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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 469: There is a War Being Raged Over Your Food Choices | Dr. Cate Shanahan, The Fatburn Fix
00:59:44
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- [00:01]
Jenny Urch
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- [01:24]
My name is Jenny Urch and I've been looking forward to this for so long because Dr. Kate Shanahan is back with us today for a second time. Welcome Dr. Kate.
- [01:33]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Oh, thank you so much for inviting me back. It is great to be here with you.
- [01:37]
Jenny Urch
I am slowly marching through your books because they are changing my life. I am the type of person with a pathologic hunger. The type of person that was consuming all of these vegetable oils had no idea. And you have changed my life. I read the book Dark Calories. I never thought I would get an opportunity to talk with you. I read it just for my own sake and then you so graciously came on and I have gotten message after message after message about that episode and dealing with something that people don't even really know is a thing but is affecting our health to such a degree. And so then I'm marching through your books because that one was so life changing for me. And I recently read the Fat Burn Fix. Boost energy and hunger and lose weight by using Body Fat for fuel. Welcome back Dr. Kate.
- [02:23]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Well, thank you so much. I'm so excited to talk with you about this book, because this is my weight loss boss manual. It's the, it's like, really, It's a manual for human metabolism. Because when I put it together, I realized, wait a second, I'm helping people understand how their metabolism is this amazing set of integrated body systems that regulates their body weight automatically when it's working. Right. And their appetites, which are supposed to drive them towards nutrients when it's working.
- [02:58]
Jenny Urch
Right.
- [02:58]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Right. So that our cravings are for nutrition, not sugar. And how all of this is tied into our hormones. And so it's just like, I was like, this is the manual for a human metabolism. And I kind of wish I had called it that, but I like letters. That's, you know, I like titles that start like with the same letter. So Fat Burn fix is what it was, what it became.
- [03:22]
Jenny Urch
Yes. And it's just a different look at trying to increase your energy and looking at long term health implications. Can we kick it off here? You talk about nutrition and training, and I want to kick it off here because you've talked about it and then I experienced it when I put out your episode, there is so much pushback. You're like, well, how could there be so much pushback? I was just sharing my own personal story of feeling this pathologic hunger since I was a child. And I read your book and I make these changes and it's changing my whole life. So that's all I'm sharing. I'm like, it worked for me. And you're saying vegetable oils are in so many things. I had no idea. It's in the organic protein powder at Costco. It's in the organic granola bars. I mean, in so many things. And I had no idea. So you talk about. Nearly everything I'd learned about nutrition in medical school was wrong. In fact, most people dishing out dietary advice don't actually learn much about nutrition. Most health practitioners give terrible nutrition advice because most of the nutrition education they receive during training is either backwards or just plain wrong. You say we don't even have an agreement on if eggs are what we should eat for breakfast or if they give heart attacks. So can you just talk about the issue of confusion? Can we start there? Just kick it off there because this is going to help you so much and you have to be open minded toward it.
- [04:44]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Absolutely. It's a great, great way to start off because I was confused when I first, like, started looking into nutrition science from a different perspective. And that perspective was a historical perspective, or what's called the ancestral perspective. You know, what did our ancestors eat? Our parents, great great grandparents. Now you have to go back to healthy, were they? And as soon as I did that, I came into dramatic, shocking conflict with everything that I had held dear as the truth from not just my medical training, but, you know, the programming we get as consumers when we read cereal boxes that tell us that Cheerios are healthy because they lower our cholesterol. So what I found was like, like I found that people were so much healthier before we started eating vegetable oils, when we were eating these supposedly unhealthy animal fats. And that created confusion in my mind that I had to resolve. And that took me like months of initial research, right. And then it continued and continued for decades. Because I do get that pushback myself, right? Like I, I discovered that we were lied to. That's why there's this confusion. We have all been lied to. Medical professionals, well meaning health professionals who care about their patients, who believe that they know the best nutrition information because they trained. Like, I'm talking about dietitians, I'm talking about the very people giving us pushback on this idea because they too held dear the training that they probably pay dearly for. My medical education was expensive, you know, I was paying off loans for years and years, you know, and you value what you pay for, right? So that's why there's confusion, because we were lied to 200 years ago. There was no confusion really about this. You know, are eggs healthy? Is butter healthy? There was no confusion. It was considered wholesome food. Everybody was on the same page except for some extremists who were, for various reasons, whether it was, you know, religious or some other kind of non science based philosophy. Right. Like where they weren't really trying to do something for physical health, but perhaps for spiritual beliefs. Right. Nothing wrong with that. But that's not science. So there wasn't controversy. The controversy started after we were lied to. I think it's helpful to, you know, understand the timeline of this controversy. There wasn't any in the 1930s and the 1920s and all the years prior to that, and in the 1950s, that's when this idea kind of was injected artificially into the medical conversation. And what had happened in that time was the voices of dissent were systematically silenced and snuffed out. That's why we have what, what appears to be confusion or what is confusion? I mean, it's confusing. Why are, why are people like me saying something that makes sense to people intuitively, but it's so different than these other arguments? That on the surface also make some sense. And that's a setup for confusion, where you tell people that they are experts and you set them up with misinformation. And then you tell people like me who are just independent researchers, not backed up by a university or the author, any kind of authoritative body. You tell people like me to shut up and sit down. When I realize, hey, wait a second, we were lied to. That is a recipe for mass consumer confusion. So if you're feeling confused, that's why.
- [08:35]
Jenny Urch
Right? And someone's making a lot of money off of that. And I learned about in Dark Calories, you talked about propaganda and Edward Bernays. And I ended up reading one of his books and it was like he was involved with tobacco and then he was involved with processed foods. And they're using these experts, you know, to push forward these ideas and people are following and their health is falling apart. And that's what you've been on the front lines seeing. You wrote, the problem is not that nutrition is hopelessly complicated. The problem is that the science is driven by special interest groups, politics and money. And vegetable oils are central to big food profitability. They are possibly the defining feature of processed foods. The processed food industry would collapse overnight if vegetable oils and sugar were not available for these products. So I want to talk about this really big thing. We've never talked about it on this show at all. And that's diabetes. We've never talked about it, but obviously you start hearing about it. It used to be called Adult Onset, then they changed the name to type 2. And I read things in your book that I've never read anywhere else. This is in the fat burn fix. And obviously I think, you know, we're thinking about our children and their children. You write, diabetes is easily prevented and reversed without medications over consumption of vegetable oil is the root cause of the entire diabetes spectrum. Obviously this is a majorly big conversation topic and it's woven throughout this book talking about where we get our energy from. So I don't know if I just. I'm having you bite off too much, but I, I was sort of floored to read about this. I've never read it anywhere else.
- [10:14]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yes, it's so important to talk about this. And before we dive into the question, I need to point out that type 1 diabetes is a totally different animal. Type 2 diabetes is what the focus of the book is. And when I say diabetes spectrum, I'm talking about type 2 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. What's the difference between type 1 and type 2 I think it's worth just explaining that briefly. So type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder of the pancreas, where the cells that produce the hormone insulin that lowers blood sugar get attacked by the immune system and destroyed. So the poor pancreas can no longer pump out insulin like it's supposed to do. It's supposed to be pumping some out all the time to help keep the blood sugar from going too high. Due to the fact that the body is always, you know, there's always. The body's amazing. To keep our blood sugar regulated, there's actually about 20 hormones involved, and some are pushing sugar down and some are pushing it back up at the same time. This is all going on, you know, subconsciously our body's regulating all this. And that is how a healthy metabolism keeps our blood sugar regulated in such a narrow range that a low blood sugar is a half a teaspoon of sugar in the entire bloodstream, and a high blood sugar is one and a quarter teaspoons. So, yeah, we're talking about, like, in terms of calories, we're Talking about, like 12 total calories is a low blood sugar, and 24 total calories is a high blood sugar. So I say this just to help you understand. And yes, it is a big question, but it's a very important, fascinating topic. What we're saying is that a normal blood sugar, let's say, is 16 calories worth of energy. Imagine spreading out 16 calories throughout 5 liters of blood, which is how much we have, which actually represents something like thousands, tens of thousands of miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries. We have over 10,000 miles worth of arteries, veins, and capillaries. So imagine spreading out 16 calories of sugar in all of that. And when you think about it that way, you realize, gee, sugar is not, probably not designed by nature to be our primary fuel, because that's pretty scarce, right? What is designed by nature to be our primary fuel is our own body fat. And what type 2 diabetes is what this spectrum is. And to answer your question, what we're talking about is a metabolic state where our body fat is poisonous to our mitochondria, that is type 2 diabetes. And our mitochondria generate energy for our cells. So type 2 diabetes is not a mystery. I've discovered what the root cause is. And by the way, this is news. I just got an academic paper accepted for publication in the Y on this exact topic. So it's like, hopefully, you know, going to be some real serious discussion. It's in The. It's going to be in the frontiers in nutrition. And. Yeah, so there's going to be, you know, a lot of pushback there, I'm sure. But what I'm saying is type 2 diabetes, this thing that you haven't talked about on your show yet, but now we're talking about it. And we're talking about it, Jeannie, in a more scientific way than any other show, talks about it, because I haven't talked about it in this way either, you know, because I. I just finally kind of put my thoughts together in a more deep way to write this paper that I just got published. So this is all cutting edge. So what is type 2 diabetes? It's not a disease of the pancreas, primarily. It's not a disease of the liver. It's not a disease caused by overweight. It's not a disease that's going to be cured just by losing weight. It's a disease of our metabolism where our body fat does not provide our cells with energy. It's primarily a disease of energy. And so I call my paper the Energy Model of Insulin Resistance. And insulin resistance, by the way, is the root cause of prediabetes. And then type 2 diabetes.
- [14:35]
Jenny Urch
Right. And you say the weight gain is coming after. Often that. That's what's happening. And then there was this other thing where you talked about how a lot of these different diseases you. I want to leave you with this last idea, a way to look at the relationship between metabolic health, fat burn, and diet. All or nearly all chronic diseases that doctors see and treat every day are manifestations of the reality that the person is developing diabetes. Whether you've been diagnosed with that or a heart attack or a stint or migraines or a psychiatric condition, autoimmunity, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, even cancer, you are somewhere on the diabetes spectrum. And here's the good news. That means you have more control over your own health destiny than you have been told. So you talk about these small steps over time. So the vegetable oil. So here's what I got out of it, sort of as a big picture, is that we're supposed to burn our body fat for fuel, not the sugar. And that when we've had all these vegetable oils, it makes our bodies have weird fat.
- [15:35]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Correct. Our body fat is not as weird. That's right. It's actually toxic to our cells when we try and burn it. So it's like we have this burden of fat that we're carrying around that wants to help us be healthy, but it can't because it is sick itself and so it poisons our poor cells when they try to burn it for energy.
- [16:00]
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- [18:21]
Jenny Urch
So you say medically speaking, body fat is an is actually an organ. And you go through this book, the Fat Burn Fix. It's got like a plan that you can do to make some changes and it explains all of this. But what you say is that we treat the type 1 and type 2 the same way you wrote. I'm convinced that type 2 diabetics should not be treated with insulin and that it's a totally different disease and that insulin itself can make you more insulin resistant. When you use it to lower your blood sugar, you're making your metabolic problems worse. So can you talk about then how that shift. If you shift out of. You talk about these five things that you can change. And to me, they were like, that's not that bad. You know, I'm like, I can have more salts. It makes your food taste better. And you go through these five things. I can drink more water, have a couple glasses at every meal. I could stop snacking. You know, these different things. I read the Dark Calories and I thought, I can just cut out these granola bars. Like, I don't have to eat that granola bar. That's got sunflower oil in it. Whatever. So anyway, you talk about the solutions, but how does the shift away from these toxic oils? How would that be a solution if you are a type 2 diabetic?
- [19:32]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yes, that's a great question. That is the ultimate solution because it fixes the problem at its root. You know, we all talk about root causes, right? Well, the root cause of type 2 diabetes is that we've been eating these poisonous oils. These oils, I should say, that poison our body fat. And what that does is it sets us up for energy deficits and something called oxidative stress that I could talk more about in dark calories. And dark calories explains that oxidative stress is that root cause that pathologists find with every single disease. And vegetable oils are oxidative stress in a bottle because their chemistry is such that it, you know, gives us this weird body fat that is basically an organization. Our body fat is an organ, but when we fill it up with seed oils, we make this organ essentially dysfunctional. We give ourselves organ failure. It's just that the organ is our own body fat. Right? And so we don't. We don't think of that as an essential organ, but when it fails, that's how we get type 2 diabetes. So what do we do to reverse type 2 diabetes? Well, there's really just the five steps that I lay out. And the first one is stop eating vegetable oils. Control your carbs and your sugar intake and try to seek out what I call the slow digesting carbohydrates that are really carbs that are from whole foods, right? So instead of regular, you know, bread, you get bread made with sprouted grain or Sourdough bread. And let's see, what is step three, I think seek salt, right? Like salt does make some really important healthy foods taste better. Drink water. You know what we do when we drink water is we drink less soda. That's the subtext there is please don't drink anything with sugar or a lot of calories between meals that's bad for our hormones. And I explain that in the fat burn fix, how it makes it messes up our hormones and it shuts down any fat burning that we are supposed to do, that we are able to do. I mean, and then the fifth thing I believe is smart supplementation. And that is to help support our bodies with vitamins and minerals that can help us burn off this toxic body fat. Because we're kind of on a tightrope here. We have body fat we need to get rid of. We need to be able to burn it to be healthy. But it's got toxins in it. So what on earth do we deal with? Feels. Doesn't that sound like a catch 22 to you? So how we get out of it is gradually and slowly by following those five rules. And then the other one or the other very important rule is to not snack. And the way that we do that is we build meals that sustain our energy so we don't get hangry between meals like so many of us are, until we understand what, you know, how to fix our metabolism like you were you mentioned at the very beginning, you know you're going to cure your hangry. That's how you reverse your type 2 diabetes. And you do it slowly and gradually. And as soon as you, you know, even if you're on medications, as soon as you control your carbohydrates, you don't need so many medications. And as soon as, literally the day that you start eating these healthier fats that I recommend, like foods that have healthy f, including butter and coconut oil, avocados, you know, plants and animals all will work for you. As soon as you do that, you feel that you have more energy and you don't need to snack. And so it's a, it's a virtuous cycle where you don't need to consume so many carbohydrates so that you can quickly get off any medications. And of course, I gotta add that caveat, you don't want to do this without talking to your doctor. So you understand how to safely get yourself off medications. And, and basically also, you also need to know that to cut your carbohydrates down, if you're taking insulin. You should be checking your sugars because you. You might suddenly be taking too much, and then you could go dangerously low. We don't want that either.
- [23:22]
Jenny Urch
What a message of hope. You wrote, most doctors, including diabetes specialists, think of diabetes type 2 as a chronic and progressive disease, meaning it just keeps getting worse and worse until you die. And I look at these five steps, and I'm like, all right, it's not that, you know, it's not that big. I just. I think it's doable. You wrote this. Vegetable oil makes us hungry by switching on the same kind of powerful hunger signals that smoking marijuana generates, and it interferes with the satiety. Is that how you say that?
- [23:55]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Correct?
- [23:55]
Jenny Urch
Satiety signals by driving up brain inflammation. Just about everyone is suffering from the effects of a lifetime vegetable oil consumption. So let's talk about the snacking, because the vegetable oils are making us one to have snacks. And also, I mean, I grew up in an era where you had snack time. You know, it was like 10am and you're supposed to have these small snacks through the day to keep your blood sugar even. And you say we're not supposed to need regular snacks or even regular meals.
- [24:24]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yes. And, you know, it's fascinating, you say you grew up in a time where snacking was kind of built into our culture. Because when I grew up, and I don't know if that I'm that much older than you, maybe an entire. Probably an entire generation older, but that's just 20, 25 years. Right. I'm 58. So, like, to see if people a perspective of. When I grew up, kids didn't snack. We didn't have snack breaks in school. And, you know, if we went outside to play and we came in and we were hungry because we were playing hard. Even if it was like 4:00 in the afternoon, 5:00 in the afternoon, our parents would say, you're gonna, you know, tough it up because dinner's coming soon, and I don't want you to ruin your appetite. Don't have anything. Right. And I. I just don't see that happening. I don't hear that happening anymore. And what that reflects is this fundamental shift in our body's metabolism that literally no obesity specialist is talking about. No dietitian is talking about that. If you go to your dietitian and they say, oh, yeah, seed oils, that's just an Internet trend I think maybe you should follow up with, then why is suddenly everybody so hangry and needing to snack? Did you know that wasn't normal. Just one short generation when I grew up, which was the 70s and 80s, you know, and if they don't have an answer for that, then just politely say, well, this doctor, Dr. Kate Shanahan, who is an MD and is the mother of the no seed oil movement, why don't you maybe take think about looking at her books because she can explain it and you might be very interested. Anyway, I think I got off topic for your question. I apologize.
- [26:00]
Jenny Urch
Well, but we're talking about snacking and I think like this is an interest. So I'm 44, so we're a decade different, just one decade. And I. Maybe we talked about this in the other episode, but I have this distinct memory from third grade now. This is going to be like, this is a powerful memory I have. You hardly remember anything from your growing up years. But in the third grade, they were trying to teach us about discriminating based off of looks. And so when I was, you know, 8 years old, if you have brown eyes, you weren't allowed to have snack that day. And if you have blue eyes, you were. It was about teaching about, you know, discrimination based off of your looks. And I was so mad. I mean, it was so impactful to me because I wanted my snack so badly. Like, that's how bad broken I think my metabolism was as a child, as a third grader. And so you wrote snacking trained your metabolism to make you want more snacks. And then you wrote, maybe we just shouldn't be doing it, but that we're scared of hunger because it's desperation, hunger. And nine out of 10 adults, you say nine out of 10 adults in your practice no longer experience hunger the way nature intended it. So what should hunger feel like or be like?
- [27:08]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yeah, so there's normal hunger, which is a endangered species these days, and then there's what I call pathologic hunger, meaning related to pathology or disease, that disease being insulin resistance. And that's what makes you hangry. So normal hunger is just really supposed to be kind of a polite reminder about meal times. It's really supposed to be just a light fluttering or stomach grumbling, which indicates that your stomach has got its, its digestive juices revving up and it's driven by again, the body's so amazing. Your circadian rhythm, your stomach knows what time it is, at least when it's healthy, and it knows what meal time is. And by the way, this is why your cat or your dog always gives you that special look just about 5:00 before feeding. Right. Because they have it in their guts, too. This circadian rhythm is located in our gut and it directs our gut as to when to shoot out some of those digestive juices which give us that very mild. It's just a very mild kind of reminder, like, yeah, I'm ready for you if you're going to send me some food right now. The key difference is that it goes away on its own. You don't have to eat. It'll go away in about five minutes. You know, if you get busy, it'll go away faster. You could drink something if it doesn't go away, that might help it go away. That's normal hunger. And how you tell the difference is by doing that, if it doesn't go away, then that's not normal hunger. And it's probably pathologic hunger. And there's other symptoms that go with a pathologic hunger. Irritability. That's why we get hangry. Brain fog, shakiness, weakness, sweating, nausea. Some people get. Some people get headaches, some people have. Who have migraines. When they fix their metabolism, they stop having migraines. It's like a such positive feedback that happens, you know, normal hunger in the context of a person who's well fed. Right, right. If you're starving, then, you know, hunger doesn't go away till you eat. But that's not our problem in this country. So I don't really think we need to talk about that in any more detail. I mean, if we were starving them, yes, we would obsess about food and we would have these same kind of intrusive thoughts of food that we do now. Just because our metabolism and our body fat isn't working right. And we need to detox our body fat, get rid of those seed oils, get the seed oils out of our diet and start eating the healthy foods that help except accelerate that detox process.
- [29:35]
Jenny Urch
This is so part of our culture. I read a book years and years ago called French People Don't Get Fat or something along those lines. And it was about how they don't snack. I mean, that's was it. They don't snack. And even you talk about how like the cortisol pulse and like, you should have your carbs more toward the end of the day. And you talk about the timing of all that. But I had a friend who, their family just went over to Europe and she said, all you can get in the morning is a pastry. Like you can't get eggs, you know, But. But there is this big difference that you don't snack. And there's this whole cultural push toward it, and people will say something to you if you're giving your kid a bag of crackers or something. So, like, I don't know, maybe a decade ago, I was like, we're gonna cut out the snacks. And I lasted, like, two days. I mean, it is such a part of culture with children. But you say there's no such thing as a healthy snack. A Tic Tac counts. So do cough lozenges. Consuming anything with calories outside of a predefined meal counts as a snack, even if it has zero calories. I want to talk about this because I think this is a big thing, too. The diet foods and the aspartame and the sucralose and the natural flavorings. You wrote, if it tastes sweet, it counts as a snack, even if it has no calories. Can you explain that?
- [30:47]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yes. If it tastes sweet, what it's doing is that. Here's another cool thing about the body factoid. When we taste something sweet, it's because taste buds on our tongue are sending a signal to a certain area of our brain that registers activity as sweet flavor. We have those exact same taste buds. They look identical. They're in our gut. They're not connected to our flavor centers. They're not connected to our brain. They're connected to our pancreas, which makes the pancreas release insulin, which lowers our blood sugar. So if you have something that tastes sweet, but you don't have any sugar coming with it, your pancreas is still going to be releasing some insulin, and that's going to lower your blood sugar. And within a few, you know, minutes to maybe an hour, you're gonna start feeling really bad from the lowering blood sugar, right? You could get hungry. You could get brain fog. You could get all of those. Those pathologic hunger symptoms, which are identical to hypoglycemia. A lot of people have heard the term hypoglycemia. It means your blood sugar's too low. Pathologic hunger and hypoglycemia are the same thing. The crazy thing is, if you went to a doctor and said, you know, I have these symptoms, and he said, oh, it's just your hypoglycemia. He would tell you to snack, or he or she. Or a dietitian, they would tell you to snack. But that just makes the problem worse, right? It fixes this. The feeling, the bad feeling. So we feel like it. It's a good idea, but it literally Makes the problem worse because generally the things that will alleviate those symptoms will contain refined sugars which have no nutrition in them, and often seed oils, which are causing the problem or rapidly just dramatically accelerating the problem. Both the refined sugars and carbohydrates and seed oils contribute to insulin resistance, but seed oils are more, 80% of it than, you know, the refined sugars and flour compared to the refined sugars and flours. I would say that's, that's the breakdown. Like they're both not good, but seed oils are four times worse, if not more.
- [32:58]
Jenny Urch
Well, because you had written that according to statistics, our carbohydrate consumption is about the same today as it was in 1900, when our rates of obesity were about a tenth of what they are now now. So it, you know, it's less the carbs, obviously the carbs are a thing, but like this seed oil, that's the big change, that these vegetable oils, they're 80% of the fats that we consume. I think this is a really big deal. Dr. Kate Sweet taste releases fat burn, blocking hormones. It's not just sugar that makes your body release insulin. It's anything with sweet taste. So, like all of these, Diet Coke, 1 Coke 0. You have that at 2:00 in the afternoon. It's got no calories. What a racket.
- [33:37]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Seriously? Absolutely. It's just going to make you want another one in just a short little while because your blood sugar's dropping and you're going to feel like you want energy. Right. So if it, even if it's diet and has no calories, you're going to seek caffeine maybe, right? You know, you maybe don't know that it's what you need is what's really going on. But yes, to release insulin, not only does it lower your blood sugar, but it makes you build fat. I mean, insulin is the fat building hormone. So anything that makes you release hormone takes you out of burning any body fat you might have been doing and puts you into fat storage mode. Now, if it's just a little bit of insulin that lasts just a little while, it's proportionate, right? You know, so I'm not saying that it's like a little bit of insulin and man, you're not going to burn fat for, you know, a week. It's not like that at all. But it's, it's still something that, you know, it has this effect and that is not built into medical advice, dietitian advice, doctor advice about nutrition, health, treating Hypoglycemia, treating type 2 diabetes, treating even type 1 diabetes. I mean, it's just, it's not built into the system and it needs to be. We need to help people understand that anything with calories can make you release insulin and therefore put you into fat building mode. And if you're trying to lose weight, that's going to be obviously counterproductive. Yeah, right. That people aren't told this.
- [35:05]
Jenny Urch
Yes. And even things without calories, that's the crazy part. I mean, that is so deceptive. It is so deceptive to have things that say zero calories and. No, I had no idea. I had no idea that you're still going to release insulin. It's because it tastes sweet and that tricks your body. I mean, this is things everybody needs to know. I mean, we're raising this next generation and you say like 9 out of 10 have this pathological hunger. And so there is a lot going on here.
- [35:35]
Unknown
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- [36:06]
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Jenny Urch
Needs.
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- [37:06]
Jenny Urch
You write the goal is is a different goal. It's not weight loss. Weight loss will come. But the goal is basically to get Rid of the hypoglycemia symptoms.
- [37:18]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yes, that is the goal. So that you can make it from breakfast to lunch without getting hangry, so that you don't feel the metabolic drive to snack. I have to warn you that if you always did have a snack, let's say 10:30 in the morning, then you're going to get that normal hunger, right? But that if it truly is just normal hunger, it should go away, right? So just drink some water, get up, walk around, call somebody, get in an argument that'll distract you, call your doctor and say, hey, Dr. Kate says seed oils are bad. Let's talk. That'll be an argument for sure.
- [37:56]
Jenny Urch
Call your dietitian.
- [37:57]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yeah.
- [37:59]
Jenny Urch
Okay, so then here's a question. And I know it's different for every single person, but if someone is used to having a snack at 10 o'clock or even for myself, we're on the path of cutting these out. Not perfect. And I've noticed major changes in my own self and health and all of those types of things. But still, if I didn't have the information and I didn't really care, I'm gonna have a pizza anytime, or, you know, I'd. Whatever. Is it always there? It's probably always there a little bit. That, like, pull toward the unhealthier things, the bad stuff. Yeah.
- [38:31]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly can speak for myself and people who have reported these sort of transformations to me. I myself had a terrible sweet tooth, and I just thought I was born that way. I mean, I would steal my little brothers and sisters Halloween candy. I would sneak off to the candy store, which was two miles away, but it was definitely worth it. I would sneak into the kitchen and eat that, you know, 11th bag of chocolate chips, the entire thing, because my mom probably wasn't counting. She didn't do an inventory. So, you know, I was that way. And I. I had a roommate when I was in college who was this skinny, Filipina beautiful woman. And she was like, I don't have a sweet tooth. I would rather have a steak than a Hershey's bar. And I thought, you are a freak woman. And, you know, like, I was like, I'll. I'll never be like that. Right. I wasn't even jealous because I love sugar so much, I didn't even bother being jealous. But now we have a pile. We have a stack. My husband is like a slight bit of a hoarder. If something's on sale, he's going to get way too much of It. So we have these four or five year old chocolate bars that are only there because my sweet tooth is gone. And I have had many, many patients report the exact same kind of experience that they can control themselves in ways they never thought possible. And it takes a while. Like it's not going to happen to everyone, you know, right off the bat. It didn't happen to me until like I still, I still couldn't control myself around this stuff for about two years. But you know, I, I was maybe more hopeless case than other people. I know everyone's different. Other people have said that they stopped craving it, you know, after just six months. But I mean, whatever, whenever it happens, it's a ball and chain that you don't carry around anymore. And it will go away, I promise you. Let me give you just one little tip to making sure that it goes away.
- [40:36]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [40:37]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Here's a little biohack for you and your audience. Anticipate what you're going to make. If you have a plan for dinner, start anticipating it, right? It doesn't work if you don't have a plan. So meal planning is integral to long term success. But if, you know, like today I, I'm gonna make this scrambled egg thing that I love that tastes like macaroni and cheese. It's like eggs, a tiny bit of flour and cheddar cheese and milk. I don't know how it works, but tastes like macaroni and cheese to me and I love it, right? So I start thinking about it hours before I eat it and yes, that makes it just taste so much better. Like the experience of eating it is just so much more enjoyable instead of what in the past was. I would have looked forward to the dessert, right? The after dinner, the thing that did have the sweet and the meal was just something to chew your way through on the way to the real reason for living, which was dessert.
- [41:29]
Jenny Urch
What a hope though that it can change in two years. That makes sense because you had that sweet tooth starting as a child. And I would say I've got same thing decades. I mean in third grade I remember having an issue with missing one snack. So this has been going on for a long time. So it would make sense that it, it would possibly for some people take a while to make those changes. But then what happens is then you start using ketones, which, this is a whole different topic. But that ketones are really good brain fuel. You know, you talk about like this can affect your life in a lot of different ways. It's your energy, it's what you can bring to the table in terms of your work or your, you know, the meaning of your life. So it's not just about the weight. It's about so many other things. And then as far as our, the way our bodies look, you wrote, the ability to build and maintain a lean and healthy physique is a fundamental body function, like breathing and having a pulse. Our body composition is. This is so wild. Dr. Kate, our body composition is not supposed to be something we have to stress about. I mean, this is like a trillion dollar industry, isn't it? About our body composition?
- [42:34]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yes.
- [42:35]
Jenny Urch
And you say it's not supposed to be something, it's supposed to be automatic.
- [42:39]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
And it was. I mean, if you look at old film footage of just like people walking about town in places like Baltimore, New York city in the 60s and 70s, you'll see people who look like athletes strutting about in like, their perfect physiques, their perfect body proportions. They, you know, they look like extras on, on a movie set about athletes or something. You know, that was normal. That was the standard. And back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, we had a fraction of the vegetable oil in the food supply that we do today. And so our obesity epidemic parallels the rise of the consumption of the vegetable oils, which I call the hateful eight now. Right. And when I wrote that book, I didn't have that term. And so it's not olive oil, it's not coconut oil or avocado oil. It's the list of the bad eight oils that I've identified as the ones that are. That contain toxins because of the way their chemistry and the way they're refined. And just to list those, I probably have them in the show notes, but just in case you're listening. Curious. You don't want to scroll. It's corn, canola, cottonseed, soy, sunflower, safflower, rice bran and grapeseed. Everything else is not toxic. Those are the worst of the worst. And the rise in this metabolic disorder and just all this obesity and type 2 diabetes, the whole spectrum, insulin resistance being hangry, and then the epidemics of related diseases. Cancer is increasing. Cancer in young people is increasing. Heart attacks in young people is increasing. Early onset dementias are increasing. The visual problems and blindness associated with diabetes are also increasing because all of these disorders are increasing due to the same root cause. And the vegetable oils are driving 80% of it.
- [44:35]
Jenny Urch
Wow. When your metabolism is healthy, you can partake in normal social celebrations while maintaining your normal weight. This is how our body is supposed to function. So you're gonna learn all sorts of things in this book about metabolism. It's not about fast, it's about flexible. There's no such thing as a fast metabolism. I mean, these are all the things I didn't know. I didn't know. And I read Dark Calories, so I'm so glad I read this next one. Does exercise speed my metabolism? You're like, metabolism does not have speeds. Your metabolism performs the tasks you ask of it. Fast metabolisms are a myth. You want it to be flexible. And then you wrote, like you to me, this is motivating. Unusual fats damage your metabolism. The fatty acid composition of your body fat changes. When a person's diet is composed of extraordinary amounts of unusual fats, then your body will be composed of extraordinary amounts of the same unusual fats. So I'm like, I don't really want that. I think that that's really, really motivating. I mean, this is a life changing book. Your books are so life changing. They make sense and also they work. And I feel like it's really important if you're working with children to be aware of these types of things too, for their lifelong habits. I want to talk about one other thing that's completely sort of. I mean, it's not separate because it's in the book. But I'd never heard of this. Everyone's talking about sleep. Sleep. You gotta sleep. Prioritize your sleep. But you wrote about how sometimes people have to sleep more than eight hours, different lengths of sleeping, and people tend to be like, oh, that person's lazy. And you wrote about how sometimes when we're sleeping, we're fighting viruses.
- [46:11]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yes. Yeah. There's so much that medical science has not been investigating because we've been focused on developing drugs and, you know, to treat all these diseases that are caused by the wave of seed oils that has taken over our food supply that doctors don't learn anything about. They don't learn anything true about them anyway. They learn very little about even what they are. They don't identify even what is a seed oil. They don't know about the haplo8. And so there's viruses that live in our bodies forever, like the chickenpox virus, the Epstein Barr virus, of course, then the other herpes, type one and type two, the embarrassing viruses. I like to call them parvovirus, which something like 70% of people have. And we get it from pets. These viruses can live. They can all, like, hide dormant in our body, either in our bone marrow or our lymph system or our nervous system and perhaps other tissues, and they are living there forever. And so it's like our bodies are constantly fighting them off. And if we, you know, some of us have immune systems that are just less able to fully eradicate them than other people, and a large portion of people cannot fully eradicate parvovirus. But, you know, if you are getting enough sleep or if you don't, like, abuse your body or, you know, abuse your emotional state, which I certainly did, you can fight them off. I talk about this because this is my. The reason I got into this in the first place, because I was attacked by some of these viruses because I was living in a terrifically stressful situation. You know, I was going through medical school and I was in a terrible, terrible relationship with somebody that I didn't even know. It was a terrible relationship. I thought, you know, I was the problem. That's what the worst relationships do to you. And so, you know, I wasn't sleeping on my days off and on, and I was up all night every second or third night. And so the viruses that would have just caused mild infections took deep roots in parts of my body that they didn't belong. And so that is why I couldn't walk for a few years during the time where I had this complete revolution of my understanding of what a healthy diet looks like and how the, you know, all of the stuff that I've learned since then is owed to viruses, I guess. Which if as long as they don't kill me, I guess I might be grateful for it one day.
- [48:37]
Jenny Urch
I thought it was important to read about because, you know, everyone's saying, don't let your kid have their cell phone in their room. And people are just not sleeping. They're up at night, they're on their phones. And you wrote, some of us have been unlucky enough. I mean, I had mono. These are keeping our immune system busy at night. There was one called cytomegalovirus or something like that. What a name. That's not the best name of all of them. Cytomegalovirus. Who came up with that one?
- [49:06]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
That's great. Good branding. Part of the scary virus.
- [49:10]
Jenny Urch
Yeah. If you're sleeping, if you need sleep, it might be because of that. The salt thing I thought was really eye opening. Salt reduces hunger. Salt makes health food taste better. Use at least least three times as much as you should. This is a similar thing to the eggs.
- [49:26]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yes.
- [49:26]
Jenny Urch
You know, it's like low salt, low salt. Don't have salt. Monitor your salt. And you wrote there's almost no chance you'll get too much salt in your diet. It improves your energy, your bone health, your learning, your concentration, your digestion. It helps reverse insulin resistance and diabetes. Yes, this is incredible.
- [49:43]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Yes, it's a nutrient. I mean, you know, we, again, medical science has taken to the attitude that some things that in previous generations, doctors knew were nutrients, that, oh, those are the problems. Those are the reason that we're getting sick. Right. Salt has even been blamed for cancer. It's been blamed for obesity. Salt doesn't even have any calories. It's just like when you start examining some of these tenets of what? Of nutrition, modern nutrition science. When you start examining the. The principles that people are taught as if they're gospel truth just on their surface. They don't even make sense when you just, like, come on that common sense level. But nobody does that because we are so acculturated to. Salt is a. Is bad. Like, we've all grown up hearing that. And, you know, this is where we have to invoke, like, people who've spoken the truth in the past, like the evil man Mussolini, who wanted to convince people that lies were true. He said a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. That is the world we are living in in nutrition science, so called nutrition science. And I want to say something, you know, here because of what's going on politically right now, you know, with rfk, who has this, you know, belief that seed oils are bad, which, you know, you're welcome. Yes, they haven't thanked me, but I. I hope that they will someday realize that I can help them. And he has this mandate, but he doesn't know where to start. That's why I think I can help them. But he's being attacked because nutrition science is this farce, and people believe that what he's saying is wrong. And he's saying seed oils are toxic, and he's saying that we are putting too much money investigating things that are not true. And he hasn't gone into deep detail on the nutrition part of it, but he should. And if he doesn't know how, then they should reach out to me. And I've made myself available to them, Honestly, I've told them. And so if I sound a little bit like, flummoxed, I guess I am, because I really do want to help, and I really can. And. And it's a shame, though, that Robert F. Kennedy is being attacked and being called, like, incompetent when, sure, maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense for A lawyer to be running the health, the human health services, an environmental lawyer. But if you look at it from his perspective, he believes the environment is what's poisoning us. Right? He believes that there's a lot of toxins out there and he understands at least enough about cedar oils to know that they are toxic. So that is you know, kind of in his wheelhouse a little bit, if you think about it that way. And so if you're one of these folks who has been, you know, there's such divided camps, he's such a divisive person right now, unfortunately, if, if you've heard that you know, bad about him and he doesn't know, just please consider that you're hearing this from people who don't understand nutrition science but think that they do. And, you know, these are the people who are running, who were running the hhs, and these are the people who are unhappy with the way he's running it and cutting their funding. Just consider that this is some of the fallout of that lie that we were all fed about seed oils being heart healthy and cholesterol being unhealthy. That's part of the fallout is now this political division where a man who, I believe, at least for now, I believe that he really intends to do good, but he's being accused by the establishment of being completely incompetent. So that's part of the whole story that we've been talking about here, because.
- [53:32]
Jenny Urch
Vegetable oils are central to big food profitability. And these oils are possibly the defining features of processed foods. That's where we started. And they would collapse overnight if they didn't have the oils and the sugars. You dedicated this book, the Fat Burn Fix, to open minds and gentle hearts. You wrote, there is a war being raged over our food choices. And so you give all of these answers and they're not difficult. They're not difficult. It's like you have to walk 22 miles a day and you know you can't eat and you, I mean, they're not. And I just, I find so much hope in what you've written and my own personal experience is that it is making changes for me now. It's going to take me, I think, a while because I think I've had issues for a very long time, but I, I do totally notice it and I'm So, so thankful, Dr. Kate, for you coming on and spending this time with us. People can connect with you on your newsletter. Can you tell them how to do that?
- [54:24]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Please visit my website, which is Dr. Kate.com-R C-A-T.com and towards the top you'll see. Subscribe to my newsletter. You'll get a bunch of helpful free resources PDFs to download. When you do that and I don't bombard you, you get a few emails, you know, to kind of let you know about like what books are about and stuff like that. And then it's like a monthly newsletter if that. I'm sort of behind on my monthly newsletter. So if you signed up, I apologize. I. I have actually been involved in a very exciting pro project Jeannie that when you ask, asked me earlier what else am I doing, I for some reason it completely skipped my mind. We're going to be doing a documentary and you know, on getting people off seed oils. So if anybody listening wants to be a participant in the documentary or you know, depending on when this is released, the documentary may already have been out for inspiration. You can also go to my website and find out where to go to get the supportive. There's an application that we're an app that we're also developing and a community that I'm developing that will support you in your journey. But yeah, so depending when this comes out, please reach out to me for. If it comes out before probably has to be. Well, no, actually the documentary is not going to start. Yeah, there's.
- [55:52]
Jenny Urch
I'll get it out whenever you're getting.
- [55:54]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
It mixed up up. So the documentary is going to be. Yeah, going to be starting. We're not even deciding sure yet when it's going to be starting. So that's why I'm mixed up. We don't have an answer yet. But yeah, so I will let you know Ginny. And so that you can kind of put an update on that if, if you, if you would like to do that to get your listeners to be documented. I mean I think it'd be fantastic to watch a transformation over probably a 30 day time period. Maybe a little longer.
- [56:18]
Jenny Urch
Wow. Okay. So that's why you have to sign up for the newsletter so that you know what's going on because you also have a court course. You have Rebel. Well, you track your biomarkers so a lot of different ways that people can connect with you. And this is information that you're not really getting in the mainstream and in fact might be shot down in the mainstream. So you might be confused. So you wanna, and you wanna read the book. You gotta read the book for the sake of your kids even I was talking to our kids. They're really into the protein Powder. I was like, there's information on the protein powder in here. You've gotta be careful with that kind of stuff. And you just have a plan. There's recipes. It is just another wonderful life changing book. The fat burn thing. Fix. Boost your energy and hunger and lose weight by using body fat for fuel. Dr. Kate Shanahan, thank you so, so much for coming back.
- [57:03]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
Thank you so much, Jenny. I just always love talking to you. I was always. It's been twice, but it's just been amazing to speak with you. You're. I love your energy. You are so good. I just, I cannot say, like, you asked you how the great segues you pick out. Like, you pick up quotes in the book that I don't remember writing. I'm like, did I say that? Like, am I that smart? That's a really good quote. Thank you.
- [57:27]
Jenny Urch
This is what's going to change the world. This is changing the world with the diabetes epidemic. I mean, and these kids. So thank you. Thank you for all that you're doing.
- [57:37]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
You just put me in a good mood.
- [57:39]
Jenny Urch
Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm on to the next one. I'm going to read Deep Nutrition next. I mean, you have so many, so this is great. And people should read all of them. And what an honor. I already said thank you by saying thank you again. Thank you, Dr. Kate.
- [57:54]
Dr. Kate Shanahan
My pleasure.
- [57:57]
Dr. Edie Wadsworth
Hi, dear one. I'm Dr. Edie Wadsworth, your new favorite Christian life coach. And I want to invite you to the House of Joy podcast. If you're a woman over 40 or the daughter of one who wants to build a positive mindset, healthier habits and thriving relationships, this is the show for you. We talk about personal growth, faith resilience, and creating a life you're obsessed with. So if you're tired of feeling stuck and ready to step into more joy and purpose, come join us. Listen now, wherever you get your podcast.
- [58:28]
Unknown
Are you looking for your new favorite podcast that's both entertaining and will challenge you in your walk with Jesus? Hey, we're Macaquenz from the for the Girl podcast. Every Tuesday, we break down everything that we wish someone had told told us in our 20s, from faith and relationships to wild career transition, we're getting real about all of our mess ups and the things God has taught us along the way. Think of us as your hilarious weekly dose of honest conversation with your Internet besties who've been exactly where you currently are. So come check out for the girl on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen to podcasts and make sure to click Follow on our shows so that each new episode is dropped right into your personal feed.