbate, as you mentioned, this fat cell hyperplasia.
[01:00:58] So the creation of new fat cells, which is concerning. But I would say that for anyone that's listening or considering them, making sure you're working with a practitioner who judiciously utilizes these drugs and helps counsel you on whether it's a gentle ramping up and a gentle ramping off. I know Dr. Rocio Salas-Whalen, actually talks about that she believes, and she's an endocrinologist, she believes it is a lifelong drug. And so that's going to be a unique perspective. I've not yet spoken to her, but I think that when we start looking at these new and novel drug therapies, it has to be with the full understanding of, you can't just lose fat. It has to be that you are actively working against the losing muscle mass as well.
Vinnie Tortorich: [01:01:45] Yeah, I think if we can start educating people. Whenever people are certain about something, I always lose my mind. And people want me to say, “Oh, GLP-1s are horrible.” No, no, they're helping a lot of people and I'm able to see that. But drugs are never the answer. If you're using a drug in order to help you get off of that drug eventually, then that's the better option. But we live in a society, you mentioned your kids getting DoorDash at 11 o’clock at night or whatever. People look at drugs as, “Hey, I can take this drug now, bring on the brownies.” We can't have it both ways. And I think that's the biggest problem we're having, is people want their cake and eat it unintended. But, yeah, we're not going down a good road if people are going, give me the drug. And I blame WeightWatchers for this. I like blaming WeightWatchers because it's fun. [Cynthia laughs] “What do you do for fun, Vinnie? “Blame WeightWatchers for everything.” But WeightWatchers years and years ago-- and my beloved Richard Simmons did a very similar thing.
[01:03:01] And I was always a Richard Simmons fan because maybe it's because we both came from the deep south, from Louisiana, and he truly wanted to help people, but he was a bit misguided a few times. But WeightWatchers said, “Hey, we're going to create this point system. You can either eat healthy foods, wholesome foods with these points, or you can save all of your points all day long and then eat five brownies at night because it's all based on points.” So weren't teaching people to do the right thing. We were teaching them, “Oh, this is how you can circumvent.” Same thing with GLP-1s. If you just tell someone, “Oh, you can just jab yourself with this drug and then just go have all the brownies you want.” Good luck. Good luck.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:03:50] Well, and it's interesting because I will just add, and this is, again, I'm saying this just kind of objectively how many people in the health and wellness space who are already thin are using these drugs to, “take the edge off their appetite?” And so that's a whole separate discussion about there's appropriate utilization and certainly in someone who's morbidly obese or not metabolically healthy, in conjunction with an excellent healthcare practitioner to help guide them through that process is very different than the individuals who probably have some degree of borderline anorexia or orthorexia are trying to take the edge off of an already very thin, probably undernourished individual. And they're trying to take that edge off because maybe they're in the, let’s say, perimenopause and they’re starting to notice changes in body composition. And so, I think that it can be certainly very challenging to navigate some of these decisions and choices. But nonetheless, as always, it’s always a pleasure to have you on as a guest.
[01:04:50] Please let my listeners know how to connect with you, how to see your new documentary. Obviously, looking at your other documentaries, which are also excellent resources, or connect with you and your podcasts.
Vinnie Tortorich: [01:05:03] It's easy to find me at vinnietortorich.com or you can just go Instagram, I'm there. I'm on Twitter answering questions all day, every day. But vinnietortorich.com is the easiest way to find me. The movie, it was supposed to be up already on Amazon. We're not sure why Amazon is still holding it, but eventually it will be on Amazon only. And the movie's called Dirty Keto. By the way, my other three documentaries on Amazon, and actually they're around the world, those are on everything. But this movie, Dirty Keto will only be on Amazon. So go check it out, rate it, and review it. I'm hoping you guys give it a good review. That's how you find me. I'm out there.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:05:46] That's great. Thank you again for your time.
[01:05:49] If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review, subscribe and tell a friend.
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