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Dr. Sara Gottfried & Jonathan Bailor: The Basic Truths for Staying Slim and Healthy?


Jonathan Bailor: Hey everyone back with Dr. Sara Gottfried. We’re talking about why this seems to get harder and harder as we age and what we should be worried about, what we shouldn’t be worried, all that kind of fun stuff. And, Sara, I think where we left it last time was we need to make sure we don’t put the cart before the horse. And if we don’t have our diet in line and we don’t have our sleep in line focusing on water bottles we’re using might be misdirected. Are there big rocks? What are big rocks in your mind?

Dr. Sara Gottfried: The big rocks, when it comes to staying thin and slim as we get older when you have metabolism working against you, environmental toxins, the microbiome, potentially all of these things. Well I would say one big rock and I think of a rock as being the small hinge that swings a big door. One big rock is drastically reducing sugar. I think that is so important and we’ve gotten some great information recently from Robert Lustig who is the king of sugar is evil and that’s all the YouTube videos on his particular video that he recorded. So he wrote his book Fat Chance…

Jonathan Bailor: Yeah.

Dr. Sara Gottfried: …is that title of it?

Jonathan Bailor: Yeah.

Dr. Sara Gottfried: I think that’s the title. So Fat Chance, Robert Lustig. I think he really describes this beautifully that the big rock is fructose, the big rock is sugar/glucose. We really got to cut it out of our lives and it’s causing so many problems with insulin, with Leptin. But Jonathan tell me what you think. What are some big rocks to you?

Jonathan Bailor: I’m certainly not a fan of sugar. I think it’s very interesting though that it seems like there’s always a backlash no matter what you try to do. It seems that there is this pro sugar resurgence happening especially around fructose because it seems. And then, Sara, I’m curious what do you think here is once we start saying things like sugar and fructose are not the optimum fuel for the body which is what my research suggests? Then we have to look at individuals who say, okay I hear eat more fruits and vegetables so I’m not going to eat more vegetables because they’re gross, but I am going to eat five bananas a day and that’s going to provide me with 40 to 70 grams of fructose. I don’t know, they’re really fructose heavy — bananas. Is that healthy?

Dr. Sara Gottfried: Well, I would say no. I mean if you have insulin working in your body like Jillian Michaels just like all business and you’re not eating five bananas every day, but just occasionally you have some fructose then I think you’re fine. But if you’re like me ten years ago I would say my insulin was not Jillian Michaels, t was far from it. I was about 25 pounds heavier than I am now. And insulin’s a fat storage hormone, right? It’s what lays down fat as you get older and sugar is a big part of that fructose, too. So I’m a big fan of eating low glycemic index fruits and really focusing on the vegetables first. One of my key messages is eat a pound of vegetables a day, a pound a day not all at one sitting, but spaced out over the course of the day.

Jonathan Bailor: I love that, Sara. And I think so much of the Internet debate around fruit is just a problem of thinking that all people are the same and they’re not, right? Clearly, the biology — the internal workings of a female who is 65 is not comparable to 22-year-old guy that does CrossFit six days a week, right? To even talk about those two people in the same sentence other than they’re both probably awesome seems silly from a nutrition perspective.

Dr. Sara Gottfried: I totally agree with that. I mean we’re heading toward this era of personalized medicine where we know your genetics and we know your microbiome — all the bacteria and the genes that are in your gut and how those interact with the food that you’re eating and we really need to personalize this. I think it’s important to say that the athlete is not the same as a 65-year-old woman. We also know that there’s some basic truths that we can cover and hopefully some of those we can cover in our video sessions that we’re having. So the first one I would say is vegetables. The answer is always vegetables, a pound a day. What are some basic truths that you would add to that, Jonathan?

Jonathan Bailor: I completely love the let’s focus on these basic truths because in fact I think the number one thing we can do as a community is (1) agree there’s some level of variability. So for example if I’m a person who’s trying to build muscle ingesting really high glycemic sugar along with really easy to digest protein immediately after I work out is scientifically proven to be super helpful for my goals. But if I just go out and say eat sugar and weigh protein all the time without that context, I’m just going to confuse people. So why don’t we first lead with until you eat ten plus servings of non-starchy vegetables a day, until you’re eating nutrient dense non hormone [inaudible 00:05:31, poisinine] sources of protein, until you’re eating whole food fats, until you’ve got that and until you’re sleeping, stop. Just focus everything, everything on getting those things right.

Dr. Sara Gottfried: That’s great. I think that’s fantastic information. I love that you brought in not just the vegetables, but the sources of non-poisoned [inaudible 00:05:53, poisinine] protein and also the fat because before we got on today I was looking at some interesting data. I’ve done genetic testing on several hundred of my clients and one of the things I found in myself and I find in a lot of women clients is the PPAR gene. And what that means is folks who have this genetic variation, we’re talking about fact here, folks who have this genetic variation do better with the polyunsaturated fats rather than saturated fats. So what I mean by this — you can call it hoofah — polyunsaturated fats. Those are things that you find in fish like wild Alaskan salmon. You also find it in leafy greens. It’s a source of fat that’s really healthy and I need more of the polyunsaturated fats than the saturated fats. That helps me maintain a lower weight and that’s a kind of personalization that we’re talking about here, but you can also test it for yourself.

You can look at those fats and see how they interact with your body. If have a period of time where you go Paleo and you’re eating more saturated fat, how does that work in terms of your body versus having more of the polyunsaturated fats. So I just want to dial in that one nuance about genetics and how it varies person to person.

Jonathan Bailor: Absolutely. And, Sara, let’s pick up here next time because I think there’s such an element of truth in this individual variation. And in fact, I think there might be a good rule we can give people to judge the validity of a nutrition source and let’s start off — I want your thoughts on that when we start up next time if that’s cool?

Dr. Sara Gottfried: Totally cool.

Jonathan Bailor: All right. See you in a bit, Sara.

Dr. Sara Gottfried: Okay.