5 Fasting Myths with Ben Azadi, FDN-P

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I have on Ben Azadi who is the founder of Keto Kamp; a global brand bringing awareness to ancient healing strategies such as the keto diet and fasting. In this episode, we unpack five myths around fasting, ketosis, and how this is an ancient practice. I LOVE Ben's style and mindset around this topic and I think you will too.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• It's not a diet
• You don't need to eat so much fat
• What is the 2-2-2-2 rule?
• How to support the liver when eating more fat
• What testing/lab work is needed?
• Keto friendly foods are not the same as health friendly foods
• Oils that impair mitochondria
• The process of keto is different for everyone
• It is not "keto forever"
• Heart rate variability (HRV) as a measure of the adaptability of the nervous system
• Keto and fasting for cancer
• Continuous glucose monitor (CGM) vs Oura ring

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ABOUT GUEST:
In 2008, Ben Azadi went through a personal health transformation of shredding 80 pounds of pure fat. Ever since, Ben Azadi, FDN-P, has been on a mission to help 1 billion people live a healthier lifestyle.
Ben is the author of four best-selling books, including his latest Keto Flex. Ben has been the go-to source for intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet since 2013.
Ben is the host of a top 15 podcast, The Keto Kamp Podcast and YT channel by the same name.

Freebie from Ben: Seed Oil Allergy Card http://www.seedoilcard.com 

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: www.benazadi.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/thebenazadi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benazadi/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thebenazadi
YouTube: www.youtube.com/ketokamp
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebenazadi
Podcast: The Keto Kamp Podcast 

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife 
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Christa Biegler: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down. We're over medicated and underserved. At The Less Stressed Life, we're a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories.

[00:00:26] Christa Biegler: Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home. 

[00:00:44] Christa Biegler: All right. Today in the Lester's life, I have Ben Azadi and in 2008, which feels so long ago at this point, but really not that far long ago, he went through a personal health transformation of shedding 80 pounds of pure fat. Ever since Ben has been on a mission to help 1 billion people living a healthy lifestyle.

[00:01:01] Christa Biegler: He's the author of four bestselling books and including his latest KetoFlex, which I do like that name now knowing that that's like your version of carb cycling, which we'll talk about Ben has been the go to source for intermittent fasting and ketogenic diet since 2013.

[00:01:15] Christa Biegler: And he's the host of a top 15 podcast, the Keto camp podcast and YouTube channel by the same name. Now, last week I got to be interviewed by Ben on his podcast and I little did I know, I really like Ben, so I'm excited to have him here. I'm excited to know him and I'm excited to talk about this other area that I don't even foray into too much on this podcast.

[00:01:34] Christa Biegler: And maybe it's because I have my own history with it. Maybe, maybe not. And I'm okay. Like, I'm okay with it. We're going to talk through some of these issues, problems or like who it's really for. And maybe, maybe not for yet. So welcome to the show, Ben. 

[00:01:49] Ben Azadi: Thank you for having me. I had so much fun with you on my show last week, totally geeked out and learned so much from you.

[00:01:54] Ben Azadi: So I am grateful for the collaboration today. 

[00:01:58] Christa Biegler: Yeah. So I listened to some of your podcasts before our interview today. And I do think you have so many good ones, but I think let's just get started with either mistakes or maybe even myths, which could, those could kind of like commingle a little bit. Let's just kind of get started with that.

[00:02:15] Christa Biegler: And I've got lots of other questions that will end up being unpacked through that. So if you have some mistakes . what I want to say about this is people are familiar with ketosis at this phase. As a dietitian, we originally learned about ketosis as a medical diet for epilepsy, especially in pediatrics, right?

[00:02:32] Christa Biegler: Doing this really crazy specific measuring of the food situation. And then in 2016, 2017, I was working in a intermittent fasting and ketosis type program online as a behind the scenes person. And then I think that's when it was really, I feel really at its heyday. Maybe you would have different feelings and then kind of here we are.

[00:02:52] Christa Biegler: So people are familiar with it, but what I was thinking about before this, conversation is that, well, you've got a good niche here because I think it can be easy, but I think there's a lot of education, to doing it well. Otherwise, I think you can really crash and burn, unfortunately, if you do this wrong.

[00:03:08] Christa Biegler: And so I think there's a lot of opportunity for education. And even if you kind of know what you're doing to get a little bit fancier with the education, like improving the food quality, because if you're consuming a larger amount of fat and or proteins, then the quality of that may make a really big difference, which I know you're into too.

[00:03:23] Christa Biegler: So let's just start with unpacking mistakes. Or myths around fasting and ketosis. 

[00:03:30] Ben Azadi: Yeah, I would love to. So I got into keto and fasting at the same time back in 2013. I was actually transitioning away from a plant based diet, a vegan diet for a year and a half. I remember back in 2012, I read the China study book and back then I didn't really understand how to read studies.

[00:03:47] Ben Azadi: So the book kind of duped me into doing a plant based diet. So I did it, but, it didn't work out for me and I was pretty dogmatic about it when I did it as well, but I didn't feel well and I did some lab work it verified how I felt so eventually 15 months after that, I ended up transitioning away from a plant based diet.

[00:04:05] Ben Azadi: And I was still exploring. Okay, what else is out there? There was paleo. Keto was out there. But to your point that you made, it wasn't at its peak yet. I do think 2016, 2017, it did peak it's still popular, but it's not as popular as it was in those years. But I did come across some articles and some books about a ketogenic diet.

[00:04:23] Ben Azadi: And of course, a lot of the research came out of the 1920s as it was used for epileptic seizures and the effectiveness of them and then the drugs were, created. So they kind of forgot about the dietary approach in general. But I discovered a lot of things about keto. Let's start with the myths, right?

[00:04:38] Ben Azadi: A lot of people look at keto as a diet and why that is accurate. I don't view it that way. I don't teach it that way. I view keto as a metabolic process. And when we think about our ancestors, and I don't think we should do everything our ancestors do. Our ancestors all went through this metabolic process called ketosis because they didn't have food available all the time.

[00:04:57] Ben Azadi: And if they did, let's say it was the winter, they didn't have a lot of carbohydrates in general available to them. So by default, they had to burn through their sugar reserves, their glycogen stores. And after that, what's the next option? Well, You got to burn some body fat, that body fat is sent to your liver, ketones are produced, and that was used as a survival mechanism to help their brain function to stay alive and alert so they could kill their prey and survive.

[00:05:21] Ben Azadi: So thankfully we have this process and it was part of the reason why we survived back then. Now we fast forward and we see, that study that came out from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2018, showing that about 88% of American adults are metabolically unhealthy, looking at different health metrics.

[00:05:38] Ben Azadi: That was before COVID, right? It probably got worse. And there's some recent studies showing that it did get worse. So I categorize these individuals that are metabolically unhealthy as essentially being in a keto deficiency. They're just burning glucose, burning sugar, which is, I'm not opposed to that.

[00:05:54] Ben Azadi: But when you're stuck burning sugar and burning glucose, and you don't have this metabolic flexibility, You've forgotten the other pathway of burning fat. It can be problematic. It could create inflammation. It could create reactive oxygen species, and it could create things like type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance, etc.

[00:06:09] Ben Azadi: So what I do is I teach these individuals, and that's the majority of the people that come to me, those who are obese, those who have high blood pressure, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, PCOS. And I get them into this metabolic process of ketosis and I get them there in a very efficient way. We have a gradual way to lean into it.

[00:06:27] Ben Azadi: But the first myth, and I'll talk about, the way I do it, but the first myth would be that it's not necessarily a diet. It's more of a metabolic process and it's not new. It's just nuanced. It's just maybe new to some people. When we look at it that way, we could understand that we're designed to use this metabolic process, not all the time, but from time to time.

[00:06:44] Ben Azadi: And an example of that, Krista's babies, right? I looked into some of the research regarding babies that are breastfed. And to my surprise, I saw that babies actually naturally are going in and out of ketosis when they're breastfed. We know that breast milk has saturated fat and cholesterol, and then the argument is, but there's sugar in breast milk.

[00:07:02] Ben Azadi: And that is true. And the baby is so efficient at using that sugar that it naturally goes in and outta the state of cosis. And I asked the question why, and I believe it's because it helps the neurological development of that baby's brain. The brain is mostly fat, so essentially born into ketosis.

[00:07:17] Ben Azadi: So our burning fat is our primal birthright. But we wean off the breast milk, we're fed a high sugar formula feed, and then we're eating high carbohydrates every two to three hours. And essentially we forgot this process. So the myth is that it's a diet, but it's really a metabolic process. And I just want to teach people to tap into it and then tap out of it.

[00:07:35] Ben Azadi: And I'll teach a little bit of how I do that. 

[00:07:37] Christa Biegler: Yeah. All right. So metabolic process, what's the next myth or issue surrounding how to fasting at this juncture in time? 

[00:07:46] Ben Azadi: Yeah, so the next myth is that you have to eat a whole bunch of fat. While that can be true, you can do that and get into ketosis.

[00:07:52] Ben Azadi: I don't actually recommend that, especially for people who are overweight because your body's gonna have to burn the calories from the fat versus the body fat. So in the beginning, I do, the first seven days, I do look at it as a high fat diet if you want to look at it as a diet. So it is a high fat nutrition plan where we're teaching, we're gradually decreasing their carbs while we're increasing healthy dietary fat, healthy dietary protein.

[00:08:15] Ben Azadi: And we're getting their body familiar with burning fatty acids instead of sugar. As we make that shift, We check blood ketones to make sure that person is, looking at their ketones. It's 0. 5 or higher, beta hydroxybutyrate, which is millimoles per liter. We use a keto mojo once they make that shift.

[00:08:31] Ben Azadi: And I see they're in ketosis. We actually lower the fat and we focus on protein and the carbohydrates are still low because we want to keep them in ketosis. And now it's not a high fat diet. It's more, okay, let's allow the metabolism to burn in body fat and not all this excess dietary fat. You have a lot of people doing keto who are putting butter in their coffee or adding all these extra oils to hit a certain percentage.

[00:08:53] Ben Azadi: If you go on Dr. Google, you're going to see it needs to be like 85% fat. That's not necessarily true. Once you're metabolically flexible or in ketosis, then you could get the fat from your body fat versus the dietary fat. So that's the second myth right there. Go ahead. I have another one, but 

[00:09:08] Christa Biegler: Well, I was going to stop and talk a little bit about getting into ketosis because you just mentioned that first week you kind of do high fat.

[00:09:14] Christa Biegler: I heard you talking about this two to two method, and then also one of the negative things. So there's, again, a lot of education about doing this kind of, let's call it the right, maybe a right way. Let's try to make this a more optimal situation. Cause it can kind of head South. If you don't have good electrolytes, I put myself into.

[00:09:35] Christa Biegler: A stupid position, once upon a time, also, I was like, oh, my gosh, on the floor. I was like, I didn't need electrolytes. I am not. Okay. So talk a little bit about kind of prep. What happens if people just are like, I'm just going to like, go into a once a day fast or whatever you're talking about. Oh, let's actually prime ourselves or let's get a little bit more ready to become metabolically flexible or burn fat for fuel instead of carbs for fuel. So talk about the two, two, two, and talk about the issues around electrolytes. Cause we're talking about this as if people know what we're talking about a little bit. So I want to make sure I acknowledge those things. 

[00:10:08] Ben Azadi: Yeah, no, great question. So yeah, let's talk about that. 

[00:10:11] Ben Azadi: If somebody goes from eating 300 grams of carbs per day, which the average American is doing. And they drop that to under 50 grams per day, which is for most people, that's what you got to do to get into ketosis. And they do it within like a day or two. That's a dramatic shift.

[00:10:25] Ben Azadi: So what happens is you have your body lowering insulin because you're lowering your carbohydrate intake, which is good. But it's a dramatic lowering of the insulin. So as you lower insulin in that effect, you're going to lose all this excess body weight. And that is also good because you're going to feel lighter and look lighter.

[00:10:42] Ben Azadi: But here's the problem. The kidneys also go through this sort of diuresis process where it sheds all of these electrolytes. And if that happens fast, to your point, Krista, It's not going to feel good. People call it the keto flu. It's really more accurately described as carbohydrate withdrawal symptoms because you've done it too fast.

[00:10:58] Ben Azadi: So what we want to do, number one, is have a gradual decrease in your carbs while increasing those electrolytes. And part of that two, two, two, two rule has electrolytes in it. So I'll explain what that rule is for the first seven days until we get that person to ketosis. I have them follow this rule, which is every day, starting day one, as you're lowering your carbs slowly.

[00:11:18] Ben Azadi: You consume two tablespoons of olive oil or avocado oil, two tablespoons of grass fed butter or grass fed ghee, two tablespoons of coconut oil or MCT oil, and then two teaspoons of sea salt where you get electrolytes and minerals. And as you do that, it should prevent those symptoms. As a matter of fact, taken a few thousand students through this process, and if they follow that structure correctly with a gradual decrease with the 2 2 2 2 rule, that switch.

[00:11:46] Ben Azadi: I don't start fasting yet. And here's why the person, like you said, goes and does a 24 hour fast. And that is another way to get into ketosis. But if you don't have the ability to burn fat and produce ketones, it's going to feel awful. If you want to go do CrossFit, but you've been sitting on your butt for 10 years and you go do a CrossFit workout, you're going to hurt yourself.

[00:12:04] Ben Azadi: It's going to feel awful. It's going to look awful. So you want to build up the fasting muscle. And I think one of the best ways to do it. is to get fat adapted because as you lower your glycogen stores and burn through that during the fast and then you have the ability to tap into fat and produce ketones, those ketones fuel the brain and it tells your body you're okay, you got ketones coming, you're using ketones, everything's going to be fine, you're going to feel good.

[00:12:27] Ben Azadi: But if you don't have the ability to produce ketones and you try to force the fast, your brain is going to send your body some signals like glucose is dropping in the brain. It's dropping in the body. Go get carbohydrates. Even if you have great willpower, your body will create glucose from gluconeogenesis.

[00:12:42] Ben Azadi: So I don't think that's the ideal way to do it. I think it's important to get a variation of fat adaptation and then pair it with a fasting routine. And that's a great one to punch. 

[00:12:52] Christa Biegler: Okay. 

[00:12:53] Christa Biegler: I realized I have multiple questions about these first two myths. So first of all, my functional medicine approach where I'm like, okay, optimizing liver, optimizing gut functional, which ketosis and fasting can be assistive with, but sometimes is tricky, which we'll get to later.

[00:13:07] Christa Biegler: So one of my questions is, as you are adding this fat, are you ever running into issues? people without a gallbladder with sludgy bile. And that's like the first thing that comes up. Anything that pops up sometimes, I mean, even skin manifestations could pop up because skin's just this organ that's safe to clear things out.

[00:13:24] Christa Biegler: So do you ever see anything like that? Or do you kind of just, educate around that in advance? 

[00:13:28] Ben Azadi: Yeah, it's a great question. You talked a lot about the liver on my podcast. It's actually the number one struggle that I see people face when they do keto and that is their liver is sluggish and they're I call it the soccer mom liver because it does everything like a soccer mom, right? 

[00:13:42] Ben Azadi: So one of those processes, of course, is producing bile. And as you eat more fat, you need to produce more bile to break it down. But if that liver is so sluggish and it's been beat up from alcohol, medications, high processed foods, it's going to have a hard time keeping up.

[00:13:55] Ben Azadi: So we emphasize a lot of bitters right from the start. We emphasize things like arugula, high quality coffee. If they process coffee well, we utilize apple cider vinegar, lemon mimes. I talk about rosemary, thyme, and basil to season their food. So bitters to stimulate that bioflow. Now, if that doesn't do the trick, then I might recommend like ox bowel supplementation, et cetera.

[00:14:17] Ben Azadi: If they don't have a gallbladder, they're going to have a different approach, because as you know, Krista, the gallbladder is that storage house, the liver is what produces the bile. So they don't have the storage house, but they're still producing bile. But now the liver has to Make up for the absence of the gallbladder.

[00:14:31] Ben Azadi: So if we start really introducing all these fats and they don't have that storage house, probably going to get diarrhea, probably going to get some stomach issues. So we actually do something different for those individuals. We definitely have them on an ox bowel supplement. We might be doing other things to support the liver, like coffee enemas, a phosphatidylcholine push, castor oil packs, et cetera, and we'll spread their fats out.

[00:14:53] Ben Azadi: So we actually do smaller meals more frequently until that liver. Adapts to the amount of fats they're having. And that might take 21 days to 28 days, depending on the person, but we actually spread those fats out. And they might not do the full on 2 2 2 rule. They might cut that in half with the exception of the salt.

[00:15:09] Christa Biegler: Are you recommending blood labs, baseline, and then later? Because you can probably see pretty dramatic shifts in that sometimes. And I feel like your population might actually have some of those common labs that would be out of range. And then does everyone purchase a ketone monitor? It sounds like just, 

[00:15:23] Ben Azadi: well, I recommend it. Not everybody, has in their budget, but most people do and they'll purchase it. And that's something that me and my coaches look at. We do recommend a test that we utilize called a metoxy test and we have pretty much all of our students that are enrolling now take this test in the beginning and then about three months in and metoxy, it's a urine test they do at home.

[00:15:42] Ben Azadi: It's looking at malon de aldehyde, which is where looking at the cell membrane health and it's looking at the amount of inflammation and some studies suggest it's about 50 times more accurate than a blood test looking specifically at some membrane inflammation. So the darker the vial turns.

[00:15:58] Ben Azadi: Because you collect your urine, put that in the vial. The vial has an agent, wait a minute, and then it turns a color. The darker it turns, the more inflammation you have in that membrane. And a lot of people are on the darker end when they start. And it's super cool to have them retest and see that drop, along with asking them how they're feeling and seeing how their symptoms have improved.

[00:16:16] Ben Azadi: Along with that, we do recommend other tests like HSCRP. We recommend like a full thyroid panel. We recommend, of course, A1C and fasting insulin. Those dramatically improve, especially fasting insulin. Some people want to go a little bit deeper and do things like a C peptide looking at their beta cells in their pancreas that dramatically improves. But not everybody has that in those labs for their budget. The metoxy is something we do add as a part of our program when they start. 

[00:16:42] Christa Biegler: Yeah. That's what I was wondering. If you send that out to them, I feel like Daniel Pampa does a good job, really promoting that test. And then, but to like, go find it on your own.

[00:16:51] Christa Biegler: It's kind of like I don't feel like it's easy to find you can buy like a whole bunch of them if you're a practitioner, but otherwise just trying to order. 

[00:16:56] Ben Azadi: You got to be a practitioner to order it. That's the thing. 

[00:16:58] Christa Biegler: Right. Right. 

[00:16:59] Christa Biegler: Do you have them do it? So you have them do a before and later with that one?

[00:17:03] Ben Azadi: I have them do it right before they start. And then they take a photo of the results and they either, share it with the coach or share it with me on a group coaching call. And then I have them do it about 60 days in. So sometimes 90 days in, but you know, two to three months in. And we can see that shift, especially, and we can talk more about this, especially as they remove these inflammatory, like seed oils and vegetable oils.

[00:17:21] Ben Azadi: We see a dramatic shift in, those scores. And then Dr. Pompa is actually my mentor. I love that guy. I was just on a call with him an hour ago, so he's doing some great things with his program as well. 

[00:17:31] Christa Biegler: Yeah, cool. 

[00:17:32] Christa Biegler: Okay. Back to the first myth, which was it's not a diet. It's a metabolic process that brought up for me when you have people coming in.

[00:17:39] Christa Biegler: I think we could say. I'm not going to make up any statistics. A lot of people have some kind of relationship, food relationship issue. Maybe everyone has a food relationship issue at some point, at to a varying degree example. And I think we'll circle back to your story, which I probably should have started with, but you did a good job opening with it a little bit.

[00:17:55] Christa Biegler: Even you see this all the time when people first recognize food as medicine, right? They're a little dogmatic. I mean, that's kind of how, you know, like your relationship with food is still developing when you're a bit dogmatic sometimes around it. Right. And that was kind of your, even your early phase.

[00:18:09] Christa Biegler: So what do you do? How do you help people or how are you handling food relationship issues that come up? Because I feel like there is some rules to follow to like get into optimal States, all in the best interest of the person. But what do you do when people have like challenged food relationship issues and 

[00:18:26] Christa Biegler: they're coming in?

[00:18:28] Ben Azadi: Yeah, it's a great question. There's different types of food relationship challenges that they have. It could be emotional eating, of course, sugar addiction, food addiction. And I had a lot of those, during my teenage years and in my early adulthood as well. For those individuals, I'm not a food addiction expert, right?

[00:18:44] Ben Azadi: So I would, recommend they work with a sugar addiction expert, but I can say this. They can work with a food addiction expert and combine what we teach, for their protocol because it does work really well. Once we get their metabolism healthier, and they start eating more protein, animal based protein.

[00:19:01] Ben Azadi: We know what that does. Animal based protein is great to be, satiating, macronutrient. What it does for cholecystokinin and leptin and peptide YY really helps them make better decisions. But a big part of that puzzle is the fundamentals, right? All right, if we're not getting quality sleep, if we're not focusing on stress, you know, you have your podcast, the less stress podcast.

[00:19:20] Ben Azadi: If we're not focusing on that, it doesn't matter how much keto you do, how much fasting you do. We got to get those fundamentals nailed. And we focused on that in the beginning. And that helps tremendously with them making better decisions. I helped them find out what their why is like, why are you doing this program?

[00:19:34] Ben Azadi: Why are you trying to lose weight? It's not as superficial as I want to lose 50 pounds or something underneath that. So we get clear on the why. And sometimes it requires having a specialist, like a food addiction specialist, sometimes it doesn't. And then, it gets to a point where they've been doing keto and I want them to flex out.

[00:19:53] Ben Azadi: But somebody who has a food addiction still, or a sugar addiction, they're not gonna flex out the same way as somebody who doesn't. So we had that conversation figure out approach that works for them. But to your question about the being dogmatic, that is something that I struggled with for many, many years.

[00:20:05] Ben Azadi: Even when I started doing keto, I also was dogmatic. I think that does us a big disservice. It really does. I'm all for health and metabolic flexibility over dogma. I love keto, but I don't think it's the thing we should all do forever. It's a tool in the shed. So we got to look at all these different tools like fasting and keto and paleo, whatever it is as tools in the shed and utilize them the right way.

[00:20:27] Christa Biegler: Yeah. 

[00:20:27] Christa Biegler: You used a good analogy. I was listening to one of your podcasts about , I think , you said keto is like a chainsaw. Great. If you know how to use it. Destructive if you are not using it right and I think that's super reasonable, super, super reasonable. So let's talk about this third myth.

[00:20:43] Ben Azadi: The third myth is that you could eat any fats and get into ketosis. And there's truth to that. You can. You can eat bad inflammatory fats and get into ketosis. But here's the myth. Keto friendly foods are not the same thing as health friendly foods. There could be a huge difference. And arguably, some of these keto friendly foods are more detrimental and inflammatory then process sugar and some experts say even smoking that I've had on my show. So I'm referring to these bastardized fats, these adulterated omega 6 linoleic acid seed oils that are processed with detergents and high heat that are oxidized and very unstable. And they're all keto friendly. They're in a lot of keto products.

[00:21:24] Ben Azadi: They might get you into ketosis, but I got to tell you, they're not healthy. So we distinguish between healthy fats that are stable. The body could use the membrane could use and build the membrane. And then the fats that actually destroy the membrane. So we got to distinguish between those different fats there.

[00:21:38] Christa Biegler: Oh, I'm so glad you brought up membrane health. This is not discussed very well yet. So inflammation destroys cell membranes in short, and you basically have to rebuild them. And if you're cell membranes, my stupid analogy is it's like a lawn that's dried up and you can't really plant seeds in a lawn that's dried up unless it's like nice soil.

[00:22:00] Christa Biegler: So you've got to really support and improve those cell membranes, which is, I talk about it a lot because of skin stuff, but the other thing that you can see if people are having really poor absorption or poor cell membrane status, a dead giveaway to me is like diarrhea, trying to take a vitamin cause they're not even able to get that into the cell.

[00:22:16] Christa Biegler: And so it like causes that for them, you mix it with things that support cell membrane health. And it's like, it magically fixes it. It's pretty cool. So that's fun. 

[00:22:26] Christa Biegler: you just brought up that you started using, you know, in any program, business, whatever someone's doing to help people there's iterations.

[00:22:33] Christa Biegler: We improve it as we go. Right. And so I'm guessing you didn't have this metoxy test at the very beginning of keto camp, just a guess. I don't know if that's true or not at the very beginning. But like you said, as people will change their seed oils, vegetable oils, they're seeing that change. Do you have any other, and this is cool.

[00:22:50] Christa Biegler: It's very fun because people love metrics. They love something that tells them something right. Like that's just how humans are. We're like, we just want to be validated right. I'm guessing the seed oil changes or the fat quality changes came a little bit later, right? Not at the very beginning of either your journey.

[00:23:06] Christa Biegler: I mean, I feel like this is actually in its heyday right now. This conversation is in its heyday. So any other changes besides like what you're seeing from that metoxy test, that you could share when people kind of change up their seed oils, anything, or do you see them accelerate faster? Like anything that's kind of dramatic enough, or, you know, you can share a little before and after as you made that shift in your programming. 

[00:23:29] Ben Azadi: Yeah, yeah, for sure. 

[00:23:30] Ben Azadi: So, I was asked. them to pay attention to their symptoms, right? And one of the most common symptoms that I see people face in my community, brain fog is a big issue these days.

[00:23:39] Ben Azadi: And we know the brain is loaded with mitochondria. So it's really a mitochondrial issue. So we know seed oils really disrupt and impair the mitochondrial membrane, right? And the membrane is key. I love geeking out about the membrane. I lecture on it. You're right. It's so important. I believe the membrane is where the intelligence lies, not the DNA nucleus.

[00:23:57] Ben Azadi: The membrane tells the DNA nucleus what to do. So we need the right integrity, the right fluidity in that membrane. Good things need to get in. I love your analogy about the garden. We need to plant good things that could get into the soil. And then we need things to get out that are bad, like reactive oxygen species, et cetera.

[00:24:13] Ben Azadi: So with those changes, I've noticed individuals, have their mental clarity come back. And it doesn't happen right away. And I think it's a combination of two things. Number one, they're reducing inflammation by replacing the seed oils with healthy, stable fats like saturated fats and monounsaturated fats.

[00:24:29] Ben Azadi: But number two, ketones are also been, have been shown to be signaling molecules that actually stress the mitochondria to help them create more mitochondria, biogenesis, So what happens is you get healthier mitochondria becoming stronger. Bad mitochondria that the body is getting rid of through mitophagy all because of ketones.

[00:24:49] Ben Azadi: So that's one process there. And a lot of that happens in the brain because the brain is really dense with mitochondria. So when you're in ketosis, that's one of the most common things that you hear people say, I got my brain back. I just feel so much better. And again, it doesn't happen right away, but over time it does.

[00:25:03] Ben Azadi: And then the process of removing the CDLs is also going to help with that as well. But joint pain, skin issues. Weight loss because what happens is these seed oils are toxic. They're like toxins. The body treats them like toxins and the solution to pollution is dilution, right? So these toxins go and they hide out in your fat cells.

[00:25:19] Ben Azadi: Linoleic acid are stored in your fat cells. And what happens is when you have a whole bunch of linoleic acid and other environmental toxins, which you talk about, you start burning body fat, which is great. And you start releasing these fatty acids into the bloodstream, the liver picks it up and uses it.

[00:25:34] Ben Azadi: All great things. Then you dump all these toxins with it. And then you recirculate them back in and the innate intelligence thinks, wow, every time I burn body fat, we dump toxins and it hurts us. I'm going to slow down. Fat oxidation, I'm going to slow down fat burning and the person experiences weight loss resistance.

[00:25:49] Ben Azadi: So we got to do some things to clear that out. I focus a lot on, doing the right detox, environmental detox as well, but seed oils are also considered a toxin in my book. 

[00:25:58] Christa Biegler: Yeah. 

[00:25:58] Christa Biegler: Toxic burden is kind of the name of our current life and game right now. And there's not necessarily avoiding it.

[00:26:06] Christa Biegler: It's just being able to support it and doing our best in mitigating it. I mean, that's kind of my approach. I'm like, well, I cannot change all of the natural disasters happening in the world right now. So I'm doing my best to do my best. All right. 

[00:26:19] Ben Azadi: Those pathways open, right? Let them do their job. 

[00:26:21] Christa Biegler: Just support, just support cause we live in a challenging environment. 

[00:26:25] Christa Biegler: So fourth myth. 

[00:26:27] Ben Azadi: Fourth myth is that men and women do keto the same way. And I would even take that even farther and say, Women who have a menstrual cycle, versus women who have a postmenopause, or postmenopause should do it the same way, that's also a myth.

[00:26:40] Ben Azadi: We gotta do it differently, and do this according to their hormonal cycle. Menstruating women and postmenopausal women have a similar 24 hour pattern. We'll call that like the sun 24 hour pattern.

[00:26:52] Ben Azadi: Menstruating women have more of a 28 day cycle, similar to the moon, right? So the perfect example, what we teach is if you have a menstrual cycle, the week before your period, right? That's the week where we want to build progesterone, which is very important for the cycle. And you don't do that with strict ketosis.

[00:27:06] Ben Azadi: You don't do that with a lot of fasting. You actually do that with some feasting and feasting on some carbs and making these hormonal conversions. So for you, We're actually going to take you out of ketosis the few days leading up to your period. Once you have your period and you're in that bleed week, we shift you back into ketosis.

[00:27:21] Ben Azadi: If you want to do a longer fast, that's a good way to do it. But we look at a week by week breakdown on this hormonal cycle. For example, the second week we have a shift where testosterone increases. So then we tell them, hey, let's do more strength training and bump up your protein, get more mTOR that week, right?

[00:27:36] Ben Azadi: Because we want to utilize the testosterone the right way. So we want to go with the hormones not against it. And for men I've seen could be a little bit more aggressive and they could do more fasting, more keto, they'll get faster results because their hormonal pattern is recycling every 24 hours.

[00:27:51] Ben Azadi: Now, women, they are similar to men in terms of that they have more of a 24 hour pattern, but At this point, as you know, Krista, the adrenals are picking up the slack here for the ovaries shutting down, right? So if you're not supporting the adrenals and you're really aggressive with fasting, it's not a good idea.

[00:28:09] Ben Azadi: So we focus a lot on oxytocin, the love hormone. We focus a lot on adrenal support. We find a good sweet spot for you to practice fasting. It might be 18 and six for one lady, or it might be, 14, 10 for somebody else. But we determined that by looking at things like HRV and just asking about their symptoms, et cetera.

[00:28:26] Ben Azadi: But that's the myth that everybody does the same. It's not true. 

[00:28:29] Christa Biegler: Well, I'm really glad you brought that up. Cause I was going to ask you, I heard you talk about that around women before their period. And I think it's wonderful. I'm guessing this is an iteration of programming. And I remember you said last week, a lot of your audience is women that are right either perimenopausal Or postmenopausal, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but kind of that big group and, what happens sometimes to us is like, you have your story and you did this, you had your health journey, and then you start helping people and then it's like, a little bit of a whiplash when the people who need your help are like, Oh, I was not prepared for the post menopausal women or whatever. And there was a lot to learn to support them. 

[00:29:10] Christa Biegler: So I just, and I would say like, this is perhaps a critic, everything you said in that myth encapsulated some of the criticisms that I've held for a while around ketosis and intermittent fasting as humans.

[00:29:22] Christa Biegler: So what's cool about keto and intermittent fasting, if done properly, is that you could get some cool immediate results. And then people love that, right? So they get that pretty quick validation. So that's cool. But then our human behavior is to do more of the same thing. And so then you can get a little bit, let's just use the same word dogmatic.

[00:29:42] Christa Biegler: And you just do more of this thing to the point where, nourishment becomes a little bit of an issue. And then sometimes the adrenals get not in great shape or Hey, guess what? Your cortisol, like you're not addressing the stressors in your life also, or you're not, just not nourishing and you're living on coffee and cortisol. 

[00:29:59] Christa Biegler: And what I see happen, which is kind of honestly my favorite audience is this sluggish thyroid stuff. Like before it even shows up on blood work, cause it's actually faster to help and people still don't feel good. And they're kind of getting lost between the cracks.

[00:30:10] Christa Biegler: And then that not great adrenal status, because again, they're going to get lost between the cracks conventionally. They're not really going to get a lot of support. They're just not going to feel great. And they're going to put on those high performers are going to put on a happy face as they're able.

[00:30:21] Christa Biegler: They're just going to keep trucking. I really appreciate you bringing that up because that's been a little bit of a conversation is a lot of fasting research is around men and not necessarily women. So I'm glad you're kind of making this, you're definitely making this distinction around that. So anyway, 

[00:30:35] Christa Biegler: thank you.

[00:30:36] Ben Azadi: Yeah. I like you. Thank you. I like you said, you know, it's, it's what I learned working with a lot of women. It's like, you gotta just not be dogmatic, that's my goal, and understand, okay, this might work for this guy, but it's not going to work for this lady, because obviously it's not working for her.

[00:30:50] Ben Azadi: She's getting symptoms, her hair is falling out, she's, chronic fatigue, etc. Obviously it's not working for her, let's figure some things out. So I know you've been on Mindy, Dr. Mindy's podcast and I work with her too. She's in my team. So it was Dr. Pampa. So I get to learn from them too.

[00:31:02] Ben Azadi: And all the other doctors in our group. So it's not just the people I'm working with. It's a combination of all the patients in our group. We meet every Tuesday, we do case studies and we see what's working, what's not working. So I get to use some of those golden nuggets that they get those clinical pearls and use it with my group too.

[00:31:16] Christa Biegler: Oh, that's essential as a practitioner. That's very cool. All right. And I want to circle back to HRV, but next after the fifth myth. 

[00:31:23] Ben Azadi: Yeah, the fifth myth is that you do keto forever, and I do not recommend that, and it's interesting, Krista, because... I get asked to speak at a lot of keto conferences and that's cool.

[00:31:32] Ben Azadi: I love it. I love keto. I love the keto community and it's an honor to speak at these conferences. I'm going to keep doing it, but my message is very different than most of the keto speakers there. And there's a lot of brilliant people that I'm friends with that don't agree with me. They think once you're in ketosis, you do it forever.

[00:31:46] Ben Azadi: It's something that you do continuously. And I do not agree with that all. It is not something we do forever. It's considered a stressful state. And again, not all stress is bad, but do too much stress that is bad. That hormetic curve drops deeply and you lose all the benefits and hurt yourself. So I don't think you should do it forever.

[00:32:04] Ben Azadi: Ancestors didn't do it forever. When they had the opportunity, they flexed out with carbohydrate. So I think there's a point in time where you achieve this metabolic flexibility. You've done the work and now you flex out and that's the premise. You actually intentionally flex out and that's going to be different based off of the person.

[00:32:21] Ben Azadi: But that's a big myth in my space because a lot of brilliant people that I am friends with think you should do it forever. And we just disagree about that. 

[00:32:30] Christa Biegler: And I like what you're saying. You flex out and I think it's like an attractive term, but you could maybe use the word carb cycling also right. 

[00:32:38] Ben Azadi: Yeah. Same thing

[00:32:38] Christa Biegler: right. And I mean, these last few minutes are literally why I like Ben, right. That's because, if anyone, if anyone ever says like, do this forever, I'm like. I don't know, for a pretty long time, I changed my mind. I changed my mind. I want to eat my birthday cake. So now that we've talked a little bit about this, let's dance a little bit back to your story.

[00:32:57] Christa Biegler: A bit, and you just mentioned HRV. So let me start there. I know you said you like to look, it's another cool metric that you kind of like to look at. In your space in your program. So let's talk about HRV. HRV, is impacted by fasting and or, let me just put a bunch of little HRV questions in here and answer however you want, how are you kind of looking at measuring?

[00:33:19] Christa Biegler: And I know you started looking at HRV. Yours was at 38 and improved. Let's talk about how you improved it, how you measure it, how it's impacted with fasting.

[00:33:28] Ben Azadi: Yeah. Wow. You've done your research. Good job. I love it. I love heart rate variability as a measure of the adaptability of the nervous system.

[00:33:36] Ben Azadi: It's a great gauge for me. I use it for many, many things. When we think about the nervous system, we have those two primary branches. The sympathetic tone, which is fight or flight. Which is really important. You just don't want to be locked in there, right? And then we have the opposite, which is the parasympathetic rest digest, which is very important.

[00:33:52] Ben Azadi: You don't want to be locked in there as well. There's a proper balance. It's like a delicate dance in between these two primary branches and HRV heart rate variability is giving you a good gauge if your nervous system is adapting to the stressors if we're getting a proper balance of sympathetic versus parasympathetic Everybody's going to have a different baseline, a different average.

[00:34:12] Ben Azadi: I believe, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts. I think there's a big genetic component to everybody's average. Like for example, my fiance, her average HRV is like 155 or around there. 140, 155, which is, which is very, very high. Usually like elite, elite athletes have a high HRV like that.

[00:34:29] Ben Azadi: She's not an elite athlete. I think it's a genetic component for her. For me, when I started tracking, to your point, my average was around 38. And I found the average, and I'm like, okay, that's my average. Let me build that up. Let me find ways to balance out my nervous system. Because for me, my problem was I was too sympathetic, and I knew that.

[00:34:49] Ben Azadi: So sympathetic, that's just my personality. And I knew I needed more parasympathetic. So, I did a lot of experimentation. I did less fasting. I did more flexing, so less keto. I did things like brain tap, PEMF mats, more grounding, breath work. I did a whole bunch of things. You know, fast forward to now, my HRV average is around 65 70.

[00:35:08] Ben Azadi: Right, and that's my baseline. But here's what I see with my baseline. If I see that I wake up in the morning and I check my HRV on my Oura Ring, and it's 42. That is very low for me. That is a day that I don't want to do much fasting. I don't want to really exercise. I want to do things for more parasympathetic.

[00:35:26] Ben Azadi: So that's what I teach my students. Like if you have a really low score, it's probably not a good day to do it at 24 hour fast that you had planned. It's probably not a good idea to do that crossfit work or that sprinting that you wanted to do. It's more of a day for parasympathetic. Use that as a good gauge.

[00:35:40] Ben Azadi: We want to see that HRV building up over time. And if you see that, I believe we're getting a good balance of these two branches. 

[00:35:47] Christa Biegler: Yeah, that's a cool story. Maybe that's a future episode, but this reminds me of, I have my episode which is with, I think Dr. Eric Corum, his work has kind of revolved around this and he says, it doesn't exactly matter the type of data device you're using, none of them are perfect. It's just use the same one and look at your trends, which is essentially what you were saying. And so if you don't really have a little bit of longevity data, you can't really make, I think often I have people ask me this constantly. People will be like, this happened. What should I do? I'm like, if something happens one time, we just observe curiously.

[00:36:22] Christa Biegler: If it happens more like, okay, cool. Maybe this is something that there's actually something there. Cause like anything could, like, there's all kinds of goofy things that I tend to live in the world of goofy symptoms. And so. You can't probably tell me something I haven't heard. Yeah, that's not probably true either, but, there's a lot of goofy stuff, right?

[00:36:37] Christa Biegler: But it happens once observed curiously and see if we can find a common denominator the next time. I love pattern recognition. I think you do too. 

[00:36:45] Ben Azadi: Yeah, no, that's a great response. And I see that all the time with people looking at their keto mojo, like, why did my ketones drop? Why do my blood sugars go up?

[00:36:52] Ben Azadi: How many times did you say, Oh, just this one time. It's like, all right, there's so many variables at play. Let's look at trends to your point. So I love your response there. 

[00:36:59] Christa Biegler: Right. Okay. 

[00:37:00] Christa Biegler: So I want to talk a little bit about any people that you think you need to kind of like proceed with caution or contradications around doing ketosis, intermittent fasting, yes or no.

[00:37:12] Christa Biegler: Or maybe it's people who could just benefit so dang much. If they tapped into it and you know, it comes to mind, something I'm really interested in right now is cancer. And I feel like the main, some of the big benefits of ketosis, which is a tough, like getting rid of disease and damaged cells, improving that process.

[00:37:27] Christa Biegler: Cause the body's like, eh, I don't have resources. I'm going to offload the trash, which it's improving that overall system. That's essentially what's kind of broken down before cancer starts. And so, do you have those people ever walking through your program, which can get tricky because there's then a lot of medical intervention sometimes, but, it may still be an option.

[00:37:45] Christa Biegler: And I think there's even some discussion around fasting around. Chemotherapy and different things. Any like hard pauses or stops around whether people should be doing this or people that you wish would tap into this more pretty opposite.

[00:38:00] Ben Azadi: Well, yeah. So with keto, I think The majority, and it's hard to put a percentage on it, but I believe the majority of the population could do some variation of ketosis.

[00:38:10] Ben Azadi: Some people might have some genetic SNPs where they can't really metabolize fat, and there's some different approaches to that. But I think the majority of people can do it, do it the right way. And when I say people, I mean adults, not necessarily children. Now with fasting, there are a little bit more, take caution there.

[00:38:25] Ben Azadi: If somebody's underweight, somebody has an eating disorder, a history of eating disorder, if you're pregnant keto too, if you're pregnant, probably not a good idea or fasting for sure. Breastfeeding, probably not a good idea. You might dry up. What else if you're 18 for fasting, probably not a good idea.

[00:38:40] Ben Azadi: You want more growth. I'm thinking of what else for fasting. You might want to chime in if there's anything I missed for fasting, but oh, if you have, like severe, HPA axis dysfunction, right? It's your adrenals are shot. That might not be a good idea. You might tap out at like 12 hours of fasting.

[00:38:56] Ben Azadi: So a little bit of caution there, but other than that, I think the majority of people could really benefit from it. If they utilize it the right way, it's going to be different. For one person versus another person. So you have to find that unique approach that works for you, but it really works well when it's done right. 

[00:39:12] Christa Biegler: You ever have people using CGMs in your program as well? 

[00:39:15] Ben Azadi: Yeah. Yeah. Oh. And by the way, before I get to see Jim's, you talked about cancer. I wanted to finish my thought about that and then we'll transition to the CGM. 

[00:39:23] Ben Azadi: Yeah. There's a lot of research on keto and fasting for cancer. And you mentioned the chemotherapy in combination with fasting, vulnerable.

[00:39:28] Ben Azadi: Dr. Valter Longo has some good research on what fasting does to prevent chemo from killing the good cells, allowing it to get to the bad cells only. But a couple of stories for you. A student of mine, Callie's her name, Callie Moynihan.

[00:39:40] Ben Azadi: She was diagnosed with stage four thymoma, thymus cancer, which is really rare several years ago. And she went down the conventional route and she had some procedures. She had some chemo, she had some operations and It kept coming back. So she got into keto and fasting. She discovered my podcast. She eventually joined my program, the keto camp Academy.

[00:40:01] Ben Azadi: She worked with her doctors, but we incorporated all these different tools that we have. Red light therapy, fasting, keto, et cetera, and she did it and she took action consistently and what ended up happening last August, so a year ago, August of 2021, she did a scan and it showed zero evidence of disease, it completely went away, right?

[00:40:20] Ben Azadi: This is an example of what you can do when you put your body in an anti inflammatory state. A friend of mine, Owen Video, he's actually a YouTube guy, had the same cancer. He did the same thing in terms of keto and fasting, a similar approach, and he was able to reverse his cancer as well. And I actually interviewed them both on my podcast a couple of years ago to share their story.

[00:40:37] Ben Azadi: So I know those are just anecdotal shares, but I think it's powerful because there's a lot of people out there that have done these different tools and they've seen what it's done for them when the medical industry has failed them in these regards. 

[00:40:48] Ben Azadi: And I think if you were doing it and kind of this more informed, appropriate way, I've just seen it done poorly, getting into ketosis done poorly.

[00:41:00] Ben Azadi: And it's like, I think if you were doing it more informed in a more nourished way, then you could get quite a bit of benefit, of course right. As many of your students do. 

[00:41:09] Christa Biegler: Yeah. That was fun. I feel like we could definitely do part two to that sometime, 

[00:41:13] Ben Azadi: we're going to talk about the CGM.

[00:41:15] Christa Biegler: Yeah. Talk about the CGM go for it. Bring it on. 

[00:41:18] Ben Azadi: I love a continuous glucose monitor. I'm always asked if you have to choose one, like what we call biohacking tool, one health tool, what would it be? And I'm always back and forth between like an aura ring and a CGM.

[00:41:28] Ben Azadi: I think they're both beneficial. I would probably lean more towards an aura ring because that you would use longer, but a CGM is right up there because it gives you a good idea of a lot of things. Number one. You mentioned earlier, people love like tracking things, right? This is a great way to track things.

[00:41:45] Ben Azadi: But on top of that, if you use a company like I've used NutraSense before and levels, and they're all great, I've worn them for months and months and months, just as like an experiment. But if you have somebody looking at your numbers, you are going to make better decisions because you know, if you stay, see a spike of one 60 on that CGM, they're going to ask you what happened and they're going to hold you accountable.

[00:42:04] Ben Azadi: So just knowing that. For me, knowing that and when I had my CGM, it made me make better decisions because I knew there was a dietitian looking at my numbers, but I know that also helps my students. So just that accountability part is huge, but you could also identify foods that might be healthy for Krista, but not healthy for Ben, because I might be sensitive to it for whatever reason.

[00:42:24] Ben Azadi: And my glucose spikes from, blueberries or coconut whipped cream, which is actually a true story. That spiked my glucose, like 170. And I realized, okay, I can't have coconut whipped cream. So anyways, it gives you a good idea of that. It also gives you a good idea of what stress does to your glucose levels.

[00:42:39] Ben Azadi: What extras exercise can do to it. Postprandial glucose is something we check all the time and this gives you a good idea. Ideally, you want to go back, two hours after you finish that meal. So post prandial, you want to go back to where it was before the meal. That's a good response from your body, your pancreas.

[00:42:55] Ben Azadi: And I think a big myth with the CGM, and I want to hear your thoughts, is that we should have a blood sugar level that is like within a 10 point range forever, right? And that is what the keto people teach. Like always keep it below 90. It's like you're not giving your body any work to do. And that is problematic, right?

[00:43:14] Ben Azadi: So we want to see spikes, but not over 140. We want to see it go back to where it was and see a good response. I think that's more important.

[00:43:21] Christa Biegler: I think it's just useful to go in with a goal of like, what could I see when I was doing it? I wanted to see what stress did to my blood sugar. And is there any surprises here or what's the trend, right?

[00:43:31] Christa Biegler: And how much capacity do I have to like do that experiment right now? I think those are potentially good questions before something like a CGM as well. I don't know if it's necessarily has to be a, it could be a first step for some people, but for maybe what I do, I may recommend it as a later step.

[00:43:45] Christa Biegler: Occasionally, you brought up something. Not related to CGMs, but it made me think of, you said your fiancé, you thought, is there a genetic component to HIV? You know, I don't know, but I was gonna ask you, and I forgot, about her family of origin. Do you feel like they're like, really calm, caring people that like, don't get stressed out, or not really?

[00:44:03] Ben Azadi: No, they're the opposite. Okay. Her mom and dad are the opposite.

[00:44:06] Christa Biegler: Yeah, that's interesting. Okay. That was just my curiosity. Cause I'm just kind of intrigued right now about our imprinting on our nervous system from our, family we grew up in. And so how does that impact HR? 

[00:44:15] Ben Azadi: Oh yeah. 

[00:44:17] Christa Biegler: Simply a number. I really care.

[00:44:19] Christa Biegler: I mean, nervous system stuff is kind of my main thing. I like to kind of delve into around the research around right now. Cause I feel like it's our big self limiting factor on real long term progress, but just curious. So it doesn't apply. 

[00:44:31] Ben Azadi: I'm with you on that. It's not spoken about enough or studied enough.

[00:44:34] Ben Azadi: So I love that you focus on that. It is really the key, getting that nervous system balance and everything else improves automatically. And if you don't have that balance, as you're going to get some symptoms. 

[00:44:43] Christa Biegler: Yeah, no, 

[00:44:43] Christa Biegler: I mean, it's like a shaky foundation. Everything I'll just break down eventually again, because usually it's part of the initial domino impact. 

[00:44:49] Ben Azadi: Yep. 

[00:44:50] Christa Biegler: All right. So we talked about five myths. We talked about how keto is a metabolic process and not just a diet. We talked about, that you have to eat a whole lot of fat and versus instead, we talked about some of the things that can happen as you go into ketosis, especially if you haven't done improperly.

[00:45:04] Christa Biegler: We talked about that two, two, two rule. We talked about, eating any kind of fat versus higher quality fat. And I think you were really specific with your two to two rule, which I think can be good, especially to beginner. It's like training meals. It's like, do this first , kind of makes it a little bit easier, which is important.

[00:45:19] Christa Biegler: I've abandoned some of that cause so many people come in, on pretty awesome diets, but I need to remember not to use that person either. And the fourth myth, which maybe, maybe I appreciate it. I appreciated all of them, but maybe I appreciate fourth and fifth. The most men and women are different men they might get more immediate feedback or as women might need to change it with not only their menstrual cycle, but with their cycle or phase of life, right? If they're menstruating cycling and whatnot, and then also, not to be dogmatic or that it's not keto forever, that we're not flexing. 

[00:45:48] Christa Biegler: And I would say that's just like my biggest complaint kind of with anything is like, yeah, I know you're really excited about this right now, but time will tell you how you really feel with something overall, long term. And like you said, it is a metabolic tool you've had forever. And that's, I guess, you know, some of my attraction to your style is like, yeah, this is an ancient practice. You know, like if you tap into it with the right mindset. You can do really well with it right. 

[00:46:12] Christa Biegler: It's just that when you have this wrong, maybe toxic mindset around things like, Oh, I just want to lose. I get that most people have this underwriting, secret goal of maybe not so secret goal of losing weight. And it can be a tool there, but it's about, I mean, the real, I would like to say the pinnacle of health is seeking health and not just appearance.

[00:46:32] Christa Biegler: Cause Archie, or how I feel about our appearance can vary a lot. There's a lot of those. And I said, right. Non skilled 

[00:46:39] Ben Azadi: well said.

[00:46:41] Christa Biegler: Ben, where can people find you online? 

[00:46:44] Ben Azadi: My website is benazadi. com. , I also have my podcast. Krista was just on there. It's called the Keto Camp Podcast and camp is spelled with a K.

[00:46:53] Christa Biegler: Cool. Thanks so much for coming on today and got some good info for our next conversation. 

[00:46:59] Ben Azadi: Thank you, Krista. I look forward to it.

[00:47:00] Ben Azadi: Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission to help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story. Just go to review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life. That's review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life.

[00:47:22] Ben Azadi: And you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.