Episode 275: Clean Keto vs Dirty Keto
with Dr. Anthony Gustin
Dr. Anthony Gustin's story may start like a typical “used to be fat and sick, and is now lean and healthy” success story, but his path may be slightly different. He's here to share his journey: how he now runs 2 successful food companies dedicated to high-quality keto snacks and whole-food based supplements. His mission is to help as many people as possible achieve optimal health and well-being through movement, nutrition, stress management, and sleep.
More about Dr. Gustin:
Dr. Anthony Gustin is the CEO and Co-founder of Perfect Keto, one of the fastest growing nutrition companies known for uncompromising quality standards on keto-friendly products and credible resources that help make a low-carb lifestyle easier.
He’s also the founder of Equip, a whole food based supplement line that was voted “Best Supplement Company” by Paleo Magazine.
Previously, he served as the clinical director at SF Custom Chiropractic, which he helped grow to six locations before turning his attention towards entrepreneurial pursuits.
An industry expert on helping people succeed at the Ketogenic diet and lifestyle, Dr. Gustin is a Functional Medicine practitioner and holds a Masters of Science (MS) and Doctorate in Chiropractic (DC).
Additional Information:
Show notes:
Perfect Keto – Take 15% off with this special link
Keto Answers Podcast
Fastonic – Molecular H2 supplement
Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
All right, you want to make keto easier? Listen, I get the question all the time. “How do I do this? What do I eat? How do I do this with my daily schedule? I’m so busy.” You’re going to watch this episode because Dr. Anthony, he makes it easy, Perfect Keto, and he has some amazing products you’re going to want to hear about.
Matter of fact, I just told him, “Please ship me these bars that you talked about. I’ve tried your products, but I have not tried these.” When I go to Whole Foods or health food stores, there’s not a bar that I can eat when I’m in ketosis. These, you can.
This episode’s more than just about bars. We talk about the mistakes made in ketosis. We talk about how to make it easier. You’re going to want to watch this episode. If you’ve never heard of ketosis, you still want to watch because it’s going to be a how-to to get into ketosis and fat adapt. Stay tuned.
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith, and today we welcome Dr. Anthony Gustin who is the CEO and cofounder of Perfect Keto, which is one of the fastest-growing nutrition companies that help make low-carb lifestyles easier. He’s also the founder of Equip, a whole food-based supplement line that was voted best supplement company by Paleo Magazine. We will link to both of those in our show notes.
Dr. Gustin is an industry expert on helping people succeed at the ketogenic diet and lifestyle. He’s a functional medicine practitioner who holds a master’s of science and doctorate in chiropractic. His mission is to help as many people as possible achieve optimal health and well being through movement, nutrition, stress management, and sleep. I can honestly say we cannot wait to hear more. Let’s welcome Dr. Gustin and, of course, Dr. Pompa. Welcome, both of you.
Dr. Gustin:
Thanks for having me.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, glad to have you here on this topic because many people are doing keto wrong, so we’re going to make sure we do the Perfect Keto. That’s the name of your company. Ashley raves about your products. I’m glad we’re going to be able to link people to them. We’re always taking groups through fasts, and my new book, Beyond Fasting, is coming out.
Step one is getting people to fat adapt. This is going to be a really helpful tool to make it easier. I want you to start with your story. You, like me, you’re a retired chiropractor. How the heck did you get into this? You have to have a story, part of which is you were obese, sick and obese. I said, “Looking at you, I find it hard to believe.” You said, “I have pictures to prove it.”
Dr. Gustin:
My mom has a very large photo album to prove it. Yeah, grew up in Midwest where health is not a priority, especially in the 90s, when I did. We had the typical standard American diet. Not a lot of activity, just really poor lifestyle, super stressed out. All the pillars of health that I proclaim now, I had none of them. Not only was I super overweight when I was younger, very embarrassed by that, but health problems all over the place. I had joint pain, acne, gut problems. I was a wreck. This is when I was 10, 12, 14 years old.
It’s almost like I slowly clawed my way out of that and understood that—as I was reading through science textbooks, basically to figure out what I should do about it, that what we’re doing as—I went to doctors. I went to dermatologists. Nothing they did helped me, so I kind of had to figure out myself and realize that I didn’t want other people to have to go through that same misery. I wanted to be in healthcare when I was super-young. I also wanted to kind of set my own rules and help people before they were broken, so probably, like you, as far as getting into chiropractic, that’s one of the only places you can go where you make a difference before somebody’s already broken.
I had a family friend who was a surgeon. I asked him, “Is this something you would recommend?” He said that every patient that he saw is somebody who was already broken. They had a knee injury, hip replacement, and they just put them back together and don’t actually look at the whole picture and how they can help restore this person’s health or prevent it from getting worse. I knew I wanted to do that and slowly went through it.
I initially wanted to work with athletes, so kind of fast-tracked all the way through and opened up a clinic in San Francisco. It’s six years ago now. We were working a lot with sport med people at the time, so dealing with injuries, and rehab, and things like that. As I was very uncoordinated and unhealthy when I was younger, I aspired to be athletic.
It didn’t come naturally to me, so I wanted to work with athletes right out of the gate sort of like how NASCAR really tweaks their cars at the high end to see what works for professional athletes, and then it trickles down to everyday driving. I think the same thing happens with human performance, as well. My thought was if I could figure out how the best of the best performed, I could take that to the general population and help people kind of expand their health. One of the things that I worked with with athletes was a ketogenic diet. After a few years—
Dr. Pompa:
How did you find it? How did you find the ketogenic diet?
Dr. Gustin:
It was something that I toying around with even in undergrad, which, man, was that 10 years ago now? It makes me feel old. That’s something that I was doing for just fat loss. I was a little punk trying to look attractive, so trying to get lean, and shed off the extra body fat, and using it.
Actually, a friend of mine, him and I, we went through our textbooks and figured, okay, if we wanted to induce fat loss, what are the pathways we would tweak and all this different stuff? I was like, “Oh, if we stop eating carbohydrates, [00:05:55] start burning fat for fuel. I’m not saying we discovered ketosis, but it was one of those things that wasn’t mainstream at the time.
Obviously, it was a very effective tool for fat loss. Then we started coming out, and then it was—I think I read Steve Phinney and Jeff Volek’s book about The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance and Low Carbohydrate Living, which sort of the first ones to the scene. Now, it’s, I don’t know, five, six years ago the books came out.
Dr. Pompa:
I [00:06:16] that book, and they cited a lot of the studies in there. A lot of stuff out there was mostly Atkins-type of diets. They kind of took it to the next level. [00:06:36] dis Atkins at all, but they definitely took it to the next level. I thought they did well in citing their studies.
Dr. Gustin:
One of the things that—thinking about [00:06:45] to the quality of the ketogenic diet is that I’m a big quality proponent. I had everybody kind of on a whole foods diet at that point. Just looking at a lot of the athletes that I dealt with, I wanted to keep inflammation under control so that the recovery would be faster.
[00:06:59] of metabolic pathways, the best way to do that for athletes—usually they’re eating a massive amount of carbohydrates—is just to limit the amount of carbohydrates. If you don’t get into a state of ketosis, you’re sort of in this in-between state where you’re not fat burning enough to fuel all your activity, but also, you’re not eating enough carbs to fuel all of your activities.
That’s kind of a dead zone that I saw a lot of people—they’re trying to reduce carbohydrates but not getting fully fat adapted, so their performance just suffered. That’s when I started getting people on a very strict limit of carbohydrates, 25, 30, and then ramping it up for their specific activity. Some people could get away with 70, 80, 90, 100 grams of carbs, just depending on their activity, but [00:07:42] that all the way down. Then you kind of ramp it up for their specific activity.
Once we got that stuff dialed in, we expanded the clinic systems and started working—I started working more with the functional medicine route, so working with people who had diabetes, and inflammatory disease, and all these different things. The same principle’s held there, but instead of performance, now we started seeing this—[Inverda] Health is a company doing really great stuff in this space. You can actually start reversing Type 2 diabetes just by switching people onto a ketogenic diet.
When we get to this point, being in San Francisco and having the mentality that everything works at scale, I thought, well, why can’t we do this stuff at scale? At that point, I was telling everybody in my clinic who had sports injuries or metabolic problems, “Ketogenic diet is a really, really great tool for you if these are your goals,” but it was very, very confusing for people, so it wasn’t a lot of education. Also, it was very hard to maintain just from a—people eat food, and a lot of people want convenience foods or supplements that get them there. There wasn’t a lot of options.
The goal of Perfect Keto when we started it was just to expand that reach of, first and foremost, content and education, and then second, products that help people stay in ketosis longer. It can be difficult in the beginning. I’m sure with your group, if you’re talking about getting people fat adapted before they go to fasting, people who have been eating the standard American diet or even whole foods and a lot of carbs for their whole life, getting that switch for the first time for your body to start using machinery to start burning fat is a huge shift.
There’s a lot of cellular changes they have to go through and a lot of receptors have to change over before you start doing that. Anything that can help ease people through that transition so they can start feeling what ketosis is like—if that’s for fat loss, if that’s for mental energy, if that’s for physical performance, there’s different tools for different jobs here. That’s what I wanted to try to solve is the easiness of [00:09:34], which is, I think, still pretty confusing, honestly. That’s the path we’re on now.
Dr. Pompa:
We get new viewers, too. Let’s give the basics on how to get into ketosis. Let’s give some tips on how to make it easier because, like I said, getting people into a ketotic state or ketosis is something I like to do at least a month before they go into a fast. If they’re fat adapted going into the fast, not only is the fast easier, but the results are much better.
Like you said, this transition, some people do it in a week. Some people do it in two. The average American, three or four, and some don’t transition in. That’s a whole other subject because we have to detox those people. Anyway, give us some basics of [00:10:24] getting people keto adapted, and let’s talk about the things that are oftentimes missed to make it easier.
Dr. Gustin:
I think what people get too confused about and too strict about in the beginning is going crazy about macronutrient counting. Everyone thinks that they have some secret number that they have yet to unlock for themselves. It simply is not necessary for most people.
Number one, I think, before people start to go keto, I’m a big proponent of just making sure you’re eating real foods in general. If the bulk of your nutrition isn’t coming from foods that spoil, I say start there. A lot of people miss that step. There’s an argument to be had where people started making progress, and they’re eating a bunch of vegetable oil and processed foods but are in ketosis. That’s better than nothing. I kind of [00:11:07] and say that I like people eating real foods first. Even before that month of adaptation, for me, I like to make sure that person is on a Paleo-ish or whole foods-based diet.
After that, I would say limiting carbohydrates to pretty much just as low as you can get them—obviously, with some foods, you’re going to have some. If you don’t know, you can use an app to track, but just try to get them below 25 to 35 and start there, like I said. Having that as a limit in the beginning is a really easy step. Instead of trying to calculate a very specific one, just try to get it in that range.
Protein, I think, is the next we should focus on. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is just under-eating protein on a ketogenic diet. That can lead to a whole host of problems. A lot of the—
Dr. Pompa:
You’re actually right about that. You have the people who go—they just move to 100% protein. That’s kind of the old Atkins way. Today, I find the problem what you just said. People think of ketosis is a high-fat diet. Really, what puts you into ketosis is low-carbohydrates. People are always like, “What are my macros?” I’m like, “Look, just get your carbs down below this. Just Google things for a few days, and you’ll kind of have an idea. Don’t over-complicate it.” People do. They move to such high-fat diets that oftentimes, you’re right. They actually go lower on protein.
Dr. Gustin:
Yeah, and fatten in a very high amount, in an unlimited amount. A lot of people think they can have—just guzzling MCT and olive oil all day long can actually be pretty inflammatory. I’m not a huge fan of excessive in unnecessary fat. Truth be told, if you have a lot of body fat on you, you can use that for fuel, too, so you don’t need to be adding a lot of it on your plate.
Protein is this thing that you have to get that from the outside source, and it’s the structure you’re made of, and kind of the building blocks, but then you get your energy from either carbs or fat. In your body, you can store roughly 200 to 300 grams of carbs. That gets replenished through both protein and fats. The breakdown of fat leads to that stored carbohydrate. With your fat, a pound is 454 grams, and a lot of people have many, many pounds of body fat on them, so they can burn way more fat than they can burn stored carbohydrate.
This is one of those things where once we get fat adapted—in the beginning, limiting carbohydrates makes your proteins adequate. What I recommend for people is at least three palmful—take your palm in your hand and trace that out. Cut your fingers off. Cut your wrist off. Get three of those of some sort of animal product a day. You can talk about keto—if you want to be vegan, that’s a different story, but you’re getting roughly that amount of protein per day, probably minimum for most people.
Then after that, add in fat to satiety. Then after you’re fat adapted, then you can start actually pulling the fat back a little bit if your goal is fat loss. If your goal is performance, you probably want to keep fat a little bit higher because that’s your main fuel for energy is fat.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. Okay, great. Some people, they’re going to be a couple weeks into this going, “I’m not adapting.” By the way, I like to use the Keto-Mojo meter. When you start crossing above .5 on beta hydroxybutyrate in your blood—that’s the ketone measurement.
I know a lot of people watching this will just try to test their urine, but of course, ketones go high, and then they disappear when your body starts using them, so it’s not a good indicator. The blood is. They’re going to be testing, going, “I’m .3. I’m .5, .2, .1. They’re not getting in—what are some of the issues that they could be having, why they’re not adapting in a typical time period, say two to three weeks?
Dr. Gustin:
Like you said, some of it is just an individual variance. One of the things you can do to speed some of that up is just get a little bit more physical activity. If your body has a higher demand for energy and your body now has a new fuel source, which you must get energy from, you’re going to start changing over your cellular machinery a little bit faster than you were before.
What I like to recommend for people [00:15:18] are at, a lot of people just go out for a walk while fasted. If you don’t eat anything, you can’t be using that as energy, so your body has to run its own stored energy. If you get up in the morning and you haven’t eaten yet, just go out for an hour-long walk, or a jog, or anything that you can manage yourself, which will speed up the adaptation period.
I’ve seen people even doing some intermittent fasting and then doing a walk or some aerobic activity midday. That seems to really start notching people towards where they want to go. That’s a big one, as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. What about electrolytes? That’s a big deal. We know that people that aren’t getting enough, you lose a lot of electrolytes. That literally can affect you moving in ketosis, and just plain old feeling bad, or just burning muscle instead of fat.
Dr. Gustin:
Yeah, electrolytes is probably the biggest thing that people don’t understand they need to add back in. When you stop eating carbohydrates, your insulin goes low. When your insulin goes low, you start basically peeing out more of your electrolytes than you normally would, especially in this adaptation period. In the beginning, drops off a curve, then starts leveling up a little bit.
In the beginning, it’s really, really important that you start adding it, especially a lot of sodium. People freak out, still, about an addition to cholesterol and eggs, which is a myth that’s been busted, but people still have that stigma. Sodium being high is one of these things where—there’s a U-shaped curve to that. If you don’t get enough sodium, that’s a huge problem. If you get way too much like in the order of 15, 20 grams a day, that’s also too much. The sweet spot is way higher than most people would assume.
That gets even higher, and that U-shape gets pushed to the right if you’re on a lower-carb diet. I haven’t seen as much with people getting troubles with their levels going up of blood ketone levels, but for sure, this is the main problem with the “keto flu,” people feeling terrible when they switch to a ketogenic diet. This is because your body doesn’t have very simple things that carry out cellular functions. You start going to basically a base-level operating system, which is not a fun place to be, and you’re not thriving as a human being.
What I recommend is people at least increase one to two grams, if not more, and more if they’re physically active, for sure. If they’re in a hot climate with humidity, for sure—of sodium and then, as well, some magnesium and potassium. One of the things, too, that—I don’t think it’s—some people promote it as a magic fat loss supplement, which it’s not, but having exogenous ketones, the salt-based form, [00:17:52] a lot of those extra salts, as well.
Exogenous ketones are when you take the ketone molecule, which is what your body should be using for energy, and you pair it with these electrolytes. In the beginning, when you’re drinking the stuff down, your body goes, oh, this is what a ketone is. This is how I should be using it. It helps ramp up that period of adaptation.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re saying that’s a good time to bio-hack with an exogenous made from the outside [00:18:18].
Dr. Gustin:
Right.
Dr. Pompa:
More of these products are popping up. You know, my concern [00:18:23] with later taking them and people staying on them. They feel better when they take them, and then tend to want to stay on them. Just like in anything, though, if you take a lot from the outside in, you could slow your body’s own production of a ketone. If you think what that means, your body makes ketones when it burns your body fat. It burns fat, it makes ketones.
We could slow that down, and I think they are showing that that actually can happen. If you’re taking ketones, your body will make less of them, but in the beginning, I think you’re right. I think it can actually help you adapt to them. A lot of people, your blood levels of ketones will go up. You say, “Gosh, I still have brain fog. I still don’t feel great.” You’re not even adapted to using the ketones yet. It takes some time.
Dr. Gustin:
To be very clear, these things are called supplements for a reason. They should be added on for specific purposes and not relied on as foundations of a lifestyle or a diet. This is where I think people get confused. They think they must have this stuff every single day. For sure, they can be helpful at times. I still take them—for instance, I had some before the show just because I want to be mentally on point.
For me, when I’m in nutritional ketosis just eating food, I get to about .8 millimoles in my blood stream by using ketones efficiently. When I pop it up to kind of a super-physiological dose and add in a scoop or two of exogenous ketones, then my brain function really gets kicked into another level. I just have excess ketones running in my blood stream at that moment, and then I can start using more, and more, and more for what I like most of them, not for physical performance or weight loss, but I like it for the mental capacity boost.
Dr. Pompa:
Athletes bio-hack with them, too.
Dr. Gustin:
Totally.
Dr. Pompa:
It help that more energy if they’re going to do some type of performance. If you jump your ketones up, you’re affecting your immediate energy.
Dr. Gustin:
Again, not a magic fat-loss supplement at all, but—if you could take it, for instance, in the morning and delay eating a large meal for a couple hours because you have a little bit more energy, then it can be effective—sort of extending a fast. It gets questioned all the time of what breaks a fast? There’s many different theories out there. I guess it depends on why you’re doing a fast, but if you’re doing it to decrease inflammation and lose some body fat, this is a really effective strategy to sometimes use some beta hydroxybutyrate or ketone salts in that interim period of time.
Dr. Pompa:
One of the things that I love—your company, I don’t know if it was created for this purpose, but making ketosis easier. Talk about that. Talk about some of the products that you’ve created that make this easier because that’s obviously what people want.
Dr. Gustin:
Yeah, of course. First and foremost, like I said before, where we started is education. That’s kind of where before we had any products, we had blog posts, E-books, things like that. It’s been almost two and a half years, and we have had over 100 million page views and hundreds of articles posted. We try to do anywhere between seven and fourteen articles a week.
This is because the research of ketogenic diet and ketogenic state is—it’s coming out so rapidly that things are—things are always changing. There’s articles that we posted two, three years ago that we’ve had to update a lot because of the new science that’s come out and the more we’ve learned.
The first thing, I think, before anybody starts using any sort of products is understanding how it works for them for however tool they want to be using it for, for instance. That’s the most important thing. That’s kind of the backbone of our company is just making sure that people have the right information at the right time for them, specifically. Nutrition is such an individualized thing. If people aren’t doing it right, a tweak here or there for a certain person can go a very, very long way. That’s the first and foremost focus.
The first product we launched was an exogenous ketone because we think it’s really instrumental, like we were saying, to bridge that gap when someone goes, “Okay, I want to be in a ketogenic state or do ketosis,” to actually maintaining it. Number one, you get a feedback loop, so you get to take it and go, “Oh, this is what ketosis is like. This is how I feel, higher energy, better mental focus, better physical performance.” Then that convinces somebody, like, “Oh, ketogenic diet might be something I want to try longer term.” I just think it’s super, super helpful.
A lot of what we did after that was just basically listen to our customers that we had about what struggles they were having with the ketogenic diet. That kind of ran the gamut between different protein-based supplements and different MCT oil powders all the way now to really focusing on food products. People walk around a grocery store and they look at, for instance, a bar aisle.
We have a bar aisle, and you have people who say, “This bar is low-carb or keto-friendly.” It turns out, I’ve tested every one of these bars on myself with the continuous blood glucose monitor and so has my team. They are not keto-friendly. They all spike your blood sugar 50, 60, 70, 80 points for two to three hours.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s what makes them good, meaning taste good, right?
Dr. Gustin:
Right. This is the problem, though. We can just say on packaging, this thing is low-carb or keto-friendly by doing some tricks of the nutritional facts panel, but it turns out they’re using really refined starches and fibers that act just like a corn syrup in your blood stream. We’re trying to go after these segments now and provide people opportunities to have products that taste good that are convenient that are tested to not raise your blood sugar 80 points for three hours. That’s kind of the route we’re going now.
Recently, we just launched a big bars line. We surveyed people over and over and asking them where they had problems. People wanted high-protein, moderate-fat bars that were actually keto-compliant. We had to do the hard work. It took us almost two years to launch it because [00:24:20] actually do the ingredient sourcing and make an ingredient from a fiber that doesn’t spike your blood sugar that can hold the bar together. That was a nightmare. People love them because we’ve actually done the work and tested.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s the name of the bar? I’m sure we’re going to provide some links here to lead people to the products from here directly to your site. We have a affiliate, and we have a discount code you can use. What’s the name of them?
Dr. Gustin:
They’re just Perfect Keto Bar, so pretty easy to remember.
Dr. Pompa:
They’re not out there, yet, in Whole Foods.
Dr. Gustin:
No, just online right now, on our own website and Amazon. To get into retail, our bars are very expensive to make because we have this [00:25:08] ingredient that—it’s really, really expensive. If we were to go into Whole Foods, we’d have to charge $5 a bar right now. As we grow and we go that route, I think that we’ll have some economies that scale working that can bring the price down. To go indirect consumer, we don’t have to pay Whole Foods its giant margin, and distributers, and brokers, and all that type of stuff. It’s challenging to get distribution on products that are of very high quality and low margin.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. When you go to Whole Foods and you look at the bars—I’ve been there, reading every ingredient, going, “No, tsh, tsh,” and I can tell you, there’s none that I’d eat.
Dr. Gustin:
[00:25:46]. I have the opposite problem now where the bars are so good, my girlfriend and I have conversations about keeping them out of the house or in the freezer so we can’t eat them as fast as possible. It’s a big challenge, a good one.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s a good product. I’d have to say the bar is the key. People always want a keto bar, keto-friendly bar. To date, I’ve always said, “There is none.”
Dr. Gustin:
Until now.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re changing my mind. What are some of the other—I agree with you, though. The food products are really critical because it has to be easy for people, and it has to be healthy for you and I, meeting our standard. There’s easy products out there, but they’re not necessarily healthy, but easy and quality is the challenge. That’s where you’re kind of filling the gap with your company.
Dr. Gustin:
I think the ideal thing is that people eat meat and vegetables and eat whole foods, but the reality is that’s not the most sustainable thing for most people.
Dr. Pompa:
For me, I always go—it’s so easy for me. I eat meat and vegetables [00:26:54].
Dr. Gustin:
Totally.
Dr. Pompa:
With this conversation is what people want because they want those quick and easy things. That’s what they’re used to. The problem is making them healthy. You’re kind of filling the gap, not for someone like myself, but you’re filling the gap for the average person. That’s for sure.
Dr. Gustin:
Yeah, totally. This is where you need to create a bridge from where people are at and where they go. People are eating a lot of packaged foods that are terrible for you, so I want to make alternative options that are actually healthy for you, and then show them over time that you should probably be eating—not to put ourselves out of business for any reason, but you should probably be eating more real foods and less packaged things. That’s my ultimate goal here.
Dr. Pompa:
What are some of the other products you created in this?
Dr. Gustin:
One is a macadamia nut butter that has MCT oil in it, and so instead of having hydrogenated oils in really low-quality nuts, we use raw macadamia nuts and blend that up with raw vanilla bean and MCT oil, which is probably the most delicious thing ever. It’s seriously like liquid crack. It’s incredible. That’s another food product.
Another one would be keto coffee. We had a lot of people who are saying, “I make this bullet-proof stuff in the morning. It’s such a mess. I hate having to do it. I have to prepare all the time and bring a blender with me, also, and stuff.” We have super high-grade organic instant coffee with MCT oil powder in a to-go packet. People can take it when they’re traveling and have kind of intermittent fasting extension in the mornings without having to make a mess and carry some of the ingredients around with them.
Dr. Pompa:
Those are great products, man. I can see why your company’s taking off.
Dr. Gustin:
Yeah, I think it fuels—about 80% of our work at the office is Perfect Keto products.
Dr. Pompa:
I would imagine those are big, big sellers. We’re going to sell a lot of them. I mean, it’s like those are the products people want, and they want it to be easy. You did it, man. You made it easy. That’s for sure.
Dr. Gustin:
Yeah, and again, we just listened to people and what they’ve wanted. We haven’t tried to trick people into buying certain products. We’ve just asked people what they want, and we just start—tried to make a keto-compliant version of it. We have R&D going on, I think, 15 active products right now to extend more into food. That’s been certainly a challenge, but it’s one that’s—we love taking on.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome. It’s going to be a resource. I’ll give it to my fasting group, as well, as I’m moving them into this ketotic state, fat adapting them to benefit from their fast. Your products are going to be a blessing. There’s no doubt about it. What’s your day look like? You get up. Do you do the coffee in the morning? Do you not? Do you intermittent fast? How many meals do you eat?
Dr. Gustin:
I get up, and I try to keep the morning slow. That doesn’t always go as planned. What that looks like for me is a little bit of journaling, meditation, and then I have a matcha. I don’t do much caffeine—as much caffeine as I have or decaf coffee. Just [00:30:13] I try to keep stressful food compounds out of my body for now.
I do that and then get some movement in. I try to do some gymnastics work or some strength training in the morning. If I have some time, then I’ll also hit an infrared sauna after that. I will usually never eat before this type of stuff. Then after that, if I’m really hungry, then I’ll eat. If I’m not, then I won’t. That’s kind of how I approach fasting.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s what I do.
Dr. Gustin:
Pretty intuitive. I know a lot of people are very, very strict and say, “I don’t eat every day until this time or that time,” but I just tend to listen to my body. I think that especially fasting through periods where you’re actually really hungry is really stressful for your body. I think that can be good at certain times. For me for right now, I have enough stress in my life that I don’t need to be adding on [00:31:01].
Dr. Pompa:
You’re right. Certain times, getting fat adapt, you might have to do it, but [00:31:05] all the time, chronically, it’s not good.
Dr. Gustin:
Yeah, totally. For me, I’m taking a lot on right now as far as work goes. I’m not trying to push through [00:31:16] stressful times, and so I want all that stuff reduced. If I’m hungry, I’m going to eat. If my goal, though, was to fat loss, then I would just push through that and kind of cater things towards that.
I think the most important thing when people, especially when they hear other people’s ways they approach their days, is just to understand that my goals may differ wildly from yours. Mine are primarily to just feel good and have high energy so I can work throughout the day and have high amount of mental focus. Those are my two main goals. I don’t have, really, a performance goal. I don’t have a fat loss goal. I don’t have a—I’m not treating a disease state. These are things that are not on top of my bucket list. They’re not things that I prioritize or set up my day for.
After that and after the movement stuff, I may or may not eat. Other than that, it’s usually straight into work, so hit some sort of MCT oil or powder or ketones and just crank for a while and try to prep for the day, which is usually a very long one.
Dr. Pompa:
A day of a business owner, what you just described, a healthy one. That’s great.
Dr. Gustin:
Yeah, I try.
Dr. Pompa:
Listen, we thank you for the products you’ve created and the ones you’re creating. It will make a lot of lives easier. You managed to do it having them healthy, which is a testament to your company. That’s why you’re here. We seek out the best, man. That’s why you are here.
Dr. Gustin:
Appreciate it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. We’ll provide those links that link you to the products that we mentioned—that Dr. Anthony mentioned. Dr. Anthony, thank you. You made it simple, and that’s really good. Thank you for being on the show. We appreciate what you’re doing.
Dr. Gustin:
Thanks for having me.
Dr. Pompa:
Yup.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. This episode was brought to you by CytoDetox. Please check it out at BuyCytoNow.com. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 AM Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at CellularHealing.tv, and please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, and sharing the show with anyone you think may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
