{"id":10555,"date":"2019-01-07T20:20:53","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T02:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/?p=10555"},"modified":"2019-01-08T11:14:55","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T17:14:55","slug":"review-real-food-keto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/07\/review-real-food-keto\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Real Food Keto"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent a chunk of my end-of-the-year vacation watching football and nipping at the bottle of single-malt whiskey I received as a gift. Fortunately, I also found time to catch up on some reading, which means I finally had a chance to finish Jimmy Moore\u2019s latest offering, Real Food Keto<\/a>. I\u2019ll start with the brief review:<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in following a ketogenic diet and want to improve your overall health, you should read this book. If you\u2019re not<\/em> interested in following a ketogenic diet but want to improve your overall health, you should read this book. Real Food Keto<\/em> is first and foremost a book about achieving real health by eating real food, which is why the subtitle is Applying Nutritional Therapy to Your Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet. <\/em>The keto aspect of it is secondary.<\/p>\n

Now for the longer review.<\/p>\n

When I read a book about diet and health, one of the criteria for evaluating it is my \u201cAunt Martha\u201d test, meaning your Aunt Martha could understand it without reaching for a medical dictionary. Jimmy\u2019s a talented writer who\u2019s always had the knack for putting the science in layman\u2019s terms. As you may recall, Chareva\u2019s second-cousin, a neurologist, recommended Keto Clarity<\/em> to Chareva\u2019s father and specifically said he liked how well it explains the concepts to a lay audience. (He didn\u2019t know Jimmy and I are friends when he said that. I then surprised the heck out of him by calling Jimmy on Facetime so the doctor could pass along the compliment himself.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve recommended diet and health books that are well written, that definitely pass the Aunt Martha test, but didn\u2019t tell me much I didn\u2019t already know. That\u2019s because my bookshelf is full of diet and health books, and I end up reading about essentially the same concepts multiple times.<\/p>\n

Real Food Keto,<\/em> on the other hand, contains a ton of information that was new to me. I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s because of Jimmy\u2019s co-author this time around: Christine Moore, who happens to be his wife.<\/p>\n

Last year, Christine completed the Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP) course, which is offered by the Nutritional Therapy Association. Their philosophy is very much in line with Weston A. Price principles. In fact, Dr. Price\u2019s classic book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration<\/em> is at the top of a rather long list of required reading for NTP students<\/a>. As Jimmy himself has said, since completing the coursework, Christine now tells him things about diet and health he didn\u2019t already know. (I think all wives should occasionally tell their husband things they don\u2019t already know.)<\/p>\n

Jimmy has told his personal story on his blog and in his previous books. Far fewer people are familiar with Christine\u2019s personal story, which she relates in the introduction. The brief version is that she was born three months premature and has been battling the effects most of her life. You\u2019ve heard the saying genetics loads the gun, but the diet pulls the trigger<\/em>. In Christine\u2019s case, it\u2019s more like extremely premature birth loaded the gun and pulled the trigger, and then a bad diet pulled the trigger again and again<\/em>.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s been blind in her left eye since birth. The vision in her right eye grew steadily worse over the years. (When Jimmy asked to marry her, he was warned she\u2019d be totally blind by age 35. He married her anyway.) She\u2019s had issues with her joints, her spine, her moods, her hormones and her immune system, to name just a few.<\/p>\n

The good news is that after getting off a low-fat, high-sugar, fake-food diet and switching to a ketogenic diet, Christine\u2019s health problems began to improve. After completing her NTP courses and focusing on a real-food, nutrient-dense diet, they improved even more. For decades, her remaining eyesight grew steadily worse. Now it\u2019s actually getting better.\u00a0 Dr. Price would be proud.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a big believer in the value of experience. Yes, someone is naturally lean and athletic can certainly acquire the knowledge to teach others about weight loss. But I like hearing from someone who\u2019s lost 100 pounds and kept it off \u2013 even if you can\u2019t see his abs. Someone who has been generally healthy since birth can certainly acquire the knowledge to teach others about diet and health. But in Real Food Keto<\/em>, we\u2019re hearing from a co-author who has had to deal with far worse health problems than most of us ever experience. Learning about nutrition at a deep level was a big part of overcoming those problems. Sharing what she\u2019s learned is now a passion for Christine. As she writes near the end of the introduction section:<\/p>\n

With all that I\u2019ve gone through with my health and coming out the other side many years older, wiser, and healed, I knew I wanted to do something to help others on their journeys to optimizing their health.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because it\u2019s called Real Food Keto<\/em> and not just Real Food,<\/em> the opening chapters are of course about the ketogenic diet, with an emphasis on tailoring it for your individual needs. As you\u2019d expect, there are explanations of what ketosis means, the benefits of ketosis, how to get into a ketogenic state, and the various ways to measure ketones.<\/p>\n

But throughout these chapters (throughout the whole book, actually) the pound-it-home message is that to be healthy, we need proper nutrients, not just a proper ratio of macronutrients. To underscore that message early on, there\u2019s a section titled Two Major Pioneers In Nutrition<\/em> describing the works of Dr. Weston A. Price and Dr. Frances Pottenger.<\/p>\n

So yes, the book promotes a ketogenic diet, but it’s a nutrient-dense ketogenic diet. Among the many suggestions are: eating a variety of foods, eating seasonally, buying foods from farmers\u2019 markets, eating some vegetables raw, including some fermented foods in the diet, using natural salts, and switching to raw dairy products if possible.<\/p>\n

There are in-depth chapters on protein, carbohydrates and fats that describe how all three are used in the body. Since it\u2019s a keto book, there are explanations of why saturated fats won\u2019t kill you and why \u201cvegetable\u201d oils (most of which are actually seeds oils) aren\u2019t good for your heart or the rest of your body.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s also a chapter titled Water: The Fourth Macronutrient<\/em> that I found particularly interesting. I\u2019ve been making a mental note to drink more water since reading it. Here are a couple of quotes:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve already discussed quite a few nutrient deficiencies in this book, but, by far, the most common nutritional deficiency in the United States is good old H2O. By the time you feel the first tinge of thirst, the process of dehydration has already begun. When the amount of water in your body is off by even a little, it directly affects the minerals and electrolytes that keep your body in tiptop shape.<\/p>\n

Water is and always will be the most important nutrient you can get. Eat all the high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb food you want, but if your water intake is off by even a little, it can lead to some serious health issues. Our bodies were made to be nourished by water, and the reasons for and benefits of getting just the right intake of water are plentiful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The book then describes the many benefits of water, and how becoming dehydrated can affect everything from your endocrine system to your immune system.<\/p>\n

Like I said, this book contains a lot of information I didn\u2019t already know. For reasons I\u2019ve explained in previous blog posts, I don\u2019t measure ketones or aim for ketosis. So while the chapters on ketogenic dieting are well written, they don\u2019t apply to me personally. Starting with the chapter on water, however, pretty much everything in the rest of the book applies to anyone interested in being healthy. I suspect I\u2019ll be pulling Real Food Keto<\/em> off the bookshelf regularly as a reference.<\/p>\n

Part Three, which is titled Applying Nutritional Therapy<\/em>, is the largest section in the book. It\u2019s also where Christine\u2019s Nutritional Therapy Practitioner education is most on display.<\/p>\n

There are two chapters on minerals and vitamins. Both follow the same basic pattern: for each mineral or vitamin, there\u2019s an explanation of its function in the body, a list of the symptoms of insufficiency, and a list of which foods are rich in the mineral or vitamin. There are also suggestions on which tests you may want to request from a health provider and which supplements to consider.<\/p>\n

The next chapter is an in-depth look at digestion, which includes sections on stomach acid (in which we learn that nine out of ten people these days don\u2019t produce enough of it), leaky gut and the gut microbiome. As you might guess, there are explanations of how the processed garbage that passes for food these days screws up the digestive process. Since this is book about real food, there\u2019s also a section describing which foods help to heal digestive problems. Apple cider vinegar, for example, helps to stimulate the production of stomach acid. (I now have a bottle of apple cider vinegar in the kitchen and have taken to drizzling it on some foods.)<\/p>\n

There’s a chapter on blood sugar and why pretty much everything having to do with health goes haywire when blood sugar is chronically high. Naturally, the book suggests adopting a ketogenic diet to control blood sugar. The final two chapters are on the endocrine system (with a very good section on adrenal fatigue) and detoxification.<\/p>\n

As a bonus (a big bonus), there are about 80 pages of keto-friendly, real-food recipes at the back of the book provided by Maria Emmerich, who has written quite a few keto cookbooks. Search for her name on Amazon and you\u2019ll see the whole collection.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read several of Jimmy\u2019s books, and this was my favorite. Perhaps that\u2019s because I\u2019m not as interested in ketogenic dieting or fasting as some people, but I suspect it\u2019s because of the Nutritional Therapy Practitioner knowledge Christine brought to the table for this one. Either way, if you\u2019re interested in real food and real health, this is one to add to your library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent a chunk of my end-of-the-year vacation watching football and nipping at the bottle of single-malt whiskey I received as a gift. Fortunately, I also found time to catch… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[72,71,70],"class_list":["post-10555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-reviews","tag-book","tag-ketogenic","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10555"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10562,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10555\/revisions\/10562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}