Radio Show

Dr. Tiffany Binder instructs many clients about the nuts and bolts of nutrition.

Host Intro: What are the nuts and bolts to eating a healthy low-carb, adequate protein, high-fat diet?  Up next, Tiffany Binder, a naturopathic physician and nutrition expert, describes a basic "How To" handout of Rosedale Diet to members of the Boulder Nutrition Think Tank.  In this discussion, Dr. Binder explains why she finds that people do best if they really give this dietary change a rigorous try for at least four weeks.

Groups Featured in this report include: Family Learning Center of Boulder, (303)442-8979x3003, www.flcboulder.org
Rosedale Advanced Metabolic Labs, 720.859.4132, advancedmetaboliclabs.com




Full Text:

(What are the nuts and bolts ? or should we say, the nuts and good oils? ? to eating a healthy, low-carb, adequate-protein, high-fat diet? Up next, Tiffany Binder, a naturopathic physician and nutrition expert describes the Rosedale diet to the Boulder Nutrition Think Tank. I?m Shelley Schlender, a member of the Think Tank, which began in the summer of 2004 as an all-volunteer effort to help educate people about how to prevent and even reverse many diseases through a low-carb, adequate-protein, high-fat diet. Now here?s Tiffany.)

Let?s look together at the basic handout on what to eat during the Rosedale Diet.  As we go over this material, keep in mind that the main goal, as I said before, is to get you to be fat-burners. I?m going to tell you how to do that. The diet consists of low carbohydrate foods, it?s low in non-fibrous carbohydrates.  That means it?s low in foods that are sugary or starchy, such as rice, bread, potatoes, bananas, oranges and so on.  On the other hand, it?s high in non-starchy carbohydrates such as broccoli, lettuce, kale, zucchini, green beans and so on.  The technical term for these is fibrous carbohydrates, and you can have a lot of this. We?ll provide you with a list of foods to eat and foods to avoid, so don?t worry.   You?ll see the list is low in the non-fibrous carbs, like potato, pasta, bread, cereals, grains, all of those things.

The diet is going to be moderate protein. That?s one good reason we?ll have you weigh yourselves on our special scale which measures the difference between the pounds of your weight that are muscle, bone and water . . . your lean body mass . . . and the pounds that are fat . . . your fat body mass.  We need this body composition information because we want to find out how much lean tissue you have and estimate how much protein you need. You don?t want to eat too much. Other diets have people eating way too much protein. Especially if you?re diabetic, it?s important not to overdo the protein, because extra protein, beyond what your body needs, is going to raise your blood sugar and you?re going to store it as fat. It?s going to do ultimately the same thing as eating carbohydrates. Most people don?t know that. Extra protein will raise your blood sugar and make your insulin levels rise, and in the end, you?ll store the excess protein as saturated fat, and this is whole thing we?re trying to avoid.

I think a lot of you will probably be eating pretty close to a similar amount of protein. You might need a little bit more because you?re a male and have a little bit more lean tissue. We?ll be measuring your lean tissue to determine how much protein your body requires.

(And you?ll be able to tell that to us individually? Then we learn how to count grams?)

It?ll be very easy to do. I think you?ll all be surprised that it?s not going to be that much. It?s going to be lower than what you expect. If you cut the carbs and you start eating too much protein on this, it defeats the whole purpose. If you?re eating more protein than your body needs in a day, it?s just going to raise your blood sugar and raise your insulin and store it as fat. We?re only going to eat the protein we need for body parts. The rest of our calories are going to come from fat, from good fat.

As for low, non-fibrous carbohydrates, that means low on potatoes, bread, pasta, grains, cereals. You?ll eat moderate protein depending on what we determine for you, and then you?ll eat a diet high in good fats. We?ll talk about what good fats mean, differentiating ?good fats? from saturated fat. In general, saturated fats are things such as butter, lard, shortening . . . fats that stay solid at room temperature.  

(Is saturated fat good or bad?)

For people who want to reduce their fat body mass, saturated is bad. Eventually, after your body relearns how to burn fat and you get to the levels of bloodwork and also percentage fat-wise, you can start adding a little bit more saturated fat in because your body is going to be burning it very efficiently.

Okay, so you?re going to be eating lots of non-fibrous carbohydrates, meaning leafy green vegetables and things like that,  you?ll be eating moderate protein, and good fats. We?ll talk about what those fats are. A lot of times it?s shocking for people to think that they can eat fat. We have been trained for so long that we should avoid fat at all costs. The problem is that health authorities forget to say that healthy fats are good, and we should avoid the ?bad? fats. Because there are good fats and bad fats. There?s a really good book called Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, by Udo Erasmus. It?s pretty technical, but it gives helpful explanations that are worth knowing about. His book talks about good fats versus bad fats. He has an updated version that?s much better than the old version.

I want to tell you more about good and bad fat, but I know we have limited time. For now, I?ll just say that it is an important topic.  For instance, we use fat to make the hormone prostaglandin, and that hormone serves a lot of functions in the body. It dilates blood vessels, meaning that it makes them wider, which is good for blood pressure and blood flow. Bad fats constrict blood vessel walls, meaning it makes them more narrow, and that increases blood pressure. Fats are very powerful. The kind of fat we eat affects us in extreme ways.

Let?s go to the third page of the handout for The Rosedale Diet. It?s the page which begins, ?Helpful Hints for Proper Nutrition.?

(What?s prostaglandin again?)

Prostaglandin is a hormone that serves many functions.  For instance, prostaglandins are known to be involved in the pain cycle. When it comes to producing pain, there are prostaglandins that increase pain and inflammation, and there are prostaglandins that reduce pain.  For now, let?s call them good and bad prostaglandins. Bad prostaglandins are made from bad fats, like saturated fats, rancid fats and hydrogenated oils. When you have bad prostaglandins, it increases pain and inflammation in the body.  Perhaps you?ve been hearing the debates about medications that reduce pain and inflammation, and the dangerous side effects that many of them cause.  While good fats don?t get mentioned a lot in medical news about how to reduce pain, the fact that fats make a difference is old news. You could verify it in any literature search research ? so it?s old news for people who are up-to-date on that. Good fats, and I?ll talk about what they are, make good prostaglandins, and they actually decrease pain and inflammation.  Taking in good fats is kind of like if you take an aspirin, they goes into the prostaglandin cycle and stop production of some of the prostaglandins that produce pain and inflammation. But there are side effects from taking aspirin, such as an increase in stomach ulcers.  So it?s good news that, without even taking an aspirin, you can control what kind of prostaglandins you?re going to make by what kind of fats you?re eating and stop pain at the source.

Now let?s look at the section of your handout titled, Helpful Hints for Proper Nutrition. Basically, instead of eating three large meals a day, we want to go to three smaller meals a day with snacks in between. So we?re going to be eating throughout the day.

(Great!)

With every meal or snack, but more importantly at every meal, make sure you have a good protein and a good fat. We?ll get into what ?good? means. An example: fish is a good protein. It?s also a good fat.  Now, let?s look at the options for salad and salad dressings. If we had good salad dressing on hand, that would be an example of good fat. The problem is that commercial salad dressings that are decent are really hard to find. I?ll get into that more when we get to the fat section. Let?s see?other tidbits to remembers . . . of course, chew your food well. If you do, you?ll be increasing your energy for other things, because if you don?t chew it well, you?ll use lots of energy to digest the food itself. Drink lots of water, but avoid drinking tons of water while you?re eating. Drinking too much during a meal tends to dilute the enzymes that are digesting the food. You can still drink water, but if you?ve gotten to the end of the day and say, ?Oh, I forgot to drink water today,? and you drink a whole liter of water with your food, it would be more difficult to digest the food.

It?s important to make dinner the last time you eat. Or, don?t eat three hours prior to going to bed. The reason for that is that as we get into the evening we tend to slow down and we don?t need as much fuel. Most of the extra that we eat that we don?t use for energy is going to be stored as fat. Especially if we eat right before we go to bed, we?ll store a lot of that as fat.   Another reason to stop eating several hours before bedtime is that it?s good to give your body a 12-hour rest from digestion. So for those people who don?t require so much sleep at night, they need to make sure that they don?t make their dinner later, or that on the occasions when they do eat later, they make their breakfast later.

(question is asked)

If you?re going to bed early, you mean, and what about eating late?

(No, I sleep four hours a night.)

Wow. So just don?t eat three hours before you sleep, no matter how long you sleep. Just don?t eat three hours before. You can eat when you get up. Does that answer your question?

Moving on, the handout recommends preparing large amounts of food in your refrigerator so you can snack on those foods versus something else. And then, you?ll note, we have recommendations about Exercise.  Exercise, it?s important, but it?s not as important as you may think. A lot of times Dr. Rosedale says that the high exercise requiremended for a lot of diets is sort of the morning-after pill to cover up for all the extra carbohydrates that you might have eaten that day or the day before that you?re trying to burn off. If you?re not eating a lot of carbohydrates, as will be the case with this diet, you?re not going to have to burn them off. So at the very least, it?s a good idea after your last meal to go for maybe a 15- or 20-minute walk. It doesn?t have to be furious. It can be just a nice walk.  But exercising relentlessly is not a requirement of this diet.

(I do exercise in the morning. I usually don?t eat before I work out. Would it be better for me to eat first and work out afterwards?)

Yeah. Because when you wake up in the morning, you?ve been fasting for the whole night. And your body needs some fuel in a situation where it?s a bit harder for it to kick in and draw from your fat stores, meaning that it?s a bit more likely to break down muscle for fuel instead. Some people, if they?re going to work out very heavily, they don?t want to eat beforehand because it makes them sick. But I would recommend eating a little something so your body doesn?t ?eat? itself.

When we wake up in the morning, everyone?s heard it?s good to eat breakfast, and it actually is. We?ve been fasting all night. Our body does need fuel. And especially if your someone whose insulin is running high, you can?t dip into your fat storage. So the only way it can get energy besides dipping into the fat storage, which is hard for the body to do while insulin is high, is eating, or it breaks down your own muscle tissue. So for you, working out when you need some fuel, if you?re not efficiently able to use fat or if you need more immediate fuel, you?re going to start breaking down your lean tissue. So I?d recommend having a little bit of protein and good fat before your workout.

Exercise is great. Resistance training is the best. This means you can do weights, if you want, but any resistance training is fine. Walking up a hill is resistance. Or standing in front of the TV and squatting is resistance training. You can do that when you?re watching TV, talking on the phone. (laughter) But basically, at the very least, if you can go for a walk after your last meal. Why I say ?last meal? is, it?s impossible to eliminate carbohydrates entirely, because they?re common in so many foods. There are carbohydrates in broccoli.  Not a lot, but there ARE some. We want you to eat as much vegetables as your heart desires. But any extra sugar is going to serve to raise your blood sugar. So if your go for a walk after your last meal, it burns up any extra sugar floating around in your blood and helps your body get more used to spending longer amounts of time doing fat-burning.

As for how strict to be on this dietary plan, when I talk to new patients at our clinic, I like to tell them to plan for a range of four weeks or even six weeks, to really give it a go and to do what is recommended here. The success of your health and the results that you?re going to have depend on how closely you follow this diet for a long time, making it into a real lifestyle change, where you notice the benefits of better health, and that motivates you to stick with the diet.  In the long run, it?s going to be easier to follow this diet and see results if you?re very much ?on the program,? from the very start. Sometimes this is easy for people to do.  You see, sometimes, in the first couple of weeks, some people having more energy than they can remember having in ages. They can?t believe it, that they have way more energy than they ever did before. On the other hand, some people who are working very hard to eat precisely what?s recommended feel terrible, because they have several things that could be going on. Maybe they?re detoxing. Maybe their bodies need a while to get used to burning fat.  You see, when you?re not able to burn fat, then a lot of other things in the body are working against your health, too, and they can produce uncomfortable symptoms.  As Dr. Rosedale was talking about, our feelings and behaviors are strongly influenced by our hormones. Our hunger, physiologically speaking, is dictated by our hormones, and until they start to shift, it can take willpower to make dietary changes.  In addition to hormones, there are emotional reasons why making a lifestyle shift can be challenging, which maybe you can talk about one night. I think emotions are one of the most important pieces. But whether it?s emotions or hormones, it?s still the case that if you can change, and stick with eating more healthily, a lot of other things get better, over time.

I?m talking tonight about physiology, mostly, meaning how our bodies respond to dietary changes, rather than how we respond emotionally. To review what Ron has mentioned about hormones, when you have high leptin levels, which is often the case when people are overweight, the brain is not hearing that you have fat stored on your body already and that you don?t need to eat. When people are leptin-resistant, their brain actually doesn?t know that they have tons of fat on their bodies. When it?s resistant to leptin signals, the brain thinks we?re too skinny and desperately need to eat.  This diet is specifically designed to get your brain to start hearing more accurate messages from your hormone signals regarding hunger. In the beginning it?s going to take a little time for your cells to get more sensitive to the messages from your hormones. But surprisingly, it doesn?t take as long as you might imagine. In fact, it?s wonderful that for most people, even  though it?s taken years to get to where we are now, in terms of having brains that can?t hear the signals from leptin, it actually just takes a few weeks for your brain to start listening to the leptin messages again. It?s quite incredible.

But in the time period between when you make this dietary change and your brain starts to hear the leptin signals, you?ve taken away the starches and sugars that the body converts into blood sugars for energy use, and you can?t burn fat very well yet, so the body is like, ?Whoa, what am I doing here? What am I burning? What am I going to use for fuel?? Because it?s not going to be using the same fuel anymore.  It?s not going to be dependent on carbohydrates ? it?s changing into have the choice to be burning fat.

(So it makes you tired?)

Sometimes people do feel tired during this transition. But I don?t want to say that?s always the case, because sometimes people tell me that they have so much energy they can?t believe it. Sometimes people are really tired in the first week or two, and sometimes people have energy. The reason that they could be tired is because their body is switching over from what the sugars that it?s used to burning. It?s going to learn to burn fat.

So the whole idea is, in the beginning, I don?t care if you eat ten or fifteen times a day. It sounds silly, but I want you to eat whenever you?re hungry. Not when you?re upset, or when you?re bored.  But definitely, when you?re actually hungry, do eat.  This is not a diet where you force yourself not to eat no matter what. It?s a diet that?s a lifestyle, really, which you can stick with for life, and it?sdesigned to help your hormones switch so that they can communicate effectively with your brain and your hunger centers and your body is able to burn fat efficiently. So in the beginning, if you?re insulin-resistant and high-leptin, then you?re not necessarily able to burn fat efficiently the first moment that you stop eating carbs. But keep in mind that once you switch you?re eating pattern, you?re heading in the right direction.  We want you to burn fat. If your insulin is high, you might not be able to burn fat the first couple of days. So the body goes, ?Huhhh? Where do I get my fuel?? The only way it?s going to get its fuel is if you eat. But it depends on what you eat. Even if you ate ten or fifteen times a day, as long as you didn?t eat sugar, carbohydrates, if you ate the amount of protein you need, and not too much, and you also east all the extra good fat that you want to, the lack of starches and sugars, and the presence of the good fat that you eat sends leptin messages to the brain to help the brain hear that you have enough fat on your body, and you can start digging into those fat stores for your fuel. So you?re going to be retraining the brain into hearing the messages by eating good fat. You?re going to be using the good fat for energy. It?s also going to be sending messages to the brain that we can begin to burn fat now. The leptin signal will be starting to get through.  What?s more, the level of sugars in your blood will become lower, and also more stable.  This will be good for your health in many ways.

So in the beginning, if you?re hungry, I don?t want you to not eat. But I do want you to not eat starchy or sugary carbohydrates. If you do eat sugary or starchy foods, it sets up the whole cycle of resistance to hormone signaling into motion again. In this visious cycle, the insulin goes high. The blood sugar goes high. Then the blood sugar starts to go high sometimes and crash other times, and all this makes people crave more carbohydrates.

(Why no peanuts?)

Peanuts actually aren?t even a nut, they?re a legume?a bean--for one, which means they?re higher in starchy calories than most people realize.  And they?ve been known to grow afflotoxins, which is a fungus, on them, which has been shown to be carcinogenic for the liver. And when they?re grown conventionally, they?re heavily sprayed.  So they?re not the healthiest food to eat.

(Why the bans on dairy, hard cheeses, pork, and beans?)

Well, for the most part, those forms of dairy are restricted because they?re so high in saturated fat.  Let?s go through the foods you CAN eat, real quick, and then talk about the parts to limit in a second. Let?s go through the food allowed first.

The first page of your handout on the allowed foods discusses the protein sources. In every meal that you?re eating, you can choose a protein source. Starting at the top: Nuts and seeds. Hopefully if you like nuts. Nuts can be your best friend. They?re a really good snack. Choose any kind of nut except peanuts. It?s better if the nuts are raw. The next-best choice is dry-roasted. The worst choice is the Planter?s nuts that have been roasted in oils, because the oils used in that tend to be the least healthy ones, plus the high heat used is unhealthy.  You see, the oils in the nuts are very sensitive to heat and light and oxygen. When exposed to those elements, they become rancid. They actually change their structure and become rancid and oxidize. If you eat this kind, it causes free radical damage in the body. So if you can get nuts that are raw, that?s a good choice. Or dry-roasted. Or you can roast your own at a low temperature, for instance, at 250 degrees for 40 minutes or so, as long as you?re doing it at a lower temperature for a longer period of time. Nuts are great.

And it?s okay to prepare or choose nuts that offer some variety.  For example, almonds, I don?t like to eat just raw almonds. I get bored. If I go to a bin of nuts, I?ll pour out raw nuts, and then I?ll pour out some dry-roasted. Or a few with that salty tamari flavor. Do you know what tamari is? It?s a soy sauce, salty. I combine a few tamari nuts with raw ones, for variety. Nuts are a great snack.

If you like sardines, they?re great as long as they?re not in soybean oil. Any time you see ?soybean oil,? you?ll want to run away. Soybean oil is bad. It?s not a good oil. It?s the kind that tends to lead to more inflammation in the body, plus, most commercial soy oils are processed at a high heat level that makes the oil much less healthy for the body.  Sardines in water or sardine oil, mustard, or olive oil ? if you like sardines, they?re a perfect snack. They?re good protein and they?re good fat. When I was pregnant I ate them every day for breakfast. Imagine that! That?s the only thing that kept me balanced. Or course, you don?t have to eat them if you don?t like them.

Fish is great. Fish of any kind is really good.  Eggs are a really good protein source. You can get eggs where the chickens are fed green algae and flax seeds, and these contain higher amounts of a helpful oil that?s deficient in most people?s diets, known as ?Omega 3?. And the reason that these eggs are higher in Omega 3 is because the chickens these days are being fed grain. The same thing is happening to our animals as is happening to us. If a chicken eats grain, that?s really not their natural diet. In the wild, chickens never went on the land and ate buckets of grain. They grazed on the bugs and the foods in grass. So when they eat grains, their blood sugar goes up. Their insulin goes up. And they store all that sugar as saturated fat. So when we eat that egg, it?s going to have more saturated fat than the egg of a chicken that?s fed more green algae and flax seeds. Isn?t that interesting?

(How do you know when you?re getting ??)

That kind of flax- or algae fed chicken?s eggs will usually say ?high omega-3.? DHA. High DHA.

(Why in the Rosedale Diet do the eggs have to be cooked under water?)

Especially these omega-3 eggs, because they have such good fat in them, they need to be cooked with more care.  Saturated fat is more stable when heated. But omega-3, which is found in fish oil, is very unstable and tends to go rancid quickly when heated. Salmon, if you had a raw piece of salmon sitting out, in the beginning it wouldn?t smell so bad, but over time, after it?s exposed to heat, oxygen, light, it starts to be rancid. That omega-3 is sensitive to heat, light, and oxygen. So when you?re scrambling an egg, the yoke is where all the good oils are. You?re exposing the yolk to a lot of heat when you?re scrambling it, the surface area of the yolk is being heated up to high temperatures. Also heating it up to frying is using high temperatures.

I?m trying to go over this quickly, and I have several other comments to make about eggs, too. What you were talking about, what makes things doable, what things make this diet not doable, I would say that if you have a big problem with eggs and not eating scrambled or fried, and that made the difference, I certainly wouldn?t want you to not succeed because of the way you cook your eggs. But I?m just giving you the best possible option, so you can understand the best choice of all to shoot for.

(The next best thing would be to cooking them over easy, which would not expose the yolk.)

Yeah. I?m just giving you the best, that?s my job, and then you can choose.

(So raw sources are the best, because any time you expose something to heat, it takes something away.)

I don?t know if I?d recommend raw eggs. That?s a personal choice. But soft-boiling, poaching, or hard-boiling is an excellent choice for your health.

Tofu, if you like it, it?s a source of protein. Chicken is protein, preferably skinless, since chicken skin is high in saturated fat. At least in the beginning, we?re going to be low on the saturated fat. We?re trying to burn the fat on our bodies!  We humans store our fat as saturated fat. We don?t want to eat what we?re trying to burn.

(Do you care if it?s light or dark meat?)

No. Preferably skinless, because that?s where the saturated fat is. Turkey is great. Wild meat, if it?s available. Wild animals graze on their natural environment, grass and things like that, instead of grain, which means their fat generally contains more Omega 3 fatty acids and less saturated fat.  I don?t know where you find bear, but ?

Non-fat cheeses. The reason it?s non-fat is, the fat that?s in dairy is mostly saturated fat, which is common in fats from an animal source. So these non-fat cheeses are the soft cheeses: cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, cream cheese. These are all sources of protein that you can have non-fat or low-fat.

Protein powder, if you feel like having a protein shake, that is a source of protein. Seafood?s fine. And then there?s veggie-burgers on here. Later on, I?m going to talk about labels, but as a special note about veggie burgers?be sure to check the labels.  A lot of veggie-burgers are made with grain and have a lot of carbs in them. And there?s other things. When you look at turkey, there?s turkey bacon, turkey sausage, there?s a whole new world that you get to look at if you haven?t begun doing a low-carb.

(Can we have a show of hands of how many people feel like they?re going to get started on this right now? And how many people have some questions that they?d like to look into before they start doing this? How many people think that they are pretty sure that they can figure out a way to do this? It looks like there are a lot of people who want to try this and are ready to try it. And it?s good that we?ve got people who want to think it through. This needs to be a real group. It?s more important that people are honest about where they are and what their questions and doubts are than it is to go along with things. What we?re after is to see, is this something that helps our health physiologically, is it also something that can fit with our lives?)

I?m glad so many people are ready to begin.  As for the people who are hesitating, actually, it?s hard to imagine fully what it?s going to be like and what your questions are until you actually do it, to tell you the truth. Sometimes it?s hard to conceptualize what this dietary change will actually look like, so I tell you, Just do it, and you learn as you go. I will be available. You can call me at our office. I?ll make sure you all have my phone number. I?m busy, but I?d be more than happy to take time to talk to you. We also need to talk about having appointments or phone consultations for people on medications and diabetics and hypertension people, which may include maybe all of you. And of course, you should also talk about these changes with your primary care physician.  Because when you do this dietary change, if you?re on high blood pressure medication, for example, I can almost guarantee you that your need for high blood pressure medication is going to lessen. You won?t need as much. I sometimes feel comfortable with people just weaning themselves off, but I would like to at least know where we?re starting from and talk to you about it and be available to talk about that.

(Can people do the same decision-making about things like statin drugs if they feel more comfortable staying on them?)

Absolutely.

Now, moving on through the protein sources. Mostly you can eat any protein that you could imagine, as long as it?s not highly processed or contains a lot of additives, such as ham, for instance. Red meat is not necessarily on there, mainly because so much red meat today comes from cattle that have been fattened on grain in feedlots, meaning their meat is loaded with saturated fats. You can get red meat that?s grass-fed. Red meat is going to have a lot more saturated fat if it?s being fed grain.

(That would be the same with buffalo?)

Well, it depends on what the buffalo was eating. Right now, they?re feeding buffalo grain. As long as you know what the animals are eating ? I wouldn?t eat a lot of red meat right now, because red meat will tend to have more saturated fat anyway. But if you just love your red meat and you can?t stand to think about not doing it, then a better choice would be grass-fed.

Fat sources, as you can tell, is not as long a list ? unfortunately, because we want you to have plenty of fat sources. I would cross out ?hemp oil? and ?flaxseed oil.? Hemp oil is very expensive and it?s really not necessary. It?s kind of silly that it?s even on there. I want to take it off. You can have hemp oil, if you like it. It?s very good for you. It has no other alleviating effects. (laughter)

(Then you get the munchies.)

Flaxseed oil you can have a little bit of. A lot of people think flaxseed oil is pretty good. It?s OK, but a better choice is cod liver oil, because it has a more digestible form of the fats the reduce inflammation. Flaxseed oil has too much omega-6 in it, which can go into the category of bad fats, making bad prostaglandins, leading to pain and inflation, constriction of artery walls. So I wouldn?t recommend having lots of flaxseed oil right now.

(I don?t see olive oil.)

It?s right there. It says, ?If you must cook with oil, use olive oil.? If you can cook something, bake it, poach it, grill it, that?s a better choice than frying it. Every time you fry something, you usually use oil and you?re heating up the oil. And every time you heat up an oil it?s going to somewhat change the composition. Olive oil is more stable than any other oil. So if you are going to cook with oil, use olive oil, and use as minimal an amount as possible. Why olive oil is on there is, I want you to use olive oil AFTER you?ve cooked, for salad dressing. You could drizzle it on your vegetables in place of butter.

(You mentioned cod liver oil and the difference between liquid form and capsules.)

It?s very important to get cod liver oil in liquid form and not the gel capsules, because a lot of times the gel capsules are rancid. The processing of the oil to get it into the capsule, maybe it was supposed to use oxygen or some sort of heat, the way that they got it in there, so it?s probably ? a lot of it may be rancid. Also, the capsules themselves allow in some oxygen from the air. So even just sitting in the capsules on the shelf, they do suck in things that change the quality of the oils, such as oxygen, nitrogen. The best way to get your cod liver oil is in liquid form, because that tends to be the freshest.

(How much are you talking a day? I have horrible memories of cod liver oil.)

This kind that I?m recommending is actually not bad-tasting. You can get it at any health food store.  With this diet, we recommend many supplements, and if your budget is limited I know that?s a little challenging.  But I would say cod liver oil is probably the number one supplement that you want to have. It?s that important. I wouldn?t even think of it as a food. I would think of it as medicine.

(So are your thinking one tablespoon a day?)

Mm-hmmm.

(Three times a day?)

One time a day.

(What brand?)

Carlson?s Cod Liver Oil, Lemon Flavored is my favorite. It mostly tastes like lemon, so it?s not bad. Someone else said they use Artic Cod Liver Oil, it has an orange flavor. That?s fine, too. Those two brands are good. Any of the other ones are not necessarily the greatest in my experience. You want to refrigerate cod liver oil as soon as you open it. Before that you don?t need to refrigerate it. But if you buy it and leave it in your car on a hot summer day, that?s not a good idea. It?s going to be exposed to heat and it?s going to rancidify. You don?t want to keep it in any heat. You don?t want to cook with it. All you want to do is open it, take it, and put it into your refrigerator and keep it safe there. Keep the lid on tight so you minimize the oxygen.

Avocados are another great source of fat. They?re a mono-unsaturated fat, which is what the body likes to burn. By eating the fats in avocados, you?re also training your body to burn those fats. Most people are brainwashed in fat-phobia. But really, fat isn?t what makes us fat. If we ate 20 avocados in one sitting, that would probably make us fat, because we?re eating more energy than we were going to burn. But sugar is what makes us gain fat in most cases. All the extra sugar that we?re eating is going to be stored as saturated fat. So all these good fats you?ll be eating on this program are going to serve as energy for you, because you?re not going to be getting energy from carbohydrates any more. Avocados, guacamole, for breakfast you could have two eggs and half an avocado, or guacamole with some salsa that doesn?t have sugar added. And then there?s a bread that I?m going to give you a phone number for. I have no association with this bread company whatsoever that I?m recommending, by the way. We just have found they provide products that help people, which is why I?m mentioning them.

There?s a bread that you can have that?s very low-carb and it?s called Manna from Heaven. The phone number is 1-800-98-BREAD.

(Is it local?)

I?ve never found it local. I?ve seen it in California.  Some people say they can find it at some healthfood stores.

(Do they send you a package in the mail?)

Yeah, they send it to you. They have it frozen. It?s not like your typical loaf of bread. It?s round. It?s pretty dense. But if you cut a slice of it and toast it ? I like it. You can try it.

For breakfast you could have a couple of eggs, or turkey bacon or turkey sausage. Maybe you?ve never had turkey bacon or turkey sausage.

(You have to add a little oil.)

Or cooking it without any oil, because this sausage has its natural oils already. Or you can add just a little water and steam fry it, which means it cooks at a somewhat lower temperature.  And then having a slice of this bread. I don?t recommend tons of butter on this diet, especially in the beginning, because butter has a lot of saturated fat. But if you wanted to go ahead and have a little butter on your toast, that?s fine with me.

(How about margarine?)

That?s a really good question. Margarine is worse than butter. Because it has transfatty acids in it, and those are really bad. So definitely you want to steer clear of margarine. Avocados. Olives are a great snack. If you?re not sensitive to salts, you can eat olives throughout the day. Whole Foods has an olive bar that?s great. You can go and taste different olives and see what you like. Black or green, it doesn?t matter. Olives are a great snack.

Then nuts. The best nut that you can choose is actually the macadamia nut. The reason I say that is, all nuts have protein. It?s real easy to get your protein requirement on this program. Like I said earlier, you might be surprised that the protein requirement is not very high. Nuts have protein, so it?s easy to eat too much protein if you?re eating both nuts and also things like chicken or fish.  I always like to emphasize macadamia nuts because they don?t have protein so much. They mostly are made of good fat, mono-unsaturated fat, the same kind of fat as avocados. So if you want to snack on nuts, that?s fine and wonderful. Macadamia nuts are even a better snack because then you don?t add to your total protein.

I would say for now don?t worry too much about counting your grams of protein for nuts. If you?re interested in finding out how much protein nuts have, when you?re getting them, you can look on the bin and see how much protein a cup of almonds has. But for now, I don?t want to overwhelm you with all these different things to think about. For nuts, just don?t worry about the protein, but make a note that macadamia nuts are a really good choice because they don?t have so much protein.

It?s also important to remember to eat when you?re hungry?not because you?re tired or bored or wanting to crunch on something.  So keep that in mind when you?re eating nuts.  As an example, for a snack you could have ? I actually don?t like saying this, it sounds kind of silly ? you could have six or seven macadamia nuts. I don?t really want you to count it, unless you want to, for people who are more resistant to counting and want it to be more intuitive, you don?t have to count it. Just to give you an example, because they actually have a lot of good fat. If you?re hungry for a snack, you could have some almonds and maybe five macadamia nuts; a small handful of nuts is a good thing. Eat that small amount, wait a little bit and see how you feel. If you want a little more, you can have more. Especially in the beginning, like I told you, if you?re hungry, I want you to eat. I don?t want you to restrict yourself. And if five macadamia nuts is not enough, then eat ten. But the idea is to eat when you?re hungry but don?t eat when you?re not hungry. It?s a pretty simple concept.

(Do you know people that eat once a day, is that hard on their body?)

It?s not the greatest. Usually when people do that, they?re eating more than they can possibly use in that meal, which is going to force their insulin and blood sugar levels to go up. They?re eating a larger meal than they would have if they ate smaller meals throughout the day. The body is very hungry and the cells are very sensitive to whatever they?re going to be exposed to and they take it in right away. Blood sugar can go up higher than it would have. But the main thing is, they usually eat more in their proportion size than they can possibly use for energy in that sitting. So a lot of it gets stored as fat. Unfortunately, if they?re insulin-resistant, and it gets stored as fat, they can?t even access it.

Other fat sources you can think about are nut butters. Not peanut butter. We want to steer away from peanuts. But there?s almond butter, cashew butter, macadamia nut butter. You could put that on your bread that I was just telling you about. There?s also a low-carb tortilla. I?ve seen them places. La Tortilla tortillas. I would recommend for diabetics ? well, I recommend everyone to get the small kind. La Tortilla brand comes in small and large. The smaller ones are better for one sitting. You can spread nut butter on them. Another idea that?s not on here, and I haven?t gone through the diet yet fully, but since I?m talking about the tortilla ? we don?t want to eat a lot right now, we want to stay away from saturated fat. Hard cheeses tend to have a lot of saturated fat. It would be better to eat a saturated fat than a bowl of Cheerios or Fruit Loops. I?m here to give you the optimal thing, and you can choose. At the moment, for the first few weeks, we want to reduce the amount of saturated fat we?re eating. And hard cheese has saturated fat in it. Mozzarella cheese is kind of in between. Over here is the non-fat, ricotta, cream cheese. Over here is cheddar cheese. And mozzarella is kind of in the middle. So you can have a little bit. There?s a Jarlsberg light cheese that?s very low in saturated fat. You can melt that on your tortilla like a quesadilla and have guacamole and salsa. I love that. I have it as a snack all the time.

(What about soy cheese?)

Soy cheese is OK if you can look on the label and find a lower-carb. I haven?t investigated all the soy cheeses. If you want to investigate that, that would be great.

There?s not a lot of fat choices to choose from, so at every meal you have to get a little creative. When you?re having a meal, usually it?s not so hard to find a protein. Most people tend to have some kind of protein. Is anyone here a vegetarian? OK. Not being a vegetarian makes it easier. So a good protein from your protein list, and then a good fat. Salad dressing is a good way to get good fat in, but unfortunately few commercial salad dressings are healthy.  They either contain too much sugar or else oils that have not been processed in a healthy way. This is something that I have talked about making myself, having my own salad dressing, to sell a salad dressing that people can buy that?s healthy. There are not very many choices.

(Good Seasons that comes with the bottle that you just add the oil and vinegar at the line.)

That?d be great.

(And then you replace the oil with olive oil.)

Perfect.

(But that I?m pretty sure has a lot of sugar.)

(Balsamic vinegar.)

That?s fine. Balsamic vinegar and oil. Olive oil and lemon. I don?t know how many people are salt-sensitive, if you have high blood pressure and you?re particularly salt-sensitive.. One of the things about this diet is, you?ll probably be eliminating a lot of the extra salt sources that you used to have. For salad dressing, I like olive oil and a little bit of salt. The reason I say this is, you?re eliminating a lot of other salt sources, a lot of processed food. If you?re salt-sensitive however, I wouldn?t recommend adding extra salt.

I have a great recipe for a salad dressing if you?re interested in having a good salad dressing. Because if you start looking at the labels of salad dressings, number one, most salad dressings have soybean oil.  Or, they list ?vegetable oil.? You never know what that means. Usually it?s not a good sign, because it?s probably a soybean oil, which has bad combinations of omega fatty acids that tend to promote inflammation. If you?re reading Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, it talks more about that. Soybean oil is not a good oil. Canola oil is not the greatest oil. Olive oil is the best choice. If you have a tiny bit of canola oil, it?s OK, but in general it?s not the greatest. There are several mayonnaises. You can make your own, or just make sure that it doesn?t have sugar or saturated fats. There is a mayonnaise that?s made from canola oil, Whole Foods brand mayonnaise, that I say is OK because you?re not going to get a whole bunch of canola oil in a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise if that?s your only source.

Let me show you some things about reading labels to determine how much starchy carbohydrate is in them.  Take this label on this ?low-fat salad dressing?.  It indicates this food has total carbs, 7 grams. We haven?t gotten to reading the labels yet. Just for you to know, 7 grams of carb in one serving of something is basically too high. You want to get as close to zero as you possibly can. That?s the problem with salad dressings. They either have a lot of poor quality oils, or they have a lot of sugar. Any time you can have olive oil anywhere, it?s a great thing. Avocados, macadamia nuts, fish, these kinds of things.

(You can make your own mayonnaise with olive oil.)

The other oil that?s not on here that?s really important to know is avocado oil. I think that tends to be a little more expensive, but it is a great oil. It doesn?t have the flavor of olive oil. The reason I think that?s good is because some people get tired of olive oil, or they want to make a salad dressing that tastes different from an olive oil base. Avocado oil doesn?t have a flavor, so you can add whatever you want to make it taste the way you want it. You can get really creative with avocado oil.

(How about sesame seed oil?)

Sesame seed oil is OK. It?s made from a seed, and as you can see here, under protein sources, nuts and seeds, it says ?preferably more nuts.? ?Eat more nuts than seeds.? Seeds tend to have more omega-6 fatty acid. It makes bad prostaglandins. So seeds are good, but if you ate seeds all day long, it probably wouldn?t be the best thing. You could use a little bit of that.

Carbohydrate sources. Most of the list here are vegetables, and ones that are high in fiber and low in starches or sugars. You want to stay away from the real sugary or starchy vegetables. Peas are starchy. Beets are really sugary. A lot of corn tends to be starchy, although if you chose to eat a little corn versus having a bowl of cereal, I think that would be acceptable. Just be aware that those vegetables are more starchy and will have more sugar in them. Tomatoes are pretty high in sugar.  Carrots have a lot of sugar in them. In the beginning we wouldn?t recommend having a lot of carrots. Carrots on your salad, a little bit of carrots is fine, but they do have a little more sugar.

The last line under carbohydrates is Wasa Fiber Rye crackers. They actually changed their label since we started recommending them, and they say they have more carbs than they used to. You can have maybe two Wasa Fiber Rye crackers a day. They?re a little bit higher in carbohydrates for people who are first switching to this dietary program, during the time when it?s wise to keep carbohydrates to a minimum. But they serve as a nice ?platter? for getting other food in, like cream cheese, tomato, guacamole, almond butter, other dips that you can make. So they?re a nice transport mechanism.

Most spices are good. Most every spice, unless it has tons of sugar in it. You might want to start looking at your spices, to become aware of what they?re putting in there extra. Because it?s amazing, they put preservatives, sugars, and other things in there.

Condiments, you have to be careful on. Ketchup has loads of sugar, tons of sugar. You want to stay away from things like that. Steak sauces tend to be loaded with extra sugar. You might be tempted to say, ?Oh, just a little bit won?t matter.? But since it?s so concentrated, a little bit actually does matter, especially in the beginning. It raises your blood sugar pretty high.

You?ll notice in your handouts, we also have a section on Foods Allowed in Limited Quantities Later On. You?re free to look at that at your leisure. We won?t discuss it at the moment, since I?m try to move faster, and at first, we want to have you focus on the foods that work the very best.  On the next page is Foods Not Allowed. These are foods that would probably be not supportive of having your insulin and leptin come down. Coffee. It?s the caffeine of coffee that triggers some insulin and glucose responses. Are there people here that love coffee? What I?d recommend for people that are heavy coffee drinkers, it?s up to you.

(Not heavy, I just like it.)

Like a cup?

(Yeah, to kick-start in the morning.)

Decaf is a better choice. If you could even do half-decaf and half-regular, have the experience of smelling coffee. There?s ways of doing a little bit different, or just having a little less. If someone is a heavy coffee drinker, several cups a day, I don?t recommend cold turkey for weaning off of coffee. People sometimes get headaches. If you?re interested in reducing coffee, I would tend to wean off of coffee over several weeks. But if it?s something that you just can?t let go of, when I?m working with patients I work with them on that. You definitely would have better results if you eliminate caffeine from your diet. Sometimes people put cream and sometimes sugar, and the sugar, of course, is not something that is going to be good for helping reduce insulin and leptin, and the cream is just saturated fat. But if you want to have a little bit of cream in your coffee, that?s OK, half-and-half. It?s a process. You hold onto your coffee for now and do the rest of the diet first, and then you ?

(I put non-fat milk in it, but even that is not allowed.)

Non-fat milk, unfortunately, milk in general has a lot of sugar in it. It?s actually the worst kind of sugar possible, lactose. So it would be better for you to have cream, or half-and-half. Milk has a lot of sugar in it. Sometimes that?s the hardest for people to let go of, but when people let go of milk ? milk is a whole topic in and of itself that we could talk about, but not tonight.

Flavored yogurt has tons of sugar in it, just tons. Hard cheeses we talked about, to try to stay away from the saturated fat. Someone who?s really accustomed to eating a lot of cheese, maybe they can just look at that and see what they?re willing to do, just knowing that hard cheese has a lot of saturated fat.

Potatoes, breakfast cereal, rice, bread, grains ? these are all starchy carbs that very quickly turn into sugar in our bloodstreams. Rice, from our body?s point of view, is a bowl of sugar. It will raise your blood sugar high and fast. A potato is a big lump of sugar. It?s going to raise your blood sugar. Potato can raise your blood sugar higher and faster than table sugar. Potato is pure glucose. Table sugar is glucose and fructose, and fructose has a lag period of time where it raises the blood sugar later. So if you?re eating potato versus table sugar, it?s going to drive up your blood sugar. I just want to drive home how much potatoes and these kinds of things raise your blood sugar.

(What about deli meats?)

Deli meat is not the greatest. Usually they?re filled with nitrates and extra sodium and even sugar. Turkey is usually a better choice. Natural turkey?s fine. Deli meats in general are not the greatest. Pork products are not the greatest. Pork has a little more saturated fat, and the way pigs are raised in this country means there are a lot of toxins that can end up in their meat. But the more important thing is to not eat the carbohydrates. So if you?re going to choose between having carbohydrates and saturated fat, then I would choose saturated fat. Although in the beginning it?s great to try to eliminate as much saturated fat as possible and add it in later.

Commercially prepared salad dressing ? oh, I skipped something. Beans are OK in small amounts, except for large beans you want to stay away from. The larger the bean, the more starchy. Smaller beans in small quantities are better, like black beans and the smaller beans. They have more fiber, and less starch. Those are a better choice. If you have individuals questions about one thing in particular that you find that you can?t give up and you?re having a really hard time and the mental block you?re hitting involves limiting beans, or the block is cheese, I would hope that you?d call me or talk to me about that and see how much of a difference it?s going to make. I want you to be successful. I want it to be doable for you.

(What about stevia?)

Stevia is a natural sweetener that?s probably the best choice if you?re going to use a sweetener. It?s not ideal to use ANY sweetener, but keep in mind, I?m over here on the extreme optimal. We usually recommend to people to try to start steering away from sweeteners. The reason is, when we eat something sweet, it burns out our taste receptors, so we need more and more and more to sense sweetness. Once we get rid of sugar and other sweeteners, we start tasting the natural sweetness of almonds, believe it or not. Almonds become sweet. Green beans. It?s amazing. If you are going to use a sweetener, stevia is a really good choice. You can find stevia in drops or powder. If you use stevia, be careful not to add too much. It has a threshold. You can add a few drops if you?re having herbal tea. Add a few drops, taste it, add a few more, taste it. If you add one too many, it starts tasting funny, it has a weird flavor.

Avoid commercially prepared salad dressings until you can find one that has olive oil and not any sugar. Avoid all Fried foods. Commercially processed oils. Read ingredient lists, and if you see the word ?hydrogenated? it?s not good. That?s what you find in margarine. Chips. Crackers made with hydrogenated oils. Condiments. I was just talking about NutraSweet and Sweet-n-Low, and those are sweeteners you should definitely avoid.  And then of course soda pop, fruit juice. Fruit juice is merely sugar water, concentrated fruit. It?s a lot of sugar. Then, of course, cake, cookies, ice cream, candy. Flavored Jell-O is on here, but sometimes if people are really having a problem transitioning, then maybe a sort of Jell-O that doesn?t have sugar in it.  I don?t recommend it, though.

Sweeter fruits are important to avoid as well, meaning bananas, mangoes, pineapple, oranges. Right now we want to stay away from these really sweet fruits that are just going to raise blood sugar. If you?re a diabetic, I?d recommend to avoid fruits for a few weeks. If you?re going to have fruit, a little bit of blueberries is a OK, meaning a handful?half a cup. Berries are a better choice than other fruits because they have so much skin, which is full of antioxidants, and gram for gram, they have more of the fibrous skin and less of the sugars in the fruit. For most of you, the best way to go is to avoid a lot of fruits for now and if you want fruit, just have a little bit of berries, or half an apple, if you have it with some protein, like almond butter or nuts. You don?t want to eat an apple all by itself, because it raises blood sugar.

Shopping List is another section of the ?How to? handout: You can look through that. It may help you, may not. Let?s go to Reading Food Labels. We?re almost done. This is an example of a label on almond butter. Look at the bold print where it says ?Total fat.? Does everyone see that? Basically, what we?re looking for when we read labels is, we want to look at the saturated fat content and the carbohydrate content. Those are the two important things. So ?Total fat? really doesn?t tell us anything. We want to see how much saturated fat it is. So this only has one gram. That?s great. it?s very low. The rest of it would be 17 grams of unsaturated fat. So there?s saturated fat and there?s unsaturated fat. Unsaturated fat is good. You can have that. Saturated fat is not so good. So go as low as you can go on the saturated fat.

The next line is ?Total carbohydrates,? 5 grams. That doesn?t tell us the full picture yet, either. You can subtract fiber grams from the total carbohydrate. So you can subtract 3 grams from 5, which equals two. So this only has two grams of total carbohydrate. They?re counting fiber as a carbohydrate. Fiber doesn?t have any bearing on your blood sugar whatsoever. It?s a good thing. So we can subtract that out. So 2 grams of carbohydrates is a really good example.

Protein, we?re going to be counting protein, which I still have to tell you about. There?s 8 grams per serving in this jar of almond butter, whatever the serving size happens to be. You have to look on the label. It might be a tablespoon, it might be three tablespoons. Does anyone have questions about that? That?s important.

Again, the two most important things to look at are, how much is saturated, and how much carbohydrates. You want to go low on both of those. But unsaturated fat is good. You can have all you want, for when you?re hungry.

We can go to the next page. It?s examples of healthy snacks, just a reminder of what we?ve already talked about. There?s one example here which I haven?t talked about: chicken breasts or turkey with avocado, onion, tomato, mustard, all rolled up in a piece of lettuce, or a tortilla, those La Tortilla tortillas. You could take that for lunch, if that?s something you?re interested in. Or you could have turkey and put low-fat cream cheese inside your turkey and roll it up into little rolls.

(Do the tortillas actually say ?low-carb??)

Yeah, they do. They?re called La Tortilla tortillas. There are others out there. But some of the low-carb brands are not always the greatest. It?s a big marketing tool now, to be low-carb. So you have to be careful. Just because something says ?low-carb,? you want to make sure you look at the label. It?ll be a learning process.

(Like if I was looking at tortilla, what would you consider to be a low-carb?)

I don?t know how many carbs La Tortilla has in it exactly, but I would say less than 5 grams at one time. Sometimes for diabetics, we recommend having a half a tortilla in the beginning. Half a tortilla is quite large.

The rest you can read yourself. Tips on eating out, recipes, they?re all yours.

To tell you the truth, I couldn?t say per week what something like this could cost. I don?t know what to compare it to. Grains are definitely cheaper. They?re easier to store. So eating some protein versus some of the grains is probably going to be more expensive.

(But while it may be a little more expensive to eat this way, it saves money on health costs.  As a reference point, Tiffany Binder and Ron Rosedale are getting some of the best results for turning around health problems in terms of insulin and diabetes. They?re getting some of the best results that there are. That?s pretty interesting.)

Dietary changes are very powerful. That?s why I do it. That?s the only reason.

The only thing that I left out is counting grams of protein. That?s pretty simple. For most of you, you don?t want to eat more then 15 grams of protein per meal. What that means is, any kind of meat, chicken or fish or turkey, has 7 grams of protein per ounce. That translates into about a little over 2 ounces of something per meal. I don?t know if you even know what that means, because most people don?t think in terms of ounces. But it?s not a lot at one sitting.  You can think of 2 ounces of protein as being roughly the size of a deck of cards.  When you?re buying these foods, you can go to the deli counter and ask them, ?Can you please show me what two and a half ounces of turkey meat is?? or ?Please cut me a piece of salmon that?s two and a half ounces.? So you can get an idea of the portion sizes that you?re going to be having throughout the day. Eggs have 6 grams of protein. I?ll have to look a make sure that everyone fits into that model. As a general basic protein overview, 60 grams of protein per day is a rule of thumb. Some people are going to need less, and some people are going to need a little more protein than that. If you have time, we can do the body composition and I can tell you when you?re doing it.

Anything extra, almond butter, the Jarlsberg light cheese, has some protein. The non-fat cheese have some protein in them, too. But I don?t want you to be counting your grams of protein forever. I just want you to have an idea and a sense of how much it actually takes. It?s not so much in every meal.

(You can tell. It gets stuck right here. Your stomach doesn?t want it.)

Right, you don?t need much more than that for what your body needs for protein in any one sitting. It can?t even use it. Everything beyond what you need is going to be turned to fat. Does anyone have questions at the moment?

Mostly what people should drink is what animals drink out in nature. Water and herbal tea are a great choice. That?s the best. No honey. Alcohol, a lot of it?s sugar. If you want to have something with alcohol, I would say half a glass or a glass of red wine is OK. Alcohol will turn into sugar, but red wine has some other benefits, so if you like to have something, red wine is the better choice.

(The Boulder Nutrition Think Tank is conducted at the Family Learning Center in Boulder. Tiffany Binder is a naturopathic physician and nutrition expert with Rosedale Metabolics in Denver. On the web at TheRosedaleDiet.com. For questions about medications, be sure to consult with your primary care physician. We also recommend that you tell your doctor whenever you make any lifestyle change, including changes to your diet and/or supplements.)