Transcript of Episode 133: How He Lost 180 Pounds Going Keto
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Special Guest, Jimmy Moore
Meredith:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV. This is episode 133. I’m your host, Meredith Dykstra, and we have Dr. Pompa here on the line. Of course, we have special guest, Jimmy Moore. Before we jump into the conversation, let me tell you a little bit more about Jimmy.
Jimmy Moore catapulted onto the health scene in 2004 after a phenomenal 180-pound weight loss enabled him to come off of prescription drugs for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and respiratory problems. He’s the energetic personality behind the über-popular blog, Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb and the host of the longest-running and one of the top ranked iTunes health podcasts, The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show. Stumbled over that one. All right.
Jimmy also hosts two other active podcasts, Keto Talk with Jimmy Moore & the Doc and Low-Carb Conversations along with the retired podcast, Ask the Low-Carb Experts. He has interviewed over 1,100 of the world’s top health experts and has dedicated his life to helping people get the best information possible about healthy living so they can make the right decisions for their health. Jimmy is the international best-selling author of The Ketogenic Cookbook, Keto Clarity, and Cholesterol Clarity along with the upcoming October, 2016 release, The Complete Guide to Fasting. Learn more about Jimmy and his work at www.LivinLaVidaLowCarb.com. Impressive bio, Jimmy. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV.
Jimmy:
Thank you, guys. Appreciate you having me on the show.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Hey, Jimmy, The La Vida – I just kind of want to break out into that song when I hear the La Vida Loca. How often do you get that?
Jimmy:
You know, it’s funny. When you Google Ricky Martin’s Song, Livin’ La Vida Loca, I’ve been around so long now that it actually brings up my podcast, and my website, and everything. Have I surpassed Ricky Martin? No.
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t know.
Jimmy:
I’ll take his money. I’ll take his money.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. Gosh, look at the size of your mic. His mic is so much bigger than mine, Meredith.
Jimmy:
That’s just because it’s close up.
Dr. Pompa:
I feel like I have to do – there! There!
Jimmy:
My mic is bigger than yours. Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
You know what’s funny? I watched one of your videos with you and your wife, and I said, “Oh, my gosh. This guy’s a funny guy.” I love that. I love the – bringing the sense of humor because my scientific part of my brain can bring me too serious sometimes. I have to make fun of myself, even.
Jimmy:
That’s how you attract people, too, to the message. If you’re boring and – people aren’t paying attention to you, but if you throw in a little humor, it gets them to understand the message better. I do that in all my books. I throw in some humor in there, some cultural references, and it keeps people’s attention. Yeah. If we can be a little funny and a little silly sometimes to get people attracted to the message, then that’s the way you do it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Absolutely. Look, I loved your story. I do, and I’m going to have you tell your story. I mean 180 pounds in one year, actually – and you weighed 410 pounds, right?
Jimmy:
Yeah, 410.
Dr. Pompa:
I loved how you gave the analogy of you and your wife actually got within 75 pounds of one another because –
Jimmy:
That was fun.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s great. Anyway, yeah. Tell your story. It is a remarkable story.
Jimmy:
Yeah. I’ve always been big my whole life. My mom was big; my brother was big; my sister was big. All of us were just big people. My mom was a single mom most of my childhood, so I grew up eating what I like to describe as crappy carbage. It’s just processed foods that’s just carb-based. What was funny is I grew up a child of the 1980s. What was popular in the ‘80s was low-fat everything. Yeah, you, too – so low-fat everything.
Mama would have rice cakes, and fat-free ice cream, and skim milk, and diet Coke, and all these things. Meanwhile, juxtaposed to that, she fed us kids Boo Berry Crunch, and Fruit Loops, and Doritos, and Coca Cola, and all the processed junk food you could possible think of. That was what I grew up with as food. That’s what I thought of as food. Everybody’s like, “When you became an adult and you got out of the house, surly you knew how to eat right.” I’m like, “Why would I know how to eat right?” I learned a certain way, so thus, I kept eating that way.
Then the other thing was once I started gaining weight, and I wanted to lose weight, the other thing that I learned from watching my parents growing up was to lose weight, you had to cut fat, you had to cut calories, and you had to exercise until you dropped. That was the imagery that was in my mind for so many years. I ballooned up in my twenties when I went to college, and got out of college, got married, all the things that everybody goes through, I got bigger, and bigger, and bigger until I reached 410 pounds.
The interesting thing about the 410 was at the time, I thought I weighed, maybe, 330, which is bad, but I was so cognitively dissonant from the reality. I wasn’t stepping on scales, and the last scale I had stepped on that could weigh me said about 325, 330. I thought I was about 330 pounds. It was in the fall of 2003 that I had a series of events. Everybody’s like, “What’s the epiphany that made you change your life?” I say, “Well, it wasn’t really one thing; it was a series of things.”
I was a substitute teacher at the time in the fall of 2003. I remember I was writing the message on the board for them – the lesson for them that day. In the back of the room, way back there, I could hear that little boy. He said, “Man! Mr. Moore’s really fat!”
Dr. Pompa:
My god. That’d probably be my son, Simon, in the back.
Jimmy:
What was ironic is that little boy was pudgy himself, but that’s another story.
Dr. Pompa:
So is my son, Simon. Anyway, another story.
Jimmy:
I turned around, and I started laughing because the whole room was laughing. I started laughing to keep from crying. I was like, “Yeah. I am. I am fat.” It really kind of jarred me because I knew I was big, but I think the reality of hearing it out of the mouths of babes really kind of jarred me into, “Hey, I really should consider doing something about this.”
Then I was at a carnival event at my church, and they had a rock wall. I was watching all these kids and adults going up and down like Spider man. I thought, “Okay. I can do that.” Remember, I thought I was only 330 pounds. I try to do it, and I can’t do it. I keep falling off. I actually twist my ankle. It was horrible, and I’m going, “What is going on?” Then I would get in and out of car, and I would rip those big and tall clothes. I’d rip the sweet seat of the pants. I’m, “Something is wrong here.”
I didn’t see myself as this 400-pound, behemoth, morbidly obese man. All I saw was, “Hey, I’m just Jimmy.” It didn’t really dawn on me that anything was wrong.
Dr. Pompa:
Jimmy, I saw your cute, little wife. Come on, man. She was probably like, “Jimmy, what the heck is going on here?” Was she telling you?
Jimmy:
You know what was interesting was she always, for lack of a better term, nagged me about my weight, and was trying to get me to eat salad, and all the conventional wisdom things before she became educated. I didn’t tell an important part of the story. In 1999, my brother, Kevin, actually had three heart attacks in one week that nearly killed him – eventually did kill him at the age of 41 back in 2008.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, wow.
Jimmy:
That kind of was my first wake up call to really get serious about the weight, and I went on an all – no lie – no-fat diet. I basically cut out all the fat in my diet because, again, that’s what I was taught that you had to do if you were going to lose weight and get healthy. I cut out the fat. Was very successful at losing weight, but I was extremely hungry all the time. I was irritable. My wife will tell you I was probably the worst human being to live with in that year, but I lost a significant amount of weight very, very quickly.
Of course, one day, Christine, my wife, asked, “Can you go get me some McDonalds?” I’m like, “Sure, as long as you’ll let me get a quarter pounder meal just this one time.” Of course, you know what happened next. I binged for the next couple of month and gained back all that triple-digit weight that I had lost. It was a sad state of affairs. It was at that point that I said, “If I have to eat low-fat and feel this crappy to be healthy, I’d rather be fat, and eat whatever the heck I want, and be happy in my life.” That was kind of the position I was in.
Then fast forward five years later – five, six years later when I’m looking at this boy calling me fat in the back of the room, and not being able to climb the wall, and all this, I knew I needed to do something, but what could I do? My mother-in-law, God bless her, gave me a diet book for Christmas.
Dr. Pompa:
The Atkins Diet!
Jimmy:
The Atkins Diet, so Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, read that book between Christmas and New Years, and went, “This guy is whack-a-doodle! He’s out of his mind if you think you can eat fat and not get a heart attack. He’s a cardiologist. What? What? How do you have any energy if you don’t eat any carbs?” I bought hook, line, and sinker into all those conventional wisdom things.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, yeah. You were there, man. You were there. Yup.
Jimmy:
I said, “Well, what the heck? I’ve never tried this before.” Interestingly enough, in 1999, when I was losing weight, everybody was like, “Oh, you must be doing that Atkins diet.” I said – no lie – “I would never do that diet.” Again, famous last words.
January 1st, 2004, I went on the Atkins diet, did it by the book, which means not just meat, eggs, and cheese. It’s a whole lot more than that. I went on it, and the first month, I lost a total of 30 pounds. In the second month, I incorporated some exercise and other movement – when I say, “Exercise,” like three miles an hour on a treadmill for my svelte 380 pounds. I tell people I was weightlifting. You think about it, I was lifting 380 pounds on my legs. I have some pretty muscular legs today because of that.
Dr. Pompa:
I bet you have some great calves. I’m just –
Jimmy:
I actually do. I lost another 40 pounds in that second month. By the end of 100 days, lost 100 pounds. It was like, “Hmm. There must be something to this.” What was interesting was nobody noticed I lost any weight at all until after going over 100 pounds. I don’t know what it was. I guess I just – I’m 6 foot 3, so I’m tall, so it kind of hides it a little bit. I was like, “Come on, people. I’ve dropped eight inches in my waist. What’s going on? You should be noticing this.”
Then suddenly everybody noticed it after 100 pounds was gone. By the end of that year, I ended up losing a total of 180 pounds. Got the attention of the Atkins people, and they wrote to me. “Hey, can we feature your story on the front of our website?” I was like, “Okay.” I didn’t eat any Atkins bars or anything like that. Don’t eat that crap; it’s nasty. It will stall you. It’s horrible. I was like, “Sure,” so they put my story up there in November of 2004. I started getting all these emails from around the world. “Who are you? How’d you do it? Where’s your book? Where’s your blog?” I was like, “Will you people leave me alone?”
Dr. Pompa:
What were you doing before that? Obviously, you started a blog, etcetera. What were you doing? What was your profession?
Jimmy:
Everybody loves asking this question, and it’s kind of fun, too, because I feel like all the jobs that I did before doing what I do now for a living, I feel like prepared for what I do now. I was a customer service-type representative. The job I was in when I was losing the weight was at a major food company. I was answering literally all the emails that came into this customer service department for this food chain.
Now I get 500 emails a day. I was answering 3,000 emails a day for them. Now it’s a little bit different, obviously, because I get very specific questions now, whereas then, it was just cut and paste, cut and paste. It was kind of boring, but it prepared me for what I do now. I’ve always been a people person, so it’s been very easy to kind of interact with people when I go to conferences in person or speak. It’s very comfortable for me to be out in public. I know not everybody like that, but I do, and I think all my customer service, and retail, and management, and marketing kind of jobs that I’ve done prepared me for what I do now.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s awesome. Fast forward. Here you are. Like you said, you love educating; you love people; you love sharing your story. Perfect, no doubt because you have good story to share. All right. Give us a view of what your day is like now. What do you eat? This is what people want to know, you know? Even though we do this day in, day out on this show, they’re still going to ask the question. We’re going to get the emails, right, Meredith?
Meredith:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pompa:
“Jimmy, what do you eat?”
Jimmy:
“What do you eat?”
Dr. Pompa:
“What breakfast if you eat breakfast, lunch, dinner? What do you eat?” Tell us that. Answer that question so I don’t have to.
Jimmy:
It’s this really magical thing. Lean in closely. Food.
Dr. Pompa:
Ah!
Jimmy:
That’s it.
Dr. Pompa:
Really?
Jimmy:
That’s what you eat.
Dr. Pompa:
I thought it was tree bark. That was what it was in the ‘80s, right? In the ‘80s, it was like, “You have a diet? What do you eat, tree bark?”
Jimmy:
I choose to forget the ‘80s, but yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
It was low-fat, low-carb. It really was tree bark.
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re not eating tree bark. That’s good.
Jimmy:
Or rice cake. I was telling you about Mama’s rice cakes. My brother, Kevin, and I, the one who died, we used to put peanut butter and jelly on it to try to make it taste better. It does not taste better. It’s nasty.
What’s a typical day? This is kind of an interesting question because the answer will surprise you. There is no typical day. When you eat ketogenically, which is low-carb, moderated in protein, high in fat, you actually listen to your satiety. If you’re not hungry, guess what? They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but I say that’s true. It just doesn’t have to be at 8:00 in the morning.
Breakfast literally means breaking the fast, and so if you want to break the fast in 1:00 in the afternoon, there you go. That’s your break-fast. I don’t eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, midnight snack. I know Taco Bell a few years back was promoting the midnight snack as the fourth meal. I’m going, “I eat one to two meals a day.” That’s about it because when you’re so satisfied, you don’t need to eat that many times.”
Dr. Pompa:
You know, Michael, one of the things I love to educate people on – because again, if we go back to the ‘80s growing up, it was obviously low-fat, low-calorie, exercise your ass off.
Jimmy:
Yes. Yep.
Dr. Pompa:
That was the message. The rice cake was the perfect food then, right? It basically offered you nothing – nothing. It was air. The key was just eat less. It worked for that 10 pounds. All of us could eat less, lose 10 pounds, then we would fail. Then it was eat less, and less, and less, and less. The message I love to preach is what you just said. Don’t eat less; eat less often.
Jimmy:
Mm-hmm. Right.
Dr. Pompa:
Eat less often.
Jimmy:
Eat enough calories in those few meals that you do eat so you don’t become hypocaloric because if you go too low in calories, then can lead to a lot of other things. I think the mistake people make is, “Less is better,” and so they purposely try to eat less. Then the hunger and the cravings come on, and they’re wondering, “Why am I having issues?”
I’m going, “Look, if you just added a little butter to whatever you’re eating, or coconut oil, or lard, or just a little bit more fat, that bumps up your calories just enough that you get the satiety from it. You get all the benefits that you’re looking for with food without having to suffer.” If you’re suffering when you’re eating your meals, you’re not eating the right food or eating the right way.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. No. I couldn’t agree more. What are some of your favorite keto meals? Meredith’s the – she’s the queen. I’m the guy that’s just like, “Ah, whatever.”
Jimmy:
I want to hear Meredith’s meals if she’s the queen.
Dr. Pompa:
Hey, she won’t share. She won’t share. She’s great.
Meredith:
Nope.
Jimmy:
Fire away, Meredith, and then I’ll tell mine.
Meredith:
This is something we can talk about, too. I kind of go in and out of ketosis. I find, for me, it’s most effective to cycle it. I have days where I’m really low-carb, but then we practice something called diet variation, too, that Dr. Pompa can talk about, and you can share your thoughts on where I have higher carb days, as well.
As far as a keto arsenal, I love a high-fat smoothie. Sometimes for lunch, that’s really nice. I just use the whole can of full-fat coconut milk and add in some steamed greens, perhaps some wild blueberries, but – even adding in coconut oil, MCT oil, adding in a lot of that. I always have a lot of sea salt. I think when I’m keto, always make sure I have a lot of salt in my diet to have that electrolyte balance. I feel better there. High-fat smoothies are great.
I get a lot of local meat from the area, and cook it in grass-fed tallow, and make sure that I always have plenty of greens with that. It’s really basic. I like fat bombs, making fat bombs, too, which are really fun with a little bit of natural stevia, and some chocolate, and coconut oil, maybe a little bit of nut butter, making those.
Jimmy:
All right. I’m out of here now. Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s why I said – I can’t compete with her. You can tell she eats so much fat. Look how fat she is.
Jimmy:
I know, right? P-H-A-T, yes.
Meredith:
I was on the low-carb train for – the low-fat train for many years, as well, as many of us can relate. It’s just so amazing because I was constantly dieting, constantly keeping my fat low, and I’m much thinner and leaner now than I was when I was doing all of that.
Jimmy:
That’s great.
Meredith:
The proof’s in the pudding.
Dr. Pompa:
All right, Jimmy, your turn.
Jimmy:
For me, if I wake up in the morning and I’m not hungry, I don’t eat. Shocker. I wait until maybe around midday, and, say, 1:00 in the afternoon, I start to get hungry, I have chickens in my back yard back there, so I can just go back and grab some fresh eggs straight from my chickens.
Dr. Pompa:
I thought you were going to say, “Grab a chicken.” I had a vision of you grabbing the chicken by the neck.
Jimmy:
Have a chicken – and a machete and – I love my chickens too much because they’re giving me eggs now, but someday, they will be meat for me, too. Today, they’re giving me eggs.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay.
Jimmy:
Go grab some chicken eggs from my chickens and cook those in some grass-fed butter. I love Kerrygold butter. Sometimes I’ll do the coconut oil, but grass-fed butter really tastes good. Then I will also put cheese on top of that occasionally, and then I’ll have a whole avocado with that, as well, to make sure I get enough potassium, helps keep the electrolytes balanced.
Then I’ll have either some bacon or sausage with that. Then I might put a dollop of, say, sour cream on top of that. Are you seeing where you can get a lot of fat, very minimal carbs? You moderate down the protein, and we can talk about why that’s important in a ketogenic diet.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. We’re believers in moderate protein, ourselves.
Jimmy:
That meal, as you can tell, is going to be very high in calories by design. If it ends up being my only meal of the day, I don’t want to be stuck having only eaten 800 calories.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.
Jimmy:
If I have fifteen-ish hundred calories, which is what that meal would be, in that one meal and that’s all I eat the whole day, I’m good with 1,500 calories for the whole day. Then the added bonus that I know we’re going to get more deeply into is you get that great period of fasting. Let’s say I’m finished eating by 1:30, and I don’t eat again until, say, 8:00 the next morning. That’s a great period of time of intermittent fasting that gives you all sorts of benefits.
What’s interesting is the longer you do this ketogenic thing, you do that automatically. You don’t think about, “Okay, I’m going to make sure I eat within this window, and it’s got to be this window so I could have this much” – that’s overthinking it. I think if you let your body tell you what’s the right amount of time between meals, you’ll find you can easily do 16, 18, even upwards of 24 hours between meals, and it’s not a big deal.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. We do the exact same thing. We practice the exact same thing. Michael – I keep calling you Michael. I don’t know why because of the name –
Jimmy:
I look like a Michael?
Dr. Pompa:
It’s Jimmy Moore. Michael Moore.
Jimmy:
Oh, I’m not close to Michael Moore, I promise you, not even ideologically or anything close to –
Dr. Pompa:
I’m not talking about that. I’m not talking about that. It’s just his name rings out in my mind.
Jimmy:
He’s a vegan. He’s a vegan now, so definitely not.
Dr. Pompa:
I think you’re right. Quite the opposite is the funny part about it, right?
Jimmy:
Absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
Anyways, I knew a Jimmy Moore in high school, so I don’t know.
Jimmy:
There you go.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s another story.
Jimmy:
I’m nicer than that guy.
Dr. Pompa:
That is it. I have really gotten good at listening to my body, as well. I think that takes time for people. There are days where I eat earlier just because whatever.
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
I just get this hunger thing, and for whatever reason, my body said, “Hey, I need to eat earlier that day.”
Jimmy:
That’s okay.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Absolutely. Jimmy, I have to ask you this question: Based on Meredith’s question, she found something that I found. Moving in and out of ketotic states really works well for me. Now, I backed into this because I would have people that would either stop losing weight, or other things would happen. Again, I’m dealing more with an unhealthy population, typically the people that I’m coaching, but I find that they stop losing weight. Okay?
Then I would move them out of ketosis, and certain things, they would feel better again. I would move them back into ketosis, and all of a sudden, magic would start happening again. I realized, kind of like our ancestors, moving people in and out of ketosis because that’s what happened in the old, if you will, it became this amazing benefit.
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Now, some people genetically, I believe, they could stay in ketosis all the time and succeed in – do you vary your diet at all like that?
Jimmy:
Because of my insulin resistance and because of my past history – and I didn’t really tell you what my diet was like before I went Atkins. I was drinking upwards of 16 cans of Coca Cola a day. I was having whole boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes a day. I was having big plates of pasta. I was having fast food on the way to work in the morning. We’d stop by McDonalds, and I’d get two bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits with the hash browns and the big soda. It was just crap after crap after crap. I think that came with a price. For somebody like me –
Dr. Pompa:
You think?
Jimmy:
A little bit of a price. For somebody like me, I think it’s extremely difficult to stay in ketosis because of that past. I believe my insulin resistance actually makes me cycle whether I want to or not. I find that that naturally happens for me unless I’m completely eating nothing, doing a full fast for longer periods of time, I’m actually seeing my ketone levels come out of the level of nutritional ketosis, and then if I can bear down and maybe do a little intermittent fasting, I see it start to come back up again.
Even if I’m eating something that’s very, ultra low-carb, even just a little bit extra protein will bump me back out of ketosis again. I find I do it naturally when I’m not really trying to. My goal is to stay in it as much as possible, and I think people with metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, we’re the ones that need it more than anybody to be in there all the time. If Meredith is finding great carb cycling benefits, then go for it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. It’s not like she’s throwing down doughnuts when she’s eating carbs.
Jimmy:
I have heard that online, though. There’s a very famous guy, John Kiefer, online that talks about carb cycling, and he’s like, “Yeah, just have cherry turnovers.” I’m going, “What?”
Dr. Pompa:
Listen. If you look at it just from a weight loss standpoint – we interviewed the gal, the scientist –
Meredith:
Krista Varady?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, Kristin – how do you say her last name?
Meredith:
Varady, Professor Varady.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, Varady. She wrote the book of every other day fasting.
Jimmy:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
That wasn’t the name of it, but anyways –
Meredith:
Yeah. I think you’re right.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay. Anyways, so of course, one of the things that she said was, “Look, we found” – remember, they’re dealing with a healthy population, not insulin resistant, necessarily. It really didn’t matter if they fasted, and it didn’t matter whether it was every other day. Just periodic fast days with periodic feast days, they could eat whatever they want, and they still lost weight.
Jimmy:
I wish.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I said, “Caution” because that could – my clients could never do that just from an addictive standpoint and also from an inflammatory standpoint. However, the science shows, though, it worked. The diet variation of the fasts, the feasts, the fasts, the feasts, the people still lost weight, but again, healthy people. I’m not recommending that. I thought the science was pretty interesting on that.
Jimmy:
I think moving forward in nutritional health, we really need to get away from this kind of looking at every human being as the same.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Jimmy:
This is where we’ve made such a mistake. We really need classifications of people. If you’re ultra insulin-sensitive, you should be in one section. They can test for that. You can actually run different tests to see that somebody’s very insulin-sensitive. Then you got these people that are kind of in the middle ground, that they’re starting to show signs of insulin resistance, but they’re not quite there yet. Then you got people all the way on this end that totally are insulin resistant. You see it all in their metabolic markers. I think those three different people groups need to have specific dietary recommendations made for them, and stop pretending like we’re all the same.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I’m actually in the insulin resistant category along that line, probably the guy in the middle. I tell the story about when I had high blood pressure in ninth grade. I don’t tell that I also had high glucose. I was pre-diabetic most of my teenage and early adult – when I did gain weight, it would be around my waist, and I’d make fun because I was – felt skinny-fat. I wasn’t a big guy.
I’m not a big guy like you, Jimmy, but I was worse. When you’re like me, you don’t carry the fat well. Skinny-fat is not a pretty thing. Trust me. It’s like you’re skinny, and then you have this fat around your waist because of the insulin resistance.
Jimmy:
Yeah. That’s right.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s amazing body type, but you’re right. Everyone is a little different, especially when you’re dealing more with the challenged population that I do. Every case is a little different. We’re talking about when we eat. It’s different for everybody. Being able to monitor the glucose and ketones really can help us determine when that is.
We’re doing a study with Joe Mercola right now on that, just looking at some parameters that change, and it can change these fasting [00:28:11]. This is really new information, Jimmy. Right? We’re a group of people here that really is ahead of what most people think is normal diet. You’re working with a good friend of ours, on a book, Dr. Jason Fung. Tell us a little bit about that.
Jimmy:
Yeah. I met Jason at a conference in South Africa last year. We shared a stage together. We both were asked to speak. I had never heard of him before. It was in February of 2015. After he got done talking – he’s a hilarious speaker, as you guys have – on your show before, awesome speaker. I went up to him, and I said, “Why haven’t I heard of you before?” and started talking to him about his work, and he talked about how he was pushing intermittent fasting and even some of these longer fasts, not just a few days, but maybe a few weeks for some of his most challenging patients.
In fact, he probably told you the story where he had one patient go on a fast for 200 days in a row. This guy was in really bad shape. I thought, “Well, this might be a good book to pitch to my publisher.” I had a publisher at the time. Cholesterol Clarity was the first one that came out, and then Keto Clarity. Keto Clarity was such a big success, so I was like, “Okay. We had this success with Keto Clarity, a book about eating.” Now I’ve got to pitch a book to my publisher about not eating.
I get Dr. Fung on the line. I’m like, “Talk to this guy. He’s going to tell you why.” After speaking with him, they were like, “Yeah. We definitely like this.” Actually, my publisher was looking for a book on fasting, so this was perfect. I was one of their successful authors, and they fell in love with Jason, so we teamed up. Then in preparation for the book and for my material in the book, I thought, “Let me do some experimentation on myself to see how fasting would impact me.” I decided in September last year to go on a 21-day fast just to see what it was like.
Now, the longest I’d ever gone before then was seven days. I had done a seven-day fast, and actually, that one was ruined on – it was a Sunday. It was the last day, and I had communion at church, so I had the little glass of juice and the little cracker. Don’t do that if you go on a fast because hypoglycemia hit me hard, as predicted. Anyway, I thought God would honor the gift. After doing that, I never wanted to fast again, but I decided to do this 21 days.
I’m rolling along in September last year. It was really, really, relatively easy. Second day was really hard. Like I said, I’d normally fast for 24 hours pretty regularly on keto, but day two, my body was like, “Okay, we should be getting fuel by now,” so I was kind of getting a little more signals that I needed to eat in the second day. Then the magic kicked in. I was measuring my blood sugar and blood ketones. By day three, blood ketones shot way up.
Dr. Pompa:
Boom!
Jimmy:
Boom! It was at that point, I felt fine. Everybody’s like, “Well, you haven’t eaten in that long. How can you feel fine?” I’m like, “You feel fine. Just do it, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.” I make it to two weeks, and I’m rolling along. I’m like, “I got one more week. I can do this.” Day 17, we go traveling. We’re going to be with some friends at the beach. Traveling, I find, is very stressful, even happy stress, very stressful, and stress starts raising the cortisol, which raises the blood sugar, which starts killing the ketones. Guess what happened to my hunger. I was starving.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes. Yes.
Jimmy:
On that evening of day 17, my stomach growled – no lie – 45 minutes in a row. It would not stop growling. My wife is like, “Will you please eat something?” I’m like, “It’s nighttime. I’m so close to 21 days.” I was really trying to do it. I woke up the next morning, and I still felt horrible. I could really feel the hunger and the cravings. I said, “I got to end this thing.” Dr. Fung, I, of course, was consulting with him all through this, and he said, “Dude, eat.”
That’s the lesson there. Don’t try to be the hero. Realize you’re getting the benefits of it even if you don’t necessarily make some arbitrary goal that you set for yourself. Seventeen and a half days was pretty hardcore, and I’m very proud of that.
Dr. Pompa:
One of the things that I always say is, look, I’m training doctors around the country in these concepts of fasting, intermittent fasting. We really do strongly see the benefits of what I like to call block fasts versus intermittent fasts, where we pick a block of time.
Jimmy:
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
I always said, “Set a goal for four days,” because the magic happens after day three.
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
You know how it is. My daughter just did a water fast. She just finished yesterday. She did four days, and she had to leave for school. Day one was easy because she was 24-hour fasting all the time. Day two, she was grumpy. I’m going to tell you that right now. Day three, she was grumpier, and then turned over that night. Day four, she was like, “Maybe I should do a week,” but she had to go back to school.
Jimmy:
Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
The magic happens. Ketones rise; glucose drops; everything feels really good.
Jimmy:
That’s right.
Dr. Pompa:
My point is this: You have to understand fasting. We’re training doctors because you just said people do dumb things during fasts, right?
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s like we eat this doughnut that clearly, maybe – I don’t know that you should fast with instructions, but here’s the deal: Can we go back – I don’t know. Meredith, what episodes were those? One of my doctors fasted 22 days, and another – and he had bounding energy the whole time. Matter of fact, barely had to sleep, and his wife caught him painting the ceilings, or walls, or something in the middle of the night.
Then another doc, he had fasted about 30 days, but he did some bad things. He was working out during the fast, and like you, forced through it, and different things. I can tell you both of them had some remarkable things. Cancerous things were falling off Don’s body. Both of them had these lesions come off and skin tags fall off, so amazing stuff. We’re strong believers in fasting, but please…
Jimmy:
I actually ran some blood tests, and I was shocked by some of the changes. Now, predictably, you would think in your lipids, your HDL would probably go down, and mine did, statistically, very minimal. It was five or ten points. It wasn’t that much. The thing that really – my triglycerides were already low, so they weren’t going to go much lower than they already were, and they did fall, as well. It was the total cholesterol, which was mostly in the LDL, that shocked me more than anything in that 17 ½ days. This failed 21-day attempt actually dropped my total cholesterol 100 points in 17 ½ days. A statin can’t do that.
Dr. Pompa:
Did you measure particles of cholesterol?
Jimmy:
I’m getting there. I’m getting there.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah because that would be – we have seen that, as well. People that particles won’t budge, periodic fasting – one of the things, Jimmy, I love to teach is not just one fast. What I’ve seen clinically is multiple fasts, every fast, the body gets more adapted, every fast, the body gets healthier. Even a four-day fast every other month – and I even have people do it monthly. Remarkable, and remarkable the healing that occurs when you allow the innate intelligence to do what it does.
When we look at blood work, and when we look at these – what happens in these kinds of fasting, it truly is remarkable, just absolutely astounding. Meredith, you probably have some questions at this point. I know. I could see it. I always see this look in your eye.
Meredith:
Jimmy, did you finish you point about the particles?
Jimmy:
I did not. I still have a whole bunch of data points I was going to throw out. He stole my thunder!
Meredith:
Go for it.
Jimmy:
You were asking about the LDL particles. I actually got an NMR before and after, the NMR LipoProfile Test. Tested for the LDL-P, which is the total number of particles. I’ve always had really high in that. I’m one of those hyper responder keto people. I want to say it was around 2,800 before, and after, it went down to 1,600. Pretty significant drop in LDL particles. Then of the small, the small started at somewhere around 1,100, and it got down to about 500. It dropped pretty significantly there, as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Wow. By the way, when you said, “I was getting there,” I didn’t know you were getting there in your conversation. I thought you meant, “I’m going to do that [inaudible]”
Jimmy:
No, no, no. I’m getting there in the conversation. I just needed to be able to continue talking.
Dr. Pompa:
Sorry, dude.
Jimmy:
I’m a talker, dude.
Meredith:
[inaudible] time for Pompa.
Jimmy:
I podcast for a living. I want to talk.
Dr. Pompa:
I didn’t know. I thought you were saying, “I’m getting there,” like…
Jimmy:
I’m getting there, now shh. Lipoprotein(a) is another one that I measured, and this was really the big shocker for me, too. It’s always been very high. Four forty-three was my lipoprotein(a), which is – you go to a conventional doctor, they think you’re walking dead there. It dropped down to 130 in 17 days. Now, it’s interesting because since that fast – and I’ve done many fasts since then, and we can talk about the infamous one in January this year in a minute. I forgot where I was going with that now.
Dr. Pompa:
I just ruined you, see?
Jimmy:
You did, man. I never forget anything.
Dr. Pompa:
I took your momentum right out from under you.
Meredith:
Particles –
Jimmy:
Yeah. I’m trying to remember.
Dr. Pompa:
Help a brother out. That’s what I always say. Okay, LP(a) –
Jimmy:
Lipoprotein(a) – yup. Went down from 443 to 130, was significant, like sixty-something percent
Dr. Pompa:
A lot. You’re going to think of it, and this is going to help you, not hurt you.
Jimmy:
Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
Talk about your blood glucose and insulin levels because, “Oh, my gosh. I’m diabetic. I’m pre-diabetic. How can I fast?”
Jimmy:
Right.
Dr. Pompa:
Tell us about that, and you’ll remember the other thing.
Jimmy:
I didn’t test insulin because that’s extremely expensive, and you can’t do it easily at home. I did test blood sugar every single day, as well as blood ketones, and predictably, like you said with the doctors that have been on here before, first couple of days, and then whoosh! Day three is just – it’s nirvana. The blood ketones go higher. The blood sugar goes lower, and it’s beautiful.
What’s interesting, I did several other fasting experiments in the months after that where I did it for a week. I found that I didn’t do as well in one week as I did the 17 ½ days. Then I tried in December last year – that was in October, the one week. Then in December last year, I decided to fast for five days, then come off, fast for four days, then come off, fast for three days, and then end it just to see if that little bit of intermittent would help it, as well.
I found my blood sugars were all over the place doing it that way. I seem to be one of those people that does a lot better with those extended fasts than breaking it up. I don’t know if the insulin resistance has something to do with that or what.
In January this year, I tried something very daring. I thought, “You know what? Let’s go a whole month fasting.” I said, “I should be able to do this. I did 17 ½ days. I know what to expect. I’ve done a lot of fasts at this point.” I set out January 1st this year, and I said, “January 1st to January 31st, I’m just going to have bone broth with sea salt, Kombucha, and water. That’s it. It’s much less than 200 calories a day. Let’s see how I do.” How do you think I did? Did I make it?
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t know. With the Kombucha, I would say, no. I would say it would be very difficult.
Jimmy:
Your concern was with the Kombucha?
Dr. Pompa:
The sugar, it could cause a sugar up and a sugar down.
Jimmy:
This is an interesting thing with the Kombucha. I actually tested that because people were criticizing me for that, and fairly so. I said, “You know what? I will test.” I tested before drinking the Kombucha, and then I did 30-minute intervals for two hours after drinking it, and it actually – my blood sugar stayed exactly the same.
Dr. Pompa:
There you have it. That’s why you have to test. That’s why when people say, “Coffee?” I say, “I don’t know. Everyone’s different. Test after.” You did the right thing.
Jimmy:
I ended up making it 28 out of the 31 days. Again, what doomed me was my wife needed to go visit her family in the middle of January, so I drove, and driving stresses me out, and I got hungry again. I said, “I’ve been down this rodeo before. I’m going to eat a meal,” but I got right back on it the next day. Then, of course, three, four days later when we come home, I drove, hungry again. Came off of it.
I only had one other time once I got home that I got hungry, but I was able to go – I want to say I made it 16 days at the beginning of the month, and then I had those two days while we were traveling, and then one more day that I didn’t fast, and then nine or ten days at the end of the month. It was a good fast. It was almost like two two-week fasts that I did in there with just a few days off. I enjoyed that one.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, we’ve found that some people do better with extended fasts, as well. It almost takes that innate intelligence that long to really start getting efficient. Tell me this: What are you noticing post-fast as far as glucose, weight, blood markers?
Jimmy:
You know, it’s interesting. I will start with the monkey in the room because I do have some added weight on me, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to handle the stress. I find I’m a hyper responder to stress, and I didn’t really ever know that until I started fasting.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s amazing.
Jimmy:
Fasting kind of awoken me to that fact. I’m working on actively doing things to bring that under control. If I can figure it out, I’m going to write Stress Clarity one of these days if I can figure out that key. Doing some meditation, and having massage, and doing all these kind of things to try to get that in order because people live with it daily, and it’s a fact of life.
My diet is immaculate, but I still can put on weight very easily, and so fasting is helping with that, but I can’t just constantly be fasting. You said, “What are the benefits that you’ve seen since?” I’ve seen I need to keep doing fasting is what I’ve noticed. When I’m not in that mode of fasting, I see that I don’t get quite that benefits that I need. My problem is I’m asked to speak in so many different places, so I’m almost going to have to say, “No” every other month so I can at least get in a good two-week fast or something.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I tell you, Jimmy, I’ve had a couple clients the same where they just literally have to go from extended fast to extended fast because they come out – but here’s some encouraging news. They’ve been down the road probably in the fasting longer than you. Each time after the fast, they’re becoming more and more stable with the weight, with the markers.
Jimmy:
That’s good.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s taken time. In both cases, they were bigger guys just like you. It seems like that person definitely does better with the extended fast, and the quicker they can move from fast to fast, the better. You know, you have a lot of stores. Someone like Meredith and I, we do better with short, more periodic fasting just because we don’t have the stores, frankly.
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s been the cases with my clients, as well.
Meredith:
Dr. Pompa, do you think it could possibly be a methylation issue, as well, that could be contributing?
Dr. Pompa:
I think that it could be Jimmy’s inability to adapt to stress well could be a methylation issue. That’s one of the things you’re going to have to watch.
Jimmy:
Is that the MTHFR gene mutation?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. There’s a product that we have called MORS that offers active methylation. You know, you don’t even have to have this gene mutation. People that are loaded up –
Jimmy:
I do have it, by the way.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Like I said, I find it could be still even without the mutation a problem. By really boosting up your methylation, that could be a significant factor. Toxins, you probably have a lot of really deep toxins within the fat stores that, again, they start to mobilize, and a lot of them redistribute. A product like Bind for Jimmy would be huge because that just kind of snarks down the, or CytoDetox, which knocks down the reabsorption of the toxins.
We find in a lot of insulin resistance, you could do the perfect diet and the perfect fast. So much of insulin resistance today is toxin – it’s a toxic issue. Toxins are deep, stored into your bones from the time you were a baby into your tissue. As we fast, these toxins start to mobilize, and many of them get redistributed. Cellular detox, Jimmy, could be huge for you, man. Yep. Absolutely.
Jimmy:
I’m game to talk about, all fair, for sure.
Meredith:
Awesome.
Dr. Pompa:
Great stuff. Great question, Meredith.
Meredith:
Yeah. I’m wondering, too, Jimmy, what are your thoughts on exogenous ketones? Do you use them? Do you promote them?
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Great question.
Meredith:
What are your thoughts there?
Jimmy:
It’s an emerging field, and for people that don’t know what they are, it’s basically pure beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is the key ketone in your blood, and you basically drink them in the form of a powder mixed with some liquid. In fact, I think I – yeah, I do.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Jimmy:
I have some right here. KETO-OS is the one company that’s out there putting out exogenous ketones. I think for somebody that’s already ketogenic, somebody that’s already low-carb, moderate protein, high-fat, and seeing ketone levels in that 1 to 2 range on the blood meter, they’re probably not needed.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Jimmy:
That person’s already rocking it. This is a – go ahead.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, Jimmy, I’ve got myself a little loopy because I intermittent fast, my ketones rise. I come back, and work out, I’m like, “Whoo!” I shoot my ketones up to a crazy level, I’m sure.
Jimmy:
What’s interesting about the therapeutic ketones, the exogenous ketones, is once you’re kind of over 1, I’ve found that the ability for it lift your ketones any higher is a lot harder than if you’re out of ketosis. Let’s say, Meredith, that you’re in one of your days that you’re out of ketosis, and you decided to try the KETO-OS. You test your blood, and it’s .2 before you take it. Then you drink it, and one hour later, it’s .8, whereas on the day that you are low-carb, and you are in ketosis, and you see, maybe, a 1.3 on your blood ketone. You drink this stuff. One hour later, it’s 1.5. Statistically, it’s not that much greater. From 1.3 to 1.5, really not that much difference in how you feel.
I think if you’re already doing it nutritionally, and you’re getting the benefits from that, then do it that way. This is a great tool for those people who struggle to get in ketosis and have ketones in their system so they never feel the full effects of it. For that purpose, I do support it. I actually heard about this interviewing the guy that developed it. Four or five years ago, he was talking about, “Exogenous ketones are coming.” I’m like, “Exoge-what?” Now there’s here, and I’m glad they’re out there. Yeah. I like the KETO-OS. I think it’s a pretty decent product for people that want to give it a go. I don’t like the marketing of it. I think some of the marketing of, “Eat all the carbs you want, and drink our product, and you’ll be in ketosis,” and I’m like “No, you won’t.”
Dr. Pompa:
They market it even saying, “Be in ketosis within an hour.” You’re not in ketosis.
Jimmy:
No. You have ketones in your blood, but not in ketosis. Right.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. You’re not in ketosis. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t like that, either. We’re going to learn a little more. My next November seminar, we have Dominic D’Agostino.
Jimmy:
D’Agostino – he’s the one I interviewed four or five years ago about.
Dr. Pompa:
We interviewed him on one of the shows here.
Jimmy:
Yup.
Dr. Pompa:
He’s speaking at my seminars. I know he’s going to speak a lot about some of the studies they’ve been doing. When people ask me about it, Jimmy, I always say, “You know what? We’re still in the learning phase.”
Jimmy:
Yeah. It’s an unknown, but I think it’s a good tool for now. It’s just like any other supplement. Use it as a tool in the toolbox for you. If you feel like you need a little boost, go ahead and take it. Now, what I’ve found taking it is you get that good whoosh in the first hour. It kind of stays a little sustained by hour two. Then by hour three, it’s died off. It could be good performance-wise, so for athletes that are running in a race, maybe take some of that before your race. It gives you that fat adaptation boost along with a low-carb diet.
Dr. Pompa:
I have found that to be true, especially when I’m not in major ketotic state. However, I do get some weird stomach stuff that happens every once in a while. I just kind of feel –
Jimmy:
It’s got salt in it. That’s why.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s like I’m a little bloaty or something, you know?
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Others have complained about the same. Listen, just great. Gosh. Jimmy, we’ll bring you back on the show. It would be great to get me, you, Dr. Fung, right Meredith? There’s a show. Write it down. There’s a show.
Meredith:
All right.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Hey, we’ll help promote your book.
Jimmy:
Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
We believe the same things and practice the same things, so it’s really exciting to meet others on the same mission.
Jimmy:
Absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
Thank you so much. What a great story, and you have so much more to share, so we’re going to get you booked back on. All the topics that you talked about are some of our favorite topics, right Meredith?
Meredith:
Oh, yeah. So much to talk about. Lots more that we didn’t get to cover, but wow. This was just such a great episode. Jimmy, where can people find out more about you?
Jimmy:
I’m real easy to find. As you mentioned earlier, my website is LivinLaVidaLowCarb.com, but if you can’t remember all that, just type in a Google search, Jimmy Moore, not Ricky Martin, Jimmy Moore.
Dr. Pompa:
Not Michael Moore.
Jimmy:
Not Michael Moore.
Dr. Pompa:
Not Ricky Martin.
Jimmy:
You’ll get a lot of weird stuff with Michael Moore, but Jimmy Moore, and you’ll actually see the first two pages is all my stuff.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s awesome.
Meredith:
Perfect.
Dr. Pompa:
We appreciate –
Jimmy:
I’m glad my name’s not Dick Clark or something. It’d be really bad trying to find me on Google.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Absolutely. Hey, I’d love to talk to you off-air just – hey, listen. I’ve got a couple things – he’s the guy that tries everything, right? I love it. He jumps in. I got some things that I want to try with you.
Jimmy:
Awesome! Yeah.
Meredith:
Great. We’ll get you guys connected. Thank you so much again, Jimmy, for sharing your wealth of knowledge and all of your experiences. We can just all learn so much from each other. Thank you so much for Cellular Healing TV, Dr. Pompa, as always. Thanks, guys, for tuning in, and we’ll catch you next week. Have a great weekend.
Dr. Pompa:
See you, guys.
132: Why Chiropractic Rocks
