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Scott Dikkers Life Changing Low Carb

How does a low-carb diet change his life with comedy writer Scott Dikkers?

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Transcript:

(Transcript provided by Descript)

Carole Freeman: Hey everyone. We are live. Are you a fan of satirical comedy? Like The Onion? Do you get inspired by stories of successful people and the lifestyle factors that play into their success? Guess what this episode is for you stick around because my guest today is the one, the only Scott Dikkers. Oh my gosh.

I’m so excited that I have him coming on today. He’s an American comedy writer, speaker entrepreneur. He’s the founding editor of The Onion. You’ve all seen the goals, the headlines and. He’s also gonna share how a life changing health diagnosis led to a radical diet change and share how that impacted his life.

So welcome everyone to keto chat live. I’m your host, Carole Freeman master’s degree in nutrition and clinical health psychology. I’m a board certified ketogenic nutrition specialist on the side. I do some standup comedy. And so I love when I can have a guest come on that merges both of those things together, health and.

Comedy together. And so I specialize in helping women plus follow a keto diet for sustainable weight loss, and we gotta plug in the medical disclaimer here real quick. And this show is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not meant to be medical advice, no intended to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any condition.

Even though they say, laughter is the best medicine. We can’t treat you today. And so if you have any questions or concerns related to your specific medical condition, Seek out your primary care healthcare practitioner to take care of that for you. As you’re joining the show, go ahead and leave us a comment.

Let us know where you’re joining from. Join the show. And first up I’m gonna do a news segment. There is really big breaking news in the keto low carb world. And. I’m gonna share it. I’m gonna address it. I debated last week. I decided not to bring it up, but some people don’t know some people maybe have heard and some rumors and things like that.

So I’m gonna share with you all the sad shocking news of Jimmy Moore. So he is the 50 year old, former host of LivinLaVida low carb and other podcasts, plus he’s author or co-author of. Keto books such as keto clarity. And if you haven’t heard the news he was arrested on June 23rd, 2022 as a fugitive from justice in South Carolina.

Then he was transferred to Virginia and charged with this is the part that’s really shocking is seven counts of carnal knowledge. Of a 13 slash 14 year old, where the perpetrator is three plus years older than the victim. And so the carnal knowledge, it’s Southern legal euphemism for sexual contact.

So AKA, this is their statutory rape law that’s there. And he scheduled for his arraignment hearing on June 8th, 2022. And if you’re not familiar with who Jimmy is, he originally lost 180 pounds on low carb. 10 plus maybe 10, 15 years ago. And unfortunately he’d appeared to regain the weight.

In recent years, he did claim to be a carnivore recently on his Instagram and Facebook. And oh, I’m gonna make some bad jokes about he’d. To carnivore to the carnal degree. That’s alright. That’s gross everyone. And this year, 2022, he was publicizing that he was doing a 365 day ice bath challenge on Instagram, where he would go live every single day taking an ice bath.

And he was trying to show that it was gonna promote weight loss. And that experiment has come to an end now. Fortunately, because he is in jail, he’s no longer able to continue that. He went on a six month sabbatical. He very publicly went on a six month sabbatical in 2019, taking a break from all social media.

And he emerged at the end of that sabbatical announcing that he and his wife were divorcing and that he was rebranding himself as the man of real. Which was weird. And even though he had clearly gone the, just for men look where he’d dyed his beard and his hair, it was eyebrows even it was pretty stark.

And so unfortunately the seven counts of carnal knowledge, the dates of those incidences overlap with this medical dates. And so that is great news in the keto low carb world. And they’re, we’re seeing some of the, his authors and co-authors are asking the publisher to take the books off the shelf.

So it’s been pretty shocking news hitting the low carb community. This is not anything. I excited and I’m quite shocked. And I’m gonna go ahead and bring on my guest now, Scott Dikkers and I gave him the option. He can comment on this story if he likes or. He can pass him. We’ll just go onto his interview.

Everyone welcome Scott Dikkers

Scott Dikkers: thanks for having me on Carole.

Carole Freeman: Thank you so much. And any comments or would we rather just go into the interview?

Scott Dikkers: Well, I just wanna say I’m horrified. I don’t know that person, but every time I hear stories in the news and it happens so much where somebody had sex with a child, I’m just like, I wonder, like what kind of world do I live in?

What, who are these people? It’s just insanity and it happens way too much. So horrifying, horrific, and very sorry to hear it. What can we do? We’ve got all these Q Andon idiots out there. Who think that Tom Hanks is raping children and meanwhile, there’s actual child rapists out there that nobody stops.

Carole Freeman: Yes. Yes.

Scott Dikkers: If we could redirect all that stupid energy somehow and actually stop real pedophiles, we should do that.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Yeah. I, it looked like he I think as a midlife crisis, he should have just got a Corvette instead of these terrible decisions.

Scott Dikkers: Don’t abuse a child.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Yeah. Prayers go out to the victim and family.

I hope that justice is served and this is the. One and only time that this happens, that he does this. So

Scott Dikkers: yeah. The tragedy is that, kids don’t recover from that. That’s a life sentence. And it’s just horrific. But on that hilarious note.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Dikkers: Let’s talk about comedy.

No, we don’t have to talk about comedy. We can talk about food.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. I wanna talk I didn’t give you any pre notes, but I wanna talk about how you got into comedy writing, as just sharing who you are and kids on that. And then, the other half of it, we can talk about your dietary change.

So I connected with you watching Joel Byer podcast live. And he came on as a guest on my show in the past, talking about him, giving up sugar, giving up on sugar, giving up sugar. And you two mentioned that you’d had a significant dietary change and had gone primarily lower car blow carb. We can talk about that more too.

And so I was like, oh my gosh, the perfect. I always want to find how do we fit comedy and dietary change together. So anytime I can have a guest that can talk about both of those I’ve. I’m excited and I’m a huge fan too, so I feel so lucky to be talking to you. And I have one of your books here. I’ve read all how to write funny series and just fantastic books.

So thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So thank you so much for being here. And I’m so sorry that the news of the day is not a funny topic.

Scott Dikkers: Yeah. When you do news parody and news comedy, and this is, was always my experience at The Onion. Was, we would look at talk shows like late night talk shows whenever there was some horrific tragedy in the news.

All those guys could go on their talk show and they’re all guys. And they would say, oh, I can’t be funny tonight because this terrible tragedy happen. But at The Onion, we couldn’t do that because we didn’t have a personality that would come out. It was a fake newspaper. Or a fake news website.

And we had to put something funny in there. Otherwise we wouldn’t have wouldn’t have a product that week. So it was always a real challenge when something like that happened and mass shootings were this thing that dogged us every time there was a new mass shooting, we’d have to do the really painful and horrific task of what can we come up with?

That’s like funny. That, that’s at least taps into people’s rage and provides some sort of outlet for their emotions. Cuz sometimes that’s all comedy is just like a way to cope. Yeah. And we understood our role in that. And then this writer, Jason Rotor came up with this great headline that The Onion has used repeatedly every time there’s a mass shooting now.

I don’t know the exact wording, but it’s something like, “‘No way to prevent this,’ says only nation where this regularly happens.” And we just reinsert new details. Every time there’s a shooting. And every time that story runs, it like hits the point home further. And after the Aldi shooting, The Onion ran that story everywhere on its whole website.

Every story was that story with a different set of details in there, cuz there’s a mass shooting. At least once a day now in America. So that, that not only was a real great cheat for The Onion real great way to not have to think of new jokes, whenever something tragic happens, but it allows us to communicate this satirical point, perhaps in a more meaningful way.

By just showing the maddening repetition of this problem. So it’s just something we have to deal with in the comedy business, especially comedy that responds to current events, a space I’m used to and. my job could be a lot harder. I’m not a brain surgeon, nobody gets hurt when I do it wrong or do something that’s not funny,

Carole Freeman: the finding the absurdity and the fact that it’s happening

is what you’re for.

Scott Dikkers: Yeah. There’s always some kind of target for humor. No matter what’s happening now, sometimes people aren’t ready to laugh. It’s too soon for them or whatever, but eventually laughter is gonna get you out of the tragedy and it’s gonna allow you to move on. So whenever people are ready, that’s when I try to be there with a few jokes,

Carole Freeman: yeah. And that’s an that an ongoing theme in standup comedy is some standup comedians will say it’s my therapy. I go on stage and I can process stuff. That’s happened in my life. I certain a lot of the things of my jokes are been things emotional and jokes out of them process. Feel more empowered, the situations that I didn’t have any power over.

And then there’s other comedian like no standup should not be therapy. You need to go get therapy and leave the stage for humor. Where do you stand on that whole debate?

Scott Dikkers: I think it’s a little bit of a cross between the two and it depends on your comedy persona. I generally am more the latter where I just want to do entertainment but in the process of me entertaining people.

I think I’m also like helping myself. It’s a great type of healing to share your trauma and have an audience connect with you about it. But that’s the key ingredient the audience has to connect with you. They have to think. It’s funny. I have seen some comedians, especially comedians starting out who are just up there doing therapy.

And it’s really not that funny. And that’s the greatest sin. If you can do therapy and have it be funny, wonderful. Like you. Go nuts. And I think almost any comic is getting some kind of therapy out of doing comedy. Even if it’s not directly talking about their problems, just that connection that love they feel from the audience.

That’s, sometimes for comedy people, sometimes they’re a little weird, they’re a little reclusive or shy or antisocial or awkward or whatever. That’s the closest thing they get to. A genuine human connection in their lives.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. So therapeutic I’ve noticed a couple of different primary archetypes of people that do stand up comedy.

So there’s people that are overconfident and just like to be the center of attention. And they always think they’re funnier than they are. And there’s the type that you just mentioned that is a little more socially awkward or shy, and they can step into that persona on stage and be something that they in their regular day to day life or not comfortable being.

Scott Dikkers: Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. The, it runs the spectrum basically from extrovert to introvert. And the ones who are the extroverts who love the party and they love being there with all those people. They really don’t even have to be as funny because sometimes it’s just the sheer energy of being on stage and joking around with people.

Is so exciting and electrifying for everybody involved. They do a lot of crowd work, but if you read their act after the fact, you might not actually recognize any jokes. ,

Carole Freeman: I like to think that I have written, I have jokes that work, but, I’m sure there’s plenty of my non-fans out there. That would agree with you that it’s, that’s very funny.

Scott Dikkers: always how it’s. But, the winning formula is combination of those two. You love the crowd. You love being there. You love all the energy and you have good writing. You have good material. That’s that those are the best standups.

Carole Freeman: So how did you get interested in comedy? What’s your early story and influences?

Scott Dikkers: I got started really early. I was probably four years old. When I maybe earlier, when I discovered that doing, being funny was a way to get love and attention and kind of my only way. So I pursued that pretty heavily.

Carole Freeman: Talk about therapeutic .

Scott Dikkers: Yeah, exactly. I would make little cartoon books and drawings and would act silly and do silly voices and stuff.

And that continued, like that was my. Chosen personality, I guess you could say, I really went all in on that became a real class count clown in school. And when I got outta school, I knew that I really didn’t know how to do anything else. I would, I was gonna have to figure out some way to make a living out of this.

Couldn’t imagine having a job where I was sitting at a desk or doing manual labor or something, I just couldn’t imagine not doing comedy. That’s when the real challenge hit me, cuz no, nobody tells you like how to break into comedy. Nobody tells you how to make money at it. And back then when I was 18, we’re talking about the early to mid eighties, there was no internet.

You couldn’t look this stuff up. I lived in the middle of nowhere. I lived in a small town in Wisconsin. The odds were stacked pretty heavily. My family didn’t have any connections. we had no money. There was really no, no anything. So I started drawing comic strips and I sent them away to the big syndicates.

And eventually I set my sights lower. I started sending comics to actual newspapers and I got one published in college newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. And that comic strip really took off and I was able to start making a living doing. and in tandem, I also started paring my proclivity for doing silly voices, into doing radio commercials and voices for video games and stuff like that.

So I had these two comedy careers. In my early to mid twenties, I was humming along pretty well. And that’s when these two guys who wanted to start a humor publication approached. because I was like the big man on campus with my comic strip in Madison. They wanted me involved in this new publication and I jumped right in.

I thought they were really smart, charismatic guys, loved the idea of doing a humor publication. And I thought it was gonna be a magazine, like mad or national Lampoon or something. But the only way we could affordably print this thing was on newsprint. It was the cheapest kind of paper you could print it.

which I thought was really lame. We couldn’t even do color. It was just embarrassing and, form function, followed form. So we made it a fake newspaper cuz it was on newsprint. And for many years we, oh and then those two guys left after a year and sold it to me and one other, two other people and we bought out a third.

And so it was me and my business partner who sold all the ads. And I had to fill all the pages for a few years. I built a writing staff and really didn’t know it was ever gonna go anywhere. It was basically paying for itself. We were paying for the printing by selling local ads.

Carole Freeman: So you had ads in it. I get, I’m gonna get trying to figure out where they real or were they not?

Scott Dikkers: Oh yeah, that was a big problem for us. We used to have coupons for local businesses. Local pizza places on the bottom of the paper that you could cut out and people wouldn’t use the coupons because they thought they were fake and the coupons, communicated to the advertisers that, Hey, there are people reading this, you should spend more money on advertising here.

So we had to beg readers, to actually use the coupons. We really pushed those hard and. It took a few years before people finally realized, oh, and actually one thing we did, we created the back half of the newspaper, we created the AV club, which was reviews of movies, TV shows, which legitimized and grounded the whole enterprise and made people stop asking if the coupons were fake

So the AV club was like this tool to take, get people to take us seriously. And. Then the internet came along about eight years after the, after we launched this newspaper and we’re just, we’re humming along. We’re making a little more money selling a little more advertising and the internet just, we took everything we were doing in print and we just put it on the computer on a website, low and behold, we become the world’s first humor website and everybody’s writing about us.

Wanting us on their TV shows like we were suddenly like the biggest new thing in comedy. And it was I hesitate to use the word overnight success cuz we did work for eight years tirelessly before that point but it was amazing to suddenly have this small local newspaper have a potential audience of billions of people all over the world.

It was amazing.

Carole Freeman: Did your overhead. decrease by going online or did it increase? Cause a lot of times people think oh, it’s free to put stuff on the internet.

Scott Dikkers: We had to pay $400 to get the domain, The Onion.com.

Carole Freeman: Okay. Oh, somebody already owned it. Okay. Which nobody, right? Oh, just back then.

It cost a lot more to get domain.

Okay.

Scott Dikkers: Yeah, there was no GoDaddy. There was no like website where you could go to get domain. You had to find someone who knew how to do all this. Oh, okay. And they had to set up servers for you. It was like very proto internet age. And my business partner was like $400.

What is this thing? What is a website? Nah, we’re not, I can’t justify the expense and eventually convinced him to invest the $400. And other than that, no, there was no real difference. Most of our efforts were still in the print public. For the next 10 or 15 years, the internet was really just an afterthought.

Carole Freeman: It sounds like the story of NFTs now where people are like, what is that? Do I really need it? Is it gonna be the next big thing?

Scott Dikkers: Exactly. Yeah. These new things come along, nobody understands what they are and it behooves us to at least learn enough that we. Capable of like maybe dipping our toes into it.

So I did that. I created an NFT and sold it, and that was a really interesting experience. I learned so much and I’m glad I did it. but I don’t know. I still don’t really understand much about it.

Carole Freeman: Oh, so like I mentioned this book, I’m I familiar with your, how to write funny series. So if anybody is stand up comedian, excellent resources, but also if you’re somebody who’s wanting to write for TV or online or any of the other places would be a comedy writer, excellent series of books.

But I was really pleasant. I looked at your whole biography or. What’s it called bibliography? I don’t know. What is it? List of all the books? Yeah, bio. Okay. Yeah. And my favorite title, I didn’t know this before, but here’s my favorite title of all your books. You are worthless, depressing nuggets of wisdom.

Sure. To ruin your day like that just fits with the satire that I grew up with in my family. Great. how do you do you have a list of all kinds of ideas or how did that book particularly come to be.

Scott Dikkers: I sure do boy. Talk about therapy. That book was therapy for me. I was really going through a midlife crisis.

I was really depressed and my wife left me and I was homeless and I just dumped all my darkest thoughts in this book. And sold it to a publisher who thought it was really funny. oh my gosh. And it’s one of my better selling books. Like it, it it remained in print, I think for 25 years. And crazy.

Yeah, really crazy. Oh,

Carole Freeman: I didn’t even look up. So is it one of those that like there’s copies that are like heirlooms that it’s, a hundred dollars or more? I should look it up. I

was just like…

Scott Dikkers: I don’t think it’s one of those. Okay. The, yeah the rights just reverted back to me because when you sign a publishing deal, sometimes after 10 or 25 years, you get the rights back, which is great nowadays for Amazon.

Cuz now I can put it on Amazon. And I make a hundred percent of the money. Amazon takes a small cut, like 30%, but my God with a major publisher, they take 85, 90%. There’s a reason. Amazon is a Mo monopoly. They really make it easy for authors to make money. I think I’m

Carole Freeman: gonna I, I’m gonna look it up and see if I can get a copy and send it to my dad for father’s day.

I think that will be gift.

Scott Dikkers: Yeah. And let me know how that goes.

Carole Freeman: I’ll set the context that I interviewed you first. And, but also if I just send it to him without any context, it’s probably even funnier. Oh, I,

Scott Dikkers: yeah. Cause here, so with that book, the cover like looks like a self-help book.

There’s like a beautiful flower on there. It’s very flowery lettering. You are worthless, and when it first went on sale in stores, it was in the comedy section and I always. That was the wrong section. It should be in the self-help section. . So I took it from the comedy and I always move it to the self-help section.

Cuz somebody’s depressed. They’re in self-help and they’re looking at all these books. I want ’em to laugh. I want ’em yeah. To feel good. So they see this book and they crack up and I got so many letters from people who read that book and said, oh my God. I was so depressed and your book just made me laugh till I cried.

It was like the best therapy I could have ever got. Those are letters that, every comedian dreams of, yeah. Hearing people’s depression.

Carole Freeman: Oh, that’s great. Yeah. I wish I would’ve known about it growing up. I grew up with. My grandmother gifted my dad. The, do you remember the books that truly tasteless joke books, which most of them now are canceled?

They’re totally non PC jokes.

Scott Dikkers: Oh There’s a few PC jokes in my book as well. Okay. few non PC jokes. Yeah.

Carole Freeman: The n my mom tells a story of, apparently I took those books to school for show Intel. I don’t remember this, but and she got a call from this teacher, the principal, or something about how inappropriate it was. I was bringing.

Scott Dikkers: Wonderful. Good for you.

Carole Freeman: That’s my early influences.

Scott Dikkers: I’ll tell you this. Nobody’s interested in an appropriate joke.

Carole Freeman: So you did good. So let’s see. Some of the questions I had written out you’ve already just naturally answered. So let’s talk a little bit about your diagnosis too.

When did you get this digestive news that you had something going on in your lower region that was not working correctly?

Scott Dikkers: yeah, so I was probably 40, early forties when I had a baby wife and I had made congratulations. . Thank you. And he was our pride and joy of course. And then about a year or so into his life, he stopped thriving and he started to get really sick and he lost weight and he was upset all the time and he was an early talker.

So he could tell us, that his tummy hurt, typical American story. We took him to a lot of doctors. Nobody could figure it out. Finally, somebody tests him for celiac disease, turns out that’s what he has. And we put him on a gluten-free diet. He’s fine. And he turns around.

So the doctor said you two are his parents. One of you gave it to him. You should get tested. So I got tested. My wife got test. And she didn’t have it. And I had it, so I just didn’t know it. I just thought that having an upset stomach was like part of being a living human. I thought that’s just how things went.

I thought having all sorts of bad skin and other sort of miscellaneous ailments was just normal. And so I went on a gluten free diet and nothing really changed for. I was expecting to see a night and day transformation, like my son had, but he was one and a half. And when you’re one and a half, you’re like a, you’re like the Wolverine, you just heal from everything.

Miraculously. You’re like a hundred percent collagen. But for me, because I was an old man, nothing was changing. Nothing was happen. And I did this for two or three years, basically eating the standard American diet gluten-free version. And I don’t know how I got down the rabbit hole of trying to eat healthier, but I did, and I like went online and I found people who were.

saying, look, if you wanna really take care of your body, you have to not just get rid of gluten, but you have to get rid of all this processed food, all these grains. I remember seeing a video by Dr. Cola way backwards, said, yeah. The way to clear up your skin is just give up all grains, no more rice, no more any of that stuff.

And I remember just bulking at that ho I can’t give up grains. That’s the. important staple of my diet sandwiches, pizza, hamburger, buns, brownies, cookies. How am I gonna give up grains? And low and behold, I find myself trying this and I’m just like floundering, cause they don’t teach you how to eat in America.

He teaches you the proper way to eat.

Carole Freeman: The food and back then they were teaching us to eat mostly grains

Scott Dikkers: yeah. And the food pyramid is a joke created by the dairy industry and the meat industry. So I just experimented and I tried the raw food diet for a while. That was a nightmare because my stomach really hadn’t healed.

So I’m literally scraping it with all this raw vegetable fiber. It was terrible. And. Eventually I settle on this thing. And of course I tried paleo, but I settled on this thing. That’s what I call paleo. Plus it’s a very limited diet where I basically only eat vegetables, but I puree them. I steam them and puree them.

So I’m basically eating warm baby food. And then I eat clean meats cuz I went vegan for many years. And couldn’t sustain my health. I basically shrank. And I looked emaciated. Some people need meat, or if you are gonna go vegan, I think you really have to be a professional nutritionist to get all the amino acids that you’re supposed to get.

And I am not that person. I did take a nutrition class, but I was never able to do all the work necessary to get all the nutrients I need from a purely vegan diet. I decided I was only gonna eat clean meats. I was gonna buy meat from farmer’s markets where I knew the farmer. I knew that the animals were pasture raised, happy.

I didn’t wanna eat any factory farmed meat figured that was, if I was gonna eat meat, that’s how I was gonna do it. And so I was on that diet and I found my equilibrium. I found that was working for me and I really did start to feel healthier. My stomach didn’t hurt after I. My skin cleared up. I got, had more energy.

Like I just felt healthier, . And so that remains my diet to this day. I basically eat warm baby food and a little bit of meat and all I do is I puree a different vegetable. I put in some really good fat Sesame oil is my favorite. It’s like a tablespoon or so, and I make a little soup and obviously salt and pepper, all kinds of spices.

And. I have also introduced other like baked foods or semi raw foods I’ll occasionally eat a raw carrot or sweet potatoes. And as far as the vegetables go, I mix it up. I eat a lot of green vegetables, but obviously eat a lot of like purple vegetables and basically anything I can find.

There’s only a few things that are just like, so I, and then I got into obviously all the really super healthy stuff, like chlorella, Lina. And the bitters of green vegetables. And I think I took a break from sugar, even fruit, sugar for three or four months at one period. So I only ate vegetables and meat for three or four months.

And I remember coming out of that and eating a strawberry and feeling like I was eating a a banana split at dairy queen. It was the sweetest. Most amazing flavor I’d ever tasted. And then I realized, oh my God, that’s what the human body is supposed to think of a straw. , it’s supposed to be a treat

And so that’s how I operate today. I do have a little bit of fruit every couple of weeks as a treat and that works for me. And then on occasion, because I’m a human being, I have a complete cheat meal. don’t eat gluten. But I do, I will make gluten free brownies or cookies, or I’ll go out to Culvers and I’ll get the gluten free bun on a hamburger.

But I’ll tell you even to this day, like I can’t overdo it. Like I have a certain bucket. And if the bucket overflows I’m outta luck. So I do have to always come back to my baseline of puree, vegetables and clean meats and healthy fats. So yeah, that’s what I’m doing. And it’s really working for me because.

I feel healthier than I’ve ever felt in my life. And I’m nearly 60. So feeling good, feeling really good. Yeah.

Carole Freeman: Oh, that’s amazing. I love the stories, Scott it’s and it’s so similar to a lot of the people that I know in the keto space. It’s a similar story of they tried all the things myself, raw food, vegetarian, vegan food combining and similar to you.

It. I would get very sick anytime any of those came along and now I follow primarily whole foods. Extremely, low carb keto, most of the time. And similar to you. It’s you just, you feel so miserable when you go off of it. That’s is that your primary motivator? Because so many people say, oh, it’s not sustainable to change your diet.

That and I would argue that your, the way that you eat mostly is more restrictive than the way I would eat. And that’s the criticism that keto gets most of the time is, oh, it’s just too restrictive. Nobody could ever stick with that. But what is. What keeps you going? What keeps you motivated to stick with it?

Scott Dikkers: Number one, I’m just an insanely disciplined person. and if I set my mind to something, I can do it, especially if I know what the benefits are. And so I know what the benefits are of this diet. I never get sick. Everybody around me has a cold or the flu or whatever. I simply don’t get it. That’s worth it to me.

Yeah. I feel like it’s keeping cancer at bay, because I feel like I’m no doctor, I’m no scientist, but I’ve read enough about this to feel like there’s more than a causal link between all of the toxins and poisons that we eat in our food. Being a contributing factor to all the cancer that we see in the world.

Because the amount of poison that we eat has increased at pretty much the same rate as cases of cancer have increased. The liver, our livers are just way overworked trying to detoxify it from all this crap that we put into our bodies. Every time I go to the doctor and get a checkup or whatever, I don’t have cancer.

So we’ll see how long that lasts. But I’m feeling like this is kind. good insurance. In fact, I don’t have health insurance. My diet is my health insurance. So occasionally something will happen to me. I’ll get an ear infection. And over the past two or three years, I think that’s about it. I had got an ear infection.

And oh. And I had to go and get a, like a spot on my back removed cuz it was a potentially non benign. Whatever deal from me getting sunburn when I was a kid or whatever. And so I pay for those out of pocket and I’m saving so much money on health insurance. The idea that I would pay some crooked company, hundreds of dollars a month.

And this whole like Obamacare thing infuriated me so much because the Democrats had a chance to pass a. National healthcare plan, but they went with this Republican plan that was just a giveaway to the insurance companies and the medical industry where we’re forced now to pay for this insurance.

I think Trump is a fascist and I hate everything he stands for, but I’m glad he got rid of the mandate for Obamacare, because I didn’t like that. I don’t wanna have to pay money to these crooked companies. I wanna make my own decisions about my own healthcare. Wow.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. preach, preaching.

Yeah I’m big fan of functional medicine, doctors and absolutely love. My clients have to pay out of pocket for, and some of them are like, why should I have to pay for that? When I have insurance? It’s if you want a gym membership, you pay for that. If you want the best food, the healthiest and cleanest food, you gotta pay more for it.

And so it’s about what you care about. You take care of yourself and I agree our. Healthcare system is just not dead care is what I lovingly call it’s exactly what it’s. Yeah. It’s just keeping you just above, not dead or just above dead. And yeah,

Scott Dikkers: if you can walk out of the hospital, you’re fine.

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

People think that they’re protected by that, but I’ve got amazing stories of my clients that are referred to I’ve won primary. Functional medicine doctor that I refer most of my clients to and just amazing stories that people were like, oh, my doctor’s got me covered. And then he’s found these things that their doctors overlooked that were glaringly obvious in the labs that I even saw.

That’s not normal. Let’s get you checked out with him. And he digs and digs until he finds it. And just some, cancer, personal health information for my client, but like just like life changing, altering things that. The noted care was not gonna find . Yeah.

Scott Dikkers: What a wonderful concept, the idea that a doctor would be there to make sure that you have optimal health.

Yeah. That’s what I love about functional medicine. I go to this doctor and I’m basically fine, but she runs all these tests and finds all these little, vitamin deficiencies and stuff and she puts me on supplements and then retests me. Yeah, I just feel like I’m in absolutely the best health of my life.

Thanks to a good diet, a good doctor. Basically removing myself from the totally corrupt Western medical health insurance system and feeling really good about.

Carole Freeman: and you probably spend less on that care than you would on insurance, premiums and deductible

Scott Dikkers: and yeah. I’m getting off real easy.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Let’s see. So how, so it sounds like this dietary change, like the beginnings of it were close to 20 years ago or so not quite, but about,

Scott Dikkers: I would say. Yeah, it was a process, so I yeah, started probably 15 and I settled on my current diet, maybe eight to 10 years. Okay.

Carole Freeman: And how did a, that impact your mental clarity, your work, your career, your ability to think clearly?

Like what, is there a big difference between stuff you created pre finding the perfect diet for you versus after?

Scott Dikkers: Yeah. Good question. I don’t know that there’s been necessarily a change there. I do feel like I, it helps me with my energy level. So I just started this new comedy podcast and I’m on episode 14.

Now it’s a weekly show where it’s just me in front of the camera, trying to be funny. And it takes a lot of energy and a lot of work. And for the first. 12 weeks. I think maybe 11 weeks. I had to pull an all nighter once a week just to finish the show cuz I was learning how to do all the animation and the editing and everything else, the sound.

And it was a learning curve. And I used to pull all nighters in my twenties at The Onion fair amount, even did a couple of all weekenders. , which is like where you don’t sleep from Friday to Monday. Wow. When The Onion was on deadline and I used to have to recover from those, a couple of days of just like lying around sleeping.

And, but now, like I just I get right out of them, like one night’s sleep of six hours and I’m good to go again. So yeah. I feel like it’s in, it’s increased my energy, which has then increased my productivity. I can actually do more. Which is amazing and wonderful as far as mental clarity. Yeah.

I’m not sure. They always used to say that if you keep your mind active that’s like your that’s exercise for your brain. So as you get older, you’re gonna retain that mental agility. And I’ve always been writing jokes and trying to come up with jokes. And I feel like that’s really good brain exercise.

Maybe I’m sure the diet doesn’t hurt,

Carole Freeman: Maybe you started it right at the time where you otherwise would’ve had more mental decline. You caught it just in the time.

Scott Dikkers: yeah. And I do feel like I, I have a fewer memory lapses than I used to have. Like just like little oh what was I saying?

I used to do that a lot more. I still do it a fair amount, but not as much. And so hopefully that’ll improve with time and not decline.

Carole Freeman: Excellent. Oh, I’m loving this so much. And alright. We we finally got a comment. This is, I don’t know if this is a real person or not. Proverbial one says, hello.

Hello, proverbial one. Welcome to the show. You’re just in time as we’re about, about ready to wrap this up. So Scott, was there anything else that you were hoping to share or hoping I would ask about before we wrap this?

Scott Dikkers: Now it’s your show. We can talk about whatever you want. oh, and

Carole Freeman: that’s a real person.

All right. Good to know. I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for joining. Thanks for coming and where can people find you where you’ve got a lot of different places that people can find you, where would you like people to go? And I’ll add a little banner.

Scott Dikkers: Oh, thank you. I am in the computer. I’m my YouTube channel is Scott Dikkers around and that’s where my new podcast is.

I’m also around.com. No, it’s just Scott Dikkers around on YouTube. Scott Dikkers.com will find my my website. I have another website where I teach people comedy that the books that you held up that’s HowtoWriteFunny.com. And I’m on Twitter at, I think if you just Google Scott Dikkers, you’ll see it all.

Even if you spell my name wrong. Oh, that’s great. Yeah, that’s that’s one thing that the internet has gifted me is people can get my name wrong. Now. It doesn’t matter.

Carole Freeman: Just any Scott Dikkers if you’re just listening, just try search you’ll find him. He’s not hard to find pages and pages.

he’s older than the internet. I am, there is

Scott Dikkers: one other, there’s one other Scott Dikkers in the world and he’s my age and he lives in Maryland. Oh. But he he doesn’t really do much online, okay. I’m the only game in town.

Carole Freeman: There’s one other Carole Freeman that at least comes up on the internet.

She was like in parliament in Canada or something like that.

Scott Dikkers: Oh my goodness. She spell it with the E too. Yeah. Yeah.

Carole Freeman: Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. And then of course there’s Carole Baskin, but that’s a different, last name. So

Scott Dikkers: that’s . Yeah. And you don’t wanna be associated with that person?

Carole Freeman: Proverbial one is keto for six years.

Congratulations. I just celebrated my seven year anniversary. So we’re siblings there. Recently had VSG. I don’t know what that means.

Scott Dikkers: I don’t know what that is

Carole Freeman: here. Very something good. Successfully. Good. Very successfully. Good. I think that’s what that means. oh, this has been fun. Everybody come back. So this was a special episode on Tuesday to typically we’re doing shows on Thursday. So Thursday this week on what is that June? June 9th. The episode is gonna be about the secrets to ending emotional eating.

I’ve got a program that I’m launching. And so I’m gonna share with you details of that. And I wanna, oh, weight loss surgery. Oh, okay. Weight loss surgery was that proverbial one had, I’ve got some clients that have after they’ve had. Weight loss surgery. They start to gain the weight back and then they found keto afterwards, too.

So congratulations God. You’re doing well. Proverbial one. Thanks for joining the show. Thank you to our guest Scott Dikkers. Thank you for being here. And let me put the. Just search for him online, Scott Dikkers around is his new podcast and it’s very fun. I’ve watched a couple of episodes of that too.

Check out his books. I’m gonna go now. Search for you are worthless, depressing nuggets of wisdom. Sure. To ruin your day as a father’s day gift. Perfect father’s day gift. And so everyone thank you for joining us. If you’re struggling with keto, I’m here to help visit my website. Keto Carole.com. Apply to work with me if you’re struggling and remember, help us grow the show and we’ll help you shrink.

Thank you again, Scott, for being

Scott Dikkers: here. Thank you,

Carole Freeman: Carole. Thanks for having so you all next time, everyone. Bye now.

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