Carole Freeeman:            Well, hi everybody. Carole Freeman here. I am creator of 8-Week Keto Diet Programs and I’m here today with Dr. Don Clum. Very excited to have you. You have an incredible resume, so I’m going to let you share like who are you.

Dr. Clum:                             Well, it looked so good because they let me write it myself.

Carole Freeeman:            Okay.

Dr. Clum:                             That’s the key. You want a good resume? Write it yourself.

Carole Freeeman:            All right.

Dr. Clum:                             Who am I? I’m just your local friendly neighborhood chiropractor, mild-mannered nutritionist and over the years through different experiences of integrated practice that we’ve had, we’ve had some great opportunities to work with a lot of large populations, a lot of targeted groups, and in a very integrated medical and holistic fashion, so that we were able to pull from the best of both worlds to make some really targeted, really effective programs for people metabolically center. That’s my focus metabolic nutrition or insulin resistance and so forth. Then most of it came from private practice, but now I work in the population health world where we serve large companies and there’s thousands of people that do these programs.

We had to learn how to make it good for one-on-one which is the most effective and also applicable to people who are out there online and learning through distance concepts as well.

Carole Freeeman:            All right. Well, it sounds like a noble and very rewarding career that you’ve got, but it just leaves me of so many questions of how did you get there, how did you get all these experience. First I want to know like where did you grow up, what was your childhood like, what led you to be a chiropractor.

Dr. Clum:                             Well, that was preset forever. My dad’s a chiropractor, my uncle, my aunt, my cousin, my sister, my wife. I just grew up in that world. My dad was president of a college for chiropractic for 30 years.

Carole Freeeman:            You had no choice?

Dr. Clum:                             I had all the choice in the world and I tried to go other ways, but it kept bringing me back and so I gladly went in. My first degree was in human nutrition. I really like that and then I went into chiropractic, and then we went to Costa Rica where we work for eight years and lived and raise a family and we worked with the Costa Rican Olympic teams, Essential American Games, the Pan-American games, the Caribbean games, a lot of professional athletes in soccer and so forth. We get a lot of sports, and our whole role was peak performance. It wasn’t about injury management. It wasn’t a physical therapy thing. It wasn’t your even your traditional chiropractic world.

It was about how do we get these high-end athletes to get that one second more, to get that one reaction more, to get that a little bit more when they’re already at the top of the game, all about peak performance. Then it just translate that because we had seven practices there into how does the average person improve their health or get to where they want to go or set appropriate goals and so on.

Carole Freeeman:            How did you get connected with going to Costa Rica? Was that something a dream of yours?

Dr. Clum:                             They were just starting a school, I did my undergrad and was just starting a program down there. They had a clinic and they had a rural outreach where they went out with the medical van type services and we were part of that. We were incorporating WHO guidelines in third world countries, and so got a lot of different experience and it popped up. I’m a traveler. I’m a backpacker. I’ve been to 40 countries on six continents. Our family has been eight countries, we’ve lived in three and just the opportunity came up and we signed as soon as we could.

Carole Freeeman:            Right. Okay. All right. Were they call it wanderlust to just got to go and see?

Dr. Clum:                             My wife calls it triple sage but I don’t …

Carole Freeeman:            Triple sage …

Dr. Clum:                             People follow that. If you’re into that, she’s like you know … I get a little antsy. We moved around a lot. We went from Costa Rica to Spain for a couple of years, Spain to Florida, Florida to New York, New York now here to Seattle.

Carole Freeeman:            Okay. Well for those of you listening that don’t know what the triple sage thing is, it’s a Sagittarius, the whole astrology thing. I’m a single sage.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah. I don’t know any more than what I’ve already took.

Carole Freeeman:            Okay. Well, we’ll get your wife for here next. She’s going to have some good stuff to share.

Dr. Clum:                             Definitely.

Carole Freeeman:            That is really, really interesting. I have a friend actually who has traveled a lot to third world countries to help implement nutrition changes. One of the things that she reflected on after she’d been several places was the idea that a lot of the nutrition work that’s out there is that they try to take Western ideals and go and impose it on their culture. What is your perspective on that?

Dr. Clum:                             I don’t see it as so much as an imposing factor. It’s an economic factor. Anywhere you go especially in the low education area where Coca-Cola is cheaper than water, you got a problem right. Anywhere that it’s easier and faster to go get some bread or some fried flour convenience food than it is to go shop and make something for yourself, you’re going to have a problem. Then they have all these brands that they see on TV and the great commercials, and so just follow down that road. When I came, that was a big determining factor for me to get really back into nutrition because I was not so much into it for a long time in other country because didn’t need to be coming back to the states, going to the kids events, going to schools and just getting back into practice, the reality of the change over 10 years was dramatic.

Just the weight, the kids, the heavy kids, the hormonal dysfunction, all the problems with the PTA moms. It’s everything was just like what happened and it was so obvious. I wanted our family first and foremost to escape that route. I tell people all the time, I’m glad people like what we do and what we teach and so on, but I do this for me. I need to learn for myself. I’ve been diagnosed with cancer twice.

Carole Freeeman:            Oh wow.

Dr. Clum:                             I have been metabolic syndrome twice and I’ve always handled it naturally without any medical intervention, but I’ve learned you can’t just go on autopilot. You can’t just go with the status quo because that’s where it leads you. In this country in particular, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, cardio metabolic problems, cancer, weight gain, they’re all coming from the same stem. If I hope to escape that and not return to some of those scare points that I had before and I want my kids to avoid that, I need to be proactive and I started learning and then what I find makes sense to me and works in my world. I share with my patients and as we see results there, we share with the populations, the public, and so on.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, okay. Well, it sounds like you’ve had quite a learning experience from your own health crises. Did you try different approaches when you have those different diagnoses or has it always been the same approach?

Dr. Clum:                             It’s always been the same approach. I was diagnosed two times. I was diagnosed with cancer, with skin cancer. Both times was not I had a medical doctor on my staff who saw a mole on my back when we’re at a pool party. He’s like, “Hey, you got to come in Monday into my office and we got to talk about this.” I did and I couldn’t even see it and that was a reality check. In another time I went in, I had eaten some bad seafood, had a major rash reaction. I went into a dermatologist and they found a mole on my neck and they’re like, “Yeah, the rash is fine, but that thing on your neck, that’s cancer and you got to do something.”

Carole Freeeman:            Wow.

Dr. Clum:                             Both times, it shakes you up a little while. I was younger than and basically what I did because we’re on a pretty good healthy role and lifestyle as it was, I just tightened it up. I lost some weight. I up the physical activity and I started doing some rotational fasting concepts. Within six months both times, the lesion, I never had a biopsy, I don’t know what it was, that was just a diagnosis, eventually died. It dried out.

Carole Freeeman:            Oh, you never even have it removed then.

Dr. Clum:                             No.

Carole Freeeman:            Wow.

Dr. Clum:                             No, it dried up.

Carole Freeeman:            That’s pretty remarkable.

Dr. Clum:                             It went through some stages, some ugly stages, but eventually came to the surface, the skin separated and it fell off. Then it reappears because I still have the mole on my neck here somewhere.

Carole Freeeman:            That is remarkable.

Dr. Clum:                             Doesn’t even scar.

Carole Freeeman:            I love all these interviews I’m doing because I get to hear more of these amazing health transformations that people go through from the same similar dietary approach and I had a mole on my leg that over the last year has almost disappeared as well, and so it’s really interesting all these changes that happened.

Dr. Clum:                             It shook us up, it shook me up on a lot of different levels because as a practitioner, as someone who’s grown up in this, I’ve never had a prescription medication in my life. I’ve never had a vaccine. I just don’t live in that world and so to have this come up in my face, all these diagnosis, it shook me up. I’m like this shouldn’t happen to me, why. I didn’t even tell my wife. It’s on my back, I can hide. It was on my neck, I can hide it, I can tell her.

Carole Freeeman:            Wait. Is she going to see this?

Dr. Clum:                             She knows now years later because it’s almost like I had to come through a confessional and say, “Look, you know not as infallible as I like to think I am.” Then because I have a virtual online practice and 95% of all my clients are healthcare practitioner and they come almost like to confession that there’s like, “Hey, you know I know all this stuff, I teach this stuff, I work in this world, but I got mine stuff too.” I’m like, “Well, everybody does.” I work with them. They can be challenging to work with, but everyone goes through it because the environment we’re in, the misinformation that’s out there, if a healthcare practitioner who is immersed in this can still stumble, can still get caught up. The average person out there, how are they going to navigate.

It’s hard for us and this is my job. We work really hard to boil down the conversation points, to boil down the communication, to make it very simple, yet accurate because there’s a risking oversimplifying that you go off track, you can be wrong. I’ve fallen into that and the medical world definitely falls into that. That’s how we go down the wrong path, but we want that to be concise. We want it to be effective. People need to understand, not just do what we say, but learn what we know so they decide themselves to do it.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah. Well, you said that you’ve gone down the wrong path in the past. Will you share with us maybe some of the things in nutrition you thought were true in the past that now you’ve changed your mind about?

Dr. Clum:                             Well, the two times I found myself in metabolic syndrome where both times were removed, either cross-country or from one country to another, out of my routine, new house, finding schools for kids, new practice, whatever was doing, and then it just takes a few months. That’s when I really learned that my genetic susceptibility dries as me because I’m very insolent reactive and next you know, putting on weight, which is not a big deal if the metabolic factors are in line. They went out of whack and so I had to use my own program and bring it back to center. If I’m not on my game, then I start to drift down that road and eventually just gradually my set point for whatever reason, I can go crazy trying to figure this out.

For my weight, it’s a little bit heavier and so I got to be on it. Otherwise, I think it’s just the environment is so toxic or hard to deal with, the stress for whatever it is that it leads me down that road. That was probably the biggest eyeopeners. Just you got to be proactive. We started saying if you’re not proactively improving your health, you will passively lose it. If you’re not actively improving your health, you will passively lose it. It’s just the way it is in our world right now.

Carole Freeeman:            Well, there’s some quote about if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah. The other thing is and so in practice, we try to do the best we can, the information we had. We did calorie-based programs. We did five to seven meals a day. I worked with athletes. We did the high-protein, thermogenic type of workouts as well as diet program, so we did all these things. I worked with athletes who are natural. I worked with the ones who weren’t natural and we learned a lot. Eventually as you try to translate that to someone who’s not an athlete or someone who is looking at resolving a health problem, it collided and those athletes eventually crashed. I mean absolutely crashed. I mean youth and high activity can guys a lot of unhealthiness going on, you can’t feel.

Just like metabolic syndrome, there are more people in this country with metabolic syndrome at normal weight than there are with people with metabolic syndrome who are obese.

Carole Freeeman:            Oh, let’s pause for just a moment and cover what is metabolic syndrome for people that are …

Dr. Clum:                             Sure.

Carole Freeeman:            Listening or watching that don’t have any idea what that really means.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah. Metabolic syndrome is a wide variety of different changes that go on in our body metabolically, and the way we measure it, the most traditional way is through different blood values. There’s five risk factors and if you have three out of these five, any three, then you consider to have metabolic syndrome. Those five are high blood pressure, so anything over 130/80, high triglycerides, anything over 150, low good cholesterol or HDL, increased waistline. For women, the high end is  35 inches, the men’s high end is 40 inches, so that point and higher is considered a risk factor, and then high fasting blood sugar. This is blood sugar between 100 and 125, 126 starts to go into diabetes, type two diabetes and normal was up 100. Not ideal but normal.

Any three of those five and you considered have metabolic syndrome. I would say if you have just the fasting blood sugar levels that are above 100, even really it’s anything above 83, then you’re going down that path. It’s what I call pre-diabetes. If you have any kind of insulin issues, if you any  liver fat issues, those are all in the same category. You’re metabolically sick and you’re going down that path, no matter what you think or how you look or how you feel.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah. I had metabolic syndrome before I started my ketogenic diet, even before the car accident which was a big turning point for me. Even after getting a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in nutrition, I had metabolic syndrome doing what I thought was a helpful way of eating. My blood sugar was 96, so just below the cut off. My waist measure was 40 inches, so definitely met that criteria. My HDL was probably like 35, so that was low. My blood pressure surprisingly was okay initially but moved into that. Wait, what was the other one? What am I missing?

Dr. Clum:                             Triglycerides.

Carole Freeeman:            Triglycerides. Oh yeah, those were definitely like 220 last time, pre that, check that so I definitely had it.

Dr. Clum:                             If someone wants a fast track factor, triglycerides correlate very well with insulin. If you’re getting a blood test, ask them to put fasting insulin on there. They allow up to 25. Your range up to 25 is normal, but really anything over five and you’re insulin resistant, you’re going down. That’s the foundational metabolic problem that drives all these things and triglycerides correlate very well with insulin. If you don’t happen to get your insulin checked or you have old blood test that doesn’t check fasting insulin, just look at your triglycerides. Anything over 100, you’re going down that road.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, yeah. Well, these are really important things that people should look at, the traditional medical models, just wait until you have diabetes and then try to reverse it.

Dr. Clum:                             No, that’s not the medical model.

Carole Freeeman:            Well, yeah, they say it’s not reversible.

Dr. Clum:                             Correct.

Carole Freeeman:            You wait until you have diabetes and then you manage it.

Dr. Clum:                             Yes.

Carole Freeeman:            You maintain your diabetes is basically what it is, but there are ways you can catch this really, really much earlier. I mean you could catch it when you’re seven like your son and prevent it in the first place, but you can also catch it by looking at your triglycerides and then actually asking for the fasting insulin test as well which can help catch it much earlier.

Dr. Clum:                             There’s a lot of other social factors you can look for. For example, if you’re gaining weight or have gained weight and you can’t lose it, a lot of us gain weight on and off. It’s a natural cycle of life and normally we know what we need to do to drop it back down. Now if you find yourself at that higher weight and you do those normal things and it doesn’t come back down, you’re now in a state of hormone resistance or weight loss resistance and that’s indicating insulin as well. If you start to notice the weight, your belt line is getting tight but your weight is not changing, that means your body composition is you’re going into insulin resistance.

If you start to notice that your cravings change or you get bloated after you eat when you normally wouldn’t before or you get tired after you eat, things like that usually insulin resistance. There’s other tells you can do along the way. The reason it’s so important is insulin resistance or insulin problems is the gateway hormonal dysfunction from everything else. People are worried about their thyroid, their adrenals or cortisol, their estrogen, their testosterone, you name it but it starts with insulin. Insulin is the foundation, it’s happening so common and it disrupts everything else because it is such an important hormone, it drives a show.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, and we’re trying to get the word out, but it’s still not very much talked about or even acknowledged. I mean there’s insulin deniers, aren’t there?

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, of course. I mean well, yeah there’s absolutely like anything. There’s a lot of different camps on that. We knew a lot more about insulin before we could test for insulin, before we had insulin to inject into people because once we had that starting in 1922, suddenly we had what they thought was a cure for type one diabetes and everything went very medical, very supplemental, very medication centered. Even now, it’s why they believe it’s a progressive degenerative disease that once you’re there, all you can hope to do is slow it down and manage the symptoms of it. You can’t stop and then reverse it, and that’s never been true. It might be true if that’s the only way you apply your therapy or your approach, but it’s very misleading and it’s sad for people you’re stuck in that.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, yeah. Well, what have you found in for somebody who’s had, not type two, sorry, somebody who’s had metabolic syndrome, experience that twice, what have you found is the optimal diet and way of living that helps you prevent that or avoid that?

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, the great thing is this whole process stems from that root of insulin dysfunction or irregularity or insulin resistance, a lot of different names for it. If we just back and go upstream and just focus on what will improve insulin, then you’ll watch your blood sugar change, you’ll watch your cardio vascular markers, your cholesterol things change for the better, you’ll watch your waistline change. You’ll be able to lose weight because insulin, here’s the key thing, there’s only one hormone that makes you gain weight and keep weight on, one and that’s insulin. There’s eight, at least eight hormones that will start the process to burn fat off your body, but when insulin comes on strong, she trumps all the other ones, right?

That’s a bully on the playground and so insulin is a key factor. What we do is we promote the insulin friendly lifestyle. If you just start there, you can come a long way and that’s a good place to start because then the things clear up and you get a baseline and you realize what’s really a problem what’s not. You’d be surprised by going this route, how many things change that you thought were this big problem, they weren’t. They were an effect of another problem. Insulin friendly. First thing we have people do is to stop snacking, go to three meals a day. That’s it. It could be as simple as breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Just don’t put those snacks and every time you eat, no matter what you eat, even if it’s healthy, even if it’s carrots and apples and almonds or whatever, you’re going to spike some insulin. By going to three meals a day, I’m not telling you how much to eat or even what to eat at this point, you’re going to allow that insult to come back down and had overall exposure to go down and that process won’t start to accumulate. That’s step number one, that’s simple, is to eat three meals a day or even two. You’re not going to starve. You’re not going to go crazy. You’re going to be able to do it. If you have any symptoms from that, it’s usually detox symptoms or carb addiction symptoms, but it’s not real life threatening stuff, even though it can be uncomfortable. That’s a step number one.

Step number two is increase the healthy fats. We need fat in every meal and not just as a cooking medium. We’re talking as an ingredient. Cook with it but also have something in each meal that is a good healthy fat, whether it’s avocado, nuts, seeds or a fat like butter or coconut oil or so forth, but make sure it’s in there. Again, we haven’t changed what you eat yet. We’ve change when you eat and we’ve added something there. Then once that settles in, then we start to bring down the things that stimulate insulin the most, which as we know are sugars, grains, and processed foods. People don’t understand anything processed stimulates insulin. The body reads anything in a powder or in a denature processed state as basically a sugar.

We’re talking protein powders, all these workout people, protein powders. We’re talking meal replacements. We’re talking …

Carole Freeeman:            Protein bars.

Dr. Clum:                             Any of that kind of thing, anything that’s got a bunch of ingredients. You don’t know what they are, it’s processed. The body interprets the sugar because protein powder will raise insulin as much as sugar. Even though the same amount of protein in say a piece of fish doesn’t raise it the same out, only a little bit. It’s not just about the macronutrient, it’s about the food and so part of our progression is to go to real foods, get off of anything that’s made food. Should be an ingredient, not have ingredients, right? That’s what we go for.

Carole Freeeman:            That’s lovely and there are a lot of different schools of thought still about the perfect diet and what’s best for everybody, but one of the things that we can agree on universally for I think almost every approach is that what we’re finding is true is that real foods. Whole foods as close as they grow in nature tend to be the healthiest for everyone, regardless of what approach you find works for you. There’s never been a study I’ve seen that shows that having processed packaged food makes you healthier than eating real whole food.

Dr. Clum:                             It’s a great example to use why does powdered protein have a different response in the body than a whole protein. It starts you thinking why would that happen because there’s no mechanism for powdered protein. There’s no mechanism in our body for chemicals or for processed foods. Even for refined sugar, there is no mechanism, there is no pathway, there are no gene sequences, there is nothing in there to handle that. It comes in and it goes I don’t know what to do, I guess I’ll do this. I think of it like I don’t know if everyone remembers or everyone did this. As a kid, I had a coin sorter where I put coins in the top and it went ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, and it went quarters, nickels, dimes, panties, right? It sorted it out, so that’s like your body.

Your body has all these pathways and it might bounce around a little. It might use different ways to get there, but it sorts everything out. Now take that coin sorter that’s set up like that, then you take a coin from Canada or from Mexico and you put it in, it might go in but it doesn’t bounce around the same. There’s no place for it to go that perfectly fit, so it goes into wherever it can get in. That’s what chemicals and processed foods and elements in our body do. They bounced around. They use alternative modes and they go wherever they can fit in, but it’s not ideal and it can’t be healthy because if it was healthy, there’d be a mechanism and a pathway for it, custom for it but there’s not. It has to cut corners and has to guess. We don’t want our body guessing, right? We just don’t want that.

Carole Freeeman:            Right. Coming out of a time where people thought that the science of food was exciting and innovative and scientists could make food that was better for us, but it turns out that it’s just not the case.

Dr. Clum:                             It’s absolutely not the case and a lot of people look to vitamins, multivitamins. Well, I eat junkie food but then I had to take my multi. Well, your multi is probably junk as well. I do a whole video on how they make them and where they come from, what a synthetic vitamin, what a natural vitamin. There’s a big difference between a vitamin in something, what are they, whether it’s a pill or food. There’s the vitamin, there’s the amount there, there’s the amount that actually gets digested. There’s the amount that gets absorbed and then there’s the amount that gets utilized. They’re not the same. Just because there’s a hundred grams of something, you might only be getting 7% of that, but you don’t know that because if you didn’t know that pathway for whatever you’re taking, you wouldn’t know.

That’s why when you look at like protein that come … We saw this at the conference. Protein that comes from beans trying to compare it or broccoli and trying to compare that protein number that comes from steak, the numbers might even be the same on how much protein is in each, but you will actually get into your body five to eight times more from that stake than you will from those vegetables. It’s not apples to apples at all.

Carole Freeeman:            Never mind the fact that the weight of that broccoli would end up being a truck load of broccoli you could get.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, absolutely.

Carole Freeeman:            You can’t eat that much broccoli.

Dr. Clum:                             Well, if you could, you won’t do it for long I will say.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay, so many more topics. You have a really big following on Facebook. You’ve been doing a lot of videos.

Dr. Clum:                             Just started with those videos. I’m surprised someone challenged me. I was on a call and he’s like, “Doc, I love this, you know. Can you record this?” I’m like, “Yeah, I can record his.” He’s like, “No, one of our videos.” I said, “Well, just put your phone up and push, go live now.” I’m like, “I’m not ready. I don’t have this.” He’s like, “Just do it.” I did. I wrote a little thing on my board and I did it, and that was the first one and it’s been viewed over 5000 times. I was like doesn’t get an easy.

Carole Freeeman:            Okay. Well, you started then as almost a blogger on Facebook. Your status updates, you would put the equivalent of a 5-page blog post as your status update and I just notice people want this information. They want to understand what’s going wrong in their body and you put it in these terms that are in your face, like look this is what’s going on, you’re not sugarcoating it. Maybe you have some people that are disagreeing with you along the way …

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, definitely.

Carole Freeeman:            You’re gathering this momentum of people that are like wow, yeah, this guy’s telling it like it is and now I understand what’s going wrong in my body and why I’ve been trying for so long isn’t working. We referenced the conference where at the low-carb San Diego conference just July of 2016. This video will be out there forever. They talked about how we’ve got to have this grassroots approach to this dietary change. The government is not going to get on board and just all of a sudden say hey, sorry the last 30 years we’ve told you the opposite of what … They’re not going to do that.

There’s a lot of consumerism business profit centers that are centered around this as well and so we’ve got to have this grassroots effort which is people that are changing their diet and getting health benefits from that, but then also the healthcare practitioners. We’ve got to get out there. We’ve got to get the word out. We’ve got to help people just start changing on their own because it’s not going to come from a top-down approach.

Dr. Clum:                             Well, it all started with my evolution of my own learning and especially when you come from a traditional education which is nutrition, chiropractic medicine, you get some overly simplified concepts. You get to learn a lot and so I get that, but then you start to realize wait a minute, insulin does this? I didn’t want that. You mean diabetes is more of a liver problem than pancreas? I didn’t learn that or what I’m doing is wrong, that pisses me off. I want to finally start to do that and then it’s like my journal on Facebook and then I write how I understand it. I can judge by the feedbag if it was clear or not. If it’s not clear, then I don’t know it well enough and I need to study again. I do the talks. They’re just on my bookshelf that I put the paper on.

I mean I have 700 books that I go through 10 a month. You’ll see in my blog post, if you start to read them or my Facebook post, you’ll know oh he must be reading a book on this because this is how I process it through. Then how can I use that and make it practical to my life and to the lives of the people that are doing right now. It should be understandable because the other thing is I’m going through a PhD program in health psychology.

Carole Freeeman:            Oh, well that’s important to tell us too. Okay.

Dr. Clum:                             Well, I’m not there yet so I’ll tell you when I’m finished.

Carole Freeeman:            You just started it, right?

Dr. Clum:                             I’m in my first year. Yeah. A lot of it is okay, how do we get people to engage, how do we get people to act, what makes the difference. The truth is that people have to reframe their thinking and the only way to do that is to learn. If they don’t learn and believe the new concept, they won’t do it. It’s like me telling you what to eat. You might do it for a little while but no one likes to be told what to eat. They’ll go back to what they think they know. Whereas if you can say it in a way that is an aha moment that create some clarity for them, they at least open the door to the possibility that there’s a different way to look at this, then there’s a possibility they’ll get in. Then once someone gets it and they understand and they believe it, then their actions are easy. Okay.

The other way around, that’s hard. The other way around makes it a diet. The other way around makes it a gimmick, makes it a fad, makes it who knows what, makes it a treatment, and it’s not really. By following what you know what makes sense to you, then it’s a lifestyle. That’s a key.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah. Well, so that’s part of your education piece. It sounds like a natural progression for this program for you as what you were already passionate about doing and discovering what motivates people to make those changes

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, and it’s a process working in the population health. We have people in this program that are in C suites. We have doctors that are in healthcare systems. We also have factory workers, truck drivers, and part-time people, and everything in between. We have to be able to speak to that level and that and I go around and I speak at the conferences and those are practitioners, those are doctors and so forth, you can speak a certain way and we understand each other. Well, who’s going to make the change? It’s not the doctors, it’s the people that they serve. We want to be able to speak to even the doctors in that form, so they can then communicate it on.

My biggest litmus test is if when I’m working with someone, if they understand it and they can affect their household, if a man or woman can affect their spouse and their kids, then I’ve communicated in a way that made sense. It’s not just about the individual. It’s about how they translate that into their life and they communicate that the others to get them on board. That’s how we make a real big impact, a societal impact and a multi-generational impact as well.

Carole Freeeman:            Who defined has more resistance, the doctors and healthcare providers or the general public?

Dr. Clum:                             No, it’s a doctors and healthcare providers. Yeah, I mean because we learn a lot and sometimes we learn it, we do it and we even see some results doing it. Then someone comes along and says no it’s not that way, it’s confronting. Now I got to change. You know many times on Facebook, I said look I’m reversing, I was wrong, public service announcement while I used to talk about [isocell 00:29:46] in my office agave because I thought it was a great thing. Then more info came out, I said, “Oh no, I know I sold some of these agave. Sorry. Not doing what. Used to do protein powders and go look new information, no more protein powders.” It’s like yeah, it’s tough.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, yeah. Maybe your health psychology degree will help you … Maybe there’s a phrase or term for this that people that are open, right? They’re able to reflect and look at and acknowledge when they’re wrong and …

Dr. Clum:                             Willingness to learn.

Carole Freeeman:            Willingness a pivot on what you promote as well. I had a big change and I was trained in a program that’s integrating psychology and nutrition together. We basically were taught and most research shows this that it’s a fruitless endeavor to try to get people to lose weight from traditional approaches because they can’t sustain it and their body works through various hormonal mechanisms to try to regain that weight and slow the metabolism. It was cruel and unusual punishment ever recommend any kind of a restrictive diet to people and ever to try to get them to lose weight. You should just try to let them embrace the beauty of their body, whatever it looks like and eat mindfully and intuitively. You know what that led me to? I told you a metabolic syndrome already.

Dr. Clum:                             Well, there’s two sides to that. One of them is that daily calorie restriction of any kind, without changing the habits and the quality and the food and the timing and all that kind of stuff will still drive. You’re just eating less the junk, but you’re still eating the junk, you still drive insulin resistance, you still go down the same road. We know now after 50 years of research that that model even if you do lose some weight, the long-term outcomes increases your risk for heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. You’re like wait a minute, that’s why we did this in the first place yet it increases their overall risk of that because it makes them worse. It makes them metabolically worse. Like the first video, it drives down the metabolism and throws everything off. That’s one side of it, so not good.

That’s why I won’t do daily calorie restriction. I’ll do fasting and fasting rotation. We work a lot with different customized fasting protocols, but that’s not daily, that’s not low calorie . It’s a whole different concept, but daily low calorie ruins our system and the other side of that, it’s not about the weight, it’s about the health. It’s really, really important you can be overweight and metabolically healthy and you can be normal weight and metabolically sick or both can switch, right? If you’re overweight, first thing to do is to address that metabolic health because if you don’t get that healthy, you won’t lose that weight.

Then the other video, the third video that we did, we talked about if you’re metabolically unhealthy and you have a fatty liver and you have the stuff going on, until that clears out, you can’t burn off body fat. That’s how people can do all the right things. I mean really do right things for a month, two months and see no results or get worse. It’s because that has to come out first and once it does because the body fat is not dangerous. It’s the organ fat. All right. Once that’s down, then the body … Because the liver does all that work, it has to take care of itself first before I can take care of the rest of the body because that fat we don’t like to see, that’s just ego. That’s not that’s not dangerous, but the fat we can’t see, that could kill us.

Carole Freeeman:            I think it’s Dr. Jason Tsung that came out recently with one of his prolific blog post talking about how the fat that we see is actually protective mechanism that her body’s doing as a favor by getting that sugar out of the blood and putting it in fat cells, whereas we’ve been trained that that fat should be the focus of what you’re trying to fix rather than the underlying health behind it.

Dr. Clum:                             I’ve been falling Dr. Tsung for a long time and for years now back when he just had those first videos that he started without and I’ve been communicating with him and on some cases and things like that. He’s a great resource. It’s questionable whether that’s really what’s going on or it’s just storing it for survival or something like that. It doesn’t seem to be the overt blood sugar, that’s the problem. You can have high blood sugar, you can low blood sugar. If you’re in the right metabolic state, it doesn’t change anything. When you block the insulin receptors in the kidneys, for example, you don’t get any neuropathy, right? That means no neuropathy means no cutting off toes and feet, yet the blood sugar is still high.

If you do the same thing in the eyes, they don’t get a diabetic blindness yet the blood sugar is still high. It has to do with the insulin because the blood sugar is tied to the insulin, you’re keeping the insulin high. That’s the problem but it’s not the blood sugar. If you could somehow you erase the insulin effect, blood sugar is almost irrelevant. Obviously everyone can challenge that, but I mean it’s almost irrelevant. It’s the hormonal disruption that comes from the insulin that follows the blood sugar, that’s the problem.

Carole Freeeman:            Okay.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, but the same protocols follows though, so all same stuff.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah. Okay. One of the Facebook posts I remember from you, however long ago, six months or so ago, was a really eye-opening one for me and [Dr. Eads 00:34:51] at that the conference went to, he showed the same thing but the whole comparison of the Egyptians and the recent trend tours like well love your body and women get this movement of like we get to accept our body, so why can’t men get the same accept your body, so the movement of the dad bod is being the new hot bod for dads. You talked about how this was actually just a repeat of something with several thousand years ago.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah. Well actually I got a lot of from his book. Yes. He’s got a great book on that.

Carole Freeeman:            Protein power, right?

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah. Yeah. I think that was one, but anyway and that’s what got me thinking. We started looking at it. If you look, the Egyptians were the first green based society. They were incredibly grain based. Believe it or not, even more grain based than we are now. They didn’t have as many processed foods and chemicals. If you look at them, everyone from their soldiers to their elite were fat and they didn’t have pictures. All their hieroglyphics are stick figures. I’ve been in Egypt, I’ve been through the gypseum, they’re all really tall and really thin. I think that’s just for artists fact, artist rendition. What they could do, they didn’t have pictures, what they could do is they had sculptures made of people if you could.

Even from middle classes, it wasn’t just the elite, the middle and upper and so they’d have like a husband and wife and they would be sitting wherever they’re sitting and they have their address from their family line and they would have a sculpture made. These sculptures were like their version of a picture, of a portrait and you start to look at them hundreds of them, thousands of them, you see these fat people sitting there. You see these men with these great big beer bellies and man boobs going on and it’s like whoa, you see the women, babe proportional saying, but the real takeaways the man.

I’m like wow, it’s because they were so grain centric and it was so dominant in their life that they develop the same bod we’re seeing now, and so that’s not an attractive bod. That’s a dysfunctional bod, that’s a hormonal bod, and here’s the thing. This is a sensitive subject, but we can start seeing this in children. Dads and stuff like that, do whatever you want, I don’t care but just look at your kids. When I came back to the states, I started to notice that these kids not only were there more and more overweight kids, like my dad always said growing up, he was the fat kid, not one of the fat kids. It was like one fat kid in any class or group. Now there’s only a few skinny kids, it’s change. Anyway as you look at these kids, they’re gaining weight differently.

You can see kids, they’re getting puffy girls. They call a muffin top across there. I don’t know, it’s a bad word I’m sorry for this, but the pooch or whatever up through here, that’s a hormonal shift. You see the boys get heavy in the chest. My mom used to say, he’s chesty, right? Well, thanks mom.

Carole Freeeman:            Not from due to many bench presses.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, not that guy. What you see is you see them gain weight through here. You see the chest actually start to form peaks, small Peaks. You can see it through their T-shirts and now you’re starting to see those peaks start to form and they’re not that overweight. They’re really not. They don’t have the huge overlaying belly, but the chest, that’s hormonal, that is hormonal. That’s insulin going crazy, that’s estrogen and testosterone being down regulated estrogen. Even though they’re prepubescent, these are still factors and they’re sensitive to, and they’re setting up their body for the rest of their life. When you see that, that’s a problem. You think oh big boned. No, they’re not.

Carole Freeeman:            There aren’t any bones up there.

Dr. Clum:                             It’s just a phase, you’re going to outgrow it. No, not that. Kids do go like this and then they get tall and they go this, but those are some signs of roundness in the boys’ faces. That’s why the boys are maturing later and women, girls are maturing earlier. It’s the polar opposite to the same hormonal problem because men and women have different reactions. It’s really pretty scary.

Carole Freeeman:            Well, so along these lines, let’s talk about the idea that parents have about how like well kids should get to eat whatever they want and it’s a treat and they’re young and I have mine …

Dr. Clum:                             Who made that up? Since when do kids get to eat whatever they want? I never got to eat. You go talk to your grandma and ask her if that’s the way it goes. No, grandma used to spoil you. What did that used to mean? A candy, a chocolate, not a box, not an never ending bowl, not all these different things, not at every meal every day. Now kids get treats constantly and you got to say, “No. Xander, come over here.”

Xander:                                What?

Dr. Clum:                             This is my son Xander, seven. He has challenges with this. Xander, we had a baseball game the other day and what did they give out?

Xander:                                Gatorade.

Dr. Clum:                             Gatorade and did you have one?

Xander:                                No.

Dr. Clum:                             Why?

Xander:                                Because my dad didn’t let me.

Dr. Clum:                             Because my dead didn’t let me. The point is you have to make some restrictions. Thanks buddy. You got something to say?

Xander:                                Bye-bye.

Dr. Clum:                             Bye-bye.

Carole Freeeman:            Thank you.

Dr. Clum:                             Then the other team, the people who bring the Gatorade, oh I’m so sorry, dah, dah. Then you think in the head, oh he’s such a jerk, I’m going no …

Carole Freeeman:            It’s just Gatorade, right?

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, but the game before, it was a big old patch of bubblegum that had the baseball player on it. I was like no, we’re not doing that or at soccer games, they used to bring orange wedges. Now they bring donuts holes and I’m going no, you got to say no sometimes, you got to say no. You go to the pizza, we bring stuff to food and we got to say no, but at the same time we teach the kids why. He knows too, he knows. Come here Xander. Again, for example, everyone has their own terms and their own plus. What happens if you eat a lot of wheat?

Xander:                                My knee starts hurting when I go to bed.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah. You hear that parents?

Carole Freeeman:            You’re young.

Dr. Clum:                             If you think your kids have growing pains, they probably don’t. Growing doesn’t hurt. What happens is they eat something, they create an inflammatory response and usually at night when they’re calming down, they just sets in and they get leg pain, they get knee pain. I know if he’s eating a lot of wheat and he’s getting that inflammatory that collided in reaction that’s going on in his body, that night he comes knocking on our door and he says either my knees hurt or my leg hurts and that means something happened. It happens after he goes to a Boy Scout event and and they have pizza there. You can’t be in control of everything but it can’t happen and when it does, we now know growing pains are a food reaction. Thanks buddy.

Carole Freeeman:            I think that’s really more important maybe even like you said dads can do whatever they want. When you’re an adult, you can choose whatever you going to eat, but I think it because it sets the stage for the rest of your life, like it’s even more important that children eat healthy foods because they’re growing. They need lots and lots of nutrition. They need all those nutrients that are in real food and when they’re eating these processed foods because we think oh they should get to eat whatever they want or they’re young, they have a fast metabolism or watch that like behind you dude, that it sets the stage for metabolic damage very young. It’s doing them, it’s more of a disservice I think two children to feed them those things than maybe even adults having them.

Dr. Clum:                             Well, I did a Facebook post as well that said hey, would you consider me a bad parent if and I said what if I took 10 teaspoons of sugar and gave it to my 7-year-old right now, I said that’s breakfast. Everyone would flip out the scene, yeah you’re a bad parent. Not only you’re bad parent, I get child protective services. That would be child abuse and especially if I did that multiple times a day, no one would agree that. Yeah, that’s what’s in the average kids’ breakfast between a serial, the milk, the toast, the orange juice. It’s 10 to 15 teaspoons of sugar, no different. Maybe some water is mixed in there, but that’s it and they’re doing it every day.

At some point to continually feed these kids toxic, metabolically unhealthy foods at some point, we’re going to have to say no and that the parent is responsible for this. You can always judge the commitment to health of a parent by how healthy or what the weight status is of their children. People hate to hear that. I get it. No one wants to see that. No one thinks they’re a bad parent, but when kids are, especially when they’re very overweight or they have chronic asthma or they have all these different issues or constantly sick, there’s a reason for that. It’s not genetics, it’s not bad luck. Something’s driving them, the parents need to step up and learn how to not do that.

Carole Freeeman:            Well and I have to give them credit because there’s most parents out there or not like trying to be a bad parent. They’re trying to do what they think is right, so they’re trying to feed their kids snacks and fruit snacks and things like that. The traditional approach is like well I’m just trying to get my kid to eat less. If they’re still eating the highly processed out of carbs and sugar, it’s not going to work.

Dr. Clum:                             We have to step up and do some tough love in the subject. The two biggest parental lies, I wrote about a couple years ago. One is I’m doing the best that I can. What mom, dad, a parent says that, that shuts off the conversation. I go, “Really? You’re doing the best you can. How many books on the subject have you read? None. How many professionals have you consulted on the subject? None. How many blog posts you subscribe to you about this? None. Where do you get your information? I don’t get any information.” Okay, that’s the best you can do? If that’s the best you can do, I’m surprised you get out of bed, I’m surprised you can have a job. That’s baloney. Okay.

The other one is I just want what’s best for my kids. That’s another conversation stopper and I go really, what’s best for your kids. Well, I want them to be healthy. Go back down the same thing. They do want what’s best but their actions do not reflect it at all, whatsoever and parents, the number one reason for that is unfortunately it’s laziness or it’s inconvenient to them because it takes their time to do this. Oh, I don’t have time to make my kids meals all the time. We’ll make the time. If you really want what’s best for your kids and you’re going to do the best you can, you’ll budget time and you’ll do what you need to do to make food for your kids, to shop for your kids, to learn what is best for them and give it to them and then hold that line.

Otherwise, those excuses are just lies. Okay. Then when they get older and they’re out of your house and they’re sick and they have diabetes before they’re 25, you go oh no, it must run in my family. No, the problem is no one ran in your family and we’re eating terrible and you caused this predisposition in your own child. I’m not saying they’re doing it on purpose. No one wants that, I get it. There’s no psychopaths out there trying to kill their kids, but neglect will do as much damage as an intentful action sometimes if we’re not careful especially in the environment and world we’re in because it’s set against. It’s an uphill battle so we have to get it in gear, and that’s why we call our website your wellness tribe. We don’t want a village.

I don’t want a community. I want my tribe. I want my people. I want like-minded people. I want people to join that, who are going down this road, who share together because that’s why I want around me, more like family than anything, like minded family because I know not all families think the same. That’s what we want. I want a tribe, but we need to do that because it’s a really interesting statistic. One of the number one deciding factors in the outcome of your medical care at any given point of time is not your hospital efficiency, it’s not the education of your doctors, it’s not the access to the care, it’s not the timing of the procedure. It is the community health literacy around you. Not the doctor’s education, the community.

It’s a weird correlation that goes in there. Part of what we do and part of what you’re doing, part of what I do in educating ourselves and sharing with other people’s hope to raise that community awareness and that medical or health intelligence, so that in case myself or my family needs something, we’re actually helping ourselves out by that. It’s a funny dynamic, but it is a tribal concept of community concept that we need to focus on population.

Carole Freeeman:            That is fantastic. I literally have chills. I don’t know if it sounds like that exciting of a thing, but it’s just this whole community movement, the village, the tribe. The tribe sounds like yeah, you’re working together to fight this battle that’s out there. Like you said, everywhere you turn in every corner and every person’s car, there’s these refining sugary products out there. We’ve got a big battle to fight to change this.

Dr. Clum:                             Part of the focus I’m doing in the PhD is on carb addiction, sugar addiction. It’s a drug. It’s a drug. When you look at it that way you got a pusher at every kiosk in the mall. The cubicle next to you, in front of you, behind you are all drug dealers, and they’re all enabling you to use in that sense because it’s everywhere is innocuous with everything. It’s given to all the kids and it’s like could you imagine instead of sugar, that was cocaine being offered everywhere? Would you allow my 7-year-old to come to your house and have a beer with dinner? No. Why? Because it’s bad, it’s a drug, then why are we sitting down, have pizza with a chocolate milk followed up by a brownie?

Seriously, let’s really think these things through and the tribe is like you said is more aggressive and that’s what I want. You can’t join a tribe, you have to reflect a tribe, right? You can’t just join, sign up. You can sign up for a newsletter or whatever, but if you really want to be a part of a tribe, you got to be that try. You can’t join, you’re not a member, you don’t get invited, you are that tribe and that’s who you want around you because when things get tough, you want to rely on those around you. Because when things get tough in my life like it seemed especially when it comes to my kids, when you’re a parent and your kids get sick or there’s a problem, they’re injured, your brain goes nut balls, right? Just crazy.

I reached out and I reached out to my tribe, and I’m glad they’re there. When things don’t go the right way, I can reach out to my tribe. I got 7000 healthcare practitioners on my Facebook pages and I can say hey, I need help and they’re not going to send me down a road that they know isn’t in our life, isn’t in our thinking. It’s great to have and I think everyone should have it no matter what it is, even it’s not ours. Just get them going.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, yeah. One of the things I found that dictates whether people are successful in making a big dietary change long term is that they make it part of their identity and being part of a tribe is that’s part of your identity. When people think about who they are and they think about their religion, the way they eat whether they’re vegan or they’re carnivore or keto, their mom or their a dad or their grandparent, they’ve got these identifiers that dictate who they are. What I found is that people are really successful is that that becomes part of their identity is that this lower carb keto way of eating. That makes them successful because when it’s who you are, there’s no going off path of that and being part of it a tribe gives you that community.

I found that’s really, really important is that people have a community that they don’t feel like they’re the odd person out, that they’re the only one who’s trying to do this, and that I’m not the only one, I’m part of this community, I’m this is who I am.

Dr. Clum:                             Even if you are the only one out there and sometimes you are, where you might be the only kid on a baseball team not doing this, stick to it. It feels awkward in the beginning and you know it’s coming. When I see those things come out and go, oh man, can I escape before they start passing them out because you know it’s going to come, you know you’re going to put yourself out there. The more you do it, the better you get at it and the more the people around you pick up on that, they’ll stop asking. They’ll change what they bring just to accommodate you. That might be selfish but hey, I know if that helps every kid in there to get something a little bit less junkie, then I’ll be that, I’ll be that selfish guy. You’ll start to see the world around you start to change, but you got to be consistent.

You got to be centered and you got to make those hard choices. You don’t have to be a jerk about it. I’ve been that too, it doesn’t work that well. You just got to be solid in it and keep doing it and hold that line and you’ll influence more people than you think. You’ll start to make an impact, and then they’ll start asking you questions and they’ll start coming around and. Those who don’t don’t, but those who do, that’s your tribe and they start to form and they’re going to be with you and you’re going t be there for them.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah. Well and you probably really liked what already [Dyckman 00:51:11] said at the conference about his son has type one diabetes and he plays football and somebody had a question about like well what treats do you bring after football and he was like, “They don’t need treats. They just ran around for like 30 or 40 minutes, like they’re not starving. They’re going to be fine. They don’t even need anything.”

Dr. Clum:                             That’s so hard. I do that with all the football, baseball, volleyball, lacrosse. Everything that we do is like A, you don’t need a carb load the night before. We bring our own meals to these pasta dinners for football. I’m sorry if they think I’m not some like you’re going to decrease performance if you do this and number two is you don’t need a pre-workout, you don’t need a mid workout or mid game or post game immediate snack. You’re going to throw off your system. Your system is priming for action and you’re going to say stop acting and start digesting. No, it causes a problem, so skip them entirely, you don’t need them.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, yeah. Well yeah because we’ve conditioned everybody gives something with sugar is love and that’s how you show you love people. If you look at it from the lens of this is a drug, do you give people heroin when to show them you love them? No, you would never do that, but we’re conditioned that sugar is legal, therefore it’s not the big of a deal. Any parent who knows a procedure that they do two babies in the hospital, they give them sugar water because it numbs pain that well. It works in the brain like doctors know that. How are we not acknowledging that in our society that we’ve got this drug epidemic and it’s not what we think it is?

Dr. Clum:                             Well, the problem with food based addiction is a stronger than drug addiction because drug addiction triggers dopaminergic, dopamine pleasure receptors in the brain so does food. When it goes into your system and the pancreas releases insulin, the pancreas also holds serotonin in there in the body. Not the brain, in the body. When that serotonin comes out with the insulin, then it causes a relaxation in the body, so now you’ve got a pleasure center firing off in the brain and your body get that instant sense of relaxation and you got a double whammy there that doesn’t happen with drugs. I mean it is more powerful than that. That’s why mama rats will give up their pups to get the sugar where they won’t give up their pups when they’re strung out on crack. That’s pretty strong.

What would it take for you or any mom or dad to give up your kids for anything? That’s how strong this could be in these systems and so got to watch. I take you seriously.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah. One of the attendees at the conference that we just went to, he was talking to one of the vendors there and he talked about how being on a low-carb, high-fat diet took away 80% of his cravings for drugs. He said he’s been addicted to every drug out there and he said that that was one of the things that you like the most about that way of eating was that it took away 80% of his cravings. He also said that you know being addicted to every drug that’s out there, he said the absolute hardest drug he’s ever had to kick with sugar. He said it was by far harder than any other drug he’s ever been addicted to.

Dr. Clum:                             Well, they do and they use it in transition. If you look at what are they getting heroin, people were coming for heroin, you give them chocolate, straight-up chocolate. If you ever go to a 12-step, like Alcoholics Anonymous, there’s bowls of chocolate and candies everywhere. If you have the sponsors, they’ll tell their sponsees and when they’re in a trouble point to have some sugar, to have some chocolate yeah to get through it. It’s better to have a coke than it is to have a beer at that point. I get that in that scenario, but we’re talking about the same pathway in the body that we’re triggering.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, and that’s why when people start drinking sodas, they very quickly are drinking six a day, eight a day, 12 a day.

Dr. Clum:                             Absolutely.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah. Well, okay you are just full of awesome information. I love how passionate you are about this because we need more people. I’m so glad you’ve started this tribe and that you are putting so much energy and passion into sharing this information because it’s life changing in a really important way and it’s not only life-changing but it’s community changing, it’s country changing, it’s world changing this information and so I think …

Dr. Clum:                             That is who I am.

Carole Freeeman:            I’m just really, really glad that you’re here sharing this with us.

Dr. Clum:                             Appreciate the opportunity, it’s great.

Carole Freeeman:            Do you have anything else you were hoping that I would ask about or anything else that you wanted to get out there? We’ll make sure that we link all the ways to contact you and your videos you mentioned as well. We’ll put that down below, but is there anything else that you were hoping that …

Dr. Clum:                             No, not in particular thing. I think this was great. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Carole Freeeman:            All right. Well, I have one closing question for you.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah.

Carole Freeeman:            If you knew is your last day on earth, what would be or your final meal?

Dr. Clum:                             My final meal, I would probably … It’s pretty much how we eat all the time. I wouldn’t go sugar pizza and stuff like that because I want to feel good on my final day. If I do that now, I feel pretty bad. I think I’d really like to get … I like to grill a lot, so I’ll probably get some giant sea scallops, a whole bunch of butter. We would slow grill brussels sprouts and we would have a side of bacon going. That’s the kind of stuff that I would go for. If I was ever going to cheat, my cheat meal … Because a lot of people say oh I had this cheat me on and a lot of the same kind of question. I’m like, “Well, why did you waste your cheat meal on that?” You know what I mean?

If I was going to go for a cheat meal, it’d probably be a good old-fashioned homemade ice cream, high fat, the good 10% plus but still the sugar, there’s other stuff in there. I would probably do that or I do like dark chocolate. That would be a good … We make coconut oil and chocolate, so I get it there but that’s how I would cheat. Once like you said the hunger goes, the addiction level goes, you’re not drawn by emotional eating, you’re not draw my cravings, you don’t have all this stuff pushing you. You can choose a lot better.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, yeah. Well and I love that. Everybody have asked this question of they all pick foods that they know make them feel good because once you experience that and you know how bad the other stuff feels like, why would you ever want to feel that way and how deeply satisfying eating those foods you described are. They taste delicious, they make you feel good, they make you feel satisfied. Yeah.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah. I mean after you get used to it, it makes eating bread or a bowl of pasta, you ever wonder what … Try eating a bowl of pasta with nothing else on it and if it tastes that bad like that, might as well just eat the sauce.

Carole Freeeman:            If I go down the bread aisle in the grocery stores, I was like it just smells really bad to me. It’s like that something’s wrong.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah. Even pre and post Egyptian, their bread was peasant food, bread was the way they tortured people when they locked him up. What did you feed a prisoner? Bread and water because they wasted away, you can’t live on it, right? Bread were reserved so that when your crops failed or you had a herd that went away, you could get by on bread until you had the next season, but never as a staple forever.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah. Hey how do you grill brussels sprouts? I’ve been curious about doing that and I …

Dr. Clum:                             I just throw them on the grill.

Carole Freeeman:            Okay, okay.

Dr. Clum:                             Just dump the bag into the grill.

Carole Freeeman:            You got a small enough great [inaudible 00:58:31] that they don’t follow through.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, or you get one of those grill things and I love brussels sprouts on the grill.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah. My son’s girlfriend, her favorite veggie is brussels sprouts and I got a bag in the right now. I’m going to do that this afternoon.

Dr. Clum:                             Oh yeah, you go do it. Then I always have a big thing, like a ramekin of butter with just whole bunch of crushed garlic. I just based everything on the grill with that. I also like fresh calamari on the grill, but it’s got to be fresh because if not, it’s rubber. We live in costa rica, we get that very easy and we were good. What else do we like? We like mussels on the grill.

Carole Freeeman:            Oh yeah.

Dr. Clum:                             They can easily dry out there, so you got to watch them …

Xander:                                Clams.

Dr. Clum:                             Clams. We like the clams on the grill. We do a lot of good stuff and then the veggies if you care chicken or steak, if you do long wedges of broccoli, they’re really good on the grill. They don’t burn too well. We like to do that, so we do would do anything. I used to grill a lot of meat and my wife challenged me. She’s like that’s not a meal, so you got to have veggies. I’m like oh and she’s like, so I learned out of grilled veggies on the grill and we just love that.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, that’s great. Well, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Clum:                             Oh, thanks for having.

Carole Freeeman:            Finally got this all coordinated and everything like that. I love your passion. I’m so excited to share all that you have coming up because I know there’s big things coming from you.

Dr. Clum:                             For you. This is the movement so keep at it.

Carole Freeeman:            Well, it’s important to people because everything out there that’s going wrong with our society health-wise, it all has this underlying mechanism, so that’s why so many things get better when you change what you’re eating this way is that it all has the same underlying mechanism.

Dr. Clum:                             The next time we’ll come back and we’ll tell them how they can save money on it when you work in fasting.

Carole Freeeman:            Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s one of the myths people think like oh, this is an expensive way of eating. No, I save so much money. I spend so much less money on food now and I have things like filet mignon and salmon and these wonderful things and I spend less money than ever did before, so yeah.

Dr. Clum:                             We do the rotational fasting. My wife loves when I’m fasting.

Carole Freeeman:            Okay.

Dr. Clum:                             She just says we save a lot of money and …

Carole Freeeman:            Well, saves a lot of time too.

Dr. Clum:                             Do you fast too buddy?

Xander:                                I barely go out on me.

Dr. Clum:                             He tries. He’s like, “Dad, I’m going to fast.” He gets through maybe …

Carole Freeeman:            Overnight.

Dr. Clum:                             Yeah, exactly.

Carole Freeeman:            Well, we’ll sign up for now. If you like this video, give us a thumbs up, subscribe if you want to see more. We’ll put all Dr. Don’s contact info below there in the notes and we’ll see you next time. Thanks, bye.