Debunking Dieting Myths with Dietitian Cassie

Trevor:                 Hi there. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates, and today we are debunking dieting myths. My guest is known by her fans and followers as Dietitian Cassie. She’s a globally recognized leader in weight loss, highly sought-after speaker, and international bestselling author. For more than a decade, her methodology used in her worldwide coaching program has helped tens of thousands of men and women identify the missing puzzle pieces, the real reasons for their weight issues, and guide them through her step-by-step process to address those factors and put the pieces back together.

From major corporate speaking events and personal client coaching, to her regular column, Real Talk with Dietitian Cassie in Paleo Magazine, Cassie and her team of dietitians help people find freedom from diets and chronic health conditions. There’s a good chance you’ve seen her in the media, like on TV, CBS, ABC, CNN, TIME, or in Cosmopolitan, SELF, Shape, Women’s Health, Men’s Health, or The Huffington Post. In today’s interview, we discuss diet myths and what diet changes really help people actually lose weight, feel great, and have glowing skin. Please enjoy this interview with Dietitian Cassie. Cassie, it’s so great to have you on my podcast.

Cassie:                  Thanks, Trevor. I’m so excited.

Trevor:                 Yeah. I want to start off with you explaining with everyone, what makes you different than the typical registered, licensed dietitian?

Cassie:                  Hmm, that’s such a great question because when I was in school to be a dietitian, I was taught so many things that most dietitians are teaching these days that just didn’t make sense to me. What I practice and know to be true now is so different than what I learned back then. Really, the biggest thing is that we learned that weight loss and being healthy was a matter of just food and just calories, and that we just needed to burn more, exercise more, and eat less in order to lose weight and be our best self. I found out the hard way that it doesn’t work that way.

For me, in dietitian school, when this should have been the time when I was really connecting all the dots and figuring out what was going on with my own health, that was actually the time in my life when I was the most defeated, the heaviest. I actually gained weight as I continued to follow all of the information that I was being taught in dietitian school. I find that that’s the case with so many women. They feel frazzled and defeated and like failures because they’ve tried everything they can to lose weight, and nothing seems to work. That’s what happens when we believe what unfortunately a lot of healthcare practitioners, dietitians included, are teaching. Things like, “It’s all about calories. Just eat less calories. Just move more. Eat low-fat.” None of that really works for anyone, and I experienced that myself when I was in dietitian school and trying to lose weight and follow all of these dieting rules. Instead of losing weight, which is what I was trying to do, I was just losing more self-worth and self-confidence, and feeling more defeated than I ever had in my entire life.

Trevor:                 Yeah, I know I’ve seen your before and after pictures. I imagine a lot of women, a lot of us, can identify with your journey of where you kind of … or maybe they are where you were, because a lot of times we think … Because you’re small-framed so you were never huge, right? But you weren’t what you are now. I mean, now you’re just this rock-solid, just fitness queen. You’re so amazing. It’s great to see what’s possible. Look at your before and after pictures. Like it’s great to see what’s possible for people. What shifted things in your mind, or what happened for you on your journey that then has helped you be able to help other people?

Cassie:                  Yeah, good question. I’m glad that you mentioned that too, that I wasn’t like super overweight or obese. The freshman 15 ended up really being the freshman 25 for me. What we see with a lot of our clients is they say they only have 10 or 15 pounds to lose, but they know that this 10, 15, maybe 20 pounds is weighing on them in so many ways, more than just physically, I mean, emotionally and mentally, and it’s affecting everything they do every single day. Sometimes they even feel guilty about this, because it’s not that much weight, it’s only 10 or 15 pounds, but it is affecting them a lot. That’s one thing that I really believe is that no one needs to have an extra 5, 10, 15, 20, whatever it is, pounds on their bodies when that’s not how our bodies were created to be. We’re not supposed to be holding on to this extra weight, and it happens as a result of following flawed information.

I’m so glad that you asked how did I figure this out, and what happened for me, because I think what really happened for me is I started to feel like I was flawed, like there’s something wrong with me. Like everyone else, it seems like other people would follow the calorie-counting approach, and they’d eat low-fat and they’d lose weight and maybe keep it off. For me, I felt like it must just be something wrong with me. What I learned was, it wasn’t me that was flawed, it was the information that I was given. So many people feel like they’re doing the right things and not seeing results, or like what happened with me is I ended up getting fatter and sicker, and my energy levels were dropping, and I ended up in this way worse-off place.

What I did was I put on my detective cap and I really dug into the research, just because that’s something that I like to do. I wanted to see, what did the research actually have to say about calories, and fat, and cholesterol, and weight loss, and all these topics that I was learning? I was so shocked because what I found was that everything that I was being taught in dietitian school wasn’t even research-based. The low-fat diet just came out in the 1970s as a result of a couple flawed studies, and they thought it would help with heart health. What ended up happening is everyone started eating that way because products on the market were just suddenly labeled “low-fat.” It kind of makes sense when you think about it. You would think that eating fat would make you fat. That concept makes sense, and that drives me nuts because I wish that fat was called like energy, or vitality, or something like that, because when we think about it, it makes sense, but it’s not actually how it works scientifically and biochemically in the body.

When I started really digging into these findings I was like, “Oh my gosh, everything that I’m being taught is not even true.” Then I also realized that the whole dietitian industry is based on funding from big corporations like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, and General Mills. I was like, “How convenient. The entire system is backwards.” That’s when I got really, really frustrated, and decided it was time to take matters into my own hands and do some experimenting on myself and on some of my friends and family who had also been following all these dieting rules and gaining weight. Really for me, that’s when I changed the entire way that I was eating and living, and I started seeing complete results. I mean, the weight that I had gained came off effortlessly, my energy levels went up, and that was a result of eating more and eating foods that had been off-limits for me for so long, and basically doing the opposite of what I was taught in dietitian school.

Trevor:                 Yeah. I know that one of the big things with dietitians is the food pyramid. That has changed fairly recently, right? How do you feel about the food pyramid?

Cassie:                  Well, the food pyramid is really based on carbohydrates. It’s like the entire bottom of the pyramid. What we know to be true about carbohydrates … The reason it’s like that is because when we in that low-fat mindset, if we replace fat, we’re going to replace it with carbs. There’s three macronutrients: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Generally protein intake stays about the same. It’s hard to eat a lot of protein. It’s usually the fat and the carbs that are shifting. What happens is, when we eat low-fat, we eat high-carb. Really that food pyramid, the whole bottom half is carbohydrates, it’s really a high-carbohydrate diet.

What happens with carbohydrates … I don’t think carbohydrates are just bad in general. That being said, all carbohydrates turn to sugar the second they hit your bloodstream. When we’re eating a lot of carbohydrates, and I’m not just talking about things like sugar, and cookies, and soda, bread, rice, pasta, even fruits and vegetables, which are good carbohydrates and I encourage those, they all turn to sugar the instant they hit our bloodstream. Then what happens is that your pancreas releases insulin to take that sugar to your cells to be stored for use later, and that sugar is actually what’s stored as fat. Fat’s not stored as fat. We always explain to our clients, it’s actually that sugar that’s stored as fat if you don’t use it right away. The problem is, most of us are eating so many carbohydrates it’s like we’re carbo-loading, if you’ve ever heard that term that distance runners use before a marathon. They eat a lot of carbohydrates because they burn them for quick energy, but most of us aren’t running marathons every day, nor should we be. It’s like we’re carbo-loading, but then we never actually need to tap into those carbohydrate stores, so it ends up just turning into fat in our body. We do that every single day, and that’s why when we’ve followed the low-fat diet, as we’ve been following that, our weight has just gone up over the years, because we’re just storing fat. We’re in fat-storing mode.

The hormone that I love, that we all want to be best friends with, is called glucagon. It’s the opposite of insulin, and they can’t coexist. It’s one or the other. Glucagon is your fat-burning hormone. When you have insulin always working and trying to store sugar as fat, you’re not going to have glucagon working for you burning fat for energy. What we want to do is we want to put insulin, like let him take a break and go sit on the sidelines so we can have glucagon working for us and burning fat for energy. The way we do this is by keeping our blood sugar levels nice and stable. When we’re eating a high-carbohydrate diet, which is what that food pyramid is, or when you eat a low-fat diet you’re automatically eating a high-carbohydrate diet, that keeps you on this blood sugar roller coaster, where your blood sugar levels spike when you eat those carbs, and they drops. Roller coasters are fun for a few minutes, but not all day long.

The number one tip, if there’s just one takeaway of this entire conversation so far, is to eat more fat, because that’s going to keep you off that blood sugar roller coaster, because fat acts as a buffer for the carbohydrates that you eat. It slows down their absorption and assimilation in the body. When your blood sugar levels are stable, that’s when glucagon, that fat-burning hormone, can come out and work for you. I’m talking about good, healthy fats. We’re not just talking about olive oil, like most dietitians. We’re talking about butter, if you can tolerate it. Very few people are sensitive to butter, so butter is a great option. Ghee is also a great option. That’s clarified butter. Coconut oil, coconut milk, avocados, of course olive oil, olives, nuts, seeds, these are all the good, healthy fats that support your metabolism.

Trevor:                 Right. Yeah. When you said, “Eat more fat. Just eat more fat,” I could imagine people like [inaudible 00:11:23] like, “I get a jar of lard and just start spooning it in, or …” No, because you want to … Moderation is … It also depends on where people are, but certainly those kinds of fats that you mentioned, I think most people probably could eat more of those.

Cassie:                  Yeah, I think so. We’re talking about usually we start with a couple tablespoons at every meal and every snack. We’re not talking about just eating an entire stick of butter or container of lard, but having it throughout the day. The key is having a couple tablespoons every time you eat, because that’s what’s going to help keep your blood sugar levels nice and stable. You don’t want to eat it all at once either. That might be in my smoothie this morning, I put a half of an avocado in there. Sometimes I’ll put a couple tablespoons of nut butter on my sliced apple and have that with a hard-boiled egg for a snack. You’re just getting in like a couple tablespoons, but you’re doing that every single time you eat.

That’s the key, because that’s when we get that turbo fat-burning hormone called glucagon to come out, and that’s actually what gives us energy during the day too. Oftentimes, we see when people are struggling with their weight, they’re also struggling with rock-bottom energy levels. That’s because when your metabolism isn’t turned on, your energy levels are low too. When your metabolism’s turned on, that means you’re burning through all the food. Anything that you’re taking in your body, anything that you’re eating, you body’s actually using it, so you get better energy levels, and that’s when pounds come off more easily too.

Trevor:                 Yeah. I know we started off here talking about your before and after pictures and how you were able to lose weight and help other people, but certainly eating healthy is not about just what you see on the outside. It’s so much of really what’s going on inside, and having more energy, feeling better, having better clarity, and having better emotional balance. All of these things, protecting your cardiovascular health, and your blood sugar, and preventing diabetes, and those sorts of things, these are all key. What we see on the outside, what we see as far as excess fat or skin issues, is really just something else that’s out of balance that we need to address. Diet, getting kind of this balance in diet and not getting stuck on the old-fashioned kind of model, is really one of the keys that helps people. Don’t you agree with that?

Cassie:                  Yeah, definitely. I’m glad that you mentioned that too, because with skin, I mean, I think skin is a great indicator of how our body is functioning on the inside. When someone comes to us, when we have a client come to us with eczema, psoriasis, rashes, bumps, itchiness, dryness, anything like that, my first thought is, “That’s an inflammatory response, so what’s happening on the inside?” because that’s really what we want to look at. Sometimes it’s a reflection of digestive weakness. Sometimes it’s that they’re consuming …

Too much sugar is a big thing, and that goes back to what I was saying with the carbohydrates. I mean, you don’t have to just be eating boxes of cookies or bags of chips all day long to be consuming too much sugar. We see this in our clients who have been eating pasta, maybe pasta for dinner, a sandwich for lunch, a bowl of cereal for breakfast. What happens when they’re getting all those processed carbohydrates and sugar is that’s causing inflammation that a lot of times can manifest itself on the outside. That could be what the skin conditions is, is trying to tell us that there’s something going on in the inside. The thing with inflammation is you can’t feel it and you can’t see it, so you don’t always know that that’s there, but we know it’s there when there’s something happening on the outside. That’s like your body’s SOS response. It’s like, “Hey, something’s going on in here that we need to fix.”

Trevor:                 A lot of people talk about, it’s very popular, “I want to go gluten-free.” A lot of us believe that gluten can be one of those big trigger foods. Now a lot of people are going for these gluten-free alternatives. You can walk into Costco or into big grocery stores and there’ll be a whole gluten-free section. How do you feel about this movement of like gluten-free grain this or that, crackers and breads and muffins? It’ll still fit into the food pyramid.

Cassie:                  I have mixed feelings about it because … Being gluten-sensitive is a real thing, and a lot of people are sensitive to gluten. We see that a lot with skin conditions. Food sensitivities often show themselves in the appearance in our skin, and we see a lot of clients, when they cut out dairy and/or gluten, they find their skin clearing up and looking better than ever. At the same time, I know that it can be difficult to just completely remove, for instance, gluten, if you’re used to eating things like bread and pasta all day long. Or even cookies and crackers and things like that, while they’re not healthy, it can be a really big switch for people.

I like these gluten-free products. Processed foods is really what they are. I like them as like a bridge, like helping people get from a place of having gluten in their diet to not having gluten, but the thing is, we don’t need them, and they’re not healthy. Actually, a lot of times the gluten-free products can have more sugar and more additives than the non-gluten-free ones because they’re trying to add something in place of the gluten, and they want them to still taste good. I think the problem is when we think that they’re actually healthy just because they’re gluten-free. The reality is, eating real, whole food … When I talk about eating real foods, I’m talking about … PFC is a term that I coined that refers to protein, fat, and carbohydrate, so those macronutrients. Every time we eat, we want to make sure we’re eating some protein, some healthy fat, and some carbohydrates. It’s naturally gluten-free when you focus on those real food carbohydrate, so vegetables and fruits, and then the healthy fats that I mentioned, coconut oil, avocado, butter, ghee, olive oil, and then for protein, meat, fish, eggs, keeping that simple. Eating that way is naturally gluten-free, so we have no requirement for bread, grains, pasta, even the gluten-free ones.

I think that’s where it gets a little tricky is we see people actually think they’re healthy. Just because they’re gluten-free doesn’t mean they’re healthy. And at the same time, I do think it’s good to not eat gluten, because gluten can be really inflammatory. Nobody needs gluten, so personally if I were to go have a piece of bread, I would make sure it was a gluten-free piece of bread. That said, I don’t really need the piece of bread, so personally I would much rather have a banana or an apple than a piece of bread for my carbohydrate.

Trevor:                 Right. Right. I think that so often … We certainly saw it when the low-fat craze went crazy in, what was that, early ’90s, ’80s. Then what we saw was there’d be low-fat packaging. Everything said, “Low-fat this,” and then it just add more sugar.

Cassie:                  Yes.

Trevor:                 It’s like sugar is the answer. When these things kind of happen, the packaging will say, “Gluten-free,” but like you said, there was oftentimes more sugar in it. There was still processed foods. I think the biggest takeaway that you and I probably agree on is that it’s nice that they’re there and to have an occasional treat, it’s okay, but don’t become too dependent upon those types of foods. Don’t do all your shopping there.

Cassie:                  Totally. Yeah, I completely agree. Like you said, when we were focusing on eating low-fat, our fat intake went down, but our sugar intake went up. That’s when our weight went up too. If we look at the research, ever since the 1970s … Not only did our weight go up, but occurrence of cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes, and cancer, all of these diseases went up. Something happened when we started eating a lot more sugar in place of fat. I think that’s why my favorite number one action tip is to start eating more fat, because also, we crave less sugar. Because what happens when we’re riding that blood sugar roller coaster is that when we eat sugar or carbohydrates, our blood sugar levels spike. Then when they crash, that’s when we crave. Your brain is like, “Oh my gosh, I need sugar.” That’s when you crave sugar so much that you feel like there’s nothing you can do. When your brain tells you you need something, you do it. That’s when we go to the coffee shop and we get the mocha and the muffin, or we go to the vending machine, and we feel like it’s not even a choice. Our clients say that all the time. They’re like, “It doesn’t even feel like me. It doesn’t even feel like a choice.” That’s because they’re riding that blood sugar roller coaster, and when they crash, that’s when they crave.

When you eat healthy fat, just a couple tablespoons every time you eat, your blood sugar levels are stable, and you don’t hit those lows where you feel like you need sugar. That’s how we get off of riding that blood sugar roller coaster, which is just that vicious cycle that so many of us get stuck in, where we feel like we need sugar. The great thing about getting off of that is, number one, you feel more in control of your life. If you have pounds to lose, they come off easily, and you’re not putting yourself at risk for all these different diseases that are a result of inflammation. Sugar is the culprit of inflammation. I like to think of it like little pieces of glass that are just cutting up our insides when we consume it. It’s better. Fat I like to think of is it’s so lubricating and healing, it’s actually like repairing all of those little patches that have been nicked on the inside.

Trevor:                 Yeah. I definitely feel like sugar is such a big skinflammation trigger I call it, an inflammatory trigger. Certainly, we have seen those. You see the diagrams of the United States. If you see a map of the United States and you see the areas of obesity in the United States, it’s grown significantly since that time. I believe that a lot of that’s sugar. I also think that we’re exposed to a lot more toxins now than we used to. Over time, we are getting more and more of those in our environment and in our food, water, and air, our personal care products. I think that’s also a big trigger for that too, and then that can create also issues with insulin and a lot of [inaudible 00:21:26] things too.

Cassie:                  Totally. And stress too. I mean, everyone is stressed out. Most of us brush it off like it’s no big deal. We live in a society where being stressed out is viewed as the equivalent of being a productive, valuable, contributing citizen. If you’re Superwoman both at home and at the office, it’s not surprising if your waistline and your health is paying the price for it, because we find that with stress, it can sabotage all of our healthy eating efforts. This is just the craziest, mind-blowing concept for our clients is that they can be doing all the right things when it comes to food and exercise, and they’re sleeping well, and they’ve got all these things in place, but when they’re stressed out, stress slashes everything by triggering our hormone cortisol, which causes your blood sugar levels to rise.

Going back to that whole blood sugar analogy, basically this means that any time you’re stressed out, it’s like you’re eating bags and bags of cookies and chips all day long, except you’re not even eating any of those things, because cortisol literally causes your blood sugar levels to rise without you even eating any sugar. Then you suffer from those similar effects, that inflammation, and causing insulin, your fat-storing hormone, to come out and do its job of transporting that sugar to your blood stream. That’s how you can actually gain weight when you’re stressed, independent of your nutrition, without even eating any more, less, or differently, and keeping in mind that for a lot of people, when they’re stressed, stress eating happens. That on top of the cortisol response, that’s why people just pack on pounds when they’re stressed, or they’re trying so hard to lose weight but they’re so stressed out, sometimes even about losing the weight that’s not happening, that it just compounds and it doesn’t happen.

Trevor:                 Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. Yep. All of it adds up. Then we also, you and I were talking about before we started recording about the importance of gut health and how that plays a role in our health, and then really is one of the big things that helps our skin too.

Cassie:                  Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that’s such a huge piece of the puzzle for so many people. A lot of people think that gut health is just for digestion, bloating, gas, and if they don’t have any digestive issue that it doesn’t really matter, but we find that gut health is the cornerstone for everything. It does so much more than just digesting your food. I mean, it definitely has an impact on whether or not you’re going to be losing weight, whether or not you’re going to be craving sugar or alcohol, and also your skin, because gut health, when your gut is inflamed, oftentimes that shows up on your skin, whether it’s acne or eczema, or rosacea, or psoriasis.

We know that practically everything is connected to our gut, including our energy levels and your cravings, because your gut is actually where your metabolism starts. A lot of people don’t realize this, that your neurotransmitters, your brain chemicals that determine whether or not you crave sugar, they’re actually made in your gut. If we have poor gut health, not only might we see skin conditions appearing on the outside, we might also be having compelling cravings for sugar. Even if we’re eating the healthy fat, like I just mentioned was a great first step for getting rid of sugar cravings, if you do that but your gut health isn’t up to par, then you’re probably going to still crave sugar because your body’s not producing the neurotransmitters that you need to not crave sugar.

This kind of goes back to even what I was saying with stress. I mean, again, you can eat all the right foods, but if your gut health isn’t up to par, then what your body’s doing is it’s trying to put all of its efforts and resources into healing your gut, and that takes away from doing what you want it to do, which is probably great energy levels and keeping you at a healthy weight. Gut health is really a critical starting point for getting you on the fast track with anything, energy, glowing skin, weight loss, great focus. Whatever it is, we always start with the gut.

Trevor:                 Right. What do you do with your clients to help them with their gut health?

Cassie:                  Yeah. We kind of have like a three-pronged approach where the first thing that we want to do is remove anything that’s causing inflammation. That might be sugar, processed foods, stress, anything that you’re sensitive to or allergic to. It might be gluten, it might be dairy. Then what we want to do is want to heal the gut. We want to take out anything that is causing inflammation, and then we want to heal the inflammation that might already be there.

We do that in a couple ways. The first is definitely plenty of healthy fat, so a couple tablespoons every meal, like we talked about, of those healthy, healing fats. Then the other thing that we do is we add in a few key supplements. We use probiotics, we use glutamine, and we use fish oil. We find that probiotics help to really crowd out all the bad bacteria. They’re healthy, good bacteria. Then glutamine helps to heal the thin lining of the digestive track and maintain that structural integrity of the digestive track, any inflammation going on in there. Fish oil is just good for overall inflammation. When we add in those three key supplements, along with taking out the triggers, then the third … I said it was a three-pronged approach. The third prong is being patient and consistent, because just like the damage in inflammation didn’t happen overnight, it’s not going to heal overnight either. It’s really important to give your body time to do its job, and to heal it and support it along the way.

Trevor:                 Yeah. Perfect. All right. Well, I love that we’ve covered so much in a short amount of time, but I want to give you some time to talk about how people can find out more about you and what you’re up to.

Cassie:                  Awesome. Thanks, Trevor. Dietitiancassie.com. That’s where the party starts. We covered a few metabolism-boosting tips today. If you head over to dietitiancassie.com/freegift, you can grab my free guide. It’s got 5.5 metabolism boosters, and a secret half tip in the guide we didn’t talk about today, and that’s a real doozy. You might be surprised by that one. You can head over and grab your free guide.

Trevor:                 Awesome. That’s great. We’ll put the link up below your interview on the website. Cassie, thank you so much for your information today. So great to see you. We’re going to be seeing each other soon at a particular festival that I’ll be seeing you at. I look forward to that. Take care.

Cassie:                  Thanks, Trevor.

Trevor:                 I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dietitian Cassie. To learn more about Cassie and the information that she mentioned in the interview, you can go to thespadr.com. Go to the podcast page with her interview, and you’ll see all the information and links there. We also have the transcriptions there, so if you want to download those and read through them, you can do that also. While you’re there, I invite you to join The Spa Dr. community. Find out more about what we have with other podcasts and blogs. You could also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. If you haven’t done so already, I’d highly recommend you go to TheSkinQuiz.com and get your free customized skin evaluation. Find out what’s holding you back from clear, glowing, youthful-looking skin naturally. Find out the root causes and what you can do about it. Just go to TheSkinQuiz.com. It’s free. Just takes a few minutes to take this quiz and get more information. Also, join me on social media, on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and join the conversation. I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.