0 (1s):
Coming up on the get lean, eat clean podcast,
1 (4s):
But for just a regular average, Joe like me eating a higher percent of protein, you can still be in a state of ketosis. Your ketone levels might not be as high, but if your goal is to build lean body maps, and, and if you are somebody that works out in the gym and things like that, you, you need more protein and it's hard to get fat eating protein. You get fat because you eat too much fat or too many carbs or a combination of the two, because I'll tell you, we put people on protein, sparing modified fast, which is basically all protein and no fat and carbs. And those people's body fat will melt. So it's hard to get fat eating just protein. Yeah.
0 (45s):
Hello and welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. I'm Brian grin. And I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it wants. It was five, 10, even 15 years ago. Each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed Dr. Jamie seaman, AKA Dr. Fit and fabulous. She's a board certified OB GYN with a background in nutrition, exercise and health science. We discussed her health journey and Akido and carnivores misconceptions around eating red meat advantages of carb restriction, her morning, eating and fasting routine, the importance of eating protein and her one tip to get your body back to what it once was.
0 (1m 31s):
I really enjoyed my interview with Dr. Jamie semen, and I know you will too. So enjoy the interview and have a great day. All right. Welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin, and I have Dr. Jamie semen on Dr. Fit and fabulous. Welcome to the show.
1 (1m 50s):
Hi, Brian. It's so good to be here.
0 (1m 52s):
Thanks for coming on. This has been a long time coming. We finally made it work. And perhaps before we get into some questions, why don't you touch on sort of your background, how you got into OB GYN and in the keto carnival world, just to let the audience know?
1 (2m 13s):
Absolutely. So I work in my everyday life as a obstetrician gynecologist. I deliver babies, do surgery, see women for health care maintenance and, and all that good stuff. But my kind of entrance into the keto carnival world really came on a very personal level. So I grew up in Nebraska as a young girl. I was a three sport athletes, super active my whole life and left high school and went to college to play division one college softball for the university of Nebraska. And there, I got my degree in nutrition and exercise science, but young, you know, as a young girl growing up, nobody ever talked to me, talk to me about nutrition or how to fuel my body until I got to college.
1 (2m 57s):
And, you know, I was getting this degree in nutrition and exercise science with a definitely an interest of going into medicine, but kind of thinking, well, if I don't go to medical school, you know, then what will I do? And college was the first time that, you know, my eyes were really open to nutrition, but my traditional, even my bachelor of science in nutrition degree, it was very much the kind of low fat, you know, dogma, fat causes her disease. And, you know, even eating at the training table as a division college, when athlete, it was like, put the protein on your plate and then fill your plate with all the colors, you know, eat as many colors as you can. It's all about the colors, you'd all the plants, you know, the fruits and vegetables. And I'll be the first to admit.
1 (3m 39s):
I grew up in the eighties and nineties and I didn't eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. They ate a lot of, you know, rice that Ronnie pasta Roni like hamburger helper without the hamburger in it. I mean, I grew up I'll, I'll be the first to admit. And so then I left, I left the university, I got married to my husband, Ben. He works as a police officer. We moved to Omaha. I started medical school and here was this huge shift physically in my life from going from being a very active D one athlete to now I'm sedentary and I'm sitting in a classroom and I'm studying for long hours of the day. And all of a sudden I was really struggling to maintain my body weight.
1 (4m 22s):
And so just like I had learned before I went over to the gym and started doing cardio and started lifting. And, but, but I struggled, you know, for the first couple years of medical school and then my husband and I decided to get pregnant with our first baby. And during my pregnancy, I failed my glucose testing. I ended up having, you know, close to a nine pound baby. And then we would go on to have three children in about like 58 months. So all of our girls are 23 months apart. We thought let's just have our kids now let's, you know, get the baby stage over with. So fast forward to my third pregnancy. And, you know, from the outside, I didn't really look unhealthy. You know, I was still working out, I've signed up for some half marathons to try to maintain my weight, but I had hypothyroidism.
1 (5m 6s):
I was on thyroid replacement. And after my third pregnancy, I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes. And so this was a huge kind of eyeopening experience for me as here I am a medical doctor, I've got a degree, I've got a degree in nutrition and exercise science, and I'm sitting here telling patients you have to eat right and move. Right. And I'm like the worst example in the world. But also the fact that I just, I didn't look obese. I didn't look unhealthy was like, gosh, we're really missing something here. And so I set out kind of on this personal journey to figure out how to fix my own health. And I started eating kind of like a whole 30 type diet, then paleo, then you know, more of a ketogenic diet and then a year or two later, really settled on more of like a carnivore based ketogenic diet.
1 (5m 56s):
And my hemoglobin A1C is 4.9. I'm off my thyroid medication. I feel the best I've ever felt. My brain functions the best I sleep amazing. But I think the biggest kind of like manifestation out of all of this is what really started, is just eating right and moving right. It, it spilled over into every area of my life. So I practice medicine differently. You know, my relationships with my friends and family are better. I'm a better mother. I started pursuing things in my life that I never would have if I was tired and didn't feel well. And it opened a lot of opportunities. And now I'm really just on a rampage really, because I think we've gotten it wrong for so long in medicine and our traditional medical model.
1 (6m 43s):
Isn't here to help anyone, you know, it's, it's good at kind of keeping people alive with chronic medical conditions, but it's not very good at prevention. And so my medical practice is very much, you know, prevention based and lifestyle forward. And I, I hope there's a lot more people that will join my bandwagon.
0 (7m 3s):
Yeah, I agree. And when did you make the shift to keto carnivore? Like how many years ago was that?
1 (7m 10s):
So it was in, so my daughter was born in 2015, so right after she was born pretty much a couple of months after she was born, I started a whole 30 and of course, whole food. I think, you know, regardless if you want to argue about carnivores or vegetarian or anywhere in between, I think we all all agree that eating whole foods and, and avoiding anything that's processed is, is you're probably going to do well. Right. So upper, I started and you know, some of the weight came off. I was still breastfeeding at the time. It was happening having to be very careful about calorie restriction, but I did that then I thought, well, everyone talks really highly about paleo and it, it would force me to focus on protein a little more.
1 (7m 54s):
So I kind of went to paleo and then I realized that I liked dairy and cheese. So a couple months later then I switched to ketogenic and ketogenic was like really where my husband and I hit our stride. Like the weight was coming off. Energy was amazing. I felt like my brain was functioning on a whole nother level. I always tell people, I felt like I could smell colors guy. I just felt really, really good. But at this time I really wasn't focusing a lot on working out or resistance training. And like, this was just like straight diet. Right. And I got off my thyroid medicine, my hemoglobin A1C was improving and then it was in 2018.
1 (8m 33s):
So I had started kind of this transition in 2015. So 2018, I started hearing about the cardboard diet. And I think actually it might've been Sean Baker that I introduced to. And I'm like, these people are living. Yeah. Say that a completely, completely meat-based diet could be healthy. Like there's no way. And so, you know, I watched for a couple of months and then I thought, and I'm, and I'm always very forward with people. Listen, I'll be, I'll be a test, you know, dummy. I say, be your own expert, try it for yourself. See how you feel, what results do you get and figure out what works best for you, because what works for me and what works for somebody else are different.
1 (9m 18s):
We're all built from different genetics. Men and women obviously respond differently. And so in November of 2018, I did 30 days of carnivores. I was like, I'm just going to go part of our for 30 days. And the first 14, 14 days I dropped like a ton of body fat. Like I was sure I was like melting. And, but I honestly think it's because I call carnivore basically like keto for dummies, because what it does is it takes off the table, all the stupid, like keto treats and cheese and the nuts and all the things that we just tend to kind of sabotage ourselves with. So I did really well for 14 days. And then I just started to really get bored with texture.
1 (10m 1s):
I was like, I don't know. I just want like a crunchy salad or something. Cause I was really eating just like beef and salmon mostly.
0 (10m 8s):
Yeah. I was going to say, where are you doing? Pretty much like nose to tail and then some salmon, or just like, wasn't
1 (10m 14s):
Even nose to tail. It was like really muffled meat, a eggs. I wasn't doing organs at that time. And so, but after 14 days I just got bored from a texture standpoint, but I finished the 30 days I looked dang good at the end of November here I am like coming into the holiday season. So then in December I thought, okay, well, I'm going to be mostly carnivore, but I'm just going to start to like add back in, you know, little things here and there that are still ketogenic, but at least gave me a little bit more leeway through the holidays from a social perspective. And, and then that just really clicked for us. It was like, okay, this is perfect because most of our meals, we're going to center it around this, you know, nutrient dense animal food.
1 (10m 55s):
But if we want to have, you know, a few berries or a few Brussels sprouts or a few mushrooms or whatever it was and, you know, beat ourselves up of it. And my husband and I, we don't have any sort of like, we don't have an autoimmune condition. My gut, you know, can tolerate plants fine. Like I didn't have a real reason to be like strictly carnivore. Right. So then when springtime pit Paul Saladino, we met at keto con and I'll never forget this moment. He practically like slapped this mushroom out of my hands, like a stuffed mushroom that I was and him and I got into this great debate about how, you know, fungus really isn't a plants and this, that, and the other. But I just started to see people in the carnival world that was like, so dogmatic about like, plants are so toxic.
1 (11m 38s):
Like you can't eat plants. And I'm like, he had, I don't, I dunno if I buy that, you know, all the way. And so I have kind of stayed with this, like what I call carnivore ish lifestyle ever since, you know, December of 2018. And it works for us really, you know, as a woman, I think it really forces you to prioritize protein, which I think is important because you can eat a ketogenic diet and be, you know, still low in protein. And if your, your goals are body composition and gaining lean body mass, then you know, you would maybe do better eating higher protein. So it's something that's really worked for us. I see it work for a lot of patients. Men love it. Cause I think men are just naturally a good meat eaters, but women, I mean, I do have a handful of women in my own practice that have aversions to me, it's a texture thing.
1 (12m 26s):
There's only certain animal proteins they'll eat, but I think it is such a great lifestyle for so many people and for a variety of reasons.
0 (12m 34s):
Yeah, I agree. And I, I sort of took a similar path in the sense that I'm not like I don't have an auto-immune issue, but I've been very active my whole life. And like a year ago I started getting into like the whole carnivores fish diet, and it's definitely made a difference in my body and my energy. What would you say? What are some misconceptions around meat maybe that are out there because you know, the, the, the mainstream is like, oh, you're having that steak. Then you got to wait a week to have another ones. And what would you say some of the misconceptions are around having a meat based diet?
1 (13m 11s):
Yeah. So the biggest thing that I hear is that red meat causes heart disease. You know, red meat drives atherosclerosis and is going to clog your arteries or cause you to have a stroke. And certainly when I got my nutrition degree, that's what they told us. Right. They really were like eat more lean meats, you know, eat fish, very fish based, eat poultry, chicken, and really limit red meat to like, you know, like once per week. Right. And so going to the carnival world, all of a sudden, you know, like we're buying like a whole cow, like, I mean, we're like burning through the beef in our house. And when you look, you know, statistically how much red meat we're eating, we're actually eating less red meat now than we were like in the 1980s yet the rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, all of these things have more than tripled.
1 (13m 55s):
And so when you look historically, what we did with the modern American diet is we really vilified fat, particularly red meats and things like, you know, butter. And we had to find replacements for them in the, in the diet and food manufacturers are smart. So they took these, you know, plant seed oils, canola oil, sunflower oil, and started adding those foods in place of animal fats. And then of course adding flours and sugars. So they could slap low fat on the front of a product and, and put the American heart association label on it and sell it to you. And it was just processed garbage. And so now it's hard because patients come into my clinic and they think that butter and beef are going to clog their arteries and what I've seen clinically.
1 (14m 41s):
And, and of course I had the advantage of being able to lab test myself like over and over and over and over. So from a physiologic standpoint, in my own body, you, my hemoglobin A1C is 4.9. So my blood sugars are normal. My cholesterol levels actually came down. So when we talk about cholesterol levels, the only cholesterol that we tend to see a shift in, you know, of course, is this LDL cholesterol or the bad cholesterol. And there's this thought that, that it's LDL directly, that drives atherosclerosis. And it's really not. You need inflammation, you need hyperglycemia hyperinsulinemia you need all these other things to create this perfect storm.
1 (15m 21s):
My LDL did go down. So I'm kind of like the outlier. So my LCL, what like it hovers between like 90 and 120 on a carnivore based diet. But I have seen patients with LDLs than the 200, 400, 500 range on a, on an animal based diet. But what you also see on that lipid panel is that their HDL cholesterol is good. Their triglycerides are low, their blood sugars are normal or fasting. Insulin is normal. So we call that a type, a cholesterol pattern, and that has not been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. And when we look at aging and the aging process, actually the people that die of heart attacks are usually on the extreme. So they're, they're really high or they're really low. They're not those people in the middle.
1 (16m 3s):
And the same goes for like risk of dementia. As we age higher cholesterol is actually a protective to our brain, literally all of our sex hormones. So as, as a female doctor, I really care about things like estrogen and testosterone and progesterone. Those are things that are literally made from cholesterol and our body actually makes most of the cholesterol that we need. So the dietary cholesterol pales in comparison when you're talking about when you're talking about cholesterol. And so it's been sad to watch what's happened to red meat and animal fats, but usually when these patients come in with an LDL of 500, I'll send them to get a coronary artery calcium scan. And it almost well, pretty much every patient comes back at zero, so their arteries are not clogged.
1 (16m 46s):
And so the hardest part is that most of our nutrition research, our epidemiology studies that really a lot of them pull patients. You know, they say like, well, what, how many times did you eat eggs in the last year? Okay, well, I don't remember what I ate last week eggs and the last 365 days. And so these are, I mean, these are poor studies. These are poor population-based studies. And the thing about not even carnivore, but just keyed agentic in particular is that nobody has done studies where they've excluded the carbohydrates. So they've say, oh, it's the hot dogs. It's the steak, it's the, whatever the processed meats and red meat it's, that's, what's causing heart disease. And in none of these studies, did they ever exclude flours and sugars and vegetable oils?
1 (17m 30s):
And so that's where I'm excited now to kind of see this research, starting to swing and to really look at the physiology. And I know Sean bakers and I donated to his tip, his fundraiser has meet her ex fundraiser. You know, he's trying to fund these studies because yes, as a clinician, we love evidence-based medicine. But when you do a study, it takes about 17 years for that to translate into clinical practice. When you're talking about a study going through all these different organizations like American cardiology association, having them say, oh, yes, okay, there's enough evidence to recommend this. So I've had to stick my neck out as a medical provider, you know, with some of this stuff because we, we, we don't have the information.
1 (18m 11s):
You know, we don't have the, we don't have the studies, but I can tell you anecdotally that practicing medicine day in and day out and working with patients on their diet and making these changes that we've just talked about shifting to nutrient dense animal foods, eliminating flour sugars, and vegetable oils, the numbers get better on the labs. The weight comes down, they feel better. Their skin clears up, their joints don't hurt. I mean, I can go on and on and on and on about, you know, these success stories and it's nutrition is very powerful. Nutrition really is the one thing that you can change that will significantly impact your health in a short period of time. You know, even within seven days, we see changes in the immune system function and inflammatory markers.
1 (18m 55s):
I mean, even within seven days, it's pretty incredible.
0 (18m 58s):
Wow. Yeah. It's amazing what you can do when you just tweak your nutrition a little bit. What, what, as far as lab tests, you are there like maybe three to four lab tests that you really like prescribed to, that you recommend for most of your clients?
1 (19m 13s):
Yeah. So most of my patients on an annual basis, we do fasting labs and we are checking fasting, glucose level fasting, insulin levels, and a lipid panel. That's kind of like my super, super, super basic, like where are we at from a metabolic standpoint? And we want to see low triglycerides, high HDL LDL. We don't care about as much if a patient has pre-existing cardiovascular disease or a strong family history of cardiovascular disease. There are some genetic mutations, you know, with familial hypercholesterolemia and things like that, then that patient should get something called an advanced lipid panel, an NMR panel. There's Boston heart. There's lots of names for it, but it actually looks at their lipid size. And it also looks at other inflammatory markers like LP, little, a high sensitivity CRP.
1 (19m 58s):
It looks at their April lipo and B, but that's kind of getting a, you know, a little more advanced on a basic, basic basic level. I think every patient should have a fasting glucose fasting, insulin and lipid panel checked at their annual exam. I usually will check also basic chemistry panel, you know, look at their red blood cell, white blood cell counts. And I usually screen hemoglobin A1C is in these patients as well. And then kind of based on, you know, for women in particular, I screen for thyroid a lot. We can look at other inflammatory markers. So high sensitivity, CRP, like I mentioned earlier can be helpful. But I think at a basic level, most patients have no idea what their fasting glucose and insulin are and those things in particular, you know, we see insulin resistance developed for 10 years prior to pre-diabetes.
1 (20m 47s):
And so luckily was me in my thirties, I caught it. I was on the five-year train to type two diabetes and I, and I was able to stop the train. And that's what I want to be able to do as a provider is let's stop it from happening before it happens. Instead of getting down the road when a lot of the damage has already been done.
0 (21m 3s):
Yeah. No, that, that makes a lot of sense. And just taking these basic tests can go a long way. Like you said, it stopped you from going down a bad road and sometimes you need like a wake-up call and it's a lot of people wait till it's too late, you know, like you'd rather get on that earlier. It's never too late, you know? Yeah,
1 (21m 22s):
No, it's definitely never too late. I had a patient just this year who had been a type two diabetic for quite a while. She was the woman. She really shouldn't look that overweight. And she was in a randomized clinical trial at a local prestigious university hospital for a diabetes med. And she came to see me. She said, the study, just send it. I'm done with the study. I said, well, how did things turn out? And she said, well, it was okay. My hemoglobin A1C is like 8.1. Okay. Which for anybody that knows diabetes is the hemoglobin, A1C is 6.5 or above is diabetes. So that's pretty poor control to be honest. And she got the actual medication in the trial, she was in the treatment arm. And so I put her on a ketogenic diet.
1 (22m 3s):
I said, okay, we're going to, you're not on that med. She was, I think only on Metformin at the time she saw me. I said, okay, go and stay on your Metformin. I'm gonna put you on this diet. And then I want to see you back in 90 days. And in 90 days she dropped her hemoglobin A1C to like 6.7 or something like that. And she came in and she was like, I was just in this study for like a year. And like you did that 90 days. And she fell to me. I mean, she felt amazing. And that was like, it's so fun for me to sit in clinic and watch patients just like spill, you know, their experience. And it's like, oh my God, I'm sleeping better. I'm feeling better. My energy is better. This is the easiest thing I've ever done in my entire life. And I mean, it's just, it's, it's really cool to watch that.
0 (22m 42s):
And you said you put her on a keto diet, the keto ketogenic diet. What would you say the basis around that was just like I'm
1 (22m 49s):
Board certified in ketogenetic therapy. And for anybody with insulin resistance, I'm doing a period of carbohydrate restriction helps bring the fasting insulin down helps restore normal glycemia. The goal isn't necessarily to be zero carb or even low carb for the rest of their life. So like for me, you know, in particular, so now my hemoglobin A1C is like 4.9, but I add carbs back in strategically pre or post-workout or something like that for that purpose. But you have to restore the insulin sensitivity first. And so it's good for these patients to actually get into a period of ketosis for usually I like them to commit to it for at least 12 weeks.
1 (23m 30s):
And, and that is because they'll go through this period of adaptation where they're actually teaching their cells, how to lay down the cellular machinery to actually be a good fat burner and how to oxidize fat, efficiently and effectively. And once you can teach your body to do that, then you have dual sources. You have the ability to flip back and forth and burn glucose and burn fat depending on what your activity level is. And so that's what we're really trying to do is when, when I say a patient has insulin resistance, it means their body has completely forgotten how to burn fat. And we want to, we want to have them have that capability.
0 (24m 3s):
And usually that takes well, I mean, everyone's obviously a different, every different situation, but like 12 weeks, you'd say, yeah,
1 (24m 11s):
How insulin resistant they are. I mean, some patients, you know, it can take many, many months, but you know, I like to start with short measurable goals. And so, yeah, even if you can get them to, you know, commit for four weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, they, they will start to see those nice, slow improvements in, in their physiology.
0 (24m 35s):
Yeah. I mean, just, you know, it's like, you can have these five star meals, you can have a ribeye every night. Right. People think that like eating healthy, you have to necessarily restrict like, you know, not so bad. I mean, Sean Baker, I had him on my podcast and he wakes up and has a, you know, a steak dinner every, every morning, pretty much, you know, so well, and
1 (24m 55s):
I think, you know, America kind of did that to us saying like, oh, you have to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and breakfast foods traditionally. Right. It's like eat for breakfast, you eat cereal and pop tarts and bagels and toast and things like that. And so it's a, you have to break out of some
0 (25m 15s):
Of those things, the food marketers are smart. Right. They know that if they get you on something like that, like a car base that that's just going to lead to more hunger.
2 (25m 23s):
Right. And you'll need more. Right.
0 (25m 27s):
Yeah. What would you say, well, what, why don't we go into routine? I love I'm a big morning routine guy. What's your routine. And then maybe, maybe like your eating schedule. And I dunno if you do some fasting from time to time and things like that. Yeah.
1 (25m 42s):
So I wake up every Monday through Friday, I wake up at four 30 in the morning and I had to the gym completely fasted. The only thing I take to the gym is electrolytes. So usually about two grams of sodium, some magnesium potassium. I use the, the Redmond relay. It's just easy for me. So I work out fasted. I do resistance training four days per week. So two days, upper body, two days, lower body. And, and then the other day, I usually do some sort of high intensity interval training. And I typically take the weekends off because my husband works and I have kid activities and things like that. But, and so I go to the gym, I work out from five to six.
1 (26m 25s):
I come home, I shower every morning might be different. Cause sometimes I have 7:00 AM surgery or I have to go, you know, deliver a baby or something like that. But some, some mornings I get to take my children to school, but I typically will stay fasted. I've played with this idea of, you know, doing intermittent fasting. Do you eat your calories early in the day versus late in the day? And we'll of course like traditionally in America, you know, the family meal is dinner. And so it was like hard for me to think about eating my calories earlier in the day, but I've played with it before. And, and I, I do honestly think that my body responds better doing my two meals, breakfast and lunch because I work out at 5:00 AM.
1 (27m 9s):
It's best to get that nutrition and, you know, immediately post-workout, but, but some days I will fast to lunch. So typically when I get home from the gym, all I've had was electrolytes. I'm not a huge coffee drinker. I just, I just, I don't know, hot beverages, but I've started to incorporate a little more coffee in my adult life. I love nitro coffee with just a little bit of heavy cream, like a cold brew, right? Yeah. I'm the same way. I don't like hot coffee. I can't, I can't, I have a real cold day or something or like, I mean, I'll have a latte or something, but, but usually I don't, I'm just not a coffee drinker. And I know that's a big part of a lot of people's morning routines, but it's not, it's not like I'm specifically avoiding it.
1 (27m 51s):
I just,
2 (27m 51s):
Me too. You're not the only one. Yeah.
1 (27m 55s):
And then, and then my first meal is typically at lunchtime and I will have usually 4, 6, 8 ounces of protein depending on, you know, kind of where I'm trying to eat with my macronutrients. And then I might have a small amount of, of veggies or something with it, or it may just be me it's a lot of times I'll just take a Pyrex bowl of ground beef, you know, with some Redmond, real salt, maybe like an egg or two. I mean, those are easy things for me to just keep in the fridge or to kind of eat on the, eat on the run. I eat at my desk a lot in clinics and what, you know, when I'm charting and then I try not to snack. I think snacking is really emotional, but if I wasn't able to eat lunch or something like that, I have a bag of biltong, like jerky in my desk.
1 (28m 42s):
So that's an easy thing for me to grab, right. We'll have nuts or seeds or things like that on occasion. But, but mostly like jerkies and things like that is what I'm eating. If I'm running on the run, right dinner is usually a steak or salmon, wild caught salmon. We do a ton of eggs in our house. And so how our family meals work is that Ben and I will typically get our, our meat or protein portion. The kids eat the same protein that we're eating, and then they might put like some blueberries on their plate or they really don't eat a lot of like bread and pasta and things like that. I mean, they do have some carbs, but they'll put like more fruits and vegetables on their plate, you know, or some cheese, we love like halloumi cheese or last night I chopped up some little cherry tomatoes with fresh mozzarella.
1 (29m 34s):
And we had that with Sam with wild caught salmon. So we get a lot of the same things in our house. People would maybe look at our diet and think was like really boring mundane. But you know, we really find that people who eat a lot of the same things, it creates just consistency. I think it reduces decision fatigue. That's one thing I find with patients as they get on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest. And they think that their meals have to be really fancy and exotic. And I think that's overwhelming as a mom of three girls. Who's super busy. I don't have time for that. Like, but me. Okay. It's easy. Like it takes me 17 minutes to cook some salmon in the oven.
1 (30m 15s):
It takes me, you know, eight minutes to cook a medium rare steak. I mean, that's, it's, it's easy, it's fast and it's nutritious. And so that's usually how our meals work. I try not to eat after dinner and I just wake up and do the same thing. The next day, the weekends, my eating schedule is pretty similar, but if it's a day I don't work out, then I really try not to add any sort of carbs in on those days. So if I'm going to have any whole food carbs, some berries, you know, or something like that, then I, I try to do it on a day when I'm doing more intense exercise,
0 (30m 49s):
You occasionally throw in like a cheat day. I noticed on your YouTube channel, there was the one video I was like, oh, she's on YouTube. And then I'm like the one video that was the donuts. Yeah. You're like, I thought this girl was a meat eater.
1 (31m 5s):
Yeah. The story behind that is that, that was the day after Mrs. America. And the, the other person in that video is his name is Bartley Weaver. He was on NBC Titan games with me. And he is a professional eater. I had never seen a human consume food and calories like that man does. And, and the pink box donut owner was, was very gracious and gave us a bunch of free products. And I am not, I am not so dogmatic that I won't eat a donut. I will admit, I felt like garbage garbage,
0 (31m 40s):
One doughnut or 25 donuts.
1 (31m 42s):
I had like one bite of like 10 donuts because I wanted to try all the different flavors, but no, my husband and I will occasionally, you know, like if we're at a social event, you know, we might totally consciously, you know, have a couple of tortilla chips or, you know, my kids might have real ice cream occasionally. Like we live in reality as I've gone through this transition since 2015, like I had mentioned, I feel like crap when I eat anything like that, like my face will break out. I sleep horrible. I have worn a continuous glucose monitor for, for a bunch of different occasions. And I've been, I show people blood sugars.
1 (32m 23s):
I'm like, look, I like had this drink and like, look at my blood sugars. Or I had a slice of pizza, look at my blood sugars. And I'm really just showing people that you can actually really correlate that a lot with symptoms. So I find in women, like I'll put a continuous glucose monitor on and they thought they were having anxiety. And what they're having was these huge blood sugar spikes and crashes. And it was correlated. They're like, okay, this was the moment I was feeling anxious when my blood sugar was tanking and their body was putting out all these, you know, stimulatory hormones to try to get the blood sugar back up. So I think that's super a super amazing tool that can sometimes really hold people accountable. But no, I mean, I've had, I've had things like that on occasion since 2015, but it it's horrible.
1 (33m 7s):
It makes me feel horrible.
0 (33m 8s):
Right. That's the thing, like I think if you're in good health and you're metabolically flexible and you, and you cheat like that, you feel like crap. And then you realize, okay, now I, I don't ever want to do that again. And you just go back to your normal way of eating. I think then, then you're in a good state when that, when that happens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So why don't we talk a little bit about the misconceptions around women and meat? I feel like, like they think that only men should be eating meat. And I obviously, as a woman, doctor, you obviously think the opposite.
1 (33m 44s):
Well, you know, it's been interesting for me because I grew up as an athlete. I have a very athletic bill and I think this kind of like, there's a reason that they call it big muscular due to meathead, because I think like there's just this perception in people's brains that like meat is for bodybuilders or like men need more meat than women do. It's like a manly thing to like eat week. But in women's health in particular, women are under eating protein. And when we look at the macronutrients, protein is the one that you really shouldn't sacrifice. If you under eat protein, not only are you at risk for losing lean body mass and muscle, which as we age muscle becomes kind of an organ of longevity.
1 (34m 33s):
If you want to eat more calories and carbs in particular, it would be very advantageous for you to have some muscle on your body. And so if you under eat protein, you're at risk of losing that. But also when we look at the precursors, like for instance, serotonin, which is one of our neurotransmitters, a lot of these things that are, are made from protein, if you're deficient and trip to fan, and some of these amino acids, it really could be causing a lot of problems in your body. And in the literature. I think the recommendations for minimums of protein consumption is way too low, because you're assuming that your body's utilizing, you know, all of that protein. And as we age, as our gastric pH changes, as our body just becomes less efficient, we actually have a decrease in the amount of the amino acids that we actually utilize.
1 (35m 19s):
So what a woman has to eat at 50 years old compared to what she had to eat at 30 years old, she actually has to eat more protein after menopause than she did before menopause. And so you take somebody that wasn't a good meat eater. You throw them into menopause, oh, they are feeling it. They are gaining weight right in the abdomen. They are tired. They, life is not, not life is not good. And so I've really been a voice and an advocate for women to not be afraid of eating protein in the ketogenic world. You know, the traditional ketogenic diet was 20% protein and that's because half of the proteins that we eat, half those amino acids actually do stimulate an insulin release they're Glucogenix. And so when these kids who had epilepsy were put on this ketogenic diet, they truly did have to keep their protein percentage low because if you're stimulating glucose and insulin, those, those children could have seizures.
1 (36m 11s):
But for just a regular average, Joe, like you, me needing a higher percent of protein, you can still be in a state of ketosis. Your ketone levels might not be as high, but if your goal is to build lean body maps, and, and if you are somebody that works out in the gym and things like that, you, you need more protein and it's hard to get fat eating protein. You get fat because you eat too much fat or too many carbs or a combination of the two, because I'll tell you, we put people on protein, sparing modified fast, which is basically all protein and no fat and carbs. And those people's body fat will melt. So it's hard to get fat eating just protein and steak does not turn into cake and send the bloodstream.
1 (36m 54s):
I hear that misconception all the time. Well, protein just turns into blood sugar. Well, it does in a sense, but it it's not cake. And so I think that all women need to be eating 30 grams of protein, at least three times a day. For me in my clinic, 90 grams is like, I don't care how little or tiny you are. I feel like 90 grams is like the basement floor. And if you can eat up to a gram per pound of your body weight. So I'm currently like somewhere between 1 60, 1 65, if I can eat 160 to 165 grams of protein, fantastic. Now that's what people will say, oh my gosh, that's a lot of protein. But if you break that down into three meals, that's 50 to 60 grams of protein with each meal. And, you know, 25 grams of protein is like four and a half ounces of meat.
1 (37m 38s):
So that's, I mean, that's like eight ounces of meat. That's really not that much, but even if you can just get 33 times a day, I think you're, you're doing well. Yeah.
0 (37m 48s):
I love that. I think if you, I always say protein should be like the staple of, of, of your plate as throughout the day. And also the satiating effect of protein as well. You know, because I, I'm a big advocate of, you know, doing some type of fasting. And if you want to make that fast a lot easier and you're having some good quality protein, it makes it, it, it, it can go a long way.
1 (38m 12s):
Yes, absolutely. And, and real whole protein. So not bars, not shakes, eating actual, real whole protein is what provides that satiation. And it's, it's better quality.
0 (38m 28s):
And what about your experience since you're an OB GYN? I figured I would ask you a little bit about women and even Matt instinct fertile, what are some of the best ways that, you know, as you age, let's say, especially if you want to have kids later in life to stay fertile and, and, and, you know, just to have good hormonal balance.
1 (38m 49s):
Okay. Yeah. So infertility is on the rise, not just in women, but in men too. We're seeing men with a really poor semen analysis, not enough sperm, not the right shape of sperm, not sperm that are swimming in the right direction. And in women, infertility is typically related to what we call anovulation. So not releasing an egg. And we're seeing in fertility, it's really split 50 50 between men and women. And why is this happening? Well, first of all, people are waiting longer in life now to have kids. And that's a societal thing. You know, women are waiting into their thirties to have their first child. And as you know, our, our prime fertile years are really in our twenties and even in our late teens.
1 (39m 30s):
And so that's, that's an unfortunate part of our society. But when we think about, you know, nutritionally and how nutrition and things like that impact our fertility, the standard American diet is lowering men's testosterone. It's causing poor semen, it's causing erectile dysfunction. And in women, insulin resistance, you know, causes things like . And like I said, not obviating. And if you take a woman like that and then get them pregnant, it's an unhealthy pregnancy. We're seeing higher rates of preeclampsia, gestational, diabetes, all of these things. So it's all a downstream kind of domino effects. When we think about, you know, a woman's body in particular, basically every single month, her body is sensing, if this is a good time to get pregnant.
1 (40m 11s):
And so when we see dysregulation of the menstrual cycle or, or not a regular cycle, that is definitely a sign that something is off, right. And when we think about how to eat for a pregnancy, when a woman, you know, we should basically eat like we are pregnant, right. So what does, what does a pregnant woman need? Well, we need more protein. Okay. So that's a big deal as prioritizing person in the diet. We need fat all of our sex hormones, and you're making 30 times the estrogen in pregnancy, as you are not pregnant, it's all made from cholesterol. So we need these, these fats from butter and eggs and liver and beef, and these, and these types of fats, animal food has more bioavailable nutrients.
1 (40m 53s):
So if you're trying to get these nutrients, like for instance, like DHA, which is your animal based, omega-3 compared to ALA or EPA, which comes from plants, you would have to eat way more. And then there's people with genetic snips and variations like me in particular, I found out I have one where I don't convert plant based omega threes into DHA. Well, so I need to be, it's funny when I did all this genetic testing, I figured out why I feel so damn good on an animal based diet. Cause I have like all these genes where I don't convert plant vitamin AOL, I don't convert plant omega-3 as well. So it all makes sense why I feel, feel so good eating this lifestyle, but back to the question, so you need more protein, you need more, more fat.
1 (41m 35s):
When we look at micronutrients, one of the best things that a woman could be eating is some liver, like one ounce per day is probably all you need for the, for the vitamin a and the B vitamins. And it's got fat-soluble vitamins, eggs are an amazing thing. And so when we're thinking about eating for fertility, we should be eating like that. Like we want to get pregnant, even though we don't right. Please plan your pregnancies. 50% of them are unplanned, but oh, and be careful about that. I've seen people who go ketogenic, carnivores and have surprise pregnancy is because suddenly your body is like, you know, so, so yeah, I mean, you have to think about what nutrients are required to grow another human being.
1 (42m 18s):
That's how you should be eating all the time. If you're, if you're worried about your fertility and men too, men, I think downplay fertility a lot. And the, the semen analysis, I've seen improvements with nutrition men in particular, like they need more B vitamins, they need more zinc. So there's, there's so many reasons why we're seeing poor sperm production now in men, but it's, it can be fixed with diet
0 (42m 42s):
And other than died, what are the things do you think they could do to help be more fertile and help with pregnancy per se like sleep stress? Obviously those things play a role as well.
1 (42m 54s):
Yeah. A hundred percent. So I sleep is a very underutilized tool when it comes to health because literally our growth hormone and things like that are, most of them are made in our sleep. And that sets our circadian rhythm and our circadian rhythm is what determines when, when these other hormones get released in a pulsatile fashion. And so sleep is super important. And now we're seeing, you know, smartphones and computers and all this blue light exposure and people are drinking, you know, cans with more than 300 milligrams of caffeine and all these things that disrupt our circadian rhythm. And then we're inside, you know, buildings and cars and we're not getting natural sunlight. And so sleep is super important when it comes to just not only fertility, but just health in general.
1 (43m 38s):
That's one thing that I focus on a lot in my practice. I call them the five pillars. So for me, the five pillars and you have to focus on all of them at some point, but the five pillars for me are nutrition, movement, stress, sleep. And then my last one is what I call environment and environment is like, it could be things like toxic relationships and things like that, but, but really more like environmental Xeno, estrogens, and BPA, and a lot of the chemical exposures that we surround ourselves with. And so those are kind of my five pillars. So sleep is super important. Stress stress is good. So we purposely stress ourselves a lot, right? Fanciness stress, going to the gym and doing deadlifts. That's a stress.
1 (44m 18s):
Stress is good, but we have to figure out how to be a resilient and how to recover from stress. And so you should always be focusing just as much on recovery as you are on training. And so, you know, if you're somebody that goes to the gym and works out, you need to be balancing that with things that recover you and whether that's like breath, work or meditation or yoga or massage or whatever it is, but you have to have outlets for that. And, you know, emotional stress, job, stress, relationship, stress, people have to figure out how to deal with that. Because if you are constantly driving your sympathetic nervous system and constantly turning on kind of that, what we call flight or fight, switch, your, your body is not going to be utilizing glucose.
1 (45m 2s):
Well, it's not going to be sleeping well. Right. So it's total domino effect. And that's why all the five pillars really matter.
0 (45m 9s):
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I mean, a little bit of stress is good and you want to be resilient though. People ask me, I do some cold plunging and things like that. I don't know if you do any of that stuff. I do some hot sauna and like fasting and working out. Those are all great stresses. And I feel like your, like you said, your body's more resilient to handle other things when you, when you expose yourself to those every once in a while. Absolutely. I got, I feel like I could keep asking questions, but one of the main questions I ask at the end of my interviews is what would you give? Like one tip to a middle-aged individual man or woman who's maybe put on 10, 15 pounds.
0 (45m 50s):
And they're looking to get their body back to like what it once was when maybe they were in their twenties and thirties.
1 (45m 57s):
So I would say, oh, there's a lot of things. I would say like my patient. Yeah. You know, for me, it's ju it's just start because it's, I th when I find a lot of people doing is they try to, like, they want to research and read and go down all these different rabbit holes. And, and just start, I mean, you're going to mess up, just start making changes. You're not a tree. If you don't like where you're at, move, do something different. And you can't expect to get, you know, if you just do what you've always done, you'll get the same results every time. And so, if you don't like the way your body looks, you don't like the way you feel, then you have to change something.
1 (46m 39s):
And when I see people who are successful in making these changes, I'll tell you right now, your circle of influence is a big deal. So the five people that you surround yourself with most of the time, you, you actually literally become them. You do the things that they do. And so it might mean that maybe you need some new friends at the gym, maybe you're, you know, spouse, you need to have a real heart to heart about some of the changes that have to be made. Maybe you need a new job, maybe you, but you have to change something. And sometimes these are really, you know, small changes. And sometimes these are really, you know, big, impactful changes, but you can literally be anything in the world you want to be if you're willing to work for it, but just start, just start doing it, figure it out, be your own expert.
1 (47m 25s):
And it's, it's worth it. Health is a hot, because it can not be bought, can not be bought. You can buy a lot of damn things on the internet babies. You can buy houses, you cannot buy health. You can't.
0 (47m 40s):
Yeah. I love that. Love that. Well, this was great, Dr. Seaman, where's the best place for people to find you. And my other question was, do you take clients, both men and women, or do you just work with women?
1 (47m 51s):
Yeah, so I am located in Omaha, Nebraska. I work at mid city, OB GYN. And so if you're interested in becoming my patient, I don't do telemedicine currently, but I've had patients fly in to see me. I do some online coaching groups that involve nutrition and things like that. And I'll probably be launching another one here. Soon. I do work with men, you know, online in that, in that fashion, in my coaching groups. But, and I am boarded in integrative medicine, so I can work with men, but I don't currently do one-on-one consults online or telemedicine. So you have to come to Nebraska to see me, but I'm super active on social media. You can find me Dr. Fit and fabulous on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.
1 (48m 33s):
I've got a website Dr. Fit and fabulous.com. So, and I love hearing people's success stories. I can't give you medical advice online. So don't Instagram me or medical history,
0 (48m 46s):
But I love my followers. I really do. Awesome. All right. Well, I appreciate you coming on, and this was a lot of great information, so thanks so much.
1 (48m 55s):
Thanks Brian.
0 (48m 58s):
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0 (49m 39s):
If this sounds like a fit for you, email me@brianatbriangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. That's brian@briangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. Thanks for listening to the get lean eat clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there, and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member. That's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
