Well, hello, ladies and gents Robert Sykes, ketose, a.com to Dev, get special guest, Amy Burger on the line. I've known Ami for quite some time. I think I saw her speak for the first time at a, at a conference in 2017. I followed her work since then, and I really just appreciate her no-nonsense approach to the ketogenic lifestyle, proper health and nutrition, a well-formulated diets. We dive into a lot of the controversial topics as of late, such as seed, oils, vegetable
oils, vegetables. In general, whether it's got a bunch of anti-nutrients fight. So chemicals, that are going to kill you. We talk about artificial sweeteners, we talk about high-fat versus high protein. We talked about all kinds of things, hormonal Health, all kinds of topics that I think people would benefit from hearing, a lot of which are controversial, a lot of which are likely overblown and not as significant as people make them out to be. I thoroughly enjoyed the
conversation. I've got a lot of respect for Amy, she knows her stuff. She's been in the space for a long time. I've got no doubt that you will take something from this conversation. So without further Ado, sit back, relax and enjoy the podcast with Amy. Burger. And we are live. Amy, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm doing wonderful. Well, I'm excited to chat with you because we've met we met in person way back when I think in
like the 2017 low-carb cruise. And then we met again here recently at the keto palooza, I believe, and I followed you work throughout that whole time and I feel like you have very good handle on just staying true. True to what you believe to be
true with regarding nutrition. But not letting yourself devolve into the Nuance in the minutiae of just all the chaos that's out there all the dogmatic thinking, and just siloed thinking that people seem to have come up whenever nutritional Norms are questioned. So I'm excited to just chat with you about a variety of topics that included. Thank you. Sounds good. Let's dive into some of your whole like YouTube channel is key to without the crazy correct. Yes. What's the motivation behind
that? I feel like there's a lot of crazy. And I want people talk about Quito. Yeah, I mean I guess the main motivation for it is I've been eating a very low carb, ketogenic diet for a long time like over 15 years now. And when I got started in this social media almost didn't exist, like the internet was kind of the baby internet. There was no Reddit. There was no Twitter. There was no YouTube and so there was a lot less
information. About low-carbon keto diets out there, but there was also a lot less misinformation and there was much less confusion and conflicting information. And I've said to so many people, I don't envy anyone whose brand new to this now. Like, like, if I had to start brand-new today, I don't even know who I would trust or what I would believe. So I try to cut through a lot of the extraneous, and unnecessary details, and the fear-mongering
and sensational. And just kind of give people a really basic simple way to start. And yeah, maybe over time everybody has to personalize a little bit and get into the weeds and the details. But to start out like like if you're going to do that from day one, you're never going to get anywhere because you're going to be so overwhelmed you're just going to quit.
Yeah, I totally agree. I've been doing the diet for eight years now strictly and I feel like when I started what you know, was not near as long ago as you were But when I started there wasn't really any books or podcast or recipes, I mean, it was not really a keto presence online. There were certainly no keto products.
There was just no noise out there and I feel like because of that I was able to just kind of start with a pretty pristine, you know, understanding of it all and I haven't really deviated to Too Much from what I learned back then because it's never really failed to me. So now kind of fast forward to today. And you see all this, all this all this minutiae, all this, all this fear. Goering and like people that are just starting, like, I don't, I
would have no idea. Like you said, where they would turn, where they would look for a credible source of information. What are some of the big topics that really a guess get under your skin right now that have really gained traction, but you just feel like it's totally majoring in the minors. Oh boy, it's almost hard to pick one. We can go well over Mineo Ming pick multiple. Yeah, I know. That's great. I I guess. It. Wow, it really is hard to even
pick a first one to start with. I think people just need. Okay. I guess even the word keto or ketogenic is problematic because then people think that the goal is to have a certain level of ketones, or the goal is to be in ketosis all the time or they and I your world is a little different with the bodybuilding and training and coaching.
But if my world is mostly weight loss, Type 2 diabetes, you know, PCOS, all that, and for those people, they don't have to have any super high amount of fat, you know, they don't have to be chasing these like 80% fat macros and they don't, they don't have to worry about oh, I heard protein spikes insulin or
protein turns into sugar. And so when they put the emphasis on keto or even being in ketosis, that takes away from the single most important thing, that that Makes this diet what it is, which is the really low carbohydrate intake. You know, it's almost like the message of actually keeping the carbs really low gets lost because people are so worried about their ketones or just even if the number one.
Most important thing is keeping the carbs low because that is what induces the changes we want. That's what keeps the blood sugar, low normal. That's what keeps insulin low normal, that's what keeps the
inflammation away. Then that's what we need to focus on. We don't really need to worry so much that there may be, you know, some compound in in the two sprigs of broccoli, that I'm eating, or, you know, it just people people get wrapped up in these ant, the fears about anti-nutrients and the gut biome and it's like. You're so like you said that they're majoring in the minors, and they're kind of overlooking, the most important part of all
this. Yeah. Completely You feel like the protein things been a Hot Topic. As of late, like for a while, everybody was very fearful of gluconeogenesis. There was this, you know, talk of it turning into black brown or brown sugar, chocolate cake.
Whatever it was that they were saying too much protein is going to result in then, which certainly isn't the truth and I feel like, at least my perspective is that as of late it's like the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction in which, you know, there's been this massive push for protein which I think is great but almost at the expense of where people are now. A fearful of dietary fats but it's like that people can't realize that there's just a
healthy Middle Ground there. Oh, I could not agree more. I I have a huge amount of respect for the people that are spearheading this sort of higher protein angle, but yeah, it's I think the unfortunate thing is, there's a lot of black and white thinking out there. Like people don't appreciate nuance and the gray area in between just because too much fat might be bad, doesn't mean, we want to just go on a low fat
diet, you know? And and, and just in Increasing protein and decreasing fat doesn't mean eating only egg whites and only whey protein and canned tuna in water. So people people just kind of misunderstand. I think what some of the experts are saying to just because someone says, hey, maybe eat a little more protein and a little less fat which is completely reasonable in.
Certain cases, what people here unfortunately is, oh, I need to like gorge on protein, eat all the protein I can and as little fat as possible which of course is not what anyone. Is ever saying yeah, yeah, it's people. People have a tendency to just go to the extreme ends for whatever reason I feel like they just assume that if a little is good, a lot better in some situations.
That's absolutely true. But in regards to nutrition certainly when it comes to fat and protein I would argue that's definitely not the case. If like there could be an argument there with the carbohydrates but operating on the extremes of the guards defend protein, like neither is optimal if you have optimal. I mean, either is optimal if you are going so far to the extreme that your protein is causing an expensive, dietary fat or vice versa.
Totally agree. Yep, when it comes to you mentioned the the few sprigs of broccoli. I feel like as of late, the carnivore Community has certainly gained momentum to the extent where people are fearful of vegetation and take this fear-mongering around the anti-nutrients, the basically just all the phytochemicals within plants that they have created an evolved from so they can not be eaten. I guess, do you think there's much weight in that like is that just a fallacy argument there?
Reason to really lean into that or is it just people again, majoring in the minors, it's a little bit of both, I think so, I did a video a while, back on anti-nutrients that. Maybe we could include the link to because it's like, yes, certain plants do actually contain compounds that cut. The can be problematic, but most people just eating a small portion of this as a side vegetable on their plate, along with the fatty meat or something are never going.
To run into problems with this. A lot of the people that got into problems with whether it's oxalates or go Trojans or phytates or what have you are. Very often for more vegetarians or vegans, who were eating huge quantities of this stuff all the time like having a giant spinach smoothie for breakfast every morning. Right. Having almond flour. Bread. Everyday. 6 pieces. So having it the poison is in the dose, right? Because too much water can kill.
You too much oxygen can kill you but none of us is going to stop drinking water and breathing are so um I don't I don't want to like dismiss the concerns that people have though. If you know, if somebody does react to even a small amount of this stuff then yeah, avoid it. I have actually recommended the carnivore diet to some people but I think they are blowing it out of proportion. They're not wrong to be talking about it, but they're blowing it out of proportion and they're
making everybody terrified. I'd of foods that healthy robust long-lived people have been eating for thousands of years. Yeah, I think that puts it very eloquently like I do not eat a ton of vegetation and it makes it a very small percentage of my
daily caloric allotment. But when I do like, when I'm craving some brussels sprouts or something sauteed in, you know, butter and olive oil, I don't feel guilty about it like it's not like this fearmongering in my brain, I don't notice the performance benefit from it per se.
I don't notice any inherent, you know, Edge from a competitive bodybuilding standpoint, but every once in a while just freaking like the taste of some broccoli or some brussels sprouts, so I'll eat them without feeling bad, about it same same. But yeah, I think you're absolutely right that the people that do seem to have this, you know, they'll point to instances in which they or other people have had, you know, issues with the oxalates.
And I feel like like you said, a lot of those people have been following a vegan or vegetarian diet for years, on end prior to this. And they're basically just Oxley dumping though. So that's a pretty small percentage of population. Yeah, I think it's pretty small and I'm not dismissing the possibility that somebody might react to smaller and smaller amounts of this stuff. But that I guess people just need to realize that just because somebody else reacts to something.
You know, there are, I could eat half a jar of peanut butter and go about my day and meanwhile, there's some little kid who smells a peanut and goes into anaphylactic shock so yeah, just because one person is super sensitive to something doesn't mean everybody is and I again I can only we everybody in the keto world is so into thinking about ancestral health and evolution and evolutionary biology.
And yes, the human, you know, Homo sapiens obviously evolved eating meat eating animal fats but we also did eat vegetation and I don't know that it was always a starvation food like oh they only would ever eat plants if there was no dead animal handy. And so I think, too. To claim that these foods are somehow poisonous when healthy people have been eating them for for ages is just kind of a little short-sighted. Yeah, I agree. What about fruits in which case? Many of the fruits that were
familiar? With today are just simply a bioengineering version of the fruits that were present, you know, 500 years ago. Yeah. Fruit is again, fruit is what can I say? I think the poison is in the dose, you know, if brute brute can mess with blood sugar and Insulin, right? Not as not as much as some other carbohydrates, but some people are really sensitive to that. And I do think there is a case to be made that the fruit we have available today is really
different than fruit was a thousand years ago. 10,000 years ago, So, I think, you know, you don't, you can eat plenty of carbohydrate without fruit, if, you know, or lower lower carbohydrate vegetables that don't have some of the issues that fruit might bring. Ya think it's a safe way to put it for sure. What about artificial sweeteners, kind of hitting you with all kinds of topics here but I feel like these are all very hot topics in the keto
space artificial sweeteners. Often times gets a lot of Kickback and truth be told when I first started Quito There wasn't really this push towards natural sweeteners. I mean, a see, sulfate potassium, sucralose like that was just what was available. So, I was Downing artificial sweeteners like they were going on the style and I still saw tremendous success with the ketogenic diet. So I don't feel like it's oftentimes as serious as it. I mean, I feel like people should try to optimize.
I feel like people are losing sleep around whether or not they had something that contains artificial sweeteners in it or not. We are so on the same page people, people are either Gonna Love Me Or Hate Me after this. I have a pretty contrarian view about this stuff again we you know dr. Atkins wrote. His first book, 50 years ago, 1972.
So you know People have been including things like sucralose saccharin aspartame for decades and like you said, getting great restate, their losing 100 pounds, they're reversing their diabetes. So, clearly this stuff is not standing in the way of most people getting the results they
want. And I emphasize the word most, because there's always the outlier who, you know, finds that a certain sweetener does raise their blood sugar, or even if it doesn't raise the blood sugar, it just makes them crave more and more sweet things. Hmm. I think. I think we need to people in the keto World. Need to be a little more clear about the distinction between something like, artificial sweeteners versus sugar alcohols which are different.
The sugar alcohols like a mouth at all, Mannitol Xylitol those things. Do affect blood sugar and Insulin more so than the artificial sweeteners like the sucralose and the saccharine and all that. So it just I do think there's individual responses and you know, in an Ideal World we would Need anything, sweet. We would just totally break or need for something sweet but if and some people do that, right? Some people do steak and steak only or steak and eggs and that's their whole diet.
But there are people who are going to want something sweet and that doesn't have to stand in the way of them getting great results. If they want to have a diet soda, if they want to put a pack of Splenda and their coffee and even somebody might have the end goal of getting off that stuff completely but maybe use it when your new use, it kind of short term as a transition and gradually decrease.
But I just Just, if I have a client who is having trouble, you know, whether it's with weight loss or something else, isn't working, artificial sweeteners, are not the first place. I Look to troubleshoot, I don't ignore it, but that's not my first suspicion usually. Yeah. I feel like, you know, the artificial sweeteners like Splenda that are not going to have near the effect on your blood sugar insulin as something
like pure table. Sugar would, those are certainly a step in the right direction from a physiological standpoint. There's a lot of benefit there. I feel like from a Because standpoint just simply having that sweet sensation on your tongue, oftentimes leads to the tendency to over-consume in general, the hyper battable nature of all these really sweet Foods affect people. Just have to concede to over-consume and I feel like there is I don't be curious to
get your thoughts on this. I've had multiple in the podcast and I've had some people that that look towards sweets and sugars as being akin to a drug addiction. And I've had some people that think that it is a disservice Vez to associate food as being an addictive substance in and of itself. Where do you kind of fall on that Spectrum? Um, I think the only people who think that food addiction isn't real or sugar addiction isn't real or the people that don't have a problem eating these
things, you know? Like that's for me to say I could say, oh, gambling addiction who's addicted to gambling. That's ridiculous. Well, just because I don't have that personal experience. Doesn't mean I can discount the real-life experience of other people. So I do now. Do I think it's as difficult to quit sugar? It is to quit cocaine, probably not but I don't know I can't
I've not been a cocaine addict. I can't say but I think I think we do a disservice to dismiss that and to kind of Gaslight people because you know there there are people who will get in their car at midnight and drive to the convenience store and then they'll hide all the rappers from their spouse. Hide the rappers from their kids and I think I agree with you though about the physiological and metabolic effects of the artificial sweeteners or a separate.
Kind of discussion from the psychological aspect and keeping that perpetuating that addiction to the sweet taste, just keeping keeping that need going and it's that If that leads people back to the real thing that can kind of sabotage them with the ketogenic diet. But I think most people can do
the sweeteners. Just fine, I'm not a problem, but you can get getting back to the addiction thing because that's more of an important issue, I think it is real and I think going keto alone, get just getting off the blood sugar roller coaster. Getting the so-called worst offenders out of your diet or some people. That's enough. They stop binging. They the all the Things go away and it's like magic and for other people, it's it's still a problem.
We can still binge on on steak on pork chops and maybe metabolically speaking. That's not certainly not as damaging but psychologically to still be stuffing yourself. You know, stuffing yourself like uncomfortably full at every meal is still a problem. So I just think he do and there's actually been a little bit of published research on this. The keto is really helpful for a lot of People in that regard. But there are still a lot of
people that struggle. Yeah. Feel like, you know, when I started it I was having all kinds of disordered eating Tendencies and binging and purging. And I feel like simply regularly my blood sugar and insulin and just, you know, not feeling guilty about the foods that I was consuming. I think that was one of the primary drivers that alone was able to help me break free of that downward spiral.
And I feel like from a physiological standpoint of people are able to you know, not have near the DraStic highs and Was there blood sugar the Cravings? They're they're you know, bounce of just exhaustion etcetera, Etc. That's certainly going to put them in the right direction but then it becomes a psychological aspect with regard to their relationship with just sweet
things. And gentlemen, if that becomes a catalyst for them to over-consume, you kind of have to tackle this from a psychological standpoint more so that a physiological standpoint. But I feel like for the vast majority of people if they could just simply gets all those physical markers, metabolic markers, more lesson, check that certainly paves the way for them to just have a better relationship with food in totality. I definitely think so. Yeah.
How did you get into it? You've been doing this for so long. Was there like a specific? You know condition that you were trying to cure or break free and or what was your initial motivation? Yeah, I was heavier II. Did it straight up for weight loss? I was think I was I first discovered the Atkins book when I was in college. And like so many people though I started and stopped and started and stopped like I definitely Not do low-carb continuously
from the moment. I discovered it, like, I definitely had my stops and starts. So if anyone out there has been through that, you are so not alone. That's a very common, but I have a family history of type 2, diabetes, cancer and stroke and every most of the people in my family are heavy but I was at that age. Thank goodness. I didn't have any health issues. I was just heavy and I was chubby despite, you know, I was exercising regularly. I was eating what I thought was a healthy diet.
You know, my whole grain cereal and my skim milk, and my margarine on my whole wheat toast, and the whole nine yards. And I just spent so many years with really low self-esteem and feeling, like I was a failure. And, you know, what's wrong with me and being jealous of friends that could eat anything and still stay thin. And so, you know, long story short, I found low carb and it worked and it I could lose weight without starving myself without, you know, going hungry.
I didn't have to like now, I'm not a competitor. So, like, I didn't have to measure my food or way any of that stuff. And then I was so fascinated, like, wait a minute, I'm doing the opposite of what I'm supposed to do here. I'm eating, more red meat. I'm eating butter, like I'm losing weight, what's going on here? And I started just doing a little bit of research in a reading more books, even starting to Read some of the, the published papers.
And I, I was in and out of a lot of jobs that I hated and it occurred to me one day, like, oh, wait a minute, nutritionist is a career. Maybe I could do that and I could teach other people about this awesome low-carb way of eating. So I ended up going back to school to study nutrition and you probably feel the same way I do. Now, weight loss is great and Aikido is obviously effective for that.
But this way of eating is So amazing for doing so many other things for Health, it really truly. No other diet does that it's like, okay, weight loss is great, but let's talk about literally reversing your diabetes, reversing PCOS. Reversing non-alcoholic fatty liver like basically, I won't use the word cure, but you know, radically improving mental health issues. So, yeah, that's a really long story. But I came in at personally for weight loss and I still, I still
eat this way, lat. Largely to maintain my weight loss but I keep it up now also to sort of potentially, prevent any of those big metabolic problems from developing. No totally. Have you been able to kind of nudge, your family members and that same direction. Nutritionally speaking to help out there are not even not even a little bit. Unfortunately, you know, I always say they know how to find me if they want my help.
And they're there are certainly a few who would benefit from it, but I'm not going to Reach at them. It's so sad. I'm in the same boat with my family. It's like, you know, we can step back remove ourselves from the equation and just look at the situation objectively and like they have a lot of expertise at their fingertips that a lot of people, you know, pay us or ask us to inquire from us and we would happily give it to our
family members freely yet. They don't want to take advantage of it and it's a sad reality. I mean, I've had a few friend members that have shown interest but it's unfortunate that that's the way it is. The people that are most close to you, they just don't know if it's, they don't see you as an expert in the field or they just don't want to be given advice from a family member. I don't know why that is the case.
But that is absolutely the case that everybody talked about this, I think it's um, have you ever heard Ken Berry? Talk about powdered but syndrome. Yeah, I think that's that's what it is partly. Especially when it comes to older relatives, like your parents aunts and uncles. But even even siblings or
friends or cousins. If they're around your age you grew up with them so they sort of see you as like oh my kid sister or my friend like we don't ever see each other as authorities because I think in our minds were all still like 11 years old right? Yeah. So, um, it's it's frustrating, but I'm, I'm never going to be the person who preaches or gets in somebody's face, you know, like I said, they know what I do, if they want help.
They know where I am, and the quickest way to turn somebody off to, this is to evangelize and to make it sound like, you know, so much better than they do, you know, even if we do in the realm of nutrition, It's just sometimes it's easier to keep the peace and just kind of they know where you are if and when they're ready. Yeah. You just gotta live by example, and hope that they want to replicate that aspect. That's something I got to do
totally deviated here. But what about some of the controversial things that that I feel you have an opinion on what about vegetable oils and the highly inflammatory notion that, you know, people on a huge think that looking at macros alone, they wouldn't really throwing caution to the wind towards vegetable oils from macronutrient standpoint.
That seems to fit the ticket but then we start diving into, you know, the inflammatory nature and the free radicals and all that stuff is you have an opinion on any of that. I do and it's very contrarian late. I yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that corn oil and safflower oil or health foods. I'm not saying anybody should go to the store and get a jug of these things to fry their food in. But just just like with some of the vegetables and you know concern about those
anti-nutrients. People have been using these oils for decades on low carb or keto diets and still again losing hundreds of pounds. Reversing all these health issues and I just don't, we do not. And those are a couple of issues here real quick. When you go on a very low carb diet, you are reducing your consumption of that stuff without even trying because you're not eating any of the high-carb foods.
These oils are used and like you're not eating potato chips anymore, you're not eating cookies, and muffins and pastries, and frosting and crackers. So your intake of these oils is going to decrease by default. And that so I feel like the main source of this stuff is caught. It's mayonnaise, it's salad dressing, it's other kinds of condiments. And then I just we do not have
any research. On the effects of these oils are Omega. Sits, six fat specifically in the context of a low carb or ketogenic diet because, you know, and research suggesting, that's this stuff is bad. Is used in what Humans or rats and mice on high carb diets on diets that are probably typically, 40, 50, 60, % carbohydrate. So what's really causing the inflammation? There is it the oil or is it the hyperinsulinemia on hyperglycemia?
I just there's too many people being successful with keto while including those oils to say that there are terrible across the board. But that being said, if people would prefer to just avoid them on principle or just Case, that's cool too. If people just want to use lard and ghee and Tallow and like coconut oil, that's fine. But again, you know, here's the thing. We probably agree about this. When, when you tell people that not only now, do they have to give up like 75% of what they
eat in a day. The bread, the pasta, the cereal, the rice, the potatoes. Not only do you have to quit all that. Now you can't get the normal salad dressing you've been Using for 20 years now you have to make it from scratch from organic avocado oil or you have to make your own mayonnaise with bacon fat on ye or, you know, we are automatically going to exclude. A lot of people who don't have the money for that and keto. I do not want keto to be some elitist.
Snob as thing, that only millionaires can afford like this because the fact is this, you can eat keto at McDonald's. You can get burger patties without a bond. You can get a pepperoni stick and Pork rinds at a gas station like you don't have to be a PhD. You don't have to be a zillionaire and it just is so elitist when people make it sound like you absolutely cannot have any of that stuff. That's just going to it just excludes way too many people. Yeah I'm one thousand percent agree.
I feel like like none of this was even in the conversation. When I started keto, certainly not when you started exactly. Yeah. Your to entry was much much lower and now kind of going back to what we were saying earlier, people that are Coming into the space and they're Googling, you know, what is key to how to eat keto and they're getting dissed.
This massive diatribe of information about vegetable oils and artificial sweeteners like they don't even know what an artificial sweetener is at that point. So it becomes incredibly exclusive and the barrier to entry is very high. I feel like all that stuff is good information. It's relevant information, it's information that I want to know, but that's stuff that I want to know what? Like the keto 7.0 overs. Not the keto 1.0 version. Yeah totally.
So I'm right there with you on that one as well with you having been in this space as long as you have have there been anything anything that you've learned about following this diet and lifestyle long-term that have caused you to question whether or not? It was ideal optimal, especially around the topics of like hormonal health for females.
For instance, there's been a lot of people suggesting that key to a long term for females is not optimal for hormone standpoint and Now, there's quite a bit of talk about being key to long-term contributing to insulin resistance. So I'm just kind of curious your thoughts on that. Yeah, that's a great question. I think, you know, not everybody needs keto, right? Right off the bat, not everyone
needs a ketogenic diet. Some people are perfectly healthy and lean and fit and they aged gracefully eating, you know, a not like a standard American diet, but eating a Whole Foods real food diet, that just isn't super, super low carb. But I think the people that get into trouble long-term with keto, I don't think it's keto per se. I think, and coming from the bodybuilding world, you probably see this way more than even I do
there. Some people, women especially just don't eat enough long-term and especially on on keto for some people. Anyway, the appetite suppression is so strong that they just don't eat. They just eat too. Little and especially the ones who combined eating too little with working out too much. And so they're just burning out. And so that the problem there isn't keto, the problem is that there accidentally starving
themselves. And so, I just, I think that's a large part of it. It's not keto. It's the way that it's being implemented. 1000%, agree with you. I'm really glad to hear you say that because I've been trying to shout that message from the rooftops for years, people don't understand. And this this holds true whether you're competing As a bodybuilder are just simply trying to live a healthy life.
Like if you are chronically, restricting, your fuel and take your going to have a down-regulation of your metabolic rate your hormonal Health. Like there's not anything good that comes from chronic under fueling, people don't like to wear, you know, calories just
swap that after a few. Like if you were just simply not eating enough fuel, your body is going to down regulate and you're not going to perform optimally from a health longevity standpoint from a hormonal standpoint like it's just not going to be good and I feel like a lot of people you know, they experience the weight loss, they feel This tiny effective, you know, eating a ketogenic diet, they just simply don't eat enough. They're not constant Congress.
Never they don't track, which is fine. I'm not saying you have to track but if you are not tracking you have no idea as to how much you're consuming. And that amount is not enough, you're going to run into some issues Downstream especially for females from a homo standpoint and I feel like a lot of people have been advocating for introducing more carbohydrates to help regulate woman's cycle but I think honestly it's just a Band-Aid to the underlying issue of just I'm not eating enough food.
I think so too and I'm I'm never going to say like if somebody does feel better eating more carbs, that's fine because, you know, even most people maybe that's wrong to say most some people can reap the benefits of a ketogenic or very low carb, way of eating at 50, 60, 80 grams of carbs that's still very low carb for some people that might not be like actually ketogenic but it's still way low carb enough to get the benefits you want to. Especially if you're lifting and
you're exercising. That's a tiny amount of carbs in that in that scenario. But so if someone feels better with a little bit more starts, that's fine. But yeah, I, my first recommendation would be just eat more and I think this is where, this new emphasis on protein is nice because I don't know that just eating more fat would be enough to take care of these issues. Like at least at least the protein is going to fill you up more and it's going to come. Also you know presumably with
Micronutrients, that might help. But yeah, I just think it women aspect and it could happen to men too. But women just are so afraid to eat. They really are. Yeah, and it's, I mean, once you like the hardest sell, for me, is a code sick. People come to me and they want to build muscle lose fat.
You know, that's ideal. Everybody wants to build muscle lose fat, but if you have somebody that comes to me, and they've been chronically under eating for years, because they've been following this, you know, No this this phenomenon which you gotta eat less to lose weight which is there's some truth to that for sure. Like I don't want to downplay then but at the expense of just never eating enough to feel your
body. Never being a surplus, never take advantage of all the benefits that come from that for them to lose weight having chronically under eaten, you know, for years like we have to have a conversation around a reverse dieting, ramping, their metabolic rate back up, improving their hormonal Health baselines. Like there's just so much that comes with that and oftentimes,
it does not result. V in immediate fat loss, like there's a long game thinking there and I feel like there's just not there's not really much incentive for people to talk about the importance of eating more because that's not what sells thing that's not what people want to hear but there's just so much benefit involved in having periods of time when you're at a caloric maintenance or even Surplus.
Yeah, the I don't have a lot of people that, that I need to talk to you about, like, reverse dieting or kind of just maintenance even, but that's, that's huge people. It's everybody wants to just lose fat or lose weight so badly. I'm so quickly that they, they just can't even imagine going through even a short period of time of potentially gaining some even if the law Longer-term goal
is to restore your metabolism. Yeah, there's definitely a long game approached it. Like you want it to be sustainable for the rest of your life not the not just the next four months, I feel like when you change your thinking towards that it becomes much more approachable but you know people want that quick fix so just becomes a you know it's just a conversation that needs to be had for sure.
What about insulin resistance? With long term key to feel like that's something that has gained a lot of traction. As a concept lately, I was just actually listen to a podcast of Peter Tia people kept sending it to me about forgets, who his guest was Jean. I forget. But, but it was all about whether or not fat consumption and I guess he quoted it as insulin sensitivity, within the
adipocyte itself. Basic is what's contributing to towards overall physiological, insulin resistance, as a high fat diet. Give me tonsil. No, right. So I think there, there is a problem with the phrase insulin resistance, in my opinion. And that's where a lot of this confusion comes from there.
There is a phrase called physiological, insulin resistance to differentiate it from pathological insulin resistance, where one is a normal human physiological response and the other is pathological meeting like dangerous or problematic. So anybody who's been on a very low carb or ketogenic diet for an extended below like a long time. As one, quick example, if for some crazy reason you would have to go take an oral glucose
tolerance test. I think you cannot just be on a ketogenic diet for a year and then wake up one day and go do an OG T. You are going to look like a raging. Eric when you might actually be in excellent, perfect health. And it's because your body is so accustomed to burning mostly fatty acids, mostly ketones and, and just internally producing whatever small amount of
glucose. It needs that when you all of a sudden, drink 75 or 100 grams of liquid glucose, your body doesn't know what to do with it. Your muscle cells, your fat cells, everybody's like, whoa, what? What is all this glucose? We don't need Need any of this? We're humming along perfectly. Well, on fats are ketones here. Why don't we just leave all this sugar here for the brain and so it's known. It's not known among everybody, but it's known among all the keto doctors and professionals
that. If for some crazy reason you have to do one of these oral glucose test, you need to carb up for about a week, but you need about 100 to 150 grams of carbohydrate for five to seven days. Just so your body can get real. Accustomed to dealing with this glucose. And so when we talk about insulin resistance, in somebody who lets say like you or me, or somebody who's been doing a low-carb diet for a long time
has excellent blood work. Like in really good metabolic Health. You look if you eat a small amount of carbohydrate, you look insulin resistant because The sometimes they also call it adaptation of glucose sparing. Your body just doesn't, your body doesn't need that glucose. And and again, you can reprogram it of a few days of carving up. But yeah, if you all of a sudden introduce this huge amount of carbohydrate, you probably will have a massive insulin Spike.
Because it just it just this is I really, really hate the phrase, insulin resistance. It just it's problematic because you're from You know why, why is your glucose going high? Is it is it because you've been on a low-carb diet for two years? Or is it because you have type 2 diabetes? These are very different situations. Yeah, 100 degree. I feel like like when Crystal was pregnant and we had to get the oral glucose tolerance test. We actually opted out of it.
We were going through midwives. We had the ability to do so, but we basically had her where CGM for two weeks instead to illustrate that she was able to regulate her blood sugar and healthy man. Yeah because we knew I mean if we I mean she's been keto for seven years. If she had taken, you know, seventy five hundred grams of that glue Cola. I mean, she would have totally failed it in an instant. Exactly.
And I feel like a lot of this is probably not a certainly, not a scientific way to say this, but I like to refer to this as basically the reverse or inverse of Quito flu. Like, when you are born your more lesson, the ketotic state, then you pretty much fed baby foods and you don't most people don't get fat adapted until they return to a huge ink diet or low
carb diet. There's that that phase in which your body has to To upregulate those metabolic pathways to make use of those ketones and fatty acids, it's kind of like the same thing in Reverse towards sugar and glucose. It's not that you are inherently unhealthy. If your body does not know how to temporarily and acutely.
You know, uprightly those metabolic pathways like that would all return if you were to Simply consume carbohydrates on a more regular basis but you don't necessarily have to do that. So it's not like you're missing out really Exactly, exactly. And even, you know, David Ludwig from Harvard has pointed out that the adaptation to a low-carb diet takes a while like like to get the biggest benefits and start seeing the biggest results. It takes several weeks. So these studies that are only
three weeks long. It's not that not that we should throw them in the garbage but kind of we should but they're not, we can't hang our hats on them. Because what happens in the very short term is not always representative of what happens over The long term and I had another example in my mind that I totally forgot, but it was, let me see. Oh, another example is, you know, people again, like we were saying earlier that.
It's a lot of black and white thinking in the keto world is very little appreciation for nuance and context context is the king. So let's like, let's say, you You're doing an intense workout, intense cardio, super high intensity. Your blood sugar could double,
you know? I mean, let's say your blood sugar is normally in the 70s or so you could it wouldn't shock me if somebody was booking all out sprinting or something and their blood sugar was 120 140. So if you look at your CGM or you look at a hookah music, oh my God, my blood sugar so high. Yeah, but what is the context? Oh, you're on a super, super low carb diet, and you are doing this man. Massive high-intensity effort. Congratulations, your body works
perfectly. That's exactly what your body should be doing. It should be pumping out a ton of its own glucose to fuel those muscles. That's different from waking up in the morning and your blood sugar is 140 for no reason or you know having a meal and four hours later your blood sugar's 140. So I think even with this you know, quote unquote insulin resistance, it's all about the context what you know the human body is so elegant. And so efficient that it never
does anything for no reason. So anytime there's an aberration or something weird. We always need to say, okay what what is the situation here? What's going on and why? Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like I was actually just talking to my employees the other day.
I talked to of them into wearing a CGM and they both work out and I was talking to them about how, you know, my blood sugar's typically around 70 or 80 and then I'll see it Spike to 120 130. Immediately post workout and they were like, well, we don't want to see that. At high number, right? And like what, totally depends on the context. I feel like simply having conversations around. That is so key. But people, they just want to sound bites.
Like people want to hear the Twitter soundbite two things, but you have to dive a little bit deeper, you have to dive into the nuance and flesh things out, so that there is no fear Monger. There is no misunderstanding and people can actually take these this information and use it towards actionable steps. Yeah, I see this. This is why I'm incapable of making YouTube videos that are like 10 minutes long. If you're really going to cover all the different levels of nuance, you know.
Good luck doing that in eight minutes. Yeah 100%. So here's another one for you with you have been having been in the space as long as you have and learned, as much as you have, what is something that you believe to be true? And then I've totally switched gears and done, a 180 degree turn on. Oh, that's a good question and I'm sorry. A truck just started up in the parking lot outside my building. You can probably I don't know if the camera is picking it up.
Um, what is something that something that I've changed my mind about that? Yeah. Hmm. well, I guess It's a little nuanced, but I'll start out by saying, you know, even wreck even recognizing that, a lot of the conventional no nutrition stuff was wrong like oh you need all those whole grains and saturated fats, bad for you. And red meat is bad for you and all that.
Even after having accepted that, that was nonsense, I was still very much like, oh, you know, we need a lot of vegetables, we need a lot of greens, and a lot of this and that and the carnivore people. Ooh there crepitus because I do think like we said earlier they go a little too far in some ways but to their credit, they have opened my eyes to the fact that like no we actually don't need that many vegetables and some people do best with none at all. I I think most people probably
do well with a little bit. I wouldn't want everybody to do a strip carnivore diet but that definitely opened my eyes to like how overrated fiber is and Even just just all those vegetables in general. So, that's I don't know. I don't know if that counts. Like I guess I guess I that
counts as a mind change, right? Because I feel like I mean, I think I can attest that to. I feel like even when Kira was really popular there's all these like keto smoothies and keto drinks coming out because people just still fell into the something you had to have greens. Had have the micronutrients and to have the antioxidants. And prior like, seeing this carnivore space pick up as much
as it has. I mean, it, you can't deny the fact that people are excelling and performing at a very high rate with hardly any Vegetables. Like I don't know what my percentage of caloric Lyman is contributing from vegetables. Been very miniscule, like probably one or two percent.
So I'm not, I don't claim to be Corner, bro, but I'm right on the cusp of it. But I feel like there are certainly a lot of examples of people out there that are functioning at a very high rate in the complete absence of vegetables. And I like things that make you open your eyes. I like things that are not contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian, but pushing the envelope into what we previously. Deemed Possible's that people. Nuys that there are.
There's more leeway. There's more extreme, there's more of a spectrum than we initially realized. Yeah, yeah. So I'm right there with you. Well what's in the pipeline for you? What are you excited about? What are you working on? What's 2023 going to bring? Well, the biggest thing is I'm writing my fourth book now and it's going to be about thyroid.
So it's not a keto book at all. Which is kind of nice to take a break from writing about keto even though I do love Quito and it's, I don't know when it'll be out. It's going to be several more months, I think, but hopefully sometime like in the late spring, early summer the book will be out and There is I think, depending on when this podcast comes out, we have a course called the keto Made Simple course with adapter Life Academy.
And so that's like a really, it's three weeks of dedicated support and coaching and and live videos. So that's that's always a fun thing to do. Nice nice. Well I will certainly link out to that, make it easy people to find it as it relates to your thyroid book. I'm sure a lot of that you know goes hand-in-hand with what you've learned with. You know, even though it's not specifically about keto, has
there been anything? And he red flags that have been raised with regards to macronutrient distribution overall caloric intake that have negatively or positively
impacted thyroid health. I feel like a lot of people have issues with thyroid and I'm assuming it's probably going to be similar to what we're saying earlier about them just simply not eating enough fuel in general and a certain that they're eating a lot of excess of carbohydrates in there and some of this and that's going to play into that. But if someone's following a ketogenic diet, have you noticed the The vast majority of their thyroid issues seem to be
resolved. It actually goes both ways. I think there's and, you know, unfortunately, there's almost no published research on this. So it's all just kind of anecdotal which we shouldn't dismiss, but we don't have a lot of like, hard data there are, I would say that the thyroid cases that tend to get better with keto and some do I see it more specifically with Hashimoto's, the autoimmune thyroid.
So and we know, Quito is really good for many different autoimmune things, so why shouldn't it be good for Hashimoto's? But yeah, the other the other stuff I think is is what you said. Like just people not just not not eating enough and especially not eating enough in the context of working out really hard and your body. Does you a favor?
It's a protective mechanism, what it slows your metabolic rate because it's like it doesn't want you to burn out, so it's going to it's going to lower your energy. It's going. Make you depressed. It's going to make you cold and tired so you don't want to go work out. It's trying to save you but it makes you feel like garbage on the process. But yeah, I think the people that you know, Ron the people that start out fine and develop a thyroid problem on keto.
I do think those are largely the reasons. Like, I don't think it's nobody is really coming into this because of Coit origins or, you know, the anti-nutrients about. That's not the cause of that in this context. Yeah. What about totally going on another Rabbit Hole here. But when it, Comes to thyroid health and just hormonal Health. In general, there's been a lot of debate around, you know, bioidentical hormones and thyroid medication medication to try and offset.
Some of these, these low numbers or high numbers is that something I'm assuming. There's probably like a tiered system like one needs to get their nutrition dialed and what needs to be making sure they're consuming adequate nutrition before they ever play around with the, you know, Exotics hormones. I'm assuming correct.
That's that's what I would say. I mean medicine should never be our first go to. We should try to figure out the root cause of the problem and fix that, but having dealt with hypothyroidism myself and I do actually take viroid medicine, I believe me a burger is not starving herself and over-exercising said, I think that is definitely not the problem for me, but it's, I think if you can't identify the root cause And then don't dismiss the the judicious
intelligent use of medication, whether that's hormones or thyroid or anything else. Like, you know, just because some medicines can really mess you up. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, low thyroid can not to be hyperbolic here but it can be completely debilitating, the depression, the apathy, the
constipation hair loss fatigue. I mean it's miserable and So why should somebody spend two or three years trying to get to the root of the problem and experimenting with supplements and diet and this? And that, you know, maybe take take the medication and and still try to find the root cause still adjust these things about your lifestyle because you can
always reduce the medication. If you think you've maybe fix the problem, you can always kind of work with your doctor to cut back on the meds and see what happens. But I just were very very anti medicine and the keto World and I do think, too many people are on way too many medicines that they don't need. The diet could absolutely fix, but I don't think we should be completely anti the stuff when it really can help. Ya, 1000% a green when is this
book slated to be published? Oh, not soon enough, I'm not sure. We're actually we're doing some revisions on the manuscript today. Me and my co-author probably it won't be out until sometime in the late spring early summer. Hopefully sooner than that but I can't. - well, she'll have to get you back home when that does go laughs that we can just dive specifically into thyroid Health. That would be great. I mean, that just, it's, it's so common.
I see it all the time because, you know, who's going to come to me for help. It's going to be people that are doing keto, but it's not working and 90% of the time. Quote-unquote, not working means they're not losing weight. And if they didn't have any hormonal imbalance, if everything was fine, and they were just eating too much carbohydrate a straight-up Low carb or keto diet would work really well and they be losing weight. So when it's not working and they seek extra help, I dig a
little deeper. And I mean, I'm not a doctor, I can't diagnose anybody, but looking at the blood work and looking at their paperwork, the symptoms, I can spot this a mile away. So I think it's way more common, it's super common, and it's very, very often undiagnosed or diagnosed but improperly treated like they're not taking the right medicine for it. Yeah.
Like when it comes to people, Like people listening to this if they're doing all the quote unquote, right things, they got their diet dialed in there, they're watching their intake, they're making sure that their training properly, they're getting sleep, rest, all that stuff. What like what would be a good next step for them? Getting a blood panel, done, a thyroid panel, done a comprehensive panel, and just kind of seeing if there they've got any markers that are out of line there.
Definitely. But I think the first step of for that is like you said their diet, their diets dialed in. How are we defining dialed in, you know, like, are they are they eating 10% protein, because they're afraid of protein. But so if they're doing like a, we could call it well-formulated tomorrow. Stephen Finney's phrase, like a well-formulated ketogenic diet. If they really have a good diet, then yeah, depending on the kind of symptoms they're having.
I would recommend a thyroid panel but well and the first step before that is even some people take medication that makes it really hard to lose weight or makes you gain weight. So, you know, if we eliminate that like okay, we they're they're not on any of those medicines then yeah, I would do thyroid but you always have to ask for a comprehensive thyroid
panel when you ask. Like, there's two whole chapters on this and in my book, if you just ask for a thyroid test, they usually only run one or two things and that's just Just not enough like that would be like measuring just blood sugar without insulin, right? And you and I know there's millions of people whose blood sugar is totally normal but their insulin is through the roof. Hmm. And that's Miss that's missed because doctors don't test it and the same thing happens with
thyroid makes total sense. Well, I'm excited for the book to come out. I can't wait to read it myself. Thank you. No. Nobody wants it. To be done more than me. Well, Amy, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today. Where do people go to find out more about you? We said that your YouTube channel was key there without the crazy. Where else can people find you? Yeah, people can just search me on my name on YouTube to Amy Burger.
My actual website is in desperate need of overhaul, so the best place is on stall Slayer.com. S t all like a fat loss stall stall Slayer.com or I'm on. I'm on page. Creon. And I'm Twitter is my main social media. My handle is to it nutrition, túi' to nutrition. And then this company that I helped with these online courses for Quito is, it's really long name, adapt your life academy.com and that's with um, dr.
Westman to awesome. Well, I will certainly linked into all those make it easy for people to find you. And again, I can't thinking of taking the time I really appreciate your knowledge and expertise and I look forward to your book and everything else that you continue to pursue to Route 23? Yeah, thank you Steve.
And I just want to tell people, listening to me, they're listening because they're your fans anyway, but you and I have such different areas of expertise in specialty and yet, like, when I heard you speak Aikido palooza, I was just like, oh my God, this guy is just spot on. So I think I think we agree about so many things even though our areas of specialty or different.
Yeah, well it's crazy because like I mean I have like all my Marketing Online branding is definitely catered towards, you know, competitive body butters. But so many the principal like we're all humans. Like so many the principles that I applied to my competitive athletes are directly applicable to you know 73 year old grandmother just simply want to live a healthy life like it's a lot of it, there's a lot of, you know, carry over there. So I think it's so good.
That's why I bring on people. The podcast that I know we're not in the bodybuilding space because just so much to be learned from everybody, that's pursuing true Health, you know. Yeah. So thank you again. Amy, definitely keep in touch. If there's ever anything I could do for you, by all means, don't hesitate to reach out, let me know. Alright, thank you, take care, take care.