Radical healing with Functional Medicine – skipping meals

This is the continuation of the transcript of Patrick Wanis, Human Behavior and Relationship Expert, PhD and Dr. Michael Bauerschmidt, Medical Director of Full Potential Health Care exploring radical healing via Functional Medicine – treating the root cause instead of symptoms for serious chronic disease. For previous part of this transcript (Part 3), click here: https://patrickwanis.com/blog/radical-healing-functional-medicine-processed-foods/

Patrick Wanis: Number two, don’t skip meals which means what – three meals a day?

Dr. Mike: Three meals with snack. Eat something every couple of hours. It doesn’t have to be huge meals. As an example, for breakfast, I’ll typically have maybe a poached egg or two with some fresh tomato salsa, or I’ll have — I love hummus and celery for breakfast or hummus and cucumbers. I’ll even include bacon and eggs but just make sure it’s nitrate-free bacon. But avoid the — get rid of the toast. Then have a piece of fruit as a snack. Lunch can be a salad. Today, I had a Greek salad with some grilled chicken.

Afternoon snack is that’s when you get your dark chocolate, organic 70% or greater cocoa chocolate. And then dinner, have a sensible dinner, but try not to mix your protein with your carbohydrates because that tends to delay digestion and spike your blood sugars which you want to avoid.

Patrick Wanis: So does that mean do I need fish with the vegetables?

Dr. Mike: No, you need fish with your vegetables. Don’t eat fish with — the typical steak and potato dinner, forget about it.

Patrick Wanis: What’s wrong with eating steak and potatoes at the same time?

Dr. Mike: Well, the potatoes are the complex — they’re the starch. That’s the — the starch are the simple carbohydrate that will — along with the protein will spike and maintain your blood sugar at higher than normal levels for longer than you need be. And that’s going to increase your insulin — that’s going to increase your insulin response and that’s going to promote your fat deposition.

Patrick Wanis: How do you go about having dinner with steak and potatoes?

Dr. Mike: I’m going to tell you, don’t buy those. Don’t do it. And once you’re at your ideal body weight, you can liberalize this. At one point, I was about 35 pounds overweight from where I needed to be because I was just sitting around. I wasn’t exercising because of my back — my back and my neck and I gained a lot of weight. I just followed this eating plan. I did nothing else other than watch how I mix my foods and got rid of the processed foods. I lost 36 pounds in three months, and I’ve maintained my body weight. I haven’t had the — now I will occasionally have a potato with my steak.

Patrick Wanis: So if a person wants to eat meat, is that okay? And how should they go about eating it?

Dr. Mike: Yes, it’s okay provided it’s grass-fed, and that’s grass-fed and grass-finished. They’ll try to — some guys will try to sneak it out on you and say, “Oh, yeah, they’re grass-fed, but, oh, yes, in the last few months, we fattened them up with grain.” Not good. So grass-fed, grass-finished beef, organic pork, organic chicken, fish — lots of fish, but you have to be careful about mercury content. This gets in the environmental part.

So there’s a lot of fish I will not eat anymore and that includes tuna, swordfish, grouper, tilefish and salmon unless it’s Alaskan wild caught salmon. Anything other than North Atlantic is garbage. It’s loaded with mercury. It’s loaded with PCBs.

Patrick Wanis: So briefly, if we referred to the movie Forks Over Knives, the premise was to really reduce the percentage of protein in your diet.

Dr. Mike: There’s a problem with Forks Over Knives. Remember… I’ve had this conversation more than once. Remember in the very beginning of the movie, one of their basic premises that you had to accept — if you buy into the whole movie, you have to accept this basic premise — was that in the Scandinavian countries during World War II, the Germans invaded — they took away all the cattle and all that sheep and all that stuff and they took away all the animal protein. And the rates of death from cancer and heart disease dropped tremendously, right?

Patrick Wanis: Okay.

Dr. Mike: This is an observational study. The problem with the observational study is they didn’t tell you what they were dying of instead of that which was things like temptation in concentration camps.

Patrick Wanis: So you’re saying they reduced their meat intake, but they weren’t getting enough nutrition, enough nutrients?

Dr. Mike: They weren’t getting enough nutrition. So what they — what they didn’t tell you is what they were dying of which I would find to be very interesting. Granted the rates of death may have gone down from cancer and heart disease but who knows they lived enough to have cancer and heart disease.           They may have been dead — instead have been dead from gunfire or concentration camps or starvation because they didn’t have food or succumb to an acute illness because their immune system was so poor because their nutrition was so poor.

Patrick Wanis: What about the studies that they said they did in Japan or China with the tens of thousands of people?

Dr. Mike: Again, interesting study and I was fortunate enough to hear several people speak. One was the author of the China study along with two other gentlemen dieters that wrote diet books. And the interesting that came out from the China study from my perspective, you’re looking at a particular population of the Chinese who — and look at their traditional diet. They’re trying to transfer data from a specific genetic population set into a universal population set.

So I’m not exactly sure that that’s quite — that that’s any more meaningful than observational data from the — from all the cattle — we took the cattle away and the rate of incidents and the incidents of heart disease and cancer went down. This is a fallacy and logic — in Latin is post hoc ergo propter hoc — after the fact, therefore because of the fact.

Patrick Wanis: Your point is valid if you then conclude that the genetics make a difference in what we should and shouldn’t eat?

Dr. Mike: Correct.

Patrick Wanis: Yeah, you’re also saying that it’s specific to their genetics?   Based on your success with your patients, with your clients, is there a percentage of protein for meat or fish that you would recommend?

Dr. Mike: I kind of like the 40-30-30 mix — 30% to 40% protein, 30% to 40% carbs, and then 20% to 30% fat. Carbs or your vegetables.

Patrick Wanis: Dr. Mike, for me it would be a real challenge and so I’m going to break it down into percentages even though I was the one that asked you the percentages. Is there a simple way to live life simply, to remove the stress of fear about what you’re eating and could just eat healthy enjoyable meals over a week? What’s the simplest approach?

Dr. Mike: Take your plate of a reasonable size, not a platter, not a saucer, but a plate of a reasonable size to your height and weight and body build. Make sure half of whatever is on the plate is raw, and mix the other half with all the different colors of fruits and vegetables that you can find — or vegetables that you can find. Make sure at least quarter to a third of it has a good source of protein.

If you’re a vegetarian, that can lentils, legumes, nuts. If not, if you’re not a vegetarian, then have a high protein — high quality protein fish like an Alaskan wild caught salmon, grass-fed beef, organic chicken or pork. So about third of the plate protein, half of the plate raw and so you got some cooked vegetables, some raw vegetables, throw in some nuts, some seeds, lots of colors, fruits or a nice snack.

Patrick Wanis: Basically, what you’re saying is take your plate, you need a little bit of everything, don’t eat too much meat and don’t mix steak with potatoes.

Dr. Mike: Exactly. Leave the greens off of it.

Patrick Wanis: So Dr. Mike, the primary recommendations from you are: number one, don’t eat processed food, instead eat whole foods; number two, don’t skip meals. Eat three meals a day with some snacks in between or fruit; number four, don’t mix steak and potatoes. So don’t mix heavy proteins with carbohydrates; and then number five would be to eat a balance of food on your plate with a 50/50 mix of cooked and raw food. Raw food would be salads obviously, correct?

Dr. Mike: Correct.

Patrick Wanis: And so for people who want to truly take charge of their life, you’re saying they need to look at their diet, their emotions, their environment and their present physical state?

Dr. Mike: Correct.

Patrick Wanis: Are you able to help patients outside of Florida?

Dr. Mike: Oh, absolutely. I have a truly international practice. I have patients from Columbia, South America, from Grand Cayman Islands, from the Bahamas. I’ve even had one woman fly from London, England.

Patrick Wanis: Are you able to Skype legally?

Dr. Mike: I do need initial kind of physical in the office consultation. But after that, I’m perfectly able to do it by Skype. Actually, I have one lady that moved to France that I still Skype with.

Patrick Wanis: If people would like to learn more about you and your practice, Full Potential Health Care, what is the website?

Dr. Mike: It’s www.fullpotentialhealthcare.com.

Patrick Wanis: Dr. Michael Bauerschmidt, I’m truly grateful. Thank you very much for the extraordinary wealth of information you’ve said today and for simplifying a lot of the confusion that surrounds people when it comes to how do I take charge of my body, how do I take charge of my health.

Dr. Mike: It’s my pleasure and there’s a lot more we can cover.

Patrick Wanis: We will definitely do this again so we can talk specifically about adrenal stress, adrenal exhaustion, and even talk about how anger affects our emotions and affects our physical body.

Dr. Mike, thank you very much.

Dr. Mike: Thank you, Patrick. It was a pleasure

Also see now Patrick Wanis’ “Secrets to Losing Weight, Being Thin, And Loving Your Body” https://www.patrick-wanis.com/product/losing-weight-hypnosis-download/

For the other parts of this transcript – Radical Healing with Functional Medicine:

Part 1: What is Functional Medicine and how can it help you? https://patrickwanis.com/blog/radical-healing-functional-medicine/

Part 2: Functional Medicine and the impact of Environmental Toxins on your body and health: https://patrickwanis.com/blog/radical-healing-functional-medicine-environmental-toxins/

Part 3 How to recognize processed foods and why they are dangerous to your health, click here: https://patrickwanis.com/blog/radical-healing-functional-medicine-processed-foods/