On today’s episode, Robb Wolf himself joins us to talk about his new book, Wired to Eat, his latest research, and where he thinks our industry is headed.

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We’re back with our 104th episode of the Fed+Fit Podcast! Remember to check back every Monday for a new episode and be sure to subscribe on iTunes!

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Episode 104 Links

  • Click HERE for Robb’s website.
  • Click HERE for Robb’s Instagram.
  • Click HERE to grab your copy of Wired to Eat!

Episode 104 Sponsors

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Episode 104 Transcription

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Cassy Joy: Welcome back to another episode of the Fed and Fit podcast. I’m very excited about today’s episode. I’m welcoming one of my nutrition heroes to the show today. His name is Robb Wolf. You’ve probably heard of him. He’s a former research biochemist, a health expert, and author of the New York Times’ bestseller, The Paleo Solution; and, his brand new book, Wired to Eat. He has been a review editor for the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, and Journal of Evolutionary Health. He serves on the board of directors of Specialty Medical Clinic in Reno, Nevada. And is a consultant for the Naval Special Welfare Resilience program. Wolf is also a former California state powerlifting champion, and holds the rank of blue belt in Brazilian Ju-Jitsu. I hope I said that right. I always mispronounce Ju-Jitsu.

Robb Wolf: Yep.

Cassy Joy: He lives in Reno, Nevada with his wife Nikki, and daughters Zoe and Sagan. Welcome to the show, Robb!

Robb Wolf: Huge honor to be here. I always feel like I should be taller than 5’9” with a bio like that, so thank you.

Cassy Joy: {laughs} Oh, well you are larger than life. That’s definitely for sure. Thank you so much for coming on. I think Diane said it best, Diane Sanfilippo, when your book first came out. She said something along the lines of, “I’m so excited, it’s been a long time, I can’t wait to see what else you have to teach us.” And that really is how I look to all of your work. I’ve heard you speak several times, and it’s one of those where I furiously take mental notes. So thank you so much for making time.

I would love it if you would just share with folks. The Paleo Solution came out in 2010. And I still have memories. I’ve been following a paleo template since about, the past 8 to 9 years. And your book was one of the very first out there. I’m sure you hear that all the time. But it really was influential. So what have you been up to since then, aside from all the research and work that has gone into Wired to Eat? I’d love it if you would share a little bit with folks.

Robb Wolf: Sure, yeah. One thing in that mix, we had two kids. So that was definitely a game changing events, as folks pretty well understand. But in the process of having the first kid, Zoe, we moved to Reno, Nevada. We didn’t really know where we wanted to end up long-term. We wanted to get out of California. We spent 9 months in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and it’s really beautiful but it’s kind of a retiree scene and not a ton of people being breeders like we were.

Cassy Joy: {laughs}

Robb Wolf: So, we were just kind of casting around. But my wife’s father lives in Reno, and has been here since 2008. So we came up here and started poking around, and found a house that we liked that was just down the street from the soon-to-be grandpa, and so we moved here. And we were in town maybe 3 weeks. And I got a phone call, just out of the blue, from a guy who identified himself as Greenie. And he said that he was part of a medical clinic here, and he wanted me to come down and check out what they had going on. So, I went and checked out this medical clinic. And when I walked in, my jaw literally almost hit the floor. They had copies of my book for sale, Loren Cordain’s books, Gary Taubes’ books, and you know most mainstream medical establishments. And these are MDs. I’m not beating on chiros or anything like; chiros and all these other alternative health care providers are always more avant-garde so it was that much more stunning that a bunch of MDs and dieticians were in a clinic that was selling my book {laughs}. You know.

And Greenie ended up being Dr. Jim Greenwald, who is now retired but formerly pretty famous orthopedic surgeon. And they had just wrapped up a pilot study with the Reno police, Reno fire department, where they found 35 people at high risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. They got these folks eating low-ish carb paleo diet, modified their sleep and exercise, and based off the changes in their blood work and their health risk assessment parameters, it’s estimated that the pilot study alone saved the city of Reno $22 million dollars with a 33:1 return on investment.

Cassy Joy: Amazing.

Robb Wolf: Yeah, it was totally amazing. There’s nothing else like it in the world. And kind of similar to the UFC, when I’ve been taken to task a few times on social media about, “Isn’t the paleo diet just a fad? It’s not really effective.” And I’ll just say, “Ok.” So I’m now on the board of directors of this medical clinic. And I’ve been helping to develop this program, and bring it out to the masses. Which has proven to be much more challenging than I originally thought. The healthcare system is an absolutely quagmire. It needs a neutron bomb, and it just needs to be blown up and started over again. But that’s a podcast of a different topic. And nobody would want to listen to it.

Cassy Joy: {laughs}

Robb Wolf: But I’ve thrown out there to these folks that are kind of questioning this paleo diet methodology, I say, “Well what have you got?” And they’re like, “The China Study.” That’s not even in the same realm as what I’m talking about. I’ve got a tightly controlled, clinical intervention with a cost-benefit analysis at the end of it. You’ve got a fairy tale, basically.

So this event happened, and even though clearly I’ve been for an advocate for the paleo diet for a long, long time. Almost 20 years now. Sometimes I still wonder if I’m just the crazy old guy who is ranting on and on about inane stuff that really isn’t valuable. And when this study went down, and in talking to the doctors and the dieticians and the statisticians, and everybody that worked on this thing. I was like, “Ok, man. There’s really something powerful here.”

But at the same time, I’ve also noticed over the past 20 years that this basic paleo template is an amazing place to start; but it’s not always the final destination for folks. There’s a lot of detail and nuance. And that’s kind of where the backend of the book emerged, when I learned about this concept of personalized nutrition. There was a paper that came out of the Weizmann Institute in Israel about 2.5 years ago. Basically it was this story that really kind of blew everybody’s hair back, that our individual response to foods; particularly carbohydrates, tends to be massively variable. I mean, just so much variation in how we respond to carbohydrates, that there’s not a lot of rhyme or reason. And it makes it really dubious to make any kind of a one-size-fits-all recommendation. And again, even though this basic paleo template is built around largely whole, unprocessed foods; that can mean really different things from person to person.

My wife and I just did a little quantified self-experimentation where I ate a battery of carbohydrates and checked my blood glucose, and she did the same thing. And even though my wife is 30, 35 pounds lighter than I am, which you can make an argument she should have had less good blood glucose control just based off the fact that she’s a third smaller than I am. But she had 50-60% better blood glucose response to these various foods. And it kind of highlighted what I’ve suspected for a long, long time. Which is that I’m not all that good at handling carbohydrates, and my wife is actually pretty remarkably good.

And the other pieces that came together on the Wired to Eat, in talking to people, lots of folks had success, or at least they looked like they were having success from the outside. But they would get 3 months, 6 months into this process. Whether it was working in a gym or part of a medical clinic. And the person would just spin out, and they were gone. And in chatting with them, it took a little bit of digging, but the story that I got was that the person, even though they were experiencing what looked like great success from the outside, there was a ton of internal struggle. And that internal struggle kind of focused on this internal dialogue kind of to the effect that “This is hard, I’m just not strong enough to do this, this is easier for everyone else, there’s something in me that’s broken, so I’m just going to give up.” And that was really kind of the; it took me a long time to really hear what people were telling me. I mean, lots and lots of people told me this story. And in the back of my head I’m like, “Oh man, your genetics are different. You shouldn’t expect this to be easy.” But I didn’t have a good way of articulating this. And I did a PaleoFx talk, and this is ending up being the longest answer to the shortest question.

Cassy Joy: I love it; keep going! {laughs}

Robb Wolf: I’m almost done. I guess 3.5 years ago now at PaleoFx, I did a talk on this paper that looked at human brain evolution, and omnivores real dilemma. It was just so interesting, because it’s a very technical paper on the one hand. But also, it has this real empathic emotional piece to it. It makes a really powerful case that if you live in this modern world, and you’re not fat, sick, diabetic, and broken, you’re kind of screwing up. You could make that argument, from an evolutionary biology perspective.

And the corollary of that; the flip side of that is if you find it difficult to decouple yourself from the snack food aisle. From ordering every tasty, delectable treat imaginable. If you find it difficult to navigate this modern food world, and social media, and all the things that have been designed to effectively be addictive; you can’t be surprised by that. The whole world is stacked against you in this regard.

Now, I don’t recommend that people just roll over and die, as a consequence of this. I think that we need to fight and struggle. But if you can just understand that it is not your fault. It is totally reasonable that this stuff is difficult. But we’re going to fight the good fight. We’ve got a plan, we’ve got a strategy. And part of that strategy is just completely exercising these negative emotions and the drama around dietary change. If we can start with that spot, then we’ve got a way better change of really making this thing work.

Cassy Joy: Oh man.

Robb Wolf: And that’s been the last 7 years. {laughs}

Cassy Joy: I love it, Robb. Man. Hallelujah. That’s awesome. You know, you said; I don’t remember if it was that same talk you were referring to at PaleoFx, I don’t remember which year it was, but I heard you speak. I want to say you were sharing the stage with Mark Sisson at the time. Or maybe you weren’t. I don’t know. It’s all kind of fuzzy at this point. But you drew on the PowerPoint, it was a bullseye. And I think you had said that at one point in time, I think you said 10 years ago at the time, modern science said that veganism was the optimal dietary solution for human beings. And now that’s kind of moved out, and now we have this paleo/primal approach. And we thought, “Now we’re getting closer to the center.” But we’re still not; we haven’t struck the center of the bullseye. And it was really enlightening to me. Now that was years ago, and I can see the Wired to Eat being this personalized nutrition being closer and closer to the center. Because at the end of the day, every person knows for themselves.

And I just wanted to tell you, that was incredibly influential. And it was from then, however many years ago it was, that I started to build a program based on, I call it helping folks find their “perfect you” plan. Not nearly as scientific, by any stretch of the imagination. I’m more on the feel-good side of journal how things are making you feel, and at the end of the day, a piece of cake is just a piece of cake. And what’s going to look right for you isn’t going to look right for other folks. Anyway. So it was just incredible. So, amen to everything you’ve said.

Robb Wolf: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And to your point, perhaps. We are drowning in information. We are drowning in technicality. In 2013, there were I believe 30,000 peer-reviewed journal articles published on type 2 diabetes alone. I mean, that’s more than any person; it’s physically impossible for one person to stay on top of all that information. And, it’s doing nothing to move the needle and reversing these diseases. They’re still increasing at largely exponential rates. There’s been a little bit of a flattening of late. And there’s some suspicion there that people can only get so sick so fast {laughs} you know. So it’s not even like we’re really making progress, it’s just could be a hallmark of human resilience. What we really need are coaches and practitioners that are articulating this message in a way that provides enough of a framework to get people moving in a good direction, but also enough latitude that they can find that individual bullseye that is lurking within them. And it’s going to require a little bit of fiddling, and shuffling, and being non-dogmatic about the approach. And there’s going to be oftentimes a lot of emotional stuff that comes up that we need to be able to address. We can’t just sweep it under the carpet and hope that it goes away.

You know, it’s funny that now I’m talking so much about emotions and past traumas and everything, because I honestly have the emotional acuity of a turnip.

Cassy Joy: {laughs}

Robb Wolf: I just literally in my 23andMe genetic testing, it said that I was like 600% less likely to be empathic than the average person. And this may be why all of my projects involve trying to save the world. Like, the only way that I actually feel any emotion, it’s got to be, “It’s the world or nothing,” kind of deal. So it’s interesting that I’ve arrived at this spot. But it’s the stumbling block that has popped up again, and again, and again. And has been articulated to me. And I tried doing this reductionist/scientist approach to deal with it, and it fails. More information isn’t what folks need. What people need is understanding and caring and occasionally a good stout whack on the backside to get them moving in a better direction. But what you’re doing is what we need. It is absolutely what is needed.

Cassy Joy: Well that’s really kind, thank you. And you have a lot of listeners that are nodding their heads along with you. Because we talk about this a lot on this show; personalized nutrition. And the idea of individual wellness, bioindividuality, but more on the introspective side of it versus a biohacking kind of side.

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Cassy Joy: Yeah, that’s wonderful. And another similarity; I’m jumping around a little bit. But another similarity between what you talk about in Wired to Eat; significant features in Wired to Eat, and what the Fed and Fit community is really familiar with what I call the four pillars of health. We’ve got mindset, rest/hydration; which I lump as one because they’re pretty low-hanging fruit together, and then food, and then fitness. And I know that the topics of sleep, exercise, and community are really important features of Wired to Eat. And there is this perspective, especially I’m sure you coming from The Paleo Solution. Paleo, I think, has evolved to be a little less dogmatic year after year. But if you could speak to a little bit about why it isn’t just all about food.

Robb Wolf: Oh man. You know, I really wish it was just about food. It would only be one lever to pull instead of 6 of them, or 4 of them, or however many we want to break it down. The reality, though, is that our food influences our sleep, and our community, and our movement. And our movement influences how we sleep, and the food choices we make, and the community connections we have. Community connections; if people have inadequate social connection, it’s as damaging to their health as a pack a day smoking habit. Altered circadian rhythm, altered sleep makes us more likely to seek out processed, hyperpalatable foods. So it’s really this matrix. We need to address all of these different features, and we kind of need to do it, to some degree, all at once.

Now, I tend to be kind of a jump in with both feet kind of person. Clearly there are folks that just simply getting them to not drink soda would be a huge win, you know. Or even shifting them from sugared soda to diet soda as a beginning. We had a client that I described in my first book. He had literally not drank a sweetened beverage in 20 years. The notion for him of just drinking plain water; the guy literally, if he was traveling and he couldn’t get a soda or something like that, he would go all day without drinking water because plain water seemed so disgusting to him, that he couldn’t wrap his head around drinking it. And the guy was 5’10” and 420 pounds when he started working with us. So that strategy was not bearing great fruit. So for him, we had to start with really incremental baby steps. And the first thing was, “Hey, by the end of this month, you are going to start drinking water.” And as horrified as the guy was, eventually he started drinking water. And this was the beginning of kind of resetting his appetite and resetting his palate.

So we do need to think about all these different factors, to the degree that we get that right, it becomes very much a virtuous cycle that it makes everything easier and easier.

Cassy Joy: Absolutely. It’s a snowball rolling downhill.

Robb Wolf: Yeah.

Cassy Joy: it picks up speed and becomes more difficult to stop something that’s in motion. Well that’s wonderful. I think that’s a really important topic. And we talk about that a lot. But I just wanted y’all to hear it from Robb. {laughing}

Robb Wolf: And man, my publisher wanted to wring my neck, because the book is really long, and there was a ton of material that’s not specifically food or diet related. They’re like, “Really? Do you need all this?” And I was like, “Yeah, I do.” I wish I could address all this stuff in 150 pages instead of 400, but yeah we need to tackle all of this.

Cassy Joy: Oh, that’s so funny. I went through the same thing. And I published my book with Victory Belt, so they were really easy to work with. But I remember thinking; because I took a program that was, it’s a choose your own storybook ending kind of program. That’s how they arrive at the PYP, the perfect you plan. And taking something from an endless amount of Q&A between a practitioner, or a nutrition consultant like myself, and a client. And then putting it into a finite number of pages; there’s no way that you can talk about all that stuff.

Robb Wolf: Right.

Cassy Joy: And I said, “Can I have a little introduction room?” He said, “Sure Cass. Whatever you need.” And it accidentally blossomed into another 100 pages. {laughing}

Robb Wolf: Shocker.

Cassy Joy: But they’re great. Ok, switching gears once more. So this is a really hot topic for you, and I’d love it if you could address it here. The notion of cheating, and what role that would play in healthy or unhealthy eating. Because that’s something that comes up a lot. People like to have cheat meals or cheat days. What’s your perspective on that?

Robb Wolf: Right. Oh man. Yeah. I’ve had people literally want to hit me, like lunge across the table and hit me with this. Ok, so to really understand it well, this gets out in the weeds a little bit. But humans are primates. All primates have a really profound sense of justice and right and wrong. It’s maybe kind of weird for people. People are like, “Monkeys and chimpanzees have a sense of justice?” Yes, they do. If you read any of Jane Goodall’s stuff or primatology. If one individual; there are kinds of deals and bartering going on. There’s a really quite refined sense of this is a good deal versus a bad deal. I’m being taken advantage of, or what have you. And individuals that cheat people, or members of their community, they get socially ostracized. There’s some really heavy ramifications. And individuals get pissed about it. They don’t like being mistreated.

And so this is something that’s woven deeply into our DNA; this sense of justice and right and wrong and what have you. Ok, now when we look at the term, “to cheat.” The word, “to cheat,” like Webster’s Dictionary, is “To take unfair advantage of someone. To unfairly exploit someone or some situation.” Ok. Now, whether you’re reading paleo, or vegan, or macrobiotic, or what have you. How is eating something that is not on the plan taking unfair advantage of anyone? It’s not. It’s not. But; because we have this really tightly woven sense of guilt and morality and right and wrong. If we assign the terminology the psychic energy of cheating to a noncheating process, then we’re going to feel all the guilt and the impact and the drama and the hamstringing by doing that.

So what people do, is they take a really important feature of our culture. Treating people and other members of our society well, there are some good reasons for doing that. Not the least of which is that the person doesn’t turn around and try to kill you. But there are all these important reasons for doing that. But they take this really important, kind of social concept that’s just woven into our DNA, and they apply it inappropriately to just eating food. So that’s a big part of it. So they’re able to experience profound shame and guilt in a really inappropriate way. We eat. And we have consequences of eating. You either feel better, or you feel worse, or what have you. That’s the totality of that whole story.

And then additionally; I really hate this notion of a “cheat day”, particularly when it’s thrown out there in the following fashion. You’re supposed to do it once a week on Saturday, and what happens with that is by Monday, maybe even Sunday, you’re already planning the next bender. And you start thinking about it, and planning. And if you talk to drug addicts at all, or you do any reading or listen to some YouTube interviews; the planning of taking the drug. Particularly someone like a heroin addict, where they’ve got a box, and they’ve got needles, and a spoon, and a burner, and all this stuff. There’s all this gear. And just the process of getting the box out, and opening it up, and tying their arm off and everything. The drug addict will report that this is almost as good; almost better than taking the drug itself.

So this anticipatory process of building up to taking the substance hits that dopamine-hedonic center of the brain in a way that is completely addictive, and really powerful. So this is a fantastic way for basically damaging the wiring of your brain to need a stimulus that is so powerful, and so over the top, that you are effectively addicted to it. So I don’t see people very often who plan these cheat day benders who are doing well. They’ve got problems. They end up being; instead of one meal, it’s a week, or a month of off-rails eating. So instead, I recommend one of two strategies. If you think about it, we tend to eat 3 meals a day, 7 days a week. That’s 21 meals. So I say; “Why don’t you just, 2 meals a week, kind of kick your heels up. Do more or less what you want.” Within the guidelines. If you go so far off rails that you can’t get back on at the next meal, then you went too aggressive on that.

But even more than that, I just encourage people when things pop up; if you go out to a nice dinner, and there’s a fantastic dessert and you want to have some of that; have some of that. Just don’t have it in the house. If you’re relying on self-control to win the dietary war, it’s not going to happen. We are not wired for self-control. We’re wired to eat everything that’s not nailed down, and then rest. So that’s kind of my long, drawn-out story on cheating. And again, it’s a really pretty controversial topic, and people get pretty cranky about it. But also, when I’ve taken these folks and sat them down, and walked them through this whole story, the anger kind of gets replaced. You can see this awareness in their eyes; and they’re like, “Ok, I get it.” I get how this could be a really; it’s playing with fire. Tackling this whole concept with the terminology of cheating, and also making cheats a planned drug-like activity.

Cassy Joy: I had never thought of it that way, Robb, but I love it. I definitely try to promote people to just avoid the terminology of a cheat. And if they have, for example, someone goes to a wedding and has a piece of wedding cake. Instead of viewing that as, well I’m going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. What’s one piece of cake? Because it becomes an emotional decision. A decision of value, and of guilt, and of self-worth. Focusing on the actual physical body, how you’re actually feeling, and then writing that down as a lesson learned is the only way I’ve found to help people kind of get over that. But I really, really love what you’ve said.

And it’s interesting; because when you look at other nutrition programs that are out there, that are maybe a little sexier, are the ones that have cheat meals woven in.

Robb Wolf: Right.

Cassy Joy: And that’s an interesting; that’s really interesting. Because to gear people down, to your point, personalized nutrition, it’s a windy road and no two look alike. And that’s just difficult to really put a lot of bells and whistles on. But that’s wonderful. Really powerful story.

Robb Wolf: Oh thanks.

Cassy Joy: I would love it if you would talk about the program in the book; the carb test. And how it’s presented, and if you think, is this something for everybody to try?

Robb Wolf: The everybody part has a caveat. So, the context of the 7-day carb test, it does come ideally after doing a 30-day reset. And the 30-day reset comes after doing a really pretty slick and very important triage process to figure out where you are in this whole health story. If we don’t know where you are, and we don’t know where you’re going, we don’t have a map. We need a start, and a destination, basically to be able to make any sense of any of this stuff. And part of that figuring out where you are on this kind of health map, I start with some subjective elements. “How do you feel between meals, what’s your cognitive functioning like, are you clear-headed or foggy-headed?”

And then we get more granular. We start asking some questions that are much more objective. “What’s your waist to hip ratio? What’s your fasting blood glucose? What’s your A1C? What’s your blood pressure?” So we use that to establish a baseline of relative insulin sensitivity versus insulin resistance. And then we plug into what’s generally a pretty standard paleo type diet. Although in the book, there are four different plans in the book. There’s a paleo basic plan, autoimmune paleo, a transitional ketosis, and also a ketogenic diet; nutritional ketosis plan.

So this triage process helps you; it’s kind of like dropping a marble down a maze. It rattles, left right, left, right. Then it drops you at this spot where you’ve gone through a reset. Hopefully your gut is healthier, your appetite is better regulated. And then I do recommend that people do this 7-day carb test where we get an inexpensive glucometer, we pick a battery of carbohydrate foods, and we test those. We test them at the same day, each day. And this thing is important. It’s kind of funny because my publishers were like, “Oh man this is great! Carbs are back on the menu!” And I’m like, well. We’ll see.

The reason why I did this the way that I did, is when I suggest to people, “Hey, you might not be able to eat carbs, or this type of carb, with all that much frequency if you want to be healthy,” they get all angry and cranky and feel like you’re being restrictive. So they just throw their hands up and they’re done. Whereas if I say, “Heck, who knows? Maybe you can eat tons of French bread. Let’s test that out and see what the heck happens.” Then it’s not me telling them they can’t do it. It’s their personal experience, and the blood glucose monitor looking them right in the face and saying, “Ok, you’ve got diabetic blood sugars off this, and you feel terrible after this meal. What are you going to do?”

It’s kind of funny, because there’s been this kind of gnashing of teeth, where it’s like, “Why are you recommending all these carbs?” I’m not recommending them. I’m recommending that you test them. And even within that, people are like, “Why don’t you take chromium or take some vinegar to reduce the blood sugar response?” It’s like, well, those mitigative strategies are great. But I want to know under the most unideal circumstances, how do you do? How do you do with that bowl of rice? How do you do with those lentils? And if it’s a bad option for you, let’s be honest about that, and act accordingly. So that’s the kind of background story with the 7-day carb test.

The carb test is really; you need that triage process in the front. Because that really provides a lens for understanding what’s going on on the blood sugar testing side. Because there are some different things that can happen. Like your blood sugar can go high, and then it can be lower than what it was at the beginning and different things like that. And it’s hard to make sense of that unless you have that baseline of your insulin sensitivity/insulin resistance.

And then you asked a great question, which was, “Should everybody do this?” If you just know in your soul that large amounts of carbohydrates don’t do you well. You have some small intestine bacterial overgrowth, you’ve suspected that a ketogenic diet is the thing that’s going to work best for you, you’re type 1 or type 2 diabetic. There is no reason to do the carb test. We know that you’re not carb tolerant. You could play with testing your blood sugar after generally low-carb meals, and maybe play with what some outer boundaries with that. But this is; it would be similar to knowing someone is a type 2 diabetic, or peri-diabetic, and then giving them an oral glucose tolerance test. We already know they’re kind of broken, so why are we going to send their blood sugar levels skyrocketing just to reaffirm what we know?

So that’s the one caveat in that. If you know you just don’t do that well with carbs in general, then the 7-day carb test may not be your best bet. Now the caveat with that is if you motor along for quite a while and you’re just, “Man. My gut health is feeling good. I’m lean. My sleep is on point.” Then yeah, that might be the time to give that 7-day carb test a shot.

Cassy Joy: Learn some neat things about yourself. This is so exciting. I’m going to go do the 7-day carb test, Robb.

Robb Wolf: Awesome.

Cassy Joy: I’ll keep you posted. It will be a fun way to keep the conversation going. Well, my last question before I let you go. I know you have a lot going on right now, as always. But I’m just curious what you think; what’s the call to action from this point? Aside from reading the book, which I’m thinking of 12 people right now that I want to give the book to. Because I want them to hear it from you. You tell the story so exceptionally well. But what is the call to action at this point from the consumer who has more questions about themselves, to practitioners listening that are nutrition consultants and are wanting to really personalize their business from here, and they like what you’re saying, and they’re trying to figure out a way to help coach others. Any pieces of advice you have for them?

Robb Wolf: Oh man, that’s a great question. So Diana Rogers, who is a practicing RD, she has been using the whole program, and has found incredible benefit in walking through this whole, “It’s not your fault.” So there’s kind of a couple of different pieces to it. Helping to unpack the emotionality around this stuff, and really allaying people’s fears, and the guilt, and the kind of self-loathing. She’s found a lot of benefit in couching things in those terms. So if you have a practice, I would really pay particular attention to those sections, like the brief word on cheating, and also the healthy relationship with food part of the book. I would pay a lot of attention to that, and kind of the terminology that I use, and the way I unpack all that.

And Diana said that she’s basically done an Arthur Murray Dance School kind of gig. She took some notes on what I said, and client after client, it’s the same story, same drama. She has people break down in the office. They’re like, “Oh my god, I always thought it was my fault!” And she’s like, “It’s not your fault, but I’m here with you, we’re going to get through this.” And people are having really good success.

And then she is using that 7-day carb test, because it’s interesting. Because it’s kind of like, “If you do this, we are going to figure this out, we’re going to map the world that you can exist in in a really healthy, effective way. And this is the way that we’re going to do this.” And she’s had some great success with that. So, I would encourage folks to keep an eye open for all of those opportunities.

Also, with the clinic that I’m on the board of directors of here in Reno, we are working on a program where folks like you can refer your people to us. We will get the blood work, the screening that we recommend within the book, and then you and your client or patient will get a beautifully written report. A custom report that explains where they are in this story. Folks can go get this blood work virtually from anywhere. But what you end up with is a bunch of numbers, and now you’re more confused typically than what you started with. Whereas if you get this through the clinic, you’re actually going to get a written report that’s describing everything that’s going on, and what our suspicions may be around this story. So that’s in progress. Two weeks, three weeks, we should have that up and available. At least in a beta format, so that practitioners like you can refer their folks to that process. And then, you really have a great tool to be able to sit down with folks and help them understand where they are in this story.

Cassy Joy: Yeah. Wow. How valuable. That’s wonderful. I highly recommend; and I’ll update the show notes for this episode, for everybody listening, in the future if you want to see that’s live. I’ll include a link as soon as it’s live, Robb.

Robb Wolf: Great. That’s genius.

Cassy Joy: Awesome. Robb, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show today. For sharing all of your awesome research and just where you’ve been for the last 7 years. And for constantly moving the industry by leaps and bounds forward. It’s incredibly validating for myself. I know a lot of listeners here who really do believe in this personalized nutrition approach. So thank you so much for all that you do, for this fabulous book. I’m sure you can find Wired to Eat everywhere books are sold. I’ve seen it at Costco, I’ve seen it at Barnes and Noble. I’m sure you can order it on Amazon. But anywhere else you’d like folks to find you, Robb?

Robb Wolf: Just www.RobbWolf.com is where I’m hanging out. And I’m spending most of my social media time over at Instagram. After the last political cycle of Facebook, I just can’t really deal with anymore. So I’m over at Instagram. My handle there is @DasRobbWolf. Kind of like German, das. Das R-O-B-B W-O-L-F. And I’m posting a lot of continuing self-experimentation, both with myself and my wife. She’s kind of like wolverine; she’s impossible to kill. So it’s an interesting juxtaposition between her metabolism and my metabolism. And it’s pretty cool. So if you cruise over to Instagram and follow me there, there is some very cool stuff that we’re rolling out.

Cassy Joy: There is. And you guys are such an awesome partnership. I follow your Instagram, and I remember your post about the marshmallows. I encourage everybody to go look Robb up on Instagram, and pull up his videos on the marshmallows. I think it’s really interesting. It shows about hyper-palatability, and how we can change food. And it was an interesting call to action for me, Robb, as a recipe developer {laughs}. Because I thought, “Oh, goodness, if I’m making hyperpalatable food, I need to make sure it’s really good for them.” {laughs}

Robb Wolf: Yeah. And you know, it’s a really interesting point. Because we can’t expect people to eat cardboard. But at the same time, there are some really easy ways that you can take something simple, like a sweet potato, that is typically pretty satiating, and you can turn it into effectively a hyperpalatable dessert option. And again, this isn’t putting morality or right or wrong on it, it’s just being aware. And this is part of the benefit of that 7-day carb test. We recommend folks eat these foods. Like my wife did a bowl of oatmeal, or something like that plain. 50 grams of carbs from oatmeal was a lot; and she was like, I would kill to put a shake of salt, a pat of butter. Anything on this thing. And that’s interesting. Again, I don’t know that I have the 100% right answer to that. But it’s just really interesting. Where it’s like; ok, when we eat really simple foods, it’s very difficult to overeat them.

Cassy Joy: It is.

Robb Wolf: Just a little addition of a little salt, or a little sweet, or a little umami or something like that, you could maybe double the food intake. So that could be valuable if you’re working with an athletic population, and they’re under-eating. But the opposite could be true. We need to figure out; “I can add salt to this thing, but I can’t do salt and butter, otherwise it becomes cocaine-like for me.” So yeah.

Cassy Joy: {laughs} Oh that’s so neat. Oh my goodness, I could talk to you for hours. But I know you’ve got so much going on. Robb, thank you again for coming on the show today. Everybody listening, as always. You can find a complete transcript, links to everything we’ve talked about. I’ll include a link to his Instagram as well, so you can just pull up www.FedandFit.com and get all that great information. And if you’d like to read back on some of the things he said, we’ll have the transcript loaded soon.

Robb, thanks again! I wish you all the best. Keep crushing it out there. And I’m going to keep admiring you and supporting from afar.

Robb Wolf: Thank you so much.

Cassy Joy: Thank you.



About the Author

Cassy Joy Garcia, NC

Cassy Joy Garcia, a New York Times best-selling author, of Cook Once Dinner Fix, Cook Once Eat All Week, and Fed and Fit as well as the creative force behind the popular food blog Fed & Fit.


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