Behind the Scenes on Low-Carb Diets with Jimmy Moore
Low-Carb Diets
JONATHAN: Hey everyone, Jonathan Bailor back – and just time for another great session when we’re here talking about the advancements that have been made in nutritional and exercise science and technology, just like they have in every other arena and just like we’re not going to use a computer that we used 40 years ago, one because it wouldn’t fit into our house because it’s the size of our house, but we have no need to use the same nutrition and exercise information that we used 40 years ago and there is a man – a man out there who has really embodied this transformation in terms of living these old Calorie Myths, seeing where that takes him and then completely letting go of them, embracing the new science and then proselytizing that information to millions of people at this point and it’s such an honor to have my dear friend with us today. He’s the author of the brand new “Cholesterol Clarity” book and he hosted the wildly popular “Livin La Vida Low Carb Show,” brother, Jimmy Moore, welcome.
JIMMY: Hey, what’s up Jonathan?
JONATHAN: Jimmy, I am so happy to have you here today because there is no better person to give us not only insight to this modern science that goes way beyond calories, but also to take us back and illustrate what can happen when we’re trapped in the old calorie myth. So, would you mind sharing your story?
JIMMY: Oh, man – calories was all that mattered to me whenever I ever tried to diet. I’ve been overweight my entire life — until now. So many people feel like they’re trapped because they try the low calorie deal and while it may work for a while and then the hunger starts to come on and then they get frustrated when the scale stops, even though they’re only eating a 1,000 calories a day –
JONATHAN: Yep.
JIMMY: They’re like alright, something’s going on here and I was caught in that trap and I was trying diet after diet, literally from the time I was in my teens or even before that even pre-teens, I was a fat kid and so I was always trying these things and my mom was like the best model for low fat, low calorie eating in the 1980s. I say best because that’s all she ever did was low fat diet this, low fat diet that, rice cakes, you name it, she did the diet and of course us kids were all fat too, we would sometimes go it with mom and do all these things and it was all predicated on calories and so you’re looking at a carrot, how many calories does that have — I’ve got to add that exactly up and don’t eat too many.
I remember my mom — even got to the point where she had to buy this special kind of toothpaste because regular toothpaste had something like 50 or 60 calories in it and the doctor that had her on this diet said you can’t use regular toothpaste, you have to use this kind and it was some baking soda mixture thing, but that kind of obsession about calories is what frustrates the crap out of people and that is what I think mires people. So, for me I was mired in that wiring in my brain that said, calories, calories, calories, when I really needed to focus on quality of calories and the right kind of calories for my body. It wasn’t obviously until I found what I do now that I was able to finally get out of the calorie mantra and I don’t even remember the last time I counted my calories, Jonathan –
JONATHAN: Yep.
JIMMY: Probably a decade ago before I even started this current journey.
JONATHAN: Jimmy, we all know today, I mean you are a figurehead for the low carbohydrate lifestyle and you’re a great example of the both dramatic aesthetic, as well as health benefits that can accrue, but tell me a little bit about the transition period from when you were crossing over from the dark side to the light side and some of the struggles not only physiologically,but mentally — where it must have been hard to let go of those calorie myths.
JIMMY: Yeah, it really was and many years even after beginning this, even from the fat phobia to the calories mattering, all of those things — just they’re back there, I mean as much as you – even Jonathan Bailor, I know as much as you rail and you’ve got a book on it and everything in the back of that mind there’s this little fleeting thought that says, maybe I should cut down on my fat to lower the calories and go work it – even just a little bit because we’ve been so propagandized, so conditioned for so long – you’d have to be almost superhuman –
JONATHAN: Yeah.
JIMMY: Not to have that inkling in the back of your mind. So, for me it started in 2004, January 1st, 2004 was when I made the switch and I went from — I was eating a cruddy diet before this, like two boxes of Little Debbie Snack Cakes at a time, don’t want to know how many calories it was. I know how many carbs it was, but I don’t want to know the calories — 16 cans of Coca Cola a day, I mean I was a carb addict eating a lot of calories, mind you, but I had to switch that mentality from worrying about calories over to worrying about the quality of calories again. So, all that sugar and the carbs that I was eating, suddenly had become fat that I was eating and protein I was eating and limiting the carbs to the same carbs, the green leafy vegetables for the most part for me at the time.
So, the first few weeks of transitioning kind of from that mentality of oh, who cares to holy crap, I care, I don’t know what to do now. It’s scary and I can see that that would be a tough thing and it was very tough in terms of just the physiological changes that were happening from being a sugar high, high, high, high sugar burner to suddenly 20 grams of carbs in my diet, it was a shock, but very quickly, switched over and I think that’s the lesson anybody that’s trying to make a change and not worry about the calories anymore, start eating the way your body wants to be fed and you’ll know because you’ll no longer be hungry, you won’t have to be thinking and obsessing about your next meal, which for most people is every three hours, eat to satiety and I loved how you said on the low carb cruise, your wife and you would go have dinner with us, but then like two hours later, you’d go have your second dinner. I love that. I mean if that’s something that’s going to work for you –
JONATHAN: Yeah.
JIMMY: And you really aren’t worried about your calories. You’re really just eating to the satiety –
JONATHAN: Yeah.
JIMMY: What are you worried about the calories for?
JONATHAN: Absolutely. And Jimmy, so from personal experience, you must have had a moment where the fact that you could kick back two packages of Little Debbie Snack Cakes and 16 cans of Coca Cola — like the fact that you were not sated or satiated after eating all of that and then you just eat some of whatever, higher quality food you choose and you get that satiety feeling – did that just blow your mind a little bit?
JIMMY: I didn’t realize it at the time. I just was like, okay, I’m eating and I didn’t notice that I wasn’t as hungry. You stop and think about it, all of those Little Debbie Snack Cakes and big plates of pasta and Christine — I don’t even want to know what else I ate during that time. She reminds me every once in awhile how I used to eat and I’m oh, I remember the first meal she made for me because I was used to eating so big, she cooked up a dozen eggs –
JONATHAN: Wow –
JIMMY: In a skillet for me. Cooked it in butter and everything and it’s just this big plate of eggs and I’m going holy crap, how can I eat all of that and she’s like, well, I’ve been serving you this big of a plate of pasta with spaghetti sauce on top, so what’s the difference so I start eating this – this is like the first couple of days I remember this very vividly — I’ve never told this story anywhere, so this is cool. I start eating this and about a third of the way through I’m going, oh, I can’t eat anymore and she’s like how is that possible? You had just as many calories on the plate with all of that pasta –
JONATHAN: Yeah.
JIMMY: And the pasta sauce and you would eat that whole thing, plus down two boxes of Little Debbie Snack Cakes, what do you mean you can’t eat this? But it’s that quality of calories we go back to –
JONATHAN: Yep.
JIMMY: And I think it was at that point that I realized this ain’t about the calories.
JONATHAN: Yeah.
JIMMY: Because if it was I could have eaten that whole plate – had I forced myself to eat I would have threw up because it was too much, because my body was saying, finally, you’re feeding me what I want, I’m going to kick off the hunger signals and you’re going to feel just fine and by the way your brain’s going to be clear – all these things are going to happen to your body that you didn’t know was going to happen and I wouldn’t have known, but for getting off of all the garbage.
JONATHAN: Jimmy, did you ever have an experience — I love this concrete example of an isocaloric plate of pasta with an isocaloric plate of eggs, did you also ever have an experience – I’ve heard people sometimes say that if they drink soda, or beer, they can actually eat more than if they hadn’t consumed – because remember soda and beer both contain calories –
JIMMY: Right.
JONATHAN: It’s like eating those calories enables them to eat more calories and so it has almost negative satiety.
JIMMY: It’s gasoline on the metabolism. Literally and think about this, Jonathan — I would go to 7-Eleven and I would not just get the Gulp or the Big Gulp or the Super Big Gulp, I would get the Double Gulp, it was like something like 80-ounces of whatever, some sugary beverage — and I would drink that and then come home and down a bunch of cans of Coke behind that and I wondered why I was always so angry, or angry I guess is what I was –
JONATHAN: Yep.
JIMMY: And it’s exactly what you just talked about. It’s stoking this flame that you have to quench with more and more calories, which sounds odd, because a can of Coke, what’s it got, like a 100 or I don’t even know what a can of Coke has, but 100 or 150 calories in it – I’m getting calories from that, but those calories are not satisfying me. So, if it really is about calories, why am I getting hungrier not satiated when I drink that Coca Cola.
JONATHAN: And Jimmy, I love that you brought up – mood – because one thing that you are known for and I can personally attest you is you are just a happy, awesome, uplifting guy and so often transitioning to a higher quality – just being healthy, right? It’s sad that in our culture — there’s actually studies done where if you say like this is healthy, if you have a button like positive/negative, they’re like negative. Healthy is negative, whereas, you’ve been on both sides. Talk to me about healthy and is it really a negative thing or having experienced both dramatic un-health and then robust health, how do we motivate people to see healthy as happy and not a burden?
JIMMY: Well, let me give you an example. Back in 1999, I was very successful following a low fat diet. It was the year that my brother, Kevin, had his heart attacks that almost killed him at the age of 32, I was 4 years younger at the time, and I went on basically a no fat diet. I was like I do not want to follow my brother having heart attacks at 32. I was morbidly obese at the time and I want to lose weight, so I knew, just knew — I had to cut my fat.
So, I ate basically no fat – guess what my friends were that year? It was Twizzlers, and Marshmallows because they’re naturally fat free Jonathan, you got to eat those, and so I eschewed just basically anything that had fat in it basically zero fat, high carb and by the grace of god somehow, some way, I lost weight doing that – a pretty significant amount of weight too, over 100 pounds.
My wife, Christine will tell you, I was not fun to be around. I was miserable. I was like seemingly always angry. I would lash out at her and I remember this now and it breaks my heart that I was so – angry all the time and I didn’t at the time, put two-and-two together that it was the fat I was missing. My brain was starving for nourishment and fat is nourishment for the brain. So that kind of got me thinking, how many people out there are under the guise of being healthy, cutting their fat like I did in 1999, cutting it and then they’re experiencing all of these issues and we’ve seen a lot of kind psychos out there lately shooting at people and some of the gun violence, things that have happened – I wonder about their diets, Jonathan, I wonder if maybe they’re not getting the proper amount of fats that make them a happy-go-lucky person.
JONATHAN: Yeah.
JIMMY: These are serious issues I think need to be talked about in our culture, what’s been the unattended consequences of that fat phobia and making people fearing fat, because they have a lot of calories – and so thus people are cutting fat – to lower calories – but to what end? Where’s it gotten us?
JONATHAN: Yeah.
JIMMY: Not in a very good direction — anything. So, your question is a really good one because it gets to the very heart of making sure that people are choosing the right kind of calories and guess what, fat can be an extremely good calorie to choose because it’s so satiating, it helps improve your mood, clarity of thought. I mean that’s the first thing I advise people when they write to me and they’re struggling and oh, I can’t understand, I’m so stressed and I’ve got brain fog – eat more fat. Go grab some butter, coconut oil, lard, real full fat meats and cheeses, all of these things are going to help your mental health. Forget weight loss. Weight loss is cool, it’s a nice side effect of eating this way, what you’re wanting to do is improve that brain health – it has nothing to do with calories, it’s all about those kind of calories and fat is your friend.
JONATHAN: Brilliant, Jimmy and I know there’s so much science in addition to personal experience that is backing up what you say. The motivation behind your most recent book, “Cholesterol Clarity,” I can imagine is people saying okay, Jimmy, this is all well and good and yes, in fact, for people who have tried this, the results are consistent. I do feel better, but am I feeling better only to compromise my cholesterol and to die of a heart attack 10 years sooner in the future and I know that you’ve mentioned these little niggling things in the back of your brain like in addition to calories, this whole well, if you eat fat, you get high cholesterol and if you get high cholesterol your arteries get clogged and saturated fat is solid at room temperature so it’s solid in your arteries. I mean there’s all this other stuff that must be sitting back there, so —
JIMMY: Right.
JONATHAN: How do you help people to then cross that (Inaudible 00:015:51) they’re not as worried about calories, but now they’re like oh, well, dang it, there’s the cholesterol pothole, what do I do with that one?
JIMMY: Isn’t it funny how we believe things just inherently?
JONATHAN: Yeah.
JIMMY: Saturated fat clogs arteries. Where’d that come from? It came from — we just always believed it and it kind of reminds me of that story about this Thanksgiving and the family was making the ham and they saw the daughter cutting off the ends of the ham and putting it in the pan and the younger daughter said, why are you doing that? She’s like, I don’t know, let me go ask my mom. So, she goes and asks her mom, why do you do that? Oh, that’s what we did. So, then she goes back to her mom, the great grandmother and the great-grandmother said oh, back in the day it didn’t fit in the pan so we had to cut off the ends to make it fit.
So, we don’t know why we believe what we believe, there’s some reason I suppose back in the day – Ancel Keys — that we believe these things and yet they’re just traditions in our culture in our brains that say, fat makes you fat, fat clogs your arteries, higher cholesterol is the reason for heart disease, all these things we just inherently know to be true when they’re not really true at all.
So that’s kind of what I want to challenge people on. Why do you believe that? Where is your evidence? What empirical evidence do you have? What first direct research have you done into this to see why you believe that? And I think that’s a fair question to ask people, unfortunately, too many people don’t want to think, they just want to believe and so that’s one reason why wrote that book was, I wanted people to know the truth because they’re not getting it in our culture. You go to any of the major heart health websites or health organizations, Mayo Clinic, American Heart Association, all of these things, they’re all going to rail against saturated fat, raising cholesterol, raises LDL, which leads to atherosclerosis and it’s a lie. You’ve got to learn and that’s what we tried to do in the book was to educate people that there is an alternative hypothesis.
JONATHAN: And there’s great news Jimmy — not only does this book contain just a wealth of science, which is really not debatable or if people want to debate it, they should debate it on the grounds of science, not on the grounds of anything else, like if you were going to explain a causal chain, I want them to be able to identify it’s this step that’s wrong and then we could have that debate, but some of these other, these anecdotes that we hear like the whole saturated fat – there was even a commercial in Britain where they showed a bit like it was a graphical representation of when fat gets solid, see how sticks in a drain, so therefore, you know that happens in your arteries, broccoli is solid at room temperature. Does that mean that broccoli gets stuck in your artery? The logic is just so broken and backwards, so help us to understand what the science actually shows about cholesterol.
JIMMY: Without cholesterol you would die. If you asked most people what’s the perfect level of cholesterol in the body, because of the propaganda we’ve been given and statin drug companies are the worst offenders, they’re direct to consumer marketing, I’m just going to throw their name out there, Lipitor, says go lower, ask your doctor about Lipitor to lower your cholesterol. So, any time people talk about cholesterol health, they talk, lower, lower, lower, lower, but they really don’t know what they’re talking about because one of the numbers on your cholesterol panel is one you want higher. In fact, I just posted recently this lady who wrote to me read “Cholesterol Clarity” and went to see her doctor, 77 years old, doctor wanted to push a statin drug on her, her HDL cholesterol, get this, Jonathan, 159. I have never heard of an HDL that high, but her body, especially as an aging woman, needs that higher level of cholesterol so obviously that high of an HDL pushed her total cholesterol to around 290. Of course, the doctor was going ballistic, oh, you’ve got to lower your cholesterol. Why? Her LDL was like 110, get this, her triglycerides, hold on to your hats — I’ve never heard one this low — 20.
JONATHAN: Wow.
JIMMY: Twenty. And so it’s that ratio between the triglycerides and HDL is just phenomenally and I think hers was like .1. I’ve never – I’m jealous because mine’s only like .5 or .6 — under 2.0 is what you’re looking for, but unbelievable and yet he’s pushing a statin on her.
One of our experts in the book, which was Dr. Chris Masterjohn, and he noted that in traditional cultures free from heart disease, the average cholesterol level for a woman, was around 250 and as they got up into the age where this reader sent me her story, the 77 year old, as they get that age, 300 is normal, so this lady for all intense and purposes is totally in the normal range and yet here a modern day doctor isn’t recognizing the HDL — good cholesterol that she has, the triglycerides that are phenomenal and I bet if they ran an LDL particle size test on her LDL that 110 LDL, I have no doubt in my mind she has mostly Pattern A, large fluffy kind of LDL, very few of the atherogenic kind of LDL particles and yet he’s putting her on a drug that’s going to literally destroy the very thing that is keeping her optimally healthy right now.
JONATHAN: Jimmy, it’s, it’s just heartbreaking because we’re seeing – it’s this same kind of logic, even with calories, it’s just eat less calories. Just eat less calories, are the enemy and cholesterol, just less cholesterol, cholesterol is the enemy, but just like with calories, as we talked about already, it’s really a quality issue, not a quantity issue. For cholesterol, you’ve touched on this. You’ve touched on the key elements that help us to identify our cholesterol quality, rather than that quantity number, help us – just give us the specific breakdown of instead of saying, instead of looking at the number on the scale, I want people to measure their waist. Instead of looking at my total cholesterol, you want them to look at blank _____.
JIMMY: Instead of total an LDL-C, those are the ones that we’ve always been told are the be-all-end-all — if your total has 2 in front, or if your LDL-C has a 1 or higher in front, you have a statin drug deficiency is what we’ve been told.
So, they’re pushing those drugs on you and they’re doing it out of obligations of numbers. So, if you like numbers, forget those numbers, let’s look at three other numbers.
First one is one we’ve already talked about, the triglycerides. You want that number to be below 70, optimally and the way you get it there, you have to cut your carbs down. That’s really the best way and not everybody needs to be ketogenic low carb like Jimmy Moore, but your tolerance level of carbohydrates, that triglyceride is going to be a tell-tale sign. If you’re over a 100, guess what, you’re eating too many carbs, you need to back away from the carbs just a bit. So, that’s one, the Triglycerides number.
The second one is your HDL cholesterol. This is the one that’s the good cholesterol that you want to have above 70 and the way you get it above 70 and especially for women — like a reader friend of mine, 159, that’s the highest I’ve ever seen in my life, minus 79 — but for women, you can go around 100 pretty easily I think because women have certain biological needs for more HDL. So you do that by guess what? Eating more fat. When we say fat, we’re not talking about vegetable oils and we can talk about vegetables if you want to, but, we’re talking about saturated fat, and monounsaturated fat. Those are the two primary ones, so butter, coconut oil, avocado, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil, in fact I just cooked some meatballs in some macadamia nut oil a while ago. It was really good.
So those are two of the markers and then the third one is a little more of an advanced cholesterol test that you can have run called, an NMR LipoProfile test — shows you a particle size breakdown of the LDL. People think LDL is one number, but it’s actually two major numbers, a large fluffy kind and a small dense kind, so this NMR report, which your doctor should be able to run – if they give you a hard time about it, demand it, you are the boss of that relationship, you demand that you want that test and fire your doctor if they refuse to do it. You didn’t hear that from me.
So, get that run and you’ll see the LDL P-number, which is your total number of LDL particles, but the very important one on that test is the small LDL-P and it’s that number you want as close to zero as possible. So, looking at those three numbers, you’re going to know a whole lot more about your heart health and then you can throw in hs-CRP, the high sensitivity c-reactive, protein is a key inflammatory marker, you can actually see for signs of actual disease happening, get a heart scan score, where they do a CT of your chest, so they can see how much plaque is actually in there and do a carotid artery scan to see if there’s any plaque growing there, so there’s all kinds of things you can do to see if actual disease is taking place rather than simply relying on one or two numbers, LDL and total cholesterol, as the be-all-end-all.
JONATHAN: And Jimmy, how important and I know the answer to this question, but I’m not sure all the readers do — is this simultaneous reduction of carbohydrate with the elevation of fat, because often times we see these studies in the media that talk about well, this group that ate the higher fat diet had all these troubles and blah, blah, blah, but they were eating a high fat, high carbohydrate diet –
JIMMY: Right.
JONATHAN: Which is you were talking about which is a high quality fat, lower quantity carbohydrate diet. How important is that dual shift in that diet?
JIMMY: Oh, my gosh, think about it. When you are eating a low fat diet, by definition, low fat, means, high carb because you have to replenish those fat calories with something and protein is only going to go only so high, in fact, if you look at the statistics, protein intake has kind of stayed steady, regardless of whether it’s high fat or low carb. It’s always kind of been steady – the protein.
So the variables here are the fat calories and the carbohydrate calories, so when you go low carb — it kills me these people that say why high protein, low carb, I’m like, how’s that work? How much fat is that and they wonder why they’re hungry all the time and they’re suffering some of the same ill effects of low fat dieters.
So by definition, low carb has to be high fat because you’ve to replace all those carbohydrate calories you’re consuming with fat now and fat becomes an alternative fuel source and that blows people’s minds – they’re like wait a minute, I thought carbs were your energy, but fat can be just as efficient, if not more efficient as an energy source – in fact there was a book called the “Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living,” Dr. Steven Phinney and Dr. Jeff Volekand in there they said, we have about 2,000 calories worth of sugar when you’re a sugar burner, you burn carbs for fuel, you have about 2,000 calories worth of energy at your disposal. Not very much which is why you have to keep re-feeding every few hours, but when you become a fat burner, you burn ketones, you get ketone adapted, you’re letting that fat be the fuel in your body, guess how many calories you have at your disposal – and this is of a lean person, someone like a Jonathan Bailor, over 40,000 calories so at 20 fold over sugar burner, amount of energy do I look like I’m hurting for energy right now? I’ve got all these calories at my disposal in my body because I’m feeding myself the way that’s allowing me to access those calories for energy rather than having to feed myself that limits my ability — that I have to basically keep feeding myself to keep having energy.
JONATHAN: Jimmy, that point – for me – when I got what you just said – that was the thing that made that voice go away more than anything else and it was because there’s this other, the whole like eating fat makes you fat. Again, we know like we’re eating green vegetables doesn’t make you green, so of course that’s logically flawed, but when you understand what you just said, which is when you eat sugar – carbohydrates all turns into sugar, then your body becomes good at burning sugar, so if you run out of sugar from your mouth, that just came in through your mouth, the only way to get more sugar is to take more in through your mouth.
JIMMY: Right.
JONATHAN: So, when you eat a lot of sugar, if you want to burn fat, it becomes very difficult because you’re constantly hungry because when you run out of calories from sugar the only way to get more calories is to eat more, however, if you get good at burning fat, and you run out of fat calories from what you ate, and your body needs some more energy, it just says, well, might as well take it off my hips, because it’s the same fuel source, it’s just already in your body.
JIMMY: And think about how energy is stored on the body. When you eat carbohydrates in excess, beyond your tolerance level, what happens to them? Do they get stored as some carbohydrate store on the body somehow? No, they get stored as hm…oh, yeah, fat – so consuming fat is not as strange a proposition because your body is having to store fat as energy on your body, why don’t you feed your body, which by the way is about a 50/50 mono-unsaturated/saturated blend why don’t you eat that very blend of fats, that your body fat is made of, you’ll burn that and simultaneously burn the body fat, get rid of that extra energy and you’re fueled by the very fat on your body and in your diet.
JONATHAN: Jimmy have you met, because some of the most fervent — let’s say criticizers of a lower carbohydrate higher fat way of living, oftentimes come from a more vegan or vegetarian background, but that always confuses me because for example, coca, coconut, avocado, macadamia nut, to me if –
JIMMY: Vegan.
JONATHAN: Vegan or a vegetarian for moral reasons, you could still have a delicious 60 to 80 percent of your calories coming from plant based amazingly healthy fats, so like what’s going on there, why is there no love?
JIMMY: Well, there are a few good vegans that I think are doing it the right way and if you’re a vegan and you’re eating coconut oil and high fat, and trying to keep the protein down to those sources that are right for you, I think that’s the right way to do it, I’m not anti-vegan at all. People are like oh, you’re the low carb guy, so you hate vegans – I love vegans that do it the right way –
JONATHAN: Yeah.
JIMMY: What I don’t love are these people — and I’ve had a few on my podcast before — most famously Dr. John McDougall — the guy that thinks the fat is the devil and he’s all about eating starches and that’s the basis and of course, you look at him and he’s always angry and he reminds me of my 1999 low fat diet story again that he’s lacking fat that kind of evens out the mood and I don’t mean that to be derogatory, I mean you think about it. He’s always angry and so why is that? I think he’s lacking the fat in his diet, so I think vegans, they mean well, but there’s a better way to do veganism and I think the whole vilification of fat by our society makes their message a little more acceptable in the minds of people because they’re like oh, fat’s the enemy, oh, and most people go oh, yeah, that’s true and so if we get people over fat phobia I think veganism from the low fat perspective becomes much more irrelevant.
JONATHAN: And I think it is so important to celebrate what you just said, because there is a lot of science showing a lot of support for a plant heavy diet, but a plant heavy diet and a fat heavy diet are absolutely positively not mutually exclusive.
JIMMY: Right. That’s right.
JONATHAN: And so many people miss that and then they say, oh, well, the only way you can feed the world is by eating a high carbohydrate – that’s not true at all. Fat is a robust source of calories we can grow enough avocados, macadamia nut, cocoa and coconut to feed all sorts of people.
JIMMY: Yeah, I went to Australia last year on a speaking tour and they have literally avocados coming out their ears, macadamia nuts, macadamia nut oil, you feed somebody those kinds of foods, I would dare say that’s more satiating and at the end of the day they’re probably going to get maybe an equal amount of calories or slightly less and be more satisfied than if you fed them rice and beans, beans and rice.
JONATHAN: Yeah. Absolutely and I just – it kind of blows my mind a little bit because people – it’s one of those things where it’s just false. Like again, even the saturated fat critiques, from people, cocoa and coconut, especially coconut, is almost completely saturated fat, but I have yet to get any of those anti-fat people to say, cocoa is bad for you, but if you think saturated fat is bad for you, across the board then you think cocoa and coconut are unhealthy, which are obviously not.
JIMMY: Yeah, and on the calorie point of that, if you think calories matter, then I’ll eat my 1,000 calories of coconut oil, you eat 1,000 calories of those Little Debbie Snack Cakes or Coca Colas that I talked about earlier, and let’s see what happens metabolically to those 1,000 isocaloric amounts of food, there’s a huge difference between those and I love that you’re kind of pointing all of that out.
JONATHAN: Well, thank you so much Jimmy and the last point I wanted to hit on here, Jimmy, which we’ve mentioned is you’ve talked a bit about the mood aspects of fat and I really want to highlight — because part of eating a higher quality, less calorie concerned diet is absolutely getting a good chunk if not the vast majority of your calories from high quality fat sources because that’s the only place remaining because high qualitycarbohydrate sources don’t have a lot of carbohydrate in them, so you do need energy so you’re going to get them from fat, but fats are therapeutic. You talked about mood. We’ve seen studies where Omega 3s are literally powerful anti-depressants and vitamins and minerals are getting absorbed. Can you give some highlights of the therapeuticaffects that fat has in the body.
JIMMY: Oh, man, I mean think about what fat is doing. Fat is becoming your fuel in your body and it’s producing this little subset affect called ketone bodies and it’s those ketones.
People don’t realize this, Jonathan, when you are lowering your carbohydrate level to a level that’s right for you while kind of keeping the protein levels, the threshold level for you as well and eating lots of healthy real food based fats like pastured eggs and coconut oil and lard and butter and grass fed butter and all these things that we’ve talked about, you’re making the very ketones that your brain is starving for.
So, if you start – I think about when I wasn’t eating fat way back 15 years ago, and now I’m eating fat, it’s night and day in the mental clarity, I remember things – I was talking to somebody the other day and I was remembering something from like 12 or 15 years ago. I said, you remember back then and he’s like no, I’m like, darn ketones, they’re making me remember stuff I’m becoming older, but people are aging with me. I’m not complaining I love that I’m not 18 brain wise, but it’s that sharpness that you can’t even imagine that they would make a drug that could be this effective. They can’t. You can’t mimic the effect until you sit there and drink (Inaudible 00:36:43) all day I guess, maybe then, but I mean I think if we just kind of get people’s mindset that fat is your friend, it’s not an enemy to your body, get over the cholesterol thing because we address that – it’s not going to clog your arteries, I think once we get the fat phobia out of people’s minds, Jonathan, then accepting it as an alternative fuel source that makes your brain work better, people will be more apt to try it because right now, they’re scared of clogging their arteries, they’re scared of getting fat. We get them over those phobias, then they can experience all the great benefits that we’ve been talking about.
JONATHAN: And certainly a great way for folks to do that is you’ve spent years just amalgamating some of the most brilliant minds and just wonderful information for folks. Free them from this cholesterol confusion and just myths out there, so give us some recommended resources, your top three. These three steps our viewers can take to learn more about your amazing story, all the amazing research that went into your book, “Cholesterol Clarity.” Top three steps to help us clarify our view of cholesterol and to eat a higher quality diet.
JIMMY: So, is this just tips in general, is that what you’re saying?
JONATHAN: No, resources. Websites, books – that kind of stuff.
JIMMY: Oh, websites. I was confused. I was like what’s he asking? So, for the “Cholesterol Clarity” book, we have a whole website, cholesterolclarity.com, it has literally – I’ve done a million interviews for it and there’s all my experts and everything are on there. There’s a sample chapter. I was on the 700 Club, so you can see that, feature story, a lot of really great things there, so that’s one. Number two would be kind of my catch-all for most of my work, livinlavidalowcarb.com, has all my blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts, everything and then I would highlight the Livin La Vida Low Carb website, the livinlowcarbshow.com, and I’ve done almost 750 episodes of literally everyone, even the great Jonathan Bailor’s on there to talk about literally everything when it comes to this kind of alternative message when it comes to health and healthy living, so those would be my three resources.
JONATHAN: Brilliant. Brilliant. Well, certainly the man lives up to the hype once again –
JIMMY: Boom –
JONATHAN: Boom – Jimmy Moore — showing us just how delightful of a person we can be when we increase the quality of our diet rather it being trapped in this quantity bubble. Jimmy, what’s next for you brother? I know you’ve got a lot going on.
JIMMY: Oh, man. I’m taking off the month of November and December and I’m writing a new book coming out in 2014 called, “Keto Clarity” that’s going to be all about the therapeutic effects of this whole diet we’ve been talking about today, high fat, low carb, from a therapeutic perspective that goes well beyond weight loss, so really look forward to sharing that in December, 2014.
JONATHAN: Awesome, awesome. Well, folks his name is Jimmy Moore, he’s obviously a wonderful man, a brilliant author and a wonderful radio show host. Jimmy, thank you so much for joining us today.
JIMMY: Thank you Jonathan.
JONATHAN: Folks, remember, this week and every week after, eat smarter, exercise smarter and live better. Chat with you soon.