Episode #3 The Primal Show with Former FDA Investigator & Author Gary Collins & CEO Of Julian Bakery, Inc. Heath Squier talk to Dan Lombardi from Primal4Life about how he manages his autoimmune disease with Primal/Paleo eating. We also talk more about Dan’s dramatic weigh loss and how to change Paleo recipes found in almost all cookbooks to be low carb / keto.
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Full Transcript Of Interview Below:
Heath Squier: Welcome to the Primal Show, with Gary Collins, Heath Squier, and today’s guest Dan Lombardi. He has done over 600 Julien Bakery recipes. He is one of, I think, the best bloggers out there in regards to recipes, but I’m a little biased since…
[crosstalk]
Heath: Gary, can you hear me a little bit better today? Because the last couple of times I was cloudy. It sounded like I was on the moon, somebody said.
Gary Collins: You sound like you were on the moon and talking out of a tin can. That’s what I was told.
Heath: Today, we want to talk about Dan’s transformation of his own body and how he came to following a primal ‑‑ which is like a grass‑fed dairy, paleo kind of template ‑‑ and how he was able to really transform his health, and basically put away some of his…
You have an autoimmune disorder, right, Dan?
Dan: Yeah, I’ve got a couple of issues. Paleo and primal has definitely helped with that.
Gary: There are more than a couple of issues, though. There are a lot of issues with Dan, but we’re only focusing on these today. Let’s stick with those, OK. Just had to throw that in there.
Heath: Tell us a little bit about how you were able to find your way and living a primal life, how it’s really changed your life, your way, your everything.
Dan: Sure. Sure. Well, a long time ago ‑‑ I’m going back probably 11 years ago ‑‑ my wife and I were looking to start getting healthier, and we stumbled upon a nutritionist who happened to focus on a blood‑type diet, metabolic diet. Luckily, I specifically remember this conversation with him, but he’s [indecipherable 0:02:00] me out. He’s like, “Wow, you’re an O blood type. That’s the caveman blood type. We’re going to put you on a caveman type of diet.”
I’m like, “OK, it sounds cool. Let’s do it.” Instantly, rashes are clearing up. I dropped 15 pounds. Meanwhile I’m still enjoying breads, and sweets, and stuff on the side, cereal. I wasn’t fully paleo‑primal, but it just got me…It got the weight [indecipherable 0:02:27] for me.
Fast forward a few years, I ended up getting bit by a tick, and I got Lyme disease. Instantly my wrists and my knees started hurting. We’re trying to figure that out. I had literally about six or seven blood tests all negative from traditional doctors. They were like, “You don’t have Lyme disease. Here’s some Naproxen. Take that.” I’m like, “I’m good with that.”
Now, fast forward a couple more years. Meanwhile, I’m starting to get into triathlons and stuff. I’m really pushing my body. I really like mountain biking. I ended up getting sick with an ear infection. Now, this is 2011. My daughter had it back at home. We all ended up with the ear infection.
I took some Fluoroquinolone meds form my doctor. Ten pills of Avelox, and that literally transformed my life.
Heath: Not in a good way. [laughs]
Dan: Well, now it’s a great way, but it really was devastating. Every single joint in my body was hurting just starting from pill number two. I could barely walk without pain. I remember sitting at my desk at work almost bawling, “What is happening to me?” I started breaking out in rashes everywhere. Body spasms and tremors. It was horrible.
I reached out to that same health nutritionist that I was dealing with, and I’m like. “Listen, this is what’s going on.” He instantly rode back and he’s, “You have leaky gut. Your gut lining got damaged from the meds. We need to get you eating a really clean paleo diet.” Thankfully, he had that information for me. I started Googling “Candida” “leaky gut.”
Candida is part of leaky gut. It’s basically a bacterial yeast infection overgrowth in the gut. I basically was strict paleo autoimmune protocol. I started noticing huge benefits. I even pushed it further. I was vegetarian for about a week and a half. It wasn’t for me. I had a hard time with that and I started getting emaciated.
I give credit to whoever can do that, and I respect that, but it wasn’t for me. I slowly just stuck with the grass fed meats, and wild caught fish, lots of veg, quality fats, nuts, seeds.
Now, we’re talking a good solid year later. I struggled and I started becoming myself again. Now, we’re talking three years later, I haven’t touched a single pill. Not a Tylenol, an Advil. Nothing.
This piece of duct tape on my finger is to cure a wart. That’s as chemical as I get. I’ve tried all kinds of stuff and it didn’t work. I’m just totally clean now.
Julian Bakery totally helped. I stumbled upon paleo bread. I was, “Holy cow. I can still have bread?” I’m like, “This is great.”
Heath: I think we met way after…Actually I found you, I don’t know. Somehow somebody posted something of yours on Facebook. You were posting your meals and I was, “Wow, this guy has got amazing pictures. He’s using paleo bread.” I think that was in December of 2012 maybe?
Dan: Yeah. It was probably January. December or January, right around that.
Heath: At least, I first started seeing your pictures around December of 2012, and then I think we started corresponding the early part of 2013. Then I’m like, “Man, this guy has got to make recipes for us.”
I started sending you tons of stuff. You’re such a foodie. Both you and your wife, Rachel, are amazing in terms of the recipes you’ve created.
It’s been awesome to see your daughter grow up and be able to experience a lot of these great foods you’ve been able to produce for us. It’s been a real blessing for all of our customers. It’s helped, I think, educate people on what they can do.
Paleo or primal is not about what you can’t eat, it’s about what you can eat. I think that you’re living proof of that.
Of all the amazing things you can have you don’t have to be restricted anymore. That’s really what I try to do when I develop these products is enable people to have a gateway, or a crutch, as they transform their lives and their bodies.
It doesn’t have to be so hard and restrictive because so many people are like, “I can never do Paleo. I can’t do without bread. I can’t do without pizza.”
I’m all about giving those things back but using ingredients that are in accordance to the paleo or primal template. To people, I just open up. Oh my God, I can eat this way again.
There are so many people preaching such a hardcore take on paleo/primal where they make it no fun. People end up going back to the way they used to eat. They’re falling off the wagon.
I’m all about keeping people on the wagon. You’re living proof of somebody that has transformed their life with not only our products, but incorporating real food, weeding out all the processed foods, and consuming ingredients that would be primitive in nature. You’ve truly transformed your body and your life because of it.
Gary: Well, I think one of the important things is to get out Dan’s story too is to show the progression. This is something that on the practitioner’s side that I deal with all the time. Right now, in the paleo world everyone wants to do 21‑day this, 30‑day this. A lot of them don’t work with clients. They don’t understand.
They’re just preaching something that they don’t quite get and they haven’t applied in the real world. You see Dan go several years. It does for me and it does for you too. He said it didn’t happen overnight. Those first 30, 60 days you feel a lot better. I always tell people that’s where you finally…You got to get past that hump. Those first 30 to 60 days are the detox basically.
Heath: It’s just an intro.
Gary: Then from there, it’s a building block. Once you get past those 30 to 60 days, now you’re on track. You’re not desiring those foods as much. You’re still there. You’re still addicted to sugar which takes 12 to 18 months to break that habit. Then you just transition.
With Dan, it took a little longer because he ended up with Lyme disease in the middle of it. Lyme disease is very, very hard to diagnose. The blood tests are hugely inaccurate.
I’d like Dan to talk a little bit about that because especially people in remote areas, or people who live more like I’m doing right now. I’m still in my cabin here. Getting bit by ticks is very common, and the biggest carrier of ticks are deer, muse.
Can you talk a little bit about the symptoms, and how you felt on Lyme disease maybe to help people to understand?
Dan: Sure. In the beginning stages I had no actual proof that I had Lyme disease, but I just had a hunch. Honestly, I was going to therapy for my knees and doing random things like that. Eventually when we finally knew…Thankfully my naturopath Dr. Frank Aieta has been a blessing. He used a test called IGeneX.
This is based out of California. They are phenomenal with Lyme disease testing. I think that test was about two or three hundred dollars. Well worth it. I found [indecipherable 0:10:49] positive.
He’s been treating me with two or three items. We have cat’s claw, and resveratrol which helped kill the bacteria. First, he uses a thistle group extract. I use these drops. I take a few drops every day. The thistle root helps pull the bacteria out of the joints, then the cat’s claw and the resveratrol help kill it.
Literally, you will detox. This was the worst detox I have ever had. On day two, you literally use two drops of the, sorry, thistle group, and I was in bed for the whole day. Head ache, sweating. Finally, day three I was a little better. Now, I’m up to 24 drops a day. I’m sticking with that and I’m feeling a lot better. I still have some joint pain. I don’t know if it’s ever going to totally be out of me, but I’m getting there.
Gary: Well, and that’s huge to show people, because Lyme disease is a serious, serious condition.
Dan: It is.
Gary: Even without that disease, as far as the joints, detoxing people don’t get that you actually stores toxins within your connective and joint tissue as well. To include obviously your fat stores that we obviously know about. The connective tissue is another place where you can store toxins. It’s interesting your path, and how you went about it.
Maybe talk a little bit about the progression too because I’m sure like us, like me and Heath, you went on a little bit of a road, and you had a couple of forks in it here and there. You took a wrong turn there. Took a right here when you should have taken a left.
Talk about that too because I think for a lot of people once they take one wrong turn they get discouraged. They go, “This isn’t working. I don’t get it. I feel horrible.” It’s just because you’ve got to find your way. You’ve got to find the right path.
Dan: Sure. Sure. Well, I’ll tell you one thing. When people say no pain no gain, I don’t believe that at all. Not just when you’re working out but if you’re in pain, don’t fight through it. I actually fought through it. I had the pains. I went and did a couple of triathlons and afterward my joints were screwed up because of that. It was a combination of the Lyme disease plus the Avelox meds ruining my joints.
I wish I took it easier. Now, I’m recovering. It’s going to take a while. I’m still in the gym killing it. People are looking at me, “Who’s that mad man over there?” while they’re sitting on the bench taking a five‑minute break checking their iPhone. I want to go and tell them, “Let’s go. Workout with me.” You got to take it easy too.
Gary: There’s a fine line. I think me and Heath know that, and I talk about that as well. There’s this fine line between good pain and bad pain. I always tell people I’m working with who have injuries, and I’ve had several pretty catastrophic injuries over my life from athletics, and the military, and stuff, is you know the difference. If it’s a sharp shooting pain, stop. Stop right away. That’s bad pain. Soreness and muscle fatigue, that’s something different.
Heath: Until that point, I herniated my back probably three years ago in my L5‑S1. I’ve been able to actually control the pain not taking any sort of pain medication or anything through upping the omega‑3s I take. I take about two, three times a day. I take a New Chapter, two of them, three times a day. I don’t have any pain anymore.
It’s pretty amazing in combination with a Paleo diet which I follow because it’s an anti‑inflammatory diet ‑‑ removing the grains, and the legumes, and all these things out of your diet. What it’s really all about is about having no inflammation. That’s why all of a sudden you start to get lean and cut naturally because you’re removing out the properties that are creating that puffiness.
I think all of us can relate to being puffy at one point. Gary has got some great puffy pictures. I’ve seen Dan’s. I think we all looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man at one point, and after we changed into this way of eating, it’s amazing just to watch all of that extra water retention. Your hormones start balancing. You start having less estrogen. You’re starting to burn fat as energy.
Your body naturally starts to lean down and you’re like, “Wow.” I’m starting to see that six‑pack all of a sudden. It just happens naturally because you’re removing the properties out that’s creating that constant inflammation in your body. It’s amazing. Food used to be our medicine and as time has progressed people started using medicine instead of food. I think we can all relate to how the paleo and primal template has changed our lives.
Gary: For sure.
Heath: Dan, share a little bit about…There was a story about how, I think, you read Gary’s book and then you ended up taking it into work and sharing it with some of your co‑workers, and stuff. What’s been the feedback that you’ve gotten from what you’re doing in regards to your recipes. I don’t know. I’m sure you’ve told people, “Hey, these are some of the recipes I’m doing. Go check it out on our blog.” Also Gary’s book. What has been the feedback?
Gary: Well, disclaimer too. I’ve got to make a quick disclaimer. Me and Dan did not know each other before he got my book.
Heath: No.
Gary: This wasn’t something where me and Dan talked and he got my book. Actually Heath sent him my book and that’s how he got it.
Heath: That is true. Dan’s actually probably gotten every paleo recipe book. Anything I’ve been interested in I’m like, “Dan, can you read this? can you check it out? Let’s review this book.” We have a lot of books on our site. He manages to go through them and modify them in accordance to a more low‑sugar low‑carb approach because so many of them are packed with sugar.
Go ahead, Dan, and talk about how the response has been with the people you’ve shared his book and your recipes with.
Dan: Sure, yeah. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I’d be doing book reports back when I was in high school. These are great books. What I really like about Gary’s book is it’s this big, it’s easier to read. I literally read in two nights. I bring it to work and I share it with some of my co‑workers. They’re just amazed. They’re like, “There’s no fluff. There’s no BS. It’s right to the point.” One of my coworkers, especially, she’s actually a dietician at work, was struggling with some weight issues, things like that. I gave her that book.
I talked to her about a month later into it, and she’s, “Dan, I can’t believe I’m losing weight, I’m eating more fat. I’m not hungry in between meals. I can go a full five hours between meals. I would have never thought this is true.” It’s sad though, because she still has to push the sad diet on her patients, but she knows what the real deal is. It’s pretty amazing.
Gary: It was pretty cool. I think that my book was one of the first, or it maybe could be one of the only books represented by the mainstream medical community that was endorsed, and not in a wrong way. They’ll go, “Oh, because Gary comes from the traditional side, he must be…”
No, it was a pure primal paleo book. My book is definitely not mainstream medical or nutrition. That was pretty cool to finally break that, not just me, but get other authors into that world as well.
Heath: Dan, you’ve had probably experience that few people have had because I have sent you literally 50 books or so. You’ve been able to see across the board every kind of author from a variety of different publishers. Are you surprised at how much sugar they are pushing in the recipes throughout all these books?
A lot of them are really packed with, maybe it’s maple syrup or just the carb load of these recipes are insane. If you could talk a little bit about what you’ve seen in recipe books and how you’ve been able to modify it so somebody can control their blood sugar in conjunction with combining it with some of our products that we offer. If you could speak to that point.
It’s really an issue that Gary and I have seen where it’s just an overabundance of carbs, sugar. People are getting their blood sugar spike. All of a sudden, they’re not able to lose the weight because they’re still dealing with that drop in blood sugar and then increase in cortisol. If you could speak a little bit about that it would be great.
Gary: Real quick, to deal with that. The reason we want to get into this as well is because I get clients, actually, who have been on the paleo diet or are currently on the paleo diet, and they’ve gained weight. Try that one out. That one’s hard to do. If you’re doing it right, that’s virtually impossible. Yet, I get clients who go, “I can’t do paleo. I gained five pounds.” [laughs]
Dan: Unless they’re lifting like crazy, I don’t know. A lot of the recipes that I do notice have dates, bananas, honey, even agave, all kinds of things like that. Maple syrup. There are a lot of quick substitutes that you can use, just like Nature’s Hollow products are wonderful.
Zero sugar and a few net carbs, and it just transforms the whole meal into something much more digestible. You don’t feel bloated afterwards. I don’t get a heart palpitation afterwards. You just feel good. That’s one easy way to do it.
Heath: Just to speak a little bit about Nature’s Hollow, that is like a maple syrup or a raspberry syrup. They use xylitol, which is dried from the birch tree, which is actually good for all sorts of different things in the body. We’re able to take out a lot of what they’re recommending, replace it with that, and not have that spike in blood sugar. Go ahead.
Dan: I definitely like the xylitol because of the anti‑bacterial, anti‑fungal effects. That’s actually one of my morning routines is to oil pull with coconut oil. Literally, a few weeks into it, I went to my dentist, and she was amazed. What did you change with your teeth? They’re so clean.
I’m going to go another six months and check it out and see how blown away she is again this time. Xylitol is a great ingredient, especially with Nature’s Hollow products.
I’m trying to think of what other substitutes we have. There are a lot of great products out there that are tasty paleo, and you can cut out the sugars and the carbs and not just feel icky afterwards.
Gary: Even Stevia, as the more refined people call it, or Stevia for us average people, even in the paleo world, that’s gotten poo‑poohed a little bit.
I’ve been using it with clients for years. I use it. I don’t see a problem with it. They say it’s too refined because it’s an extract. I’m like, “Come on.” If you can put 15 recipes on paleo muffins, I’m sure Stevia…it’s one of those…come on. You got to pick your battles.
Dan: What you see there, though, is people are getting Stevia confused with Splenda. There’s a little bit of confusion there. That’s the first thing. The second thing, it’s not sucralose. Stevia is actually derived from a leaf. NOW Foods actually makes Stevia which is enzymatically broken down from the actual Stevia leaf, and it doesn’t give you often that odd Stevia taste. It’s one of the only ones. They’ve really gotten it to the point…it’s organic.
It really couldn’t be any more paleo than that. You’re using enzymes to actually break down the leaf itself and then they’re able to produce this amazing replacement. We sell tons of that on our site. It’s such a great replacement.
They’ve actually gotten to the point where we have this liquid Stevia. It almost tastes like honey. It’s incredible. It’s amazing what you’re able to replace in regards to sugar and not have any blood sugar spikes.
Gary: We’ll get into that, more especially. All three of us right now are working on a cookbook. I want to bring that up. It’s going to be a true paleo primal low‑carb book. I don’t think there’s been anything done like it in the industry. I think it’s going to blow some people away. The reason we’re doing it is because we’re sick of the sugar‑bomb cookbooks and the dessert.
It’s called Paleo, and literally 75 percent of the recipes are sugar bombs and desserts to placate to people, to say, “Hey, you can eat paleo and still eat desserts all day and that doesn’t work.” With our simple recipes, I wanted to introduce that. That is in the works, and we’re to be getting that out hopefully this year or early next year. We’re working really hard on that.
Dan is going to be a regular guest. We’re going to have Dan as a cooking show we plan to do. We’re going to do some really tasty primal paleo recipes and [indecipherable 0:25:30] . You guys will be able to see how to make them. We’re going to take you step through step. We’re going to teach you how to cook. We’ll explain it to you, too. We’re not just throwing a recipe out there. We’re going to say why we’re using this ingredient, why we’re using that ingredient.
That way people understand what we’re trying to teach instead of just throwing something at them and say, “Here is it. Go eat it.” For me, education is the key to this lifestyle. You have to understand it. I don’t want you to be a biochemist. I just want you to get the basic principle so you understand what you’re eating.
Heath: For anybody really looking to learn how to cook in this fashion, we have…Dan has literally done almost 600 how‑to recipes. Each recipe has a video to go along with it. He does an amazing job of detailing out how to make these recipes, if you go to julianbakery.com/blog. Gary also has some amazing recipes on his site at primalpowermethod.com. You can follow Dan also on facebook.com/primal4life. You can follow him.
Feel free to also email any of us anytime. We will answer your questions live on the show at garyattheprimalshow.com and heathatheprimalshow.com. We will answer your questions. Nothing is off limits. We talk about anything.
Gary: We’ve got some exciting shows coming up, so I want people to start getting used to sending in the questions. There’s nothing we won’t tackle, almost, unless it’s obviously an insensitive question of some sort.
It was great having you on, Dan. Really appreciate it. Glad we could introduce everyone to you. We’re going to see a lot more of you.
Heath: Make sure everybody’s hit the subscribe button. What that does on YouTube, if you’re on a YouTube channel at YouTube.com/theprimalshow, is each time we post a video, it will be emailed to you so you can keep up with us and all the different things that we have to say.
Gary: Thanks a lot for coming on, Dan.
Heath: Thanks, Dan.
Gary: I’ll see you later.
Dan: Thank you guys.
Heath: We’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
Dan: See you.
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