Ben Azadi FDN-P | 3 Secrets to Metabolic Freedom & Fat Loss

My name is Ben Azadi. I'm a certified functional health practitioner, biohacker, researcher, and four times best-selling author. For most of my life, I struggled with physical and mental obesity. In 2008, I transformed my health and never looked back. 88% of American adults are unhealthy. For the past 17 years, I've spent my lifetime digging into the research on metabolic health through biohacking and ancient healing strategies such as ketosis, the carnivore diet, and fasting. What I've discovered is the combination to the perfect health code. The unique thing about having the combination to a code is that it doesn't matter what your circumstances are. Once you have the combination, you unlock the code. I've delivered keynote lectures all across the world and I've interviewed over 700 of the best scientists, doctors, and health practitioners on my award-winning Metabolic Freedom Podcast. God made your body to be self-healing and to thrive. Everything you need to heal is within, and it's my mission to awaken 1 billion people to this fact. You are the architect of your destiny. Let's strip the power away from Big Pharma and give it back to us. We will achieve this by identifying the interference, removing it, and allowing innate intelligence to heal our bodies. Today, I'm so grateful to share my journey and research with all of you. My name is Ben and I'm your friend. Thank you. Testing. The title of my talk is Keto Maintenance. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know if you got that because Robert's like, maintenance is a myth. Christina, where is Christina? Thank you so much. Second time I was at the inaugural event in New York City. Who else was there? I know Suzanne was there. Robert was there. Yeah. Who else was there at the first event? Margarita was there. Yeah, a few of you were there. And a big round of applause for Christina. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for putting this on and inviting me back. Okay. I see the countdown going. I'm going to get started. I have a lot of slides. Probably, I know for sure, actually, the most slides than any other speaker here. But if you want my slides, I'll get it to you. So, okay, cool. Here we go. Three Secrets to Metabolic Freedom. That's the title of today's talk. I want to start here. That video shared a little bit about this. How many of you do not know my story at all? Just raise your hand. You have no idea what the backstory is. Okay. A good percentage of you. This is back in 2008, 2007, 2008. I was 250 pounds, 23 years old. You see, I'm physically obese. If I did my scan, Sean, this would be a percentage of fat around my body. A lot of visceral fat and lost in life, addicted to food, sugar, alcohol, drugs, fast food. And I knew my life was going down a destructive path. I really did. I didn't know any way out. And at 24 years old, I was dealing with a broken metabolism. I was dealing with physical and mental obesity, pre-diabetes, which was just about to be full-blown diabetes if I didn't make any changes, high blood pressure, and metabolic syndrome. And of course, I reached out to my doctor. 23 years old, I made appointments with my doctor, but there was no hope there. There were just suggestions for maybe this medication. Let's talk about your symptoms. But there was no talk about nutrition. There was no talk about my lifestyle behaviors, and I felt lost. And don't let this smile fool you. This is 23 years old, my birthday when I was turning 23 years old. I'm smiling right there, but that person you see right there is eating that cake and then going on the internet and looking for ways to end my life. That person explored suicide countless times for ways to end my life because I was crying. I was in pain every day. And the only reason I didn't take my life, the only reason I'm with you today is because I kept thinking about my mom. I kept thinking that my mom would have to deal with so much devastation if I took my life. I can't do that to her. So it forced me to figure things out. Thank God I had that in my life to figure things out. And I came across this guy. How many of you know this guy's face? Yeah. Dr. Wayne Dyer. And he's passed on now, but his work lives on forever. And I would just start reading his books when I was in this dark place. And I really made a mental shift before I made a physical shift. And I think for a lot of people, that's where it starts. Christina had said 80% of it is mental. I think at a minimum, for sure, 80% of it's probably closer to 95%. But Dr. Wayne Dyer would say things that would just wake me up. Like, hey, if you keep blaming other people for your problems, he would say this, you would have to hire a psychiatrist or the rest of the world in order for you to get better. Like, oh, that is true. I had such a victim mindset. I'm blaming this person and my broken metabolisms and my bad genetics. That doesn't make any sense. And he would say things like, what happens when you squeeze an orange? What comes out? Let me ask you. What comes out when you squeeze an orange? Orange juice. Why? Because that's what's inside. So what happens when life squeezes you, what comes out is what's inside, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions. So for me, it was bitterness, resentment, hate, anger, because life was applying pressure and I had toxic thoughts because of my toxic environment. So it started with a mindset change. And I said these words out loud, and I learned about this from Dr. Wayne Dyer and Bob Proctor and other incredible speakers out there. I didn't really understand this word responsible, responsibility. It's our ability to respond to life. When our ability to respond to life is poor, our results are going to be poor. When we change our ability to respond to life, then we change our results. So I literally said these words out loud and everything changed for me. I like how Robert said, you know, it is our fault. It is our responsibility. Some of it may not be our fault, but you're right. It is our responsibility. It is our part to take ownership. So what I want to do with you right now is I want to declare that responsibility with you. I mean, just being here on a Saturday, you could be anywhere else. I know you're taking responsibility, but I think it would be great if I counted to three and we all said that these three words out loud. I am responsible. So let's do that. One, two, three. I am responsible. I think we could do better. I think we could do a little better. I mean, really responsibility. Like if you're really taking ownership here, let's do a little bit better. One, two, three. I am responsible. That felt good. So nine months later, I went from 250 pounds to 170 pounds, 34% body fat classified as obese to as low as 6%. I didn't get 3.9, but even at 6%, that was still too low for me to maintain. There's the word again. And I went from 38 size waist to size 30. And you can see, I didn't do the scans, Dr. Sean, but you can just see I had a lot of visceral fat there. And I changed my life. And ever since then, you kind of see the before and after. That was 17 years ago. I became a personal trainer. I had a CrossFit gym, got out of that space, started writing books. Christina mentioned the podcast, Metabolic Freedom Podcast. We're on all the platforms. And our mission is to educate and to inspire a billion people, as I said in that video, to strip the power away from big pharma, big food, and give it back to us where it belongs. And I have these books that were all self-published and ranked number one worldwide. I have four of these KetoFlex books, the second edition that just got published a few months ago. And I'm going to give four of these away during the lecture for participation. It's my ethical bribe. So for those who participate, I have four to give away. They all rank number one. And then I have a brand new book that I just completed and submitted to Hay House called Metabolic Freedom that will be out in June 2025. It'll be at all the airports, the bookstores, Audible. It's actually my first published book. And you know, it's interesting. Dr. Wayne Dyer was a Hay House author, and he saved my life. And now I'm a Hay House author. And I always, it's just such a cool full circle moment for me. So if you don't listen to Dr. Wayne Dyer, go check him out and stay tuned for the book. Let's get into some of the stats. According to the CDC and Cancer.org, one in three women are diagnosed with cancer within their lifetime. For men, one in two. At least 60% of Americans are diabetic or pre-diabetic. It's probably a lot higher. By the year 2032, they're predicting that one in two children will be born on the autism spectrum. A person dies from cardiovascular disease in the US every 33 seconds. That's about 700,000 people every single year, one in five deaths, the number one killer in the United States and a lot of other countries. Christina referenced a couple of these studies. This one is from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And it was a 10 year study. And they pretty much, pretty much said in 2018, when they published it that only 12% of Americans are what they considered metabolically healthy. In other words, 88% of American adults, or Americans in general, I would say, are metabolically unhealthy. This study, this is the one Christina was referencing on 93.2% of Americans being cardio metabolically unhealthy. Harvard is saying by the year 2030, 50% of the population will be obese, not just overweight, but actually obese. This study from the Mayo Clinic in 2016 is interesting because they set out to determine how many Americans live an active, healthy lifestyle. And they base it off of four main characteristics. Number one, they do not smoke cigarettes. Number two, they get sufficient activity, moderate or vigorous exercise for at least 150 minutes a week. Number three, they're eating what they consider, I don't even know what that means, but a healthy diet. And number four, if you're a male, you have a body fat percentage less than 20. And if you're a woman, you have a body fat percentage less than 30%. Now, based off of these four criterias, what do you think? What percentage, and I have a book to give away for the person who nails it, what percentage of Americans hit that criteria? You said 0%. 25%, you say 6%. 5%. 1%. Who said three? Suzanne said three. Suzanne is correct. It's a 2.7%. So we'll round it up to 3%. But only 2.7% hit those four categories. And that was before COVID. Do you think it got better or worse after COVID? Yeah. Suzanne, you get another book here. Yeah. Give her a big round of applause. Here you go, Suzanne. Yeah. We're not clapping for that stat. We're clapping for her. All right. So how do we turn this around? Let's get into the three secrets here. Secret number one, unlearn and then relearn. I love this quote from Alvin Toffler. He said, the illiterate of the 21st century are not those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. We heard from Dr. Sean O'Mara who had to unlearn a lot of stuff he learned going down the medical path and working in the emergency room, right? So we need to unlearn and relearn a lot of what we've been taught. There's a term out there that I wrote about in my book called lipophobia, which is the fear of based off of 50 plus years of misinformation and propaganda. Even to this day, I know you know this being most of you are doing keto. When you talk about it to your friends and family, they tell you it's a lot of saturated fats, a lot of cholesterol. Aren't you worried about that? And part of the reason why is because of the gentleman Ancel Keys that was brought up earlier. But when they've done autopsies on heart attack victims, they see a lot of cholesterol, this waxy substance built up in the arteries. And therefore they came to the conclusion like, this is the reason why they had the heart attack. Look at all this cholesterol there. And that's like kind of saying, I noticed every time there's a fire in my neighborhood and I drive by the building that's on fire, there's always firefighters there. So they must be causing the fire because they're always at the scene of the crime. Well, the firefighters are there to do what? To put out the fire. The cholesterol is there to put out the inflammation, the fire. Cholesterol is so important and vital. Robert was saying for our hormones, for our liver to produce bile for the brain. So it's not the cholesterol. And here's the reason why they don't want us to know this because the stat industry made $15.4 billion in 2023. So there's a lot of money to be lost when people discover the actual truth on what really causes heart attacks and heart disease. This is an older study, but it showed that most people who have heart attacks are actually have normal to low cholesterol. They don't even have high cholesterol. And I would argue that having low cholesterol is way more dangerous than having high cholesterol. Total cholesterol is actually meaningless. And even these days we're seeing LDL as a total doesn't give you the full picture. We want to see the particles and inflammatory markers as well. We know that big pharma, brilliant business model to make a lot of money, great subscription model, but really an evil system as well. And here's how this works. I'll give you an easy example here. We have convenience stores and it's very easy to go there and get convenient food. It's fast, it's cheap, it's really affordable for everybody. So we go to the front of the store. Most people, they come to the front of the store, as you can see the photo here, and they see all these frankenfoods with artificial ingredients, very convenient to eat. And they buy it and they eat it. And what ends up happening is they get symptoms. And the average person will make an appointment with their doctor and the doctor will tell them, no worries about the acid reflux or the bloating or whatever it is, the high blood pressure. I have a prescription that's going to really help with that. So they tell that person, now go back to that same convenience store, but instead of going to the front of the store, walk to the back and go pick up your medications. Right. But that doesn't get to the root cause of why they have symptoms. So they continue coming to the front of the store and buying that food and then getting on another prescription, going to the back of the store. You see how they're just getting hooked back and forth. But symptoms are not the problem. Symptoms are a gift from your innate intelligence. Your body's check engine light. Your body's always communicating to you. Conventional medicine looks at symptoms as something that's bad and evil. But when we understand the body was built to heal itself, we understand that those symptoms are the way the body communicates to us. We have to figure out what has caused it. Thank God our cars have a check engine light system in place so our bodies. So symptoms are not bad. They're actually gifts. And the sad truth is a cured patient is a lost customer. This is one of my favorite quotes from Neville Goddard. He's an author from the 1960s. He said, we are only limited by weakness of attention and poverty of imagination. I'm going unpack that and relate it to why we see disease out there. We have our conscious mind. Then we have the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is what runs the show. 95% of your results in life is going to happen from what happens in your subconscious mind. To give you a simple example of conscious mind versus subconscious mind, when you first started driving a car, you could go back to that time when you were 16 or 15 years old. You were all conscious mind. You were not familiar with this vehicle. 10 and 2, you were really conscious of how to drive this car. Then you drove it for weeks and months and years. And now, let me know if you can relate, you could be on a car, in a car, excuse me, going on the road to a path you've driven many times and maybe listen to a podcast or a book, get to your destination and think, how did I just get here? Anybody can relate to that on being on a phone call, right? Because it's now in the subconscious mind. It's what runs on autopilot. Subconscious mind controls our behaviors, our actions, our thoughts. So what is filling the subconscious mind? You could see all of that. I'll give you a perfect example here. That's me and my mom. Her name is Hattie Azadi. She's really tiny, right? This is a photo from many years ago. I love this photo, so I always use it. But every Thursday, my fiance, Natasia and me drive to my mom's apartment and we have dinner with her. She makes us a lovely dinner. I love the time we spend with her. But there is a problem with the dinner. Right by the dining room table where we're sitting and having food, what do we see, Natasia? The television. And then what's on the television? And what do we see on TV commercials? Big Pharma, Big Food, and then Big Pharma, Big Pharma, Big Pharma. So I started looking at this because I don't watch TV. And I thought, okay, I need to figure out because I feel like every commercial is from Big Pharma. So I did some research. I'm going to ask you the question. I have some books to give away here. First question is, what percentage of all cable TV commercials are funded by Big Pharma? Who said 75? Yeah, it's 75%. You can see at least in 2020, 75% of all the ads spent was by Big Pharma. You get a book. Yeah, give a big round of applause. Yes, there you go. Yeah, well, you won it. You nailed it. Next question I asked was, okay, out of the 195 countries, how many of them allow Big Pharma to market directly to the consumer? What? Who said two? Natalie cheated because she saw my lecture last week, but I'll still give you a book. It's two, the United States and New Zealand. Only two countries that allow it. I have another question. Hand this back to Natalie. Please give Natalie a big round of applause here. Yeah. Next question. So we have 25% remaining, right? 75% big food, 25% remaining. Out of that 25%, what percentage comes from big food, fast food commercials? You said 15%? That's the closest right there. Worldwide, it's 11% to 29%, but it's about, yeah, 15% here in the United States. So let me give you a book, sir. Here you go. Grab it. Here, give a big round of applause. Give this man, please. So essentially we have, for those who are watching TV, and look, we don't even have to be consciously watching the TV. If it's on in the room, it goes right into the subconscious mind and our children's subconscious mind. I remember when the vaccines, the COVID vaccines got rolled out. When I went on Google, they Google, you know how they change the little letters depending on certain things happening in the world. All of the letters had masks and band-aids on it because of the shot. If you're not consciously aware, this is just right into your subconscious mind affecting your decision. That's not a pro or against the vaccine thing. It's just an awareness of what's happening. So we need to be aware because what happens in your environment will determine the thoughts that you think and your belief system, which determines the actions you take or don't take, which determine your results and then your destiny. So we need to unlearn, relearn, and protect our environment. Secret number two is, oh, it should have some text there, but secret number two is keto, but keto done the right way, the art and the science of keto. So we know keto is not a fad diet. It's not even a diet. It's a metabolic process. Keto is not new. It's just nuanced or new to some people. There's nothing new about keto. All of our ancestors did keto. They did it because their environment forced them into ketosis. So there's nothing about keto being a fad diet. The real fad diet, and there should be text behind it, the real fad diet is the standard American diet. That's only been around for 40 or 50 years. As Robert mentioned, and this is a fact, babies that are breastfed before they're weaned off and put on high sugar formulas, babies are actually in a state of ketosis. It helps that neurological development of the baby's brain, which is really important during that time of life. We're designed to be a fat burner. We really are. So when I go back to the study that I referenced earlier, I like to rewrite it and say 88% of them are in a keto deficiency. They're in a fat burning deficiency. And the other one that showed 93%, they're in a, well, I should have black text, but it says 93% of them is in a keto deficiency. And this study is showing that ketones are actually protective towards cardiovascular health. So for your friends who think keto is going to cause heart disease, but when we think about how ketones work, it works in amazing ways. It stimulates your mitochondria to create more mitochondria. It's called mitochondrial biogenesis. And which cells have the highest concentration of mitochondria? The brain, yes. The heart, the ovaries, the testicles, the eyes, but the heart is loaded with it. So there's evidence showing that ketones may provide supplemental fuel for the energy-starved heart. Their cardiovascular effects appear to extend far beyond cardiac energetics. Indeed, ketone bodies have been shown to influence a variety of cellular processes, including gene transcription, inflammation, oxidative stress, endothelial function, cardiac remodeling, and cardiovascular risk factors. So here are my top 10 favorite benefits, key benefits of keto done properly. Number one, increased cellular energy. As I mentioned, those ketones act as a signaling molecule to stress the mitochondria hormetically beneficially to create mitogenesis, the creation of new mitochondria. So you feel good. You feel more energized. It raises your basal metabolic rate at the same time. You reduce inflammation and its markers. This means less brain fog, less achy joints. You raise increase in growth hormone and protects your cells and DNA from damage. There's a process called mitochondrial uncoupling that helps with this, helps you burn belly fat, which is important as we learned from Dr. Sean. Increased ATP production from the increase in mitochondrial production. If somebody's burning sugar, by the way, they have about 32 to 36 of these ATP energy units that they're using for energy. 32 to 36 for a sugar burner. Somebody who is full on keto adapted has 400% more ATP being used. 400% more energy. I see your phones are up. They're like, what's number five? Okay, here's number five. Burns cleaner than glucose. Less free radicals, meaning you reduce risk of disease and you'll see your inflammatory markers drop. So you react to protein, homocysteine. We'll talk about insulin a little bit. You'll see all that improve. Number six, protects your inner mitochondrial membranes. Your cells have membranes and your mitochondria also have membranes. This supports lifespan. Decreases leptin. A more accurate term would be sensitizes leptin. That's the hormone that tells you you're full. Go get the, excuse me. Yeah, that's the hormone that tells you you're full. Put down the fork. When you sensitize leptin, you are satiated. You feel full. You're not craving Oreos or cookies. Changes the gut microbiome. Improves gas, bloating, acid reflux. Stresses the gut in a beneficial way. Increases microbial diversity. Changes neurotransmitters in the brain. That's why it's being used for even like Dr. Chris Palmer's work, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, just overall mood, what it does with GABA. And number 10, the obvious one, but it lowers blood sugar and insulin levels to help reverse or prevent diabetes, type 2 diabetes. Now that's the science. Let's get a little bit into the arts of keto. There's a difference and they're both equally important. Now, I believe it's really important to test your blood glucose and more importantly, your fasting insulin levels. When your insulin levels are high, and there should be a black bar behind the white text, but if you can't see it, I'll read it. That says insulin levels, the first domino. When your insulin levels are high, it's the first domino to fall that then triggers obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, brain disorders, heart disease, a shortened lifespan, cancer. And if we can just know what our insulin levels are, we could put a dent or prevent this from happening or put a dent in it if it is currently happening. The average American, this is according to my colleague, Dr. Don Klum. He did a patient population study and it showed that the average American in his studies consuming food, they're eating 17 to 23 times per day. It sounds like how is that even possible, right? It's the grazing. Every time you eat and start the digestive system and start to spike glucose and insulin, it's a meal to your body. Whether it's the protein shake, the kombucha, the carrots or the full meal, it's a meal. And the average person is doing that 17 to 23 times per day, glucose and insulin, glucose and insulin. So let's talk about this. How much sugar can the body hold to be considered an optimal state? Well, in the bloodstream, if you're fasting in a fasted state, that would be one teaspoon of sugar in the entire bloodstream. So if you ever put on a continuous glucose monitor or test with the Keto-Mojo, that's 80 milligrams per deciliter. That's a healthy fasting blood glucose. Our liver stores sugar as well. It's called our liver glycogen. The average person could store about 25 to 30 teaspoons. Then we have skeletal muscle. The average person can store about 100 teaspoons. But the more muscle you have, the more storage base you have, right? So Robert could store a lot more than the average person here, meaning you have more flexibility and more insulin sensitivity. So now that we understand this is the optimal state, let's look at the average sugar in food out there that people are consuming. These are stats according to a chronometer that I put into the app and it gave me these stats. So in a bowl of an acai bowl from Jamba Juice, it's 20 teaspoons of sugar, which is 99 grams. In two servings of Lucky Charms, it's 12 teaspoons of sugar, which is about 60 grams. In two servings of oatmeal, not to mention most oatmeal is loaded with glyphosate, but besides that, two servings is 10.4 teaspoons, which is 52 grams of sugar. Two cups of orange juice is the same as the oatmeal, 10.4 teaspoons, 52 grams. Now I'm going to give an analogy here from my friend Dr. Jason Fung on how this is happening to create insulin resistance and diabetes. Now what would happen if you see the photo there, I got the headphones on. What would happen if I grab my phone and I grab Spotify and I grab the playlist for the greatest rock band in the world, The Killers. If you're not a fan of The Killers, go listen to The Killers. It's not a joke. They're the greatest rock band in the history of this world. And I listen to them with the headphones on. I listen to Mr. Brightside. You know this song. Imagine me listening to this non-stop for I Can't Stop The Killers. You see, that's the example here. Imagine me listening to them non-stop at 50% volume, but I don't take a break. Just listening to The Killers, Mr. Brightside, When You Were Young, Smile Like You Mean It, all their songs, but I never take a break. I always have the headphones on. After about a month, what's going to happen? The volume is going to sound like it's a little decreasing a little bit. So instead of taking a break, I just increase the volume to 70%, but I still got the headphones on. I'm still listening to The Killers. I keep doing that for a month. I keep doing that for two months, three months. If I keep doing that, I'll probably get to 100% volume. But instead of me stopping and taking a break to sensitize my hearing, I just let it blast, and I find ways to get the volume even higher. What's happening here? I'm going deaf to the music. Well, when we're eating high-carbohydrate diets, when we're eating frequently, we're going deaf to the screams of insulin. The music, in this case, The Killers, or it's my pancreas, which is producing the insulin from the beta cells. And then the insulin receptor sites is my hearing. We need to be able to hear insulin. When we're constantly shouting at our receptor sites by eating high carbs and eating too frequently, we start to lose our hearing. So instead of taking a break, like doing keto or fasting or exercising, people just eat more carbs. They just raise the music louder. But the solution is to dial down the music. That's why keto is so powerful in doing this. And here's a crazy study. These are two studies. Your insulin levels, you could be in a range of being hyperinsulinemia, Natassia's favorite word, insulin resistant for 6 to 14 years before your fasting blood sugars or A1c levels change at all, meaning you could have full-on insulin resistance for 6 to 14 years, but your blood sugars are not changing because the music is just being blasted. You're cranking out the insulin. Then all of a sudden, you become deaf. Blood sugars rise, and then you're prediabetic and diabetic. 6 to 14 years. So if we just tested our fasting insulin, what kind of data will we get? I think it's one of the most important tests for our metabolism. I write about it a lot in my new book. I think it's one of the most important tests we can do. And here's the range we want to hit. We want to be in the single digits for our fasting insulin. It's a blood test. You go in 12 hours, 14 hours fasted. It's very cheap if your insurance does not cover it. We want to be in the single digits, somewhere between 3 and 7, but the standard reference range is less than 25. Look, if your fasting insulin is 17, 18, you've got insulin resistance, but your doctor is not going to flag it as such because it's still in the reference range. We want to be in the single digits. So this is an important takeaway. There's a lot of things you're learning today. I would definitely put this in my notes. Get a fasting insulin done in the next 30 days. Do it every 90 days or six months. Again, it's cheap. It's easy. And make sure it's in the single digits. You dramatically lower your risk of visceral fat, cancer growth, heart disease by having healthy insulin levels. And then of course, we have the A1C. I don't want to negate that test. Very important. Looking at your behaviors for three months, the average of your blood sugar. We want that under 5.2% or at less. 5.7 to 6.4% indicates prediabetes. And then 6.5% or higher is full-on diabetic. And the higher A1C, the shorter your life. This study shows that if somebody's A1C is at 7.5% or higher every year, it's at that level, the person loses 100 days off their lifespan. So if their A1C is at 7.5% or higher for 15 years, they lose four years off their lifespan. That's how destructive high levels of blood sugars are. So we want our A1C under or at 5.2% or less. One of the things in the keto space that's becoming popular now, I love seeing this. I was talking about seed oils back in 2014 and people thought I was crazy. So I love that there's an explosion now of people talking about this. But we see seed oils that were incorporated into our nutrition in the early 1900s and it's 80% of our food supply. I interviewed Dr. Kate Shanahan several times. I've got to share the stage with her. Who knows Dr. Kate Shanahan? Raise your hand. Okay. She's a New York Times bestselling author. She was Kobe Bryant's nutritionist for the Lakers, medical doctor, and a Floridian like me. And I asked her the question on one of the podcasts. I said, Dr. Kate, I'm going to give you three scenarios. Which scenario is going to contribute to disease faster? I'm talking about all-cause mortality, all disease. I said, smoking cigarettes each day. Scenario number one, eating processed sugar every day or eating vegetable oils every day. What do you think she said? You know it's the vegetable oils because you're smart. You understand that. She said, yes. That's an easy question. She actually giggled a little bit. She's got that little humor going. And she said, Ben, that's easy. It's hands down the vegetable oils. She said, look, smoking is not good for you. Once you finish the last puff, you've done your damage. Number two, she said eating processed sugar is not good for you, but you could exercise, build muscle, burn it off. You could mitigate that glucose spike. But these vegetable oils, they stick in your body. The half-life, meaning if you stop eating them today, half of them will be in your body fat, mitochondrial membranes, cell membranes, creating inflammation 680 days later, 602 years later. So she believes they're worse than sugar and smoking. I agree. Now, that's not permission to smoke cigarettes and eat sugar, but that's just making a statement on the dangers of vegetable oils. This study from Dr. Martin Grutfeld estimates that the average five-ounce serving of fries cooked in vegetable oils, the aldehyde contents are not dissimilar to those arising from the smoking of daily allocation of 25 tobacco cigarettes. Putting that in reference, so aldehydes are carcinogenic. They're carcinogens. They create cancer. They increase risk of cancer. A large order of McDonald's French fries contains 20 to 25 fries. So pretty much when you're eating a French fry fried in vegetable oil, one fry is equivalent to one tobacco cigarette smoked. Share that with your friends. Here's the list of the bad ones. Canola, rapeseed, called rapeseed oil in the UK. Corn, soybean, cottonseed, safflower, refined peanut oil, sunflower, grapeseed, and rice bran oil. I know fish oil is on there. It's not a seed oil. And I imagine some of the other speakers might agree with me here or disagree with me here. But I'm throwing fish oil into the category of bad fats. Most of it is rancid. And even the good ones, I think people take too much of it. I always tell people to just get it from fish, not the loaded fish here, but smaller fish, salmon and sardines. It's a very unstable fat, just like the seed oils. Now we want to swap those for saturated fats and monounsaturated fats. These are going to be olive oil, avocado oil, grass-fed butter and ghee, duck fat, lard, coconut oil, beef tallow, all the stuff that Maria Emmerich makes delicious meals with. So these are going to be healthier for you. Now, when I go to restaurants, I used to ask the servers, what do you cook your foods in? What oils do you use? 99% of the time, it's these bad ones. And I used to tell them that I'm allergic to these vegetable oils. Can you use butter or olive oil? And I did it for years and it worked really well. And I kept telling my students, and Suzanne knows this. She's in my Keto Kemp Academy. I kept telling the students to do the same thing. And then I asked them, did you do it? And they wouldn't do it. So then I created a solution for them. And hopefully you could use this solution too. But I have it in my pocket here. It's a seed oil allergy card. And I could show you what it looks like. I use it all the time. On here, it says, dear chef, I have food allergies to vegetable oils. In order for me to avoid an allergic reaction, I must avoid everything marked off below. It has those bad fats. The following alternatives are safe. Please make sure the approved alternatives are not cut. So you could download this for free by scanning that or going to seedoilcard.com. And you would download the PDF. You could print it out or show it to them on your phone. I have mine laminated that I keep with me. But that works really well so we don't take the hit. So palm oil, you want to make sure it's organic, sustainably sourced, and you're not using it for cooking. You could use it for like in your coffee and teas. But it would be a good fat if it's unrefined, organic, and you're not heating it at high temperatures. It's in a lot of foods, a lot of packaged foods. Yeah. So that's usually the bad stuff when it's in the packaged foods. And I have this, by the way, which is a recipe of the week where the meals are protein-focused, low in oxalates. It's not carnivore, but it's low oxalate vegetables. And we put it together. I worked with the food journalist for six months. Delivers a recipe to your inbox. Great for beginners. Great for anybody who wants to stay on track and maintain or be on keto maintenance. I'm just kidding. But it's a great product. It's $9.97 a month. I wanted to share it with you. Okay. This is my favorite part of the lecture. I'm so glad you're here for this. This is where it's at right here. I know Natalie loves this part as well. Your thoughts, and I have a whole chapter in my book, and it's the best chapter in the book on this right here. Your thoughts could influence your health, your metabolism, and your health. We've heard a lot of people talk about the placebo effect, doing studies on the placebo. We all have heard the placebo before. You've heard the term. Raise your hand. We've all heard the term placebo before. Okay. The placebo effect, or yeah, the effect started right after, or actually during World War II. There was a doctor named Dr. Henry Beecher. He worked for the U.S. military. The soldiers coming into his tent during the war were in bad shape. Bullet wounds, legs shot out, blown out. He would administer morphine to them, stabilize them long enough to transfer them to hospital care and save their life. Something happened at this medical tent where Dr. Beecher ran out of morphine. The nurse noticed that. She didn't know what to do. She was handing him the morphine. They were out. So she simply put saline solution, salt water, in the morphine, told Dr. Beecher, I'm giving you morphine. It was just salt water. He had the belief that he had morphine. He transferred that belief to the soldier saying, I'm going to give you morphine. You're going to feel better in a few seconds. And boom, salt water. And most of them survived because they thought they were getting morphine. Now, when the war ended, Harvard studied what happened at this tent and that's where the placebo effect started or where they actually started studying it. That's where it originated. So the mind is really powerful. We have the placebo effect, but we also have the nocebo effect. It could work against you. This is a true story. I'm going to share two true stories. This is a story of a football game in California, Los Angeles. An entire stadium filled with people watching a football game. Two people opposite ends of the stadium start throwing up, getting really sick. They both make their way down to the medical unit on the stadium grounds and the doctor there treating them is wondering why are they so sick? Why are they all both throwing up? They were not sitting next to each other. They didn't know each other. The only thing they had in common was that they both drank soda from the soda dispensing machine. So this doctor thought it must be the soda machine. I'm going to go on the PA system and I'm going to tell the entire stadium not to drink from the soda machine. So he goes in the PA system. Attention! Do not drink from the soda machine. We have two people throwing up and really sick because they drank soda from the soda machine. Do not drink from the soda machine. What do you think happened next? The entire stadium starts throwing up, or at least everybody who drank soda. Ambulances are picking people up, taking them to the hospital, back and forth. Everybody's getting sick. Now they investigated the soda machine. Nothing was wrong with it. They gave that news to the people in the hospital and they stopped being sick in a second. That's how powerful the mind is. Another story from the 1960s. I got this from Bob Proctor. There was a gentleman who worked on a railroad station and he was working inside of a refrigerator cart inside of the rail, inside of the train. And it was late at night. He didn't notice the time. It was past 11 o'clock and he ended up getting locked in the refrigerator cart, banging for help. All of his co-workers went home and he knew they were not going to be there for several hours, about eight or nine hours. So he started writing on the wall, kind of documenting his journey. 11.30 at night. I'm freezing. I don't know how I'm going to make it into the morning. 1 a.m. Still cold. I can't find a way to get warm. 3 a.m. I'm freezing to death. I think I'm going to die. 7 a.m. rolls around. His co-workers check in, open the door. The guy's dead. Hypothermia. What was interesting is when they investigated the temperature apparatus, it was broken for a few days. It never got below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. He was reading the wrong temperature and his mind created death. Now, if your mind can do that, do you think your mind could heal your body as well? Oh, yes, it can. Absolutely. And we have 60,000 thoughts every single day. 90% of them are the same thoughts from yesterday. This is research according to psychologists. 90% of them are the same thoughts from yesterday, and 85% of those thoughts are negative thoughts, what Zig Ziglar used to call stinking thinking. And if your thinking is stinking, your dreams, they're shrinking. George Bernard Shaw said 2% of the population think, 3% of the population think they think, and 95% of the population would rather die than think. Having thoughts does not mean you're thinking. Mental activity is not the same thing as thinking. Most people don't think. I'm going to make the example here. Most people are not actually consciously aware of their thoughts. They're stuck in the subconscious mind on autopilot. How many of you talk to yourself every day or raise your hand? Okay. Now, we have a few of you back there who did not raise their hand. You're thinking, do I talk to myself? I'm not sure. I'm talking to myself, right? Yes, I talk to myself. But are we thinking? I'm going to give the example here. Some of you have done this with me. Some of you have not. But this is a word, silk. We're going to say this word out loud five times. We're going to say silk, silk, silk, silk, silk. As soon as we do that, I'm going to ask you a quick question, and out loud, you're going to respond as fast as possible. Does that make sense? Okay. So on the count of three, let's say silk five times, and then I'll ask you a question, and you'll respond. One, two, three. Silk, silk, silk, silk, silk. What do cows drink? Who said milk? Raise your hand. Cows produce milk. They drink water. Silly example to show you that just because we have thoughts doesn't mean we're thinking. We're on autopilot. But once we become aware of those thoughts, we could change our thoughts and change our life. Dr. Bruce Lipton has proven that your thoughts communicate with your DNA to turn on proteins, turn off proteins. Healthy thought signals anti-inflammatory proteins, protects your telomeres, which we learned about earlier. An inflammatory thought creates an inflammatory process. So if we have 60,000 thoughts every day, we have 60,000 opportunities every single day to put the body in a healing state. That is the greatest biohack health tip I've ever learned, and I hope you really use that tip. 60,000 opportunities every single day. You are the most influential person you'll speak to today, tomorrow, and the future. Last part here is on my favorite supplement. You want to lower inflammation, lower blood pressure, lower fasting insulin, build muscle, get better sleep, have better relationships. This is the supplement right here. It's called vitamin G. Dr. Joe Dispenza did studies on vitamin G. They took 120 people, measured their stress, their cortisol, and then their immune system, their IgA levels at the beginning and at the end. So during the four-day workshop, they asked 120 participants to move into an elevated emotional state and take vitamin G for nine to 10 minutes, three times a day. And what they saw, we discovered at the conclusion of the event that the cortisol levels of our participants dropped by three standard deviations, and their IgA level shot up on average from 52.5 to 86. They noted this as significant measurable changes. Vitamin G has been shown to turn on 1,200 different chemical reactions in the brain simultaneously as soon as you take it, GABA, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. Vitamin G, this study, which is a newer study I just put in my book from JAMA Psychiatry, showed that researchers from Harvard analyzed data from 49,275 older female nurses and found that the higher levels of vitamin G correlated with a 9% reduction in all-cause mortality and a 15% reduction in cardiovascular deaths. The study suggests that intentionally taking vitamin G can be a valuable psychological resource for promoting healthy aging and enhancing longevity. Vitamin G has been shown to lower blood pressure levels. Vitamin G has been shown to lower blood sugar levels. Where do you get vitamin G? That's vitamin G. All of those studies are on gratitude. And gratitude is not an intellectual practice. I used to treat it as such. I'm grateful for this. I'm grateful for Natassia. I'm done. That's fine. But gratitude is an emotional practice. I'm grateful for my beautiful fiancee who comes with me to Connecticut for just 36 hours and hops on a flight, which we're getting on a flight right after this trip, and she supports me, and she loves me, and I love her beautiful eyes, and I love how she shows up in this world, and I love how she shares her life with me. And I mean all of that. Gratitude is an emotional practice. So instead of doing 10 things you're grateful for, find one thing and spend a minute there. I want to share this video, what you appreciate appreciates as a universal law, and then this quick video, and then I have a final message for you. How do you think you've lived to be 97? Like, how do you think you made it this many years? I don't know. I don't know. Because I'm naughty. I eat sugar. I eat butter. I eat things that I should not eat, and I have all my life. Well, what do you think is the secret? You know, people ask me, and I tell them that you pray a lot. You have faith. I do have faith, yes. And I really spend my day without. So that's probably the secret. That's how you've lived to be 97. I don't know. Because you never end your day without being grateful. I don't know. I really don't. You have a lot of gratitude in your heart. Yes. Clap it up for the vitamin G lady right there. That's what I call her, the vitamin G lady. Last thing I want to share with you as we land this plane together is this. I want you to grab your right hand. All of you grab your right hand like this. You see me holding it? Put it over your right ear. Leave it there as I say these few words, okay? You are a masterpiece because you are a piece of the master. God has built your body to be self-healing. Everything you need to heal is already within your body. Do not let anybody or anything tell you otherwise. You can remove your hands. All right. Well, you're wondering why did I have to do that? I didn't want it to go in one ear and out the other ear. Keep it there. Thank you so much. I appreciate you all. Thank you, Christina. I love you. Thank you. Thank you.