Falling In Love With The Ketogenic Energy System – With Ben Azadi

Ben Azadi 0:00
I love speaking about keto, as you know Monday because keto is not a diet. It couldn’t be a die. But technically it’s not a diet. It’s a metabolic process.

Dr. Mindy 0:10
I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again, my name is Dr. Mindy Pels, and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. Okay, re centers on this episode of the resetter podcast, I am bringing you my dear friend Ben Azadi, who is the founder of Kido camp Academy. So if you’re not familiar with Ben, he has so much content out there in the world about the ketogenic diet. And his new book, keto flex is actually now going to give you the tools on how to flex in and out of keto. So one of the reasons I wanted to bring Ben on is to answer all of those crazy questions that we get on our platform, which is why am I gaining weight when I’m in ketosis? What happens when my cholesterol goes high when I’m in ketosis? What if I can’t get into ketosis? Are there any great hacks I can use to get into ketosis better? I mean, the list of questions goes on and on and on. And what I did in this interview, and I’m so excited to share it with you is that I had him start from the beginning explained to us, why do we need to be in ketosis? How often should we be in ketosis? what foods do we need to change in order to get into ketosis? Literally every question I could think of about the ketogenic diet, about flexing in and out of ketosis. I asked Ben, and he is an incredible teacher. He gives you the answers in a very succinct and usable way. And probably what I love about them the most is he’s being so motivational. I felt like I wanted to get my own notepad out and write down the one liners of motivation that he was dropping on this episode. He actually when I asked him the question of where do we begin to get into ketosis, he gave two answers two steps that I have never heard anybody say before, and I’m not going to give it away because it’s just too profound. And awesome, and I want you guys to hear it directly from his mouth. So Ben is Adi keto camp, his new book, keto flex is now out for you guys to benefit from and enjoy. You can check out his YouTube channel, you can find him on Instagram, you can check out his podcast. This man is on a mission to change the world through the cake ketogenic energy system. Enjoy.

Okay, guys, I’ll let you guys in on a really cool new fasting hack that I’ve discovered for myself. So I don’t know about you but I often am presented with especially during the week with the dilemma of what am I going to break my fast with, I find that if I break it with too big of a meal, I’m sleepy for the rest of the afternoon. And I want to be strategic about what I typically eat at around one and two o’clock in the afternoon. It’s got to give me energy. So recently, I’ve been leaning into Organa fies red juice, so not only is it keeping my blood sugar stable, and therefore keeping me in a fasted state, but it also hurts my hunger and gives me even more energy. So I work long days, 1012 hour days and I’m finding that with the red juice, I’m able to get another burst of energy that allows me to go a couple hours more before I can get home and have an official healthy dinner. So red juice, it’s amazing. I’m loving it for breaking a fast please give it a try. And what I love about Organa phi is that they are giving you a 15% discount. So you just need to go to Organa phi.com backslash pills, and they will give you 15% off or you can go to the link in the notes and find their website that way. But red juice, it’s my new Energizer Bunny keeping me motivated all day long. Give it a try. Let me know how it works for you. And enjoy. Let’s start with this I since you are the what I would consider I think the world would consider this as well. One of the top keto experts. There are so many people that are hopping on the keto bandwagon, and some of those people are hopping on because they want to Lose Weight. Some people want to accelerate healing. But I feel like we are missing some of the basic premise of why we would want to go keto. And it all starts with this ketogenic energy system. So before we launch in, you’re so good at hacks you have so many great ideas. Can you help us understand why it’s so important to tap into the ketogenic energy system? Hmm.

Ben Azadi 5:26
I love the way you word that ketogenic energy system. Yes, absolutely. Because when we look at the body, we see that there’s about 70 trillion cells inside of the body. And out of those 70 trillion cells, there’s only two options for fuel. Either the cells are burning glucose, sugar, or it’s burning fat producing ketones. We know from research that when your cells are stuck as a sugar burner, or a glucose burner, that can be highly inflammatory. And the analogy that I always give is a picture of a truck, a Mack truck, speeding through the highway, with all this smoke being blasted out of the exhaust pipe going over the cars, the surrounding cars around it, paving the road with smoke, that truck is not healthy for the environment and unhealthy for that surrounding environment. When the cells are stuck as sugar burners, it creates a lot of cellular byproducts, toxins and smoke. It’s not healthy for the cellular environment. When we look at obesity and cancer and diabetes, what do they all have in common? Those are sugar burners, the cells are producing these toxins at high levels, and it’s creating an inflammatory response and inflames the membrane. Now, bad stuff can’t get out of the cell, good stuff can’t get in dysfunction occurs and then eventually symptoms and dis ease. Now the symptoms are not the problem, they are a result of the problem. So when we could teach the body to switch to this ketogenic energy system, the way that you set it, that’s like teaching the cells to be a cleaner source of energy, like a Tesla, cruising through your streets, much cleaner for the surrounding environment, much cleaner for your cellular environment. So we could do that by utilizing this ancient healing strategy called keto. And I love speaking about keto, as you know, Monday, because keto is not a diet. It couldn’t be a diet. But technically, it’s not a diet, it’s a metabolic process. And every single one of our ancestors went through periods of time of being in ketosis, their environment forced that adaptation. And now we fast forward to 2021. Every single one of our cells are hardwired to go through periods of time of being in ketosis. So what I want to do with keto camping with my book, keto flex, is educate you on how to get into ketosis, how to bypass some of the negative effects somebody might experience when doing so and how to utilize it not for a short term weight loss tool, but for a lifestyle strategy that you could flex in and out of.

Dr. Mindy 7:46
I love that. And I one of the things that I like all cars I’ve had about nutrition recently, is we’ve been debating the wrong energy system, we’ve been talking about how we should be eating to tap into the sugar burner energy system. And we haven’t been talking about this ketogenic energy system, which is why I wanted to bring you on why I wanted to have this conversation. And once we start to look at the quality of foods, the type of foods and we teach people how to tap into this energy system. I feel like we totally changed the converse conversation around nutrition. And we get out of the this diets, right this that diets bad we go back to how is the body designed? How do we tap into an energy system we

Ben Azadi 8:30
didn’t even realize we had. I love that. Yeah. So instead of debating diets, let’s debate the energy system and what’s better versus what’s worse. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy 8:39
Now, I heard you speak recently, and there was something you said again, that just like hit me in such a profound way. And you spoke about how babies and breast milk if you look like that’s one of the things we see in our route with our resellers is people are concerned about this energy system. They’re concerned about being in ketosis, they’ve walked into their medical doctor’s office and the doctor is not so sure about it. But then if you go back to our innate, you know, years when we’re little and we’re breastfeeding, breast milk is actually ketogenic. are babies truly in a state of ketosis?

Ben Azadi 9:16
Yeah, they are. And you can just go on PubMed and do a search for it. And I could give you the three studies that I referenced, because breast milk has saturated fat and cholesterol. Yeah, there’s some sugar in there, but the baby is so efficient at metabolizing and burning sugar, that they still tap into ketosis and tap back out. Why is it that way? Well, we look at the brain, the brain is mostly fat. So the fact that the baby gets to go in and out of ketosis, so the baby is naturally keto flexing, it’s so cool. It actually helps the development of the baby’s brain. So I agree. And my point is that burning fat is our birthright. We were meant to burn fat, but the problem is, the baby gets weaned off of the breast milk and then it’s given this high sugar baby for Mila, and then instantly is taught to be a sugar burner, and then it grows up a little bit more. We’re giving them snacks and Gatorade, processed carbohydrates, and it’s just teaching this baby it’s born to burn fat. And then it’s teaching it to be stuck as a sugar burner. So we just want to go back to our primal birthright and burn fat.

Dr. Mindy 10:18
So, then, and this is a total side note, if I was a mother that was breastfeeding, would it make sense for me to try to follow the ketogenic diet to improve the the fat content of breast milk? Yeah,

Ben Azadi 10:34
that’s an interesting question. I don’t know the answer to it with like a study. But I would hypothesize that if the mom is doing some keto flexing and getting some ketones, there could be a positive effect for the baby. We got to find, like a study on that. Right. Great question. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy 10:50
Yeah, me because again, it’s an energy system that we haven’t been talking enough about. And I love your idea that the ketogenic diet is not a diet, because if it is a diet, then it’s a fad. That’s sort of the way I think people look at it. And I like to look at it at No, it says energy system you just haven’t been taught how to tap into. And you know, you can tap into it a lot of different ways. Which leads me to my next question for you is, do you think you can tap into the ketogenic energy system without changing your food?

Ben Azadi 11:26
Yes, of course, as you know, with fasting, right, if you’re in a fasted state, you’re not eating any food, your body needs to get energy from somewhere, so it’ll switch and start burning fat. Now, that’s not the optimal way to start keto, right, that is one method to do it. A lot of people. They go on Dr. Google, and they type in, you know, what is the keto diet? What are the macros? What are the calories, and they’ll see bacon and cheese and fat, and they’ll start to just overload themselves with these fats, which are not a bad thing if you’re eating quality fats. But keto, technically is not about eating a whole bunch of fat, it’s about dropping your carbohydrates low enough. So you could switch the energy source to burning your fat cells and allowing your liver to produce the ketone. So you could do that, without making any dietary changes. You could do it with the combination of intermittent fasting and maybe even different fasting strategies and exercise because you’ll burn through your glycogen stores, and then you’ll force the body to make that switch.

Dr. Mindy 12:20
So okay, and then the reverse would be what if I don’t want to fast? So what I heard from you, as you said, yes, you could not change your food and just fast and you would get into this energy source. What if I don’t want to fast, then I probably need to change my food, and what would I need to change?

Ben Azadi 12:39
Yeah, so definitely, that’s the way that I teach it actually, for somebody who’s brand new, is to not even fast yet, you know, eventually, we could pair fasting with it if you want to do that. But the thing is to just monitor your carbohydrates, if you could eventually drop your total carbohydrates below 50 grams for the day, at the same time, increasing your healthy fats, and some protein you will get you get into ketosis, you’ll be producing ketones, because you’re dropping your carbohydrates low enough, no fasting is required. Eventually, if you want to do fasting, it will be a good one two punch to pair with keto, but it’s not necessarily. It’s not necessarily necessary to get into ketosis.

Dr. Mindy 13:17
So that so what I’m hearing is there’s two sides of the equation, there’s the food change that you can make, and then there is the fasting change you can make.

Ben Azadi 13:27
Correct and then there’s taking a whole bunch of exhaustion is ketones and getting in there artificially, but that’s not a method I recommend.

Dr. Mindy 13:33
I was gonna say, what do you what do you just, I mean, I don’t hear that so much from people anymore, but just in case somebody’s listening that what do you think of exogenous ketones?

Ben Azadi 13:42
I think there’s a time in place for them. You know, I would use them personally for myself, if I’m going on an airplane, like before the airplane, I’ve seen some research that it helps with the radiation. Dom D’Agostino talks about that, I would take it after the airplane, maybe for like a brain performance hack. If I want to be sharp for Monday, right here on the reset podcast, I could have taken it. But other than that, I’d like to teach the body to do it. endogenously. Sometimes also, when somebody is following the protocols, and they’re three weeks in, they’re still not really in ketosis. Maybe they could take it from a quality brand, like systemic formulas for a couple days to prime the pump and then get off of it. So those are the times I would use it. But I wouldn’t rely on the exogenous ketones.

Dr. Mindy 14:22
Yeah, I would I would definitely agree. So earlier today, I had the pleasure of talking to Dr. Ken Berry, and I saw that Yeah, he’s such a nice man. And one of the things that I know that my heart and his heart links up on and I know your heart is in the same place is how are we going to help this chronic disease, insulin hyperinsulinemia issue that we have going on right now. And it all boils down to the quality of our food. And so, my question to you on that is if you’re listening to this podcast, You’re you know, your diets not great, you know that you you need to make some changes. What do you feel like is the first couple of steps that people need to make? How can we go into keto without diving all in just sort of tiptoeing in?

Ben Azadi 15:18
Yeah, the first step I would make is to optimize your sleep. You know, if you can get quality sleep, you’re not going to be able to burn fat, you’re not going to be able to reduce inflammation, or even get into ketosis. Sleep is fundamental. And I would make sure you’re getting at least seven hours of quality sleep, you could track it. But sleep, it’s been shown just one poor night of sleep on Scientific American, has been shown the following morning to increase cortisol levels. And what follows cortisol is glucose and insulin. And what follows that as ghrelin, your hunger hormones, you’re hungrier, and then leptin drops. So when you do eat, you’re less satisfied, but also, ketones will drop when glucose goes up. So your willpower reserves will be wiped out, your immune system will be wiped out, you’ll increase inflammation, your develop these plaque buildups plaque buildup in your brain, it’s just a disaster. And it’s a vicious cycle, because one poor night’s sleep leads to more stress, you’ve been g you get worse sleep, and it’s just as bad cycle. So I would start with sleep. And then I would start with other fundamentals when it comes to health, which is I love talking about it self love and gratitude. I mean, if you don’t have that down pat, if you don’t have some form of self love, and loving other people, and in practicing gratitude, it’s going to be very difficult to heal. Because, you know, just having a thought a toxic thought will be inflammatory to the body. Dr. Bruce Lipton explains this very well and backs it up with research, negative thoughts, hateful thoughts, resentful thoughts, fearful thoughts, lead to sound waves that penetrate the cell membrane, go into the nucleus of your DNA, and tell you it tells your nucleus of your DNA to produce specific proteins that lead to disease, just from our thoughts. So if it’s that powerful when a negative thoughts, think about what it can do when it comes to positive loving thoughts, and it really starts with self love. As somebody who is depressed and suicidal and hated myself, I had to really be intentional with my self love, and I still do to this day. And when you do that, when you have this leap to self love the gratitude because what you appreciate, appreciates and expands. Then you could do the keto, the fast thing with supplements and all that will work that much better, because you’ve laid a solid foundation for your health.

Dr. Mindy 17:28
Amazing. Yeah, I’ve never heard anybody say that the first two steps to keto are sleep and gratitude. That was beautiful. And I hope that everybody’s listening to that. So my next question is, I’m putting myself in the shoes of a person that’s overweight, not feeling good, not sleeping well, low energy, it’s easy to say sleep better and love yourself. But what if I’m not sleeping? Well, because of poor living, and I struggling to love myself? How is there? Are there tricks we can do to get that person energetically pointed in the right direction? Before they step into keto? Or should they just try to make some changes and hope that the gratitude and sleep follow?

Ben Azadi 18:14
Yeah, they could do both right. So your environment is very important. Having people in your life who support you and want you to be healthier and happier. That’s so important, we it’s very difficult to find that. And I do an exercise with my Kido camp Academy members where I have them grab a piece of paper, a blank piece of paper, and I tell them, okay, I want you to draw a line down the middle, and then a little cross at the top. On the right side, I want you to list everybody in your life, who supports you who charges you up, who wants you to be healthier, who wants you to be successful, and how you know that person is on that side is because when you’re done having a conversation with them, you’re charged up so their charges, like I always feel charged up with you Monday, yeah, you want, you want to put all those people on the right side. And you’ll be surprised that list is actually shorter than what you would think. On the left side, you want to put a list of all the people in your life who are not supporting you, maybe they’re saying fasting is going to harm you. Or they want you to stay at your job that you hate or whatever it is. So put all those people on the left. And what you want to do is just make an effort to spend more time with the people on the right, the Chargers versus the drainers, the drainers you’re going to have a conversation with them. They’re going to talk about fear, they’re going to talk about gossiping, and you’re going to feel drained, the Chargers you’re going to feel inspired and you’re gonna be more motivated and inspired to actually go take care of yourself. So really do an audit on your environment because environment is more important than heredity. It could actually change a lot of your behaviors. I want to share a quick story about crabs in a bucket. You could put 20 crabs in a bucket and leave those 20 crabs in the bucket without a lid. Overnight come back in the morning and all 20 crabs will be there and you might be thinking, why didn’t all these crabs just escape and break free? Well, they tried and anytime a crab tried to escape and break free The other crabs clawed at it dropped drum, drag it back down, and did not let them break free, because that’s the way the crabs roll. So who are the crabs in your life, make sure you detach from those crabs, that’s going to be important, then the next step on your journey here is to then just gradually make some changes these small little tweaks that lead to giant peaks. There’s a great book out there, I don’t know if you’ve read it called tiny habits by BJ Fogg. Habit stacking, and just creating small little changes each day. So when it comes to your nutrition, just gradually start decreasing your carbohydrates. And at the same time, start increasing your healthy fats and protein, start doing an audit on your environment, and then get this small, little momentum. And when each day, take it to the next day. And this is just about beating yesterday, just getting a small percentage better. And then you’ll get this momentum. And eventually, it’s just going to become a habit. And it’s going to be programmed into your subconscious mind, where you just do it naturally.

Dr. Mindy 20:57
I love that I had a good friend who I went through the cancer journey with her she had breast cat metastatic breast cancer. And one day we were sitting in her kitchen she had they gave her three months to live. And she turned it into 11 years. Wow. And yeah, it was profound talking about mindset. One day she brought out if she was in her kitchen, and she opened up a cabinet. And she showed me a piece of paper. And she said, these are the this is how I categorize the people in my life, because I realized that the people around me determine how well I will heal. And she add a circle at the in the middle of the sheet with her name. And then little circles that went out from that initial circle. And the people that were further out, it was all in pencil. The people that were further out from the circle were the ones she needed to stay away from there were people that were in her life that she that were draining her of healing energy. And the closer you were to the circle, then the more she was willing to interact with you. And it was in pencil because she would have to erase it and move the people around. And she even had our dog on there, her dog was like right next door. And I felt so honored. Because I had made the list, I was like oh my god, I’m close to you, that’s awesome. I’ll just make sure if I’m ever out of favor with you, I’ll know that I got pulled out to the, to the

Ben Azadi 22:19
outer circle. I love that it’s such a great exercise and activity. And you know, sometimes somebody will be on that list further away from the circle, somebody that could be your doctor,

Unknown Speaker 22:31
or that could be well said,

Ben Azadi 22:33
and you go to your doctor and you say, Oh, I heard about keto or fasting. And they’re like they just totally poopoo it and for your friend or anybody who has been diagnosed with a terminal disease. You know, when a doctor says your diseases terminal, they should really be saying that their ability to help you has been terminal and you find somebody else because Who are they? Who is anybody to play God? I mean, you know, as well as anybody else out there that the body is the physician, the innate intelligence is the physician. So that activity is so crucial. I love that your friend did that.

Dr. Mindy 23:04
Yeah, that was well said. So okay, and I just, I’m gonna step this out, because people listening, you know, my resetter is now I love delivering great information, but I want it to move people into action. So what I’ve heard from you is we’re going to get better sleep, we’re going to go into a state of gratitude, we’re going to be mindful of the people that we allow to tell us Yeah, you’re doing keto, or no, you’re not you What do you mean, you’re gonna do keto, you’re gonna die. So be mindful of those people. And then we’re going to slowly pull our carbohydrates out of our diet. Can you can you tell me which carbohydrate I should start with?

Ben Azadi 23:42
Yeah, with the processed carbs. So anything that’s in a package or a bar or something like that, start with the process. Once you stick with more whole food, carbohydrates, like fruits and sweet potatoes, and some any, any kind of carb that doesn’t require a label on it will be safe. You know, something else to note as well, you know, the vegetable oils, the inflammatory fats. I would also start there as well not to overwhelm you in the beginning, but you do want to do an audit for these bad fats, which technically are all keto friendly, but they’re worse than sugar. So I would make sure you do an audit, and I’ll share real quick when I interviewed Brian Peskin and Dr. Kate Shanahan, and I asked them the question about cigarette smoking cigarettes versus these vegetable oils. What’s worse for you? They both agreed that vegetable oils were worse for you than cigarettes. And they gave some research that if somebody smoked two packs of cigarettes every single day, for 28 years, the chances of that person developing lung cancer within those 28 years is about 16%. And then they compare that to somebody who ate these bad fats and vegetable oils every single day. for 28 years, their chances of developing cancer or heart disease was about 86%, which is pretty good. Isn’t that crazy? Dr. Kate Shanahan said it’s closer to 100% Crazy. And that’s because they’re just highly processed, they’re inflammatory, they’re very unstable. And they gunk up the cells in the membrane, and they prevent your body from doing its job that prevents this wonderful orchestra that we have in the body. And some research has shown that it could cause inflammation around your cells, vegetable oils for six to 12 months. So there I’m going to give your audience a list here and they could write it down. Yeah, canola oil is one of the bad ones corn oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil, cottonseed, oil, Grapeseed, and ripe spring oil. Those are all the toxic ones, they’re safflower and sunflower could be healthy if they’re organic, cold pressed, but other than that, we want to make sure we avoid those. They’re very unstable, toxic fats.

Dr. Mindy 25:46
And how would I know? Like, if I go out to a restaurant, how would I know if those fats are in those? fids?

Ben Azadi 25:53
Yeah, good question. You would ask the waiter, the waitress? What oil do they use to cook with? and 95% of the time probably, it’s gonna be one of these bad fats. So what I do is I tell them that I’m allergic to these vegetable oils. And can you use an olive oil or an avocado oil or coconut oil or even butter or larger ghee. And most of the time they have that you just have to make the request. But you have to say you’re allergic because you got to get their attention that way. Just don’t say you don’t want them say you’re allergic and they’ll listen to you.

Dr. Mindy 26:23
I love that well said. Okay, so now you’re pulling out the the breads and the more refined carbohydrates, you’re changing the oils, you’re pulling out sugar. Okay, at that, is there a point at which I now start counting macros? Or can I just do this organically? Do I just keep working on the quality of my food? Where would I? Where would I go from that point?

Ben Azadi 26:47
Yeah, I like counting the macro carbohydrates, looking at carbohydrates. And you can use a free app, you know, chronometer, My Fitness Pal, whatever one you want to use, or you can just simply go on google and type in what you ate and kind of calculate it yourself. This is not something you have to do all the time. But just to get an idea of how much carbohydrates you’re having. So maybe not the first three or four days as you’re just making these small changes. But maybe after like five or six days, you want to see if you’re hitting that threshold, or 50 grams of carbs or less per day, you might want to pull out an app and log in your food just to make sure you’re hitting that marker. And you should be in ketosis. If you are less than 50 grams, and you’re eating more healthy fat and protein, you know, something else I would add is in the beginning to eliminate the snacking and just stick with your three meals a day. That could be a big difference as well and helping you getting into ketosis.

Dr. Mindy 27:37
And how would I know I’m in ketosis if I if I’ve only been like a sugar burner my whole life? How will I know that I’m in ketosis that’s like the, the magic the million dollar question that I hear.

Ben Azadi 27:50
Well, you can test for it. But let’s talk real quick about some like natural ways to know without testing, your your mental clarity is going to be improved, you’ll be losing weight as a side effect of getting healthier, you’ll have better sleep your skin will improve, you’ll be able to skip a meal and actually feel better. These are signs of fat adaptation. Now if you want to actually verify it, by testing, there are three ways to test ketones there is beta hydroxy butyrate, which is found in the bloodstream, the unique thing about bhB beta hydroxybutyrate crosses the blood brain barrier, and it’s a great source for the brain. There’s also acetone, which is expelled in the breath. And then there’s acetyl acetate, which is released in the urine. So there’s urine strips, there’s breath ketone meters, and there’s blood. ketone meters. I don’t like urine strips, it’s the cheapest one out there. And it’s the most popular because people it’s cheap. But if your body is very efficient and good at metabolizing, the ketones and using it, it’s not going to spill out in your urine. So it might just give you some bad reading some false readings, so I don’t use the urine strips or recommend them. acetone with a breath ketone meter could be accurate. If you get a good meter, I like biosense. But I’m going to focus on blood because you could get glucose and ketones. So I use keto Mojo. There’s some other apps out there machines out there. So you could test your it’s a finger prick machine, and you can get a result and within seconds, if you are point five or higher with your blood ketone meter, congratulations, you’re in ketosis, you’re burning fat, right. And the goal is not to chase ketones. The goal is to chase results. Just like we don’t want to have a whole bunch of glucose in the bloodstream. We don’t want a whole bunch of ketones because it means your body’s not really using it. So the sweet spot I’ve seen for ketones is 0.8 to 2.8. And then for glucose, you know, here’s something interesting I learned today and I want to I want to ask your question on this actual table here. Yeah, speaking of fasting glucose, like I said, For years, the optimal range is 70 to 90. I recently interviewed a gentleman today Dr. Anthony J. And he has shown research that if you’re fasting glucose, he shared research that if you’re fasting glucose 85 or higher, you 3x your risk of heart disease.

Dr. Mindy 30:05
And he wants it even lower.

Ben Azadi 30:07
He wants it between 70 and 85. He says, as you go to 85 or higher, you’re actually it’s actually toxic. Now I got to look at the research, I’m just sharing what he shared. So in general, I would say 70 to 90 is a good range to be for glucose. And then yeah, hitting hitting those ketone numbers.

Dr. Mindy 30:21
I mean, I would generally say on that, that it combine that with other markers of cardiovascular dysfunction, then maybe, but I think we already have and I know you see this in your world, but in my world, we see so many people chasing those numbers trying to get lower, trying to get into ketosis. And it’s almost like the obsession they had around the scale, they now have around the ketone meter. So if you had a family history of heart disease, if you know that your cholesterol, the numbers that you and I look at, not the total cholesterol and not just LDL, but the other numbers, and that’s, that’s a whole nother show. If and you know that your CRP is high and homocysteine is high, and we’ve got other issues. Insulin is already high, then yes, maybe. But I don’t want I wouldn’t want my resellers to be freaked out because now all of a sudden their blood sugar is at 90. Yeah. When that’s like better than most people.

Ben Azadi 31:24
So point Absolutely, yeah. It’s important. No, I agree with you, man. Do you want to look at the full picture? And not just be I didn’t mean to scare your audience. I was just Yeah, no,

Dr. Mindy 31:32
no, no, I think I you know, you the one thing that you and I, the world we come from is, is the multi therapeutic approach world. And that is the world where you don’t solve your health problems with one specific thing, you have to look at several things. Well, the same thing goes for testing. You don’t identify your health problems with one metric, you’ve got to look at several. So I could it like the clinical part of my brain could listen to that and go Yeah, okay, I can see lower blood sugar. Absolutely. It’s always going to be the best. But I also don’t want to send people into a fear state because now they’re at 87, which is still amazing, right? Yeah.

Ben Azadi 32:17
We’ll try therapeutic approach.

Dr. Mindy 32:19
Yeah. What do you think of this? The continuous glucose monitors? Are you guys using those in Quito camp?

Ben Azadi 32:25
I love them. I mean, I know you love them as well. They’re such a great tool to give you an idea of what food is doing even keto foods that you might think, would keep your glucose low, you might have a sensitivity to it. And it could be a trigger food or food that’s actually creating a problem. So it gives you a great feedback on stress. I know you had mentioned you had shared before what what goes what exercise could do what a poor night asleep could do. I like that even better than a fingerprint machine because it’s giving you 24 seven access. Yeah. And, man, if we could just have that readily available to everybody in the US. What a game changer that would totally

Dr. Mindy 32:59
change. Yep, it would be a total game changer. I have you worn one for a significant amount of time.

Ben Azadi 33:06
For 60 days. I want Yeah.

Dr. Mindy 33:08
What was your big aha for yourself? Well, what

Ben Azadi 33:11
exercise was interesting to see what exercise did, I saw some really interesting readings where in the beginning, it would go up like during the exercise the strength training component part of it the first 20 minutes of my workout, I would see like a 20 minute 30 point increase. And then as I finished with cardio would drop so I guess my body was like dumping some glucose to be used for energy. And then it was burning it and dropping back down. So that was super fascinating. I also saw that coconut whipped cream jacked up my blood sugar’s like 151 60 which it’s not even high in carbs and it’s keto friendly. Yeah. So that was super interesting as well. What about you? What are some Yeah,

Dr. Mindy 33:48
I cauliflower chips or anything cauliflower, the cauliflower pizza crusts, all the things that exists same thing, the grain free things I was doing, hoping that it was going to be lower carb actually had more of an impact on my blood sugar than something like a gluten free pizza or we get some ancient grain flowers that will make some like pizza pizza is typically what will make. I’m like, Oh my gosh, I actually was doing the cauliflower to get into ketosis. But what I learned is it was spiking my blood sugar higher.

Ben Azadi 34:20
So interesting. And you would have never known if you didn’t have the machine the advice? Yeah,

Dr. Mindy 34:24
exactly. And I actually also learned I do really well with protein. So if I do protein, my blood sugar stays the same or it drops. And that hadn’t always been the case. I had done the continuous glucose monitor about three years ago and every time I ate protein, I started to get a spike in my blood sugar. But this go around I would I did it for 30 days and I walked around and I was like carnivore loves me. Oh my gosh, I should be doing more carnivore. It loves me my blood sugar drops and I recently chatted with One of the leads at neutral cents, and which is one of the monitors that we recommend. And she said, usually if your cells are getting much healthier, you will process protein more efficiently. And you should see that your protein that your blood sugar drops with protein.

Ben Azadi 35:19
Interesting. Yeah, I like that idea. And I’ve also seen incorporating healthy fats at the same time of eating the proteins, when we have some natural fats also helps with the glucose response from the protein to

Dr. Mindy 35:30
Yeah, it’s fascinating, but I agree with you. I think everybody should get one of them. I tell my resellers get it, and then get it for at least 30 days and test every possible food that you can with it. So and we did it’s really fun. I also learned that wine loves me.

Ben Azadi 35:51
And I know the story here, you ask Carrie Jones, I know. Still got to be detoxified by the liver Monday.

Dr. Mindy 35:58
That’s right. I was like I brought her on. I was so excited. I was like, Oh my gosh, wine. Wine makes my glucose go down. Does that mean it gets me into ketosis better? And she’s like, yes, but your liver is probably trying to break it down. estrogenic can’t do it effectively. If you’re if you’ve got wine and you and I was like, Oh, all right.

Ben Azadi 36:18
And you drink high quality wine like a dry farm, right?

Dr. Mindy 36:21
Yeah, we only drink dry farm we have I feel really sad because we have a whole cellar full of really nice Napa wines that I don’t know if I’ll ever drink because they’re toxic. So yeah, yeah, it’s too bad. Nothing that I love to talk about more than wine. So I got to tell you about dry farm wines, which is my absolute favorite place to get wine from for many different reasons. One, they’re keto friendly. And you didn’t hear that wrong. They are literally keto friendly. They have no added sugars, no added toxins, and they will leave you feeling amazing the next morning. So go check out their website that not only is the wine incredible, but the people behind the wine are amazing. You guys know how I love people who are on a mission to serve the world. Well, Todd white and his crew are on a mission to help people drink healthy wines and enjoy the whole experience. So they taste amazing. And if you go to dry farm wines, calm, backslash, Dr. Mindy Pels, they will actually send you a bottle for a penny. So give it a try. Let me know what you think. And cheers to an incredible Wine Experience. So okay, so now we’ve got gratitude. We’ve got sleep, we’re in ketosis. Okay, tell me where the flex part comes in. Because I know that a lot of people want to jump into the flex right away. But do you believe we should learn how to get into ketosis first, and then flex second?

Ben Azadi 38:03
Yeah, exactly. I believe that’s the goal. So in my book, keto flex I talked about, I have my four pillar protocol, and it takes about 60 days six zero, before we start flexing. So we’re pretty disciplined, pretty strict. For the first 60 days, we’re getting fat adapted, and then keto adapted, which takes a little bit longer, which then your mitochondria now prefers the ketones, your body prefers the ketones over the glucose. So we do want to do that. We want to reset the metabolism, reset the hormones and get keto adapted. And that could take about 60 days. And you’ve done that you’ve earned the batch to start flexing, you know, we talked about our ancestors doing keto, well, they also flex all the time when they had tubers or honey or fruits. They didn’t look back of their tribe and say, we don’t eat that bro, or keto. That right, so they always flex in and out. There’s not one culture in the history of this world that stuck with the same diet long term. But you’re getting into trouble as he knows thinking with the same diet.

Dr. Mindy 38:59
Oh, yeah, we’ve all made that mistake,

Ben Azadi 39:01
right. So flexing happens after 60 days. Now, if at the 60 day mark, you still have insulin resistance and diabetes, or some sort of metabolic condition going on, you could probably stay in ketosis a little bit longer as you heal some of that metabolic damage. But that in the book, I talk about 60 days, and that’s the principle. It’s the diet variation principle that you speak about, where we intentionally flex adequate doses. And that could be one day, that could be two days. But the goal is to have a day where you’re activating insulin, you’re getting these healthy insulin spikes, as you mentioned all the time helps make these hormonal conversions. One of them being T for inactive thyroid to T three, that’s conversion needs insulin to make that conversion. So no fasting that day, we want more mtorr which is anabolic growth, and we want to have more carbs. So 100 to 200 grams on that day of healthy carbs is the goal.

Dr. Mindy 39:53
I love the timeline you give because that’s a big question we get a lot is how long should I stay in ketosis? How long, how long will it take me to get into ketosis? So what I’m hearing you say is 60 days, give yourself some grace, just practice these first principles and then move to the flax. And I have two questions on that when you move to the flax, then how often should you flex in and out of keto? Is there a specific amount of time? Like, should I be more in Quito? Half the week and half out? Is there any research on what’s best?

Ben Azadi 40:29
Yeah, so the way that I outline it is if you want to maintain your weight, or even put on some healthy way, or maybe you have just like five pounds left to go, then I like the 511 rule, which is just one day flexing out. If you have 10 to 20 pounds or so to lose at that point, then I like the four to one rule. If you have more than 2025 pounds to lose, then I like the 331 rule. Again, those are protocols that you always want to mix up and match. But for the next 30 days, I would follow one of those pillars.

Dr. Mindy 40:58
Okay, and just so we keep everybody up to speed on those on that terminology. I’m sure it’s in your book, I’m going to encourage everybody to go get your book. But tell me briefly what 511421 and 331 is.

Ben Azadi 41:12
Yeah, mostly your audience? No, because you speak about him a lot. But yeah, for sure, I’ll explain it. So the 511 is a seven day protocol. Five days out of the week, you’re practicing intermittent fasting, whatever your favorite schedule is. You’re in ketosis, eating keto friendly meals. So that’s the five. The one is a 24 hour water, fast dinner, dinner or lunch, the lunch sort of deal. The last one is your keto flex day, higher carbs, no fasting, have your breakfast, lunch and dinner, you’re flexing adequate osis. That’s the 511. That’s good for somebody who has about five pounds or less to lose or one they want to maintain their weight. The four to one is when same rules apply for days intermittent fasting, doing keto, but instead of the 124 hour fasts, you’re doing a 48 hour water fast. So you’re going like Monday night dinner to Wednesday night dinner or lunch or whatever you want to do. The one is the same thing. keto flex day, higher carbs, no fasting, the 331 rule separates it by having a three day water fast. As you know, it reboots the entire immune system, you get a lot of a toffee g a lot of fat loss. So it’s it’s 72 hour water fast in those three days, three days in a minute fasting with keto, and then that one flex day applies as well. Now you could split up the 72 water fast into 324 hour water fast. But if you want to maximize it, I would go with the straight 72 hour fast.

Dr. Mindy 42:29
Yeah, I like that. That’s a little bit of a variation than what I teach. And I like it. That’s that’s really it. Yeah, I like the three day water fast. I like that that is especially for people we’ve seen people with chronic conditions do really well with those three day water fasts, putting them in on a fairly regular basis. So now what if I get to the end of the 60 days? And I’m still not in ketosis?

Ben Azadi 42:53
Wow, well, hopefully, if we’ve done the right work, you’d be in there. But if you’re not, you know, toxicity, you know, it could be that you have a lot of neurotoxins, you have something going on with your stress bucket underlying condition where it’s causing, maybe an inflammatory response, where it’s not allowing your body to adapt to being a fat burner. So I would look at these hidden sources of stressors, these hidden stressors, so toxicities, silver, amalgam fillings, cavitations, in the mouth of multihomed, make sure your sleep is optimized. So I would explore those avenues. But that’s very uncommon for somebody to do 60 days of the protocol, because not only do I teach them the first protocol, which is getting you adapted to a fat adapted, we move into different fasting strategies in the second pillar, and then we do carnivore in the third pillar. So most people will be in ketosis. And if not, there has to be some sort of underlying stressor going on.

Dr. Mindy 43:49
Yeah, and I would agree that and it does happen. And I always say, I don’t want people to give up on keto, this energy system is a gift. So that’s why I want to make sure our audience listens and hears that that there’s another reason it doesn’t mean you failed. It doesn’t mean something’s wrong. There’s just another reason you got to go searching for So I love that.

Ben Azadi 44:10
Yeah, so I love You’re so right, because a lot of people they’re comparing themselves to somebody else who got into ketosis three days you lost 20 pounds, please don’t do that. comparison is the thief of joy. It’s gonna really rob you of pleasure, everything that you’re doing all the wins and all the challenges all of it is on the way not in the way it’s all part of the learning process. You know, it’s not about competing against Mindy or me. It’s about competing against who you were yesterday, you know, today than yesterday and just make those small tweaks years not months. You say it all the time, right many years, not months to get healthy. Just continue the path and stick and stay and it’s bound to pay.

Dr. Mindy 44:50
Yeah. Oh, I love it. You have some great one liners. I think that’s what should be on your shirts are all those one liners. I love it. Okay, let’s talk about carnivores because I know you’ve experimented a lot with Carnival for I was recently with you at dinner while you were on carnivore. So what I’m hearing that you just said is you would work to get into ketosis then you would practice 60 days of keto flex, and then you’re ready to try carnivore. No. So

Ben Azadi 45:17
carnivores before the keto flex, okay, it’s the third pillar right? After the first pillar getting adapted to burning fat. Then we move into the second pillar, which is fasting strategies. And the third pillar is called phase. We’re phasing out all carbs, all anti nutrients, oxalates and lectins that are commonly found in vegetables. Can they be bad for you? Yes. Do you want to avoid them forever? No, you want to just eliminate them for about 30 days in a book, I outline four levels to carnivore, my outline which level you want to do level one is the most extreme one more for like autoimmune cases, and then you have more flexibility as you go down the line. But it’s tremendous for eliminating these, these foods that actually create inflammation in your body that are fruits and vegetables that we’ve been taught are healthy, but they contain these anti nutrients and plants do not want to be eaten. They have developed these defense mechanisms. you’ve interviewed Paul Saladino.

Dr. Mindy 46:14
It’s such a crazy concept, right? It’s like, I think people have to hear it over and over again, I know that that is mind blowing. So explain a little bit why so that we don’t lose people in this moment, because there’s some magic in this carnivore diet. Yeah, I

Ben Azadi 46:29
mean, plants can’t run away, they can’t really defend themselves. So when predators came around, and they didn’t, if they didn’t have a defense mechanism, they just died, they go extinct, they lose their species. So they developed these, this internal defense mechanism, which are developed, they’re called plant toxins, anti nutrients, oxalates, lected, lectins, phytates, there’s over 50 of them that I’ve researched. And it’s the plants way of protecting itself. So when that predator ate the plant, it got sick, and I didn’t want to eat that plant again, and it saved the plant species. So there is an argument to be made that consuming, these plants actually create a positive stress and hormetic stress, which is true, but if we’re eating them all the time, and we already have leaky gut, from pesticides, herbicides, toxins, then it creates that down curve of the hormetic curve, and it leads to problems. So eliminating them for short term in the book I talked about doing it for 30 days, could have tremendous benefits on your gut and an inflammatory levels. Like for me Monday, I did it twice in the last year, 30 day protocol, 36 day protocol than a 40 day protocol. It did wonders for my energy levels, my heart rate variability, my sleep score, my autoimmune flare ups, I lost weight, my skin looked better. I healed my gut tremendously when you remove the plant toxins, and start working on your gut, and then we introduce them. That’s the way to do it to really benefit from carnivore

Dr. Mindy 47:56
and in the book, do you explain how to do carnivores? Because I do feel like Carnegie you know, if you think keto is overwhelming, I feel like carnivore for some people is really overwhelming.

Ben Azadi 48:06
Yeah, carnivore, it’s actually it’s it’s simple to do, but simple not to do because it’s kind of it’s restrictive, but it’s like eat this, don’t eat that. But then when you’re like in your day to day, it’s kind of weird deal your dinner table and you have fresh fruits and vegetables. So yeah, in the book I talked about, here’s level one, here’s what you’re going to eat. Here’s some supplements that help support you why we want to have collagen balance your amino acids maintaining glycine, here’s level two, here’s what you can eat. Yeah, so I have each level. And as you go down the levels, it’s more flexible. So I’ll briefly let’s just explain the levels. Yeah, please. Level one is just beef, red meat and salt. Right? It’s just like for severe autoimmune, it’s gonna get you the most results, but it’s a lot. It’s very restrictive. Level two introduces all animal proteins. So you could have the chicken, the poultry, the same thing, the base and the meats. And then level three, you can have all of the above plus some eggs and dairy. And level four, all the above plus some some plant plant sauces, like mushroom sauce, or some ketchup, something like that. So as you go down the line, it’s a little bit less restrictive.

Dr. Mindy 49:13
Yeah, I and I like that the tier system is nice because it gives you a little bit of flexibility. So Exactly. Now, what do you think you you have some great hacks for all of this, like, I love where this conversations gone, because hopefully people are getting really good foundational ideas. And I always believe we should start with the foundation first before we start tricking out our diet or tricking out some aspect of our lifestyle. And I feel like in the keto world, we have a lot of hacks out there. There’s like, you know, I was on a masterclass with Dave Asprey the other day and he was talking about spermidine and there’s a lot of different little like one off supplements you can take, do you feel like those are necessary and if so, what are some Some of the hacks that you’re like, yes, people should take this.

Ben Azadi 50:05
I do think they could help for sure. And you did a great job on that masterclass, I was watching it. Thank you. You’re welcome. They could help but you got to get the fundamentals down. First, you got to get the basics. And then once you got that mastered, you could add something like spermidine, or, you know, some basic, some basic supplements or hacks, if you want to call them that would be like magnesium and electrolytes and minerals, you speak about that all the time. Anything that could support this, this orchestra and the body, the hormones and the cell metabolism is going to be beneficial to you. The problem is that a lot of people don’t get that fundamental the framework down pat, yeah, and they take all the supplements, they don’t feel a damn thing, I used to do the same thing, because you got to take care of the fundamentals, and then it’ll work that much better. So there’s a time and place for it, but you got to take it step by step. You know, you’re my chapter 21 is not the same as your chapter one, right? You don’t do what it means or what Dave chapter 120 is, right? Your chapters doing, and then go on to the next chapter.

Dr. Mindy 51:03
Yeah, and I think that’s such an important point, because it’s easy to get distracted with those one off hacks. They’re great, but don’t lose sight of the Foundation, which is why again, I hope this conversation really gives people a platform in which to fall in love with this ketogenic energy system, and not get distracted. And then once you have a good foundation, go for it. Those things are phenomenal, but let’s not use them as distraction tools.

Ben Azadi 51:32
So Amen. Could be a good title to this podcast, falling in love with the keto genic energy system.

Dr. Mindy 51:39
I love it. Okay, done. That’s what it’s gonna be. I love it. Okay, now I have to because I know you and I live in very similar worlds. We get asked so many questions. So I have to ask you some of the questions that we see 1000s and 1000s of questions on social media every week about hurdles that people get stuck on obstacles with keto. So I want to know your opinion on them. Okay. First, I went on keto, and my cholesterol went through the roof. Why is that?

Ben Azadi 52:13
Well, if we’re just talking about total cholesterol, that’s a good thing. You know, more people die from heart disease with normal to low cholesterol than with high cholesterol. So we want cholesterol mixture, sex hormones in the cell membrane is made up of cholesterol, by the way, so did your doctor or healthcare practitioner look at your HDL and triglycerides and all that you already mentioned the inflammatory markers. So I would recommend you do some research, go check out maybe Dave Feldman, he has some great research, I have some videos, you have some videos, you want to get the full picture, not just cholesterol, but your inflammatory markers. If there’s high cholesterol, high triglycerides, low HDL and high inflammatory markers, then we got to make some changes. We want to remove the sugars and the vegetable oils and eat some clean, stable fats. But if you’re doing it the right way, and you know you’re eating clean foods, you’re not getting the jitters, you’re not getting the inflammatory fats and you have high cholesterol. I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on that unless you’re looking at the full picture.

Dr. Mindy 53:12
Okay, great. And where I’ve heard you talk on that topic. I’ve heard you talk about the bitters before, would we wait is that a time since the liver is what is is going to make cholesterol it’s also what’s going to make ketones is our Can you talk a little bit about the bitters and how that might help in that moment as well?

Ben Azadi 53:30
I’m so glad you asked the question because it’s it’s very important to incorporate bitters, especially in the first month. Because what that does is it helps stimulate the liver to produce bile and bile is necessary not just for detoxification purposes, which is very important, but also it helps you break down fat. And a lot of people who struggle on keto they just don’t feel good. digestive issues. It’s because they lack the proper bile flow to break down the fat so bitter for the liver. You know, Dr. Don Klum calls the liver, the soccer mom, Oregon, because she does so much for us. And it’s true. We want to support her. We’ve treated her so bad with medications and toxins and alcohol. So bitters helps support that liver. Some of my favorite sources of bitters are a rucola, ginger, ginger tea, dandelion tea, dandelion greens. Really organic shade grown coffee can help apple cider vinegar. I also like radishes, and what else do I like I like herbs like rosemary and thyme, and oregano, those are also good. So we want to just have those bitters on a daily basis. And if you’re really struggling even with those bitters, then maybe incorporating like an ox bile supplement can also help break down the fat.

Dr. Mindy 54:39
I love that. And recently at the seminars that I was, I heard you speak you listed a whole list out it was so good, it was so good. So I’m sure people can go to your Instagram and I hope you’ve done a square on that. Or maybe it’s in your book, but you have amazing list on those bitters.

Ben Azadi 54:55
It’s in the book for sure. And I have done a square in the past I got to repurpose it. Now that you’re Break it

Dr. Mindy 55:01
down. Does.

Ben Azadi 55:03
You know in the book, there’s in the back, I have what’s called my Kido camp blueprint, where it’s an aisle by aisle grocery guide for how to shop for keto. And I include the bitters in there for at the awesome.

Dr. Mindy 55:14
Okay, awesome. Okay, here, I know you’ve gotten this question. Um, I’ve been doing keto forever, and I’m gaining weight. Why is that?

Ben Azadi 55:24
Well, I would focus not on weight loss in the beginning, because the body does not lose weight to get healthy, it gets healthy to lose weight. The reason the number on the scale fluctuate is numerous. Right? If you have a monthly cycle, I’ve seen women actually retain more water, it’ll show up on the scale, you work out, you’re sore from workout, you retain more water, it’ll show up on the scale. Too many people put their worth on the number on the scale. It is ups It drives me nuts. It really

Dr. Mindy 55:53
yeah.

Ben Azadi 55:54
And I know it’s important to get the weight down and get to your goal weight, but the body doesn’t work that way, you got to get healthy first. So what I recommend is give it a good seven weeks of a good effort, you know, following the protocols, pay attention to non scale victories, how do your clothes fit? How are your energy levels, what about your skin, you have more confidence, maybe get some body fat, done your measurements and then fell on the scale for seven weeks, and you’re going to be in the right direction. Now if you don’t see the scale budge, even after seven weeks, going back to before, for the person who can’t get into ketosis, there has to be an underlying stressor, toxicity could be the number one thing here. Because when your body’s very smart, it wants to survive. That’s the number one priority. And if it knows it has all these toxins in your fat cells, and if you’re going to shrink and burn those toxins, and those toxins will go into your bloodstream that could hurt you. So in order to protect you, it could slow down the fat loss. So you got to explore toxicity there.

Dr. Mindy 56:51
Yeah, well said well said Okay, what about sleep, I go on keto. And now I I’m having trouble going to sleep. Is there anything I can do? That’s common, you know, there’s

Ben Azadi 57:01
a few things you can do. You could have one to two teaspoons of raw honey right before bed that can help for the first seven days, not something you want to do all the time. I also like banana tea. Banana tea is keto friendly. And what you want to do is grab a whole banana make sure it’s organic. And leave the peel on just cut off the ends and then boil that banana with the peel on with a couple of two cups of water and let it boil until the pupil starts to turn brown a little bit. The peel of the banana has more micronutrients, magnesium potassium than the banana itself. That will seep into the water, pour that water into a cup and drink it. That could be a great way to get to bed. It’s like nature’s NyQuil.

Dr. Mindy 57:41
Well, I’m gonna try that do it. Does it have to be a green banana? Banana? Does it matter? The ripeness of the banana? Yeah. more yellow, the better. Okay, so like in the middle? Not Brown? Not green. All right. Yeah, perfectly. And organic would probably make the most sense,

Ben Azadi 57:58
please. Yes. Okay, I

Dr. Mindy 58:00
just want to make sure we’re clear on that. So, okay, ah, my hair is falling out. I’ve been doing keto. And now my hair is falling out.

Ben Azadi 58:08
Yeah, you’ve got some good videos on this, I just go watch Mindy’s video. But I’ll add to the conversation. When you lose weight. It’s a stress to the body. And when your body goes through stress, it will prioritize your organs and more important things, not necessarily your hair. So you could see some hair loss, but it could grow back stronger and better than ever before. So if this is happening in the beginning, this might be what’s happening. There could also be a mineral electrolyte law. So increasing our minerals, many men do you talk about that all the time, increasing your minerals, getting some high quality salt, and then making sure you’re getting some collagen and protein could help regrow that hair back.

Dr. Mindy 58:50
Okay, here’s, here’s my next one. And I know you that you know the answer to that to this. I mean, our audience does, but you may have a new twist on it. Do men and women need to do keto differently?

Ben Azadi 59:04
Absolutely. Yes. As Mindy preaches all the time. In the book, I have a chapter chapter 12. All about how to do it differently. And it’s a credit to you. I gave you credit in that chapter. But yes, of course, a cycling women even a postmenopausal woman needs to do it differently than men. Now in the beginning, for those first 60 days, you could follow that protocol and be strict but after that, when you do the flexing and the variations. Yeah, you got to do it differently.

Dr. Mindy 59:28
Okay, Okay, awesome. Can kids do keto?

Ben Azadi 59:33
Well, the interesting thing about kids is that they all did keto in the past. However, I think kids naturally go in and out of ketosis if they’re very active, and they’re not eating a standard American diet. I wouldn’t intentionally put my kid on a ketogenic, like strict protocol, but I would for sure, make sure they’re eating clean fats, not overdoing it with carbs and they’re, if they’re so active, they will naturally flex in and out of ketosis.

Dr. Mindy 59:56
Okay, what about pregnant women can pregnant we talk about about breastfeeding. But could pregnant women do keto?

Ben Azadi 1:00:04
I would work with your doctor for sure. I’ve seen some pregnant women do it in the beginning, I wouldn’t advise to it. You’re in a growth phase, you want a lot more nutrients and a caloric surplus. So I wouldn’t recommend it for pregnant women. No.

Dr. Mindy 1:00:18
Yeah, it’s I that’s what I always say to work on your microbiome. I mean, up your good fats, but work on your microbiome. What about diabetics? Is it safe for for? For type one? Let’s start with type one. Is it safe for type one diabetics to do keto?

Ben Azadi 1:00:35
In my in my I have a story in the book keto flex from one of my members, David, who is a type one diabetic, and he did the protocols and he benefited him tremendously. Of course, he worked with his doctor, he monitored his glucose and ketones because you don’t want your glucose to drop below 50. You don’t want your ketones to go above a point oh, you don’t you don’t want to get into ketoacidosis, which is a concern for type one diabetics. But if you do it the right way, it could tremendously benefit somebody who’s type one diabetic, somebody is using their insulin, what, seven, eight times 10 times a day, you could drop that down to four or five times so it’ll help your quality of life for sure.

Dr. Mindy 1:01:10
And what about type two? anything different that type two diabetics need to know

Ben Azadi 1:01:15
they still need to monitor their numbers very important. They can be a little bit more aggressive. And they would they typed I would argue that every single type two diabetic needs to do some variation of keto and fasting to heal that lifestyle disease.

Dr. Mindy 1:01:29
A great a great, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes like give me two or three of the biggest mistakes people make when they come to keto?

Ben Azadi 1:01:39
Hmm biggest mistakes people make when they come to keto coming to it for the weight loss, and losing, they’re distracted when it comes to the health benefits, because keto, as I mentioned, is not a diet, it’s a metabolic process. So change that around focus on health, cellular health and look at keto as a health tool, and the weight will come off as a side effect. That’s number one. Number two is the make that you’re in ketosis for too long, you know, they fall in love with it, vegan carnivore, whatever it is keto, they fall in love with it, and they stick with it too long. So that could create some problems. We don’t want to stay in ketosis long term, because it could affect the thyroid, it could affect your sex hormone binding globulin. It can also slow down fat loss. So that’s a big mistake right there.

Dr. Mindy 1:02:22
Yeah. And that was actually my next question is How would you know you’ve been in too long.

Ben Azadi 1:02:27
It’ll depend on your unique situation. So again, if you’re diabetic insulin resistance, metabolic damage, then you’re you have a longer shelf life, in regards to how long you should be in ketosis, it might be six to nine months before you get out somebody who’s just, you know, healthier, they just want to improve their metabolic health. I like you know, a three to five month approach before you start flexing in general. So I don’t I guess you could pay attention to some of your lab markers, maybe your thyroid health. If you start to see some of your results. Slow down. You think you need more keto? The answer? Usually, you need less keto? Yeah, yeah, it’s

Dr. Mindy 1:03:05
really true. And it’s a subtle there. It’s like it’s the hormetic stress idea, right? Like you’re doing great, you’re doing great. And all of a sudden, you’re not doing great. So you just have to really pay attention like that. I would totally agree on that. Okay, let’s see, I’ve got five on it finishes up with five of my favorite questions. Some of them are keto related. Some of them aren’t. But let’s start with the rapid fire five. So the first one is what is the one food that helps you with this whole ketogenic energy system that you could not live without?

Ben Azadi 1:03:41
olive oil, real fresh pressed cold, processed olive oil? I could drink it like it’s a water. I love olive oil.

Dr. Mindy 1:03:50
Okay, awesome. Okay, what about I know you have a morning routine? So what Tell us about your morning routine? And one question that I know you probably get all the time and we just got to say it to the world is what is your Do you drink coffee in the morning? What what’s in your morning coffee? Like? Do you use it as a tool for ketosis?

Ben Azadi 1:04:10
Yeah, my morning routine is extensive. So I don’t know if we have time to go over all of them.

Dr. Mindy 1:04:14
Give me that give me the quick version, right?

Ben Azadi 1:04:16
I waited an hour and a half. Well, I wait two hours before I check my phone. So I’m not looking at my phone. First thing I’m doing my gratitude journaling. I’m writing down my goals. I one of my feet hit the ground. I’ve gotten into the habit of saying today is going to be a great day I say it out loud and my girlfriend says it with me. I walk my dog, get some sunshine. I go to my rooftop here at Quito camp HQ. And I’m reading a book drinking coffee about an hour and a half after that’s the best time to have it. I know I’ve mentioned this to you before. That’s when the cortisol begins to drop down. So I throw in some healthy fats. Like one tablespoon of grass fed ghee. I throw in a little bit of some MCT oil and some sea salt in my coffee, read a book and then I do some Zen. That’s my morning routine.

Dr. Mindy 1:05:00
How long does that take you?

Ben Azadi 1:05:03
So I wake up at 645. I don’t start my day till 9am.

Dr. Mindy 1:05:07
That’s amazing. And just so everybody knows, because you and I have had this conversation about coffee. Why do you wait an hour or so before you have your coffee?

Ben Azadi 1:05:15
Because if you have it first thing in the morning, cortisol is already activated and high, and it’ll pretty much render the caffeine somewhat useless. So you get the most bang for your buck, but an hour and a half after you wake up, cortisol naturally begins to go in decline, then you have your coffee, you’ll get you’ll get much more sustainable energy from it.

Dr. Mindy 1:05:33
Yeah, that’s amazing. Okay, the book that has changed your life that you think everybody should read?

Ben Azadi 1:05:41
That’s a tough question, Mindy.

Dr. Mindy 1:05:43
And you’re not allowed to say the menopause reset?

Surely there’s

Unknown Speaker 1:05:53
what? The reset factor?

Unknown Speaker 1:05:55
Yeah, the reset factor. There you go. I don’t think that was the

Ben Azadi 1:05:59
you know, anything from Dr. Wayne Dyer. So he changed my life with his books. He has so many books out there. The erroneous zone, I guess that book, the erroneous zone, it really helps you understand your thoughts? And how your thoughts? It’s your greatest power. And that’s the ability to choose your thoughts. And if you could change your thoughts will change your life. So be aronia zone by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

Dr. Mindy 1:06:24
Yeah, and it also depends on when you hear the read the book, right? It’s like different books have different impacts at different points of your life. So if you could spend the day with anybody on the planet, and I’m gonna say alive. Anybody alive on the planet right now? Who would it be?

Ben Azadi 1:06:48
I would love to spend the day with Elan Musk, I want to just get in his mind and ask him, you know, do you really believe that we have to live on Mars? Like what? What’s going on? I just would love to just pick his brain for an entire day. That’s why I would choose.

Dr. Mindy 1:07:01
Yeah, my I have a patient who is on their part of the law wing of Tesla. And she got to have a meeting with him. And so we had a fun discussion about what it was like to meet him face to face. And supposedly he’s quite quite an individuals, though. Yeah, I would do that. That’s pretty good. I love that. Okay, last question. And this is what I think is the most important question to ask anybody, which is, if you could get one message in any in everybody’s brain on the planet, if you had one message for the world, what would it be?

Ben Azadi 1:07:40
The word responsibility, responsibility, that is your ability to respond. And that’s in every area of your life, your ability to respond to what’s going on in the world, when it comes to the virus, the vaccine, your ability to respond to what people say to you, your ability to respond to challenges in your life. But your ability to respond is going to determine your happiness is going to determine your health. And it wasn’t until I took full responsibility that I changed my life, it’s almost impossible to say those words I am responsible and still feel angry and resentful. So taking ownership and responsibility is the start of dramatic change is the start of transformation in it and it really was a start for me myself.

Dr. Mindy 1:08:25
Yeah, amazing. Amazing. I couldn’t agree more that that was well said. Okay, how do people find you where they get your book? When’s your book coming? out? How can people engage with your information? Thank you, Mindy.

Ben Azadi 1:08:37
You’re such an amazing host. I love how you reiterate what you learn from me and you kind of summarize what we spoke about. You’re really good at what you do. And I just love you, Mindy. So thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:47
Thank you. The book,

Ben Azadi 1:08:50
you know, flex I believe it’s gonna be the greatest book out there ever written on keto. If you wanted to just read one book on keto and nothing else. This is it right here. 311 pages. keto gold, right back here. You see Dr. Mindy pelts wrote me an amazing

Unknown Speaker 1:09:09
it’s gone because of the information you put in there.

Ben Azadi 1:09:12
Right. Well, your endorsement means so much to me. And Dr. Palmer wrote the foreword. I mean, Dr. Fung wrote a testimonial, Megan, Megan Ramos and a few other amazing leaders. So the book can be found over at keto flex book calm, you can pre order right now. It’s going to be on full release on April 12. Love for you to get it by for somebody else, gift it to somebody. I really put so much effort and blood sweat and tears over two years writing the book and I’m really happy with it. Yeah, it’s gonna be available on Kindle and on paperback and then eventually audible. And then if you want to just check me out. keto cam podcast. Mindy has been on there two times. We’ll get her back again. That’d be a great resource. And then the keto cat YouTube channel, of

Unknown Speaker 1:09:51
course.

Dr. Mindy 1:09:52
Yeah, you have a great YouTube channel. And I just think the more more of us that are out sharing these principles. It’s like, you know, you think living on Mars is bizarre. You know, I think for some people trying to go keto feels like on Mars. And so we’ve got to just keep getting this information getting to people. So thank you, Ben, for everything you’re doing. And you guys go check out his YouTube, go get his book and just dive into this energy system because it really wants to heal you. So thank you, Ben, appreciate everything that you’re doing for the world. Hey, resellers, I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews. And those of you that have left me comments on iTunes. I just greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you’re enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I’ve learned in just interacting with so many people’s that we’ve really lost the art of deep conversations. And for me, the reseller podcast stands for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life about mindset in a way that we may not be getting on social media or in mainstream media. And so I just want to say give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me, because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it’s impacting your life. So please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make this podcast more customized to you to make it better. We are now officially in season two. And we are working to bring you the best conversations that health influencers have that mindset changers can give and to really deliver you something that you’re not able to get anywhere else. So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say my YouTube from the bottom of my heart. I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you and let’s get healthy together.