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DNA & Hormones

I'm fascinated by dna. We know that the human body has one hundred times the number of fat jeans as it does skinny jeans and we're talking not j a chance, and so you've got to figure out what are the strategies that are gonna best turn off the fat jeans, turn on the skinny jeans. So I have a few strategies that I figured out for myself, and then when I work with clients, what I do is I try to figure out ok, what are the main hormonal drivers for this person? Right? Most the time there's a problem with court assault and it's linked up with estrogen. Ok, there's some people who have an issue with their thyroid and so we've got to address the thyroid and fat burning within that context. So I think it's helpful to start number one with root cause analysis. How do you like that? I like that I think that's better than just, you know, throwing some blanket statement, right? And so if you do my quiz, for instance, you will figure out ok here's here's, my top three hormonal drivers and just by ...

the law of averages, what I found in women is that they are what I affectionately call the hormonal charlie's angels right there, cortes, saul and its relationship to insulin, thyroid and estrogen so those are the three that I think are important to focus on for fat burning, and then we can maybe get into some detail about howto how to work that, yeah, what I'd love you have a personal story as it relates to health and your own body, and basically optimizing it over the course of time, based upon what you've learned and discovered personally. So what? What was it like before? And what is it like now? So I my own story very briefly, is that in my thirties, I was a working mother total stress case, you know, like burning the candle both ends, and I was working as new, joanne, I was delivering babies at night and doing surgery during the day, a glass of wine or two at night was just the thing that sort of helped me transition to my home life, and I put on weight, like I put on about thirty five pounds, and it wasn't pretty right his women do not like to be fat, right? So I I went to my doctor and explained some of the symptoms that I had that I had weight gain, especially, you know, wasn't even a muffin top, it was more like a cake top, and I had I had premenstrual syndrome, I, um I blame my husband a lot of the drama in my life okay wasn't owning at court assault keeps you from owning your part in that and I went to my doctor and he said three things he said it's simple math sarah you know this you need to exercise more and eat less and I was a runner at the time yeah, he also said, why don't you take this nice antidepressant because you sound like you're very stressed and I think this would help you and then third he said you sound hormonal when it she's start this birth control pill well, let me just interject those first two are exactly the advice that I got from my doctor uh eat less exercise more even though is running thirty miles a week and take this anti depressant antidepressant which will help you sleep oh my gosh well, at least he didn't offer you a birth control that's true for that, but that was a defining moment able because that's where I just was like, ok, I've been trained to say this to people and it feels wrong yeah like it feels wrong I was humiliated that he was basically saying you don't have the willpower to do this whole math equation that's really quite simple in based on calories and energy expenditure, but I realized ok, I could actually take my medical training and apply it to my bio ology I have a hunch it was pretty cool that was like a beautiful moment and I had a hunch that my problem was hormonal so I tested my hormones and I you know I was overweight but I was I still had like a body mass index of twenty five point three or something and I found that might my court of saul was three times what it should have been wow it's crazy and I had an insulin level that was insanely high I didn't have diabetes but I had a fasting blood sugar that was about one hundred ten well and it was making me it was like a magnet for any fat like every car by eight right there so it took me a month but I reset my court us all and that just created grace in my life yeah I graduated from couples therapy my pms resolved I lost the weight you know, not within a month but a little bit longer than that and I was a runner at the time and I also realized that running raises your cortisol level and for that doctor to say you had exercise more so wrong advice for so many reasons not to say that all running is bad or anything like that we're going to be talking about that in the next session what it looks like to exercise in an effective way but you were actually exercising in what might not have been an effective way before and now you exercise very differently. So what does it look like for you specifically as a woman? Because I think a lot of women need to hear this, it doesn't just apply to make sure we'll actually have a leading question way like leading questions. So I I exercise less than I did in my thirties and I eat more, eat more fat and more protein, and I'm a lot happier like my serotonin let's call it dr serotonin. So I know and I think that's so important to realize that this this message, this dogma that we've been hearing about, you know, eat less exercise, more it's actually not proven, yeah, like there's, some really smart people who are now finally doing some the well design rigorous studies to show that maybe dropping the refined carbohydrates is a better idea right, then, just watching your calories and paying attention to that. So, yes, I changed the way exercised the only to get granular into specifically so I I went through a phase of being more adaptive, especially when I saw that court assault that was so in sanely high, I knew, ok, I think I need to like reset the button in my brain and not be such a stress case and there's a cost to it it's not just that you're laying down belly fat when korda sells high it fries your telomeres talked about telling you oh good okay, so telomeres are those cute little caps on your promise soames in your cells and they they're like the they tend and befriend your chromosomes and if you're a stress case like I was in my thirties, you can shrink your telomeres at an accelerated rate. In fact, there was a study not far from here at ucsf, where the biochemist elizabeth blackburn looked at women who are stressed out premenopausal women that were stressed out so like us, right? So in their twenties and thirties and forties and women who had the highest perceived stress we're aging ten years faster then women who had a normal amount of stress so it all comes down to perceive stress it's not what you have on your plate, it's actually your perception oh yes, you have a lot to say about that and it's so it's not just that you're changing your body fat, you're also accelerating the aging process. Telomeres are the best marker we have right now of longevity your biological aging compared to chronological agent so that was very long aside, but I want us to say that I changed to more adaptive exercise so I became a yoga teacher I'm an overachiever like you are so I just, you know, all in and I practice pallotti's and I you know, that was a big shift, especially when you're a runner, you know, it feels like you're taking a nap, but I found a way to do yoga that really worked better for the matrix of my body and then I started running again because I I love running I love the meditation of it I have to move to meditate I'm not one of those people who could like sit on a cushion for thirty minutes I can relate to that you can yeah, no one else can make a difference like one of the biggest reasons I ran marathons was number one on the type and love doing crazy stuff like running thirty miles for no reason but more importantly than that that was that was my time that was how I did it then that was when I had total peace no cell phones, no people wanting anything, it was just like time with me and then a lot of times music bumping into my ears that's right? Well, it's a beautiful thing and I'm not saying runnings bad I appreciate that she mentioned that and we know that you know, when you push your saw yourself hard with exercise when you're vo two max goes up your maximal oxygen intake that raises cortisol you know it's one of the reasons why marathon runners age faster than tibetan monk right? And you khun blunt that effect so you can actually take vitamin c vitamin c has been shown to reduce the bump in court a soul that you have so I went back to running after I had fixed my metabolism that's kind of the important piece and I started doing burst training I started tio doom or you know, I wouldn't call it interval training because I think that again it's a bit of a this news for some folks but just like hard core bursting usually around of about eight I would go running and inside of twenty one to twenty five minutes I could get the exercise that I needed for my body what is bursting what is bursting well so I'll explain it the way that I do it I run in my usual pace and I'm kind of a slow runner as my husband likes to point out, you know, maybe like eleven minute mile, ten minutes depending on you know, whether I'm running with a girlfriend or my sister the rock star and I and then after I warm up you know, like three, five minutes, then all all run as fast as I can and that's more like it nine well, I'm running pretty fast, like I can't I can't push it any harder, right? And I do that for about thirty seconds and then go back to my, you know, usual pace for about ninety seconds somewhere around there. So I rest back into my baseline and then I push it again and one of the things this does have you talked about growth hormone yet? No. Yes. So that's exact for you. Thank you, sir. So that raises your growth hormone growth hormone is another really important hormonal metabolism. And it's also one of these hormones that's involved in belly fat. And, you know, it's, not just the waist. I want to make a point about that to what we want with creating a good neighborhood in the body is we want tio minimize the amount of visceral fat so it shows up at your waist. But it's also fat around your organs inside it's around your liver at noon it's around your kidney. It is bad news. It is metabolically active and in two thirds of americans it's working against you. So we want to burn that fat right. So raising growth hormone helps with that, and I, you know, I'm super rigorous when it comes to data. And because of these uncontrolled medical experiments we've had in the u s and our shameful past, I think it's really important to be clear about what the data says and I don't think we're at a point where you can inject growth hormone and have that be your answer teo managing this particular aspect of metabolism, I would rather that we do it with our food and with our movement yeah and that's the way that you do as a woman works really well with your lifestyle one of ways that I do it is through fasting as well as resistance training and burst training, which is very similar to the way that you do it so that that doesn't just apply the man, I think the way that a lot of people view exercises that women are supposed to basically tie themselves to a treadmill and just stay on as long as they possibly can and that's how you stay there and whereas men are supposed to train like athletes and that's what they do to like be burly men in fact, to have a body that has healthy hormones to have the physique that you want it's actually not that different in terms of burst training resistance exercise like you mentioned it's all about adaptation as opposed to burning off calories yes, yes, yes, yes can you talk about why burning off calories isn't really a perfect equation well there's a lot of debate right now with this particular topic and I I'm a little careful about you know sort of what we know versus what we don't know I think the person who's articulated this better than anyone else besides you is gary tops so I think your e tabs you know he thank goodness for gary tubbs he spent five years synthesizing hundreds of years of literature on this topic about calories you know is it simple thermodynamics that you just need tio exercise more eat less to lose the fat is that the answer and he basically came to the conclusion no that's not the answer it's probably not the answer we don't have rigorous studies suggesting that it isthe even though if you go to the american heart association I did a fellowship with the american heart association after I finished medical school and they will tell you step number one for heart health is to count your calories and stay in this range sixteen hundred calories per day for you know this person and that is not proven it's not proven so this whole equation you know this idea of calories in calories out you had a burn more and eat less to lose weight I don't find that works in the studies have been done have shown ok we've been giving that strategy for fifty years and it's been a colossal failure diabetes keeps increasing people are getting fatter so we need to have strategies that are more proven such as the ones that you have and I think the true testament to a lot of this is let's let's look at your weekly routine in terms of movement and in terms of day to day meals what does it look like hmm that's a great one well I have ah sell the sole philosophy you know I'm not I'm not just ah pay attention the biology and that's all that matters I think that there's so many other elements so for me day to day what I dio well I started this morning with the shake so I I'm a working mom still right and so I really love to start the day with a shake because I can get all the nutrients I need I happen to love chocolate and it's good for you and I found like the right proportion in my smoothie where I can get my kale on and I can have the chocolate but I can still taste the chocolate it's not to caylee so that's what I had this morning but otherwise so it's a green smoothie just gets a green it's a green chocolate smoothy and so that's what I had for breakfast and what I find you know with this particular way of eating breakfast is that it gives me enough carbs for my brain function which I need for focus and it also stabilizes my blood sugar so does this hormone balancing thing that's super cool is that fruit that's in what one of the cars that are contained within that smoothie so I'm not a huge lover of fruit I think that for people who have a healed metabolism they can eat fruit and not have a problem I find that a lot of the clients that I work with have a problem with fructose it keeps adding to that liver fat it keeps some you know fructose is process differently than other sugars in the body and so if I have someone with a metabolism that I'm trying to fix I will take out the fruit I'll tell them eat coconut you can have avocado you could have olives those air your new fruits delicious well that's that's all absolutely put an avocado on your smoothie oh my gosh it says it's so smooth and rich and it's on for satisfying it sort of ok so you have ah green smoothie then wells well and I also very so I wouldn't have a green smoothie every single morning like I think it's important for the matrix of your body to meet up with different players like different nutrients and kind of change the game if you eat the same thing every day you're more likely to have intolerance is and I have quite a few so yesterday breakfast I had wild alaskan salmon knife and some broccoli and some green beans I try to fill up my plate about eighty percent vegetables and then a chunk of protein so that's what I had for for lunch yesterday and then for dinner I had grass fed filet mignon yum and some cauliflower yeah wow so that doesn't sound like a diet to me that's not a diet I well see the problem the problem I think a lot of people have this idea especially on mondays women in monday's and like the diet it's crazy so women have this idea that they have to restrict calories and I can I just say one thing to just disavow al you of that particular idea when you restrict calories we know this from ms lee animal data when you restrict calories and then you start eating the way you normally do you can lay down the fat at about twenty x which you had done before restricting calories we don't want that that ruins your metabolism right so don't restrict calories don't starve yourself it makes you fat were oddly weird and then have to eat fat to lose fat well let's talk about that right now I didn't have a chance to go specifically into what good fats or yesterday so can we talk a little bit about what you eat in terms of that's what you think are healthy for the metabolism for hormones as well as some of the facts that might not be sure and you're gonna help me with this oh yeah okay good so well we could take my little menu so that I just gave you and break that down so one of the things I know genetically about myself because I'm in a mighty bio hacker I can't help myself is that I need to have about a fifty fifty ratio between the poly unsaturated fats the preface and saturated fats so I can't be eating grass fed meat for breakfast lunch and dinner like that's not so good for my matrix and this is well proven and women who have this particular gene that they need to have the right ratio between the you know the poo fas and those air things like walnuts and pretty much all types of nuts lots of fish so proof is there I think are quite good for you those were the mega threes and I tend tio work with people and sort of figure out what's going to be optimal for them so I don't think saturated fat is the enemy you know there was uh thirty plus years of telling people to not eat meat because saturated fat is clogging your arteries that's not proven it's not proven yeah it's funny because it's like that's so true and that's what I say but there's a little bit more to it which is last the saturated fat that is found in feedlot meet yes very much does yes, do that in some circumstances, absolutely. But what that means is that it's not saturated fat or poly unsaturated fat per se that is doing these things, it's the quality of those fats themselves that's, that's really doing it that's a really important point. And you know, what we know is that if you look at both men and women and you look at vegans, are vegetarians and compare them to meat eaters, it's not just the loss of meat that's different between the two there's a huge difference in the amount of fiber that they're getting, and so that makes some of these studies really complicated. So yes, there's like, you know, the big food industry and the gm owes that these animals are eating and, you know, that's like another conversation there's the the hormones that you're getting exposed tio there's, it's it's a metabolically blocking type of fat compared tio pastured meets, for instance, so that's a really important piece. And then I think, um, this fiber issue, you know, it's just I was just reviewing a study for my new book about how vegetarians eat about double the fiber of women who identify as mediators, so on average meat eating women eat about twelve grams a day, which is abysmal, yeah, we don't want that right they're not getting enough vegetables. They're not getting their kill on no, but even the vegetarians were eating about twenty to twenty four grams a day and that's still not enough like you need to be around forty to fifty grams a day to be managing your estrogen to keep your to prevent your liver from getting congested. Detox it makes you feel great and balanced. It offsets the huge spikes. Like I said before in blood sugar and insulin, and and the rest of that, and one of the best and easiest ways to do that is with what you do in the morning, just rocking out with a green smoothie. All of a sudden you're getting loads of five or right away, and you don't really have to worry about it so much and trying to find fiber the rest of the day, because that can actually be kind of stressful. That's what happens to me sometimes, especially when you're traveling because good green's aren't often found in airports. Unfortunately, well, san francisco airport. Ok. That's, that's really? What I found. All right, so let's, let's. Take a little bit more time to talk about good fats to to eat raw or at a low temperature, as well as the good fats to cook with so omega threes. Are essential omega sixes are also essential, which means that we need them to survive. The problem is, most of us who were eating a standard american diet or even eating something close to it, or even eating like paleo or vegan, or eating far too many omega sixes, which are inflammatory, which can cause all sorts of of problems when you meet them at a ratio of like thirty to one, which is what we're eating them right now in terms of a ratio when they should be. If you look at our past as humans, more like one to one one to two, something like that so it's not necessarily that you want to eat loads of omega threes because they can oxidize, and if used them as a fuel that's bad news it can accelerate aging you can have a lot of free radicals. You want to make sure that they're very high quality to talk about the the meets once against with saturated fats and the fats in meats. If you're getting them from a free feedlot, they're packed with omega sixes. Generally, crappy meat is packed with the facts that you don't want on the other side. Wild name, uh, cows that eat grass, for example, and things that they should eat other animals like chickens, that feed that are high in omega threes or certain things, naturally, that would contain omega three's that's, where you get those great fats and that's, how you avoid those bad fat so that's. Another really compelling reason to avoid the yakking meets and the yucky eggs and all that other stuff that super cheap. That seems like it's a good deal. It's not, um, and go for the good stuff. The fats that I use to cook with tend to be the more stable fats, which are saturated, so animal fats are generally better at withstanding a high temperature, then something like, uh, like olive oil, which will smoke and oxidized to all sorts of things that you don't want that can actually cause that damage if you cook with it. So what we used to cook with are typically animal fats. Coconut oil is a great one. Avocado is wonderful raw, but you don't really want to cook with it. Same thing with olive, uh, let's. See, what else do we have? And then when it comes to canola oil, I kind of covered that yesterday, it's not something that I eat most of it is terrible. Some of it actually isn't that bad if you find the, you know, organic, expel er pressed canola and other fats like that it's actually not that damaging do you have any other things to add in terms of like good and bad that's why I'm on the same page I wouldn't I would maybe make it astonishingly simple because that's how my brain works so coconut oil for cooking olive oil avocado oil on your salad for making a vinaigrette don't cook with it so that's that's how I approach it there's many other oils and when you're eating this way you want to have some change in your taste, right? So I have an artisanal lard that I use ivan artisanal g that I use also so I'm I'm a big fan of those I drink coffee with g yeah and making fat makes everything delicious as we went over yesterday, so if animal fats like that butter can be great, you don't want to cook with it quite as high of a temperature as g can with stand so it is basically butter with the milk solids removed so it's clarified butter and that's something that works wonderfully especially if you might not work that well with their yourself so in g is is pretty rocked out it's pretty easy to find you can't find that grass fed butter carry gold is fairly good in terms of things that you can find everywhere that's a great option for everyone they haven't really caught on there's a huge demand for it right now, so it's, actually relatively cheap, it's the best bang for your buck if you want to fill up. I was talking to eight dave asprey yesterday, he said, if I if I were a hobo, you know, just go getsem carry gold, and I would much on butter for three days, and I'd be fine. I'm just like that's. Brilliant, I think that's awesome, just like handout. Instead of handing out dollar bills, we give him some carry goal, and then they're gonna load up on the c l a and their brains are going to be totally rocked out, its eyes start walking downtown with my character. I just think we're looking at a much more nursing, usually given apple. I think very gold would be a lot more fitting for them.