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Transcript
- 02:50 How the Fat Burning Man started
- 07:79 The Food and Beverage Industry
- 10:30 How Abel’s podcast started out
- 17:50 Paleo cookbook app
- 20:30 Abel James’ general philosophy on health and diet
- 22:54 Abel James’ Fat-burning Secrets
- 29:12 Wild Exercise
- 34:43 Foods that are not as healthy as you think
- 37:50 On Losing 10 Pounds in 10 Days
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 podcast. I’m your host, Wendy Myers. Today I am interviewing Abel James, also known as the Fat-burning Man, on his ideas about how to optimally burn fat, and pick his big fat brain about the Paleo diet because, believe me, the only part of this man’s body that’s fat is his brain. So we’re going to pick it today. But first, I have to do a little disclaimer. Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. The Live to 110 podcast is solely informational in nature. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in any treatment we suggest on the show. And for those of you who are not in the know, I just put up a new and improved version of my Live to 110 by Weighing Less E-Guide © on the site. I’m a perfectionist. I just wanted to re-write and add a couple of things that I thought were important so if you want to learn about weight-loss or the modern Paleo diet, which is my version of Paleo, go to myersdetox.com and sign up for my free 35-page weight-loss guide and the 14-part email series about the modern Paleo Diet which are both essentially about how to live a long, healthy, disease-free life.
Today I’m honored to have our guest, Abel James on the show. You may already be familiar with Abel as he has the number 1 rated health podcast on iTunes in the US, in the UK, Australia, Canada, Greece, Finland and many other countries. You can find him on his site, fatburningman.com. And Abel is also the author of several best-selling books including The Wild Diet and The Fat-burning Chef. He also has the number 1 app in food and drink on iTunes, which is also in the Top 10 overall. He’s been a keynote speaker for Ivy League Institutions within the ancestral Paleo movement and for Fortune-500 companies. He’s got over a hundred thousand listeners and subscribers to his website but, most importantly, he has an incredible, velvety-smooth baritone. Fat-burning Man, you’re on fire!
Abel James: Hi, Wendy. Thank you so much. That was a great introduction.
Wendy Myers: Haha. Well, it’s so nice to have you on the show. I’m just really honored that you came on and blessed my little baby podcast with your presence. So first, why don’t you tell the listeners about how all this got started and how you reinvented yourself as the fat-burning man?
Abel James: Yeah, totally. I have always been that type A who’s going after being the best at pretty much anything that I did. So I’m from a little town in New Hampshire. We always ate from the backyard. My mom’s a heuristic nurse practitioner so we got into some pretty voodoo stuff. Whenever I got sick she’d bring in a bunch of plants and herbs, and tinctures, and weird balms and stuff. So I always had this appreciation of kind of thinking on the fringe and self-experimentation, ancient traditions and all that. In my path to be as healthy as I possibly can, I basically adopted my doctors as my gurus when I was in my early twenties. That was mostly because I knew that, genetically, I was predisposed to have thyroid problems, high-blood pressure, being overweight and various things like that. Because most people who came before me, especially the men, struggled with all those things.
All of a sudden I found myself in the same position in my early twenties, kind of falling apart with high-blood pressure, my thyroid basically stopped working, I was overweight, I had low energy. I had all sorts of inflammatory issues and just kind of heading down this path despite running 30+ miles a week and eating a really really strict diet, I was dieting all the time. I came home one night, and my apartment building burned down. I lost everything. I kind of looked around and thought, “well, everything else is completely a disaster in my life so I might as well figure out this whole thing because, clearly, following my doctors’ advice is not working”. So then I just guinea-pigged on myself. I body-hacked and read every medical journal on body-building form I could find. As soon as I started really embracing fat again and focusing on real food, suddenly, all these problems that I had, started to disappear and I lost over twenty pounds in the first month of doing this and then, all of a sudden I’m like, “Wow, that was kind of easy. Why doesn’t everyone know this?” People deserved to know that they can cure themselves with real food. So that’s why I started my show and put myself out there. It’s really in hopes of teaching people that they can be happy and healthy at the same time.
Wendy Myers: Were you vegetarian at one point?
Abel James: I was on and off vegetarian, vegan. You name it, I’ve tried it.
Wendy Myers: How did that work out for you?
Abel James: I was encouraged because, morally and ethically, I wanted to believe in a better world where we’re not relying on feedlots. The horrible things that we do to animals, I thought came as a function of eating meat as opposed to the way that meat is served today, if that makes sense. So being a vegetarian for me was great, ethically and morally because I thought that I wasn’t really participating in that system until I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which actually kind of ruined it for me. It ruined eating vegetables for me. Haha. It made me not a vegetarian anymore.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It burst that vegan bubble. Ha-ha
Abel James: After I read that for the first time, this is before the vegetable movement caught on, I’m just like, “Oh my god! I can’t eat anything now.” So that kind of got me thinking that maybe it’s the system that’s the problem, not the food itself. Then I really got into the farmers’ market thing, going back to our roots of eating real food. So from my health perspective, being a vegetarian was a disaster for me. But I think that was more of a function of the type of food I was eating as a vegetarian than necessarily being a vegetarian in and of itself because I think some people can make it work fairly well. Especially if you have eggs or fish, if you’re lacto-vegetarian, or whatever, you can kind of hack your way through that.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I had the same experience. I didn’t do so hot as a vegetarian or vegan but did really really well on the Paleo diet. But I have some clients that seem to be getting by vegetarian diet.
Abel James: Sure. I try not to be super dogmatic about it. Everyone does well with a slightly different diet so I’m not going to be throwing bacon at people who don’t believe in that. It’s really important that everyone finds their own journey. Because oftentimes, some of your favorite foods if you’re honest with yourself and you start eating real food again, some of your favorite foods are really the foods that are best for you.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Well, you can throw some bacon my way because I like bacon. I’m all about bacon.
Abel James: Okay. It’s a deal.
Wendy Myers: So I hear you were a former strategic adviser to the Food and Beverage Industry. I thought that was really interesting. How did this experience shape some of your ideas about food?
Abel James: For me it was really a formative time. The reason that I got into consulting in the first place is because I went to Dartmouth and paid my own way with scholarships as well as quite a few loans. So when I graduated, I wanted to pay off my loans as quickly as possible. It’s either Wall Street, which I got a job there. Or consulting, I got a few jobs there, or the CIA. I was really tempted by the CIA. Haha. I decided to go for consulting. So I found myself, I was like barely 21 years old, in the board room with some of the most intense companies on the face of the earth, and working with some big players in the Food and Beverage Industry who shall remain nameless. But what I found was that, these folks understood that they weren’t selling health food. And they also understood that they wouldn’t feed a lot of their products to their own family.
Being 21, being bright-eyed, totally positive and optimistic about the way that the world works, and being really excited to work with some of the biggest companies, that was a huge shocker for me to know that this was how the sausage was made so to speak and that these companies are making products that they know full well are not good for us and are in fact quite the opposite in many cases. It was formative for me because I got to know the industry from the inside out and working with the government as well, later on. It’s like, a lot of people will say, “well, I don’t believe in big business because big business is bad or the government is bad.” But they don’t really know much about how it works and all so I found it useful to get that inside look on how these companies and corporations and the government actually do work or don’t do work in market things and putting things to market, especially marketing the kids and all. The things that I learned, I can’t talk about them in great detail because it’s all confidential but I can tell you that what I’m doing now is a heck of a lot better for the world than being a consultant ever was.
Wendy Myers: I agree because you do. You have the number 1 rated podcast on iTunes so people like your message and you’re up in the top 5 in the UK and Canada. Frankly, I know it’s that velvety-smooth voice. Haha.
Abel James: It’s funny. Even when I worked with the government and I did a bunch of speeches, Haha, my nickname was Radio Voice. Haha. It’s so funny. I never really used that before until I started my podcast and I’m like, “Duh, I should have been doing this all along.”
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Well, you’re doing video podcast. Why did you start doing the video podcast?
Abel James: Because, really, it was as simple as turning on the webcam. Haha. And now it’s one of the things that we’re looking to do in the next few months. Fortunately, now I have a wonderful team of, actually it’s all girls who are helping you with production and getting the shows together and really upping the production values so that we can start competing with some of the bigger names out there like Jillian Michaels. Haha. Because the way that I feel right now, I kind of I’ve hit the top of the podcast thing and I have a huge following there which is wonderful but I don’t want to plateau. I want to keep being able to get in touch with more people so I think video is really important there we’re going to be stepping up the video game pretty soon.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I thought it was a really good idea. It’s very simple. You just turn on the camera but it adds another dynamic to it that I think will draw more people in. I think, “Why aren’t more people doing this?” But they’re not.
Abel James: Video is intimidating and it means you have to actually put pants on when you’re doing it. Haha.
Wendy Myers: Ugh I know. I actually put makeup on today just in case you’re like, “Turn the camera on.” Haha. Because I like to just do it on my PJ’s and looking like I belong in a morgue. I don’t want to have to get all dolled up.
Abel James: Well, to be perfectly honest, I’m a guy so I can get away with this more. All I do is put on an acceptable shirt and then I’m still wearing shorts. Ha-ha. I did a show with Jonathan Bailey not too long ago. It’s hilarious because we’ve all stood up and you could see, Haha he’s like wearing this freshly pressed button down dress shirt and he’s wearing gym shorts. Ha-ha.
Wendy Myers: And fuzzy slippers.
Abel James: So funny.
Wendy Myers: I have to say. What is up with that shirtless photo on your podcast artwork? But I love it. It really gets across your point that if one follows your advice, he will burn fat and look like Abel James.
Abel James: You know what’s really funny is, I’m not at all the first one to take his shirt off in any sort of situation. But when I first came out with all of this, one of my dirty little secrets is, I’ve actually been a health blogger for years before I came out with Fat-burning Man. But I never really put myself out there. It was just a blog and I would write interesting stuff sometimes and 32 people would read it. Most of them were my aunts. What I found while I was doing this whole discovery phase, all my research, reading all these diet books, and body-building and stuff. And the first thing that I would do is turn the book over and see “is this person’s healthy?” or if they’re living this. Because if they aren’t following their own advice, then I don’t want to listen to them. Or if they’re following their own advice but they’re unhealthy, I don’t want to listen to them either.
When I first came out with a blog and a podcast, I tested a few different things and I got some of these artsy pictures. I’m type A, I’m the super creative type so I geek out on artsy pictures and stuff. I’m not a great photographer but I’m a fan of great photography. I don’t think I told people this on podcasts but I took these thumbnails to try to test my podcast artwork, to see what would work. And I had these artsy pictures, and I had a picture of kale and a picture of me with my shirt off to see if the same article would get the same number of clicks with these different things. I had an assumption that sex sells or whatever and having a shirtless picture would do something different than the rest of them. But I really hoped that the super artsy picture would work. I found that the picture of kale got two clicks, the picture that was artsy got about four clicks, and the picture of me with my shirt off got about a hundred and twenty two clicks. I was like, “Oh no!” Haha.
Wendy Myers: That’s such a good idea.
Abel James: Yeah. But for me, if you look at it, it’s meant to be more of an archetype. It’s not necessarily me. My face is a little bit blurry. It’s just kind of like this Wolverine-ish-looking character outside and I really wanted to be that because it’s not about me, it’s about putting yourself in your shoes. This is what a human, eating and living in the natural way, should look like. You should be empowered and strong. If you look at the picture, it’s not like I have a fitness model body. You can’t see veins and all the weird sinews that you see in a body builder. I’m not super jacked either. It’s like, this is a healthy person and you could live this way too if you live the way that humans should. That’s what I want to communicate.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s definitely about being a role model. That’s why you have so many followers. It’s because you are living and breathing your philosophy and your health shines through. I think it’s really good that you have that modeled on your podcast.
Abel James: Thank you. I think it’s so important because the fitness and diet industry is a horrible one. It’s disgusting. Especially as I started to get bigger, I started to meet a lot of the big names. I’m not going to name anyone here but a lot of these people are not pinnacles of health. So it’s really important to me that I live this. It’s not just like I’m doing this show and I’m selling products and I have a supplement company or anything like that at all. It’s like, this is my life and I’m standing at my desk talking about this all day. Haha. When I’m not standing at my desk on the show, I’m talking to my girlfriend about it, I’m talking to George, the last caveman, about it. We’re living this everyday and it’s so important that other people know that this is a lifestyle. It’s not a quick fix. It’s not product sorting.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I love that when I type in your URL, fatburningman.com, it even shows little baby picture of you with your little low-fat bod under. It’s so cute. Haha. You even have the number one food app in iTunes. I realized that when I looked at your website today, I was really blown away that you have this amazing app and I was kind of tooling around with it. How did that come about?
Abel James: Thanks. I realized that it’s difficult to compete with big people who have really strong footing on the publishing industry. I have to get a little bit more creative and just do what we can do best. As opposed to going after big book deals and trying to get on typical TV or whatever, I’ve just been focusing on my podcast and making great connections with some of the best people who mostly tend to be cooks in the Paleo-space, in the real food space. One of whom is my good buddy, George, The Last Caveman. I also have another guy who’s a friend of mine and who had an app about being a cyclist in London and what to do if your bike broke down. It’s like a manual that you can keep on your phone so if you get a flat tire, you know how to fix it, all the different steps to do that.
So we got together and we talked about how can we, you know cookbooks are great and blogs are great but there’s so many iPads and iPhones and android devices where people can really have all their favorite contents in one device. So I wanted to make the best cookbooks that we ever could that aren’t just cookbooks but are apps too. They’re full of great content that you can also carry around the shopping list with you; put your favorites in it. It’s like an interactive cookbook. I think that’s where this is all going. We’ve decided to really focus on getting digital cool apps to people. The first one we did is Caveman Feast. We’re doing a lot more. We’re doing gluten-free desserts for the holidays. I’m really excited about this because it’s more than a book, more than an e-book. It’s something that you could use and hopefully, it’s fun and cool and only a few bucks. That’s one of my favorite things about it. People kept asking for it, all this content on their phones or on their iPads. I think this is such a great way to get it to them. People worry that this way of living costs a lot of money or cookbooks cost a lot but ours are $2.99. Haha
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s great.
Abel James: I just want to get as many people started with it as we possibly can. I think that’s a great way to do it.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I’ve done that before too. In the old days, I used to print out a recipe and go make it. And I’d always get flour and water on the paper but now, I look at recipes in my phone, follow it while I’m cooking with my phone. It’s such a good idea. You have so many fans and listeners because people obviously like what you’re saying. So what is your general philosophy on health and diet? What kind of health, diet, and fitness regimen?
Abel James: Yeah. It’s about being happy and healthy at the same time. I think and I say that it sounds cliché but it’s so important to focus on feeling good first and looking good kinda comes as a side effect of that.
Wendy Myers: Hear, hear. I concur.
Abel James: So the way that I actually eat is somewhere in between Paleo and Weston A. Price, I like to say. Most of the time it’s pretty typical and predictable. Most of my meals will start with a lot of veggies and then will have eggs or some naturally raised, pasture-raised meat of some kind, not a whole lot of it but I eat a lot of dairy. It tends to work pretty well with my body and I’ve done allergy testing. It all comes out saying that dairy gets along with me pretty well so I eat a lot of butter, heavy cream, and fermented dairy: cottage cheese and I love sheep yogurt. It’s really bizarre but it’s all I’ve taken. And then combining that with bone broth and fermented cod liver oil and other totally weird stuff that most people probably wouldn’t be eating right away but start to embrace once they start eating real food for a while. I’m a huge fan of French cooking. High-fat type stuff. I know an awesome dude in the farmers’ market who makes these artisan meats and smoked duck breast and blood sausage and liver pâtés and I totally dig that weird food, that kind of traditional type food that we’ve lost sight of for the last couple of generations.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s very upsetting here in California. Arnold Schwarzenegger outlawed foie grass. It’s so weird so we can’t have goose liver, which for me was a nice healthy delicacy that I ate all kinds of when I was pregnant. I ate it all the time. So unfortunately we can’t have that. We can’t have our weird French food over here anymore. But I’d fly to Vegas to get it. Haha.
Abel James: Pot is legal but foie grass…
Wendy Myers: Hey, you got to have your priorities.
Abel James: Haha.
Wendy Myers: So let’s a little bit about weight-loss and fat-burning. You’re an expert and you’ve got a 30-day fat-loss system available on your site. Tell us a little bit about that and some of your fat-burning secrets because everyone is dying to burn fat.
Abel James: Totally. Most people want to think that they can exercise 4 hours a day, every day and the pounds are just going to melt off. They assume that that’s how it works. So if they see a picture of me or meet me, they’re just like, “Oh, he must be a gym rat or something.” And that’s really not what it’s all about. It’s about getting your diet in order first. You ask any body builder about this. Body builders know because it’s their job to know, so do fitness models and a lot of celebrities. If your diet is not in order, it’s almost like there’s no point of even exercising at all. Because the results come from following the right dietary advice. From a macronutrient perspective, that really looks like keeping your carbs in check unless you’re exercising all the time. A quick thing that people can do, if you want to shed weight quick, which is actually fairly easy and well-understood, is you dial down the carbs, especially the high-glycimic carbs.
So you want to get away from most grains, especially in any sort of quantity, and you’d also want to make sure that you’re keeping your blood sugar in check. A good rule to follow there is if you’re eating veggies, which you should be eating loads of them, is that you want to go after green non-fibrous ones. Load up on those first. Eat plenty of protein. Most people don’t eat enough or they don’t get it from the right places. Protein shakes aren’t really the best place to get protein. It’s really by eating pastured eggs, by eating some amount of meat, it doesn’t need to be a whole lot. Just the size of the palm of your hand. But if you want to know how body builders lose 20 pounds in a couple of weeks, it’s all about eating very specific things and exercising in the specific way. So the way that most of them eat, is the way I told you; loads of non-starchy, low-carb, low-glycemic veggies. Maybe a little bit of rice or sweet potatoes, especially if you’re exercising, you replenish your lycogen but keeping your carbs below 50 or 100 a day, depending on your activity, and your size and then filling it out with protein. Then from an exercise perspective, whether you’re a male or a female, this really applies to both, focusing on burst training, on high-intensity exercise for short amounts of time.
This decreases the amount of cortisol during strain and it also ups growth hormone and keeps your metabolism at a really high level. It also doesn’t take heck of a lot of time. A great exercise that people can start with is something like Tubatas where you sprint for 20 seconds and then rest for ten seconds and you do that 8-10 times in a row. It takes you 4-5 minutes. That will get most people down to a lowish body fat percentage and then if you combine that with any amount of weight training, using compound exercises and heavyish weights, then you can really start to see some major results because that’s going to boost your metabolism even more and you’re going to be toning your muscle, whether you’re male or female, like I said, that’s really the equation. If anyone tells you that that’s more complicated than that, then they’re probably trying to sell you something.
Wendy Myers: So it’s about intensity?
Abel James: Yes, it’s about intensity as opposed to duration. I think a lot of people basically shackle themselves to treadmills and think if they’re on it long enough then their weight will just come off. Unfortunately, that’s not really the way that it works in your own body. It’s all about passing this threshold of telling your body that it needs to adapt to getting faster, to getting stronger, or anything else. So one way to think about it, most of us probably played sports when we were little kids or in high school or maybe even in college, and the way that we looked and felt when we were younger, and played those sports was usually strong and fast and healthy, and if you want to look and feel like an athlete, then you should train like an athlete does. What athletes don’t really do, unless they’re endurance athletes, is go out and just jog on the treadmill for hours or the stair master or anything else. What they’re doing is lifting weights or they’re sprinting or they’re doing pull-ups, they’re using their whole body. And in the sport itself, they’re definitely using their whole body. It’s all about that burst training. So if you want to look and feel like an athlete, then you got to train like one.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. That was me. I was shackled to the treadmill. Ha-ha. For hours. But I didn’t have a lot of great results during that.
Abel James: One of the big reasons for that is most people think that because of these fancy watches and the LED screens on the treadmills, they’re saying, “Whoa! You burned 12 calories.” They think that exercising is all about burning calories. That’s not the best way you exercise. If you start to view exercise as a way to cue your body to adapt to building muscle or toning muscle, or losing fat, no matter how long it takes, or how short the duration of your exercise is, then that’s really the best way to use exercise. You want to overload your muscles to some degree. You want to reach your viatude max and really get your body to a point where you’re huffing and puffing and it’s difficult. Because otherwise, if you’re just humming the whole time, you’re not going to cue your body ever to adapt and you’re not burning enough calories for it make a difference.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about your book, The Wild Diet, you talked about a concept in there called “wild exercise”. What exactly do you mean by that?
Abel James: It’s all about exercising the way that we used to. Ha-ha. Exercise for most people, these days, is misery. The best way to exercise is the opposite of that. It’s more about playing. It’s about being outside and doing things that you love. And so if you combine what I was just talking about, the effective strategies of how to manipulate your own body such that, you got a healthy core, a good shape, and good strength, and functional strength as well, if you apply that methodology and plug it into being outside and having fun and all that, that’s where wild exercise comes in. So it’s basically about finding that perfect thing for you that you enjoy that gets you the results that you want. So for me, it’s going out for two walks a day with my dog and exercising a few times a week for just a few minutes. Like this morning, I did Tubata Burpees because it’s an interview day so it’s packed with interviews and I didn’t have that much time. It takes 5 minutes in the morning so that’s definitely worth it.
Wendy Myers: What are Tubata Burpees?
Abel James: Okay. So Tubatas are what I was talking about before, 20 seconds of exercising intensely and 10 seconds of resting and then doing it again. Burpees are basically a push up with a jump and squat in between. So it’s going down to the ground, doing a push up and then popping back up and jumping up in the air and clapping above your head and doing that again. So basically you do as many as you can in 20 seconds and take 10 seconds off. I do it ten times. That’s a kick-butt exercise. If you’re not smoked by the end of that, and if you’re not wide awake, then you’re doing it wrong.
Wendy Myers: Okay. I got to try that!
Abel James: That’s a great way to do it but I love going for sprints outside with my dog. Whenever I am lifting weights, I do it in my backyard, even if I’m traveling, I’ll find some way to get outside and get some sun and have fun while I’m doing it. Because, I’ll say, if you’re miserable while exercising, you probably won’t keep it up. For a long time. The reason that most exercise programs fail isn’t because they’re giving you the wrong advice, it’s because of compliance, because most people aren’t integrating it to their own lifestyle. It’s all about finding that thing you love.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I refuse to work out in a gym any longer because, you’re in there, it’s a stale, low-oxygen air, and these chemicals you’re breathing in, it’s just not a healthy environment.
Abel James: I hate gyms. Haha.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I like to get out in the air and walk on the beach and do all kinds of things like that. But unfortunately, I do the slow walk, a one-hour walk. Ha-ha.
Abel James: That’s great, though. That’s exactly what you should be doing. We’re not on our feet walking around enough.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. But, hey, at least it’s outside. Even though I’m not burning fat that efficiently. Bad fat-burner.
Abel James: But at the same time, you’re doing a great job. It’s a great insurance. If you look at the Europeans, they tend to walk so much more than we do. Because of that, they can withstand a lot more sugar and carbs and other stuff. There’s a great book called, French Women Don’t Get Fat. If you walk around 3 hours a day, just because you’re walking to your job, or you’re walking to your friends’ house or whatever, you can actually indulge a heck of a lot more than someone who’s a desk jockey, or just driving to work, the way that most Americans live, because you have healthy cardiovascular system just from walking around at low intensities. It’s great for stress-relief and more than anything else, it’s very meditative. It’s great for your mind to get outside and just walk.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I try to get outside and get some sunshine, trying to get some little improvement on my circadian rhythm, maybe do some little earthing. It just adds a healthier aspect to it.
Abel James: Totally, and you said it’s not good for burning fat but I would challenge that because, one of the best things that you can do if you want to stay lean is reduce the amount of stress in your life. When it comes to walking, for me, that’s one of my secret tools. Whenever I’m overwhelmed, I would just go outside and take my dog for a walk, go for a light jog, or just to be outside, more than even exercising. When it comes to regulating cortisol, that’s the most evil demon that destroys most people who are trying to lose fat and stay lean, because as soon as you have cortisol, you start putting fat around your midsection, so that’s fat-storing. Haha.
Wendy Myers: Ha-ha. That’s my website. Fat-storingwoman.com. I definitely agree with you because a lot of people don’t realize that they’re focusing on these calories and focusing on burning calories but it’s all about hormones.
Abel James: It is. It’s really about hormones.
Wendy Myers: So you talked, in your book, about diet and many foods that a lot of people think are healthy but in fact, are not. Can you elaborate on what foods you are talking about that may not be as healthy as people think?
Abel James: Diet foods are unhealthy hahaha. I was tricked by that one for a very long time. It’s so bizarre but these foods that are thought to be health foods, and maybe even your doctor says that they are health foods, and all these magazines say that it’s that greatest thing since sliced bread. They actually, in many cases, make you fat because they’re full of chemicals and sugar and other junk. They’re not going to nourish your body. The thing that makes you lean is nourishing your body with foods and nutrients that it needs to stay lean and to thrive. It’s not about eating less; it’s certainly not about eating diet foods. It’s about eating that weird stuff like fermented cod liver oil. I don’t like the term super food but it really is. It’s super nutrient-dense. Any food that isn’t nutrient-dense is not really going to do much for you. It’s just empty calories essentially. A lot of foods that people are eating, they assume are keeping them lean because it doesn’t have something in it. Like rice cakes, fat-free, whatever. Haha. I can tell you rice cakes, as example of that, is a cheap food. One of my friends is a fitness model so he’ll get down to 3% body fat. And then the way that he puts fat back on, is by eating rice cakes. Haha. He gained 20+ pounds in one weekend just by eating rice cakes.
Wendy Myers: Whoa. He must really like rice cakes.
Abel James: Yeah. He’s a big dude. Can you imagine that people are eating rice cakes because they think it’s going to keep them lean it’s the very thing that people who are super lean are eating to get fat again. I had another guy named Drew on my show and he’s a personal trainer. Usually, he’s a 6-pack whenever he wanted to show what would happen if he tried to gain 75 pounds and then lose it again. And the way that he gained it was by eating cereal, sometimes whole-grain cereal, which is supposed to keep people lean right? If you watch the commercials. He was eating lots of pasta; he was eating low-fat and lots of sugar. I think that’s another great example. A lot of people go after these little yogurts that are supposed to be good for your metabolism with aeros and bellies on the front, and they’re low-calorie and low-fat, but if you look at the back, they’re packed with sugar. Sugar makes you fat. A lot of people accidentally eat these foods that are just absolute sugar-bombs, that they think are healthy because it says that it’s healthy on the front.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. That’s why they taste so good.
Abel James: Yeah. Haha.
Wendy Myers: So what do you think about people that are trying to lose 10 pounds in 10 days and going for this really gimmicky weight-loss strategies? Do they work?
Abel James: Sure. If you want to lose 10 pounds in 10 days, there are ways a lot of people can do that. Especially if you’re a man. It’s a lot easier for men to do weird stuff like that and get away with it. For women, it’s much trickier. Like you said, it’s all about hormones. For some women, you can lose, 10 pounds in 10 days, other women, it’s going to be a lot more difficult. The real question is, why would you do that? Here’s a good example, the same fitness model, he can lose 20 pounds in a month, piece of cake. Does it all the time. Has it down to a science, knows exactly what he needs to do, and then gets down to 3% body fat and takes all his pictures, and literally, as soon as that show is over, you can’t even walk around like this because you’re dehydrated, you’re shedding water, a lot of people are using diuretics, and you just don’t have any energy left in your body and you’re also down-regulating a lot of hormones that you’ll need to keep fat off later. And then you gain 20 pounds back in a weekend. Think about what’s happening after that weekend. How good are you feeling? You were just the sexiest you’ve ever felt two days before and you’re 20 pounds heavier now and you’ve down-regulated all these hormones that you need to stay lean for the rest of your life. The weirdest thing is that a lot of my friends who are fitness models, are actually walking around, when they’re not doing a show, at a higher body fat percentage than I am because they’ve down-regulated so many hormones that they need to keep the fat off long-term.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. That’s what a lot of these Victoria’s Secret models do too. For three weeks prior to their big show, they just do a liquid diet, smoothies and things like that. Then they do a water fast for 24 hours prior to the show. So that’s what you’re seeing.
Abel James: Yeah. That’s what you are seeing and that’s not good for you. It’s this whole thing where you think that people are walking around like that. You think that Victoria’s Secret models look like that but the thing is, they don’t look like that in real life at all. They might look somewhat like that during the day before the shoot but then they’re smothered in makeup. There are all sorts of crazy lighting tricks and they’re also taking hundreds of pictures and they’re only taking the best ones that are from perfect angles. If you meet these people in real life, then they’re easily 20 pounds heavier than you know them as. The same is true with most celebrities as well who are known for being low-fat or whatever, or having a low body-fat percentage. That’s just the reality of all this. I guess to answer your question, losing 10 pounds in 10 days, for a lot of people, that’s achievable. It really is. People think that it’s impossible and hopeless to try and do stuffs like that but if you know how to do it, you absolutely can. The question is just, why? I would much rather say, stay lean for the rest of your life and don’t give in to those gimmicks “Lose 5 pounds in 5 days”‘, or whatever. Sure, you can do that but wouldn’t you rather stay lean happy for the rest of your life? I know I would.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Slow and steady wins the race. Well, I have a question that I like to ask all my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Abel James: Nutrition. It’s about food. Because even people who are well-fed, in terms of volume of food, most people are starving right now. They’re starving for nutrients. In third-world countries, they don’t have enough volume of food in certain places. In America, food security is a huge issue as well. A lot of people aren’t getting enough of food at all. But if you look even further than that, expand the definition; most people aren’t getting enough nutrients. That’s the real problem. It’s not about the amount of food that you’re eating in terms of volume. It’s about the nutrients that your body can use and absorb. I was actually just talking before this interview with Grey Gran who wrote Pontius’ Prophecy. It’s all about, basically, epigenetics is showing that we’re losing our vitality generation to generation because we’re malnourished, because we’re not getting the foods and the nutrients that we need. The only way to change that is by believing in a better world. Believing that our food should be coming from farms instead of machines and labs, Haha, which is kind of where our fast food comes from. The biggest thing that we can do is help support-systems that provide us with food that nourish our body as well as the world around us so that we can help continue to build more farms that thrive and trying to make our world a little bit more like a cave man world. Haha.
Wendy Myers: Yes. Yes, I agree. All about Paleo. So can you tell the listeners a little bit more about you and what kind of things you have on your website and where they can find you?
Abel James: Yeah. Best place to find me is fatburningman.com. If you sign up for my email list, I send a lot of free goodies and eBooks and a video course; we’ll be putting that in real soon. There’s loads of fun to be found there. We’re about to release the new version of Fat-burning Chef, which is all-paleo, friendly, gluten-free, recipes. We have a few more apps coming out. I’m helping Terry Walls come out with her new book this spring. Jonathan Bailor for the New Year, The Calory Myth, I’m partnering up with him. I’m doing some video training on that. I’m doing another creative live course on Caveman Cooking, so there’s lots of fun and the best way to find me though id fatburningman.com.
Wendy Myers: I love Jonathan Bailor. I’ve interviewed him on the podcast previously. He’s a really really great guy. I’m excited about his book. I’m reviewing it on the site.
Abel James: Cool.
Wendy Myers: Abel, thank you so much for coming on the show. I’m so happy that you agreed to come on my little baby podcast.
Abel James: Haha. My pleasure, Wendy.
Wendy Myers: I’m hoping one day I’ll become an 800-pound paleo-gorilla like yourself. Ha-ha. So again, thank you for coming on the show.
Abel James: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Wendy Myers: If you want to learn more about health, you can find me on myersdetox.com, you can follow me on Facebook and twitter @ I will live to 110. I’m also on youtube at Wendy live to 110. If you like what you heard on the show, please give the Live to 110 podcast a review on iTunes. I need reviews to push the show further up the charts and into the search engines. So I would appreciate it so much if you could take a couple minutes of your day to do that. Thank you listeners for tuning in. Remember, unhealthy is what thin people call you when you’re fat and what fat people call you when you’re thin, which means, no matter what weight you are, you should be thinking about how to get healthier. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.
