Tanning Beds, Strength/Aerobic Balance, Saturated Fat on Keto – THRR008

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Show Notes:

News topic du jour:
Shared by Joe T., in The Healthy Rebellion:
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-butter-versus-margarine-whats-the-healthier-spread/?cauid=100503&geo=national&linkId=78510387&mc_id=us&placementsite=enterprise

 

Transcript:

Robb: Welcome back to The Healthy Rebellion Radio, wife, you came back again.

Nicki: What would happen if I didn’t?

Robb: I would soon live under a bridge with or without the kids. It’s got to feel good that you know that you’ve got some security around my general ineptitude.

Nicki: This role.

Robb: Yeah, yeah. What’s new? What’s exciting?

Nicki: Oh goodness. We have, actually, we do have a really exciting announcement today.

Robb: Do we have an exciting-

Nicki: We do. We’re doing the 30-day Rebel Reset and 7 day carb test inside The Healthy Rebellion Community.

Robb: Very cool.

Nicki: So we wanted to let all of our healthy rebellion radio listeners know that we’re doing this. And so if you’re not yet a member of The Healthy Rebellion Community, now is a perfect time to join. We’re going to be helping everyone get ready for the reset. We’re going to do some kickoff calls as a team. Robb’s going to be doing weekly Q&As and tons of ongoing support throughout the whole process. So the first kickoff call is on January 10th so you want to be signed up before then. It’s free to members. So you want to be in the rebellion before then and we’re going to kick this off.

Robb: Who would want to do this? Who wants to do The Healthy Rebellion 30 days reset?

Nicki: Anybody who’s looking to make a change but also wants support. Like the key thing about this reset, the way that we’re structuring it and how we’re having it inside The Healthy Rebellion Community is it’s all of us. It’s led by Robb and our team and we have-

Robb: So you have an idiot running this thing, that’s what you’re saying. Okay.

Nicki: And we have our community, so we’ve got tons of people in there ranging from health coaches to your average person who’s lost, a hundred pounds and plus and has navigated all of the road.

Robb: The challenges internal and external with making a change like that.

Nicki: Exactly.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Exactly. So we have a pretty cool program laid out. We’re adapting it directly from Wired to Eat, like the 30 day reset, then the 7 day carb test within Wired to Eat. But doing it as a group, we can kind of support each other along the way. We can answer questions as they come up and keep the motivation strong throughout the whole process.

Robb: And we have some kind of generalized buckets that weight loss and specific health stuff. But if people want to do something a little different, then they just kind of need to alert us and let us know.

Nicki: We have some people that are already following a keto plan and they have their macro set and they don’t want to deviate from that. Or maybe you’re carnivore and that’s what-

Robb: But you want a group of people-

Nicki: But you want a group of people and we’re not just focusing on food. So part of the 30 day reset, especially as it was laid out in Wired to Eat, there’s the four pillars of health. So food is a piece, but we’ll also be focusing on sleep and movement and community as well.

Robb: Cool. Cool. I like it.

Nicki: Yep. So as I said, the kickoff call for that is January 10th so be sure to sign up before then and you can sign up at join.thehealthyrebellion.com.

Robb: Shweet.

Nicki: What’s your news topic for today?

Robb: Oh, you know what? I completely dropped the ball on the news topic.

Nicki: No, we have one right here.

Robb: Did I-

Nicki: I put it in when we were talking about it, we had actually Joe, one of our Healthy Rebellion Community members posted a link to this article in the Health Rebellion a few days ago and it was just sort of like so appalling that I was like, “We should put this in the next episode of the show.”

Robb: Man, I am losing my mind. So I was like, “I thought I had something.” But yeah, this one was, it’s so hilarious-

Nicki: It’s from the Mayo Clinic.

Robb: … Mayo Clinic Minute, butter versus margarine, what’s the healthier spread? And it’s hilarious. It was like final line butter, although not considered heart-healthy for some people they may just really enjoy the taste and so portion becomes especially important. And it’s hilarious because there was this study that came out that was after a round filed study from the all the Ancel Keys work where they had several thousand patients in mental hospitals, and this was before like IRB boards and stuff like this, but they fed them a super controlled diet. It’s a study that you could not do today for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is legality and morality.

Robb: But they removed saturated fat and added exactly the types of fat that go into margarine and their cholesterol levels decreased and all cause mortality including cardiovascular disease increased. And so this is one of these things where you’re just kind of like, how many times around the sun do you have to go with this and keep getting the same deal? But yeah, that was hilarious when this one popped up.

Nicki: Well, and then the funny thing is, and we’ll include a link to this in the show notes, but then there’s a handful of recipes at the bottom, Robb, if you scroll down, like shrimp scampi and cauliflower mashed potatoes and all of them include heaping portions of margarine. I guess it’s also considered vegan because it’s the plant spread. They’re also marketing it as like plant-based.

Robb: Hey, man, as long as it’s plant-based, I guess you’re good to go.

Nicki: Okay, well, let’s see. We have our review T-shirt winner this week goes to Sarchambo81 And the title is The Best Since Sliced Meat. “I’ve been listening to Robb and Nicki for several years. They’ve changed my life and now I pass the info on to my patients. I’m a dental hygienist, so I do a lot of talking and my patients have to listen. If you want a great podcast with a lot of common sense, this one is for you.” Sarchambo81, thank you for your review. I love the title. Send us an email to [email protected] with your T-shirt size and your mailing address and we’ll send you a Healthy Rebellion Radio T-shirt.

Robb: What more could you ask for?

Nicki: All right. This episode of The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by Perfect Keto. Snacking on keto has never been easier or cleaner than with perfect keto bars, nut butters, trail mix, and chocolate covered nuts. And the best part, Perfect keto products are super clean. They don’t contain soy, dairy, gluten, artificial sweeteners, binding agents, or anything that doesn’t directly improve your health. Now Robb, last week, in last week’s show, you talked about one of your favorite Perfect Keto products, the sea salt caramel MCT oil powder, and we were just chatting a little bit earlier and you were saying how you wanted to share your newest concoction.

Robb: It doesn’t sound that crazy. But I’ve been putting it in black tea instead of coffee and I think I might like it better in that than the coffee. Like it’s just, particularly with the caramel, the caramel really comes out with the black tea. So if you’re just looking for something that’s a little bit different and usually black tea is more of something that I do in the summer versus the winter. But the other day I was looking at the coffee and I’m like, “It doesn’t look good, but I kind of want something.” And so I brewed up some black tea, put the sea salt caramel in there and it was really good. 7

Nicki: All right, so go to perfectketo.com/rebellion10, and use code rebellion10 for $10 off orders of $40 or more. All right, are you ready to answer some listener submitted questions?

Robb: I will make something up, yep.

Nicki: Okay. Our first question today is from Jason and he’s wondering why test in isolation when doing the 7 day carb test? “Hey, Robb. Why test a given food in isolation when doing the 7 day carb test? If it’s never eaten in isolation normally, for example, when I tested rice, I had my blood glucose spike to 166 after two hours. However, when I tested rice with a full avocado, my blood sugar was 91 after two hours. I never eat rice in isolation. So would you still recommend that I avoid it even though I seem to tolerate it when eaten with other foods? Thanks for your work and trying to spread the message of optimal health into the world.”

Robb: This is a great question and we agonized over exactly how to do that 7 day carb test when we were writing Wired to Eat and really what the goal was, was to in as disadvantaged a situation as you could get in some ways, evaluate what the effect of these, a specific carbohydrate was, and then whether it went well or not, then there’s all kinds of mitigating strategies that you can do, like adding a good quality fat and fiber like avocado. Avocado is amazing for that, because it has both fat and fiber, it’s monounsaturated fat. The monounsaturated fats tend to improve insulin sensitivity, they improve glucagon release, so you get a little bit of tweaking and fiddling on that access.

Robb: Other things that can be done. You do the whack of carbs pre or post workout. You could take like some apple cider caps or something like that to get an acid load in the stomach, which seems to mitigate the glycemic load. Doing a little bit of cinnamon, and I’ve heard this before, but this Ceylon cinnamon is the stuff that won’t nuke your liver.

Nicki: Yeah. We just came across an article that was talking about the different types of cinnamon and-

Robb: And a ubiquitous form of cinnamon has a fairly toxic constituent to it.

Nicki: It’s kind of toxic, yeah. Which is of course the one that we have in our cupboard.

Robb: Right. Right. Right. And our kids are like labeling on this stuff. So Jason, really good question. And the goal was to see how do you respond to this stuff in complete isolation so that we control as many variables as possible? And then there are a whole host of mitigating strategies that can be employed to see if we get more of a result like this. So yeah. Yeah. I mean that was the basic-

Nicki: So given the fact that he tested it with an avocado and it was only 91, he’s asking is it okay if he eats some rice occasionally with other foods.

Robb: Under those circumstances. So we had both this objective element to the 7 day carb test, which is what’s your blood sugar? And then we had a lot of subjective elements. How do you feel afterwards? Do you get foggy headed? Do you have some sort of like-

Nicki: Any GI distress?

Robb: … GI distress? Which interestingly, big blood sugar deltas, highs and lows, can lead into IBS and other intestinal issues, so that’s where we had kind of a combination of both the subjective and objective so that we could kind of overlay both of those and see if they work. So if he’s feeling good, he’s motoring along well, then this seems like a great strategy to take something that’s convenient, super tasty food, which is rice, stick a little bit of avocado in with it, and then you’re mitigating this maybe problematic blood sugar level. Yeah.

Nicki: All right. Our next question from Matt and he’s trying to balance between strength and aerobic endurance. Matt says, “First, after being introduced to Dr. Michael Rose and his take on aging and longevity, I’ve started to look at that topic from a fitness perspective. At the risk of overgeneralizing, it seems like keys to longevity from a fitness perspective are adequate strength coupled with a leaner body composition along with a strong aerobic base. Coming from a CrossFit background, I’ve always been attracted to increased work capacity, broad times, modal domains, et cetera. But I’ve found over the last few years that strength and aerobics endurance appear to exert the most influence over the other metabolic pathways and that focusing on those two helps to improve the more anaerobic pathways more than vice versa.”

Nicki: “My question is, is it possible to determine where the trade-off exists when trying to balance those two and how could the average person focus on periodizing those two aspects through the year. For example, could we apply a metric to it or ever begin to define optimal based on something like we should be able to run X pace at Y percentage of max heart rate and also be able to squat X percentage of body weight and do X number of pull-ups rather than just attacking random domains like certain functional fitness programs do rather than dividing into strength or endurance camps and prioritizing too much of one over the other at the expense of the other.”

Robb: So great question and a lot of smart people have kind of dug into this and I will do a plug for The Healthy Rebellion because we did a really deep dive into Dr. Stephen Seiler’s Understanding Intervals paper, which is, it’s both funny and it’s incredibly informative and it’s a piece that used to be a key feature of the CrossFit Level 1 Cert a long time ago. And for reasons that are still a little oblique to me, I have some opinions about why, but this stuff got removed. And the basic takeaway from what Seiler’s piece states is that intervals are great, but you will absolutely burn yourself out with intervals at some point and that they’re best utilized as honing an edge, not developing the whole tool. And any details, historical examples like the East German rowing team did a couple of blocks of training, like several years, a decade of training that was mainly intervals and they had massive attrition.

Robb: They did okay, but not that great. And then they reintroduced aerobic base phase and steady state and volume building and then used intervals as a way to bring people up to a performance maximum. So I think that to some degree this paper paints a picture of all intervals all the time, all intensity all the time in a not particularly favorable light. And Matt really kind of hits the nail on the head. Ironically for the best overall athleticism, one could make the case that you should probably develop power, I wouldn’t just say strength, but power, the ability to produce force rapidly. That’s a primary concern. And then the ability to have endurance and to have both cardiovascular endurance and then also substrate level. So there was a difference between the fatigue or wasn’t fatigue and endurance?

Robb: It was local muscular fatigue was one element which is basically a substrate story. Like to use fat or carb and you develop efficiency there and the enzyme systems. And then there’s your aerobic capacity, which is both the interplay between the heart and lungs. Probably people should divide those things out for the most part and then use certain peaking techniques like intervals or in strength training, you accumulate volume, then you increase intensity and you kind of play back and forth with that. So that’s kind of one thought on this.

Robb: And then years and years ago, Dave Werner, one of my co-founders of the very first CrossFit gym in the world, he developed the Athletic Skill Standards and he had four standards, a healthy beginner, intermediate, advanced and elite. And some of these things were, I wouldn’t say arbitrary, but like when you get in and look at it, people will gripe and bitch about all kinds of elements to this.

Robb: But it’s a start, and he breaks this stuff out. I have the link in here, but it’s really interesting. So, just for like a hip based movement, a well-rounded beginner would be able to do 50 air squats. Level 2 athletes would be able to do 50 air squats and one times body weight back squat. Level 3 athlete, fairly advanced, would be able to do 10 pistols with each leg and a body weight and a half back squat. And more elite athlete, 25 pistols with each leg and a two X back squat. People can piss and moan and bitch about all this stuff, but the thing is, is that in addition to stuff like that, they had some endurance work. Where was that, like the work-

Nicki: 2000 meter row for level 1 with specific times for men and women. Level 2 just faster. Level 3 was a 5K row for women at 21 minutes in a 6K row for men at 21:45 or under. And then the elite was a 5K row at under 20 minutes for women and a 6K row at under 20 minutes for men.

Robb: So, interesting stuff. And again, like people bitch and moan and piss and whine and then offer nothing remotely as good as what Dave put together years ago. Like, I think he developed this in 2004 maybe, it might’ve been right around there. 2004 2005.

Nicki: 2004, 2005. Yeah.

Robb: Yeah. And when he floated this by me initially I was kind of like, “I don’t know. This seems kind of silly.” And then it actually was a major contribution to this whole topic. So I don’t know that there’s a perfect way to delineate all this stuff. I think that Dave’s Skill Standards are, and really they maybe should have been called Performance Standards, but you know, whatever. I think that that’s as good a place to start as any. There’s the work by, Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m blanking on his name, but the hybrid athlete work where they’re doing a concurrent strength and endurance work and a brilliant guy, like I can’t believe I’m blanking on his name, big muscular dude.

Robb: It’ll come to me in a little bit. But people are out there hashing around doing this stuff. And it’s a really good question. It’s a good insight. I do think that from a longevity perspective, putting some thought into again that strength training with an emphasis on power production power, the loss of power production is possibly the most prominent feature of aging. And what’s interesting is really power-oriented athletes in particular like shot putters and field athletes where everything they’re doing is accelerating and like throwing and stuff like that. Their decline is flatter than most other athletes. So in addition to the standard strength work, some field type stuff-

Nicki: Throwing.

Robb: … different weights, shots, hammer, getting some kettle bells and just chucking those, picking things up and throwing them in different ways, broad jumps, things like that are really, really valuable for the power production and not as sexy, particularly within the … one of the problems with CrossFit is they got so enamored with this kind of work capacity deal that something that wasn’t easily cycled and quantified didn’t really get used at all. So plyometric push-ups, things like that, like those things are really valuable, but you have to use them in a very different way than going down and touching your chest on the deck, picking your hands up, doing it so that you’ve got some sort of a standard with it. Yeah.

Nicki: Alrighty. Thanks for your question, Matt. Robb, before we get to question three-

Robb: You’re going to hand me a drink of LMNTs so I can swizzle my whistle? Yeah.

Nicki: There you go. Our next question is from Michael on tanning beds. He says, “Good morning, sir-”

Robb: And ma’am, it should be and ma’am.

Nicki: … “I was hoping you might provide more detail on your use of tanning beds. I believe I heard you use very brief exposures. Are these beds UVA or UVB? How long do you hop in? How many times a week? Could you unpack the risk reward and strength of evidence regarding the danger of using such beds? Thanks, Michael.”

Robb: So I’ll kind of work backwards from here. Like the risk reward, strength of evidence and I’d provided a PubMed link on a paper. What is the title? Benefits and risks of ultraviolet tanning and its alternatives, the role of prudent sun exposure. And if I looked for information on this five years ago, it was uniformly tanning bed’s bad. Like the risk reward story was, it was just negative. Like it seemed to be just uniformly bad. But, man, I really got in and looked at the literature on this and what was interesting is virtually no one was asking how long are you in there? And this paper that I referenced made the case that for most people who tan, they also spend more than average time outside, so they’re getting more sun outside.

Robb: And there is a dose response curve here. Like some is good, more isn’t necessarily better. It’s kind of like fat on a ketogenic diet, you can eat the right amount but not necessarily too much. And so there really wasn’t a quantification of exposure. It was did you do it or not? And it appeared the people who go to tanning beds typically are shooting more for leather handbag effect than they are like just a therapeutic dose. And this is where I’ve talked to Bill Lagakos and some other people and at the end of the day, nobody knows the real story on this and there are so many different factors that go into it.

Robb: But there was just a paper that we were talking about in The Healthy Rebellion the other day, that UV exposure modifies the gut microbiome in what appears to be favorable directions. Nobody had any inkling of this stuff, and this is another sideline of why I think that other than looking for pathogenic organisms on a gut screen, like so much of this gut microbiome testing is absolute horse shit other than like you just kind of want to see where you are in that moment and not really read too much into it because everything makes it change. So that’s kind of an aside.

Robb: But the beds, there’s a wide variety of beds. They have higher intensities, which tend to be more UVA, and kind of lower intensity beds are more UVB. The UVB I could argue is more in that kind of bandwidth of producing vitamin D and the seco-steroid cascade that is a consequence of vitamin D production, which is probably why, at least in part, why getting vitamin D from UV sources is arguably so much better than just taking a supplemental form of vitamin D. It’s all of the side pathways that are occurring. Nitric oxide release, so it improves vascular endothelial function, antioxidant up-regulation, opiate release, so endorphins. So you feel good. And the paper that I referenced makes the case that the fact that you feel better and you’re happier and your mood is elevated, that those are probably really valuable things, but that people need to have prudent exposures.

Robb: And I think the main thing is to avoid burning and all other things being equal, so we’ll make sure we’re avoiding that, then you’re probably risk mitigating in a really significant way. And I’ve known friends my age that have had different types of skin cancer and it’s super scary. And there’s always this, well, gee whiz, could I have done something differently? But for myself, I try to be careful about not getting burned, and knock on wood, I’ve done a pretty good job of that over like the last 10 years. But sun exposure is so life changing for me, like it really makes the difference between wanting to live and not, you know, for me in particular-

Nicki: You’re pretty sensitive to like the seasonal light.

Robb: Yeah. So for me it is definitely worth it. Now. If I end up with some sort of gnarly skin cancer and I die from it next year, then I may regret that. But it’s also a thing of we don’t know if a sunburn that I got when I was 11 set the stage for that and it didn’t matter what else I did the rest of my life that that was the thing that could have precipitated it. So I mean it’s definitely a complex topic. But Chris Masterjohn had an interesting piece around this not that long ago where he was talking about even equatorial region people when there was some digging into the anthropological literature, clearly they do get more sun exposure, but they also tended to avoid mid afternoon sun. They would do things like harvesting different types of oils to put on their skin that they felt like bought them some UV protection.

Robb: And then when it was studied, it did provide UV protection. Some people cover themselves with mud or dust to mitigate their sun exposure. So even indigenous populations that clearly had a greater sun exposure than we have actively reduced their total sun exposure. So it’s not a case where more is uniformly better. There is kind of a trade-off with that. Something that folks don’t oftentimes understand is there’s an interesting trade-off between the same UV that produces vitamin D also degrades folate in our system. So you can end up folate deficient in a vitamin D rich state from sun exposure. So there’s kind of an evolutionary trade-off there and there’s some implications around that with the nutrient variety and all those types of things. So, kind of bounced around a lot on that.

Nicki: so when you go and you haven’t gotten a thing since we’ve moved to Texas yet, but you’ve been talking about doing it.

Robb: I would seek out what they call the lower intensity, more UVB oriented beds. And I would start off with a minute or two minutes and for me, I still, like from the summer, have a little bit of base tan so I might go two maybe even three minutes, but I would err on the shorter side and then I would build it up over time and I might max it out at like six minutes or something. And so I’m really not doing it for a tan, I’m doing it for the mood elevating effects and ostensibly the health benefits. And I would shoot for somewhere around two to three days a week. And then just trying to peripherally get as much out in the light as much as I can. It’s funny, this Hill Country weather, it’s really wacky, yesterday it was freaking cold.

Nicki: It was cold and overcast and today is sunny and gorgeous and like 75.

Robb: It’s like … 75 degrees. So I set up my computer and my workstation outside on the back porch today. And if the weather continues like this, that’s where my workstation will be. So even though I’m not getting a tanning light, being outside that circadian entrainment, I feel way better with that. Yeah.

Nicki: So, Michael, if you don’t have a base tan, then you would start super conservatively and then if you do, then you can have two to three minute and kind of range.

Robb: But again, like starting super conservative, a minute, two minutes, and then the next time, a minute and a half, and then the next time a minute 45.

Nicki: Really gradual stair-stepping. It’s not like you jump up a minute week to week.

Robb: Yeah. And people will kind of freak out because they’ll say, “Well, I could be in there 20 minutes,” and you have to pay for the session you do because people have to go clean the booth out of there. Yeah, getting a sunburn isn’t really worth it. Like that’s not doing you any favors. So you just kind of suck it up and just recognize that less is better in the beginning for sure and that is definitely consistent with what the literature says.

Nicki: Okay. Our next question is from Jenny. She says, “Hi Rob, thank you for the wonderful content you put out. I own Wired to Eat and just completed your keto masterclass and I love the podcast. I’m writing in today looking for some good introductory resources for someone looking to take small steps toward a healthier diet. A little context here, I’ve been paleo-ish for about three years, starting with Whole-30, doing the 7 day carb test and most recently moving into a keto experiment. However, my boyfriend is less nutritionally aware. For example, yesterday he made 12 banana bread muffins and as of dinner time has consumed eight of them. And nothing else.”

Robb: It sounds amazing.

Nicki: “He’s naturally thin and can kick my button in almost any workout, so he’s felt less of a drive to change his eating habits and I don’t bug him about it. Plus he doesn’t even appear to feel bad when he lives off banana bread muffins. However, he sees how great I feel and how much I love learning about my health, so he’s willing to try. Plus I often cook for both of us and he sees how delicious healthy eating can be. He asked me for some good introductory resources that he can use to learn more about healthy eating. I would point him to Wired to Eat, but I think a book may be a big investment to start. I don’t want him to quit too early. Do you have or know of something simple or short that could introduce him to the impact of food on his body? Thank you again for all you do.”

Robb: I linked to a book called the PE Diet by Ted Naiman and William Shewfelt and although it’s a book, Ted Naiman is just brilliant, super smart guy, engineer by training originally. Then went to medical school and he has taken these topics and made these infographics like he’s just like so prolific with infographic production.

Nicki: Really good at representing complicated information in a really visual way.

Robb: Yeah, yeah. And so even though Jenny’s boyfriend doesn’t sound like he needs to lose any weight, and that’s definitely like a Ted’s wheelhouse, but it just explains like the nutrient density concept and the value of protein relative to energy intake and the benefits for you in like one picture, like the book is amazing. If there was a book that might be good that this may be the book, but even if he just followed Ted and Williams Twitter accounts or Instagram accounts and kind of dug into the archives of what they’ve posted, it would be a great introduction. Like I really can’t think of anybody that has taken this just insanely complex topic of nutrition represented it in a more accessible way than what Ted has done. It’s amazing.

Nicki: Awesome. And it’s awesome, Jenny, that you are cooking and it sounds like he’s loving your food. So that’s like one of the biggest buy-ins for a lot of people, because for most people it’s what do I eat? I don’t know how to make this stuff taste good or I am just used to the convenience of eating packaged foods. But the fact that you’re cooking for him, I think that’s going to go a long way for keeping him on track. So good job.

Robb: Well, and if I could eat a banana bread muffin today, I’d be pretty happy too.

Nicki: Yeah. The last time we were doing that was when we had just had Zoe, we mentioned this in an earlier show and we got super chubby.

Robb: Well, it was both the banana bread muffins and the fact that we were putting like a stick of butter on each loaf.

Nicki: Yeah, it was not a good plan.

Robb: And this, like every once in a while we get a question around, and I don’t know if we did this for the people that asked about how to gain weight, you know, “I’m a skinny guy and I can’t gain weight.”

Nicki: If we haven’t, we need to give him the banana bread recipe.

Robb: The banana bread and butter diet, man, yeah.

Nicki: Almond flour, banana bread with butter.

Robb: Yeah, it tastes amazing and it had to have been like 2,500 calories alone from that in addition to our food. That’s why we got fat.

Nicki: Alrighty. Our last question for the week is from Diana on saturated fat on keto. “Hi, Nikki and Rob, is saturated fat something to try and avoid on a keto diet? I strive for coconut oil, avocado and olive oil, but what about butter, fat found in bacon, sausage, cheese, red meats, et cetera. How much is too much?”

Robb: So let’s tackle that last part first. How much is too much? It depends on goals. So again, like we were just talking about if somebody wants to gain weight on a low carb or ketogenic diet, then you need to eat a lot and so we’ll set a caloric excess. If you’re at maintenance, then we need to kind of figure out where you are that will be a good maintenance level. And then clearly fat loss, we need some sort of a caloric deficit. As to the types, the only situation that I would see some concern around all of these kind of natural sources is that there are some people for whom ketosis. So there are some people for whom ketosis elevates cholesterol and lipoproteins just because they’re in ketosis. HMG-CoA reductase is the enzyme system that is involved both in the ketogenic process but also in cholesterol and lipoprotein synthesis.

Robb: And for some people, some of the spillover of ketones feeds into that and it will elevate cholesterol and lipoproteins. For other people, things like dairy fat disproportionately elevate cholesterol and lipoproteins. And I mean it can take someone had an LDL-P of 800 and make it 3,500 after a month of, like doing buttered coffees and stuff like that. And then people will cut that out and they look way better. Some people eating coconut butter, I was going to say margarine, but they’re not going to eat margarine.

Nicki: Not our people.

Robb: Whole cream, the saturated fat sources can elevate cholesterol and lipoprotein levels. So those are kind of the only people that I think are … you might consider sticking more with the avocado, olive oil, nuts as tolerated because you’re going to be more on the monounsaturated fat side.

Nicki: So she could get her blood work done and see if she appears to be somebody whose blood work is affected disproportionately from animal fats or more saturated fats.

Robb: Absolutely in doing that, going through lab core doing the LDL-P possibly the LPIR score, because you get a little bit more information. Looking at LP little a would be smart because if you have a high LP little a then it makes other things more concerning on the lipoprotein front. Like if you have a high LP little a, then they usually like to see your other lipoproteins a bit lower to kind of offset the risk profile with that. So that would be a great place to start.

Nicki: Okay. That was our last question for the week.

Robb: Nice.

Nicki: Let’s see. Anything else you want to share?

Robb: I don’t think so. We worked out with our kids today.

Nicki: We did work out with our kids.

Robb: We were doing a circuit and that was pretty cool. They walked out in the garage and we were just getting going and they’re like, “Can we work out with you?” And I’m like, “Heck yeah.” So we did kind of a fight gone bad circuit with the whole family.

Nicki: Fight gone bad, but not what most people imagine is fight gone bad. It was like box step ups and kind of those things.

Robb: Very aerobic pace. Yeah, it was super mellow, but just basically a five station deal. One minute at each station, conversational pace, but got the girls doing some kettlebell deadlifts, got them doing some step ups, doing some body rows.

Nicki: Body ring rows.

Robb: And Zoe was, both of them like, “Dad, this is fun.” So it was super cool and we got to hang out with them and get some exercise in. And they’re like, “Can we do this tomorrow?” I’m like, “Absolutely. Yeah.”

Nicki: Absolutely.

Robb: So yeah, so that was cool.

Nicki: All right, guys, thank you so much. Please subscribe and review and share this episode with your friends and make sure to check out our show sponsor Perfect Keto. Go to perfectketo.com/rebellion10 and use code rebellion10 for $10 off orders of $40 or more. And remember now is the time to join The Healthy Rebellion and be in there just in time for our January Rebel Reset and 7 day carb test. So you can do that at join.thehealthyrebellion.com.

Robb: Cool.

Nicki: I think that’s a wrap.

Robb: See y’all soon. Take care.

Nicki: Bye.

 

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Robb Wolf

Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat, is a former research biochemist and one of the world’s leading experts in Paleolithic nutrition. Wolf has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world via his top ranked iTunes podcast and wildly popular seminar series.