(upbeat music) The Greek definition for metabolism is to transform. Your metabolism is designed to take food and to transform it into energy so you feel good and burn fat. We are determined to deliver the science and art of metabolism to you. We bring on the thought leaders in this space to have life-changing conversations so you could apply it and upgrade your metabolism. The topics covered here include biohacking, ketosis, carnivore, fasting strategies, mindset, and metabolic health. Your body was built to be self-healing. Our goal is to identify the interference and remove it. You are a masterpiece because you are a piece of the master. Welcome to the Metabolic Freedom Podcast. My name is Ben Azadi. I'm the best-selling author of KetoFlex, and I wanna thank you for spending part of your day with me. (upbeat music) I'm gonna share with you a 30-day protocol to lose up to 20 pounds within a month. The best part about this protocol, you don't have to suffer, you don't have to count calories, you don't have to rely on any restrictive dieting. In fact, it will be easy. After I personally went from being physically obese at 250 pounds to losing over 80 pounds in nine months and going from 34% body fat to 6% body fat, I cracked the code. And the cool thing about having the combination to a code, you unlock it no matter what. I tested this protocol on over 5,000 of my KetoCAMP Academy students over the years. And as you can see with the photos on the screen here, it worked with great success. All walks of life from all across the world, different ages, different activity levels, every single person got significant results. And the really cool thing about this protocol, I actually outlined it in a brand new book coming out in 2025 with Hey House called Metabolic Freedom, but you're getting exclusive access to this 30-day protocol. I'm gonna reveal it all to you right here, right now. The protocol will be laid out on a week-by-week basis. Now, before I get into week one here, I wanna lay some ground rules. These are rules that you wanna follow throughout the entire 30 days. First, let's start with the foods we want to remove and avoid for the 30 days. These foods are inflammatory. They'll create inflammation in your body, but also cause fat gain and prevent you from burning fat. The first set of foods are called Vectable Oils, also known as seed oils. I've interviewed some prominent experts on the research on Vectable Oils. One of them is Dr. Kate Shanahan. She is a New York Times best-selling author. She was the nutritionist for the Los Angeles Lakers when Kobe Bryant used to play. Yes, Kobe Bryant's former nutritionist. Her research has shown that the consumption of these Vectable Oils contribute to chronic inflammation and weight gain. There are mega-6 fatty acids that are pro-inflammatory, that damage the brain, damage the body. Another gentleman I interviewed, Dr. Chris Kenobi, has also written a lot of research and books on the topic of these Vectable Oils, poisoning your mitochondria, lowering energy production, lowering the metabolism, and creating chronic disease. When I interviewed another gentleman named Brian Peskin, who's an MIT researcher, I said, Brian, which is worse for you? Smoking cigarettes are eating these Vectable Oils. He's an MIT researcher, so he said, let's look at the analytics, let's look at the research. He said, if someone smoked two-axis cigarettes every day for 28 years, the chances of them developing lung cancer within those 28 years is about 16%. That's one-six. Then he said, compare that to somebody who consumes these cooked Vectable Oils every day for 28 years, their chances of developing heart disease or cancer, he said, is 86%. I asked Dr. K. Shanahan if his stats line up with hers, and he said, it's actually closer to 100% disease. They stay in your body, these Vectable Oils, for years. The half-life is 680 days, meaning if you stop eating them today, which you will, for this protocol, two years later, they'll remain in your body. Now, in the protocol, I'm giving you some ways to enhance the removal of these bad fats, but first, let me give you a list. You want to write these down? Maybe take a screenshot, pause the video, pause the podcast, and make sure you get these. This is the list of the fats you want to avoid during the 30 days. We have canola oil called rapeseed oil in the UK, corn oil, cotton seed oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, rice bran oil, grape seed oil, refined palm oil, hydrogenated oil, refined peanut oil, and fish oil. These are highly unstable. They create oxidative stress in your body. So I want you to think of me biting into an apple, and I left that apple on the counter, and I came back hours later. What would we see? We'd see that apple turn brown. You've seen that before, with avocados and different foods. This is oxidation. When you consume these vegetable oils, they're oxidizing your cells, slowing down your metabolism, preventing fat burning by creating cell membrane inflammation. And when you have excessive cell membrane inflammation, your fat burning hormones cannot do their job. They cannot get into the cell. On the topic here on how inflammatory they are before we move on to the next item to remove, Dr. Martin Grudfeld put out a study, he estimates that the average five ounce serving of french fries is equivalent to 25 tobacco cigarette smoked, in terms of something called aldehydes. When you smoke cigarette, tobacco cigarettes, your body produces aldehydes in your body. Cancer causing. The same amount can be caused from french fries. So there's about 25 french fries and five ounces. Essentially, one french fry equals one cigarette smoked. Whoa. Now the tricky part for these 30 days is when you're at restaurants, when you're at events, because 99% of restaurants are going to cook in these vegetable oils. I use something called a seed oil allergy card. I show this to the server. It prevents you from taking the hit. It has the bad fats, the good fats, good replacements. They show it to the chef and they accommodate. It works really well. You can get it over at seedoilcard.com or click the link down below. The next item to avoid is alcohol, at least for the next 30 days. Alcohol is a poison to your body. Every sip you take will create damage to your brain cells and it'll slow your metabolism. Because your liver and your metabolism will prioritize getting rid of that alcohol, which is a poison versus fat burning and other really important detoxification effects. The worst offenders out there when it comes to alcohol is beer and wine. Dr. Zach Bush, triple board medical doctor, came out of my metabolic freedom podcast and he made the case that the average California wine has 64 herbicides in it. This is glyphosate. This is creating inflammation in the gut, ripping open your tight junctions, leading to leaky gut, fatty liver disease and a slowed metabolism. Beer is also bad because it's very estrogenic. It will raise estrogen in both men and women. That could slow fat loss, create fat storage and also man boobs in men and estrogen dominance in women. If you're going to have alcohol, I don't recommend you do, but let's say you are gonna have alcohol, then you wanna go with clear liquors. Vodka, tequila and whiskey would be your best options on the rocks. If you choose a wine, go with a European wine or even better, something called dry-form wines, which is an organic, biodynamic wine, low in sugar, better tolerated, no pesticides. You can learn more about that wine over at ketocampwine.com. If you're gonna drink, make sure you drink a lot of water ahead of time. Take a binder like a activated charcoal and other what's called chelation agents before you have the alcohol and even glutathione could help as well. Some studies also suggest eating asparagus with the alcohol helps you metabolize it faster as well. Let's move on to the next list of items you want to remove. Do you wanna avoid these synthetic ingredients that create inflammation and slow your metabolism down? That's gonna be artificial sweeteners like a soul-sophane potassium, aspartame, sucralose, which are found in these diet drinks. They're found in crystal light, diet sodas. You wanna make sure you avoid them and you also wanna avoid inflammatory ingredients like saccharin, nutrile sweet, any red and blue dyes, artificial colors and flavorings. Now, let's discuss the approved foods I want you to consume throughout the 30 days. When I go through your week by week plan, I'll let you know how much to consume, what time to consume them, and we'll lay that all that out for you when we get there. But in general, these are the foods you want to consume for the 30 days. Let's talk about nuts and seeds first. That's gonna be flax seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, walnuts, pistachios, brazil nuts, cashews and pine nuts. These are all approved. For fruits and vegetables, you wanna consume blueberries, strawberries, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, carrots and cabbage, an asparagus, onion, garlic, sprouts and arugula. For healthy proteins, you wanna add grass-fed beef and lamb, pasture-raised turkey and chicken, bison, pasture-raised pork, pastured eggs, charcuterie meats like salami and prosciutto, sardines, salmon and chovies, herring, mackerel. These are all healthy fats and proteins for you. Now, the best fats to cook your food in are going to be fats that tolerate high heat. That's gonna be butter, ghee, beef, tallow and duck fat, coconut oil and lard from non-hydrogenized pigs. The best fats and oils for salad dressings and dips are going to be avocado oil and extra virgin olive oil. The best sweeteners are going to be erythritol, xylitol, swerve, pure stevia, monk fruit and algulos. And lastly, we wanna also add an abundance of these bitter-rich foods which support your liver and the ability for your liver to break down fat, which we're going to increase during your plan and to help your body to toxify. I don't know if you know of this as well, your liver is a very important fat loss organ. So bitters for the liver. Here's a list of bitter-rich foods you wanna incorporate, have a few, have them all, but have them consistently to produce healthy bile, to break down the fatty acids from food, which then are assimilated, used by ourselves and increase your metabolic rate. This is gonna be arugula, organic coffee, apple cider vinegar, lemons and limes, radicchio, rosemary, thyme, basil, dill, ginger and ginger tea. In addition to that, you wanna also add in milk thistle tea, brussel sprouts, broccoli, Jerusalem artichokes, dandelion greens, saffron, sesame seeds, turmeric, grapefruit, peppermint and green tea. Now that we have the ground rules out of the way of what to avoid and what to consume, let's get into week number one. This is gonna start on a Monday, just to make it easy for us and it'll end on a Sunday, and then the following Monday would be week number two, but let's focus here on week number one. The first step here in your protocol is to get you fat adapted. This is called the fat-adaption phase. Your metabolism essentially could only burn two sources of energy. Either you're burning sugar or you're burning fat. Your goal is to burn body fat. So we need to get you away from burning sugar and teach your metabolism to burn fat. 93% of Americans burn sugar. They're metabolically unhealthy and unstable. When you're stuck burning sugar, it will be difficult to burn stubborn fat. How do you know if you're a sugar burner? Well, if you answer yes to two of the next five warning signs, chances are you're a sugar burner. The first warning sign is you feel tired after eating a meal. Second one is you have skin tags. Third one is you have brown patches underneath your armpits or your neck. The fourth is you snack in between meals and the fifth sign is that if you skip a meal, you get hangry, hungry and angry. If you said yes, that's me to at least two of those, that's a red flag that you are a sugar burner. Now, of course, you get lab work done, a fasting insulin, which is a blood test. If that's over 10, you are for sure a sugar burner. The problem with being a sugar burner is that it blocks you from burning body fat. The extra fat on your body is simply stored energy. Similar to this truck I'm showing you here, carrying gasoline. Compare this gasoline to your body fat stores. If your goal is to use the energy you're storing, the gasoline you're carrying essentially, you need to stop putting gas back in your truck. In other words, you need to stop raising insulin. Every time you raise insulin, you put more gas into the truck. In other words, you store body fat. - Let me know if you could relate to this, health insurance. Oh my gosh, what a pain in the butt it is to deal with health insurance. It is a broken system that is penalizing people who are truly trying to get healthier. Like you listening to this podcast. These healthcare costs are rising dramatically due to a broken insurance system that incentivizes higher costs and interventions instead of prevention. So what's the solution? I'm a big fan of crowd health. It's a better alternative to health insurance. It's not a health share, it's a decentralized community supporting each other directly for large health expenses. Crowd health is a revolutionary healthcare platform that empowers consumers by offering an alternative to traditional health insurance. It operates on a subscription model. This fee grants them access to a comprehensive suite of healthcare tools, resources and personalized support through personal care advocates, as well as access to the crowd where they can submit any healthcare expenses over $500 for funding by the crowd. Crowd health is not an insurance company. It offers a consumer centric approach to managing healthcare expenses, focusing on transparency, community support and cost sharing. Crowd health recently launched the carnivore crowd initiative. It's a crowd within the crowd, specifically for verified, metabolically healthy people who eat animal-based diets. Members of this crowd will exclusively fund each other's healthcare expenses. You can opt into this crowd and stop subsidizing poor diet decisions with rising premiums while saving money for being a part of a healthy crowd. For metabolic freedom podcast listeners only, you can join using the code vitamin G and get $99 per month for the first three months. When you sign up with this code, you will be temporarily added to the carnivore crowd until you submit the required metabolic test. For more information on how it works, visit joincrowdhealth.com/cardivore or click the link in the show notes. Make sure you use the coupon code vitaming. That's joincrowdhealth.com/cardivore. The code is vitamin G. Let's face it, in the health and biohacking space, there's a lot of supplements. And I have used a lot of them. My cabinet looks like the vitamin shop, but there's one supplement that I take more often than others. This supplement is called Man of Vitality. I actually have this on auto-ship to get it each month, and I love it so much, and I'll explain why, but I love it so much that I even have my mother on auto-ship for her to get it every single month as well. Man of Vitality contains a high concentration of Sheila Jip, which is this super concentrated mineral sourced from the Himalayan mountains and Ormis from the Dead Sea. There's so much I love about Man of Vitality and the company, 10 years of expertise. Their decade-long journey in sourcing from sacred sites and sharing the purity and potency of our ingredients makes it a favorite of mine. They have vigorous lab testing processes that guarantee the absence of a contaminant, including heavy metals, providing peace of mind, knowing that it is clean when you consume it. Simply take one sashay per day. You could have it straight up, makes it with water, or do what I do, I put it in my coffee, and you're gonna notice the difference on that first day. I have been feeling incredible. Every time I take Man of Vitality, I take it with me when I travel. I actually put two packets in my coffee when I travel to make sure I feel great while I'm on the road, and I think you're gonna love it as well. Manobolic Freedom Podcast listeners get a nice discount off Man of Vitality products. If you head over to manahvitality.com/ketocamp, you could see their products and use the coupon code ketocamp at checkout, which is a nice discount. Manah is spelled with two ends. Manavitality.com/ketocamp. When you become a fat burner, which you're gonna do in the first seven days of this protocol here, your insulin levels lower, you make that metabolic switch to tapping into body fat for energy, and your body produces ketones. Ketones are really important for fat loss, for metabolic health, and for mitochondrial health. So the first step here is to get you fat adapted in the next seven days. Here's how you're gonna do it. You're going to gradually lower your carbohydrates, your total carbohydrates, until by day seven, it's at 50 total grams of carbs or less. Now the average person is consuming over 300 grams of carbs per day, and I do not recommend going from 300 grams of carbs per day to under 50 grams in just a day or two. You wanna do a gradual decrease, so by day seven, you're under 50 grams of total carbs that'll prevent any symptoms, any headaches, any side effects that may occur if you do it too fast. You could track that by using a free app. I use the one called Chronometer. It's free, download it over at chronometer.com/ketocamp. It's the only macro nutrient you're gonna track, and that's gonna be carbohydrates, and you could track it with that free app, or any other free app out there. The second step here, you wanna hit this 2-2-2 rule every day, starting day one, all the way to day seven, and then you could discontinue it after the first week is done. The 2-2-2 rule consists of two tablespoons of either butter and ghee every day, two tablespoons of coconut oil every day, and two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil every day. What this is doing, as we strategically lower your total carbohydrates, we're gonna lower glucose and insulin. That's a good thing. We wanna teach our metabolism to switch over to burning fatty acids for fuel, so by incorporating these healthy fats with the 2-2-2 rule, it'll make that switch effortlessly, so you don't have any symptoms. So you wanna hit that. You wanna consume those fats with your meals. You wanna consume it with the foods, the oils you cook with, the salad dressings, the dips, consume it throughout the day. The next thing you wanna add here is the keto cocktail drink. You're gonna drink this for the first seven days to replenish your electrolytes, 'cause here's what's gonna happen. As you lower your glucose and insulin levels, your body's gonna shed a ton of excess water weight, which is wonderful. You're gonna feel lighter, look lighter, less puffy, you're less bloated. However, your kidneys sort of go through this diuresis process where it sheds a lot of minerals and electrolytes too, so you wanna replenish that. And the best way to do that is with the keto cocktail, which consists, do this in the morning, every morning for the first seven days. Two cups of water, which is 16 ounces of water, spring water is best. Two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, diluted in the water, a teaspoon, or a pinch, I should say, of sea salt, and a teaspoon of cream of tartar. Mix that together, drink it, replenish the electrolytes. Now, if you don't wanna drink that, then just take a high-quality mineral supplement, an electrolyte supplement, just to replenish those electrolytes. You're going to consume three meals every day for this first week. You're gonna have breakfast, lunch, and you're going to have dinner. No snacking in between the meals, 'cause every time you snack, you raise glucose to an insulin and you put your body in a fat storage state. We don't want that. So what it's gonna look like, you can see the calendar on the screen here, Monday through Saturday. Let's give you a general template here. 8 a.m. breakfast. You fast until 12 p.m. You have your lunch. Then you fast until 8 p.m. dinner. That is your schedule for the first seven days. But then, 8 p.m. is too late for dinner. I agree. Then have it at 6 p.m. But the goal is to have three meals, no snacking in between for those first seven days. The food you eat should be gradually decreasing the carbs and focusing on protein and fat. I gave you a whole list earlier in the video and the lesson here. So eat the protein and fat and gradually lower the carbs, have three meals per day. By day seven, you're gonna be in a fat burning state. Now, can you have coffee and tea? I actually recommend you do have coffee in the morning because coffee is actually a really powerful agent for fat loss. But it has to be the right coffee. Let me explain that real quick. Coffee has a powerful polyphenol called chlorogenic acid, CGA. And CGA tells your body to burn fat cells for energy, for fuel. This is the same mechanism that statin drugs use to lower cholesterol without the potential side effects. CGA cuts cravings, suppresses your appetite, activates the liver's ability to produce bio we talked about how important that is in an AIDS and detoxifying your cells. Helps deliver to processed fats and glucose more efficiently by lowering triglyceride levels in the blood and stabilizing blood sugar levels as well. The effect of this blood sugar balancing act decreases your risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes while inhibiting the growth of new fat cells. Working together with the caffeine in coffee, CGA helps to reduce belly fat by increasing the number of cells that are burned for energy. This even works while you're sleeping. A Norwegian study found that women who drank high CGA coffee dropped three times more weight than those who consumed lower CGA brews. It needs to be the right coffee though. You wanna choose a medium roast as opposed to a dark roast. Once the beans are roasted beyond medium, they've lost about 75% of their fat blasting polyphenols. Also, you wanna choose coffee grown at high altitudes that are organic, that have been tested for contaminants. I personally use and love purity coffee. I've been using them for years, they're clean, tested for heavy metals, medium roast, taste delicious. You can get their coffee over at ketocampcoffee.com and use the coupon code ketocamp to get 15% off. That covers your first week, the fat-adaption phase. Now let's shift into week number two, which is called your autophagy phase. Why do we call it the autophagy phase? What exactly is autophagy? The autophagy is an incredible process in your body that recycles damaged cells, fixes the metabolism, allows you to burn fat, fix the gut, prevents disease like cancer. I want you to envision a refrigerator. When you open up this refrigerator, what do you see? You see groceries inside of the refrigerator with expiration dates on them. What would happen if you let all the groceries inside of this refrigerator expire? Every single one of them. And instead of throwing these expired groceries into the trash can, you kinda just shove them towards the back of the fridge, shove them in the drawers of the fridge, buy new groceries, put them in front of the old, expired groceries, and you close that refrigerator door and then you open it up later on. It's gonna be disgusting. Disease will manifest in that environment. Your human body is like this refrigerator. You have cells and proteins and mitochondria that have expiration dates on them. Autophagy is the process of getting rid of these expired groceries, these expired cells. Your metabolism and your innate intelligence is so sophisticated that when you activate autophagy, it looks for these expired groceries and it uses it for energy. It's like Pac-Man going within your cells and cleaning out the junk. Now, there are a few ways to achieve autophagy. Exercise, different foods called synolytics. Autophagy is occurring all the time, but we wanna boost it to get the effect that I'm talking about here. And one of the best ways to do that is with time-restricted feeding, also called intermittent fasting. And the goal is to get into a 16-hour fast to hit a boost in autophagy. Now, you might be watching this or listening to this thinking, there's no way I could fast. I feel awful when I fast, it's too restrictive. It's gonna be very difficult. It's like I'm asking you to hold your breath for 10 minutes, I get it. But guess what? Week number one was designed to get you fat adapted and metabolically healthier so you could actually feel great during the fast and achieve all the wonderful results that come with fasting. Now, fasting is a great way to burn fat, fix the gut, turn the brain on, give you energy, not take it away from you when you do it the right way. And by following this protocol, you're actually doing it the right way. So your fasting schedule is going to be 16 hours and your eating window is going to be eight hours. So this is what it's going to look on your calendar, Monday through Sunday. This is week two. I'm going to give you an example schedule here. Let's say you eat your first meal at 12 p.m. So you're gonna skip breakfast, you could still have the coffee, but you're gonna skip the breakfast, eat your first meal at 12 p.m. Eat another meal, let's say at 4 p.m. and then your final meal at 8 p.m. You could have two or three meals and then eating windows up to you. All of your meals should consist of less than 50 total grams of carbohydrates at this point to get to keep you in ketosis. Protein now should be the focus. You're no longer following that 2.2.2 rule. You don't have to add the extra fats, but you wanna get at least 40 grams of protein at each of those meals. That's going to hold you over and satiate you to complete the fast. Now, if you feel like it's better for you to skip dinner and have breakfast, that works too. Whatever works for your schedule. You just wanna make sure you have an eight hour eating window and a 12 hour fasting window, but for sure use your sleeping window as a fasting window. Utilize that window to make sure you have a good fast. So just one more time here before we move on to week three, let's put the calendar back up. Monday through Sunday, you're going to fast for 16 hours, eat for eight hours. In this example, you're eating between 12 p.m. and 8 p.m. getting at least 40 grams of protein at each of the meals and you're not surpassing 50 total grams each day. Let's shift on and move on into week three. Week three is called the metabolic fasting phase. We're gonna incorporate something called metabolic fasting. This is a term that I personally coined. Metabolic fasting is where you build up that fasting muscle even more. The longer we could get into this fasting state, the more dramatically you're going to lower insulin and start burning body fat for energy. I love this example from my friend Dr. Jason Fung. I want you to envision a wallet. Whether it's pulling it out of your pocket or your purse, you pull out the wallet. We're gonna compare this wallet to your sugar reserves, your body stores energy and body fat, but also in this immediate reserves called your glycogen stores. This is stored in your liver and muscle cells. Think of that, let's compare that to your wallet. You pull out the wallet, the benefit of using your wallet or your glycogen stores is that it's easy access. You could put energy in in the form of cash or calories or take energy out in the form of cash or calories. Now the drawback, there's limited storage capacity in the wallet and in your glycogen stores. You could only store a certain amount of cash in the wallet and you could only store a certain amount of calories in your glycogen stores, about 2,000 calories. Once you deplete that, you're tapped out. Now the body fat you have that you wanna burn is like your bank safe. The drawback to using your bank safe or your body fat versus the wallet or your glycogen stores is that it takes longer access to get to. You gotta get into the car, drive to the bank, show documentation to the teller, then you have access. But the benefit is that there's almost unlimited reserves in that bank safe and on your body fat. You have tens of thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of calories energy on your body fat. With this metabolic fasting schedule I'm about to give you here in week three, you get access to that bank safe, your body fat, a lot faster where you're just burning body fat for energy. So let's pull the calendar back up for week three here. Monday through Sunday, you're gonna do a 20 hour fasting window and a four hour feeding window. Now you might have that meal between 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. Two meals, focusing on protein, 40 grams of protein on each meal, keeping your total carbs under 50 grams per day and getting just the fat that comes with the protein. So 12 to 4 p.m. eating window, 4 p.m. Till 12 p.m. the next day, fasting window. This is a 20 hour fast, the metabolic fast. You're gonna feel so great during this fast because you just completed the first two weeks and you've built up that fasting muscle. Now what if you'd like your eating window to be earlier in the day? That's actually better. You could do 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. eating window and then fast from 12 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day. That works too. The goal is just every day for week three, these seven days, every day have an eating window, four hours, two meals in that window and then fast outside of that window for 20 hours. Now we enter the final week of your protocol. This is called the metabolic flexing phase. The goal is metabolic flexibility. The ability to burn sugar, fat, oxygen, sunshine, any energy substrate that's available for energy and fat loss and by this time you have achieved that. So congratulations for getting to this point of the protocol. Now we don't only want to burn fat and stave in ketosis forever so I'm going to give you something called a metabolic flex day. That is a day that you're going to use on this Monday, the first Monday of week four to actually increase carbs, shift out of fat burning to sugar burning and then shift back to fat burning. It sounds counterintuitive but let me explain why I'm doing this. The best personal trainers in the world understand that changing the routine gets their clients results. If you've ever worked with a great fitness coach and personal trainer, they get this. One week you're doing high reps and low weights. The next week is the complete opposite. You're doing high weights and low reps. The next week the entire routine has changed on you again. Why do they keep doing this? Because it keeps the body adapting and guessing and it gets your results. Same thing with this protocol. We don't only want to just burn fat, we want to shift into sugar and then back to fat. So you're going to do a metabolic flex day which is enjoyable, like enjoy yourself but it's not a cheat day, it's a feast day. So what is a metabolic flex day? You want to consume three meals on this day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Let's put the calendar up on the screen here. 8 a.m., 12 p.m., let's say 6 p.m. You want to get about 100 to 150 of total grams of carbs and protein within those three meals and you want to eat as low fat as possible in those three meals as well. You're going to feast it up. So the list of carbohydrates I gave you earlier are great. You could also add in white rice and other fruits into the mix. Make sure it's just whole foods you're consuming on this metabolic flex day. Once you complete that, the rest of the week here, Tuesday through Sunday, you're going to perform something called ADF, alternate day fasting. Another fantastic way to shift things up and get that metabolism blasting stubborn fat. So Tuesday, you're going to do one meal. This is called OMAD. You're going to have just one meal hitting 40 grams of protein, less than 50 grams of carbs in that meal and then you're going to fast the rest of the day. That meal could be a breakfast, lunch, your dinner, it's up to you. Now, the next day, you have three meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner. You're still going to be in ketosis by keeping your total carbohydrates under 50 grams of carbs or less throughout that day of those three meals, hitting your 40 grams of protein at each meal. You'll have three meals on that day. The next day, which is going to be Thursday, back to one meal. The following day, which is going to be Friday, three meals and then one meal and then three meals. That's alternate day fasting. So you could see what it looks like on the schedule to make it easier for you. That is the protocol. Now, there are additional things you could add into the routine that will enhance your results and these are for the go-getter. So I'm just going to share those with you right now. First thing is if you could get 7,000 steps per day throughout the 30 days, you're going to get better results. Walking is how you do it, just movement, but 7,000 steps per day is the goal. So take the stairs instead of the elevator, park farther in the parking lot, find ways to get your steps, walk your dog, get 7,000 steps a day. That'll help with fat loss and inflammation. Second thing is you want to consume, when I say protein, 40 grams of protein, I was saying that a lot. You want it to come ideally from animal-based protein, not plant protein. There's a difference. Animal-based protein is more complete. Plant protein is not. So ideally, if you can do it with animal, great. But if you do it with plant protein, you'll still get results. - One of the best ways to know if you are in a fat-burning state, or a fed state, which is a fat storage state, is to track post-prandial glucose, post-prandial meaning after eating. The higher your blood sugar rises after eating, and the longer it stays elevated, the more insulin needs to be cranked out. An insulin is an energy-sensing hormone, and it tells your body to store fat. Therefore, the higher your blood sugar levels after eating, the faster you store fat, and the longer it takes to going back to burning fat. Hands down my favorite way to track post-prandial glucose and blood sugar levels in general, is with a continuous glucose monitor. I've been using Nutrisense and their amazing program for so many years, and I've been able to pinpoint specific foods that raise my blood sugar levels after eating. I've also been able to pinpoint what quality sleep and lack of quality sleep does to raise my blood sugar levels, what exercise does. It is such an incredible way to customize your approach, no matter what diet you are following. And one of the cool things about Nutrisense, they give you a professional in their app to monitor your progress, and the human expertise also gives nutrition advice as well. These are eye-opening insights from CGM data to help you make actionable steps. Head over to Nutrisense.io/freedom and use the coupon code freedom to get $50 off your first month. That is Nutrisense.io/freedom. Coupon code is freedom. One of my favorite ways to get my protein is with paleo-valley's superfood bars. Their superfood bars taste amazing, and I always have it on hand, especially when I'm traveling or on the go. These bars are certified organic, rich in superfood antioxidants. It's cold processed, and it contains 100% grass-fed bone broth protein. They're gluten-free, grain-free, soy-free, and non-GMO. They contain a high amount of healthy fats and proteins and vital nutrients. There are no sugar added, no artificial sweeteners, and no sugar alcohol. They have different flavors that range from dark chocolate chip, apple cinnamon, lemon meringue, and red velvet flavors. My personal favorite is the lemon meringue and the red velvet. I always buy this for my mom as well. Her kitchen is stocked up, and you could get your hands on paleo-valley's superfood bars with a 15% off-code automatically applied if you head over to paleovalley.com/ketocamp. That coupon code is automatically applied, and you could check out all the other wonderful products and supplements paleo-valley has, and your discount is applicable to any of their products. Head over to paleovalley.com/ketocamp to learn more. You also want to add, when you're metabolically adapted here, maybe after week one, some fasted cardio in the morning, but if you could do this little trick here, and have green tea, which contains catechins in it, catechins have been shown to target belly fat. You want to get a high-quality green tea, like peak tea. I'll put a link from down below. In the morning, on an empty stomach, with a tablespoon of MCT oil, which also helps with something called mitochondrial uncoupling, ketone production, and fat loss, drink the green tea, and then do a 30-minute, like, moderate cardio session, whether it's a walk or a jog or just a fast walk, you're gonna enhance your results as well. It's gonna really help with bed oxidation and fat burning. One more suggestion here, and then I'm gonna answer some questions that you probably are thinking about right now. You could add a supplement that I use called Radical Metabolizer, which contains four ingredients that have been proven to burn fat and increase metabolic rate. First ingredient is African mango, which promotes weight loss, especially around your waist and hips. Second ingredient is raspberry ketones, which help with a fat burning hormone called adiponectin. And third ingredient is alkarnitine, which gives energy to your mitochondria. And the fourth ingredient is green tea. As I mentioned, it has EC, GC, and catechins, which help with belly fat. You could buy those ingredients separately and just have them every single day during their protocol, or you could take the supplement, and I have a link and a code for you, so I'll put that down below in the notes as well. Now, you don't have to take the supplement, you don't have to do those additional tips there to get results, if you wanted to be a go-getter and do it all, you'll get faster results with that. Couple of things to consider here is you want to really master stress and focus on quality sleep. You burn fat during sleep, you recover, you restore, you activate your lymphatic system, which cleans out the junk of your brain and your body during the night. So make sure you're getting quality sleep, sleep is foundational, make sure you're mastering your stress. Now, and make sure you're taking this supplement, and this is a free supplement, you could get anywhere that lowers inflammation, lowers blood sugar levels, lowers blood pressure levels, turns on your brain, and allows your body to produce oxytocin, GABA, dopamine, these feel-good chemicals and hormones, buffers stress and cortisol, helps you burn fat, it's called vitamin G. Vitamin G is gratitude. You can see here on my shirt, I don't have a code, I don't have a link, it's free, there's no upper limit, this is not a joke. When you feel gratitude, you put your body in a healing anti-inflammatory state, so every morning, right down 10 things you're grateful for, get your daily dose of vitamin G. Keep in mind that gratitude is not an intellectual exercise, it's an emotional exercise, you wanna feel that gratitude, do it, and you'll get great results. I'm going to answer some questions now that are commonly asked when I give this protocol to people all across the world. First question is, Ben, I'm concerned that I will feel hungry and tired during my fast, what should I do if I get hungry, what should I do if I get tired? Well, I explain the way that I built this out for you is that we're not practicing much fasting until you're fat adapted. So you're not gonna feel tired, you're gonna feel more energized. If you get hungry, I want you to know this is normal. There's a hormone in your body called ghrelin. Think of ghrelin as a gremlin, it shows up, you're not enjoying it when it's in your company and makes your stomach growl, but the cool thing about all hormones, including ghrelin, is that all hormones are pulsatile. They spike, they go down, they spike, they go down. So if you just keep yourself busy and distracted after 10 or 15 minutes, maybe go for that walk and get those steps, by the time you come back from the walk, the ghrelin hormone would drop down, hunger is gone. Now, another little tip for you for hunger, take a tablespoon of coconut oil and consume that during your fast, doesn't break it fast, and it should also help with the hunger. Second question I always get is, can I have coffee and tea during my fasting window? For the purpose of this protocol, we're gonna say, yes, it'll enhance fat loss, go for it. If you really wanna know if it's breaking a fast, my definition of breaking a fast is, when you raise glucose and lose some of the autophagy benefits, if you really wanna know if it's doing that, you wanna test your blood glucose right before the coffee and then 45 minutes after. Now, tea is safe. Coffee, for some people, can spike glucose. If you see that glucose, go up five points or higher, 45 minutes after testing. Yeah, it is breaking some of the autophagy and some of the fasting benefits. I wouldn't really concern yourself too much with it, but if you're somebody who wants to make sure you cross all your teas and dot all your eyes, you can get a machine like keto mojo over at ketocantmachine.com to test your blood sugar and to see what it's doing to your blood sugar levels. Tea, as I mentioned, is safe. Next question is, am I allowed to take supplements during the fast? The answer is yes. However, you don't necessarily wanna take the following supplements during the fast. Not because it's going to break it fast, but because it's pretty much not gonna be useful. And here's why. You don't wanna take any supplements that have fat soluble vitamins in them on an empty stomach. That's vitamins A, D, E, and K. Fat soluble vitamins need to be eaten with a meal to help with the absorption of those vitamins. And for some people, when they take them on an empty stomach, they feel nauseous. I don't recommend as well, antioxidant supplements, resveratrol, and turmeric, and these antioxidants during the fast, because it might block your innate intelligence from really achieving max autophagy and doing some deep healing. Have that with your meals as well. Other supplements are fine. Minerals, magnesium, potassium, go for it. Next question is, are there any tools I can use to track my progress? I would say, step on that scale, day one of your protocol, and don't step on that scale again until day 30. I know that sounds crazy, and it's very difficult to do for a lot of people. But the way it's gonna fluctuate, but overall, after the third days, you're gonna see it's going to drop, and you could, as I said, up to 20 pounds I've seen a fat loss by day 30. You might wanna track body fat as well. Good idea, there's different scales you could do for that. You could get different metrics done, like blood work, fasting insulin, A1C, inflammatory markers, that's up to you. But I would say, in general, day one, get your starting weight, day 30, get your finishing weight. And then I want you to come back here, if you're watching on YouTube and not listening on the podcast, come back to the YouTube video and post your results. I wanna hear about your amazing results. Next question is, what should I do if I get symptoms and feel off during this protocol? Most people will not feel off and not have symptoms. If you get something like loose tools in diarrhea, increasing those bitter rich foods I spoke about, we'll fix that. You could also take a digestive enzyme that has something in it called Oxpile and HCL. That'll help with digestion. If you feel like your energy levels are dropping, which is not common, but it might happen, increase your electrolytes, increase your minerals, and that should solve it. And make sure you got the foundations down pat, the sleep, the stress, the movement. Next question is, then I have a lot of digestive issues, acid reflux, bloating. Will fasting help to fix this? Absolutely. Fasting is one of the best ways to fix the gut. The analogy I always give people is this, Sandra the corporate worker. Sandra clocks in at her nine to five corporate job, and she puts in eight hours of hard work, and it's five p.m. She's exhausted, she just put in eight hours of work. So imagine Sandra walking to her car, getting ready to go into her car, and drive home and relax, and as soon as she enters her vehicle, her phone rings. She picks it up, and it's her boss. Hey, Sandra, we need you to come back in for a project. We just got this new project. We need you to come back in for a few hours. So, reluctantly so, Sandra walks back to her office, puts in another five hours of work. It's now 10 p.m. at night. She's exhausted, ready to go home and crash, going back to her car, same phone call. Sandra, I'm sorry to do this to you, but we have another project come back into the office. Now, imagine this happening to Sandra over and over and over again. This is exactly what we've been doing to our digestive system when we eat too frequently. When we don't practice fasting, we just keep giving our digestive system project after project. Fasting gives Sandra a month off of work and allows her to just recover. Fasting gives your digestive system a complete reset. So, you could actually see, if you're dealing with acid reflux and bloating, that could be completely gone by day 30 of this protocol, if not even sooner. The next question I get asked is Ben, all my friends, all my family members, that fitness pro and TikTok tells me if I fast, it's gonna slow down my metabolism. Well, here's the thing. The metabolism doesn't necessarily work in speeds. It's either efficient or inefficient, but we have seen in studies that after four consecutive days of fasting, the metabolism becomes more efficient, 13% increase in the efficiency. This is because when you're in a fasted state and you do it the right way, the way I'm teaching it, you're in the protocol, then your body, your metabolism raises something called counter-regulatory hormones. As insulin drops during your fast, these hormones run counter to insulin. That's why they're called counter-regulatory hormones. It's your sympathetic tone. Cortisol, human growth hormone, adrenaline. This is your body's way of increasing your efficiency of your metabolism, because your metabolism and your innate intelligence doesn't know you're watching a video or listening to my podcast and fasting because you're inspired to do so. It thinks you're going through a famine. Your cells and your metabolism is hardwired for the old school. It doesn't know that I could click on my phone, go to the Uber Eats or DoorDash app and have somebody knocking on my door in 45 minutes with food or walk to my kitchen and get food. It doesn't know this, we're hardwired for the old school. So it automatically goes into this state of alertness, increase in metabolic rate, increase in efficiency, increase in these counter-regulatory hormones. So it will not slow your metabolism. It'll make it more efficient and you'll have more energy at the same time. Next question I get on fasting is, will I lose muscle if I fast? Will I lose muscle with this protocol? The answer is no, because number one, during the fast, I already mentioned it, but your body raises human growth hormone, preserves muscle, builds muscle. And when you get the 40 grams of protein as I outline for you, you create protein synthesis where you build muscle back up. All the research out there, showing that you lose muscle during the fast, shows muscle volume, not actual muscle protein. What's the difference? Muscle volume is fiber and water. Muscle protein is what we want to preserve. You don't lose that. You actually can build healthy muscle during the protocol. Next question I get asked is, can I do strength training and other workouts with the protocol? The answer is yes, it'll actually enhance your results. Do it, do it at your schedule that you usually do it. You're gonna feel more energized, especially if you do it in a fasted state. You'll get more results. Like when you go into a workout in a fasted state, you put your body fat at the front of this metabolic bus to be burned for energy first, versus going into a workout, having consumed a protein shake or a banana, you're putting the calories from the food at the front of the metabolic bus, where your metabolism has to burn the food first, and then back to your body fat. So without the food, it starts with your body fat. You actually enhance your fat burning and your results with this 30 day protocol. Next question is, how do I find those grass fed, organic meats and seafood you spoke about? I can't really afford it, or I can't find it available at the supermarket. I know a resource that's called Wild Pastors, and it's really affordable. They deliver it right to your door. They support regenerative organic farming, and they have grass fed and finished beef, grass fed and finished lamb. They have wild caught seafood, a pastured pork, and they deliver it right to your door, and we have a special deal for you. If you go to ketocampmeat.com, you could go ahead and get a special deal, a discount and some free gifts from Wild Pastors. Next question is, for my protein, can I have a protein shake? The answer is yes, but I'm not a fan of all protein shakes. A lot of the protein shakes out there are filled with the synthetic ingredients I outlined earlier to avoid, and also whey protein is very insulin-genic, so I'm not a fan of whey protein in general. The protein powder that I use and recommend is from equipped foods. They use beef protein isolate, and it's 100% grass fed and grass finished. No artificial sweeteners tested for contaminants taste delicious. All the amino acids and it's complete protein that you need for protein synthesis. So yes, you could supplement with a high quality protein shake, like prime protein from equipped foods. If you go to equipfoods.com/benazotti, you could actually get 20% off your equipped foods, protein in any of their products. We'll put links for everything we mentioned down below. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Benazotti, disclaimed responsibility from any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not accept responsibility of statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representation to warranties about guests' qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or non-direct interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician. You
