We discuss how:
– Robby and Cyrus have managed to keep diabetes under control with a low fat, plant-based diet
– Robby was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was 12 years old
– He switched to a low fat, plant based whole food diet and that dramatically improved his quality of life
– He met Cyrus and together they started Mastering Diabetes to offer information and coaching
– Cyrus was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 22, along with two other autoimmune conditions
– Initially the doctors pointed him towards a low carbohydrate diet and it made him feel terrible
– He then switched to a low fat, plant based whole food diet and his insuline use came down by 40%
– Now Robby and Cyrus help more than 800 people with their coaching program
Clint: Today we have gone in a little bit of a different direction and certainly a fun one for me, as I’ve welcomed onto this episode 2 of my friends who I met in Anaheim recently at the plant-based nutrition health care conference. And we hit it off straight away because we realized we had a lot of parallels, not just in the way that we ate, but in the way that we serve people and help people online. So I’d like to welcome Robby and Cyrus from Mastering Diabetes, how you going guys?
Cyrus: Thank you so much Clint, we appreciate it.
Robby: Yeah it’s really great to be here, and looking forward to sharing everything we can with your audience.
Clint: Awesome. Well some folks might be wondering why are we having some guests on to talk about diabetes on our podcast that typically focuses on inflammatory arthritis? And the reason is, that we time and time again see people with inflammatory arthritis. Who sometimes have other health conditions. And one of those other health conditions that they sometimes have is either pre-diabetes, or their type 2 diabetic, and in some rare cases they also are a type 1. And what I’ve found, is that when they follow the Paddison Program, and they eat a whole foods, low fat plant based diet. That these other conditions also improve especially prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. And so when I got talking with these now friends of mine in Anaheim, we realized how effective this dietary approach can be against these conditions. And that’s why I want to explore this today. I want to talk about the differences between Type 1, Type 2. I want to hear the stories of Robby and Cyrus and how they came about forming this wonderful fast growing organization. And for those of us with family members who have these conditions, be able to send them off in the right direction towards your mastering diabetes online program and support. So why don’t we kick off, let’s let’s hear some stories. Robby tell us how did you come about, tell us about your health, and how you came about into this sort of business and so forth.
Robby: Sure. So I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, when I was 12 years old. So this was in 2000. And then my older brother also has type 1 diabetes, so difference between type 1, and Type 2, is that people with Type 1 diabetes their pancreas has been damaged. So, I don’t produce insulin, I don’t produce enough insulin, and I have to inject exhautious insulin to live. So I’ve been doing that since I was 12, and over the years I just learned and learned about new dietary approaches. How to improve, how to become you know reduce my chance of complications which is a big concern with anybody living with diabetes.
Robby: And only long story short, I ended up coming across the low fat, plant based whole food diet, and it just transformed my life in every way imaginable. So my insulin sensitivity improved dramatically, I’m sure Cyrus is gonna talk about that in detail today. Why that’s important? And more important than that, was for me was my quality of life. And that’s why I’m just you know Cyrus and I both are so passionate about sharing this message because we are about more than just diabetes numbers, we’re about overall health, quality of life. And anybody watching the video they can see the (inaudible) behind me. I love the food I eat, I enjoy it, I get to eat fruits. People with diabetes are told that’s not okay. And so, I’ve been living this lifestyle for 11 years now. And on 11 years as a type 1 diabetic, I never had anyone see about 6.6. Usually in the low 5’s, and high 5’s. And but again, beyond these numbers my quality of life is amazing. I just knew yesterday about somebody living with Type 1 that they quit, they left college, they stop playing sports, and some people let take over their life. And as per Cyrus, and myself, and our clients, it’s like no, it’s just a small inconvenience and we still get to live the super high-quality life. So, yeah I’ve been eating this way for a long time.
Robby: And as far as career wise, I Graduated from University of Florida with a degree in basically Event Management and a minor in Business. And that I met the founder and president of forks over knives at a health event in Costa Rica. And then I worked there for six years, and had a lot of fun. So the building that company up from scratch with him, so this (inaudible) person. you know Brian is a really good friend, and just a genius brilliant guy what he’s done with forks and knives, it’s just been amazing so it was very fun from my time there with him.
Robby: And then I, just you know Cyrus and I, started talking about what we could do together and I left forks and knives to create Mastering Diabetes with Cyrus, because we felt there wasn’t. In the world of low fat, plant based whole food nutrition. There wasn’t one website, one destination, where people could go to figure out exactly what to do for living with diabetes. All the nuance details so, a good friend Neil (inaudible), there some great resources. We have some (inaudible) over forks over knives, but there was not a place for all the nuance details, of what to do for people living with diabetes and that’s what we’ve created. We have a coaching program, and we’re really really proud of it.
Clint: Yeah, it’s sensational because you know and I have spoken behind the scenes, and Cyrus, and we talked about you know how many people you’ve been able to reach and the results that you’ve been able to get for people and it is amazing. Just to frame it in my audience’s mind it’s very similar to the Paddison Program, and then you can access materials online, is a support platform. And so it’s just a really really comprehensive way to enable an enriched lives for people with this condition. So awesome man love it, and love your work with Forks over Knives obviously that’s just been a major success story. And I always like hearing about that part of your life and learn more about that. So now Cyrus I want to shift over to you now, and Robby touched upon some blood marker numbers, and maybe when you tell us your story and how you came about into this plant based lifestyle as well. I expect that if you could explain those numbers a little bit more for us, and give us an idea of what we’re aiming for when we’ve got diabetes, and what our markers should be, and what’s scary and so on?
Cyrus: Okay. Cool. So I’ll answer that in 2 ways, I tell my story and then I’ll go to the numbers. So I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2002. So normally people get diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when they’re young, when they’re 4 years old, 8 years old, 12 years old. So it’s considered a juvenile onset form of diabetes. And just like Robby said, it results from an auto immune destruction, of a very specific set of cells in your pancreas. That only makes up about 1 percent of the total pancreas mass. So the pancreas is a pretty big organ, and 99.9% of your pancreas functions fine. But there’s a tiny little collection of cells called the beta cells. And if those beta cells can no longer secrete insulin. You’ve got a system wide defect, and you have to inject insulin from the outside world. If you don’t you die, period end of story. So Robby discovered that when he was a young kid, I discovered that when I was 22, which admittedly is very late. So not only was I diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, I was diagnosed with two other autoimmune conditions.
Cyrus: The first one is called Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism, which is you know reduction in thyroid hormone output. Number 2, is alopecia universalis which is why I have no hair. So alopecia just means hair loss, universalis means every everywhere. So I have no eyebrows, I have no eyelashes, I have no nose hair, I have no ear hair, I have nothing on them. And then the third autoimmune condition is type 1 diabetes, and all three of them set in within a 6-month period. And so you know at the age of 22, I’m trying to graduate college, I’m going to Stanford University, and I’m I’m scared because all of a sudden I you know go from being a happy go lucky guy who trying to get a job in the outside world, to a medical patient three times over.
Clint: Yeah.
Cyrus: So at this point, you know I’m open to learning anything that’s going to help me from feeling crappy, and from having my blood glucose go up through the roof. Because if you’ve never lived with you know a blood glucose problem, pat yourself on the back. If you have blood glucose sort of instability issues, when your blood glucose was high you feel like crap, when your blood glucose goes low, you feel like crap. When your blood glucose is within a normal range and it stays there, you feel much better.
Cyrus: So on a daily basis my blood glucose goes high, low, high low, high, low. And you know you’re trying to develop some type of system, whereby you know how much insulin to give yourself for every meal, and at what time of the day, and it depends on what you’re eating. And it depends on how much you’re exercising so, it’s this multi variable equation it’s got a bunch of moving parts. And your goal is to just try to keep your blood glucose within normal range. And admittedly it’s very challenging. So the doctors at this time of my life we’re saying, you know low carbohydrate diet, low carbohydrate diet, low carbohydrate diet, and they still do that to this day. And the idea behind a low carbohydrate diet, is that if you’re living with diabetes and you consume carbohydrate rich foods like bananas, or fruits, or potatoes, or quinoah, or beans, and lentils, as an example. Any of those foods that contain a sufficient amount of carbohydrate energy, means that you’re going to inject more insulin. So the idea is simple, it’s like if your’e trying to control your blood glucose a simple way to do it is to minimise your insulin use and a simple way to do that is to eat less carbohydrate rich foods. So it seemed pretty logical to me at the beginning, I was like Okay fine I’ll do this. So I got a prescription to eat more meat, more cheese, more eggs, more bacon, more chicken, more tuna, and I was like great! this is literally the diet that I love to eat very, I’m gonna do this
Cyrus: I wake up in the morning, and I would fry to turkey burgers for breakfast, and then I would have a you know an egg to go along with that. And then at lunchtime, I would have a sandwich that’s like mainly vegetables with some black forest ham, and some really thin bread. And then for dinner, I would pig out on a giant piece of cod, with you know a side of non starchy vegetables. So I was trying to do my best to follow this low carbohydrate prescription. (Inaudible) all over the place. I felt terrible, I had low energy, I had a very difficult time exercising, I had a very difficult time recovering from exercise. And after doing this for about a year I said to myself you know what, intuitively I know something is wrong, I know it. It just don’t feel right, and my energy levels are going lower, and lower, and lower. And I actually suffered from like what I consider to be muscular inflammation. So as opposed to joint inflammation which happens and you know osteoarthritis, or rheumatoid arthritis, or gout. Muscle inflammation is from my experience when you go and you perform exercise and then instead of recovering within a 24 or 48 hour period, it takes you 4 days, 5 days, six days a week. I go and play a game of soccer and I would lay on a couch for 4 days. And I had never been true up until that point, so I switched over I started eating a low fat, plant based whole food diet, under the guidance of a nutrition expert who basically said, Cyrus trust me what you’re about to experience is awesome.
Cyrus: So he showed me a system whereby I could increase my fruit intake. Significantly increase my fruit intake (inaudible) expense of fat rich, and protein rich foods. And that was the key, Right? So he said alright listen I’m going to open your mind to the idea that you can eat lots of bananas, and figs, and dates, and berries, and melons, and mangoes, and papayas, until you pass out. And you’re not going to use a single unit more of insulin. And I said to him I don’t believe you. And he was like Of course you don’t believe me because you have been subscribing to the carbohydrate means more insulin methodology. I don’t expect you to believe me just try it. So in the first week I started eating just like he described, lots and lots of fruits and lots of vegetables. And I completely cut out meat, fish, dairy, oil, eggs, gone which was a hard thing for me to do but I said you know what I’ll try that. And because I eliminated those foods, the fat content of my diet fell, the protein content my diet fell. As a result of those two falling my ability to consume, and metabolize, carbohydrates went through the roof.
Cyrus: So my insulin use, I was expecting it okay. You know I’m now eating 600 grams of carbohydrate per day okay Great. That means if sixtuple my carbohydrate intake, then I’m going to sixtuple my insulin use. Wrong! my insulin use came down by 40%. So I’m eating effectively six times as many grams of carbohydrate per day, and I’m using almost half as much insulin. so that when I was like oh wait a minute, a couple of things are true. Number 1, this idea that eating more carbohydrates equals more insulin is totally bogus, it’s not true. And that number 2, there’s something fascinating going on under the surface and I want to learn more. So long story short, I put myself back at school I went to UC Berkeley to go get a PHD in nutritional biochemistry.
Clint: Wow I didn’t know that.
Cyrus: Yeah because I was like, you know what. I want to work, I want to be able to talk about this in a scientific way, rather than just sort of using sighting biology that may or may not be true. So I went to UC Berkeley for 5 years to study the nutritional biochemistry which is basically just super nerd nutrition. To really understand the molecular level details of what’s happening in your pancreas, and your brain, (inaudible), your blood, and muscle tissue. And having walked away from that 5 years experience, it was almost like I was privy to a whole collection of information. You know what the research community has known for over 100 years which is that, A – type 2 diabetes is reversible and more than 80 percent of all cases. That’s very important to understand. Number 2 – you can reverse prediabetes, and type 2 diabetes, by dropping your fat and protein intake, and increasing your carbohydrate intake. That’s the way you do it. Number 3 – Carbohydrates are not your enemy, they never were the enemy, they never will be the enemy. And anybody who tells you that carbohydrate rich foods are the enemy, doesn’t understand science properly.
Cyrus: And having gone through this experience where I was now maximizing my insulin sensitivity, I thought to myself “I wonder if there’s a way where I can help other people?”. I started working with clients individually, that then became a small group at which point Robbie and I joined forces. And now we have created a large group coaching program, that now serves hundreds of people we have currently 800 plus people in our coaching program. And by the end of the year we’re hoping, how about 2000 people in our coaching program. And you know the story that Robby is telling you, the story that I’m telling you, which is that you eat more carbohydrate rich foods for less insulin, and less medication. It’s true in, oh I don’t know 95% or more of all the people (inaudible). And so it’s a really, it’s a really really really fun job. And it’s cool to watch people of all different shapes and sizes, and disease history. For the first time to be able to see such improvement in their overall health, dropped their own medications, lose weight, get off blood pressure medications, get off high cholesterol medications, and start to like live for the first time in many years.
Clint: That’s a fabulous story man, not just the personal side of it but their educational side of it and so on. And you know I love how you just went out, and just decided to research the heck out of it. Which I did informally when I got sick, because I have a you know laser physics background, and although I’ve done stand up comedy between laser in physics and getting sick. I decided to go back and just you know buy every book I could on digestion, enzymes, hydrochloric acid, arthritis and so on. So I did it informally, you’ve gone back and done a PHD and which I think is tremendous. And so what I want to do now, is just actually let’s break down the myths then of, what’s going on? You know you’ve gone and studied this, and we might hand back to Robbie and get him maybe to explain this to balance things out. What’s wrong with this at an atomic level? Why do we have to have low fat for example, what’s going on here?
Robby: Okay. So I’m gonna to give you a very basic answer, and I’m gonna turn you back to Cyrus to give you a more scientific answer. So you know when I’m talking on my own I give a certain answer. When I got Cyrus here with me, we go into the nitty gritty. So let the basic, basic thing, is that the reason a low fat diet is important. Is because, the underlying problem or challenge with all forms of diabetes is insulin resistance. So insulin resistance is the cause of type 2 diabetes and the cause of prediabetes. For people living with Type 1 diabetes, you can also be living with insulin resistance which makes it much more challenging to manage your blood glucose, keep your blood glucose in range like I was talking about. But also leads to increased chances of all the complications that are associated with type 1 diabetes. So all people living with diabetes, the number one killer is heart disease. They’re not dying of high blood glucose numbers, they’re dying of these other diseases mainly heart disease.
Robby: So the bottom line is, (inaudible) is caused by fat storage tissues that are not designed to store that. So that’s the basic summary of that Cyrus going some more about the muscle, the liver, and all that stuff.
Cyrus: Yeah for sure. Let me tell a quick story here. There was a great prepose here. When you eat, so regardless of whether you’re living with diabetes or not let’s just say Clint in your situation right. Your’e non-diabetic, you’re a healthy guy. If you start eating a diet that contains foods that are high in fat and or protein, right? And it turns out the fat and protein tend to travel together in food. So whether those foods are things like chicken, and beef, and eggs, or whether they’re foods like avocados, and olive oil, and lots of nuts and seeds right? Regardless if you’re eating a diet that’s higher in fat and higher in protein.
Cyrus: What ends up happening is that, mainly the fat comes in your mouth, that travels down your esophagus, it gets into your stomach. And then from that point it gets into your blood, it goes through small intestine into your blood. And now you have fatty acids that are that are circulating in blood. And the fatty acids end up getting deposited inside of your muscle and your liver in particular. they are two very large storage house of energy, and fatty acids can basically gain entrance to both of those tissues for free. The cellular mechanisms that prevent fatty acids from accumulating in those tissues, are very poor they’re very weak. And so as a result of that the more fat you eat, the more fat ends up inside of those tissues. Also fat ends up inside of your adipose tissue or your fat tissue. And if that tissue is located in your neck, it’s in your face, it’s in your abdomen, it’s in your butt, it’s everywhere. So fat basically gets partitioned to these 3 different tissues.
Cyrus: So, over the course of time as you continue to eat high fat high protein diet you get more lipid or more fat deposition inside of your muscle, more inside of your liver, more of your muscle, more of your liver. And at a certain point when those tissues have accumulated an excess amount of fatty acids, they go into a state called insulin resistance. And insulin resistance just think of it as like a protective mechanism. What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to block more energy from coming inside of the tissue. Fatty acids are very rich in energy. The problem is that they can’t really block fatty acids because like I told you earlier the mechanisms to block fatty acids from entering the tissues are pretty weak. So as a result of that they go okay I’m gonna try and block energy. The most effective way that I can block energy, is to tell insulin to go away.
Clint: Right.
Cyrus: It is because insulin is the most powerful anabolic hormone in your body. And what that means is that when insulin is present, insulin what it does is it basically tells tissues, it knocks on the door and says hey muscle, hey liver, I have this glucose, this is your opportunity to take it up, go. So when insulin is present then those tissues can then open their doors and let glucose come inside. So if the muscle and liver basically tell insulin to go away, the next time insulin knocks on the door and says Hey knock knock I got some glucose, the muscle liver sort of like mm not listening, don’t pay attention, don’t pay attention. And by doing that they basically prevent more glucose and more energy from coming up inside the tissue. So they’re effectively blocking more energy from coming in, right?
Cyrus: So here’s the problem. At that point in that state, if you’re going to eat a banana, you go eat a bowl of quinoa, you have some beans. The glucose, the carbohydrate energy from that food will get broken down into glucose. Glucose will enter your blood, your pancreas will secrete insulin, so now you have insulin and glucose together. The insulin will come a knock on the door say hey knock knock liver, muscle, I got some glucose want to take it up. And those tissues are basically like hey insulin sorry, you see what I have inside of me right now? I’m done, we’re closed for business, You go do something else. So the insulin doesn’t really work as well, insulin gets trapped in your blood. Glucose can’t get out of your blood so glucose gets trapped in your blood. And as a result of that you use a blood glucose meter, you check your blood glucose you look at it and the number is high. And you say oh look, that doesn’t make any sense I ate a banana now my blood glucose is high. It must be bananas fault, right?
Cyrus: So that’s what happens in the world of diabetes, people are constantly blaming the banana, and they’re blaming the potatoes. Because every time I eat those foods, my blood glucose goes high. The problem just like Robby was saying is that, insulin resistance is the problem. If you get rid of insulin resistance and allow those tissues to act as a giant net, such that when you do go eat a banana or you go eat a potato, then the glucose from those foods can enter the tissues. Then you can eat a very large quantity of those foods and your blood glucose stays nice and rock solid. So insulin resistance is like Robby said, the cause of prediabetes. It is the cause of type 2 diabetes. In other words, you cannot become type 2, you cannot become prediabetic, unless you have insulin resistance (inaudible) relationship. With people with type 1, what ends up happening is they develop Type 1 through an auto immune reaction that is not their fault it happens due to environmental conditions. Maybe there is a virus that you contracted, its something to do with the cows milk protein that you been eating from a young age. So you end up with an autoimmune condition.
Cyrus: At that point your doctor says, oh eat a low carbohydrate diet. You started eating a low carbohydrate diet, and then you actually eat yourself in to Type 2 diabetes. So you end up with type 1 and then you eat yourself and type 2 and you have what’s called Double diabetes. And that’s a huge problem, because now you’re living with insulin resistance, and you don’t make insulin. Now you got to use a ton of insulin from the outside world.
Clint: Right. Absolutely makes sense. And it comes at me a little easier because we have been over this in person. We’ve talked about this and I have read Neil Bernhard’s reversing diabetes which is a fabulous book. Which is a similar sort of explanation that you just gave, yours was you know just as rich and different in its own way.
Clint: But I remember the discussion that he put forward or the explanation which was that, insulin is like the key to unlock the cell to provide this sugar to go in. But when you’ve got insulin resistance, the cell cannot be unlocked and so the sugar cannot get into the cell and just keeps circulating. So it’s the same, just a different metaphor.
Cyrus: Exactly right.
Clint: Okay good. So let’s say, let’s imagine someone is sitting here on the edge of their seats saying my God this is what I’ve needed to know. So how did they make that transition that you made Cyrus, where you’ve gone from a high fat sort of conventional wisdom? But you need to get to the the Holy Grail outcome which is to be living with that condition and having wonderful life as if it’s just a small inconvenience like you got. That week or two, must be crucial how you transition across and maybe it goes a bit beyond the scope of of this call. But what’s the general, how do you get that balance right? Maybe, Robby you might want to take that one up.
Robby: Sure. So, it’s very nuance, and it’s something we’re very proud of in our coaching program. Is that we work with people on day to day nuance details, so it’s going to be different for each person. And we’re not just writing E-books, and making videos, and go do it yourself. We are there in the nitty gritty, and we love to work with people through that challenge, that transition.
Robby: So the general guidelines is that one thing we do is, we guide people through changing one meal all the time. And even when doing one or the time, they see improvements in their blood glucose numbers even if they just changed their breakfast. And sometimes, we do see challenging cases but you know what? We’re changing one meal all the time, and it’s not enough. And numbers maybe got worse because they’re really really you know terrible stuff at lunch and dinner and they’re already have a very fatty liver it’s a big problem. So in that case faster than we guided to okay hey wait a minute, we go a little bit deeper right away. And we got to let you know work hard and to do this together, and that’s where we start making the adjustments of adding in more non starchy vegetable in the transition phase. And so the glycemic index becomes useful at that point basically in that stage essentially. So more beans, more non starchy vegetables is not saying, you can’t add any fruit, or he don’t have any grapes. It’s more about if you’re going to eat grapes, make sure to keep them in a salad with a bunch of other vegetables and greens. And that meal now has a different glycemic impact on your blood glucose.
Clint: 100%, because it’s that it’s the sum total of the foods glycemic index that gives you the meals glycemic index doesn’t it?
Robby: Correct.
Clint: Yeah. Okay. This is this is awesome. All right. So now I imagine there is a graduation process that people go through. We’ve just been speaking now about that first few weeks that you guide people with. What’s the end goal? Where are people aiming for? And it might differ depending on which type they have. But I mean what’s the you know I have five phases in my program, preparation, cleanse, baseline or elimination, and then it is reintroduction of foods, and then finally a maintenance phase. Which is where I just, I have a completely diverse low fat, plant based diet. What’s the end goal for you guys? Where are you getting people to?
Cyrus: Okay. So great question. So I would say the end goal, kind a. Let’s put it this way. The end goal which can actually be somewhat difficult to measure admittedly. Is to get your insulin use, to what is considered a physiologically normal insulin use. So let me explain what that means. Clint, you have a functioning pancreas. Your, the beta cells in your pancreas manufacture insulin every single time you eat food. And in fact they’re might be manufacturing insulin sort of drip irrigating that into your blood all day long every single day in order to keep you glucose nice and stable.
Cyrus: So if we were to do an experiment on you to try to find out how many units of insulin your pancreas is producing on a daily basis, we would come up with a number. And that number would be relatively stable from day to day because I know how you eat. You’re very consistent in the foods that you put in your mouth, and as a result of that your insulin output is also nice and safe. So you’re physiologically normal amount of insulin, is the amount of insulin that your pancreas would produce if you were living a low fat, plant based wholefood, lifestyle. Whereby your risk for chronic diseases is nice and low. So it’s considered “healthy, normal physiological amount of insulin”. So you’re living with type 1 diabetes like Robby and myself. Most people come into our program living with type 1 diabetes whether injecting a lot of insulin. And again they’re injecting a lot of insulin because their insulin resistant.
Cyrus: So they come into our program, and they’re injecting let’s call it 40, 45, 50, 60 units of insulin per day. When in reality they’re physiologically normal target is closer to 25 to 30 units of insulin per day. So what we teach them over the course of time how transitioning their diet on a stepwise basis, brings their insulin use down, and down, down, down, down. And you think, okay well this is the biological system. It’s going to take a long time to get from 60 units all the way down to 30 units, that’s a 50 percent reduction. But what we generally see, is that people will end up dropping their insulin use pretty quickly right off the bat. So it’s not atypical to get something like a 20 percent reduction in insulin use in the first week. Like I said earlier I drop my insulin use by 40 percent in one week, in one week. Right? And so people usually make a big drop, and then the next step was drops, and drops, and drops, and drops, until they get to their physiological normal value. For someone who’s not injecting insulin, you can’t measure how much insulin your pancreas is producing.
Cyrus: So in that situation we use indirect measures. And the indirect measures are number 1. are you at your ideal body weight? Okay. We give you a calculator that says, based off on your height, based off of your sex, this is your ideal your body weight. Only when you get to this body weight is your actual insulin sensitivity maximized. If you’re anything above this body weight you are defacto more and more insulin resistant.
Cyrus: So as an example of your target body weight is 175 pounds, and you’re 210 pounds. Then that extra 35 pounds, is adding more insulin resistance onto tissues. So you know you started 210 you drop, you drop, drop, you get to about 175 lbs. At that point that’s indicator number one, that you’re producing the physiologically normal amount of insulin. Number 2. If you’re taking any other oral medications, let’s say you’re taking high blood pressure medication, you’re taking high cholesterol medication. Those medications your need is going to go down over time as your body weight comes down, and as you’re insulin sensitivity goes up. So medication use tends to drop, energy levels go through the roof, and then when somebody goes back to their doctor to get their A1C value measured. Which is their you know their marker of average blood glucose over the past three months. Your A1C has a very specific range that you’re trying to achieve. In order to be classified as nondiabetic, it has to be 5.7 or below. In order to be classified as prediabetic, is basically 5.7 to 6.4. And then anything beyond 6.4, means you have type 2 diabetes. So let’s say you start with an A1C value of 8, which is not uncommon. We want to get your A1C from 8 down to 7, down to 6, down to below 5.7.
Cyrus: If we can do that, normalize your body weight, get you on medications, and then also lastly make sure that you’re active on a daily basis. Then chances are, your pancreas is secreting the physiologically normal amount of insulin. And then you’re good to go, continue the lifestyle, and it’ll continue for the end of time.
Clint: It’s amazing isn’t it? It’s awesome.
Robby: (inaudible) just brief active one important point Cyrus was talking about. One of the big things we do at mastering diabetes, we reverse insulin resistance (inaudible) diabetes. And Cyrus talks about this often in his lectures, of insulin resistance being linked to so many other conditions. So I (inaudible) you wanna talk about that long list, but I know you have that whole reel in you slides.
Cyrus: Yes. So briefly. Insulin resistance is a central node. So think about it as like, the centre of a wheel. And on the outside of that wheel you have practically every other chronic disease that you can think of. Whether it’s high cholesterol, hypertension, said type 2 diabetes, cancer, erectile dysfunction, atherosclerosis, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, yada yada yada you can keep going all around this wheel. Point being is that, if you target the root cause of metabolic damage and cellular dysfunction, which is insulin resistance. You bring that down, and you become insulin sensitive. Then the symptoms of all these other conditions also tend to go away.
Cyrus: You know we’ve had people come into our program with rheumatoid arthritis. Within 2 months, their rheumatoid arthritis is gone. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer. We’ve had people come out with osteoarthritis, gone. High blood pressure, gone. Coronary artery disease, gone. Cognitive decline, gone. Right? So these are all very important metrics of overall health that are directly linked to insulin resistance.
Clint: Yeah. It’s similar to what I witness as well. Whereas instead of targeting insulin resistance, we target the restoration of the digestive system. And that’s what we’ve got in our mind is when we’re trying to achieve this. And the reason that we are targeting low fat is because, fat increases intestinal permeability. And when we’re having an increased intestinal permeability then we’re getting more of the problematic proteins entering the bloodstream. Which is then causing the immune system which is, got this innocent confusion to attack the joints when it sees these problematic proteins to kick into gear. And so by targeting healing the gut, which reduces the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, we also see all those other things. Now I can’t claim to have seen all of those other things reduced because I have not seen some of those in clients. But certainly common other problems like gout, or tiredness, or you know the type 2 diabetes is a classic example relevant to what we’re talking about, also to resolve. So what’s fundamental again between both of our approaches is that it’s all plants, it’s low in fat, and that it’s whole foods. And it’s whether or not you’re targeting healing the gut or targeting insulin resistance, you get these phenomenal life changing improvements across the entire spectrum. And that’s why it’s like, just ridiculously awesome. And you feel, you know you feel very passionate and excited about talking about it because it’s not like we’re on to some fad here or this is some kind of latest thing. This is like true health because Nature is providing the healing.
Cyrus: 100%. There’s this phrase that one of the doctors that we know Dr. Gibson he says, you can’t heal your body selectively, can’t do it. Right? And you can say oh I’m going to eat this way because I’m going to try and reverse diabetes, and that couldn’t easily happen. But in the process, you’re also going to improve your digestive status. You’re probably going to improve your ability to think, you’re probably going to completely transform your microbiome, probably going to become a lot more energy etc etc.. So all these processes unfold, and you can’t sit there and choose one of them because they’re all going to happen likely at the same time.
Clint: I got one question for you before we wrap up. Both you guys are physically fit. Cyrus looks like you try and maintain like a body that will impress your woman for the rest of your life. Now but I notice both you guys a lot of fruit, now when I was in my raw food days. So I went through a period where I only ate raw plant food so you know nothing cooked whatsoever. And most of my calories came from soaked raw almonds, and soaked raw macadamias, and soaked pumpkin seeds, and stuff. I just no matter what I did I couldn’t gain my weight back that I had lost by doing so. And no matter how many calories I would count calories and sometimes go into the 4000 some days but I still couldn’t gain weight when I was trying to workout and stuff. Now both of you I’d like your answers on this, with a lot of fruit intake. How do you keep the muscles and strength on? Or is it if I’d fallen into the same stupid trap that many people do. What am I missing? There must be, what’s going on there?
Robby: I’m gonna let Cyrus answer that muscle part, because (inaudible). But I just want to make it clear that the you’re describing what would be called a high fat raw food diet.
Clint: Okay yup.
Robby: So it’s completely different than the type of fruit based approach that some people on our program could follow. (inaudible) program is not a raw food program, it’s not an only fruit program obviously. But if somebody wants to do a raw food diet appropriately, they would have a very minimal amount. So we at mastering diabetes define a low fat diet as a maximum of 15 percent of calories coming from fat or, a general guideline is no more than 30 grams of total fat. So that, so you’re eating all those nuts procedure automatically going above that. So you know when do it we were getting our calories from whole foods, not very minimal nuts and seeds. So I’ll let Cyrus answer the muscle part.
Clint: Yeah sorry before Cyrus jumps in. I wasn’t suggesting that, that was as just something I tried and failed even when I was eating a lot of fat. I just couldn’t, couldn’t get there. And I thought you know, getting it, maybe you know it’s unnecessary depth on this but. What I notice is when I would then eat dry roasted nuts vs soaked raw nuts, I was able to get much more traction with my weight gain. But of course dry roasted nuts are much more advanced when you’re trying to heal something like rheumatoid than the soaked raw nuts because they are activated, and the fats become fatty acids and so on. It’s all getting complicated. But what I want to know basically how were you ripped Cyrus? How do you do it?
Cyrus: So when I first became a vegan back in 2003 or a plant based eater, I also was raw because the guru that I was learning from at the time he basically has a raw food you know instructor. So that’s what I did, It worked like a charm. So for 14 years I was eating nothing but raw fruits and vegetables all day long. And I felt fantastic and I got no complaints with it. And what ended up happening was that somewhere along the way I decided that I wanted to eat more potatoes, and more squash, and more beans, and more lentils. So by choice I decided that I’m going to start eating all the more cooked food. And so my diet right now consist of primarily raw, and a little bit of cooked here and there.
Cyrus: But in that process of eating a raw food diet, I noticed the exact same thing that you noticed Clint. Which is that no matter how much I ate, no matter how many bananas, how many mangoes, how many pieces of a papaya I put in my body. I could not gain weight, I could not, I was having a difficult time maintaining my weight. And I was frustrated because I was like this whole you know energy in, energy out, equation just doesn’t seem to be working right? So when I analyze my diet what I noticed was that my protein intake, on a raw food diet was actually something like you know 6 to 7 to 8 % of total calories. And like what Robby was saying is that you know what we try to teach people to do is eat a maximum of 15% And so I said to myself listen I’m going to do an experiment I want to see if protein really is that important, which a lot of people would tell you the truth. What if, I started eating something like a protein supplement. So I went and I did a whole bunch of research and I found that hemp could be a good alternative.
Cyrus: So I literally bought a hemp protein powder at the store. Then I started incorporating that into my diet, by doing so on my protein intake went from like 6 to 7 % of my total calories. Upwards of like 10, 11, 12, 13, sometimes close to 15 %. So I think it did double my protein intake. By doing that, boom! I noticed immediately that my, I was getting a lot more bang for my buck. I would still go out and exercise, I would do a lot of resistance based movements, I would go to the gym, I would work out. And instead of feeling like I couldn’t weight maintain, all of a sudden boom! I was building shoulders, I was building triceps, I was building abs, I was building a chest.
Cyrus: And so by changing my protein intake, and increasing that proportion of total calories against the protein, that’s where I got the effect. So if you choose to be a raw foodie which I again completely advocate. Think about what’s your total proportion of calories from protein. If it’s down beneath 10 %, I would suggest increasing it to between 10 and 15 %. And again you can do it through some kind of hemp based protein powder would be my recommendation. But if you’re eating a cooked food diet, it’s actually easier to meet that 10 to 15 % requirement. Because by eating cooked food, you can eat beans, you can eat lentils, you can eat quinoa. And just by incorporating those three foods into your diet, your protein content will go up. And so if you choose to be a cooked food vegan, just eat more beans, eat more lentils, eat more quinoa, boom you’re there. And you should be able to not only gain mass, but keep that mass on.
Clint: Yeah Beautiful. Well sounds like I found out what was gone wrong during the raw food days. And now you know my diet consists of lots of lentils, lots of beans, with rice is most often the base behind those kind of meals. Obviously quinoa here and there. And quinoa has a very big portion of our the early parts of our program. So people are getting lots of protein in that format the cooked format and I’ve covered that a lot in other episodes. That’s. Yeah. Awesome voice. Well this has been sensational. So who’s the sort of clientele that’s most benefits from your program? And where should they go to learn more about it?
Cyrus: Okay you know whether you, it doesn’t matter what type of diabetes you have. You could be living with Type 1, Type 1/2 which is adult onset type 1, prediabetes, type 2 diabetes. If you have any type of diabetes there visit www.masteringdiabetes.org. Okay, and that’s your starting point. If you go into the nav bar you can click on coaching, and you can learn about our process. In our process we provide you with an online course that teaches you exactly what to do. We give you a Facebook community that’s very strong, that enables you to share your experience and learn from other people. And then every twice per month we have a large group video conferences, where you can bring your specific concerns to us and we can work with you in a large group format. We also have small group coaching, where we give you more of a much closer focus. We also have private coaching as well. So depending on the level of attention that you need, and how much direct access you want to Robby and I, there’s multiple options. So if that’s something that you know anybody from your audience is interested in participating in, go learn about it, and see if ot’s right thing for you because. You know we get a tremendously high success rate something between 85 and 93 % success, and it’s really fun, fun process.
Robby: And I just want to add, that for any of our programs that you sign up or whether it’s a large group, a small group, of the private anyone. We, our Facebook group, our is so powerful and we answer questions within 24 hours, that’s our key. We are there with you every step of the way. So we talked about earlier, somebody comes on the program. There’s, maybe their concern the transition phase it seems high above this, they don’t what to do. Like, we are gonna be with you every single step of the way, every day. Hour over often you want to ask questions 365 days a year. We are just so passionate of this, we love it. We just want nothing more than people to succeed, and get results that we know they can if they apply the program properly and know what to do.
Clint: Yeah nothing beats having someone to guide you who’s been through it or is living it themselves. And that’s why you guys offer something that is so unique to people with diabetes because rewind 10 years, and it’s a wasteland there’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to learn. It’s just confusing information online. And in fact even to this day, you know I made a comment on a YouTube video the other day. There’s someone who’s done a TED talk, and this particular female speaker has like a I guess like I forget it but you know upwards of 500000 video views and that’s all the information that you discredited at the start of this conversation. And everyone underneath it is like this is this should be like you know taught in schools, and everything and it’s like no it’s the absolute wrong stuff. You know what I mean? And so finding, you guys like the narrow path through the mountain for people with diabetes and again to draw parallels to what I do. Anyone who is familiar with how I operate, what I teach and so forth. You’ve got an outstanding, comparable platform to work with these guys over at mastering diabetes. So thank you so much guys. And I look forward to continuing staying in touch with you guys for a long time. Love your energy, love what you’re doing. Thanks so much for coming on this episode.
Cyrus: Thank you Clint. We really appreciate the opportunity, and you know you’re transforming lives just like us and we hope that over the course of time you can increase your exposure. You can increase the number of clients you work with and we’re doing the exact same thing.
Robby: Everything sounds good. Thank you so much.