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Dr. Shawn Baker Podcast

Ultra Marathon Runner Felt Her WORST As A Vegan | Dr. Shawn Baker & Veronika

Duration:
51m
Broadcast on:
22 Jun 2024
Audio Format:
mp3

Veronika came to Australia from the Czech Republic to study Sport and Exercise Science in 2003, which ignited her passion to discover the 'recipe' for everlasting health, fitness and wellbeing. That's how she became a Personal Trainer, Accredited Exercise Physiologist, Strength Coach and Nutritionist.

Work aside, she LOVES running and proudly calls herself an ultra marathoner! Especially, after completing one of the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc races in 2018. Running is her everything… meditation, stress relief, hobby, means of transport and a rewarding way to socialise and connect with people. She loves helping others fall in love with running and to become better runners.

Her quest to find a truly healthy convenience food to take on her running adventures wasn't very successful, so she ended up creating her own wholefood snacks, and she's super proud to be a co-founder of Chief Nutrition. Besides being a co-founder, she's the company's chief nutritionist.

She's 44 years old, and last year, she was at her best health and fitness level ever. Then, suddenly, her health started to fall apart, which is why she decided to try a pure carnivore diet. She implemented the diet during a very challenging month (physically, mentally and timewise) and had great health and performance results.

Find Veronika: https://www.instagram.com/veronikalarisova/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/chief.nutrition/?hl=en https://veronikalarisova.com/about

Timestamps: 00:00 Trailer. 00:47 Introduction. 04:41 Food environment from Czech Republic to Australia. 10:27 Water-only fast. 13:45 Microbiome in carnivore diet. 17:03 Feeling energetic all day. 18:42 Low carb state may reduce soreness after races. 21:57 Lean individuals on low-carb diets experience cholesterol rise. 23:32 Consider getting coronary calcium score for heart. 27:32 Many people dislike plain vegetables or need seasoning. 29:35 Veganism pushback. 33:40 Giving up dairy to help weight loss. 38:18 Lab results. 40:17 Industry view on ultra-processed food. 42:19 Unhealthy eating for athletic performance. 45:29 Drug effectiveness vs side effects. 50:47 Where to find Veronika.

See open positions at Revero: https://jobs.lever.co/Revero/

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Didn't trend properly worked 12 hours a day just the two days before the race. Then I did the race fasted and I felt amazing the whole time. All right. Perfect. Welcome. We have with us Veronica all the way from Down Under in Australia. Veronica, thanks for agreeing to do this. How are you doing today? I'm good. It's early morning here. I'm still dark. It's 7 a.m. I went for a run to wake up and I'm here and thanks for having me. It's a good way to wake up. That's awesome. I used to go for some sort of activity. It's always great to get moving in the morning. I used to because before the day gets in you and then you sometimes don't have the energy to get it out of the way. You have a bit of a success story you're going to share with us. I understand. I guess maybe just tell us a little about you, Veronica. You've got a bit of an accent. You may be from somewhere else. I'm guessing somewhere, maybe Eastern Europe if I had a guess. I don't know. Maybe that's correct or not. Tell us a little about yourself. I can just challenge 21 years ago from the chief republic to study sport and exercise science and then I need them to stay. I'm an exercise physiologist, nutritionist. I also have my own brand of healthy food snacks, which I guess I can mention here, but yeah, that's what I do at the moment. I make some amazing mid-based products and supplements, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to try the carnival diet. A few reasons. Obviously, as a nutritionist, I have a lot of people at the moment asking me about carnival diet, wanting me to help them, and I always have to try something for his hand. In the past, believe it or not, I even tried the vegan diet. I decided to do carnival diet for a month because there is not that much data out there. I decided to test myself. I did my full pylenol blood test before I did a full gut microbiome mapping. I also did my dexascad. Then I did carnival diet for a month. Then I would retest it for the bloods. The gut microbiome waited for six weeks to get my dex up. Also, on the week four of the carnival diet, I ran a 50 kilometers trail race. That's pretty long. Good for you. I've never enjoyed it. I ran cross-country in high school for a year. I think the farthest we ever ran was about a half marathon distance of 13 miles or whatever that is in kilometers, 20k or something like that. I don't enjoy the distance running. We're good for you for doing that. I was born next to the Czech Republican Germany right on the border, literally on the border. I've been to what was in Czechoslovakia Prague one time many years ago. When you grew up, did you have any sort of special any dietary influences there? I don't know if it was like in the Czech Republic whenever you were young some years ago. I grew up eating really healthy. Our diet was mainly need-based, as I was everywhere else in Europe. So it made every single day need eggs, not so much fish. It was mostly red meat and pork that we ate. Also, we used to eat a lot of caffeine and other fermented dairy, fermented vegetables, fermented drinks, a lot of fermented foods, a lot of meat. As a result, in my 20s when I moved to Australia, I was pretty much carnivore, except for I was eating a little bit of berries here and there. Most of my diet was just eggs, meat, fashini, and things like that. That felt amazing. So yeah, I was very lucky to grow up. When parents were very healthy, no ultra-processed foods. If my mom wanted to make as a treat, she would use quag or kefir and blend in with fruits and honey and that was our treat or my grandma's to blend raw egg yolks with cacao and honey and chocolate sauce and things like that. So I'm really lucky in that regard, I didn't grow up on ultra-persessed foods or bring in meals and things like that. That's a huge advantage. Do you think about today, kids are growing up on something like 70, at least in the US, 70% of the diet is coming from ultra-processed food. It's interesting because that region of Europe, Czechoslovakia or Czech Republic, as it's now called, that was the heart of, I think about the result of this population called gravedians, which kind of range in that region. They were basically specialist mammoth hunters. So that's been really central for eons, for millennia after millennia, tens of thousands of years, people were eating a lot of meat in that area. So I get you into that kind of state on. So when you move to Australia, I assume there's a little bit of a dietary shift because the culture is different and Australia is probably not as bad as the US, but it's probably closer to the US and Czech Republic, was at least back in the day. Did you diet shift much towards moral to process food in Australia? Or did you stay pretty much where you were? No, not at all. I had a very good education from my parents when it comes to ultra-persist foods and very strong opinions about it. They thought that because I have been communism, so I have the Eastern Bloc and they always told me that all Westerners are sick and unwell because they eat all the ultra-persist foods and McDonald's and things like that. So I never liked that. McDonald's actually opened up in my whole time with the first time when I was 16 years old. So I didn't develop the politics as ultra-persist foods. So my diet has changed when I came to Australia. I started to eat more seafood because we don't really have a good seafood. I didn't have back then in Eastern Europe. So I started to eat a lot of sashimi and oysters and a lot more fish. And I also realized that Ozzy Stag is better than in the Czech Republic. So more fish and more steak, a lot so as ultra-versist foods. I never really liked it. And even now, I tried to avoid it. It's not a good one. Yeah, that's a good point because what we often see is a lot of the adult patterns that carry on for the rest of our life are laid down in our early teenage years, young adult years, and that's what whatever we start eating then is what we stick with. So parents have a tremendous influence in the rest of your life by how they feed you in those formative years as you become a, as you start to become more, I guess, grown. And if you start out eating just garbage in your teenage years, you tend to do it the rest of your life, unfortunately. So good for you for avoiding that. Now, let me ask you, you said your experiment would veganism at one point. What drove you in that direction since you're already healthy by what you were saying. So why would you want to do veganism? I didn't do it for health. I knew it is not going to be healthy, but as a nutritionist, I tried to help my clients to be the best they can be within their constraints or what they want to do. So instead of trying to convince them to start with to not be vegan, I was trying to help them to be healthy vegan and I didn't have much idea of recipes. And I also wanted to experiment with it and feel what it feels like. So I went to Bali and did the vegan chef course for a month. I turned vegan just for that month and I did not feel amazing. And as a result, I actually convinced a lot of my vegan clients who definitely don't want to eat meat, but I at least convinced them to supplement with collagen, which is a big week because that's an animal product. But yeah, I did not, being vegan was the worst I've ever felt. Even though it's okay. Yeah, fair enough to you, some people say they feel better going vegan. But I like that it wouldn't work for me. I know that I have a lot of people feel better to turning vegan, because if they turn from eating ultra processed foods and lots of junk to eating vegetables, of course they're going to feel better. I think when you eat lots of junk, any whole foods that is going to make you feel better. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's vegetables are inherently so healthy. Or is it because they're replacing all the garbage that's out there? And I think it may be a lot of the latter, quite honestly. And some people say the same thing about a carnivore diet, the only reason you're healthy is you aren't eating junk now. And there's some truth to that, but most people don't do carnivores at first line. Many of them have already tried some sort of whole food diet. Maybe it's a plant-based diet, maybe some Mediterranean diet or something like that. There's a few that go straight from standard American, but most don't. Okay, so you tried vegan hasn't felt awful. You wanted to do it. And I get that. I do have my own experiments, so I know what it feels like for me before I sort of share it with someone else. So that makes sense. So I guess there's some sort of success story here, maybe not. But tell us what, you do a carnivorous diet now, or you did it, a carnivore. What's going on today with you? That is a success story, yes and no. I did all the testing and I sent you the test, but it really didn't have a time to look at them. But a lot of my tests have improved. I last, I'm 44. And last year, I was in my fittest and healthiest. And this year, I don't know why I think it's what to do with my workload and stuff. I just did not feel really well. And so I thought I can, I tried to do some changes. So one of the reasons why I tried the carnivore diet is to get my gut health better and to see how it feels to run on ketogenic diet. As I said, I did my blood test, gut tests and the exercise before and after. And I had some good results. I think the biggest thing for me was the mental clarity and sustained energy during the day. I have really long days. I usually train at 4.30 or 5 a.m. and then I go to work from 6 and I don't finish until five or six. And when I have a coffee in the morning and my regular diet, I usually crash in the after two, nine or three and I'd really tired. But then I don't want to have another coffee because if I do, then I can sleep at night and then mix me tired again. On the calmyward diet, I'd sustained mental energy and mental clarity throughout the day. I didn't have any cravings. I didn't feel hungry. I didn't feel fearful. My sleep was really good. And the interesting thing is, and I actually want to say I do once over six months, five-day water only fast. And during the fast, I measure myself with ordering and my HRV goes really high and my resting heart rate goes really low and my stress levels are non-existent, which is what happened also on the calmyward diet. And it's really interesting because now I'm on a modified carnivore. But on the days when I do have more carbohydrates or I'd later at night, even though it's not a junk food, my HRV goes down and my resting heart rate goes up, which is what I wanted to ask you about that because I think it's really interesting because it's not like a really jungle drinking alcohol, but even a small change in diet make a huge two cents to both families. Yeah, I've seen that before. Certainly way back when I was first talking about this diet, before we even called a carnivore diet, I had a bunch of about 100 people that we convinced to do a meat-based diet for 90 days. And all of them, as I recall, saw their heart rate improved by about 10 points. It just dropped by the resting heart rate went down, which is generally considered a good thing. We didn't have ways to just check HRV. It was all just what we could get basically for free and checking your pulse doesn't cost anything. Definitely see that. I've seen that many people. I think a lot of people are big believers in HRV as being a sign of health. So the more variability we have beat the beat is considered better for many reasons. That's unclear what it really means in my view. It's still one of the things that maybe it means something good, maybe a dozen. Yeah, you'd mention because you weren't eating junk. It was just some normal probably regular carb, a whole food carb, carbohydrates, and yet still that was making new HRV differences, heart rate differences, sleep differences, and fatigue differences. So it's pretty interesting to see it. And many people do comment on their overall energy improvement once they get adapted to this. Now, the thing that a lot of people will find interesting, maybe you can share with us, but share with us what was going on with the microbiome, because a lot of people will tell us that, oh my gosh, you need all this fiber for a healthy microbiome. And if you don't, you're going to lose all this diversity. What was your experience with with a carnivore diet with pre and post microbiome testing? If you don't mind showing me that was super interesting, because my diet is normally low in carbohydrates. I don't need any rice pasta and things like that. My carbohydrates are just like a little bit of sweet potatoes, some veggies, some berries, so not really high arts. But my test before the carnivore diet showed that I had a really imbalanced in the ratio of furry cubes and bacterial disease. So much more fermi cubes, which is inflammatory. And it's of someone who eats a lot of sugar, which I don't. And after the carnivore diet, after the mother saw the carnivore diet, that ratio has switched to the healthy ratio. So now I have less fermi cubes and more bacterial disease, which is great, and less inflammation as well. So I think that was very interesting, and I'm really happy with that in order to keep that trend up because my ratio is not great yet, but a death switched from biased to good one, but it just needs to improve a little bit better. Yeah, so a theoretical improvement in your microbiome floral composition with more of the macaroni's and less fermi cuties. And I've seen that many times, and believe it or not, I've talked to people that if not everybody does microbiome testing, but I've seen some people that have had gut issues like things like all sort of colitis specter's another fellow down in Australia that did that. And he over appeared as sequential. I think he tested several times over a period of a year or two. And what he saw was and continued improvement in his microbiome as he was longer and longer on a carnivore diet, which is interesting to see because most people will tell you you need all this fiber for a healthy for gut bite, gut diver, gut bacteria diverse diversity, and perhaps it isn't true. And it's not been my experiences true, but it's one of those things that people use as a reason to not do this diet. Were you having you said gut inflammation was down as well? And sometimes we measure that with something like a fecal calprotectin. I don't know what was used in this particular case, but did you clinically, did you have any kind of actually palpable gut issues on your regular diet, maybe some bloating or something like that? Did that go away? Or how did that work for you? Yeah, I always have not always, but I often get bloated. I make stomach cramps sometimes for no apparent reason. And when I was on the carnivore diet, I did not have any stomach cramps of bloating once, which is evident. And it's none of symptoms whatsoever. So I don't know what causes it if it was the veggies or the coffee or I don't know what yeah, on a carnivore diet didn't have any of those symptoms. So that was great. And I also had a great results from my race. So just to put the picture out there, the race was in the Blue Mountains. It's the biggest trail race in Australia. It's very difficult. And they have experts two days before the race, which is where I had a stall with my brand. And I was there working 12 hours a day by myself before the race. Star wasn't really resting. And I didn't really put a lot of training into it because I was really busy with work. So I didn't train properly. Worked 12 hours a day, just the two days before the race. Then I did the race fasted. I didn't need anything before or during. I tried to during a little bit of build on what I didn't feel like having it. So I just didn't. And I felt amazing the whole time. I did quite a good time considering that I didn't train properly. I felt good the whole week. I was mentally and physically really well. I didn't feel sore, didn't have any issues. And especially I felt good afterwards. Normally what happens, I low carb diet fully around. But when I race, I usually have carbohydrates before and during. I have natural gels or a main bite all, but it's very high on carbohydrate, like pretty much sugar at Caspieni. And what happens is after every race like that, I usually crash. I get really irritable, cold, and really exhausted. I have mental fog and a lot of the times in the past when I was at breath for a race, I also got injured and had tethered inflammation and a lot of tendonitis and tendon related injuries. So after this race, I didn't feel tired at all. I didn't feel hungry. I forced myself to accept steak because I thought I should eat because I had to tuck up all my exposure into my car, drive out in a house back to Sydney, and unload it all in my office. And I was so full of energy the whole day. I just felt like I went through a warning joke. I didn't feel exhausted, didn't feel irritable. I was up until 10 p.m. the night, clean my whole house. I was just full of energy and just felt really good mentally and physically, which has never happened before. Normally, I'd just go home and crash in the bed and lie and have some tea and ring a book, and just feel sorry for myself. So then it was amazing. And the next day, I woke up and I wasn't sore, which is also incredible because the race finished with 1,400 stairs, which I really see. And I wasn't prepared for it. So I was expecting to be really sore. I wasn't sore at all. I wasn't tired. I begged myself two days break. It's not to be silly. I don't start training again. But after two days, I started running, training, doing waves felt completely fine, no hatred. So that was also remarkable. And then when I did my DEXA scan, that showed that I've gained 1 kilogram lean muscle mass in the six weeks, which is also incredible because I was running a lot. I was running more than dreams, strength training, and I still learned to put 1 kilo, which it's a lot for my friend because I only wear out of 50, 53 kilos. So those were really great results. There are few results of my testing that were in bed, which I wanted to ask you about, but there is more positive days than there is. Yeah, it's interesting that you mostly run, put on muscle mass, and have a good time, not be sore after a huge ultra marathon distance race. And I've heard that before from people. They say they just like my friend Zach Bitter, who would often do very long races in a low-carb state, said the swelling in his legs, the pain, the soreness was much, much less. And there's some studies out there that show less oxidative stress in this type of strategy versus a carb loading or a gel consuming race strategy. So good for you for doing that. Let me ask you, before I'm happy to talk about some of the other labs you had that you're questioning about, but let me ask you, as someone who is a nutritionist and deals with people trying to adjust their diet, have you found an uptick in the number of people that are interested in carnivore, or is it still heavily plant-based, or what is the mix here in recent times? Have you seen some sort of a shift? Oh my god, massive shift to the words carnivore. When I was at the Expo before the race, there were people coming up to me like other competitors talking to me about carnivore diet. There was a lady that was in her 60s who was running 100 kilo-vellers. But carnivore diet, and she made me her own carnivore body product for me, like really in Australia at least. There's a lot of people shifting to the words carnivore diet, and if not spirocadivore, the words eating more meat, our organic grass-fed grass-finished beef. And yeah, it's a big, it's a big shift. Yeah, I guess that's encouraging to see, because we keep hearing. There's always overtures about we need all to go plant-based, everybody's going plant-based, but that's not the reality. I think we see all these sort of fake meat companies collapsing, their interest is low. None of them, even the culture, lab meat people, that venture cap has sunk literally hundreds of millions of dollars in her now, just they can't get funding anymore, because it's interesting. But where I live in my suburb, we had two years ago so many vegan restaurants and cafes, and they're all gone now. There's none of them left, not one. Yeah, I'm super upset about this. If I ever get down to Austria, and I've never been, I used to live in New Zealand, but hopefully at one point I'll get down to it, because I know there's a lot of people that are good people down there, some good ranchers and farmers, and certainly be fun to hang out and see some of those folks. So you said your labs were, or you're happy with the results. Obviously, you feel better, which is really the ultimate, I think to me that's the ultimate result, because how do we feel perform? Look, that trumps everything else in my view, but you had some questions or concerns about something. What would those things be? There's few things that I was concerned about. So besides putting on one kilo of muscle, which is, I also put on one and a half kilos of fat, and I also put some disteral fat. So that, I didn't like that because that's quite a lot in my frame. And then also, my cholesterol went from 5.4 to 9.2. My HDL is from 2.22 to 3, which is good, but my LDL is from 3 to 6. And my non-HG HDL cholesterol is from 3.22 to 6. So I was just wondering, what do you think about that? Well, that is a, it's interesting because you are, even though you gained a little bit of body fat, you're very lean. I can look at you and say you're clearly quite a lean person. The most likely reason to see big rises in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, non-HCL cholesterol, and sometimes even HDL, to a degree, is how lean you are. If you go on a low-carb diet, or a carnivore diet, which is clearly a low-carb diet, and you are very lean, you are most, much more likely to see your cholesterol rise, that is due to something called lipid energy model, which has now been published in many studies. There was a really good meta-analysis of randomized control trials on people in low-carb diets, and looking at their cholesterol, why it went up. This is done, published just this year, back in January, by a guy named Adrian Sotomoda, who is a friend of mine. They showed that basically the number one reason for rises in LDL cholesterol is being lean. And it's because when you deplete your glycogen stores, so we have less glycogen, perhaps, in your liver, and you need energy because you're exercising. And really, the worst, I'll call it the worst combination, is being lean and working out a lot, because then you really need a lot of energy. Where's that energy going to come from? Well, it's not coming from a lot of liver glycogen, so it's going to come from fat that your liver is producing and trafficking, so you have a higher flux of fat in your bloodstream. Now, the question is, is that bad for you? And the answer to that is, I don't think we really know, although there is more and more evidence coming out there to showing that it may not be a problem, that it could be just totally fine. So I don't say that with 100% confidence yet, because I just don't think we have the studies that are there. I do think those studies are coming. In fact, there will be some that'll probably come out later by the end of this year. So it's just something to keep an eye of. Now, you said you, I think you said you were 40, would you say 44, I believe, or something like that. And so you are in an age group where you could potentially get some sort of coronary imaging of your heart, say, coronary artery calcium score, which would give you more evidence or more information to tell you what you'd want to do chronically. And I don't know, like I said, what the situation is in Australia on the ease of obtaining those. But I mean, that's not an uncommon pattern, particularly in lean people that go very low carb. That's actually probably we see that more often than not. Now, if you happen to have been obese, if you had class three or class two obesity and your BMI was about 35, which many people are, unfortunately, going low carb out often has the opposite effect. We just end up losing or decreasing our LDL until we get to down to a normal weight or even a lean weight. And that's where it's confusing, because you're like, I've gotten healthier because I'm not overweight anymore, but my cholesterol went up. So what does that mean? I think, again, I think in my opinion, and I'll say this very clear, this is an opinion based on a lot of the data that I believe is out there, elevated LDL cholesterol in the setting of a low carb diet, and a lean, otherwise metabolically healthy person is, I think LDL cholesterol is a dependent variable. And whether it causes heart disease or not, or significantly increases risk of heart disease probably depends on other factors. And looking at you and hearing your background, you probably, everything else is maxed, you probably don't have high blood glucose, you probably don't have high blood pressure, you probably don't have a lot of underlying inflammation. And as you mentioned, it got better on carnivore. Any inflammation you had got inflammation irritation improved. And so when we look at what causes heart disease, you look at, I look at it as like building a fire, if I have to have, if I want to build a fire, I can get some wood, I need oxygen, and I need some kind of spark, right? And if I don't have any of those three things, I can't make the fire happen. I could have all the wood in the world, but if there's no oxygen, it's not going to burn. Well, maybe I guess it was some other gas, but you get the idea. If there's no spark, it won't burn. So what is the spark? Maybe it's vascular damage or inflammation? What is the wood? Maybe it's cholesterol? What is the oxygen? Maybe it's a, I don't know, a metabolic syndrome environment or something like that, so you can see the analogy there. So again, I would not say it's nothing to ignore, but I would say get more information at this time. And then maybe in a year or two, we can tell you, hey, it's totally fine. Don't worry about it. That's how I would approach this at this point. Obviously, you said you feel, but I don't know what your long term plan is. Most people that do carnivore for whatever reason, they feel better. They will do it maybe for strictly for a period of time. Some people had some food back in. You had a reasonably good diet before. Maybe use it periodically to feel better. Like you said, you fast once, a couple times a year and use it in that fashion. But if you ever say, I don't feel as good, like I think I could, maybe we'll do carnivore for a month or two and then just keep that going. And that to me is very reasonable and sustainable for a lot of people. And I really love it. It's really ready. I really loved how I felt and the recovery was amazing, so I just stick to it for running. As you said, I'm probably going to do it periodically, but I definitely will have more meat and less veggies, because what happened was I told you, I grew up eating more mostly meat. And then when I was to Australia, I started studying nutrition science and all that, I would cut things that I need more vegetables. So my ratio has shifted. I started eating more vegetables and less meat. And now I just think I'm going to switch it. It's really funny because I thought I wouldn't listen to myself to vegetables. And I thought when I switched to a carnivore diet, I was going to miss veggies and I was going to miss fruits and I didn't miss it at all. And as a matter of fact, I don't even feel I'm eating veggies right now. I did feel I'm eating a little bit of berries and I was missing a coffee, but still I haven't been able to have broccoli, or I still like to look at it and I look, oh, I don't think I enjoy it. Yeah. It's much more exciting. It is interesting. Many of us are our condition to like vegetables or eat them or tolerate them. I never liked them. I never, a kid, I never liked them. I said, oh, I never liked them. I forced myself to eat them because I thought I needed them for whatever reason. And the only way I could tolerate them if I smothered them in enough fat or some kind of seasoning butter or wrapped it in bacon, so I could gag it down. But those people that claim they like eating like just plain spinach leaves or just plain cauliflower plain broccoli with this uncooked raw, it literally tastes like eating styrofoam in many ways. And so I don't see how people enjoy that stuff, but something I guess just some people say they do. Anyway, I'd also only to say what was really good about carnivore diet was the simplicity of it. One can make veggies and salads and everything. It's so time consuming. And also, it's really expensive. Like I eat everything organics. Well, having organic veggies, organic berries, it costs so much with the meat. I hope my meat delivered once a week. It was organic grass, but grass finished meat. And then it literally takes me six minutes to make a steak. So I'll just bring a roll steak with me to work and just cook it for six minutes in tallow. So I didn't spend a lot of money. I didn't spend a lot of time preparing meals. And it just tastes delicious. That's an idea. I don't want to use herbs and spices because I like a lot of herbs and spices. A cooking steak in a lot of tallow with salt. It just tastes so good. You don't really need any herbs and spices or condiments. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it tastes pretty darn good. It's inherently, you don't need to like you like a lot of people do the carnivore diet because it is so simple. And I think should nutrition have to be hard to figure out how to nurse yourself proper leaders. There are no animals on the planet that need someone to tell them what to eat of what and how much of something to eat. And it's it is very easy. A lot of people like that. They prefer that to send the other ones because they just say, I'll eat, I'll eat a steak when I'm hungry or something ground beef or some eggs or something like that. Do you as someone who, you know, I don't know what your like you said, if you have an online presence or if you're what your company does and people hear about, I don't know how vocal you've been about doing this diet. If you were, obviously, we heard about just so obviously must be somewhat. Has there been any sort of push back from that? Because you're you're like I said, a lot of women, like you said, you did the we see a lot of women that are health conscious and often thin and want to stay thin will go plant based. And then also say, I'm saving them. They think they're saving the animals. Not really, but has there been much sort of negativity directed your way because of what you've done or trying to do? No, actually, not on my personal social media. I don't really have many negative comments. There was a lot of support. I think a lot of people that are following me are very health conscious and health educated. So there were, there was a lot of support. I didn't have very bad comments. But on my other, on my business website, which is to meet my snacks, we often have a lot of getting negative comments and let's just release one, remove comments from all sorts of people. And it's sometimes it's really funny when they post and yeah, no, I didn't personally didn't have very much negative response because obviously I perform well on the diet and I do perform well. I did before I studied the carnivore diet, I did an anti-running race, which was the half-parton in the mountains and I did it fasted and I didn't know any carb loading and had no coffee and I placed second and I'm 44 and the other people were in their 20s. So that my results just proved that I'm healthy. I know one can say, oh, you're unhealthy or a reading disorder or whatever because I'm 44, I'm healthy, I'm performing well, I'm not skinny or anything. So I think that people don't really have anything to flan before, kind of. Yeah, even if I don't say well, it's funny. I just actually talked about this today. If someone's words can upset you, then that you have, if words have a lot of impact on you, then anyone can control you because anyone can say anything at any time. It doesn't matter who they are, a little kid can tell you think you're fat and ugly and you get upset, but who cares? Just don't be worried about people's words. But let me ask you, as far as you'd mentioned, gut felt better, better energy, you put on muscle, you said you put up a little bit of fat and visceral fat, which potentially may be an issue, maybe it's not. What were you eating on your car? Or did you feel like you're eating more food than you normally do? Yeah, I was eating definitely. No, it's not more food artistic, it was more nutrient dense, more fat because I was cooking everything in beef tallow. So I taught initially that I was going to eat a variety and eat lots of seafood and fish and whatever, but then I didn't see like it. So I started eating seafood fish and also a lot of fermented dairy. Eating a dairy was just making me craze more dairy and I was like being on yogurt and stuff, so still doing that. And I ended up just eating steak and eggs, to be honest, and lots of liver. So I grew up eating lots of liver. It's part of our cuisine. And I really loved it. I always eat a lot of liver all year round. So my diet, Indian was mainly steak, liver and eggs and all the water would be subtle. And I was drinking bone broth because I like hot drinks. I couldn't have tea or coffee. And so I was like in my room or else every week and just taking both. Yeah, there's certainly with regard to dairy. I think about what the purpose of dairy is. It is literally to put weight on things a little, whether it's a little kid or a baby calf or any other mammal. The goal is to grow rapidly. And because of that, there are compounds in that that make you want to keep eating it. So it's not as satiating as it might be. Maybe it's the case of more phones and some of these other things that drive that. So there's certainly that. And a lot of people find that if they're worried about losing weight, giving up dairy is helpful in that regard. Again, I don't know. Again, I went from the shoulders up, you look very lean and fits. And I don't look, you probably don't have a lot of excess body fat, I would guess most people look at you say you have none. But some of that may be like a lot of people lose weight on carnivore. They approach a normal healthy weight. And some people maybe that are too thin will put on a little weight, even body fat to get to to maybe a healthy right. I don't know. I can't say for sure where it is. I can give you the numbers. I went from 15.7% of body fat to 17.7% of body fat. Again, 17% body fat on a woman is still fairly, you know, it's still within the realm of essential body fat in many ways. And so I don't know that's a real problem. Let me ask you as far as I shine really, I think that the vitamin A toxicity is killing everybody and it's liver and eggs. Oh, things are bad. I'm a little bit skeptical on that claim. But do you find so you did this diet for one month or something like that? How long ago was that finished and to the end of May? So recently, so yeah, just for two days of June. What are your plans at this point? Did you add some? Because when I first went carnivore back way back in 2016, I did it for a month and then I brought back in sort of my normal omnivorous foods and I felt worse. I decided to get my back certain a little bit. My guts don't feel as good. How do you feel now compared to back when you were doing the diet more strictly? So I added, I started to a little bit of coffee because I realized that they said smell of a coffee. So I don't have coffee every day. I've had some coffee, had some berries and had a little bit of pumpkin. And I had a massive stomach cramps yesterday after having all that. So yeah, I didn't really like it. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. So I wanted to speak to you and see what I want to do, but I'm definitely not going to go back to eating too many veggies because of this really not happy eating stomach homes and bloating. So I think, I don't know, but it's what I wanted to ask you and do you think about eating mainly meals and then adding little bit of berries of coffee sometimes? Yeah, I think there's no wrong with that quite honestly. I said with the vegetables and what causes the bloating was the fermentation, the fermentation sugars, fermentation of fibers. And some people say if it's pre-fermented by a pre-fermented vegetable, there's less of that they can occur to our gut because it's already been pre-digested in a way for us. So that might be helpful to do it that way although I don't much care for fermented but I don't like any vegetables and fermented ones are no better in my view. That kind of looks slimy and I'm not really interested in that. But that could be a strategy. I think some berries occasionally. Like I said, as I've said many times, even in my book, humans are omnivorous. We clearly eat what we have available to us. However, we exist on a spectrum and I don't think there's any meat to eat plants. I think they're optional. You certainly won't die without them. At least I don't believe so. I have very rarely if I read them and I'm almost 60 years old and I'm doing okay. I'm still getting after it. So it's one of those things where... My practice, all my vitamins and minerals are perfectly fine after the month of cutting more is not better. My blood tests have actually improved in many aspects. But was also interesting. So I had a little bit of less blood iron after the month but I had more red blood cells. So it's like my body was utilizing the iron rate to create more red blood cells. Do you see that? That makes sense. A lot of times when you say iron and it could be ferritin, which is sometimes elevated or iron in general, is regulated mostly... Well, particularly in all people, most of the controls, how much we absorb our gut sort of dictates how much iron we absorb. If we don't need it, we just excrete it when we go to the bathroom. And when people are metabolically not as healthy, i.e. they have some degree of metabolic syndrome or some inflammatory stuff going on, that system doesn't work as well, I believe. And then you might have overacumulate iron in that situation. And again, and maybe you're not utilizing it correctly. As you mentioned, iron is part of red cell formation. And when we have the most common form of anemia is iron deficiency anemia. Well, one of the most common... I think it is the most common deficiency around the world is iron deficiency. And a lot of women in particular, because not only do they maybe under consume, but they also, if they're menstruating, they lose iron every month in the form of menstruations. Yeah, it makes sense to me. I've seen that before. I think people with a lot of things normalize in many ways. And again, I don't tend to get too hung up on lab results because ultimately you've got to realize these things change every day. And they can change every cost every hour in some cases, depending on what lab we're talking about. Glucose. And it can change every... Literally, I'm wearing a CGM. It changes every one minute. It's changing sometimes dramatically in the course. If I'm exercising real hard, it'll go up or something like that, or so on and so forth. So I don't really get too, too concerned about labs unless there's something really lining up with some clinical symptoms. It sounds like clinically, you're like, maybe you feel as best as you ever have at some point or something close to that. It sounds like you're generally healthy in general. Do you have... Do you have family around you, by the way? Do you have a family that lives with you? Or do you... I know what you're... My family, or back in public, I'm here always. So you don't have anybody saying, "Hey, this is crazy. You don't do that," because a lot of people are like their husband, their wife, their kids, or parents say, "Oh, you're crazy. You're going to have a little cholesterol." No worries concerned about you in that regard. And my friends and my family, they all think I'm crazy. So they don't really question anything I do. It is about just crazy. Did they think you were crazy before, though? All right. Yeah, though, I think I'm crazy. Just full stop. So whatever I know, that's why I don't remember. I'd say it's funny we have this whole sort of this year, a health not or your orthorexic, because you don't have an eating disorder. Literally, I think most people have an eating disorder. You look at most people eat, and it's like garbage, and that to me is an eating disorder. And if you just eat healthy, all of a sudden people know you're weird or something wrong with you. You care about your health. We're going to put a label on you. That's just a way of saying. I think it's a way industry just tries to reinforce the normality or normalizing the illness that we see in everybody in society. It's because my mind that someone can tell you you're crazy for eating me. But then it's not crazy to eat all the industrially manufactured crap that's not even food. That's just carico. And because that's not wrong. It's really sad when I actually feel sore as people. Yeah, I think we're starting to unbrainwash people. It's like this. You have this hypnotism, and you have to turn it the other way. It's a long process. But it's interesting to see how the industry is pushing back now, because they're having the government saying there's nothing wrong with ultra processed food. You can have a fully healthy diet eating a little 91% ultra processed food, as USDA's study said. Or we have these dieticians saying that all foods are healthy. And I go to the grocery store, I see blue, blue artificial flavored maple syrup. I'm saying that's not food. I don't know who in the right man will claim that any amount of that is good for us. It literally, it's just awful stuff. Crazy. I don't be too hyperbolic. But that's stuff. There's no reason to eat this stuff. I know, but actually it's the totally something that is even more concerning. So I was at a sports nutrition conference where there was college friends for professionals. And they were recommending diet full of ultra processed foods to athletes. And I questioned that. I'm like, why do you need to eat all these crap? Like, why can't you just feel with real food? And they said, no, as an athlete, you can't fuel with real food. Because it's not enough calories, not enough nutrients, not enough is not enough that. And you actually have to have ultra processed food. So the recommendation was like ice cream through a cardboard was better than many white bread with being on a butter and jelly, lollies, cliff bars, just full of crap. And they literally said, no, as an athlete, you can't fuel in real food. It's not enough. Yeah, I was like the Gatorade Sports Science Institute is funding all these studies and funding and most of these conferences, you go to any conference and they've got all these vendors, right? There are those ones that pay for the conference in many ways, who are through their rental feast course, dieticians groups that are totally bought and paid for by Nestle and Coca-Cola and PepsiCo and God knows what I mean, it's, you know, where it's coming from. It's coming from very much a conflict of interest sort of thing. I just ignore this stuff and hopefully enough people are out there. It really saddens me when you have physicians recommending this stuff, you have dieticians, you have other other people out there that are clearly conflicted in many ways. And it's sad that you would compromise your ethics in that regard. It's that you're advocating that someone eats pure garbage to even be an athlete, which isn't, you know, because that's the way it is. The good news is, it's like, hey, my competition is getting easier because everybody's sick and my kids have a better, they're going to have a better easier life because they're going to be, they're going to stand up, stand out out above everybody else who's stuck in this mediocrity, admired in this awful food addiction, maybe they're all taking their olympic shots and stuff. How is that, by the way, let me ask you that question, just to get your perspective on that. Are you seeing a lot of these obesity drugs and NBC drugs being taken over in Australia as these GLP1 drugs? Yes. Everybody's worried about it, but you're not wrong, but like so many people, it's being sold out, like, it's like so little when people, so many people are resent big. And I even wrote a blog about it, but I tried to educate all of my clients and on our website, so I wrote a blog about it. And it's just, it's really concerning because as many people go on those drugs, they don't exercise, don't eat healthy, lose muscle mass, and it creates more issues. So what do you think about it? That's probably the majority. Obviously, I think it will benefit a small segment of the population, but really, this is really something. If you are not prepared to be on this drug the rest of your life, you should look, think really long and hard about not doing it because not only are there going to be issues you're going to regain, anyway, you lost when you come off the drug, you might regain more, you might have more fat cells due to the tendency toward hyperplasia. You may suppress your own endogenous production of GLP1. You may not even be able to do that to agree. It's like being on a bunch of steroids and guys see their testicles shrink up because they can't produce it anymore. Or you may be so habituated to high levels with GLP1 that when those high levels are there and your body, there's no way your body can keep up with that. Your body makes a tiny amount compared to what the drug doses are. And now you're chronically adapted to high levels and you don't have it anymore because you couldn't tolerate it. Maybe that side effects, maybe you can't afford it anymore, whatever. Now you're in a situation where you're maybe even hungrier than you were before and now you have even worse problems. So I think we're going to see a immense number of people. This is going to turn around and bite them in a very significant way. And of course, drug companies will largely be immune for many sort of retribution. They maybe they'll pay a small fine for them. Even a multi-billion dollar fine for some of these companies is literally spare change. They have so much money that it's okay, we'll pay the fine, no big deal. They factor that into the product cost and all that stuff. Yeah, I don't think it's a good way to go. The only people that are going to have any kind of success are going to be doing the things they should be doing anyway, eating more protein, lifting weights, exercising, not eating garbage. But why don't you just do that to start with? That's like I said, people say, well, anyway, there's a lot of excuses out there. The thing is that, okay, people lose weight on these drugs, but they're not getting any fitter, they're not getting more muscle mass, their mobility is stronger hot. This would happens when you exercise, but this completely takes exercise out of equations. So these people, okay, they might lose weight, but they'll probably be immobile and on catches by the time it's still 60. Well, I have to say, like I said, any drug that comes out, and you can take this to the bank, any drug that comes out, the initial proclamations on how effective it is, they are always overestimated. And the side effects are always underestimated. This is just we see it over and over again. So whatever they say, you can say, I believe about 50% of that and whatever they say is bad about yourself, it's probably double of that. And that's probably somewhere close to the close to the actuality of things. I've seen that for years as a physician drug after drug, just under delivered under delivered more problems with it than one. That's but that's health care. That is what health care, I only I hesitate to even call his health care. It's the sick care model. And the reason these types of drugs, and this is what they want to develop, they want to drug, they want lifestyle drugs, they don't want anything that cures disease, they don't want anything that that's really sick people are concerned with it. They just want people to chronically stay in the state of suboptimal health, chronically being consumers, chronically being arrest, a renewable subscription model, which is, that's what we have. That's what we have. And it's unfortunate. That's, anyway, I'll get off my soapbox because I can want to suffer a long time. What you said, you had some a lot of beef, a lot of lamb. Is that something you prefer over there? Lamb is quite prevalent in Australia. Yeah, I do a lot of lamb. Yeah, it's my favorite. I actually didn't have a lot of lamb for some reason, though I had a lot of beef. I don't know. I just feel like eating really fatty steaks there. When you don't have carbohydrates, you need energy from some sort of fats. That's where it is. You can get some very fatty lamb. Lamb thighs can be very fatty. I think I've had some great lamb. Here in the US, we don't consume as much lamb because it's not made as much. It's not as popular, maybe people don't like the taste. It's more expensive. The lamb can be, gosh, such a little, and it arguably lamb is even better than beef when it comes to nutrition. I love that. You can make that argument, I think. I love many kinds of meat to do. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Okay. I have some deer liver that was amazing. We have a lot of deer in Australia. Actually, at the moment, it's too much, and whoever is good in license, they encourage people to go hunting for deer because it's too much. It's the best. So, my friend went hunting with his son and then brought me lots of deer liver and deer meat, so I had that as well. Yeah, the only concern about deer is a little lean. It's tough to get enough fat with deer, but what about a kangaroo? Have you had a kangaroo while you're there? I did have a kangaroo, but that's very lean, and it's not my favorite meat, to be honest. It doesn't have a lot of size. It's very gamey. It's not so my favorite. Yeah. I've had some kangaroo. No, I never had a kangaroo. That was ostrich, my bad. I've had ostrich before. Still lean. I'm not my favorite, because it's tough to be beef. I'm honestly, I think that's clear than my favorite. I might get in the cow with my favorite animal. I like them. They taste good, so I hope we have more of them. It's funny. I talked to a rancher this morning in Mexico, Chihuahua. His name's Alejandro Carrillo, the regenerative ag gun in Chihuahua, Mexico. He's literally turning the desert green with his cows. I asked him, I said, and he goes all around the world, and he's quite insightful. I said, "There's about a billion cattle on earth right now. That's what we have about billion cows." I said, "What do you think realistically we could support on earth with without?" He said, "You think we could hold about five billion?" So we could five fold the number of cows on earth. That would be great, because it would help reverse the desertifications going on. If you manage it correctly, you could actually put more soil and microbes and improve the water carrying capacity of the land and improve the biodiversity and increase the wildlife if we did that. But again, it's got to be enough people, you, myself, and millions more, that are going to have to make that a reality. I'm not a pessimist. I'm optimistic, but I think it's a fight. We've got to keep our minds optimistic and energized, because we feel good, and why not? Why not make a world better place with more cows and happier people and more better nourished people. We have so many people that are malnourished, especially the younger generation, where they're surviving at ultra-processed foods, and they've got all these mental health issues and on, and it's just not a good thing. So we've got just a couple minutes left. Why don't you share, do you have a website or social media or anything like that where you talk about nutrition and stuff like that? Yeah, I have a social media, but my name is Ronin Kalaris, a server, and then also, cheese nutrition, and the website is wearecheves.com, and there's a lot of- How do you spell it, cheese? We are A-R-E-C-H-I-E-S.com, and that's in the article section. I write most of the articles, and it's all free education about all different topics, and lots of free downloads and things like that. So I'll try to educate people and all why I put everything that I write with science based. I search for all new science department, and read it properly, and then make my conclusions based on that. Yeah, I just went over to your Instagram, and there's- you're not overweight at all, so you're quite sitting lean, so good for you. Anyway, Veronica, thanks for doing this. I appreciate that, and maybe if I ever get down to Sydney, we can eat steak or something. Yeah, also, I want to ask you, would you come on my podcast? Yeah, absolutely. We can do that. Absolutely, how nice that. Yeah, I'll tell you after this. So anyway, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. Thanks so much.