117: Diane Sanfilippo - The Fundamentals of Paleo

Oh hello and welcome to the ultimate health podcast episode 117 Jesse Chavez here with Marnie Wasserman and we are here to take your health to the next level today our featured guest is Diane San Filippo the owner and founder of balance Speights a certified nutrition consultant and two-time New York Times bestselling author of practical paleo in the 21-day sugar detox she is also the co-author of Mediterranean paleo cooking she co-hosts the top-rated weekly health podcast the balance bites podcast and diane lives in san francisco with her husband Scott and twofer kids before we get into details on our show with diane i am going to share with you guys that we have a new show sponsor so we're really really excited to have teamed up with raw elements in canada and if you guys have been purchasing your Sun warrior in Canada that is who you are getting it through so we're really excited to pair up with them because they have so many epic products that we love so many super foods and so many great things that Jesse and I love to add into our diet and our lifestyle so today I'm going to be featuring two incredible products from them that totally fit in with today's show all about paleo is the coconut wraps I don't know if you guys have had coconut wraps before you may have heard us talk about the before in previous shows or if you follow us on Instagram we may have alluded to them they are literally wraps made out of coconut meat and you can put anything in them you can make them sweet or savory and they're perfectly fit for a paleo lifestyle or someone who's avoiding grains and certain carbohydrates so if you use one of those wraps and what I've been doing lately is I've been putting some nut butter on them and raw elements also has this incredible nut butter by the brand gem je m and there are different flavors there is a cinnamon maca and cardamom cashew and there's a chocolate one they're so delicious the infusions of the flavors of these nut butters is so good you just put a little bit of that inside of a wrap roll it up and you've got a breakfast crepe so that has been a wonderful snack for Jesse and I as of recently and it is totally paleo-friendly totally keto friendly and it's it's really really really tasty so as listeners to the show you guys get ten percent off all your raw elements products all you need to do is go to ultimate health podcast.com slash raw elements and for listeners in the US and canada bundle that order together if you spend a hundred dollar some more you get free shipping amazing products again we're super excited to work with this company and you guys are going to totally benefit and I was shout out to our longtime sponsor Sun warrior and I am going to highlight what I've definitely highlighted before which was a chia Bowl but this morning I made such a delicious chia bowl and I'm going to share that recipe with you guys so what I did is I soak some chia seeds with some coconut milk and I added in the vanilla warrior blend which is also perfect and paleo friendly because it is grain free so i use the vanilla warrior blend stir that into the milk with the chia seeds i added in some almond butter i added in some coconut flakes or shreds or whatever kind of coconut products you want add in there get just get some coconut in there and then some cinnamon and some blueberries and some goji berries and you stir that all together and you've got the most delicious porridge for breakfast and it's protein packed it's fat filled and it will totally hold you over for several hours as listeners of our show you guys get ten percent off all your Sun warrior products super easy to do just go to ultimate health podcast.com slash SW and again for listeners in the US and canada bundle that order together if you spend a hundred dollars or more you get free shipping so take advantage of all these amazing health food products and you can thank us later so now back to diane sanfilippo and what we talked about in today's show we get into white rice and can it actually be part of a healthy diet we talked about how almost everything we know about good nutrition is wrong we discussed the Paleo diet versus the ketogenic diet and ketogenic is such a hot topic in today's health world we get into what Diane eats in a day so her breakfast lunch and dinner and we talk about prioritizing yourself first thing in the morning and that just gets your day off on the right foot so much great information you guys in for a treat and for the show notes on this one go to ultimate health podcast.com slash 117 a summary in depth more than we're discussing here in the opening and links to everything we talked about on the show so be sure to check that out enjoy this one with Diane San Filippo hello Diane and welcome to the podcast how you doing today I'm great thanks for having me now we're excited to have you on the show or excited to dive deep into this topic paleo hasn't really been covered so much in our podcast or soak sites to talk about it with you that's awesome i love it because i'm speaking on a lot shows where it's we're tired of it you know so it's cool to talk about it to totally new audience i want to start off by congratulating you on practical paleo second edition that's just about to come out right after the release this interview that's that's huge thank you i'm stoked cannot wait to even get the first copy off the print print run hopefully end of next week i think i just can't wait to get to stay in my hands it's it's been like a rewriting the book really so it's been a lot can't wait all right we're gonna get into some of those changes but first thing i think is an interesting way to dive in here is let's talk about what's changed with you specifically since the release of the first book has there been any major shifts something maybe you've added in or taken away from your diet since the release of the first practical paleo book so that's an interesting way to word it in terms of major shifts because the way I see it in terms of the community at large folks who are not as intimately kind of worked into doing this stuff all the time teaching about it talking about it see some of these things that I don't think are that big of a deal it is this huge crazy deal that somebody might have added a certain feedback to their diet so just to give a little bit of background there if my education and experience is in holistic nutrition it's not I learned about paleo now I teach about paleo and so I come from a background of knowing that there are a lot of different ways to be healthy and a lot of choices and changes that we make that can make us healthier that don't need to be going paleo so from that perspective in terms of ways that I've changed my choices and things that I do every day I definitely eat a lot more gluten free grains now than I used to and I find that I feel fine doing that I feel good doing that white rice being one of them also a gluten-free it's like a quinoa brown rice pasta that I'm finding has no other weird ingredients in it but my digestion responds very favorably to that and so things that I can look at without a Dogma without a lens of is a paleo or not which I address a ton in the new edition of the book looking at it not just through this this dogma visit paleo or not but how does it make me feel is it is it a real food is it some you know man-made synthetic chemical product or is it a real food that maybe I've shunned in the past for a dogmatic reason that now I can look at differently and so that's a perspective that I like to have and me personally I'm allergic to a lot of nuts and a lot of folks who eat paleo will make bread or cookies or whatever it's in me out of nuts and I actually can't eat those things and so for me to find a way to enjoy things now and then that might be gluten free instead of strict paleo I think it's it's one of the major ships I would say so yeah there's so many things I want to get into so one of the things we need to get into for sure for our audience is breaking down what paleo is kind of the Paleo 101 and and then I'm gonna take it from there it got a few more things I want to dive in on sure so really the basics of Palio's that we're eating real home nutrient-dense foods and we're avoiding processed refined man-made foods and what we mean by that in terms of the actual choices were making is that we are eating meat seafood and eggs vegetables and fruits nuts and seeds healthy fats and oils that's kind of the basic paleo framework and from there we're avoiding grains all types of grains so if you're looking at strict paleo it's not just about gluten free or not it's just all grains whether the refined or whole legumes so beans beans and peanuts and things like that packaged foods dairy products sweeteners for some people that means alcohol for most it doesn't most are trying to find a quote paleo alcohol and um you know just sweeteners in general sweetened beverages etc so tell me about your journey did you take everything out at one point now you started to reintroduce some of those grains like how hardcore were you when you first you know started changing over your diet um I was pretty hardcore so I had learned about problems with gluten dairy and soy long before I learned about paleo and so for me it wasn't this like aha moment black and white didn't ever consider anything about this approach and then one day it was illuminated it wasn't like that for me because I'd been studying nutrition for years before I learned about paleo so for me it wasn't this overnight all of a sudden going paleo thing but at some point I think I I pretty much did dive in grain free dairy free I'm trying to remember if I was ever a hundred percent dairy free I probably was for a period of time soy free i try to be soy free pretty much all the time and i would say sweeteners I don't think I was ever super strict about sweeteners because before I even again before I learned about paleo i created the 21-day sugar detox and i got myself to a place where i really do not rely on sweetened foods all the time anyway and so that kind of wasn't a big deal to me if i use a teaspoon of sugar maple syrup or something in my coffee it doesn't then create blood sugar issues it doesn't create cravings all day for me and very well controlled with that just from experience and changes i had already made so you know paleo for me when i learned about it it wasn't this huge heavens have opened up moment it was kind of a more of a natural progression of what i had learned so i guess that might not be that exciting to some people but i also i don't tend to be I don't tend to be as black and white or dogmatic about things as folks might somehow assume I am or might assume a lot of folks who teach about paleo are because I think inevitably you end up digging yourself into a hole because the more certain you are that something is right or accurate or the way to be healthy as time goes on you find out the more inaccurate that that will be in terms of every single human you know and you can look at the scenario if somebody is a staunch vegan for example and they're so convinced that it's like the way to be healthy and perhaps it was revolutionary and life-changing for them in a certain way but give it enough time and hopefully if that person is at all open minded or has some some way of looking at science and being a person who's reasonable to change their mind when presented with new accurate information which is what I hope to always be then in time they might learn that it's not a hundred percent that is the only way to be healthy for every person so I you know I always hope to not be that way when it comes to paleo even though I've written a book that obviously tons of people have and it teaches about paleo and that's one of the things that the second edition that I think will be even more apparent where people learn does this have to be the way you eat strictly for your whole life no and here are more thoughts on that you know I want to take a minute Diane and jump back to something you brought up earlier on in the interview when you said white rice and both Marnie and I looked at each other as that came up and we're like white rice isn't this nutrition 101 where we're supposed to avoid right white rice and stick with the brown let's let's dig in on that and talk about how white rice can be a part of a healthy diet so the basics here and this kind of goes back to one of the things that I teach impractical paleo that I teach in dog bites master class which is coming out this fall for some early enrollment and what my podcast co-hosts and teaching partner Liz wolf and I have taught for years is that almost everything we know about good nutrition is wrong and so if you go back a few years or I don't know however long it's been that your listeners or yourselves known about whatever good nutrition is there's a moment when you become aware that what we eat should be quote healthy but for most people if that was five years ago or more or wasn't when you were learning about paleo or real food or any of this it's what we call conventional wisdom healthy you know the standard American diet is one thing but then there's also conventional wisdom about what is healthy and that includes whole grains which you guys are probably thinking like brown rice that typically includes things like nonfat or low-fat dairy that includes those are probably to the big ones avoiding saturated fat avoiding cholesterol rich foods avoiding the Sun comes in with that one as well in terms of conventional wisdom about health and all those other things and so if we're looking at what we're trying to get from the rice at this point I'm just looking to get some easily digested carbohydrate what we do what cultures have done for thousands of years and polishing rice to take the brown part which is the brand and the endosperm off of the rice off of the grain is to get rid of the part that's tougher to digest and so people were eating brown rice and I'm not saying brown rice is bad because there are probably tons people who feel great eating brown rice and when I say I do something it doesn't mean that should be to the exclusion of everything else being a potentially healthy choice for other people if that makes sense it's uncomfortable for people to hear me say things that are not black and white because people want answers they don't want to be given an idea that then requires more thinking from there and more assessment and applying to your own life but that's really the truth here we can get some minerals and vitamins from the brown part of rice but how well we digest and absorb that is kind of inconclusive at this point as far as I know and it may not be as well as we think so just because the green contains those minerals and vitamins doesn't mean that we digest and absorb them optimally from the green so if we could get minerals and maybe let's just say B vitamins from a grain does it mean as humans that that's the best place for us to get it probably not we're probably better off getting a lot of mineral from something like bone bra we're probably better off getting B vitamins from liver then we are getting it from a grain product just for reasons of digestibility and other factors that you know are not something that every single person will be dealing with but for me I also just prefer the taste of white rice and that's hard for people to hear that I eat it because I like the way it tastes I enjoy it more like earth-shattering that we might eat something because we enjoy it more and not just because it's healthier that's not allowed and come on so you mentioned rice being an easily digestible carb let's stick on this carb topic here for a bit and talk about how quote-unquote the Paleo eaters think of carbs are carbs something that in general should be kept to a minimum or if they're the right carbs can we just go crazy on carbs let's talk about paleo and carbs so I actually have a whole new chapter in the 2nd edition of the book on this because there's a lot of confusion around carbohydrates and the chapters called clearing up carb confusion because and that was one of the big sections I added because this is such a huge topic so going back let's just say about six years or so when paleo started to get pretty big and primarily within I would say the CrossFit community is where that Paleo community started to grow out of thanks primarily to rob wolf for that and then folks like myself who went on to teach more seminars around the country and get this word out to more gyms but you know the initial introduction of paleo was meat vegetables nuts and seeds some some fruit little starch no sugar that was kind of a CrossFit way of explaining it and so when you look at what we're doing with the workouts in CrossFit you look at eating little starch which in terms of paleo starches are really going to be potatoes sweet potatoes winter squash spaghetti squash things like that and at that point really the only rich sources of starch are going to be things like potatoes and sweet potatoes and then your fruits so like bananas kind of higher and starch we kind of ran into some problems a couple of years into that where folks were saying they didn't feel so good they're not performing as well at CrossFit like maybe initially the inflammation in their body is reducing because we're getting rid of refined foods and they're getting more nutrition in in terms of vitamins and minerals from their food but over the long term and not so long term folks just didn't have the energy that they used to have and they're feeling lethargic or they're not sleeping well they're not performing well at the gym and one of the things that I used to talk about a lot is you know how do we get more carbs from paleo sources we have other things like root vegetables like taro root and cassava some more interesting approaches you know things that people don't think about all the time but we kind of hit this wall where there are a lot of people who are eating paleo who didn't need to each picked a Leo for autoimmune reasons or specific health reasons and they were finding that adding back in some things that maybe were easy to digest did not include that outer portion of the of the grain as I mentioned you polish that off you have white rice or when you're eating something like I mean white rice is probably one of the biggest ones that folks have added back in just because it is sort of the most it's mostly pure starch there's a little bit of protein there and enough so that some people feel like they're intolerant to rice but for the most part its starch and so when we just add that pure starch back in on top of what we were doing with nutrient dense meats vegetables and fruits things like that we just find that we take our energy level back up especially if we're athletes and so it's not for everyone there are lots of folks who come to paleo because they have blood sugar issues they're dealing with diabetes they're dealing with autoimmunity and for some people maybe keeping the carb count lower is helpful in some people it isn't but the truth is there's no again one size that's going to be good for everybody and what a lot of people did by going paleo was becoming an accidental low carb ER which is something I've talked about for years I can't remember the first time I talked about it but it's been so many years that I've said this were because I would see it so commonly with my clients that they went paleo and they didn't realize that they needed to put more forethought into their carbon tape because as soon as you eliminate grains you now eliminate the easy quick sources that you can get at the corner store for example or something that's pre-made at the grocery store that you're picking up somewhere and you need to cook those potatoes ahead of time you know you can't you can't five minutes from now be eating a potato unless you maybe microwave it and I don't even know how long it takes in the microwave but a lot of people didn't want to microwave them and so we needed to think about it a lot more and for that reason I think folks just hadn't planned well enough and ended up either going accidentally low carb or frankly accidentally hypocaloric to what they needed meaning they dropped calories because they're feeling paralyzed by not knowing what to eat and all of a sudden they're not eating as many calories so you know basically we saw the energy levels drop and focus needed to eat eat more carbs and I think people just wanted to have more options and look if we can eat things if we can eat more things without ill effects we should we shouldn't eliminate them simply for a dogmatic reason of you know we think they're unhealthy for everyone because it's just not the case for sure it has to come down to how you feel but I want to dig into beans and grains specifically is some of the reasoning behind taking those out in the initial stages or if someone's going paleo due to digestion are there ways around this I can someone look to the pseudo grains like quinoa amaranth and buckwheat and maybe cooking their beans from home as opposed to getting a can of you know generic beans from the store so what are ways around integrating easy to digest I guess more or less at grains and beans so if you're looking at giving paleo a try it's going to be green and legging free so for people who are like I only give it a shot maybe I give it a month three months something like that and again I talked about this in the book to where you know I talked about if you want to go cold turkey you just want to make the big switch where you want to go step by step and I kind of detail what to eliminate first and then next and so on if you do want to do it step by step because I think for some people and that's an easier approach to not feel like you're just overwhelmed by everything and just deal with one thing maybe for a week or for two weeks but when we eliminate grains and legumes yeah well it's two things happening and I cover these in detail in chapters in the book and the two elements of our health that I think are extremely foundational to lowering inflammation just feeling better in general our number one blood sugar regulation and number two digestive health and so as you touched on just a couple minutes ago you know is this an issue of either or both well when it comes to blood sugar regulation just getting rid of refined foods in general goes a really long way to helping to regulate our blood sugar what I mean by refined foods are any foods that have been you know produced as a flower that lots of things are being added back to you know those are being either enriched or adding stabilizers and all kinds of things to either make the food seem more nutritionally dense or just kind of keep it on the shelf and I think most people know what I'm talking about with refined foods but when we look at the impact of grains on blood sugar it's so unique to each person it's not even just about you have diabetes or not are you an athlete or not how active are you do you need more carbohydrate in your day is that not going to send you on a blood sugar roller coaster and and what is the impact of a sweet potato with the same number of carbohydrates versus a piece of bread with that same number of carbohydrates and is it the food itself is that the carbohydrates is it the presence of nutrition in terms of micronutrients vitamins minerals or the lack of vitamins and minerals and all those things impact our blood sugar very differently and it is a complicated topic it's not as simple as we eat this many carbs and our blood sugar does this because different types of carbohydrates affect different people differently and so it's a big conversation and people need to feel it out for themselves and generally speaking carbohydrate forms that were eating that are considered quote paleo starchy vegetables generally are more nutrient dense than a lot of other types of carbohydrate sources meaning we're getting more vitamins and minerals calorie for calorie than we would be from other sources so that's kind of one of the arguments for the types of carbohydrates that we're eating in palios that we're getting a lot more nutrition from them but when it comes to digestion it's something that's becoming more widely known now whether it's a gluten containing grain or otherwise grains can be just very irritating to our digestive system for reasons that we don't know every single reason why we might not be able to break down grains but one of the things that Rob wolf has talked about in the past and was something that I learned from him for sure was about the concept of anti-nutrients and every living thing has a defense mechanism and animals and humans for example we can run away right or we can fight but plants have defense mechanisms that are built in and so when you think about something like a strawberry or peach shower brace have those tiny little seeds right you eat the entire strawberry but you don't actually digest those seeds so when you go to the bathroom those seeds are actually there in the toilet when you eat a peach you eat the fruit and you leave the pit what you're leaving behind in the pit or what you're eliminating in the seeds from that strawberry are the reproductive force of the plant and not is something that's out there trying to survive that's nature and action you know survival of the fittest we need to find a defense mechanism this is even true of something like sesame seeds that are not ground up for the most part you're not going to digest sesame seeds you'll see them in your eliminations and you know we use them in a transit time test to see how long it takes your elimination they get through your body for that reason they don't break down because there's something in the coating of that seed that is an anti nutrient it is not digestible for us and so what happens when we eat thousands or millions of these anti-nutrients once their ground into flowers that create different breads and different products we don't know all of the different implications that they can have but we know that a lot of folks don't do well eating them for different reasons maybe their digestion is impaired for other reasons and it's it's such a complex topic that's why I've dedicated separate chapters so this stuff in the book because I I don't like to talk about paleo from the perspective of let me tell you why not to eat grains because I can talk about that for a few minutes but then it's less interesting to me than it is to hear how should my body be working what's supposed to happen in my body and if that's not working what do you propose i do about it and so for me it's here's how your digestion should work here's how your blow or should work here's how you should feel throughout the day if you don't feel that way I'm gonna propose the yank these foods out then see how you feel from there I also then have what's known as the for our protocol because you're asking about reintroducing certain foods yeah there's a time and a place for okay how do I feel without those foods do I feel better or worse and then can I do some repair work can i reenact you late my gut get some of those probiotics in and then look at reintroducing some of these foods and see how I'm doing once I reintroduce them and and I don't talk about reintroduction in this in the form of okay let's reintroduce poor quality food you know lowest common denominator like pizza and beer sorry you know it is what it is not much kinda hate on pizza but you know when I say what can we add back it's not about adding back poor quality food and creating you know okay well I can just eat cereal on pizza and sandwiches again and I feel fine because that's ignoring everything we just learned right about actually getting nutrition from our food but adding back something white rice to a bowl of arugula and Brussels sprouts and salmon and seaweed salad that's a different picture do you know what I mean so there's a lot there's a lot to say there but i'll let you guys uh oh you guys come back in no that was great and you did a great job of breaking down what this diet looks like let's take it to the next level here and talk about what are some of the benefits that people are going to experience when they start eating this way and maybe there's some things that they can look out for within the first little bit maybe first few months and then what are some of the long-term benefits of eating paleo sure so probably one of the biggest one so first of all the first week or two is probably not going to be amazing for most people between it being a big change and just frankly pretty frustrating or feeling like it's limited because depending on what you were eating before this could be a full 180 like you were eating cereal and sandwiches and pasta and now you're not so i can be really jarring just from a social perspective from a you know what now perspective there's a lot of preparation that i always recommend for people but physically the first couple weeks can be rough for some people particularly i would say days three and could be pretty rough for people and the same thing happens on my sugar detox program but as time moves on and you make sure that you're not make sure you're not under eating because if your energy it's really low you're probably under eating we've tend to see people regulating blood sugar a lot better I think that's probably the number one positive effect and what I mean by that is lots of folks know what it's like to be in the middle of target for example I might be speaking from experience and feel like if you don't eat a granola bar right now you're going to lose your mind or pass out in the middle of the store I mean this is what I was dealing with years and years ago where I couldn't leave the house without some kind of snack in my purse because you know heaven forbid I go more than two hours without a snack I was just gonna crash you know my friends would be like somebody get her something because it's turning into a monster um I think that's one of the biggest benefits of people experience with eating paleo because what we do when we ain't got a lot of these refined foods and we reenable you to eat the whole egg for example and let you know that avocado is it's not gonna kill you and you you can in fact even eat perhaps a whole avocado at once and you'll be okay what happens our blood sugar is just so much more stabilized and we can last longer between meals we don't feel the crazy hunger that happens so what I like to talk about pretty often is a difference between like a stomach hunger and just an appetite hunger and a head hunger or an energy hunger where your brain has become a little bit disconnected and crazy or sometimes people call it hangry versus I'm hungry right and sometimes we'll go from hungry to hangry very very quickly and that tends to be poorly regulated blood sugar and sometimes it takes a lot longer you could be hungry for an hour or two or three and then it turns to hangry it doesn't mean you're immune to the hangar eat just because you've gone paleo but i think that the place where you can live between starting to feel hunger and having that absolute crash it extends and so you feel a lot better your energy is so much better and you're not freaking out and not time period so that's one of the biggest benefits that blood sugar gets a lot better regulated another practical benefit of that is that you've kind of bought yourself some time to make a better decision about food because instead of being in a situation where you're going to crash if you don't get something quickly which tends to be sugar that we reach for you can kind of have the wherewithal to say okay what should i eat I'm gonna find some protein and fat and some you know nutrient-dense carbs and and that's when I'm gonna eat so that's that's one benefit their digestive health is definitely another benefit people do tend to have much better digestion we tend to be upping the veggies we tend to be sitting down to a meal that we're eating with a fork because we can't really eat on the run quite as much with this whole paleo thing and just getting out some of those foods that are potentially hard to digest for a lot of people gluten dairy and soy tend to be tricky this is not to say for all peoples not to say all forms of dairy for example but I think over time we do tend to feel a lot better getting us out of our system and you know then you then you work back and see what happens when you reintroduce it I generally don't do well with a lot of corn-based products but then if i do the brown rice or quinoa base you know items I might feel better so it's a chance for us to kind of explore and see what works for us instead of kind of moving along blindly and not ever paying attention to it those are a couple of them lots of other benefits mean literally anything that's going on in your body that hasn't a root inflammation can be sort of i wouldn't say cured but alleviated so seasonal allergies skin issues issues with sleep quality mood energy which i already talked about the blood sugar level so it's literally pretty much anything one of the other benefits which is huge so a lot of folks these days is that how people experience improvement in autoimmune conditions and that's because about sixty to eighty percent of our immune system is in our gut and when we get our gut kind of calmed down get the inflammation cool down in the gut our body is able to deal with insults and issues in other places in the body that may have otherwise been problematic so something like eczema or as i mentioned seasonal allergies you know these are irritations going on in the body and it's it's a primary function to deal with digestion its primary to our survival that we digest and absorb food and get our nutrients from them so that we can live but it's not a primary function for your body to deal with the inflammation that might be causing redness on your skin because you're still going to live right but you can't live if you don't digest and absorb nutrients so your body is really going to put the focus on the survival first so when you cool that inflammation in the gut and give your body a chance to deal with inflammation and the rest of your system people experience all kinds of things just getting better because they're getting healthier overall I'm so glad you outlined all the benefits because I think there was a bit of a stigma that going paleo meant weight loss cuz we all know way back in the day when everyone was going sorry I didn't even mention that huh yeah well that can happen by default but I think people going paleo for that sole reason as people did with the Atkins and we know that the Atkins didn't even include any fiber or anything healthy for that matter totally different so I'm so happy you outlined all the health benefits that's one can experience and knowing that you you will have the repercussion of just having a more balanced blood sugar approach to food which is huge which is for everyone because we all crave things and we all I think people you know being a nutritionist myself and working with people people do not know how to put a balanced plate together even if it's healthy even if it's brown rice or white rice they're like okay this is great let me just put some spinach on that that's dinner okay sure those are healthy choices but you're not gonna feel very good 20 minutes later that's a good point and you know um just from the personal side of things I actually didn't experience weight loss going paleo so maybe that's one of the reasons why it's not front of mind at all and it honestly uh tons of my readers do come back and say they lost this much weight but I'll tell you it's almost never without a follow-up of and here's this other amazing thing that happened with my health you know so even if somebody does lose weight they're like I lost me and you know my skin is so much smoother it's always something else to anything that that's really important to notice but for me I used to get sinus infections very frequently I'm talking every six to eight weeks it would like start up again and last for a week or two at least and another couple of things that I just don't think people think about this not often but any time I would go to the dentist for that annual checkup there were always new issues whether it was you know cavities are kind of the beginning of one and you know granted us a kid I probably at a ton of candy but there in years of my life where I wasn't mainlining candy but the food i was eating was just nutrient-poor probably did have more sugar than it should have had and so every year there was something new cropping up at the dentist and I mean you remember that vividly when I don't know who likes going to the dentist but getting a shot of novocaine having them drill is something that you know that is burned in my brain as something I wanted to avoid and didn't know how to and I literally didn't even think about it until I realized that a few years in or two years in I was like I haven't had a cavity may literally haven't had a cavity since I've gone paleo and and this used to be a real problem for me also my vision I were contact lenses and glasses my prescription has not gotten worse actually I think one I got a little bit better in probably the six plus here since I've got paleo and those are things that people expect and think are just normal progressions as we age and I think that we have to remember that what's common is not always what's normal and that's a real kind of eye opener for a lot of people and to your point about building your plate that's one of the updates that I included in the new edition of the book i always had general portion size guidelines but i included three different just proposed options of here's what this looks like on your plate to show people that visual of you know this much should be veggies or this percentage of calories can be coming from veggies as percentage from protein this percentage from fat just to help people see what that's going to look like so important and since sugar was such a big entry point for you and something you tackled early on let's talk about some paleo approved sweaters and yes and what people can choose to use for for sweetening up things sure so you know a lot of people will say sugar is sugar and I think that that's true to a large degree I do think that there are some that are just better than others you know we're not eating sweeteners to get nutrition from them but there are some that actually do carry nutrients and I don't think that that's I don't think it's irrelevant so if we look at the most whole form of sweetener it's always going to be fruit i would say dates are some thing that are very the most basic whole food extremely sweet sweetener so larabars for example tend to use mostly what dates and cashews things like that most people know what that's like those are pretty darn sweet so dates that you cook down into a paste there are some that are sold out there now that's a good source maple syrup honey molasses things that your great-grandmother might recognize as a sweetener I think are the first choices we should be making this is my opinion I think white table sugar is probably a better choice than any artificial sweetener out there because at least our body is getting calories with that sweet taste that's a natural thing we should be getting calories so that sweet taste hopefully we're getting nutrition with it as well when I say nutrition I don't generally mean macronutrients protein carbohydrates and fat I mean micronutrients vitamins and minerals so if you're eating a date if you're eating honey if you're eating maple syrupy than molasses especially there are some trace nutrients in those foods we're not getting completely empty stripped away carbohydrate which we are in table sugar but we do get some calories from table sugar so we take this thing in and we do get some energy from it but if we're taking in artificial sweeteners I'm not sure I'll not one you know I'm not a scientist I'm a nutritionist and so I think the jury is still out on that I think there are some things that are naturally sweet like licorice root and stevia as a green plant that probably in small amounts so don't have the same effect I mean hopefully content of the same effect of things like aspartame and sucralose and stina truvia that are more refined and synthetic chemical chemically bulked forms of these sweeteners that I just don't recommend for people so something your great-grandmother would recommend is the short answer or that she would recognize excuse me and you know any of these crazy packets of white powdered stuff generally let's not incorporate that into our everyday lives that's that's kind of how I feel about it well now that we've dug into sweeteners and carbs and how they fit into the Paleo diet take things to the other end of the spectrum and talk about the ketogenic diet because this is just becoming wildly popular in the health world and what is the mesh between the Paleo diet and the ketogenic diet is there is there some overlap there I mean I think naturally there is because if you go paleo and as I mentioned earlier you kind of forget to prepare carbohydrates if you just eat green vegetables meat and fat you're probably going to end up eating a ketogenic diet by accident throw some fruit in there and you probably won't basically we're looking at ketogenic diet most people will consider it about 30 grams of carbs or fewer per day I've recently seen some information coming out from Chris master John who was talking about adding in MCTS and being able to eat something like pasta and that being something that will still support a ketogenic diet where it's not just about eating low-carb it's really about having that fat source as the fuel so it's not something I'm versed in to kind of a scientific level at this point and I haven't been studying it or looking into it because i haven't eaten that way in many years I did for a while probably on and off for almost a year i was eating basically what i would consider very low carb or ketogenic diet and enjoyed it for a while definitely had some body fat loss and felt pretty good my energy was good I could definitely go longer between meals but frankly it didn't enjoy not eating as many vegetables as I like to eat I really like eating salad and I like having some fruit and um you know for me it was a lifestyle choice more so than just a diet choice but yeah I mean there it's pretty easy to eat that way while you're eating paleo because the foods very much align and I think a lot of people just confuse it because obviously on both ways of eating you're avoiding refined foods and grains and so people really confuse the two but they're not mutually exclusive ketogenic really addressing typically addressing a macronutrient question and paleo is addressing a food quality question palos addressing which foods in my eating or as kita Johnny because addressing how much of different types of macro nutrients by eating I like that break down and let's take a little pivot here and talk about some of your favorite healthy fats fortunately a lot of people that are into eating healthy are starting to embrace fats it seems like that's the trend but there's still those people that are maybe newer into the health world and they still have that conventional nutrition wisdom implanted in them and they're still avoiding healthy fats so let's talk about how fat is part of a healthy diet and what are some of your favorites so I think um just to give a little foundation here I think one of the reasons why people are scared of something like saturated fat is that it tends to be solid at room temperature and somehow people associate that solid nature partially based on what the USDA has spouted for decades at this point they assume that because it's solid at room temperature that it somehow remains solid in the body and that that's going to clog your arteries like there's a physical characteristic to that food that people visually and somehow logically which it's not logical they seem to associate that with in clogging your arteries which if that were true then broccoli would clog your arteries like this logic is completely flawed and the chemical mechanisms by which our body breaks down fatty acids are far more complex then this is solid at room temperature and so it's solid in my body so just to kind of clarify that because I've dealt with teaching this stuff for a long time and I know that you know seeing people's faces when I explain that and they're like yes I did think that and so saturated fat I'm just gonna give a little lesson before I talk about it but saturated that all it means is that the carbon chain of the fatty acid is saturated by hydrogen so when you look at the chemical structure it's stable so unfortunately it was named saturated simply because it's a chemical thing it's just every one of those carbon bonds is saturated is filled with hydrogen but if we remove some of those and we have some parts of this chain that are not filled with that then there are some unsaturated elements there if it's one spot on the chain that's not saturated that we have a monounsaturated fat something like olive oil people typically think of if there are multiple places in this chemical chain that are not saturated we have a and saturated fatty acid but what's interesting that people don't really know about is that the less saturated your fat is the less stable it is and when you have a more stable fat it actually resist oxidation which is damage from like heat and air we actually want to be eating the most stable fats possible we want to be eating fats that are not damaged damaged fats or what's unhealthy what are causing more inflammation in our body because they require our body to do more to heal the issues of inflammation so we want to be eating undamaged fats and the best thing that we can do is eat fats that are more stable in order to eat undamaged fat so we're looking at more saturated fats and monounsaturated fats some polyunsaturated people tend to eat more of I don't like for people to eat tons of polyunsaturated fatty acids to give you another reminder of what those are fish oil this is a controversial hot topic I don't want to talk about it for 20 minutes but I'm gonna just stepped on it fish oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid it's something that some people will take as a supplement but I think it's really easy to be uncertain of whether or not that fish oil is damaged when it's not in the whole food or the fish itself when you isolate these fats and then when they're exposed to heat light and air as I mentioned there's a huge possibility of these being damaged more and more possibility the more unsaturated they are so something like butter you can leave it on the countertop you don't have to cover it it's going to be fine it's not going to be damaged it's not going to be rancid but if you left some fish oil out and left the lid off and left it on the counter I mean most people know if you're buying it you stick it in the fridge that's a sign that it's something that is very very delicate shouldn't be handled it shouldn't be handled lightly so to that and the sources of fats that I think are the healthiest for us to be eating our coconut oil everyone talks about coconut oil it's not super nutrient dense there's not tons of vitamins and minerals there but it's a good healthy source very stable palm oil some people are able to get a sustainably sourced that's controversial but we're just talking about the fatty acid composition butter especially from grass-fed cows and then from butter ghee or clarified butter if you don't do well with dairy protein ski and clarified butter excellent you're getting the butter oil which can have lots of nutrition fat soluble vitamins vitamin A but you're not getting those very proteins lard bacon grease we're talking about from well-raised pastured animals i'm not talking you know you're eating oscar meyer bacon saving not fat i'm talking you went to the farmer you bought the bacon you're not going to throw that bat away except bacon was ten dollars pound I'm so hard bacon grease tallow would just be fat duck fat schmaltz was it chicken fat lamb fat any of the facts that come from your well raised animals are great fats to be eating full-fat dairy from grass-fed sources fat that's in eggs meat seafood etc from from well raised high quality sources which is all covered in the book if people want to guide to food quality I have that you can see what's kind of the best quality you can get for your money and then go down from there if you're like I can't quite afford everything at this level what's the next best i can do i have that all detailed in the book and then in terms of unsaturated fats which are okay to be eating but i would use these for cold applications versus hot and cooking or lower heat cooking something like avocado oil olive oil macadamia nut oil sesame oil and then generally for cold applications only things like a walnut oil some people do flaxseed although i'm not a huge fan of that it is one that's okay i'm small amounts in diane waters what are some of your favorite ways of getting these fats into the diet things like coconut oil d butter I just cook with them primarily mean we cook with ghee in the house pretty often or I put olive oil on a salad other than that I don't think people need to over intellectualize adding that I think we need to just get over avoiding it if that makes sense it does it does and let's also give our listeners an idea a snapshot of what a day looks like it's like Diane I know it's coming back well it's not a literal snapshot of it most people can check me out on Instagram act I am about practical paleo I share tons of stuff that I'm eating all the time currently doing that on snapchat as well though I don't know what's gonna happen once Instagram stories might take over snapchat but typically for me breakfast is I don't know very often it's a salmon bowl which I just had this morning which means I'm eating a bunch of arugula about like a cup of arugula maybe some white rice which again it's not strict paleo but I've got some leftover Brussels sprouts I'm looking at the bowl that I didn't finish this in here and then about four or five ounces of wild-caught salmon and i seasoned the salmon and the whole thing only takes me about six minutes to make I've got a recipe on the blog for that but anyway so that's breakfast lunch will be some kind of protein of some kind of vegetable I feel like every single paleo person says that all the time but that's really what it is and I don't think about it more than that I literally just think what's my protein what's my veg sometimes I'm thinking what's my starch also just depending on the day and so for me that might be some other kind of gluten-free grain that feels good for me or might be sweet potato or potato and me and veg sometimes it's a big salad something like that um same thing for dinner it's just not it's not that complicated but it's also I try and keep it really simple you know meat seasoning some fat cook it till it's done that's really it is there an afternoon snack it just depends on how i feel it's not all you know you know sometimes if I'm following a certain meal plan then I need to eat more often sometimes I don't eat us often but it's not it's not as calculated but here's here's the caveat there work for myself and I work from home and so if I were planning if I went into an office I would probably eat breakfast before I went or bring breakfast with me and bring lunch and probably bring a couple of things to snack on I will be over-prepared I can we do a lot of air travel I'll bring something to eat and I'm happy if I don't eat it because I'm like whatever I didn't need it but I don't want to get stuck somewhere without a healthy meal or snack on me and so I'll bring things I'll bring a cooler I'll bring some deli meat I'll brain you know some chopped-up veg something like that so they can have something to eat on the trip do you have anything that you carry in your purse or maybe have in a drawer your desk like snacks or in between meals so big so I don't really work in task most of the time but trying to think so I'm allergic to most nuts as I mentioned earlier a lot of the sort of paleo friendly snacks are not based and so for me that doesn't work what I have lately it's not it's not common but again I don't like a lot of dried out snacks so there are things like jerky and then most folks may know about epic bar for example those are all great choices I feel better eating something that's a little bit fresher not dehydrated so more often for me it's gonna be something like deli meat or a little bit of leftover protein from a meal and then some kind of like you know raw carrots or something like that'll snap gone nothing I don't know it's just there there's no magic or secrets or wow that's so interesting or special it's just super everyday stuff sometimes it's a whole avocado just let me just chop up this avocado put some hot sauce on it and salt lemon and I'm good it's there's no like I don't make little snack balls or any of that stuff I'm just I'm not that interesting you keep it simple right you really do I really do yeah so Dan up until this point we've really dug into the diet and I want to put that aside for right now and dig into some of the other essential parts to your healthier routine what are some of the things you're doing on a daily basis to maintain your overall health so one of the biggest things that's been a change for me since oh let's say probably last November so coming up on a year I guess of this habit is working out first thing in the morning most days of the week or doing something first thing in the morning that's physically active that has been a huge change for me because I like to lift weights I used to feel like I could not do it early in the morning sometimes it's tough to get under a heavy barbell at 7am but I got myself in that habit i was on a plan last winter and I was like okay I'm gonna do this every morning and it went from walks in the morning to some classes and some other types of things and now I do whatever my workout is that day and it's primarily lifting him strength training early in the morning that has done so much for me especially as an entrepreneur because it's it's of the day for me where I've taken care of myself first and then I can deal with whatever else comes at me then I'm not worried that by five or six o'clock when I was going to work out in the past that's what time I would work out generally I've had too much stress that day or I'm just tired or it's a dark out and I don't feel like going because I'm extremely affected by the season than the light I know it's about myself so um that really has been a huge impact for me over the last year as well as impacting my sleep I am having much better an easier time regulating a bedtime in a wait time going to sleep anywhere between about 10 and 11 and I generally wake up between five and six typically without an alarm I mean if we sometimes have an alarm because my husband has office hours of his you know chiropractic office but without an alarm and generally up between five and six and that's just when I wake up and feeling much better rested so that's probably been the biggest thing for me in terms of other other things I do for my health right now and for the last few months I've been taking some adrenal supplements adrenal support because while I was working on the book I just didn't want to get myself into a hole I will say I was not suffering with any adrenal fatigue during this time it's just I knew would be a stressful time so for me it was taking those supplements to just support myself and protect myself because you know four years ago when I wrote the book the first time I really did burn out from it and I didn't think to try and take those supplements until i was already burnt out whereas this time i thought you know i should take these alongside the healthy choices that I'm making and came through that feeling a lot better and so those are the things really nothing else there's nothing that i do that's i'm not a biohacker i'm not a take a million supplements all the time I really tend to take supplements only you know for an acute period of time for a specific purpose and so those are kind of the main ones and then you know the one other thing that I have added probably again since i changed my workout routine was collagen peptides in terms of a protein source around my workouts I don't tolerate way very well so I really hadn't taken in much extra protein but now around my workouts not every day and I just very little that I do religiously other than like eat sleep and go to the bathroom other than basic bodily functions here but you know using the collagen as a form of protein that's something that's been new for me and I like it I don't you know it's not like some crazy platform that I need to talk about it four million years on but I just it's another interesting thing that I've added and I'm curious to see how that might affect me in the longer term you know have some positive effects on my skin hair and nails and just my energy in general so as a busy entrepreneur your podcaster you're an author of a number of amazing health books and you just have so much going on what are some of the things you're doing throughout the day to get into that rest and digest mode and just slow down and create that balance within your day um I don't really I generally don't do work while I'm eating so you know oftentimes will say not to do something like watch TV while you're eating and really to focus but what I do most of the time is I put a TV show on my computer while I'm eating so that I to not work and just kind of chill out and that's definitely something that I do throughout the day you know probably not what you were thinking of but this is another thing that I do just to get more relaxation as much as possible is that i delegate a ton i have a team that works with me and I don't do everything and so that really makes a big difference if I think of something that needs to get done unless I personally absolutely have to do unless it's pure content generation you know it's me on the live video it's me recording the podcast as me writing my books if I don't have to do it I don't do it and so you know delegating stuff out it's definitely a big a big part of being a successful entrepreneur who does not burn out that's key for sure so what we're gonna do now Diane is we're gonna go into a rapid-fire question router ask you some fun questions sound good good I'll be as quick as again okay first one is what are two things you do as soon as you get up in the morning go to the bathroom and pet my cat right on what is the biggest misconception people have about you that I live some kind of perfect dogmatic strict paleo lifestyle what is your specialty in the kitchen oh this is hard so many choices right how do I answer that well first one that comes to mind it doesn't have to necessarily be the yeah magic time just like no magic like we did not know there was anything to eat and then suddenly there's something awesome to eat so that's my specialty creating something out of nothing yeah all right and what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given for my mom just do it makes you happy and what is one thing most people don't know about you hmm maybe they're learning in here I'm really thoughtful sometimes to my own demise I don't like these rapid fire questions can you tell no you're doing great I'm really thoughtful I like to I like to think things through yeah so we talked about what you do when you get out of bed in the morning but what is it that drives you and gets you out of bed each and every morning I'm just a passion to create and do good work and help people live better lives and one question we asked to all of our guests what's one thing after all this awesome information that you can leave our guests with that they can take towards reaching ultimate health I think that you know my hope is that the work that I do and the information that I share empowers people and enables them rather than creating an environment where you feel paralyzed by all these rules and you feel like you don't know what to do because it seems scary I just want to create resources that help you make better decisions that help you figure out how you can feel your best and that you feel empowered and enabled and you know hopefully if you guys are you know following along with me wherever that's going to be through books or social or my blogger would have you that you can catch that vibe from me that it's about empowering you not spoon feeding it to you not doing it for you but putting you at the center and in the driver's seat of your life and you're out love it and listeners right around the time of the release this interview practical paleo second edition is going to be released so be sure to get your hands on a copy Marnie and I can't wait to get our copy Diane this has been awesome thank you so much and other than getting the new book how can listeners go connect with you reach out to you after the show so many places to find me you can find me everything is the hub at balance bites calm balance bites podcast you can catch every week on Thursdays on iTunes wherever you listen to podcasts Instagram definitely over an Instagram Facebook I'm doing Facebook videos live pretty much every week on Thursday so I'm kind of considering that like my office hours so if you want to come check in and say hey and ask questions that's a great place to do it live and interact with me am i emailing list definitely the number one place to make sure you're getting information on whatever is coming up revie's all kinds of fun stuff and we've got a nationwide tour coming up in September to celebrate the launch of the book so at balance bites calm / events you can see where we're going to be all over the country so if you're listening you're like this sounds like it would be cool to come you know chat and get more information get a signed copy of the book etc just make sure you check that out sounds great thank you so so much for all this amazing information thank you that's fun thanks Dan and congrats on the new book we'll keep in touch take care thank you what an awesome conversation with Diane we hope you guys have a better understanding of approaching paleo in a practical way and as always we want you guys over in our group at ultimate health podcast.com slash community that's over in facebook where we keep the conversation going ask you guys questions you can share stuff lots of good stuff happening in between episodes we'll see you over there have a great week you guys and we'll see you over in the group take care .

Video Description:

Diane Sanfilippo is the owner and founder of Balanced Bites, a certified nutrition consultant, and a two-time New York Times bestselling author of Practical Paleo and The 21-Day Sugar Detox. She is also the co-author of Mediterranean Paleo Cooking.

Diane co-hosts the top-rated weekly health podcast, The Balanced Bites Podcast.

Diane lives in San Francisco with her husband, Scott, and two fur kids.

Access show notes here: http://ultimatehealthpodcast.com/117

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October 05, 2020 Tags : Diane Sanfilippo , diet , fat , health benefits , Paleo , Paleo Diet , Video

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