Diversify Your Diet, Forget Calories & Change Your Mindset to Heal Your Metabolism with Ben Azadi

Dr. Mindy Pelz Ben on this episode of The resetter podcast, I bring you my very dear friend Ben Azadi. Now, I know some of you have been listening to me for a while. You've heard me bring Ben on. We have great discussions about detox and metabolic health and mindset, and I, as you'll hear, he's been on four times. This is fifth time, because our discussions are so deep and they're so nuanced, which is what we really need is to have a deeper discussion. Give you all deeper tools on how to approach something as important as metabolic health. And what's really exciting about this episode is that Ben has a new book coming out, and it's called metabolic freedom. I was really honored to write the forward to his book, and I know Ben's heart. I know how tenacious Ben is at learning, and what he has laid down in this book on metabolic freedom is like no other. And I'm really excited not to just bring you this podcast, but I hope you run out and get the book, because there was so much more to discuss beyond what we discussed here, but in this discussion, let me tell you, we start to break down some key concepts around weight loss, that if you're or, you know, even just great metabolic health, if you're looking to just keep improving that metabolic marker for yourself, we address the calories in, calorie out idea, and we really went into that deep so if you're still confused, know that that is a good discussion. Here. We talk about, well, if you're not going to count calories, then what do you count? And what does that mean when you're looking at a nutrition label? How do you navigate that nutrition label? What needs to be your focus? We then went into the microbiome to talk about the power of the microbiome when it comes to weight loss, which, of course, then morphed us into detox. I think this one's really interesting, because we don't realize that something as simple as plastic water bottles, or as you'll learn here, holding a plastic receipt from the cash register is causing an accumulation of micro plastics in our body that is absolutely destroying our metabolic health. And what Ben will bring forward to you here is why that is so. If you're in disbelief, he's got the science to prove it, then of course, we had to talk about fasting, and we landed maybe my favorite part of the whole interview is we landed on men mental freedom. How do we use our mind to improve our metabolic situation? And he has some incredible stories, some incredible research to share with us, with us there. So it's a really deep conversation. Ben has been studying the ketogenic diet. He's a big fan of the carnivore diet. He has been on the path of studying fasting. He is just a student of metabolic health, and here's what he has learned. I'm really excited to bring it to him, to you, go check out his book. But most of all, enjoy this conversation. There is a lot to learn about how you personally can move your metabolic health forward. Benzady, metabolic freedom. Enjoy Welcome to the resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again, if you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Well, Ben, I have to welcome you back for the what the fourth time? Fourth time to the RE center podcast? Ben Azadi I think so. Well, Mindy, I love our collaborations. We just feed off of each other. We have so much fun, and this is going to be our best one yet. I just know it Dr. Mindy Pelz agreed, agreed. And you know, on that statement, I do think those of us that have been really teaching metabolic health in the culture for several years now, one of the reasons it's the best one is because we keep learning, and the more we learn, the more we listen to people, the more we write books, the more we not only refine what we're saying in a way that people can hear it, but we're also learning new ways to help people with metabolic health. So if you've heard Ben and I talk before, please, please, please, this is going to be a conversation that you have not heard he and I have, and I'm really excited to be diving in with this with you. So thank you for being here, Ben. Thank Ben Azadi you, Mindy. Yeah, let's dive into metabolic health, such an important and much needed topic these days. Oh, Dr. Mindy Pelz needed. Okay, here's what I want to start with before I go into the nuance of a lot of really cool concepts you've written about, what prompted you to write this book now, like you had written keto flex, and then I know you upgraded that revised it, and this became metabolic freedom. But what was it in the culture that wasn't being discussed that you felt like you needed to bring forward Ben Azadi the book? The new book, metabolic freedom was it was written for the masses. There were three studies that I read over the last few years that really inspired me and convinced me to write a book to deal with this problem. The first study was from 2016 it was a Mayo Clinic study, and the study set out to determine how many Americans live what they consider an active, healthy, fit lifestyle. And it based it off of four characteristics. The first one was they don't smoke cigarettes. Second characteristic was they exercise moderate to vigorous exercise for a total of 150 minutes per week. The third criteria was that they eat what they consider a healthy diet, which is simply a minimally processed diet. And the fourth criteria was that, if they're a female, they have a body fat percentage under 30% and a male under 20% The study concluded that only 2.7% of Americans hit that criteria. That's at 2.7% and that was almost 10 years ago. I asked I would predict that that has gotten a lot worse, and other studies like the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill study in 2018 showed 88% of Americans are metabolically dysfunctional, unhealthy. And then a recent study in 2022 showed that it's closer to 93% so we're trending in the wrong direction. A lot of people are frustrated because they have a whole bunch of symptoms, and they feel let down. You know this mean they feel let down by allopathic medicine, which is just looking at the symptom as the problem, where that symptom is not the problem. It's actually something we should be thankful for. It's a gift. It's the body's check engine light. So I wrote the book to show people look, these are the main causes to why we have metabolic disease on the rise, and here are the solutions, and it doesn't have to be as difficult as what you have been taught, and it's very different. It's a paradigm shift to what we've been taught in regards to the medical system and the mainstream news. Dr. Mindy Pelz It brilliantly said, because what we've been taught is so wrong. And I want to start with the first thing I know I learned in my public health high school gym class, and that was the calories in, calories out concept. I literally remember the gym teacher talking about, when you eat more calories than you move, then you then you actually use you start to gain weight. Can you help us understand why that is not an acceptable way to approach your weight loss efforts? Ben Azadi I've been there too. I've taught it for many years. I'm guilty of it, but I realize it does people a huge disservice. Focusing on calories is a distraction. It kind of makes sense. Yeah, eat less and move more. Create a deficit, you'll lose weight. And you know what? It works, Mindy for them, for the most part. For most people, it does work in the beginning, yep. And then all of a sudden it stops working. And most people think, I just need to cut more or exercise more, or do a combination of both. And then maybe it works again for a little bit, and then it stops working. You see the premise that people have when they take that approach of calories in versus calories out. And we see a lot of prominent people in our space still teaching it, their premise is that we need to get you to lose weight in order to get healthy. But that is not how the body actually works. We don't lose weight to get healthy. We get healthy to lose weight when we focus on just cutting calories, it distracts us from what really matters, which is hormones and inflammation, cell metabolism. It doesn't have to be restrictive. You don't have to deprive yourself and measure everything going into your mouth. That is a short term failure and a long term failure as well. You're going to be frustrated. So when we focus on hormones and find ways to lower inflammation. The weight comes off as a side effect, and there are two key studies that I reference in the book that just demolish this whole calories in versus calories out approach. The first study was from The Biggest Loser, which was a TV show in the United States. For many years, they had these these obese individuals enter this TV show, and they would put them on a calorie deficit. They would restrict their their calorie intake excess exercise, and a lot of them lost a ton of weight. They celebrated them on the final episode, this study followed up with 14 of those contestants, contestants, and it showed that 13 out of the 14 contestants gained a. All the weight back, and a portion of them gained even more weight. But they also looked at their hormones, Mindy, and they saw that their ghrelin levels, their hunger hormone, was through the roof, and their satiety hormone, leptin had plummeted. So they destroyed their metabolism. They're hungrier, they're less satisfied, and they have even more of a challenge now losing that weight. The second study was on fecal microbial transplants. Really interested, interesting. They had two groups of obese individuals. One group, they simply gave them this fecal microbial transplant from lean donors. Did not change what they were eating. They kept the calories the same, but the group that populated their gut bacteria with healthy gut with healthy bacteria lost weight, right? So study after study is showing this. I feel really bad for people that are just thinking it's all about calories in versus calories out, because, like to your point, we were taught that in high school, and unfortunately, fitness pros and dietitians and doctors still teach it to this day, I think calories matter, don't get me wrong, but they're not important. They're more of a distraction. So Dr. Mindy Pelz if I'm listening to this conversation and really hearing this differently for the first time, perhaps you just took a tool away from me where I could pick up a package and I could know, oh, the calories are too high in this particular food product. What else can I look at if I'm not going to look at the calories, or I'm not going to look at the calorie output, at the cardio equipment at the gym, if I have to just totally let this calorie in, calorie out concept drop, then what else am I going to focus on? How do I know if the food is healthy? How do I know if my workout worked for me and for a lot of people listening to this podcast, like calories in calorie out appeared to be working. So what else can we put our focus on so we don't fall prey to the calorie in, calorie out game. Ben Azadi It's great question. I would say, don't count calories counter carbohydrates. And I will preface this by saying I am not against carbohydrates at all. You know this about me? Mindy. I think they have a great role, and I talk about it in the book. However, 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. That's a 2022 study, I re referenced that. I call them being in a Keto deficiency. They're in a fat burning deficiency because they're stuck burning sugar and glucose. There's nothing wrong using sugar and glucose as a fuel source, unless you're only using sugar and glucose as a fuel source. And of course, out of the three macronutrients, carbohydrates, protein and fat, it is the carbohydrates that will raise blood glucose and insulin way more than protein and fat. Protein has a very moderate response. You talk about this a lot, Mindy and fat barely moves the insulin response and insulin, insulin is a key role here. Insulin, as we know, is an amazing hormone. It's needed for survival. It's a Energy Sensor, but when it's chronically elevated from high carbohydrates and frequent eating, we have problems. It's the first domino to fall that triggers metabolic disease. You know what's really fascinating? Mindy. When I dug into the studies on insulin and weight gain and metabolic disease, there was two studies. One of them was called the White Hall study, two, number two, and it showed that you could have full blown insulin resistance, which is hyper insulin anemia, for on average, six to 14 years without your fasting blood sugars changing, or even your a 1c changing at all. Wow. That's because the pink that's because the pancreas is so busy producing massive amounts of insulin to clear that excess glucose until it cannot, until it goes death to the screams, and then the insulin rises. So a fasting insulin blood test is a great test to get done. You want to see that in the single digits, three to six is what I want to see. Where I want to see mine at. But to answer the question in a straight up answer here, instead of counting calories, count the carbohydrates. The average American consumes 250 grams to 300 grams of carbs per day. If you drop that to 100 or 50 total grams per day, you will start to lose weight without having to focus on calories, and you'll actually balance your hormones and actually have more energy at the same time, Dr. Mindy Pelz does the quality of the carbohydrate matter. Like, I feel like carbohydrates are even confusing for people. So can you help me understand? Like, is it just the number? Like, if I decide I'm gonna keep my carbohydrates under 50 grams neck, net carbs every single day, and that affords me a bowl of cereal and I can't eat, then I can't eat anything else, does it then? Is that okay? Can I just have the bowl of cereal and and not worry about any other carbs the rest of the day? Does the quality matter? Ben Azadi That's a good first step. You know, that's not ideal. But. That to have that from cereal, the calories or the carbs from cereals. Cereal, it's a good first step, though, because you're still reducing your total carbohydrate intake. But ideally, we want Whole Foods carbs. What do you call it? Mindy? Nature's carbs. Yep, nature's carbs, in fact, like a girl. So we want nature's carbs. We want whole food carbohydrates. You spoke about this really brilliantly, in fast like a girl, when you're shopping and you're looking at the ingredients list. I mean, a potato doesn't have an ingredients list, so you see what is in front of you, potato and avocado. But when you buy potato chips, there's an ingredients list, right? So the processing does matter. We want to limit or avoid processed foods, because that will spike your glucose and insulin create inflammation. So ideally, the if it's 100 grams of carbs per day or 50 grams of carbs per day, we want it from nature's carbs. We want it from whole food carbohydrates. Amazing. Dr. Mindy Pelz So okay, so just for the person listening, if I walk into the grocery store and I already have a habit of picking up a box of cereal and looking at the calories, now I do, all I have to do is train my brain to look at the carbohydrates. Is, is that? What you're saying is just refocus it to the different C on the label. Ben Azadi That's right? Yeah, exactly. Easy. Make that first swap, right there. Look at the carbohydrates instead of the calories. And if your total carbohydrate intake, you want it to be at 50 grams total per day, or you could do net carbs, then you could calculate how many carbs are in that food and see if it's going to be a fit or not. Yeah, Dr. Mindy Pelz so good. And can you help everybody understand what a net CARB is? Ben Azadi Yes, so net carbs are your total carbohydrates minus the fiber, right? So if a food has 50 grams of total carbohydrates, but 15 grams of of fiber, that would be 35 gram net, net grams of five of carbs. Excuse me, so you subtract the fiber from the total carbs. It gives you your note, your net carbohydrates. Okay, Dr. Mindy Pelz perfect. Anything else I need to see on that label that I need to look out for, because again, if somebody's a calorie counter, we've taken this really important tool away from them. And so is there anything else I should be focused on on that label that might get me in trouble and tell me I should put that that particular product back Absolutely. Ben Azadi There's a lot of red flags on these labels. First of all, like you just said, Mindy, it's important not to fall for the front of the label, which is brilliant marketing. Keto friendly, it looks so healthy. But in reality, when you actually turn the package around and read the ingredients list, here are some red flags that might signal. Let's put this back down. So number one, we want to make sure it does not have high fructose corn syrup. And there are about nine different names for high fructose corn syrup, but they usually have fructose in it the name in the name. So high fructose corn syrup is metabolized primarily by your liver. 90% of it's metabolized by your liver. We have a problem with non alcoholic, Fatty Fatty Liver disease in adults and also in children these days, and primarily it's high fructose corn syrup. It's mitochondrial poison. It causes weight gain. Dr Richard Johnson has a fantastic book called nature wants us to be fat, and he makes the case that animals that right before they go into hibernation, they eat a whole bunch of fructose from fruit to gain as much fat as possible to go into hibernation, right? So that's similar to what's happening with high fructose corn syrups. So that's one ingredient. The next one is going to be processed fats, processed seed oils, canola corn, cotton seed oil, soy bean, safflower, sunflower oil, rice bran, grape seed oil. These are all called vegetable oils. These are really inflammatory, and we could go into a little bit more if you want Mindy, but these are Mindy, but these are inflammatory as well. We want to see olive oil, avocado oil, butter, ghee. You don't really see that in packaged foods, but those are healthier fats. And then lastly, we want to avoid artificial sweeteners, sucralose and aspartame, which actually cause you to be hungrier. Instead, we want sugar replacements, like monk fruit, stevia, xylitol, I'm good with, personally, erythritol. So those are key things you want to look out for when you're looking at the ingredients list. Dr. Mindy Pelz Why do you think that seed oils are so controversial? I don't understand if just people want to argue over stuff, but I don't get why. There's so many things that we should be debating. And I don't understand why you get on one side of the health equation an expert that's like, seed oils are horrible, and on the other side an expert saying seed oils are are not horrible, and whoever tells you that is trying to sell you a bill against help me. And this is literally a question I've had for myself. Why is this so darn controversial? I've Ben Azadi thought about this a lot, Mindy, and I know we've been talking about seed oils for many, many years. Here's my thoughts. Number one. And when we look at the studies out there, there are studies showing that seed oils are absolutely healthy for you. They're anti inflammatory. They're actually great for you. And that is true when it's the unprocessed variety, when it's organic, cold press. You're not heating it. Seed oils could be amazing. I know you use them as well. I use them as well. And then we have the processed seed oils. Those are the bad ones, and unfortunately, almost all of the seed oils in our food supply, it's the processed variety. 80% of our entire food supply contain these processed seed oils, 80% nd, that's a high percentage, a lot. The reason why they are inflammatory when they're processed is because of the following. It's the chemical structure of these fats that are called polyunsaturated fatty acids. So the word poly means many. That means these fats contain many double bonds. The more double bonds a fat contains, the more fragile they are, the more aggressive they are when they attract oxygen, heat and pressure. Okay, how do they process these fats, oxygen, heat and pressure? So these These oils are rancid. During the processing, they add chemical agents to them to mask the disgusting smell. Then they're put in a bottle, and unfortunately, the American Heart Association puts their stamp, stamp of approval on them, which is another confusion out there, and then we heat them up. We heat up the oils over and over and over. They're already rancid. And there's a study I put in the book metabolic freedom. I don't know if you've seen this study, but it's from a guy named Dr Martin grudefeld. And he looked at french fries cooked and vegetable oils, and he was looking at the aldehyde contents being produced after the frying process. Aldehydes are are cancer causing their carcinogenic when you smoke a cigarette, aldehydes are produced. That's how smoking cigarettes are linked to cancer. He showed that one French fry cooked in vegetable oils equivalent to a tobacco cigarette smoked when it comes to the aldehyde content being produced. Wow, which, which is crazy, because I've eaten a lot of French fries in my life. Dr. Mindy Pelz I was gonna say it's my kryptonite. Sweet potato fries, they're so good, Ben Azadi right? So good look. We could do a lot of things right, and hermesis, right? Small stress. Yeah, exactly. But a lot of people are not doing a lot of things right, and that one fry is making a big difference. And let's face it, it's not just one fry. It's hundreds to 1000s of them. And these fats, they embed into the cell membrane and mitochondrial membrane. It's called lipid membrane reorganization. I talk about this in my book, and it happens within hours. Mindy, meaning, if we have the bad fats in hours, within hours, it's incorporated into the cell membranes. Wow. And it's there for years. The half life is two years, 680 days. That's why they're so bad for you. So unfortunately, there's a lot of confusion. There was a recent study, I don't know if you saw it, from JAMA, that CBS News published all over the place, showing that seed oils are healthier than butter. And when I looked at the study, it was done on questionnaires. Dr. Mindy Pelz It was a questionnaire, right? Yes, right. And the piece, Ben Azadi yeah, I showed it to my fiance, natasia. I show it was a Tiktok. It was like a three minute piece that looked so good, like if I did not read the study, and I didn't, if I was not in this space, I would say that seed oils are healthy for you, because this looks like such a legitimate study, but it's actually not. There's a lot of confusion out there. Dr. Mindy Pelz Do you remember this? This came out about a year, year and a half ago, on intermittent fasting. There was a study that said intermittent fasting, like actually makes you gain weight, and it was a poster, and I dove into the study trying to understand what the poster was. And then I brought such and panda on my on my podcast. I'm like, explain this to him. And he goes, Do you know how many people dropped from my fasting and circadian rhythm studies after that came out? He's like, do you understand what a poster is, and I'm like, No, he and he went on to explain that it where they collected the data from was a call in. It wasn't even a questionnaire. Somebody called in. The N answered a couple of questions once a month, and then they gathered those questions, and they saw that there was a trend of this potential of fasting causing people to gain weight, so they put it out to the scientific community as a post. Hence the poster, in order for the scientific community, for somebody to pick it up and actually do a real study on it. But instead, the media and social media got a hold of it and put it out, because fasting is destroying a lot of the big industries. So that story is really interesting to me, and makes me sad for the lay person to really try to navigate this crazy food system. Am. So I think the way you explain that, it's like, wow, we you know, to those of you listening, this is why you need to go into longer format. You need to read books like the one that Ben is putting out the amount of research and time it takes to put a book out like metabolic freedom is going to give you the detail that you need. And when we go to Tiktok, when we go to reels, this is a huge pet peeve, and we take these little splices of information and make them our, our guiding light, that's where we get lost. So I just, I just had, couldn't let that comment go, Ben, because it's you and I are really trying to educate people to make smart decisions, and then something like that comes along on Tiktok and destroys years of hard work on our end. Yeah, Ben Azadi you're right. I feel bad for the average person who really wants to get healthy, and it looks like this is legit. Okay, I could have seed oils or, Hey, fasting doesn't work for me, and it's unfortunate that that is allowed, yeah, and that's why we're blessed to have you Mindy and your books and your podcasts and conversations like this, like you said, the long form allows you to go a little bit deeper and understand, wait a minute, this, this doesn't really make sense. Like fasting is working for me I feel better. Like not eating seed oils is working for me. Like you're gonna feel better? Yeah, when you follow these, these ancient healing principles that you've discussed so well, and I also outline in the book, yeah, Dr. Mindy Pelz I mean, you bring up a really good point at the end of the day. If you see something on Tiktok, or you see a reel, or you hear a conversation like this, the best thing you could do is get curious and try it for yourself, and then make the decision for yourself, which I think is so profound, I want to go back to something you said about the fecal transplants, because we I had Stephen Gundry on this podcast a couple weeks ago, and his new book is all about the microbes and the brain, and I don't want to us as a culture to move past microbes and metabolism too quickly. How much of the microbial system in our gut controls our metabolism like can we, if we have a horrible gut microbiome, are we doomed to never lose weight? Ben Azadi I wouldn't say that. I think everybody, the way the body is built, everybody could achieve what they want. It'll make it a lot more difficult, though, to to lose the weight and get healthy when your microbiome is not diverse, and there's some problems with the gut microbiome. There are some really cool things we can do, though, for the gut micro microbiome. Before I share that, yes, it is. There's a huge connection between your gut and your brain. You know this Mindy, it's connected whatever happens in the gut happens in the brain, and vice versa. So when you have a poor gut microbiome, you're going to be you're going to have more cravings. You're going to crave sugar, chocolate, carbohydrates, processed foods. Going to make it very challenging to eat clean and to practice fasting. When you clean up the gut, a lot of those neurotransmitters in the brain are optimized, and you actually think better. You think clearer. You're able to make better decisions as well. I did an experiment with my gut, and last year I did 90 days of just meat, the carnivore diet. But before I went into that, I did a gut microbiome stool test. So look at my gut microbiome, my diversity, different relationships in my bacteria, for example, bacteriotis and akkermansia. We know akkermansia, for example, is one of those bacteria that help with fat loss. The more of it that you have, the more easier it is to burn fat. So when I did my test and I was already lean going into it, I was already eating pretty clean going into it. So keep that in mind, but when I did my test, the results came back, and it showed that my gut microbiome was was average. I had average diversity. And here's the interesting part, the test suggested, when it gives you the lab report, it suggested that I needed to eat less keto, less meat, more more plants and polyphenols and fiber. And look, I'm for all of that. Don't get me wrong. I talk about the value of that. I know you are as well, but I didn't do that for 90 days. I did the opposite. I just had meat and fat. And then on day 90, I retested my gut, microbio, Mindy, and you would think that it would look worse, but actually everything improved. My I developed, I developed five Keystone bacteria on day 90 that was not there on day one, and seven core bacteria. Because here's why I think this happened. And by the way, I think if I would have stayed with just mean fat long term, I would have seen the opposite effect, Dr. Mindy Pelz right? It's all the the small, micro doses, yeah, yeah, exactly Ben Azadi it was, it was a, it was a, it was a shift to my gut microbiome. It was a stressor, and it forced my gut microbiome to adapt, which created amazing results. Fasting is one of those ways to do that, but if I would have stuck with that and just did carnivore long term, or ketosis, long. Term, I would have seen the opposite effect, but it was the change, the change here. So that's good news. So change the foods you're eating. Adapt to different proteins and fats and fibers and polyphenols or whatever it is. You change the food around, it'll create this adaptation, which will help with your diversity, and at the end of the day, it'll help with weight loss as well. Dr. Mindy Pelz So you bring up such a good point that I don't want people to miss. If you go from the standard American diet to a plant based diet, you're going to get a result because you moved away from that. If you stay on that plant based diet over and over and over again, you're going to get stuck, and you're Where are you going to move at that point? So let's say you move to a carnivore diet. I mean, that would be a very interesting juxtaposition, but I know people have done it. So you move to a carnivore diet all of a sudden you get another result. And you're like, oh my gosh, I'm doing so much better. And then you're now, you're thinking, it's, it was originally the plant based diet. Now you're confused, because you're like, wait a second, maybe it's a carnivore diet. But what I hear you saying, I really want you all to hear this is it was the change that was so pivotal. So do we do we have any guidelines of how often you should be changing your diet? Is a daily? Is it weekly? Is it 90 days like Do you have any sense of a protocol of change. Ben Azadi It's, it's, that's a tough one, because it's custom. It's custom to the person, but you're absolutely right. It is about the change. I'll give you a couple of general protocols that I've used for autoimmune, severe autoimmune conditions. I love 9090, days of a carnivore diet. I think it works incredibly well. Now, of course, women and men different. You made the case. You've made that really popular, and that is true. So if you are women, and if you have a menstrual cycle, maybe you could cap that and cycle it with your do it with your cycle, is what I'm trying to say. And so the three weeks outside of your period, excuse me, the the three the week before your period, not a good idea to do that carnivore. The other three weeks, you could do it or do a variation of it. Now, 90 days seems to be a good sweet spot for a meat based carnivore diet. I've done 30 days. 45 I like 90 days. For the autoimmune people, there is the idea of seasonal eating that you could also follow. That's a little bit more difficult to do, especially with dinners, but that is an idea that you can do. I know that in the book, at the end of the book, there's a 30 day plan. In the week four of that 30 day plan, I intentionally have these metabolic, what I call metabolic flex days, which are similar to the Keto flex days I used to talk about, where you're mixing things up a couple days per week. So you could do it weekly, you could do it monthly, you could do it seasonally. There's different ways to do it, depending on what your goals are, but the goal is to change the foods you're eating. You know, this Mindy people eat the same foods over and over and over. That's that's not a good idea. Our ancestors didn't do that, nor, nor should we. Yeah, Dr. Mindy Pelz I think that's why the universe burned down my neighborhood in LA, because I kept going to ere one and buying the same salmon, and did you sell re salad? And I was eating it every day, and I think that the universe was like, Hey, I'm gonna burn down your neighborhood. So, Ben Azadi my gosh, I do the same thing. It's easy to make. It's right there. It's quick. I was like, and then you eat it over and over, and then all of a sudden it stops working for you. We we're so guilty of that. And just Dr. Mindy Pelz to call myself out. I am the classic, and I find something good, and I eat it until I can no longer stand it. I just want to say that I also do the same thing with music. I find a song that I love, and I listen to it over and until I cannot listen to it anymore. But what I'm hearing you say, and I really, again, want people to understand that this, that one of the greatest ways to get these gut bacteria to work for you is the variation. And yep, just pick a variation. Don't stay in the same lane all the time. Yeah, Ben Azadi I could tell you right now my and I know I'm a man different than a woman, but and I'm 40 years old. So what I'm my variation right now. I've been doing this for months. Monday through Saturday, I'm carnivore, actually. So Monday through Saturday I'm carnivore. Sunday, I'll have three to 400 grams of healthy carbohydrates, low fat, day, plants, vegetables, white rice, sweet potato. So that's my personal variation. Sunday, I flex out Monday through Friday. I'm carnivore, and that that works for me right now, but that will change in the future. But Mindy, I do the same thing with music and songs, and it drives my fiance, oh yeah, crazy my Dr. Mindy Pelz family, they're like, tired of the same they're like, this again. I'm like, yep, not done Ben Azadi until it's played out. And then you move on to the next one. I do the same thing. I'm so Dr. Mindy Pelz happy to hear I'm not the only one bed I really have made that I feel so seen. Ben Azadi I get it, you know, I Dr. Mindy Pelz recently, I don't want to leave the carnivore topic too quickly, because I recently had a photo shoot, and I, you know, have been in a highly traumatic. State this year, and I've been working on my book, and I was not looking so great, and I looked in the mirror, and I was like, you have a photo shoot in a week. What are you going to do to be able to, you know, bring back some health to you, to you and I and it's the carnivore diet, because I did. It wasn't fasting. I I want. It's all of that collagen, all of the meat, keeps you very satisfied. And there is something incredible about a few days of carnivore only. I mixed it with some bone broth. It resets you like nothing I've ever seen so and I like it as like an alternative to fasting, if you're if you're feeling like, Oh, I'm not sure I want to go on a three day water fast, go on a three day carnivore diet and see how you feel. That's, that's how I've used it. Have you seen good luck with with people not necessarily going 90 days, but people just doing a day here and there? Ben Azadi Yeah, no. It's a fantastic reset, absolutely. Now, some people, depending on where you're at, when you go into a carnivore diet, if you're doing standard American diet and you shift the carnivore, you're gonna feel worse before you Yeah, but if you're already doing low carb or eating whole foods and practicing fasting, great transition to do it for a few days or a couple of weeks, amazing reset. I mean, you're gonna notice less inflammation, less brain fog, better sleep. Your HRV is gonna increase. You're gonna get more deep sleep. When I did it those 90 days, I lost 16 pounds. I didn't even know that I had 16 pounds to lose, and I dropped 6% body fat off of me, like I got shredded. Now, that was 90 days, and I didn't think, I think there was too much for me, actually, but you're going to lose weight because you're going to lower inflammation, your joints are going to feel better, and that's for many reasons. A lot of these plants out there, I know there's a whole movement against plant toxins and anti nutrients, and there's a there's a case to be made for that, especially when your gut microbiome is compromised. But the solution is not to run away from them forever. Solution is to fix the gut, bring them back in, and then it's a hormetic stressor, Dr. Mindy Pelz yeah. Like, look at it like, like, a supplement, like you're coming in with, like, and you're gonna just bring in a treatment and then back away. That's how I think we we don't tend to think of diet like that. We are like, Oh, I'm either a vegan, I'm a carnivore, or, you know, I eat, I'm on the X, Y and Z diet, but they all have benefits. And so if you can look at them as you would use medicine, or you would use a supplement, like, oh, this week I'm going to use Lean into the healing power of carnivore, and then next week I'm going to lean into the healing power of plant, of plants. And we should start coming back to that being the healing tool, not always trying to bio hack our way into our own system. Sometimes it's just mixing up the food selection and leaning into all these tools that that many people have brought forward. So I really like, yeah, I really like how you said that talk, talk to me a little bit about toxins. So just to fill the audience in, Ben and I come from the same lineage of detox information, and have spent a lot of years looking at heavy metals and what they do to not only affect our mental health but our physical health. Where do you sit after years and years of detoxing people, where do you sit on toxins causing a metabolic health problem for people, and which toxins do we need to think about? Ben Azadi Where do I sit now? I think I sit here. Chapter Five is all about this, and there's some good news, some easy things we can do, which I'll talk about. But there's two main toxins that I talk about in the book, obesogens and diabetes gin. So as you know, Mindy, obesogens are these toxins in our food supply, water supply. Heck, when we just go outside, it could be in the air, and our cleaning supplies are everywhere. These are toxins that actually create obese human beings. And the reason this happens is because when these toxins enter the body, the body wants to survive. It does not want these toxins to circulate in the bloodstream and enter or enter our vital organs and kill us. So it activates a process called PPAR Gamma to shuttle those toxins into our fat cells. And it's similar to insulin. Insulin is activated to shuttle glucose into the cells. P part gamma is activated to shuttle toxins into the cells. These toxins are called lipophilic. They're fat loving toxins, so they go into our adipose sites, because there's room there. The solution to pollution is dilution. I'm going to dilute these toxins by putting them into the fat cells. And hey, if we don't have room in your fat cells the body, the metabolism, will increase the fat cells, and in some cases, create new fat cells for those toxins to go live in. Then we have a second classification of toxins, that's a new classification called diabetogens, which trigger beta cell dysfunction in the pancreas that lead to pre diabetes and diabetes. 90s. So what can we do? Keeping your detox pathways open is always a great idea. You talk about that all the time, Mindy. So the lymphatic system, the gut, the kidneys, the liver, the colon, keeping the pathways open by moving your body, sweating, doing rebounding, trampoline, jumping, sauna. Enemas, castor oil. Packs, a lot of great things we can do, taking different binders, taking liver support, different things we can do. But there's some swaps we want to make in our lifestyle. For example, these micro plastics. Now, right? We're having all these conversations about micro plastics being found in men's testicles and in the brain and the arteries there were turning into plastic people. Yeah, so simple thing. And by the way, before I give a simple swap, the University of Newcastle has a study showing the average American consumes a credit card size worth of plastic every single week. It's coming from our plastic water bottles, our plastic Tupperware, our plastic cutting board. We want to drink out of glass bottles. We want to use glass Tupperware. We want to use wooden cutting boards. And we want to also say no to cash register receipts. Oh yeah, because studies show there are 1000 times greater more BPA in cash register receipts than canned food and Mindy. When I go to the grocery store, I sometimes see a lot of women grab the receipt. Sometimes they're holding stuff, and they'll put it in their mouth, or they'll put it on their bra and they just store it there that's being absorbed by the body. So say no to cash register receipts. This is a big problem, but if you if you keep those detox pathways open, practice fasting, get autophagy, you can get things moving, because a lot of the times, people who are very toxic, and they try to lose weight, they start dumping these toxins and and they start auto absorbing them or recirculating them, and the body starts to slow down fat loss. You talk about this in order to stop dumping those toxins, so we have to remove it and eliminate it by keeping those pathways open. Yeah. Dr. Mindy Pelz So well said. And where does fasting fit in for you on all of that? Because it could fall into two camps. It could fall into the camp of your metabolic metabolically resetting yourself. You're giving a chance for the glucose to go down. The concept that Jason Fung brought years ago, where you're forcing your body to go and find what it stored years ago, and then you could also bring it over to this part of the conversation, which is you're triggering states of autophagy and apoptosis, which is causing the body to detox itself. So where do you see fasting in the conversation for metabolic health? Do you feel like it's optional, or do you feel like, Hey, if you really want to overturn your metabolic situation or bring your hemoglobin a 1c down, you're going to need to learn how to fast. Ben Azadi Me. I'm like you Mindy. I love fasting. I think it's one of the one of the most efficient ways to harness this innate intelligence. I think it's such an incredible tool. You've done a great, incredible job bringing it to the mainstream and helping people understand that this is a very valuable tool, and women do it differently, differently than men. So chapter eight is all about fasting. It's a powerful tool, but I want the audience to understand it is a tool, like a chainsaw is a tool, and a chainsaw could hurt you if you don't know how to use it, if you didn't read the user manual, but a chainsaw could get the job done if you've read the user manual, so you use it wisely. Get, you know, lower, lower the carbohydrates. First, eliminate the snacking first, then start adding in a fasting schedule and building up that fasting muscle. I think it's amazing. I know, personally, when I'm in a fasted state, I feel the best. Oh, the best. Using, right? I'm using all of my energy and bandwidth for healing or the task at hand. Personally, most of my workouts are in the fasted state. When I have a big speaking gig, I'm speaking on stage. I'm fast because I want to be at my top game, top performance. It's incredible. I mean, just just a 14 hour fast, which is not that much, has amazing benefits. You lower insulin, complete digestion, and of course, as you move on, you get more of the autophagy, the cleaning of the cells, and you get more the human growth hormone surge around 24 hour. I mean, amazing things start to happen. So it's not optional for me. I know it's not optional for you. It's a mandatory tool in the shed to achieve metabolic freedom, yeah. And Dr. Mindy Pelz where do you think that mental mental stress fits into this as well? You have a chapter on mental freedom. And, you know, I a lot of these concepts that we're talking about right now. I look at them as like, feedback loops, like, which came first? Are you thinking poor thoughts because your diet is bad or, or is your diet bad and causing you, you know, like or, or is are you thinking bad thoughts causing you to have a bad diet? Like, which came first? And I think what I've learned a lot of really, this is a fascinating one on the ozempic. Conversation, because I've straight out of the gate, have been like, oh, there is no way there's going to be a magic pill that overturns years and years of toxicity for the human body. But what I've heard in a lot of cases on the weight loss drugs is that once people start to drop the weight, that their thoughts change for the better, and so then they start to make better choices for their health, which I can understand that. So where can we use the power of our mind? Where does stress come into the metabolic picture, and how do we integrate it into everything we've talked about so far? Love Ben Azadi Mindy. This is my favorite thing to talk about, chapter 10. It's my favorite chapter in the book. I think it'll, I know it'll change many lives for those who read chapter 10, listen to chapter 10. I to answer that question, is there interesting thought does is it the toxic thoughts that lead to poor behaviors and bad eating, or is it the bad health that lead to toxic thoughts? I think it's, I think it's both. But I I would choose. I would say the thoughts come first, and then it makes it more difficult to change those thoughts, because you're becoming unhealthy and yeah, but even before all of that is your environment, your environment determines the thoughts, which determines everything else. But before I get to all that, the mind, the mind, by the way, is not a thing. It's an activity. A lot of people think of the mind. They think of the brain. It's not the brain. The mind is an activity. Beautifully said, your fingernails are the same, or as much as the mind as your brain is. So the mind is not the brain. Your thoughts are very powerful, and your thoughts have the ability to heal you or to hurt you. And I start chapter 10 off with a story, and I'll give the story right now, because I think it's that important. You've never heard this story. Mindy, so I'm excited to share it with you right now. Yeah, it gave me goosebumps when I first heard Bob Proctor share this story. It was from the 1960s it was actually in the newspaper, and it's a story about a train station employee. He worked on a train inside of a refrigerator cart, and he was working late one night inside of this refrigerator cart. He didn't realize it was past 10pm he was supposed to clock out. His co workers left for the night. He tried to leave, and he was locked into that refrigerator car. He was trying to open up that door. He's banging on that door. He was stuck, and he was freezing, and he knew nobody was coming until the next morning, so his thoughts got the best of him. He started to freak out and have really negative thoughts, and he ended up writing on the wall, documenting his night, and the newspapers caught this with photos the next day, he wrote, at 12am I'm stuck. It's cold. I don't know if I'm gonna make it tonight. At 1am he wrote the words, freezing. Temperature keeps dropping. Cannot keep myself warm. At 3am he wrote the words, I'm freezing to death. I think I'm gonna die. 7am rolls around his co workers clock in they open up that refrigerator cart. The man was dead. He froze to death. Hypothermia. What was interesting about the story, when they investigated the temperature apparatus, it never dropped below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. It had been malfunctioning for weeks. Oh, my God, His thoughts literally created disease and death, hypothermia, Mindy, oh, Dr. Mindy Pelz my God, that your thoughts. True story. Ben Azadi That's a true story was in the newspapers in the 1960s Wow. So I start the chapter off with that story to illustrate how powerful your thoughts can be. If our thoughts can do that, can our thoughts heal us as well? Absolutely, 100% and we know dr Bruce Lipton has proven with his work that thoughts are a frequency that have the ability to communicate with all 70 trillion cells inside of the body. If it's a hateful thought, angry thought, bitter thought, resentful thought, the signal sent to the DNA produces inflammatory proteins, which shortens the telomeres, damages the DNA and shortens the lifespan with a single thought. But if it's a grateful thought, loving thought, abundant thought, healing thought, same signal sent now your DNA produces anti inflammatory proteins. Your telomeres are protected, your genes are protected, and you extend your lifespan. And psychiatrists have shown study after study that the average person has 60,000 thoughts a day, and they estimate that 90% of those thoughts are the same thoughts from yesterday, and 85% of those thoughts are negative thoughts, what Zig Ziglar used to call stinking thinking. And I've been saying if you're thinking is stinking, your health is shrinking. So I think pun intended, that the greatest bio hack I could ever share, learn apply, is that if you have 60,000 thoughts every day, and those thoughts have the. Ability to communicate with your cells. You have 60,000 opportunities every day to put your body in the healing, anti inflammatory state. That is the greatest thing I could ever learn, ever share, and I'm excited to go deeper in that concept on chapter 10 in the book. Yeah, Dr. Mindy Pelz that's amazing. So does that mean that you could like, Could I start changing my food plan? I dive into metabolic freedom. I do give a 30 day plan in there that I want you to talk about here in a moment, and I start doing it. And when I step on to that 30 day plan, if I bring with me the thought that this is going to work, the thought that I am finally going to drop weight, the thought that this, that my body knows what to do. If I bring those empowering thoughts to a plan, whether it's your plan or another plan, will I get better results than somebody who does the opposite? We've both seen people who walk around and are like, I'm on another diet again. I'm gonna try this again. I was doing carnivore, but then I saw a tick tock that said it was really bad, so I completely switched. Like, where does the Where do those thoughts fall in to an already well orchestrated plan. Such Ben Azadi a really important question. I would say, not only will those thoughts help you achieve the results you want, but if you don't change your results, you will never get the results you want. And it all relates to something called the self image. I talk about this, and I've changed my life, and I want to share it with your audience right now. You cannot outperform your self image. I'll unpack what I mean by that. We discovered what this self image means in the 1960s again, but this is a different story. This is actually from a book called PSYCHO CYBERNETICS by a plastic surgeon, Dr Maxwell malt. So he called it the greatest physiological discovery of his generation. Here's how it works. He was a plastic surgeon, and he worked with individuals who had really wicked facial deformities. They were born with different disfigured facial deformities, and they were unhappy. They were depressed, they were self conscious. So they would hire Dr malt to perform plastic surgery to remove the facial disfigurement, and he noticed that even after the surgery, they were still unhappy, depressed and self conscious. They were they would literally look at themselves in the mirror, in the mirror, and although their facial disfigurement was gone, their self image still identified with that so they nothing changed. For them, it wasn't until he changed their self image that they were actually happier, less self conscious, less depressed. It's the same thing with us, when we identify as being an over an overweight person, obese person, an autoimmune person, that that's our self image, we can make a conscious decision to change. I'm going to read metaboloid freedom and follow these steps. I'm going to do fast like a girl. I'm going fast like a girl. I'm gonna do this program. You can make that conscious decision, but if you don't change the subconscious programming, which is the self image, you will only get so far, you will course correct, meaning the example I give in the book is about somebody who has a self image of an overweight person. You can make a conscious decision to do keto, to do fasting, to cut your calories, whatever it is, and lose some weight, and you'll lose maybe 510, pounds that first month. But you didn't work on that self image. You'll find a way to gain the weight that was lost. You'll course correct. You'll continue to course correct. You'll continue to sabotage yourself by eating the donuts, going to this party, whatever it is, you'll find a way to course correct. We got to change the self image. If you don't reprogram the self image, it's going to be really difficult to get lasting results. So I talk about two ways to change self image. There are only two ways to change it, and emotional impact is one. You just went through a couple of emotional impacts, losing somebody you loved, losing the wildfires in LA. Nine times out of 10, an emotional impact is negative and it's unpredictable, but it changes the way you think. It changes your paradigm. A cancer diagnosis, a near death experience, experience. Those are all emotional impacts. That's one way to change the self image. Ideally, we don't want to use that, because, as I mentioned, it's unpredictable, and it's usually nine times out of 10 a negative experience. The second way to change it, which is the best way, is the way that it was built, which is the constant, spaced repetition of that self image. What do I mean by that? Yeah, tell me more. Literally, writing down, and I have it, I do this all the time, writing down on a card the new self image in the present tense and repeating it over and over enough times where it then replaces the old self image with the new. Self image. We call it an affirmation. People hear that, and they think it's woo, woo. But there's actually scientific research showing that affirmations can change your life when you do it enough. In the book, I give an affirmation to change the self image. The affirmation is, I'm so happy and grateful now I am at my perfect weight, I'm healthy, I am happy. The perfect health I seek is now seeking me. I remove any blockages between us. And part of that 30 day plan is to write it down and read it every day for 30 days. If you read this new self image for 30 days, you will reprogram that self image, and you will no longer sabotage yourself. Amazing. Will change that in self image, the poor self image with the new one, and it'll change your life. And you could apply this to every area of your life, not just weight loss, but any area you want to improve. I do it to this day, every morning, every night, throughout the day, I carry it with me. I call it my affirmation card, and I talk about that in the book that's Dr. Mindy Pelz amazing. And you know what? It's funny. I I'm thinking of the person who really is about to step on a big metabolic journey where they know they need to lose, like, 100 pounds, they know they need to make some of the changes, like around the quality they food, they know they need to fast. And yet, the actual application of all that is really difficult. And they also could hear something that you just like what you just said, and feel like it's it's not gonna work, and nor do they believe it. So is when, and I'm just playing devil's advocate here is there is, what do we do when we are making these kind of affirmations, and yet we're like, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. And you know, I'll tell you, I had so many people after the fire. Tell them, give me so much advice. And Lisa Bill, you gave me some of the best advice. She said to me, I know someday you're gonna teach from this wound. And that was such a beautiful way for me to step into my own healing journey. And I think there's so many people that are listening to this podcast that understand some of the principles, and they know they need to apply them, and yet the action of doing that all of a sudden brings up so many limiting beliefs about who they are. So when I go to read a statement like, what you just said, is it a little fake it till you make it and then one day, all of a sudden, you believe it. How do we help the person that's like, hopefully they haven't turned on the off the podcast at this point? Because I think what you're saying is so powerful. But what do you do when you're stating an affirmation over and over and over again and you don't believe it? Ben Azadi Yeah, I love that you brought that up. Left brainers have a really difficult time with what I just shared. Left brainers are more analytical. Give me facts, give me figures, and I do share scientific evidence that this works in the book to appease the left brainers. Right brainers understand this, but here's the good news about the left brainers. Once you get this, you guys take off. You guys and gals take off. I would say a few things to address that. We've been taught that we need to see it to believe it. We learned from Dr Wayne Dyer that we'll see it when we believe it. Yep. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence first and foremost, and faith and fear are the same thing. You're putting energy into something you cannot see. Why not choose the faith? Bob Proctor shared the greatest definition of faith that I've ever heard. He said, faith is the ability to see the invisible, to believe in the incredible, which will permit you to achieve what the masses think is impossible. So as you read the affirmation, you're not going to believe it. It's not you. This is a it's going to feel phony. It's gonna feel fake. That's normal, that's all part of it. Yep. But give me 30 days. Yep. Do it for 30 straight days in the morning. Read it right before bed. Read it 30 days in a row, and I promise you it will change your entire life. Yep. 30 days. Yeah, if you're at this point right now and you haven't got the results you want, your way is not working. Why don't you try mine for 30 days? Why don't you try this for 30 days? It's gonna feel weird and phony. It's not fake it to your make it. That's not the way that I would word it, but it's changing the way that your self image was built. It was built this way. Mindy, think about it this way. When you were born and your mom and dad said, Hey, Mindy, that's your name. Mindy, don't ever forget it, and never repeated your name. Yeah, you had to repeat your name over and over and over, repetition. And then you thought, I'm Mindy. I'm Mindy. Pelz, it's the same thing. You it's the repetition, constant space repetition. What built yourself image right now is the constant space repetition. What's going to change it? It's the same thing. It's not going to happen in a day, it's not going to happen in seven days, but it will happen tremendously, amazing results in 30 days. So have the faith here. The same thing. Choose the positive outcome here. So Dr. Mindy Pelz beautiful. You know, I was remembering a time when I came out of college where I had gained quite a bit of weight from all the pizza and beer. And I remember feeling so frustrated and trying to figure out, you know, we didn't have the education that we have now on metabolic health. And I was trying to figure out what I could do to drop about 2530 pounds extra weight I was carrying around, and I was looking in the mirror one day and saying all kinds of horrible things to myself. And all of a sudden this thought popped in my mind, could you find one body part that you like? And so all of a sudden, I started to look around and like, point out, like the shape of my eyes or the size of my ears. Yeah, I like my ears, like little, little, tiny things. And then I started to obsess on the random little pieces that I loved about myself. And I did that for about a week. And then after a week, I was like, is there another place? Is there another place? And the next thing you know, I started to create this excitement to go to the mirror and see what I could discover about a body part that I hadn't been giving enough credit to. And sure enough, within like, a year's time, I was at the size I wanted to be, and that was in my early 20s. I'm 55 and do you know I do that now. I literally look in the mirror when I'm hopping in the shower, I'll look at my naked self in all her imperfections and zone in on let that looks good. That looks good. I'm really happy with that. That that has become my go to because I've been doing it for so many years. And if you tie in some of the affirmations that you're stating, I think that is really, really powerful. Ben Azadi I love that Mindy. That's great. And at first, I'm sure it was weird. Oh, so weird. Yeah. It's like, Dr. Mindy Pelz it was like, little things, like, my hair. I was like, Oh, I've always loved my hair. And then it was like, What do you think it was like? I asked myself questions like, What do you think of the shape of your ear? I was like, I kind of like my ears. Those work like, and then you start realizing that all the time, this time, I had been staring at myself and only seeing what I didn't like, and not ever, and I had missed all the parts of me that I did like, and it over time I changed how something is that you we do every day. I now look in the mirror and I'm focused in on what I like. It's really, it's really turned out to be a beautiful process that I haphazardly fell into so I and it ties up so nicely with what you're saying. Yeah, Ben Azadi it does. And it's that constant space repetition. It's a universal law. What you feed energy into expand. So you started feeding energy into what you loved about yourself, and you saw more things that you loved about yourself. That's the way it works. Look, the subconscious mind is completely what's called deductive. Psychologists call it deductive, meaning it accepts everything as truth, real imagined what anything you plant in the subconscious garden of your mind will manifest. It's the subconscious mind that moves the body. So we're reprogramming that subconscious mind. These are the only two ways to do it, an emotional impact or constant space repetition. So yeah, I 30 days. Give it 30 days. It'll change your life. Dr. Mindy Pelz And I like that. I like what you said. Well, if your way is working, then stick with your way. But if it's not, try Ben's way. It's really true that we hold on to our limiting beliefs. So I thought that statement was so well said. Thank Ben Azadi you for that. And a lot of people are not aware that they're holding themselves back with their thoughts. You cannot escape a prison if you don't know you're in. One first step is to realize you're in a mental prison and you can get yourself out. It's really simple, constant space, repetition, that's it. So Dr. Mindy Pelz when somebody gets your book and they're listening to this podcast, they really want to dive in, tell us what they can find in there, and a little bit about the 30 day plan you have in there. Ben Azadi The book is split into two different parts, similar to what you did with a fast like a girl, right? I believe first half is all about the problems, the causes to metabolic dysfunction, being a sugar burner, processed carbohydrates, processed foods, ingredients to look out for, environmental toxins, poor sleep. Those are the problems. We need to identify the causes so we could remove that first and foremost. Second half of the book, it's all about the solutions. Ketosis is a tool. Fasting is a tool. Different bio hacks are in there. My favorite bio hacking devices that are. Some that are paid for, supplements, melatonin, I talk about how that helps with metabolic health, and then it's all put together in a 30 day plan, because you learned about the interference, you learned about the solution. But information alone won't change your life. It's the application of that. So how do you actually apply it to make it work for you? So the 30 day plan is split, split into two different parts, a beginner protocol, an advanced protocol, and you just follow it to a T. It tells you exactly what to do. I hold your hand day by day for 30 days, we take you from burning sugar to burning fat. I talk about the right foods to eat, the foods I want you to avoid. Then we start pairing it with intermittent fasting. We increase our step count. We're taking vitamin G every day, which I want to get back to in a second. We are reading the affirmation. We're incorporating different flex days. We're doing a high protein keto diet, a low protein keto there's different changes each week, but it's not a whole bunch of changes all at once. It's small wins. I'm getting you each day, and we're stacking some momentum. I say a couple tweaks a week, is what I talk about in the book. So the 30 day plan has that. And then there's some recipes at the end of the book to make it easy, free. And these recipes are recipes that I work with the food journalists to put together that are easy, seed oil, free, protein focused, more, low oxalate, vegetables, etc. Amazing. Dr. Mindy Pelz Very thorough. And if there's anything I know about you, I knew it, there would be, it would be dense. So how do people find your book? Where's the best place to go, and when does it come out? I know that when this episode comes out, it's right about launch day. So give us a little bit of where we can get a copy. So Ben Azadi the book is called metabolic freedom. For those watching on YouTube, you can see I had a brilliant human being slash practitioner. Write the forward. She's She's amazing. She inspires me all the time. She's an amazing friend. She's been in the trenches with me for such a long time. We've had so many dinners together, so many laughs. Shared the stage together, even shared a keynote together. Yeah, of course, that's, that's you, Mindy. Mindy graced me with a beautiful forward to the book. So thank you, Mindy. I love to appreciate you for doing that. Yeah, the book is available everywhere, hard cover, Kindle, audible. I narrated the audible myself. If you get my book and haven't gotten fast like a girl or like a girl, put those in the cart as well. Yeah, we have a special bonus we're giving to your audience. It's a free course on the metabolism that I built out amazing love lessons on the metabolism and exclusive interviews with Dr Jason Fung Megan Ramos, Dr Daniel Pompa and Cynthia Thurlow. Amazing. It's only in this course and your audience could get that for free when they pre order the book over at metabolic freedom book.com Dr. Mindy Pelz amazing, amazing, well, I love what you're up to, and it was such an honor and so easy to write the forward for you, because, as I say, in the forward, I know where your heart is, and I know what you're trying to bring forward to the world so and the amount of nuance that you put in there that needs to be really brought forward, the detail of the little steps that we trip on when we're trying to get metabolically healthy. I just applaud you in making sure that you caught all of those and helped us understand all the complexities of great meant, of great metabolic health. So you're incredible Ben, and I'm cheering you on. And everybody go grab the book, and I'm sure you'll be back a fifth time, and already guess this is the fifth time. I'll see you back on the recenter podcast, I'm sure for a sixth time, but just keep doing what you're doing. Ben, I just adore you, and the world needs your message. So thank you for everything you're doing. Thank Ben Azadi you, Mindy, love and appreciate you. And for those wondering what vitamin G is, you have to recap for 10 Dr. Mindy Pelz There you go. There you go. Vitamin G, it's the most important one. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.