Jackie Eberstein – The Inside Scoop on The Atkins Diet

Jonathan: Hey everyone, Jonathon Bailor back with another bonus Smarter Science of Slim podcast. Today’s show is a uniquely cool show because we have the great fortune to talk with a woman who has been part of the inSANE elimination or elimination of inSANE starches and sweets from the very beginning in the modern era, a woman whom I had the great pleasure of meeting her and her delightful husband recently on the Low Carbohydrate Cruise, a woman who has such a compelling story and has helped so many people to live better. We have none other than Jacqueline Eberstein, the registered nutritionist who began working with the Dr. Robert Atkins way back in 1974. Jackie, welcome to the show.

Jackie: Well thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here and it was very nice meeting you and hearing your wonderful talk on the cruise.

Jonathan: Well thank you so much, Jackie. The reason I wanted to share you here with the audience is you have such an amazing story. You’ve been doing this for many, many decades and you’ve really been at the center of the cultural shift away from saying just eat less and rather saying, eat so much of foods that don’t make you get fat and diabetic, that you’re too full for foods that do make you get fat and diabetic aka starches and sweets. Can you tell us all the way back to the very beginning 1974, how did you get plugged in with Dr. Atkins?

Jackie: Well it’s a bit of a funny story because I had, my background, I’m a registered nurse and my background was that I worked in intensive care in recovery room and I hated nutrition in nursing school and never thought I would spend virtually my entire career in this field. I got married, moved to New York, I was a little burned out, looking for a nice Monday through Friday job and I went to an agency to find a job and this one of the places they wanted to send me was to Dr. Robert Atkins’ office and I did not want to go.

I had no desire to work with Dr. Atkins. I of course knew a bit about his book because it was all over the media. I had no interest in nutrition, I had no interest in diet, but they talked me into going and I went. After a little bit of a tumultuous interview I accepted his job. I don’t know why I did because I really didn’t want it. I remember going home that day, it was a Thursday and I said to my husband, “I accepted this job that I really don’t want, and I don’t know why I did that.” and I was to start work Monday and he said, “Well if you don’t like it, you can always quit.” Well I stayed until 2003 and I closed Bob’s office after his death, after his brain injury from a fall.

Jonathan: Jackie, you played such a critical role. You were the Director of Medical Education at the Atkins Center for Complimentary Medicine, you designed and ran the Atkins Center of Modified Diet Program as well as the Atkins Low Carb Cruises and you did all of this while — it sounds like you were not a true believer. You didn’t just take this on “Oh Dr. Atkins is a celebrity.” You came in with a skeptical view. What for lack of better terms, converted you?

Jackie: Well I was very skeptical and I started as a registered nurse drawing blood and doing EKGs and all the things we did. He had a very busy diet practice. It was basically at that point still just an obesity practice and I very quickly realized the advantages because I started seeing patients come in every day and when I took their weight and their blood pressure and their pulse and chatted with them about how they were doing, if they were having any problems and people were just getting better.

The thing that struck me particularly was I had had the diet since I was 12 because I started gaining weight at around that age, which a lot of young women do when their hormones change. I also became a real carb addict at that time and that was also I believe because of the changes that happen with hormones. I do have a family history of diabetes on one side of the family and morbid obesity on the other and I could look back and see that I always was a carb addict even when I was a little kid. When I became a preteen, a teenager I really started craving a lot of carbs.

I started dieting in the usual way most people did. About the only thing I didn’t do was diet pills. I was always hungry, I was always craving, I’d lose the few pounds I needed to and then I went back to eating the way I was. When I became to work with Bob and saw people losing weight and losing inches, which really impressed me, without hunger and their cravings would go away after a reasonably short period of time I decided I would try it and I did, and it did work. I also had a medical problem that couldn’t be diagnosed and it was Dr. Atkins who diagnosed it a few months after I started to work with him.

I had rather severe cardiac symptoms, among other symptoms, at the age of 24. In order to suppress the symptoms I was on cardiac medication which was really ridiculous since I knew I didn’t have a heart problem even though I had some cardiac symptoms. It turned out I had a severe reactive hypoglycemia which would explain why I was such a carb addict and no one listened. The only who did was Bob and I fit the typical profile of someone who would have those kinds of conditions and those kinds of symptoms.

Of course we now know and what Bob and I learned as we looked at all the testing we did on our patients and looked at symptoms and how much better they got over time, that reactive hypoglycemia is a stage of what will become diabetes and so recognizing that so early was very useful and I can thank Bob for my not being diabetic now.

Jonathan: Wow, that is such a powerful story and it seems so similar to other medical professionals who I’ve had the good fortune speaking with where results are the most convincing, it’s difficult to argue with results. Not only from your own personal experience but also from all these patients you’ve seen. But Jackie, my follow up question is it seems there is such a vast array of successful not only clinical trials but just anecdotal experiences for anyone who goes on a lifestyle that focuses more on nutrient dense whole foods rather than a carb, starch, sugar saturated diet. Why is this still “controversial” in the medical community?

Jackie: Well I think one of the reasons that it is, is because it goes against the grain of so called conventional wisdom. We can look back at medical history and see that even with very simple solutions to medical issues, to get the medical community to change, for some people in the community to even admit they might have been wrong is sometimes a monumental task. When you go against the grain, especially the dietary guidelines that we’ve heard now for 40 years, you’re considered outside of the normal box of thinking and people will criticize you for that. Plus I think that there’s a lot of fear in the medical community.

Doctors are afraid to not follow national guidelines. I think that’s one of the reasons why there are so many prescriptions for statin drugs written. There’s also so much power and money. When you look at the pharmaceutical industry, really do you really think they want us to not to need all these medications? Do you really think the food industry wants us to stop us buying theses silly 100 calorie snacks that are supposed to be so helpful for you to manage your weight simply because they’re a 100 calories?

The fact that they’re poor quality food, the fact that they’re deficient nutrients, the fact that those foods really in the hands of a carb addict is like giving an alcoholic his first drink after he’s been sober for six months. There’s all these issues and there’s a lot of fear when people try to make change that doesn’t follow the guidelines. I’ve heard many of my patients say, “Even though they’re getting healthier and doing better, all my friends are telling me how that diet is going to kill me.” Yet the friends don’t tell them how sugar is going to kill them when they’re eating a lot of sugar, drinking a lot of soda, and they’re gaining a 100 pounds. Somehow that’s socially acceptable in some people’s minds. I think it’s very complex, it’s going to take a lot of work to turn back the mindset of a lot of people who frankly have been brainwashed with a lot of media messages too.

Jonathan: Oh you’re exactly right. Brainwashed is such an apropos term and do you have any recommendations in terms of, I love what you said about even though myself, you, all of our listeners understand the simple science of avoiding starch and sugar, replacing it with nutrient dense foods we have “friends” who tell us that we’re killing ourselves. When we look at our blood glucose, our triglyceride levels, our cholesterol levels, our thyroid hormone levels, they all seem to be improving yet our friends are telling us that we’re killing ourselves.

Two questions, very much related, one what can we expect from a medical perspective in terms of, we get blood work what should we expect to see changing? And how confident can we be that, this isn’t a matter of opinion, if those numbers are changing in a certain direction you are getting healthier and you can know that with confidence?

Jackie: Well I think there’s a number of things and even before you get to blood work I think the very idea of you’re doing a properly formulated carbohydrate restriction program you may not feel well when you make the transition. Once you’ve made the transition to carbohydrate restriction which in some people can be days and some people can be a few weeks you should feel better. All these nagging symptoms you always have, your joints hurt, you’re tired, your mood swings, you’re hungry, you have insomnia, all the kind of things that people all think is just how we’re supposed to feel go away.

So that’s telling you there’s cause and effect there. Also that you have less hunger and less cravings so you can control your eating because if you aren’t on a lifestyle weight loss and maintenance program where you can control your eating you’re not going to be able to make it a lifestyle. Then you look at labs and what we have seen time and again in research done on low carb and after the last ten, 12 years there’s a significant body of research which has shown the opposite of what the naysayers said research would show. Is that your triglycerides go down, your good cholesterol goes up.

If you get the more sophisticated testing of the size of your particles of lipids, of LDL and HDL, they are much healthier particle size, less likely to cause problems. Inflammation markers should drop, a very common marker is the HSCRP should drop because as you’re losing visceral fat and you’re controlling blood sugar and insulin you’re going to have less body wide inflammation which is really what underlies cardiovascular disease. If you’re able to be on less medication because your blood sugar is better, your blood pressure is better, how is that unhealthy?

These are the markers that regular doctors look for. The problem is their treatment is usually a prescription pad. We’re simply saying that these are lifestyle caused imbalances in the body that make you sick over time and so the treatment is really a lifestyle change. I think you have to go by how you feel and if you’re healthier and getting better. Then the naysayers unfortunately are simply people who are uneducated or ignorant about the facts.

Jonathan: Certainly Jackie, I think it’s also helpful to keep in mind in addition to all the wonderful advice you just gave that these naysayers, if they are struggling with their health and their weight and you are having success, listening to their advice is a bit like someone who is really, really struggling from a financial perspective telling you which stocks to buy and sell. Who cares what they have to say?

Jackie: Right, that’s exactly right. The other thing is is in some people who aren’t supportive of you and it doesn’t mean they don’t love you or they don’t care about you but they may not even be aware there may be some underlying reasons why they are having an issue with you looking better and feeling better. It may be confronting to them because they may have tried and failed and they’ve given up. They also may be a group of people who are carb addicts and they can’t imagine living a life without their carbs.

They see you doing it and somehow it upsets them, they can’t do it, haven’t done it, don’t want to face doing it, or whatever somebody’s unconscious reasons are. I’ve seen that time and again in my practice. It’s unfortunate but sometimes then you have to go it alone as far as you’re doing what’s right for you. If you need support, you’re not getting it, there’s plenty of low carb forums you can go and get support from people who understand low carb. Get the support from people who truly are supportive.

Jonathan: Certainly Jackie, at least in my own life it seems that when we experience some success, regardless of whatever area of life it is be it health, be it professional, be it familial and these individuals in our lives start to be anything less than supportive. For me at least that really helps to — people who really, really care about you it seems would only be supportive of your success and those who are intimidated by it if nothing else now you have an additional data point in terms of maybe who really cares about you and who’s just along for the ride.

Jackie: The other issue is if you’re in an obviously committed relationship and your partner who you know loves you but somehow they can’t be supportive… I saw a lot of fear on the part of the other partner that if you really start being healthy and looking better you’re going to leave them, kind of thing. That’s simply a talking point that the both of you need to address and maybe get professional help in addressing because both of you could both be much more mutually supportive if you’re both getting healthier but are comfortable in your relationship and that was a fairly common situation that I saw over the years.

Jonathan: Well Jackie in speaking in terms of over the years because you’ve been doing this and working with people on the very frontlines for almost four decades now so quite a bit of time, what have you seen as the biggest… change is too strong of a word but let’s say evolution of a deliberate carbohydrate approach. One example being and this might just be my own selection bias, I noticed in reading the most recent Atkins book that there was this focus, again I’m probably biased here, on required vegetables.

Meaning like you just have to eat a certain level of nutrient dense vegetables even during induction and then whereas in the early days one could have seen the Atkins message as being this just put butter on top of your hamburgers that you get from McDonald’s and wrap them in nitrate heavy hormone injected bacon, it doesn’t matter food quality is not important. Have you seen that evolution and what other evolutions have you seen?

Jackie: Well I’ve certainly have seen the evolution although what I will say is that even back in ’74 when I learned how to teach people to do the Atkins diet when they came to the practice, we did talk about the vegetables, we did talk about whole foods, we did talk about being off processed foods, we did talk about concentrating on certain healthy oils and not being on trans fats and not using Oleo or margarine or Crisco, or not missing the allowed amount of vegetables.

I think part of the difficulty and the reason why a lot of that is now focused in the Atkins message is because there are still so many myths that have carried over from ’74 even until now. Again human nature is once you hear the same thing repeated again and again you somehow start to internalize it as the truth even though it may not be. It can go back to something as simple as the Earth is flat story and look at how long it took before we started to realize the Earth never was flat everyone thought it was the truth now needs to be accepted.

We’re still working on that but I think it’s important that a lot of these messages are being talked about much more often and even on the media now you’ll start to see them make some corrections about this. I think what’s important is the internet, your blog, a lot of other people’s gives people the opportunity to find the truth. We just have to do more of that because I believe the real change and the tipping point will come when it’s a grassroots movement.

The more people we start to influence and the more people get the facts, the more we can start to educate your own doctors, the more doctors are going to start seeing patients get better and they’re going to be open minded enough to use the same protocol, the same dietary advice to someone who’s in a similar situation with risks of diabetes and whatever. That’s how I think we need to keep focusing the message and correcting the myths. I think a lot of it is yeah the vegetables now are really important because somehow that message got diluted n the past.

Jonathan: Interesting and I love the comparison of the flat Earth theory where it was always there it was just not what people acknowledged as true and it was not what was focused on. If we start to take this much more intentional and healthy approach to food, it’s not even carbohydrate, right? It’s about what’s the highest quality form of carbohydrate, highest quality forms of fat, and highest quality forms of protein and how do we ensure we take in the optimal levels of each. Let’s say the top three myths that people are going to tell us and what are some quick ways you’ve seen for us to help educate those individuals?

Jackie: I think one of the biggest myths and the government is guilty of this, is that carbohydrate is not an essential dietary nutrient. We need essential protein, we need essential fatty acids, we actually do not need dietary carbohydrate. That’s where people think you need to eat all these carbs, even if you’re doing a minimal amount of exercise people think you need all these carbs and the truth is you don’t. We actually evolved as fat burners.

That’s what allowed us to actually survive and now we have excessive amounts of body fat in the last 35, 40 years we never had before. The one question is why are we doing that? The big difference is all the carbs. We’ve cut fat down in our diet, we’ve replaced it with carbs and we’ve replaced it with poor quality carbs. That’s certainly one of the big ones we have enough evidence to know we don’t need dietary carbohydrates.

Jonathan: Jackie I love that one. If you don’t mind I’d love to share this quote any time I can because some listeners may have heard what you’ve just said and think that it’s controversial and it’s actually not. Even the USDA, even the people who come up with the MyPlate, which has got a big chunk of non-essential starchy carbohydrates there and came up with the wonderful food guide pyramid. Which tells us the foundation of our diet should be these non-essential hormonally clogging substances, states in their — this is very elegantly titled “Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy Carbohydrate Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Protein, and Amino Acids,” aka the document on which they base all of their recommendations.

This is a quote from that document: “The lower limit of dietary carbohydrate compatible with life apparently is zero, provided that adequate amounts of protein and plate are consumed.” Now I don’t know why they need to stick the word apparently in there, but…

Jackie: But yes, yes. It is funny and yet you’ll hear this repeated time and again. The other misconception that we have out there are that it’s all about calories in calories out. This one of course drives me crazy since the whole idea of the measurement of how various foods, proteins, fats, and carbohydrate are burned as calories was done decades and decades and decades ago. I don’t remember exactly and it was done in a controlled laboratory experiment in a closed system.

Human body isn’t that way and we have more than enough evidence to show calories in, calories out is really not what it’s about. It’s not the calories never matter but they’re a lot further down in the lists of what matters now. Especially with everything we’ve learned about hormones and how different foods affect how hormones, that effect fat storage, fat immunization, appetite, hunger, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s another big one that needs to be changed.

Jonathan: Jackie, I’d love to take that one level deeper and hear your thoughts on this especially given your role in combating the epidemic that is Type 2 diabetes in our country as you co-authored the book Atkins Diabetes Revolution and just speaking about of calories in calories out certainly I’m not a fan of that mythology as you know. But the example, when I was doing my research that most obviously demonstrated this point to someone who is even slightly nutritionally or biologically savvy has to do with Type 1 diabetics and how if you, hypothetically, were to feed a Type 1 diabetic who is not being medicated in any way 10,000 calories of glucose just intravenously pump it into their body, they physiologically could not gain weight.

Jackie: Actually no they can’t. Well, they’re not going to live long enough to do even do that. In the absence of insulin they’re obviously going to have very high glucose levels and in the absence of insulin the only thing the body can do is start to break down the body tissue to try to survive. So one of the symptoms of variant stage of Type 2 diabetes but also one of the symptoms that often takes a Type 1 diabetic to the doctor is unexplained weight loss no matter how much they’re eating because they are actually consuming part of their body for energy because they can’t utilize glucose anymore. So that’s a good example that calories in this context don’t matter.

Jonathan: Jackie, what I was a bit what I was trying to illustrate with that example is that if you consume even this abundant source of calories and you consume it in a source that your body cannot store as fat and in this case —

Jackie: You can’t because of the lack of insulin.

Jonathan: Exactly, so here you have 10,000 calories and I don’t want to dig too deep into the biology necessarily but just so people understand that an abundance and you would be in an “energy surplus” depending on how you look at it in this state. Biologically your body has to do something other than treat that caloric excess by storing more because it can’t. The absence of insulin can prevent, it’s just like oil and water. Without insulin you cannot put that glucose into your fat cells, therefore I don’t care how much of it you eat, your body has to do something else with it. What would it do with it in that context?

Jackie: Well I mean one of the things it does with all that glucose is you start to excrete huge amounts of it in urine and that’s why these people have very high blood sugars but then the excess in order to try your body to survive in balance is going to have to keep dumping it in urine. So you’re going to get increased hunger, increased urination, I’m sorry, increased thirst because you’re also getting very dehydrated.

You’re pumping out huge amounts of water, you’re getting very dehydrated, that further increases the salt metabolic [indiscernible 26:22], you’re going to lose electrolytes, you’re going to get very much acid in the body. Then you’re obviously going to get very sick and death will follow if you’re untreated.

Jonathan: Jackie, just really quick. Is it fair to say globally that if I have no insulin, so I’m a Type 1 diabetic let’s say for these purposes and I’m in a caloric surplus, but all I’m eating is dietary carbohydrate, I’m not storing fat? In fact, I could be losing weight?

Jackie: Well, you are going to be losing weight because that’s one of the symptoms when you get to that. Actually your body is in a starvation mode because you can’t utilize glucose, you can’t store it, you can’t access anything other than you start really breaking down your protein tissues. That creates this acidosis which does not happen when you’re simply in a state of nutritionally ketosis. One of the symptoms of course of this out of control Type 1 diabetes is huge amount of ketones which is very different from nutritionally ketosis that we see with carbohydrate restriction. That is a good example that it isn’t all about calories, It’s far more complex than that.

Jonathan: I just think Jackie that it’s such an interesting way to look at this problem because we have these huge populations, which not only Type 1 diabetics but let’s just even look at, these are often male but there are millions and millions and millions of males across this country that are struggling to gain weight. They buy weight gainer supplements and they’re constantly in this state. We’ll put it this way, from the way we’re traditionally taught about it perspective they’re in a state of caloric surplus.

What we’re discussing right here right now I think that shows that we need to redefine what we mean by caloric surplus or caloric deficit because if you’re not gaining weight that means by definition you’re not in a state of caloric surplus because your body is going out of its way to get rid of or burn off those excess calories in a way that maybe a person with a different metabolic profile would not do. So just eating more or taking in more calories does not translate into storing more body fat as evidenced by Type 1 diabetics and as evidenced by naturally thin people. What do you think?

Jackie: Exactly. That’s absolutely true and I will tell you that we used to see patients even though Dr. Atkins was known as this diet doctor, he actually had a practice that was much bigger than that. We would have people come to us who could not gain weight and were trying to gain weight. Yes we gained larger amounts of calories and all sorts of things to get people to try to put on more weight and it isn’t that easy to do.

They should have been because they were eating very large amounts of calories, and yet it was very hard to get them to gain weight. That’s why this calories in calories out really does a huge disservice to people who are trying to manage their weight.

Jonathan: Jackie, reminds of rat studies and anyone who has read my book knows that I love mice and rat studies, not necessarily because I love animal testing because I don’t. But because when we are able to test non-humans we can eliminate all of the complexity that comes along with humans like emotional reasons for eating and various hormonal deregulations and the fact we’re taking medication or not and stress tests, blah, blah, blah, you got mice and rats, you can minimize variables. For basically the entirety of medical or clinical history researchers had such a hard time making mice and rats gain and stay fat. They just wouldn’t. They would try to overfeed the rats and the mice their natural diet and the mice and rats would just be like, “No, I’m good. I’m full, thank you. I don’t want anymore.”

Then they started feeding the rats and the mice the now coined cafeteria diet, which just basically means the Western diet, so a bunch of processed garbage, sugar and sweet heavy, inappropriate fat heavy and the rats surprisingly enough, became and stayed obese with no problems. Again it wasn’t the amount of food provided to the animals, it wasn’t even being in a state of abundant food, it was being in a state of improper food.

Jackie: Yeah it’s how you change the ratio of what the normal diet was. I think a very good example is people can go back and watch movies in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and you look at the size of most people. You look at the size of kids in those movies, they were eating whole minimally processed diets, and they weren’t snacking 12 times a day, drinking high fructose corn syrup and they actually now look very thin. You see some kids, they actually were very skinny and people now look at them and think that these kids were unhealthy.

No these were kids who were going to grow up to be healthy adults. The difference is simply what we’ve done to our food supply. It’s very similar, I believe, what food manufacturers over the decades very slowly with their food scientists and their flavor experts have learned how to manipulate foods to make them more appealing, more attractive, more hunger provoking, more addiction triggering in much of our population, which is similar to what the cigarette industry did for decades. We’re still allowing it to happen on our foods because most people haven’t really wised up to the fact.

Jonathan: Yeah and that is so heartbreaking. I think at the same time it’s the one thing that I so appreciate about Dr. Atkins work and your work in the sense what you said there in terms of creating foods that are so palatable and so enjoyable but then prompt hunger and prompt addiction. Often a healthy lifestyle is thought to be one of deprivation and of not enjoying pleasurable foods and if nothing else your message and the message of Dr. Atkins is that being healthy does not require giving up delicious rich foods. It’s just the delicious rich foods we’re going to be enjoying are the ones that do not poison you and do not addict you but are still quite delicious.

Jackie: I mean that’s true. I think its pseudo pleasure real people are experiencing now. When you really think about the consequences they’re ultimately going to pay. I think it’s important to say that once you get off of those high sugar foods, your taste buds, when you go back to real food, your taste buds taste become much more sensitized to even small amounts of sweet tasting foods. The more you assault your taste buds and this is true of salt, too, the more you needed that particular food to stimulate your taste buds again. You want to roll back the sensitivity. I’ve had patients come in to me and say, “You know I never realized broccoli could taste sweet.”

Because they were assaulting their taste buds so much with sugar and salt that it just took more and more and more of it before they had any sense of real pleasure. That can be rolled backed within a very short period of time. That’s the way food used to taste. I mean that’s how real food should taste instead of needing more and more of these salty, sugary foods.

Jonathan: Jackie that hits home because last night my wife and I had just finished watching a fabulous movie. If people haven’t seen it I would highly recommend it, it’s not an easy movie to watch but it certainly puts things in perspective. It was The Machinegun Preacher and we finished watching that movie and we were both in the mood for a snack and something a little bit sweet. Interestingly enough and we weren’t like, “We’re going to make a healthy choice,” this is just what we did. I have this wonderful vegetable blend I purchased from our local Costco, which is carrots and cauliflower and broccoli and we also make cauliflower.

We cook the cauliflower and we then mix it up in our Vitamix blender and we add some cinnamon and it tastes quite lovely. My wife ended up having a concoction of this cauliflower and I had some of these vegetables. I promise you Jackie this is not some infomercial. I don’t own stock in vegetable companies, but we were both sitting there with our giant bowls of respective vegetables and like, “This is great.” We were just as happy as clams and it was sweet, the carrots were delightfully sweet because we’d recalibrated our taste buds and I just smiled. I said, “How fortunate are we to be able to sit here and derive so much pleasure from eating something that is so healthy and what if more people could experience this.”

Jackie: It doesn’t take a lot to really get your body back to functioning the way it’s supposed to. That’s a perfect example of the things you can learn to enjoy again and they have a positive payoff. If you would have gone and got into the potato chips with who knows what last night, two hours later you would have been looking for something else. That’s what the food companies want you to do. That’s how they’re getting rich and you’re getting sick and that’s how our healthcare system is frankly beginning to slowly break down because we cannot afford this.

Jonathan: Jackie, I so appreciate the decades and decades and certainly countless hours and energy you’ve spent trying to reverse this. If individuals want to learn more about you and about your work certainly they can visit your controlcarb.com website. But are there some other great resources they could check out?

Jackie: Well that’s certainly one of them and I’m really going to be doing a lot more work on the site in the next few months. I’m hoping have a section on there on family education, I’ll be blogging a lot more, so I’ll be out there much more frequently than I am right now. Certainly Atkins Diabetes Revolution is I think a very important book for anyone who has a family history of diabetes and you’re struggling to try to maintain your weight because it really does explain how diabetes happens over, it’s a nutritional wear and tear disease and how it doesn’t have to happen.

Or if you’ve just been diagnosed why it’s important to control carbs and how that will be the one thing that you should try first because diabetes is a disease of carbohydrate metabolism and you need to control your carbs. That’s certainly one of my other favorite places to recommend people because Dr. Atkins really wanted to write that book on diabetes but he passed away before he could. Dr. Mary Vernon and I did our best to try to get his message out there about prevention but also about treatment.

Jonathan: Jackie, wonderful. I so appreciate you getting that message out there and carrying on the great work that Dr. Atkins started. Folks again, please do check out Jackie’s work. If you know of anyone who’s suffering or on the road to the potentially fatal illness that is diabetes please have them check out Atkins Diabetes Revolution, and please also send them over to controlcarb.com.

There’s a lot of people out there talking about what to eat, what not to eat, and Jackie is one of the few individuals who has lived an entire life dedicated to this effort with one of the most central figures of all time in this effort. Certainly the internet is full of resources but this is one that is quite the standout. Jackie, thank you so much for all you’ve done and thank you so much for joining us today.

Jackie: Well thank you very much, it was great fun. Thanks Jonathon.

Jonathan: Thanks Jackie and thank you so much listeners for joining us. I hope you enjoyed today’s show as much as I did and remember, this week and every week after, eat smart, exercise smarter, and live better. Talk with you soon.

Jonathan: Wait, wait don’t stop listening yet.

Carrie: You can get fabulous free SANE recipes over at carriebrown.com.

Jonathan: Don’t forget your 100 percent free eating and exercise quick start program as well as free fun daily tips delivered right into your inbox at bailorgroup.com.