The Paleo Diet Explained - Amazon S3 · lose weight. Neely is an expert in this subject and today...

!!!The Paleo Diet Explained

!Interview with Neely Quinn!

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Table of Contents Paleo Diet Background……………………………………………….……….…….………….3

Foods To Avoid: Grains, and Beans……………………………………………………….….9

Is Dairy Paleo?…….…………………………………………………………………….…….16

Which Oils Are Paleo? ……………………………………………………………………….20

The Paleo Diet and Sugar…………………………………………………………………….23

The Benefits of Paleo………………………………………………………………………….30

Confusing Foods……………………………………………………………………………….35

Primal vs. Paleo…………………………………………………………………………….….49

Transitioning to Paleo..………………………………………………………………………..52

Paleo for Female Athletes…………………………………………………………………….56

Are Supplements Paleo?..……………………………………………………………………59

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Paleo Diet Background !!!!!!!!!!!!

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Dave: Hi there my name is Dave Sinick from paleohacks.com and today I'm here with my good friend Neely Quinn, an excellent nutritional therapist. And today we’re going to be talking about the Paleo Diet.

So you may or may not have heard of the Paleo diet at this point. My website paleohacks.com is all about it so I hope if you go there you’ll be familiar with it. But it’s very popular as one of the top diets in U.S. news world reports. I'm sure you’ve heard that like athletes like LeBron James and Dwayne Wade and Steve Nash and Novak Djokovic are all using it to essentially help them with their performance in life and many other people are using it as well to lose weight.

Neely is an expert in this subject and today we’re going to grill her on the Paleo diet, its benefits, what constitutes the actual Paleo diet. So Neely thank you so much for being here with us to talk about this.

Neely: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Dave: So let’s jump right in. Why don’t you tell me essentially how the Paleo diet came to be, who popularized it, and kind of like the basic core tenants of this diet.

Neely: Okay. So it’s kind of a long story. It starts millions of years ago. And basically Loren Cordain was the first person to really popularize the diet. And he called it the Paleo diet and that was in the early 2000. Loren Cordain is a professor at the Colorado State University.

So he brought to light the fact that people from millions of years ago, well our ancestors from millions of years ago until about 30,000 years ago were eating this certain way because they were hunter-gatherers and that’s the same way, it’s similar to how present day hunter-gatherers eat.

And so basically it is meat, seafood, fish, eggs when they could find vegetables that they could find, fruits not seeds, and then the fats came from like the meats that they were eating, the eggs that they are eating, those nuts and seeds, coconut products, avocados, stuff like that.



And what they weren’t eating was the agricultural foods that came into existence really popularly in around 30,000 to 10,000 years ago. And so that was like the grains, the wheat, the barley, the rice, all that. And then the beans, the legumes, the soy also, lentils, black beans, pinto beans, stuff like that. And then the vegetable oils that we have really just started creating this past century so canola oil and soybean oil, corn oil, those things. And then extra sugar, he was saying that they don’t eat that generally. Some of them eat honey and would eat honey but it wasn’t like a major part of their diet.

So that’s basically the differences between our diet now and dairy, can’t forget dairy. We’ll talk about that more. So those were the basic differences between our diet now in industrialized countries compared to 30,000 years ago and before.

And what he’s saying is that their health was much better than our health now. Like they weren’t obese, they didn’t have diabetes, they weren’t dying of cancer, all of the things that – and heart disease, that were generally dying of now.

Now granted one of the major arguments against it is well they didn’t live very long. That’s what the fossil records say. But in actuality when they did survive you know like harsh winters or being eaten by a tiger or something like that, they did, they could live very long lives and they weren’t dying of those things.

So we have the best of both worlds now where we can eat all these things and sort of mimic the best we can what they were eating and go to the hospitals when we break our bones.

Dave: Yeah, also have a place to live and not be hunted by wild animals like sabertooth tigers during that.

Neely: Yeah, exactly.

Dave: And I guess correct me if I'm wrong but it would seem that like kind of one of the arguments is that there’s been a lot of foods that have been essentially invented in the past 10,000 years or even sooner. And I guess like the grand scheme of things, evolution is a much longer period of time than just like between now and 10,000 years ago it’s not like we’ve changed all that much compared to like 50 million years or whatever plus.



So essentially all these new foods were not like adapted to digesting properly and our body doesn’t like know what they are. You know what I mean? It’s not like there’s something, it was programmed to eat Doritos. This is like something made in the laboratory. So I'm assuming that’s kind of a correct statement right?

Neely: Yeah. And I forgot to mention that. That’s a huge part of it is that Loren Cordain and some of these other scientists, they are saying that our genetics have not changed more than like one percent in a very long time. And so this 30,000 years compared to the millions of years that we had evolving from whatever Lucy up to what we are now, yeah our diet hasn’t changed very much. So that’s just like a very small bleep in time.

The only differences that we can see or some of the major differences dietarily are like some groups of people did develop an ability a better ability to adjust to dairy as adults. So like people in Sweden and Switzerland and in that area and some people in Africa who one of their staples is cow’s milk. So those people may have a better ability to digest milk than like our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

But that’s one of the main, one of the very small differences. Other than that, like yeah, we’re designed to eat meat and vegetables and some fruits when we can find them. And that’s kind of where it gets a little confusing too is that Loren Cordain, he studied about 300 different tribes of people, current hunter-gatherer people and saw what they ate. And then averaged it all out like the macronutrient ratios. And so he said that most of their diet came from animals sources so meat and their fat. And then very little of it was vegetables and fruits actually.

So that’s kind of where it got started like okay let’s eat tons of meat. But in reality it was just an average of those people’s diets and so there is a spectrum you know there are people the Inuit as we all know they eat a ton of protein and fat, a ton of it and very little carbs because they didn’t really have many available to them.

And then there are other groups like the catavins who eats 70% carbohydrates and tubers and all these things and very little



meat. And we all survived. They all survived you know and did really well. So there’s a huge spectrum. We can talk about that a little more later.

Dave: Yeah, we also have now like anyway it’s eating so much fish as because they didn’t really have grocery stores. food being in trains and planes that ship their food across the country. I guess one other thing I wanted to talk or ask you about is when you talk about Paleo a lot of people tend to get a little dogmatic and a little bit over committed and they say you know it’s all about living like a caveman so you know. I’ve heard of extremes from eating raw meat to like sleeping outside all the time and all that.

So I don’t know if you can touch on like I guess one of the phrases a friend of mine used once was like that we’re modern cavemen. So if you and I know that you kind of I don’t know prescribe is the right word but tell people, promote the Paleo diet for people as a way to be healthier. You generally I'm sure have some caveats in it so it’s not super extreme. It’s not like mimic caveman, it’s you know there’s modern foods that are okay obviously.

Neely: Yeah. I definitely am not super dogmatic. And to be clear I didn’t come to this diet because I was like oh this is the healthiest thing to do so I'm going to be Paleo. The whole caveman thing to me has always been sort of silly to be honest. And silly to me probably because most of our ancestors were not living in caves. That’s actually true like they're out on prairies, they're in forests. They were not in caves in general.

But anyway I came to it because I realized overtime and I couldn’t do gluten. Then I couldn’t dairy, then I couldn’t do grains and I couldn’t do legumes and so I was like what is this. And I found out online that there were a lot of other people who were doing the same thing.

And so no I'm dogmatic about people figuring out what is right for them because we are so adaptable as humans, it’s just about you know taking out the most toxic things from our diet and making ourselves the healthiest of what we can be.

Dave: And I think that’s kind of a good cool way to look at Paleo is taking up the most toxic thing so it’s to me personally it’s more



about cutting out the processed garbage that has now essentially becoming epidemic in not just our country but all over and focusing on eating real whole actual food. Not things that are mostly created in the lab.

Neely: Right. Yeah.

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Foods To Avoid: Grains & Beans

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Dave: So why don’t we go into the actual details of the diet. You know what foods we should eat, what foods we shouldn’t eat and why. So the first thing I want to cover because obviously if you watch shows like Dr. Oz or other popular health mediums, they don’t seem to be on the same page about the Paleo diet or eating real foods. It seems like a lot of healthy recommendations I see are for extremely processed foods.

Like for example there’s a popular meal planning service that my mom uses that is known to help people lose weight. But when I looked at the ingredients it was much more than the actual food they say. And so I know now that those things are bad. But why don’t you kind of breakdown for us because they’re being told that these are healthy foods that are helping us lose weight, why is that not true? What is wrong with our like current kind of agricultural situation here?

Neely: Okay. So let’s start with the grains. So what I had said was that we’re trying to avoid these agricultural foods. And when I said that I didn’t actually mean the fruits and vegetables that we grow agriculturally because those are things that look similar to what we would have been eating as hunter-gatherers.

What I'm talking about are like the wheat, the corn, the rice and all of those things. So the problem with wheat is one of the problems is the gluten in it. And I mean people are hearing all over that gluten is bad or whatever and that people have problems with it and it’s because we can't really digest it as humans. We’re not meant to do it. We’re not made to do it, we don’t have the tools. And so what happens is it can create inflammation in our guts and it can help create weaky gut or permeable, intestinal permeability.

Dave: Can you quickly explain what intestinal permeability is in like 10 seconds?

Neely: Yeah, sure.

Dave: Over all.

Neely: It’s basically I mean in a nutshell it’s like when your gut gets holes in it because of inflammation because of these foods that we’re going to be talking about. And proteins and other things get into



your bloodstream through your gut and your immune system reacts to those things they sort of attack it because that’s what they're supposed to do.

And then sometimes those things in there can look like your own body. And so this is where autoimmunity starts to come into place. So some protein of some food might look like your thyroid and your body has now learn to attack that thing so now it starts attacking your thyroids. Then you have Hashimoto’s. So that’s basically what gut permeability is.

Dave: Yeah and it’s like over time as you're eating those bad foods constantly your body like adapts or just essentially adjusts to hating that thing and gets confused and then you have…

Neely: Yeah and that’s exactly it gets confused. So your immune system is overacting and underacting sometimes it’s just very confused. It’s kind of shooting everywhere at the wrong time sometimes. So the gluten is one of the problems. There are other lectins in wheats and other grains that lactins are fine sometimes. But grains have quite a few in them. And certain ones are extremely harmful and they can also help contribute to the leaky gut and the intestinal permeability.

And the same with legumes. So legumes have the same things in them plus phytic acid. And phytic acid is sort of a debatable one but what Loren Cordain had said was that phytic acid binds to minerals like zinc and calcium, things that we really, really need and it takes it out of the gut in the poop basically unabsorbed.

And so he says that he believes that it’s contributing to osteoporosis and iron deficiencies and all these things. When you eat those foods. It’s not that it’s taking what you have out of your body, it’s taking what’s in that food and not letting your body absorb it. So those are some of the main problems with grains and legumes, so beans and soy.

Dave: So just back to grains specifically, gluten again. I guess the other thing that I kind of wanted for you to touch on is like also the difference now between like wheats when it was first created or first started to become cultivated agriculturally versus the wheat



that we have now and why it’s at worse now or like what’s happening.

Neely: Yeah. And I'm not actually an expert in that but I know that they're saying that there's more gluten in the current wheat. It’s also that I mean there are actually people who lived, they’ve done studies on these people. I think it was in Switzerland who one of their staple foods was wheat you know a long time ago. And they were extremely healthy.

And so one of the problem is that we’re not actually processing the grains that like we did even a hundred years ago. So we’re not soaking them, we’re not sprouting them like maybe we used to or fermenting them. And so that causes problems because those processes breakdown those things that we can't digest for us. And I think that’s one of the major problems here now because we’re not doing any of those things and we’re taking all of the nutrients out so that we can have these white gooey flour.

And so there’s like no nutrients left in them that’s why they're called fortified cereals because they actually put the nutrients back in them and sometimes those nutrients aren’t even good for us. Like they put folic acid into cereals because we need folate and folic acid turns into folate in your body but sometimes it doesn’t. And when folic acid doesn’t turn into folate in your body it can potentially cause cancer. And so it’s just like these mess that’s created with using these processed grains.

Dave: So what’s the final word here at least for this segment on grains then?

Neely: On grains, you know I think that a lot of if our hunter-gatherer ancestors have come across them naturally, I am sure well my guess is that they would have eaten them. But it’s just not something that could have been a huge part of their diets because they didn’t have these crops and crops and crops of them because they’re always moving around in search of food.

So I would say that for most people that’s probably how it should be. It just shouldn’t be a staple because it can be so inflammatory and cause all these other you know issues.



Dave: So why don’t we kind of take us back for a second to beans because we brought them up and then we went back to grains. You had said beans contain something called lectins. And I didn’t just want to quickly breach over. I wanted to actually – so as far as I know, lectins are kind of a similar protein to gluten isn't that correct or have a similar effect? You tell me what those things are. I'm not the expert.

Neely: So lectins are these protein found in every food actually. We actually have them in our own bodies. And they are sort of like in plants they think that they are there for protection. So they are sort of these poisonous thing that hurts us when eat them as their predators, plants predators.

So they are sort of protective and they are hard for us to digest and they’re part of what can cause the gas and bloating that you might get from eating beans. And so the other things that beans have are enzyme inhibitors in the phytic acid. I mean we all know that when we eat beans, a lot of us, that’s why we have this thing called beano you know we do get gassy. And so that’s kind of the problem with beans and that’s also a product of us not processing them correctly.

You know soaking them and sprouting them and doing all these things that will help take away all those things. So again, I think that if we didn’t eat them all of the time or as a staple in our diets, it would be probably okay but since we eat them so much it’s just caused problems.

Dave: I definitely heard mix doubts on beans. I know I'm pretty sure Dr. Cordain is pretty much no bueno on beans. But I know guys like Robb Wolf who is another kind of a big Paleo proponent for those who aren’t familiar is a little less – is not as a big, he doesn’t seem to be from what I know he doesn’t seem to be as strongly against them.

So I'm just curious, your personal opinion on it and also if they are okay if there’s like you mentioned there are certain ways to prepare them to make them if you must eat beans like here’s how you should. Can you talk about that?



Neely: Yeah, like I've said from the beginning I think it’s whatever people can tolerate. Like if people are psyched on lentils and they do really well with lentils. It’s not just about the digestive stuff, you have to look at your whole body if you're having headaches, if you're having skin stuff, if you're having even like pms or things like that, you got to look at the whole situation. If you're having symptoms, they are something that I would cut out like I did. When I would eat beans I would get itchy skin and I would feel just weird. And I would get bloating.

So your question was my personal opinion on it, yeah I think that when you process them, if you are going to eat them, don’t eat them out of the can because they haven’t been properly processed. You’ve got to soak them for like 12 hours and if you wanted to even go a step further you can let them sprout and that would take away some of those what we call anti-nutrients and help you digest them a little bit better. And then actually if you're going to cook them I have heard that pressure cooking them is the best way to get all that stuff out.

Dave: Speaking of sprouting and you may not have an answer for this, but I've seen a lot of you know it seems that there are people who are hardcore paleo who is just no grains at all. And I see people who are a little bit borderline and will kind of promote or say that sprouted grains I don’t actually know the names of any because I...

Neely: Like a…

Dave: Yeah, I don’t know eat them myself but it seemed to be more okay or just okay. Do you have any thoughts on sprouted grains in general?

Neely: Yeah, I mean if you're eating the gluten grains you’re still going to get the gluten from them. But the sprouting process will take away some of those anti-nutrients like the phytic acids, some of the lectins and things like that. So yeah, they are going to be easier to digest and you may absorb more of the nutrients from them.

So I think that for some people like we’re all on the spectrum I am over here and my mom is probably over here. You know where



I can't tolerate very many things but there are plenty of people who can. And they don’t have these health issues.

Dave: So essentially the final word on that is if you're going to try it just pay attention to how you feel when you eat it and if you feel like crap, don’t eat it. If you feel okay then don’t worry about it.

Neely: Yeah. And eat the highest quality beans that you can and really pay attention and be honest with yourself if you're eating them a lot like does this actually feel good?

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Is Dairy Paleo? !!!!!!!!!!!



Dave: The next step on our list in terms of foods that essentially are not really recommended on Paleo is dairy. And especially recently I think there’s probably been a little bit more controversy in like kind of back and forth to no, actually dairy is okay. So before we get into that why don’t we just start with the rationale behind not eating dairy.

Neely: Okay so the rational is very simple.

Dave: Great. I love simple.

Neely: Yeah. When you're talking about hunter-gatherers, most of them for a very long time didn’t have cows or goats or sheep that they would milk. You can't go out and milk a mastodon on either.

Dave: Or with a saber tooth tiger.

Neely: Or a saber tooth tiger and that would be weird. But it was just not something that they have available after they were breastfed so that’s why most humans after about the age of threeish, our ability, those enzymes that help us digest lactose in milk start disappearing.Whether or not they disappear completely is dependent on the person. But they do start going away. And so it gets harder and harder for us to digest milk products.

Dave: So, there’s definitely again people now who are kind of dairy is okay and others that are still very much just like no way, no how, never. Let’s get kind of your personal opinion on it as obviously a nutritional therapist, your recommendation to people about dairy in general.

Neely: Yeah, dairy is such a, it is quite a complicated issue because part of the issue is that people like I said many of them are lactose intolerant. You can tell if you're lactose intolerant if you're like farting a lot, you're bloated after you eat dairy.

Dave: By the way, for people watching, probably notice that I'm smiling, laughing and all the farting poop jokes. I'm the most mature person on Earth here. Keep going I'm sorry.

Neely: So other symptoms are diarrhea or even constipation. So that’s one issue. The other issue is the casein so that’s the protein in the dairy. And a lot people including myself are allergic to that. So I



can eat dairy and I don’t have those symptoms those digestive things but I have other symptoms including like major eczema on my face and my legs and yeast infections. And it’s immediate and it’s life altering. Those are common symptoms actually too for people who are having an immune reaction to the protein in dairies. So it’s not just the lactose.

That can range from like I said the skin issues, yeast, headaches. Some people just feel off, they get really fatigued. Some people get joint pain and some people from the casein sensitivity will get digestive issues. So again scan the whole body and see if you are okay with these things.

So the other thing that you have to think about now is the quality of the dairy that you're eating. So we’ve got raw dairy which is unpasteurized and unhomogenized which is what we’ve always had up until now. Or we have the pasteurized and homogenized dairy which when you pasteurized and homogenized dairy, you are taking out a lot of the natural enzymes in there and a lot of the nutrients. And then you're also causing a more allergenic product because you're putting when they homogenize it, it actually makes it so that there are protein globules in the fat.

And so it just gets all messy and I think that’s where a lot of people have problems with dairy because it’s not raw dairy. So if you're going to eat dairy, I would first try raw dairy and you can get that from like a local dairy farmer.

Dave: And hopefully in some other places have like raw cheese and coab…

Neely: Yes, that’s true. So in California it’s legal.

Dave: That is true a lot of states are not…

Neely: We are in California, right.

Dave: Yes.

Neely: And in some states it’s legal like in Colorado where a dairy farmer will have cows and sell their raw milk but only to people who technically own those cows so it’s like a co-op. And in another state it’s completely illegal I believe. But either way you can



always get raw cheese in whole foods or in natural health food source.

So that’s where I would begin with it but really I always suggest to people that if they're going to change their diet and they have health issues, take out the dairy for 30 days. And I was like the worst at this. For four years I had symptoms and my friend kept saying to me it’s the dairy. You got to take out the dairy and I was like I'm fine with dairy. I'm fine if this could never happen to me. And then I took it out and immediately I was better.

Dave: So then what about grass-fed dairy? It seems kind of like in the middle in between pasteurized and raw.

Neely: Yeah. So you might find milk in stores now that says it’s from pasteured cows or grass-fed cows and that’s awesome because the grass that they're eating will actually impart more vitamin A and other nutrients and other fatty acids into the milk than say factory farm cows that’s just eating grains, GMO grains at that.

So yeah, I think it’s much better and it’s much better for the cows and I've always been a huge proponent of me as a vegetarian for 12 years because I didn’t want to hurt animals. And I still don’t, it’s hard for me to accept that people are having to kill these animals that I'm eating but at least you know we need to be treating our animals humanely and because it’s not only good for them, it’s good for the environment, it’s better for us.

Dave: Yeah. I'm sure I think if people saw where some of their milk and meat comes from and the living situation of these cows they might have some second thoughts as well.

Neely: Yeah. And that’s one of the major tenants of the Paleo Diet is the quality of the food because you would never have seen a factory farm cow or pig in a hunter-gatherer days. So that really, really changes the structure of the animal protein, quality of the fatty acid, quality all the nutrient values in there.

Dave: I think it’s Paul Check who said something along the lines of like you can't get healthy eating sick animals.



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Which Oils Are Paleo? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Dave: So I believe next on our list is vegetable oils which I know in the past 20+ years have become probably more than 20 years have become much more popular and almost impossible to avoid if you go to a fast food restaurant or a chain restaurant or in a place that is not specifically saying they're using them. So why don’t you tell us about why vegetable oils are essentially bad and why we shouldn’t be eating them and then maybe give us some alternative options.

Neely: Great. There are lots of reasons and we could get into the whole cholesterol saturated fat conversation with this which I’ll just touch on. But basically that whole thing came from really bad research from people who were trying to prove something that they wanted to prove. But it wasn’t true. And there's tons of research now that will tell you that saturated fat and dietary cholesterol have nothing to do with heart disease. That’s what they were trying to tell us from the 1960’s on.

Dave: They're trying to tell us that they did have sub…

Neely: That it did have to do with it, that we should stay away from saturated fats. So we have all these crops and of course they want to make money off of these crops the corn and the soy and the canola. And so they started to go through very long chemical processes of deriving oil from – I mean honestly when you see a corn kernel it’s not like this oily thing. It takes a lot to get the oil out of that.

And so we started using corn oil and soy and all these things and those oils are actually really high in what we know as omega 6 fatty acids. And there's omega 6 fatty acids, there’s omega 3 fatty acids. And they're basically omega 3 helps us be less inflamed in general. Omega 6 helps us be more inflamed. And so we need both of them but we need them in a good balance. So when we started putting all of these omega 6 heavy oils into our diet, we started tipping the scale very heavily toward omega 6.

And omega 3’s are going to come from the kinds that our body really like are going to come from cold water fish, that’s basically the main source. There’s a little bit in grass or beef. So we’re not getting very many of those fatty acids. We’re getting a lot of



these other omega 6’s but also those omega 6 are very delicate and they can be corrupted easily by air, light and oxygen.

And so when you put them in these clear bottles and you keep them on your counter you know forever and ever, they're going to go bad. And when you chemically process them and heat them in order to get those oils out, they're already corrupted by the time they get to us. So they're causing inflammation in our bodies. That’s what that corruption does.

So they're bad for many reasons especially also because they're GMO. They're mostly GMOs which there’s I mean that’s a debatable topic. Yes so that’s what I have to say about that. I think that the oils that we should be using are the more stable oils, the saturated fats like the fats that are going to come from pastured animals so they can grease and the lard from pastured pigs and the tallow from grass-fed cows, stuff like that and then coconut oil, coconut milk, avocados. So those are the fats that we should be eating. They're much more stable and we need them in order to have our bodies work correctly.

Dave: You know a lot of vegetable oils also contain trans fats.

Neely: The trans fats, they have to go through a process to hydrogenate them. And those are obviously becoming less and less popular but they're still in there. But yeah, they usually turn those vegetable oils into the trans, the hydrogen oils yeah. And those are bad. Everybody should stay away from those. That is not debatable.

Dave: Yeah. My impression was that they're like you know you can debate beans and dairy all you want but when it comes to hydrogenated oil there is no disagreement between any…

Neely: Even like the American Heart Association agrees with that.

Dave: They're like no, no.

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The Paleo Diet and Sugar !!!!!!!!!!

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Dave: So next step is sugar. And I know sugar has been very much demonized in the past few years, maybe even longer. Why don’t you tell us about sugar, why it’s removed when you switch over to Paleo whether there’s any benefits of having sugar in your diet or if it’s totally bad and so on.

Neely: Okay. So the sugar is on its own it’s not a bad thing inherently. Right, like our bodies are really good at processing it and using it it’s really quick energy for us. We are made to eat sugar in the form of fruit and honey and all the other natural sugars that are out there in nature because when they're available we need to take advantage of those.

So it’s not that sugar is necessarily bad and you look at like a hunter-gatherer groups there are some plenty of them who climb trees to get honey. They risk a lot to get honey and it’s actually a staple in their diet. So and when you ask those people that done studies which are really interesting what’s your favorite food of your diet and it’s like meat, this vegetable, this vegetable, this fruit and just honey. And all of them said honey. So obviously we love sugar.

However in the Paleo diet in the original book by Loren Cordain he says that we should avoid it. And the people who are following this Paleo diet should avoid it. And that’s because he was really talking to typical Americans or industrialized people who are overweight, you know pre-diabetic or on their way to being that having lots of inflammation because over the last 30 years or so, sugar has become extremely abundant in our diets. And that’s been causing problems with insulin sensitivity and diabetes and being overweight because when you eat too much sugar or any carbohydrate, it’s going to turn into fat in your body and you're going to be overweight and unhealthy.

So he was basically just saying don’t eat too much of this. Don’t go crazy and if you're overweight and you need to really cut it all out. So there are different kinds of sugar obviously and he went as far as to say don’t eat the sugary fruits like bananas and peaches and mangoes and just stick with berries.

Well I think that can be good for certain people and not like for diabetic people and pre-diabetic people I mean like my dad is



diabetic and if he eats too much watermelon you know his blood sugar goes crazy. So yes for certain people it’s really important to avoid those sugary fruits.

Dave: I was just going to say I know that I’ve cut out fruit from my diet quite a bit and I used to be a huge fruit eater and not that I've ever been significantly overweight but I was trying to become more lean and just cause you know I'm like I want to get ripped you know. And I noticed when I cut down fruit and I didn’t want to do that because like my friend used to call to me a fruit bag because I'm like nuts with it that I started to lose fat quite a bit.

So not to cut you off but it would seem like it can kind of also fruit cause fruit can be high in sugar right, but doesn’t seem like it’s necessarily unhealthy but it can be more the decision at least in my mind whether to eat fruit or not is more about like my specific body type goals. You know what I'm saying. So I don’t know if you can talk about that at all.

Neely: Yeah and I think it’s about your specific body type not necessarily your goals. So I have tried ketosis. This is kind of like an aside a little bit but it relates to this. So I've tried ketosis and that is high fat, moderate protein, very low carbs. Because I want to see if it would make me do all the things that all these athletes are saying you know. It leans them out, it makes you have more energy, it makes you have more sustained energy all of these things.

And so when I did that, I felt terrible. I felt awful and it’s because I don’t know why but there was an article written on it by that Paleo guy and he was like well look at you, you have muscle, you’re lean, you don’t really have much fat to burn but in use on your body. And so that’s not going to work for you. Whereas somebody like Jimmy Moore who’s bigger, he does really well with it and so do a lot of people who do have fat to burn.

And I'm not like making myself seem better than anybody else here but like if your body type is one way, it may not do, you may not do very well with like such little carbohydrates. If I don’t have fruit every day I mean you see how much fruit I eat, I just tank and my brain doesn’t work and you know I've tried this for weeks at a time. It just doesn’t work.



So yeah for people who need to lose weight, have a little bit of fat to spare, it’s probably a good idea. But even then you know there are plenty of people who do have fat to lose and their body type is such that they need the carbs in order to like get through their day properly and be a functional human being.

Dave: So what is your not final word, but your word and your advice for people who come to you for nutrition consulting on sugar like totally cut it out, lower it a lot, don’t give a crap. What is your approach here?

Neely: Obviously I have a lot to say about carbs because I think that it’s not okay to say to everybody if you want to be healthy you have to stop eating carbs. I think that’s ridiculous. And I'm not saying you know vegetables, that’s carbs because most people who are touting healthier diet are saying eat lots of vegetables and vegetables are carbs source. So I'm not saying that.

But I think that it totally depends on the person. If the person has a lot of fat to lose and they're pre-diabetic, they have metabolic issues obviously, big blood sugar issues, I generally say let’s start with lots of veggies, lots of meat and fat and try one or two pieces of fruit a day, right. And because a lot of times in the transition period it’s hard for people to just cut it out you know because we love that sweet, I mean it’s natural.

And then we go from there so we try that for a couple of weeks, if it’s not working then we cut it out and see how that goes. And you know maybe some of the more veggies so that they still have that full feeling with the fiber and all that. So it really depends on the person but if they're coming to me and they're an athlete then that’s a totally different story. Then we’re looking at you know especially if they're an endurance athlete especially Nell Stephenson would even say something different.

But I have seen with my own clients that when they come in and they are an endurance athlete and they're running or cycling a few times or more a week, and they're used to eating this many carbs, they have to substitute those with something. So we have sweet potatoes, I have them put in tapioca, I have them put in plantains in fruit so that first of all they're not completely



shocking their body and going no carb and trying to you know burn fat for fuel right away because it does take some time.

But also just because when you're doing that kind of work you do need carbs. You just do. I mean even ketogenic, ultra runners a lot of them are using like gels or whatever during their races. It’s just better.

Dave: So I guess the thing I'm taking away from this is you know essentially sugars from real, natural sources you know they're not, we shouldn’t be like freaking out about it obviously again it fit whatever it fits into what you want or your body type and what works for you. But I think you would agree probably that process sugars is kind of like a not really up for debate kind of topic here. Like it’s just …

Neely: Well, it’s interesting because when you say process sugars I'm assuming that you mean white sugar.

Dave: Yeah.

Neely: So like granulated sugar, powder sugar, brown sugar even, high fructose corn syrup, things like that. Yeah, I mean high fructose corn syrup is gross because it’s made in a disgusting way and it’s like completely manmade. It’s usually GMO, it’s from corn so like a lot of people have issues with corn. Anyway, so yeah don’t eat that.

But high fructose corn syrup is it’s make up is similar to honey and as far as fructose and glucose composition. So it’s not like it’s this terrible, terrible thing. It’s not really even higher in fructose in general than honey is. So I mean fructose it’s being demonized also because if you have too much fructose it’s going to affect your liver and it’s going to affect your metabolic syndrome like they are thinking that it’s affecting inflammation and your susceptibility to becoming diabetic and having liver issues.

So it’s not something that you want to be eating a ton like supplementing with fructose or something like that. And some people are going to be more sensitive to it than others and that’s always my message is you have to figure out what you can deal with. Like I don’t do well with agabe for some reason. It makes me feel high. And I don’t know if that’s because it actually has a



lot of fructose in it. But I don’t know what it is but everybody needs to figure out their own tolerance to these things even if that means you're using a glucometer in figuring that out. I mean it’s easy to buy one of those things and test yourself.

Dave: Yeah, I think next time I’ll have something sure be able to tell everybody I'm supplementing with fructose. That’s my new thing.

Neely: Yeah and as far as the white sugar to answer your actual question, I don’t think that we need it. I mean there are plenty of other sweet things that actually have nutrients in them.

Dave: Like fruit.

Neely: Right. Like fruit but also like yeah, like dates and raw honey. And if you really, really want sweet there’s just other options like grade b maple syrup that still has nutrients in it.

Dave: So give me the final word on sugar.

Neely: My final word on sugar.

Dave: And you can't ever change this ever. No going back on it. This is final.

Neely: Okay. Again I put a lot of thought into sugar and read a lot about it. White sugar doesn’t really have many nutrients in it. It doesn’t have really any at all. And so those kinds of sugars in your daily life for basic needs, you don’t need to eat it. High fructose corn syrup, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, things like that it’s not necessary. And you can substitute that for other sugars like honey, raw honey when you really need a sweet treat or grade B maple syrup or dates and things like that. It really can satisfy your sweet tooth when you need something like that. And those have nutrients in them.

So as far as if you're an athlete, this is different if you're doing long runs and you need fuel then you very well may need to supplement with glucose. You know gels or homemade sugar balms basically to keep you going because it’s hard work for your body. You need to fuel. But if you're trying to lose weight and you're exercising an average amount or if you have diabetes or you’re pre-diabetic, you're metabolic syndrome and all then yeah,



it’s something that you need to cut out and experiment with how much fruit and what kinds of fruit you can deal with.

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The Benefits of Paleo !!!!!!

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Dave: So why don’t we talk about the benefits of Paleo. We’ve been talking about what it actually is but you know we haven’t really talked about why people should it other than oh that’s what our ancestors ate. Like what’s in it for me when I switch to Paleo. You know I don’t know what’s in it for me. Why don’t you tell everybody what they’re going to get when they switch to Paleo.

Neely: Yeah, because it’s a big sacrifice. It’s a big lifestyle change even for me. and I’ll start with how it affected me because I think I'm pretty typical. When I switched over from being even gluten-free to no grains, no legumes, less sugar, my muscle tone changed a little bit. I was less fatigued and my skin was less itchy. I was less depressed. My blood sugar, I've always struggled with blood sugar issues with hypoglycemia so there were many mornings where if I didn’t eat by a certain time I was about to punch my husband in the face which he didn’t like. You know I was really grumpy and I think a lot of women especially can relate with that. And so...

Dave: Punch your husband in the face.

Neely: Yeah, feeling like not a very good person. A lot of the time when you don’t get your food at the right time. And I didn’t ever think that I can be different than that. I thought it was just, that was just my personality. But it turned out that when I stop eating the grains which were apparently really messing with my blood sugar and I focused because I was having like rice for breakfast with a little bit of eggs in it you know and some veggies or something and then I’ll have gluten-free bread for lunch with some meat in it and then for dinner we’d have like rice pasta or something you know that’s even as a gluten-free person but it’s similar to a non-gluten-free person.

And when I took that out and I was eating lots more veggies, lots of meat and fat and not like an excessive amount of meat but enough where somehow overtime my blood sugar just sort of stabilizing. And I think that happens to a lot of people. So what happens with that is if you're pre-diabetic or diabetic or your blood sugar is out of control in any way, it starts to normalize. And that means that your mood normalizes and that means you have less anxiety, it means you have less fatigue, it means you



have less depression. And all of it sort of, so your brain is working better. Everything is working better.

Dave: Why is your blood sugar normalizing when you're eating Paleo specifically?

Neely: Because if you're living on these pretty low quality carbs with not very many nutrients in them to begin with and also they're simple, they're much simpler than like broccoli. Broccoli compared to white rice or quinoa even is going to affect your blood sugar in a much faster way. So you're going to have this high blood sugar rise and then the higher it gets in a shorter amount of time, the lower and more quickly it’s going to plummet. And that’s just the way it works.

Like you eat, it goes high, you feel kind of jittery even sometimes or very energetic and then it plummets and that’s when people want their coffee and their sugary foods and all that. And then so they have something in it and it goes way way high and then it plummets again. And then you just do that your whole day and so you're releasing all these hormones to deal with all that. And your mood is going crazy. You're energy levels are going crazy.

When you have the protein and the fat which are very stabilizing with high quality more complex carbohydrates, your blood sugar isn't doing that anymore. It’s just much more, it’s much smoother throughout the day.

Dave: So another one of the big benefits I know from switching to Paleo is that it’s essentially reduces over all like a systemic inflammation. So can you talk about what that actually means and also why is that happening.

Neely: Yeah. So sugar can cause inflammation, we’ll just start right where we left off. So all of that sort of the highs and lows of your blood sugar are going to make you release cortisol. Because when your blood sugar is really low, your adrenals release cortisol and tell your liver to produce more glucose to put into your bloodstreams so you have the energy to keep going.

And so that cortisol is going to create more inflammation in your body. And by inflammation I mean systemic inflammation like you



were just saying so that can look like, I can just look like making your immune system being more on alert to anything.

So for instance the other thing that can cause us inflammation are these foods that we’re talking about like the grains, the gluten, all of those things that are going to affect your gut because inflammation a lot of times starts in the gut. So if you have what we’re calling intestinal permeability earlier, then your immune system is being affected by these foods that are getting into your system when they shouldn’t be.

And so that’s going to be causing I think, that can cause anything from digestive upset to migraines clogging not clogging but causing inflammation in your arteries that can turn into heart disease. So it can look like anything. Eczema, acne is really popular. My skin cleared up when I went Paleo completely and figured out my other food sensitivities.

So that’s the deal with inflammation or any pretty much any disease that we hear now cancer, diabetes, heart disease, even being obese, those are inflammation. But depression, this is all becoming known that it’s inflammation related.

Dave: Well it seems like you know like you said inflammation being like all those those things I think it would be fair to say then that if you were to switch to Paleo and along with the food sensitivities like you said, you would be reducing the risk of many of the top disease like killer diseases. Is that a true state or a fair statement….?

Neely: Yeah, for sure. I mean people reverse diabetes. Their heart markers go from crazy out of control to like completely normal. All their diabetes markers or pre-diabetes markers go from out of control to normal. I mean I don’t know many, I haven’t talked to many people who have had any success with this curing cancer and I don’t ever want to say that. But you know it would make sense that if you have less inflammation in your body to begin with, you might be able to avoid having cancer.

And other disease, the auto-immune diseases like MS and rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, celiac, all those, those definitely stem from the gut. They stem from your gut health. And if you're



not putting toxins into your gut then you're going to have a better chance of not having those diseases too.

Dave: So for me when I switched to Paleo just so I can – not just you obviously and the people you’ve worked with, but you know there’s a case study here too. When I switched I was able to lose fat and build muscle much easier. My hormones balanced that I had my mom who, sorry mom, I think she’s 58 years old. She had higher testosterone than me when I was 23 years old which for what I've been told is not…

Neely: It’s not normal.

Dave: It’s not like she’s like a body builder, it’s like I was just like super low. I can think clear. I felt happier, more energy. You know I had struggle with depression for a little while and that kind of went away. Are there any other, the reason why I'm saying this I'm trying to show that there's so many things that can happen that are good for your body when you switch. I mean that was really life changing for me. Are there any other big benefits that you want to cover in regards to switching to Paleo?

Neely: Yeah. I think that the biggest ones I see like you said you have more energy, your mood is more stable, you have less water weight. A lot of people have edema that goes away. People will have less joint pain, that’s something that happened to me. I mean I'm suffering some from an injury right now but in general I used to be injured a lot more or so I thought.

And it ended up that you know certain foods were causing inflammation in my joints and a lot of people have said that. I mean I have talked to people over the age of 75 and thought they had arthritis and it just went away when they stopped eating these foods. It looked like arthritis went away which is just so incredible. You know people who have MS who were in wheelchairs are no longer in wheelchairs and they're living a normal life.

And these aren’t just I mean this isn't just stories that I'm making up. I used to talk to these people on a regular basis and hear their stories and it’s incredible. It’s just incredible.



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Confusing Foods On Paleo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Dave: Hi. So I'm back with my handy dandy fancy little notebook here because we’re going to talk about some foods that are confusing when we switch over to Paleo. Some foods that are Paleo but we may want to not have as much over so on and so forth. And of course there’s a few them so I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget with this fantastic invention.

So the first food that there is some mix messaging on when it comes switching to Paleo are potatoes. And so potatoes, sweet potatoes and kind of just starchy carbs in general. So why don’t you tell me where the confusion is, are potatoes good or are they bad, are they Paleo, what’s the story?

Neely: So in the original Paleo diet book by Dr. Cordain, he said that white potatoes are not good for you. Number one because they’re worst on your blood sugar than sweet potatoes. Well that’s just not true. And I don’t know maybe I read it wrong or maybe I'm remembering incorrectly but I do believe that’s what he said. And in any case that’s what a lot of people think.

And so I just looked it up to double check and the way that your blood sugar is affected by both of those things is basically the same. Sweet potatoes do have more nutrients in them. A little bit in some ways. And so in that way they are definitely better but the only other problem with white potatoes is that they're a nightshade and so they have certain anti-nutrients in them that are glycoalkaloids. And those can compromise your gut.

A lot of times people who have arthritis are affected by that. It’s also something nightshades are taken out of the diet on the autoimmune protocol for Paleo. So they can cause damage to your gut if you do have more of a sensitivity to them or if you're a little bit more compromised than other people.

But if you can deal with them, if you're not getting any symptoms when you're eating potatoes or tomatoes or eggplants and things like that, peppers, then I think that you should go ahead and eat them. Especially if you don’t have any major blood sugar issues. If you're not trying to avoid carbs too much. Potatoes I think are a totally viable option for people.



Dave: So you kind of touched on that briefly in there nightshades. So that was one of our other foods on the list here. So for me personally I know that I'm a little bit extra sensitive to peppers though. As far as I know there are vegetable that’s paleo. So tell us about the confusion here with nightshades and what do we need to be thinking about.

Neely: Yeah, in general so pepper again. Nightshades are peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, tobacco actually in there too. So that means any sort of her or like spice mix that has those things in them like chili peppers, cayenne pepper, anything that’s a pepper not black pepper but other peppers, those are all nightshades.

So a lot of people when they have Hashimoto’s or lupus or MS or one of those things where they're really immune, their autoimmune and so their immune system is very confused and on alert. These are the people who really want to be very tender with their gut health. So anything that is maybe going to affect them should be taken out.

I mean my personal opinion is that if you're autoimmune and you want to change your diet from a standard American one to be healthier, I would start with Paleo and see how that goes. And then if it still not getting any better then yeah, you start taking out the nightshades and the nuts and the seeds and anything else that might compromise your gut health because as we said inflammation starts in the gut. Autoimmunity starts in the gut. So that’s the deal with those. But other than that, if you don’t have any effects from them yeah, they're perfectly fine to eat.

Dave: So the next one we have is quinoa which is a green, it’s not, don’t have gluten.

Neely: It’s a pseudo grain.

Dave: Tell us all about quinoa because I’m personally confused about it as well.

Neely: Okay well my opinion of this is that if it looks like a grain and acts like a grain, it’s a grain. And quinoa is definitely one of those things and I've had so I can't tell you how many people I have had say to me quinoa is a seed, quinoa isn't a grain. Well all grains are



seeds number one. And second of all quinoa has all the anti-nutrients that other grains that other grains have in them like the lectins, the phytic acid, there’s another one I can't think of right now but they can affect your gut. They can cause immune symptoms, they can cause digestive symptoms.

And just because it’s not technically the same kind of food as wheats and rice and all the others it doesn’t mean that you have license to eat it when you're trying to have a healthier less inflammatory diet. So the other thing about quinoa that people think that it’s a high protein food, well it’s not. It’s not any higher protein really than any other grain.

Its amino acid profile is a little bit different and people say that it’s a complete protein. Well it kind of is but a couple of those amino acids are extremely low so while it has all of them in there, it’s not like meat, it’s not like eggs, it’s not even like dairy. Well those are like robust protein sources. I would never say to somebody yeah, you need a high protein meal go have some quinoa and vegetables.

No, that’s just not the way that it works. So I don’t want people to be confused or like misinformed because you're getting in one cup of quinoa you're getting about you know 10 to 15 grams of proteins and that’s not very much as opposed to like 4 grams or 4 ounces of steak which is going to be like 30 grams. So it’s completely different.

Dave: So next step we’ve got nuts and seeds. So we’ve talked about them in this video about how they're good for you. So why are they confusing food? Where do we run into promise with nuts and seeds?

Neely: The thing with nuts and seeds is there are a lot of things with nuts and seeds. Number one is that they are extremely easy to snack on. So when people go to Paleo they’re like oh I need snacks so I'm going to take this bag of nuts and seeds. And I'm going to eat that. And while that’s really fine I can personally attest to the fact that you can gain weight doing that. And for a while it was just having handfuls of cashews and I was eating like a thousand calories of cashews a day and that’s not okay for a person who is



trying to maintain or lose weight. It’s really easy to do that. That’s a cup of cashews has 900 something calories in it.

Dave: Only a cup of cashews is probably not even really all – it’s not a lot of cashews.

Neely: Right. Yeah. And my husband too he was working, he had a desk job and he constantly has to have something in his face like I think a lot of people do. And so he was just eating just handfuls and handfuls and all of a sudden he was 15 pounds heavier. And he was like oh my God it’s the nuts and seeds. And so he cut them, he ended up bringing a very small bag to work every day. And he would just eat one at a time and then the weight went away.

So the other thing about nuts and seeds is that they have those anti-nutrients in them just like grains do the lectins and the phytic acids. And they can be very difficult to digest. So we don’t properly process nuts and seeds in this country at least not most of us. You know you need to be soaking them or you need to be sprouting them in order to get rid of a lot of those anti-nutrients so we can digest them properly.

So when you don’t do that a lot of times people will get gas and even if you do that a lot of us have just problems with them whether it’s immune or it’s digestive or whatever. So for instance I thought that I had elbow tendonitis for two months. And it got so bad that I couldn’t climb anymore. And finally I was like do you know I'm kind of a sensitive person, I wonder if it’s a food that I'm eating. And it was, it was the freaking cashews.

And as soon as I took out the cashews, that elbow pain went away within a few days. And it was incredible to me and it was really eye opening for all of my clients and my family. And the same thing with my mother-in-law when she eats nuts and seeds she gets finger pain. So I think that it’s more common than we know where people are having problems with nuts and seeds whether it’s digestive or headaches or skin or joints, they're kind of an inflammatory food if you're eating too much of them.

The other thing with nuts and seeds is that a lot of them are really high in omega 6 and lower in omega 3. Some of them don’t really have many omega 3’s at all. So they can be sort of you



know tipping you over to that inflammatory place. So I just say if you're going to eat them don’t eat too many of them, find other snacks. And don’t make them like your main source of food. Because a lot of people do.

Dave: Right so next step on our list of confusing foods, a fan favorite, a personal favorite, you told me other day it’s your favorite food, chocolates.

Neely: Oh yes chocolates.

Dave: Yes, so tell me about chocolates. Good for us, bad for us, confusing food, Paleo, not Paleo, what’s the story with chocolate?

Neely: Yeah, chocolates. So we all love chocolates. Chocolate is my favorite food and I cannot eat it. When I eat it I am like a crack addict and I get acne. And it’s just that simple. So we had to breakup, we’re no longer together.

Dave: It must be so sad.

Neely: It is sad, it also gave me an ocular migraine. My first one ever because I went on a chocolate binge. Anyway, you guys are getting to know a little bit about me but I don’t think I'm alone in this. You know chocolate is one of those things that’s like it affects your serotonin levels. It is a blissful food. It’s lovely.

Dave: It’s almost like a drug.

Neely: Yeah and it is like a drug.

Dave: It pretty much is. We were just talking about this yesterday with Dr. Tom O’Brien and food and what not, how it affects your brain. It is almost like exactly the same response in your brain. I mean I'm not the expert here but my impression was that it was like a very similar response in our brain to like having cocaine basically.

Neely: I don’t know if we should go that far but it is for me personally it is very much like that. If there’s chocolate in the house I mean yeah. So anyway the thing with chocolate is that well we’re trying to stay away from sugar on a Paleo Diet. A lot of people are saying you know you can still have dark chocolate and so what does that mean? That means that your general Hershey’s or even Chocolove



or like some of the better brands of chocolate are out because they have, you're trying to go for like 70% cacao or more.

And that to me is not delicious at all. Like I don’t eat that. I never have really eaten that. and I don’t think a lot of people have. So it also has soy lecithin in it which soy is something that we’re trying to avoid for various reasons. And it’s really hard, now there’s these Paleo chocolates coming out that are higher in cacao and lower in sugar. They don’t have soy in them so that’s cool.

But it’s something that you want to just eat in moderation and watch yourself with it because it’s an addictive food really consider, maybe not completely breaking up with it like I did. But yeah, just watch it and watch the sugar content and try to eat 70% and above and if it bothers you, if you're still having symptoms and you're doing this Paleo thing like think about chocolate because it is something that does affect a lot of people.

Dave: And when you say chocolate too are you talking about like pure cacao or coco powder?

Neely: Cacao seemed to be, I mean they don’t usually have much sugar in them. I could be wrong. I never really was into those. They're really bitter.

Dave: Those are gross. I don’t even talk about those.

Neely: You know they come from they're similar to chocolate, they come from the same place. And they have antioxidants in them. It’s a nutrient dense food in a sense and so it’s not like it’s bad for you. It’s just something that usually has a ton of sugar in it so you just got to watch it.

Dave: From what I've learned so far is that chocolate and nuts come together is just like a disaster waiting to happen.

Neely: For me.

Dave: Yeah. So next step, we’ve got another fan favorite, something that I have only recently started even being okay with drinking just for the taste purposes is coffee. And I know plenty of people drink probably an obscene amount of coffee and feel the need to



drink it every morning just to get through the day. What are your thoughts on coffee? Is it Paleo, is it not Paleo, benefits, pros cons?

Neely: Well I don’t, I think that there have always been stimulant plants out there. I mean there's a lot more than just coffee that people have used to whatever to keep themselves awake like there's the…

Dave: Yerba mate.

Neely: Yeah, yerba mate and there’s another one that Vietnamese people chew on. So I don’t think that it’s necessary not Paleo. But I do think that people used it as in my opinion way too much of a crutch And I know that there are people listening to this who just now got very defensive.

Dave: Yeah. Because they're like with a cup of coffee in a hand.

Neely: Yeah and that’s fine. And like everything else they say everybody has their own tolerance for caffeine. And so there are couple of things with coffee though. One is that if you were going through your day, only because awake, only because you have coffee then that’s a problem.

And granted there are sometimes in your lives where you have to have a crutch for whatever reason like if you have a big work project or if you just had a baby and you have to work but you're up all night. And I'm not saying this, I mean obviously it would be better if you didn’t have to do it but if it is a crutch like that yeah, I would say give it a few minutes of thought and think about will my life be better if I wasn’t stressing my body out with this caffeine every day. And I can go on and on about this.

But the other problem is that coffee, they just figured out that it’s not necessarily, they used to think that it looked like gluten to people’s bodies. And so it would react the same way. But now they actually found that there is gluten in most coffees. S o instant coffees, coffees that you find at grocery stores…

Dave: So not just like coffee beans per se.

Neely: Yeah. So it’s manufactured.

Dave: And like processed coffee is what you're saying.



Neely: Yeah, well the coffee beans.

Dave: Really, wow.

Neely: Yeah, because they're manufacturing them or not manufacturing them but they're processing them in the same plants as they're processing food with gluten in them. And so they have gluten on them. And so they actually found that the only place that doesn’t have that is Starbucks because they have like a dedicated facility which is kind of a big deal and I don't know which brands exactly other than Starbucks are okay or gluten free.

But it’s definitely something to think about if you're still having the same sort of gluten issues that you were before you were gluten-free. And you're drinking coffee, it’s something that you should think about. And maybe switch coffee brands or take it out for a little bit and see if it affects you or you get better. And so yeah, coffee to me is something like in this stress-filled world that we live in, it’s definitely a stimulant, it’s definitely affecting a lot of people’s health in extreme ways and they don’t sleep, they can't sleep, they’re fatigued a lot, their joints ached, their digestive issues are way worse because of coffee. And so it’s something to just think about. Do I really love this or am I addicted to it so…

Dave: And from what I've been told again I'm not the expert here that’s why we’re asking you the questions. If you are going for coffee then you want to find like organic roasted like the highest quality coffee bean as possible.

Neely: Well yeah, but I don’t even know, you would have to do a little bit more research on it to find out if it is actually gluten-free and I'm sure that some of these more high quality coffee companies on their websites will say this is a gluten-free product and we know that for sure. But if it doesn’t, I mean I don’t really trust anything that’s been…

Dave: Yeah. I guess the other thing too is like it some like mainstream coffee drinks and I won't say any brands will sell you like something spiced latte or something and it’s not really quite coffee which is kind of a different topic here but I guess I just



wanted to like be clear when we’re talking about coffees specifically we’re talking about just like..

Neely: The bean. Yeah, but that’s a good point too because when people drink coffee they're not usually drinking like black coffee, they're usually drinking it with either cream in it which is dairy which a substitute for that would be coconut milk or coconut oil even or MCT Oil which people are putting in their coffee. And then there are also usually having some sort of sugar in there and I don’t know if you want a sweetener or maybe do raw honey instead.

But yeah, like if you're going to Starbucks or wherever I'm getting some sort of sweetened coffee drink then there’s going to be some stuff in there that’s probably not going to be good for you in many, many ways.

Dave: So we have two more. The next one, I love this fan favorite. Fan favorite is now a fan favorite place for me. Alcohol. So as far as I know our cavemen ancestors could be wrong or not out getting cronked on shots of tequila but from my impression people who are Paleo will still drink. So I think this is one of those this subjects where we kind of talked about, the focus on like the reality of modern life and like being social and whatever. So why don’t you talk about alcohol. Why is it confusing, where do you stand on it overall?

Neely: Yeah. So in my, my best guess is that our ancestors were probably getting drunk. I mean birds get drunk off of highly fermented fruits. Like you seen it or maybe you haven’t seen it or maybe you haven’t seen it but I have. And I know that it happens. And so super, super easy to make alcoholic beverages.

And if you look at all the hunter-gatherer groups now, there's usually something that they're making that is from a fermented alcoholic beverage. Sometimes it’s really gross but you know it seems like everybody has the taste for it or the need for it or whatever. And I don’t think that it’s necessarily I mean there’s a group in Scotland who has some of the longest living people. And one of the things that they say has kept them alive for so long is mead which has like all of the properties of the honey cone in there and everything. So they are saying that that is good for them.



But anyway back to the topic of today in the real world, I don’t necessarily think that alcohol is bad for us in moderation. I mean I'm not saying like go get crunk on a case of beer every night by any means but I do think our bodies are capable, our healthy bodies are capable of processing it and detoxing it and we’re fine.

There are some drinks that are high in antioxidants like wines. So if you're going to drink which you're going to drink, most people are going to drink. There are times when you shouldn’t, there are times when you need to figure out what is hurting you. And so like if you're doing a whole 30, if you're doing a Paleo challenge or whatever you're doing at that time, yeah I’d say don’t drink. Everybody can stop drinking for 30 days. And if you can't that’s an issue that you need to deal with.

But if you're going to drink, what I personally do is I’ll drink these things, I’ll drink mead which is honey wine. It’s wine made of honey, it’s really good. Sometimes it’s dry, sometimes it’s sweet. I’ll drink wine. I actually like port wine because I have a sweet tooth so it’s kind of like this dessert thing for me. I’ll drink really high quality tequila and when I say it really high quality I mean expensive which sucks but it means that it is actually just pure agave. It’s made from pure agave and there is nothing coloring it.

Because a lot of times with those cheap alcohols, they're brown partly because they have like a caramel coloring or some of their coloring in them which is often made of gluten or something involving gluten or corn or something like that. The cheaper whiskies are going to be made out of corn and they're going to have additives in there as well. So you want to get the pure, distilled, higher shelf liquors. So I’ll get like really nice gin even Bombay or something like that is high enough quality.

So things like that are of really high quality vodka. And just use very simple mixers. Don’t go buying the skinny girl whatever it’s called mixer that’s got like high fructose corn syrup and aspartame and all kinds of preservatives in it and weird colorings like that’s unnecessary. If you take tonic which yes has sugar in it but again if you're going to be drinking like most of us are going to use a mixer. Just make it a really clean tonic with no



preservatives or anything in it. Or not too many like get a higher quality tonic.

Use lime juice and you got yourself a drink with gin you know or margaritas anything like a little bit of honey, mix it up with an unchilled tequila and put some lime juice in it and ice and you’ve got the margarita. So it’s really simple. Stuff like that.

Dave: One thing I did pick up when you were talking about this is that you said a healthy body should be able to detoxify you from alcohol. And that reminded me that a friend of mine and I don’t think people should do this but he was like you know what’s great about Paleo, he’s like when I go out and get drunk, I don’t get hung as hangover anymore. So I feel better about it.

Neely: I don’t either.

Dave: So side perk of Paleo, going back to our benefits not that we’re recommending people go get drunk but it is definitely something I've noticed where tolerance for alcohol in terms of how quickly you know be drunk or whatever. But definitely I don’t feel like I'm dying the next day as often.

Neely: Well yeah, and if you're drinking higher quality stuff that also affects how badly your hangover because you got all those other chemicals that your body is going to detox.

Dave: I'm sure everybody has that one experience in their life where they were like had a lot of cheap wine or something and the next day was just a total disaster.

Neely: Yeah, completely.

Dave: So the final one we’ve got here are sweeteners and you kind of just briefly hint to that it. I'm assuming, we’re talking about natural sweeteners, artificial sweeteners, good, bad, what to use, what to avoid…

Neely: I think that the bigger topic here is sweets. So in the Paleo world now there is a hundred million cook books which is awesome and a lot of them are great.

Dave: You mean like dessert cook books?



Neely: Well yeah, there are books just that are dessert cook books which is awesome. Like I like sweets sometimes and so that’s fine for me and there are other people who – we’re all in a spectrum here like some people can really tolerate the sweets and some people really, really just can't. So those books are out for them, those sweets are out for them for pretty much ever because they’ve messed up their metabolism and their insulin sensitivity and all that for a long time maybe forever.

So anyway, if you can't deal with sweets on any level whether it’s honey or white sugar, then don’t eat them. But if you are going to eat them, figure out how often you can eat them and create them using you know like I said raw honey or grade b maple syrup or I'm not really a huge fan of agave I think it’s weird. Or molasses or dates, just if you blend up dates that can be a good enough sweetener for things.

Dave: What about like coconut sugar and coconut syrup?

Neely: Yeah, coconut sugar, coconut sap, also just using fruit as a sweetener. Bananas like we make banana tapioca crepes pretty often. It’s a staple in our diet and it’s you know it’s got kind of like a hint of sweetness to it and we can even wrap savory things in them. So it’s amazing how your palate changes and fruit, the sweetness of fruit is very sweet. Whereas before you would need like a coke to really get that sweet sensation.

So I would just say those are the sweeteners that I would use and that I do use. I would stay away and [0:26:56] [Inaudible] is fine too I'm not really a fan of it but people do use those and some people will use the sugar alcohols which I don’t think are terrible but they can give you some serious digestive issues. I have that with them and I mean some of those things are actually used as laxatives.

So I would say just see if you can tolerate those but definitely stay away from like the aspartame and those artificial sweeteners I think that there’s enough research done on them now that we know that they can cause neurological issues. I mean I've seen it with friends actually where they had MS issues. They stopped drinking diet sodas and those MS issues went away. Headaches and



mood issues and cravings and all those things. So I would say definitely stay away from the artificial sweeteners.

Dave: For sure.

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Primal vs. Paleo !!!!!!!!!!!!!



Dave: SO why don’t we talk about another kind of confusing topic for some people. There’s been another kind of diet I guess lifestyle that’s been promoted in the past few years called Primal. And Primal and paleo are two very similar but also different programs. So why don’t you tell us the difference between the two and I guess your thoughts overall on which you ascribe to, pros and cons, what people should think about when they're approaching you on one of those or Primal at least.

Neely: That’s a good question because there's a lot of confusion around it and I think they’re sort of melding into each other. So Paleo diet I guess that was not, there was some other authors who were talking about it before Dr. Loren Cordain but he is pretty much like the godfather of that and then Robb Wolf came after him. He was actually a student of Dr. Loren Cordain and he has his books on it. And they are pretty much the same thing.

It’s pretty much like lean meats, no dairy, very little carb right. So then you’ve got Mark Sisson and he is the guy from Marksdailyapple.com and the Primal Blueprint. that was his book. And that’s what all his products are based off as the Primal Blue Print. And he basically said yes I totally agree with this and I think that we should eat like our ancestors, we shouldn’t be eating these grains and these legumes, vegetable oils.

But there are some people who can deal with dairy especially high fat dairy because that’s where all the nutrients are in the fat. And raw dairy preferably, fermented dairy preferably. And so if you're going to eat dairy, if you can tolerate it then eat that kind of dairy in moderation. So that’s one of the big differences with Primal and Paleo.

The other difference is that Mark Sisson is way more okay with fat and fatty foods than Loren Cordain was. And even Robb Wolf although that’s debatable about what Robb actually thinks. So he’s way more okay with eating the fats from the animals. So what Cordain would say now is that he’s okay with the fat. He’s okay with the fat from these pasture-raised animals. And he was saying to people that they should be eating lean animals because the bad stuff form those animals, from the conventionally raised factory farm animals is stored in their fat and that is mostly what



Americans have access to. Most people don’t have access to pasture-raised, grass-fed animals.

So he was trying to have to stay away from that and that’s why he said that. He understands that there are fattier animals in the wild that are fine for us. That fat is fine. So he also wasn’t okay with bacon. I don’t really understand that and obviously Mark Sisson is totally fine with bacon. I'm totally fine with bacon, I don’t see any problem with eating bacon as long as it’s from a pastured animal. And that it doesn’t have all kinds of nasty preservatives in it or extra nitrates or anything like that.

So those are the main differences. But other than and Sisson is also in Primal is also okay with a few more carbs maybe than Dr. Cordain was. So those are the differences.

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Transitioning to Paleo !!!!!!!!!!!



Dave: So when someone transitions to the Paleo diet, how should they expect to feel? I mean obviously they’ve talked quite a bit about the benefits and how we feel great but I know for me it wasn’t like that initially and I know for a lot of people there’s some challenges. So why don’t you tell me what can happen and like that first kind of two to three week period when you transition from essentially the standard American diet to the Paleo diet as we know it.

Neely: Yeah, it can be really bad.

Dave: That’s it, alright, done.

Neely: I mean like I said I transition from a gluten-free, dairy free diet to paleo. And for three weeks, 21 days I felt like I was walking through oatmeal. Every day. All I want to do is sleep. I had headaches and I was grumpy and I was just so tired. And it can be much worse than that. And after the 21st day it was like okay I'm good.

So what can happen is when you take out those foods which can be very addictive and they have some of the same properties in them as drugs do, it can be just like when you're coming off drugs like if you're a drug addict or an alcoholic and you're coming off of those and you get sick. You feel worse before you feel better.

So for anywhere from two days of seeing people have this to a month, you can feel headaches, tired. Some people will even throw up sometimes and they’ll be really nauseous. You can get diarrhea or constipated. You can have like flare ups of your worst symptoms so like if you have eczema it might get worse before it gets better. If you have MS you might have worse, whatever your symptoms are it might get worse before it gets better. So you might get a migraine. You might not be able to sleep very well. you might feel super, super cravy. I don’t even know if that’s a word.

Dave: It’s okay we get it.

Neely: Yeah, but you know and you might want to binge really bad. You might have the worst sugar cravings you have ever had that make you want to kill someone to get some sugar. So what I have always told people to do is number one, definitely enough. Because I



think that what happens with a lot of people is they go from eating their standard diet to Paleo and they don’t really know what to eat. So not eating enough. They're not substituting their calories out properly and they're kind of starving themselves. So yeah, you're going to be you're going to crave sugar when you do that.

So definitely make sure you're eating enough calories whether that means you’re eye balling things and putting a little bit more even on your plate than you normally would and using a little more fat than you normally would because you're not having those grains and the beans to create calories for you. So eat enough.

Number two would be to I know that a lot of people don’t agree with me with this but I think that it helps people transition. So if you're going to be binging or if you're going to be wanting to binge and you're craving stuff, I would have something Paleo on hand for those moments. So make a batch of Paleo muffins or cookies or something and keep them in your freezer so that they're individually pack like make muffins and individually package them so you can just grab one and not necessarily the whole pan.

And have those on hands so that when you do have those cravings you don’t just like go to the gas station and get a candy bar or something and put yourself right back where you were before. So that’s my second suggestion. My third suggestion is to definitely eat enough vegetables so that you're getting good carbs. Eat a little bit of fruit every day, two if you want to go that route.

And definitely eat enough fat so fat can keep us satisfied, it makes our bodies run well and your body starts to learn how to run off from fat as fuel instead of carbs. And you want to get it going right from the beginning. So eat fat. You know don’t put half of a teaspoon of coconut oil in your milk, put a tablespoon or two so that you're actually feeling good about what you're eating, it’s tasting good and you're satiated.

The other thing is to make sure that you're drinking lots of water. So water will help you keep you full and it will help keep the detox process, everything moving. It will help keep your digestion normal. And that is super important and the last thing is when you're going through this process, don’t exercise too much. Like



don’t expect that if you're training for a triathlon that you can keep up your same schedule that you are doing before because your body is changing and it’s working really hard to clean itself out and to deal with these changes. And so take it easy and definitely sleep a ton.

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Paleo for Female Athletes !!!!!!!!!!



Dave: So kind of wrap this up. Why don’t you tell us if there's any special considerations that need to be taken into account for women and then also for athletes because obviously the diet probably needs to be tweaked based on if you're male or female and if you are an endurance athlete or a high intensity athlete or whatever versus just someone who does not exercise at all.

Neely: Okay, so the only thing that I really have to say for women is that it seems in my experience I don’t know what this is statistically true, but that more women suffer from like your typical hypoglycemia or reactive hypoglycemia than men do. In that way we’re like if you don’t eat, you’re hungry, you're going to go crazy, you might even passed out, you might feel symptoms tend to be more common among women.

So I would say that more carbs might be better for women. I'm not saying honey or anything like that but like definitely getting those starchy carbs sometimes at least and not like completely depriving yourself of carbs. I found that can be really hard on people’s not only their blood sugar but a lot of women will end up like having cortisol issues, adrenal fatigue, their thyroid will go crazy and that’s been shown you know like they’ll go to their doctor and their doctor will say okay you're hypothyroid now what’s going on?

So our hormones are just it seems like they're a little bit more delicate. So I would say definitely try to have a very balance meals with plenty of carbs as well as your meat and fats. And then it might help you to in the beginning at least to have like four meals, four to six meals throughout the day. That’s kind of what I had to do and then now if I need to I can definitely go many hours without eating. So it’s kind of a process you have to heal your blood sugar as women in particular. And for any of the men man who have the same issue like same advice. So that’s for women.

For athletes, when I first went Paleo I'm a climber and I would be climbing every weekend. And I was trying to be the good Paleo girl and not eat very many carbs at all like starchy carbs weren’t really something that I was eating. I was eating like a minimal amount of fruit every day. And I was climbing like crap. I was having major crashes. I didn’t have energy. I felt really tired a lot



of the time whether I was climbing or not. I was grumpy. Actually was climbing worse.

After a while, like once I started getting depleted of carbs, my performance went down. So I finally had to put in like I've been saying you know the tapioca flour, the plantain flour, the sweet potatoes. I would make like unsweetened muffins out of coconut flour and olive flour and tapioca flour and fruit. And those would be like my – and I’ll make banana bread or whatever.

So those are staples for me because if I don’t have them I don’t perform well. And I have found that that’s the same for a lot of women who are athletes, who were training hard. At least several times a week. If you're just like going for a light jog a few times a week, this isn't really something that you're going to have to deal with.

But if you're like lifting or training for hours at a time at whatever you're doing, you're going to have to definitely look at your carb intake and experiment with it and see what works best for you. And definitely get those good fats in like a lot of them because your body will learn how to use fats as fuel. And the longer you do it for, the better your body will get at doing that. So it’s definitely a personal journey but with some experimentation and being open to experimenting with it you will figure out what you need to do.

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Are Supplements Paleo? !!!!!!!!!!!



Dave: So a kind of controversial subject in the Paleo world. Some people very much on the side of for it, some people on the side are against it is supplements. And I'm very much on the side of supplements. I take supplements every morning, fish oil, vitamin D, cumin and sometimes a green powder.

Some people will say or the argument will be against supplements as we can essentially get all the nutrients we need from having healthy organic wholesome foods. So why don’t you tell us your opinion on supplements if that statement is true, do we get all of our nutrients just from food? Are we going to be okay without supplements? Or are they necessary or at least sometimes necessary. So why don’t you kind of despell some myths and go through that whole supplement shebang.

Neely: So yeah, you could get all your nutrients from food if it was like many years ago and the soil wasn’t depleted in most places. I'm sure that some more organic farms or their soil better taken care of and they're getting a lot more nutrients out of the earth. But yeah, our food doesn’t have the nutrients that it maybe once did have. We’re also not breeding foods for their nutrient density or breeding them so that they're perfectly shape and colored and all that.

So yeah, also if you were to be eating like bone broths all the time and organs of animals and other things that most Americans are not okay with doing or people in the industrialized world in general. Like I can't stand the taste of liver. I'm sure if my mom had brought me up eating liver, I would be more tolerant to it as I know a lot of Paleo moms are doing with their kids now and they love it. But that’s like a really nutrient dense food.

So you're getting a lot of the things that you don’t get anywhere else including the vitamin D and A and K and all that. Those are the super nutrients that like Dr. West was studying that all these hunter-gatherer people are indigenous people were getting from their foods that we are no longer getting. And so everything is going downhill for us. Like our bone structure, our overall health.

So those kinds of things yes, we can get from food but it is difficult in this day and age. So the most common things that people are low in like you said I think you said vitamin D which is



probably because we’re not going out in the sun and when we do go out in the sun we have sun block on.

Dave: I know all about that.

Neely: And we’re not getting, vitamin D is also depleted and that’s because when we’re stressed out, when we’re on birth control pill, when we’re vegetarian for many years we realized we’re not getting vitamin D. So a lot of us just depleted, we need to supplement. We need to get back up to the point where we should be.

So vitamin D, vitamin Bs , omega 3’s since most of us have been brought up on a very high omega 6 and trans fats diet. We need to bring ourselves back up to that omega 3 point. You can also do that with food pretty easily like if you're eating smoke salmon or sardines, something like that everyday which for a while I was, you can get just as much from those foods everyday as you can from pills and then some which is awesome. I think that’s easiest one to really do with food.

The other ones would be probiotics. Sorry it took me a second to get there. Most indigenous people would be eating fermented foods and that’s where you get all the probiotics so like sauerkraut or even like cultured milk or things like that so the kimchi, so those are the things that have natural probiotics which feed our good bacteria in our gut which helps promote health in general.

We don’t usually eat those foods, when we do they're pasteurized, they're not going to have that many probiotics left in them like yoghurts or whatever which yoghurt isn't even part of this diet anyway technically. So probiotics would be a really good addition to supplement regiment too.

So if you are doing those things though or if you have serious health issues, that’s when you want to go see someone about which things to take. So like I take a bunch of supplements at this point because I wasn’t even with Paleo, I wasn’t at a level of health that I wanted to be. I still have like very bad breast tenderness, I had really bad PMS. I was tired when I didn’t think I



should be. I wasn’t sleeping well. And I wanted to see if I was fertile in case I want to have a kid.

So I went to my naturopath and he’s very on board with Paleo and he figured out all the things that I needed and how to mitigate my own inflammation and some other genetic things that I have going on. So there are some supplements that I'm going to be on for the rest of my life which I'm grateful that I know that I should be taking. And there’s some things that you know I take when I feel like I need it.

And I think that there are lots of us like that who have these just constant issues that we really need help with. So I tell people to go to like primaldocs.com to find a really good functional medicine doctor, nutritionist to help with those things.

Dave: Did you mention digestive enzymes?

Neely: Oh I didn’t. Thank you. So a lot of times when say a vegetarian goes from being a vegetarian to eating meat or a standard American will go from eating not too much meat and then to eating Paleo where you’re eating more or are just in general sometimes people will have digestive issues when they change their diet and a lot of times it’s just because our stomachs and pancreas have stopped making the enzymes and the hydrochloric acid that we need to digest these things.

So you can actually supplement those things and those are the cheapest supplements out there pretty much. You can go to like a health food store or online and find digestive enzyme spectrum so it’s going to have everything in there to digest protein, fats and carbs and dairy usually in there too. And then the hydrochloric acid and you’re going to want to figure out how to use the hydrochloric acid but basically you would just take both of these things every time you eat like in the first two bites.

And you don’t have to do it forever like I've gone through cycles of doing this. I haven’t had to do I for a while but you would do it for a week to three weeks and then most of the time people can stop forever. So those are really helpful and glutamine, L-glutamine is an amino acid that’s something that you can help. It’s good for healing your gut and it’s also good for recovery from



athletics. So those are basic ones that everybody can benefit from.



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