!!!

The Truth About Desserts & Cheat Meals

!Interview with Kelley Herring!

Hosted by Neely Quinn!© Paleohacks, LLC!

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Neely: Hi. I'm your host, Neely Quinn, and welcome to this session all about women's weight loss. Today I'm talking with Kelley Herring of healinggourmet.com. !

She's basically here to tell us how we can have our cake and eat it too. So this super fit mom and baker. She is a role model for how we can eat sweets but still have the body and health that we want. She's going to tell us how to make desserts that taste delicious that will not make us fat and will actually help us lose weight. So, here is Kelley Herring, and I hope you enjoy this interview. !

Hey, Kelley. !Kelley: Hey, Neely. !Neely: How are you? !Kelley: Good. How are you? !Neely: I'm great. Thanks for joining me today. !Kelley: Thanks for having me. !Neely: Why don't you tell people who you are, anybody who doesn't know

already know? !Kelley: Okay. Well, I'm the founder of Healing Gourmet. We are a company that

educates on how foods promote health and protect against disease. My most recent work or sort of the focus of my work in the last five or six years has been on healthy desserts. I'm the author of a book called Guilt-Free Desserts. !

Neely: Alright. People can find that where? !Kelley: Sure, guiltfreedesserts.com. !Neely: That's easy. All right, tell me a little bit about why you ended up here.

What's your health journey? !Kelley: Well, I was a Biology and Chemistry major in college. I was going down

the pre-med track, and I realized that medicine was pretty much broken. I mean, it's awesome for emergency situations but in terms of prevention, there was a lot that was lacking. I had my own health crisis about the first year in college. I got very, very sick. Doctors didn't know what was wrong. They tried to put me on kinds of different medications. !

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It turned out I had some food allergies and intolerances so I started cutting things out of my diet and just experimenting, stopping the processed foods and the beer on the weekends, things like that. I started regaining my health, and I realized at that point what a huge impact food really has on your body. !

Neely: Yeah. It's so funny that we don't know that, that we're just not told that from the very beginning. !

Kelley: Right, yeah. I know. It's kind of surprising. !Neely: So what kinds of changes did you start to see? !Kelley: Well, I started feeling better. I had debilitating illness. I had sore throat

all the time. It was like chronic fatigue-type symptoms. It was just malaise, no energy, hard to think. When I started eliminating those foods and chemicals in the diet, I just felt better. !

I was able to exercise. I could think clearly. My brain was working better. I regained my health. I was functioning was normal after I really cut out all the processed foods and the beer which I have a terrible allergy to, which I learned later. Yeah, that was my experience. !

As I progressed, I learned more and more about the different things that I needed to avoid, like soy for thyroid issues and whatnot. We all have this journey that we go on. I think we hone in and we refine our diet to the point where we really understand what we, as individuals, need. It took some time, yeah. !

Neely: It does. It's definitely a template, huh? Everybody is different. So, since this is all about weight loss, did you have a weight loss experience or was that not really part of your thing? !

Kelley: No, I've always pretty much been a lean person. I have gained 10 to 15 pounds here and there over time which of course isn't healthy in my freshman year. I gained the Freshman 15, but a lot. That was just, again, bad choices, processed foods, sugar, grains, things like that. !

I'm probably leaner now at 38 as I ever have been. I think that's kind of something that people expected. As they get older, they're naturally going to gain weight. I think that's something that we all need to take a harder look at. Maybe it's just our diet and not necessarily so much age. !

Neely: Right. Yeah, I totally agree with that. What were the main things that you -- So you said soy was something that you ended up having to take out. What else did you have to take out of your diet and switch around?

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!Kelley: Gluten, dairy. Dairy was a big one for me that I had no idea that I was

allergic to. I was doing Greek yogurt and organic milk and all of these things. I had sinus issues, and I went to lots of doctors for that. They said, "Well, we'll just have to do surgery on you." I said, "No, there's a reason why this is happening. Why?" "We don't know." I cut dairy out and haven't had a sinus issue since which is pretty amazing. !!

Neely: That's amazing. !Kelley: So those are the key ones; grains in general, definitely gluten, dairy and

soy. !Neely: Okay. Is that kind of what you tell other people to do? !Kelley: Well, I do. I think everyone is different. Some people tolerate soy or

legumes but I think that a Paleo template is the way that we all need to be eating in terms of avoiding certain inflammatory foods that are just unhealthy for everyone. !

Processed foods, processed sugars, sugars that are extracted, sugar in juices, people think they're doing a good thing by giving their child apple juice but it's pretty much the same thing as a soda, things like that. !

I think that sugar is probably one of the biggest issues in our diet today. Even with the crowd that has gone more on the natural side, more on the Paleo side, we still have too much sugar on our diet. !

Neely: Yeah. We'll talk about that a little bit more, but I want to hear more about the changes that you've seen with weight loss and health with the people who you are in contact with through your websites.

Kelley: It's been pretty amazing how fast these changes can happen when

people start to adopt a Paleo kind of framework, and they cut out all of the added carbohydrates in their diet. They just aren't necessary. Unless you're a real athlete, I think that people eat far too many carbohydrates, far too much sugar. !

We've had a lot of people who've come to us with diabetes. They started following the low glycemic, gluten-free Paleo template and dropped 20 pounds in a month-and-a-half and see great improvements in their brain health. That's one of the big things that we're seeing, I think. !

I know you've probably read Dr. Perlmutter's book, Grain Brain, and how much our blood sugar affects our brain and how our brain is so sensitive

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to those fluctuations in blood sugar and also how it affects us over time with our memory. !

People who said, "I'm not thinking clearly," or "I'm having difficulty remembering," and going to a more low carb diet and eliminating grains and sugars and started eating more high healthy fats really have improved their health, their brain health, their body composition, overall energy, and mood as well. Those are I think the things that we see most typically. !

Neely: Yeah, it's so crazy. I think a lot of people think that this is the fad, like low carb or Paleo or primal or whatever, or gluten-free even. What do you have to say about that? !

Kelley: Well, I think that at the beginning, I was a bit of a skeptic too because anytime you label something -- you remember, "Oh, the low-fat." I think everyone is tired of hearing this name of something. But Paleo is different because it has a basis that goes back so far into our evolutionary history that it really makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of genetics and what our body is adapted to eat, what we should be eating. !

I think that that's the case for Paleo not being a fad. I also think that certain people -- Chris Kresser does a great job of talking about Paleo templates too about how some people, they can do some legumes. Some people tolerate dairy and butter or ghee or even full fat cream. I think that everyone is individual and I think that Paleo really provides that framework. I think that's what differentiates it. !

Neely: I think you're right about that. It's that people don't want this label on it, and Paleo is kind of a silly label in ways. You think about cave people and nobody wants to be like a cave person. !

Kelley: Sure. !Neely: Yeah, I had the same thing as a nutritionist even. I had learned about

Paleo in school. Somebody told me they were doing Paleo, and it was working for them. I was like, "That sounds stupid." Now I'm like the biggest advocate for it in the world. !

Kelley: Right. !Neely: Yeah. Anyways, let's talk about sugar because I know that it's something

that's really important to you. Why don't you tell me why you focus on sugar and what you've seen it do to people? !

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Kelley: Well, I think everyone loves sweets, and it's not something that -- it's very common for us to love sweets. It's something that is innate in us because it's an urge. It's a primal urge that we have to eat sugar, and there are several reasons for that. !

Sugar in nature, found in fructose and fruit, those are foods that you can eat that are non-poisonous. That's kind of an interesting little fact. It also triggers to your body to store fat and less energy. That meant survival for our ancestors which I think is pretty important. !

The problem is that we have gotten so carried away with sugar, and our sugar consumption has increased so much. Not only over the course of 10,000 years but over the course of the last hundred years. Our sugar consumption has dramatically increased, and we're seeing all these issues from it; obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, and children with liver disease from sugar sources. !

Sugar is really at the crux of all of these chronic diseases because it promotes all of these key factors; inflammation, systemic inflammation in the body, oxidation, free radicals, glycation which is when sugar binds to protein or fats and creates these strange compounds that then attach to our tissues and organs. They cause physical aging, but they cause even worse things inside of us. I think we're just starting to understand that it's really sugar that is the cause of all these diseases. !

In my goal, to really help people understand how foods promote health and protect against disease, figuring which foods actually are causing diseases is just as important to me. I think that sugar has not received the negative press that it should because it's associated with happy things. It's birthdays, it's candy, it's sweet things that make people smile. No one wants to cut sugar out because it's like raining on your parade, sort of, but sugar really is toxic. !

So that's kind of where my interest in sugar came from is the disease prevention aspect because it really is linked to pretty much every chronic disease. !

Neely: Yeah. It's interesting because I think that people, especially our age and younger, just think that diabetes and heart disease have always been around as commonly as they are now, but they really haven't. !

Kelley: Right, absolutely. !Neely: Yeah, like even over the last hundred years. Do you know how much our

sugar consumption has increased by or… !! 6

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Kelley: Well, right now, I think that we're consuming a third of a pound a day on average which is 150 pounds per year. Our Paleo ancestors were consuming about five pounds per year. A hundred years ago, it was something like 10 to 12 pounds per year. !

You have to think that the process of refining sugar was expensive. Our ancestors didn't have access to those kinds of things so it was reserved for a special occasion. As opposed to now, sugar is cheap and ubiquitous and is in everything. It's hard to stay away from it, whereas it used to be hard to get hold of. I think that has really shifted our entire dietary landscape over the past hundred years. !

Neely: Yeah. Okay, so you said a third of a pound a day. !Kelley: Right. !Neely: All right. It's mind boggling to think about that and when people hear

that, they're probably like, "I'm not eating a third of a pound of sugar. I'm not seeing this much sugar coming into my body." So where is it? !

Kelley: Well, of course it is in the packaged foods. A lot of people who have adopted a more whole foods lifestyle aren't eating that much, but the typical American is. It adds up in the sodas. It adds up in the candy bars or the granola bars and all these things that we're eating. Of course, grains act just like sugar in the body as well. But this is added sugars that we're talking about. !

Neely: You're not talking about fruit sugars or sugars that are naturally in fruits or the grains or anything. You are just talking about white sugar -- !

Kelley: A third of a pound. !Neely: -- or corn syrup and those kinds of things. !Kelley: Right. It's pretty astounding. If you look at the American people in

general, obviously, we're sugar-addicted culture. There are soda machines in the schools which is something that is crazy to me. The kids have free access to that. If they have enough money, they can buy as much of it as they want. But it's in everything. It's in ketchup and barbecue sauce, and all these little things that add up over the course of the day. !

Neely: Yeah. Yeah, speaking of school, I remember I started gaining weight when I was about 14 or something, as I think a lot of people do. It was partly because I was going and getting, like, three 32-ounce Mountain

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Dews during school every day. If I haven't had that, it would have been a totally different story. Anyway, what is the sugar doing to us? !

Kelley: Well, it does a lot of things, and it's very much on a cellular level. I think people just assume, well, sugar is calories and all calories are created equal. But that's not the case. It might be isocaloric, but it's not isometabolic. So it has a very different impact on our body than, say, eating a healthy fat like coconut oil or grass-fed beef. !

Because what insulin does is it triggers our blood sugar to rise and increases insulin levels. Insulin is the fat storage hormone so all of a sudden we start packing on fat. It's our biological wiring. That's the first thing. But insulin in and of itself is a very harmful hormone in many ways. !

The way that most people experience insulin is they have very high levels over a long period of time, and they have elevated insulin and A1C levels. Insulin -- !

Neely: What's A1C? !Kelley: A1C is a measurement of your blood sugar control over time. It's a test

that a lot of diabetics get. It's a good snapshot. It takes three months snapshot of how your blood sugar is over time because you could take it during the day. I don't know if you use a glucometer at all, but it's very interesting to see what your blood sugar is in the morning or after you eat different foods. It's a good practice, I think, for people to get into. !

Insulin is very dangerous because it promotes the growth of cancer. I read a book on cancer a number of years ago. It's very interesting how much a low glycemic diet can help prevent cancer. One of the reasons is the hormone-dependent cancers, especially breast and colon cancer, they have insulin receptors on the tumor itself, and sugar feeds them and allows them to grow. So the more sugar we eat, the more insulin we produce, and the more we feed tumors. !

Of course, we all have microtumors inside of our bodies, which is something that people gasp when they think, "I have cancer cells in my body." But we have to be careful about these things because our diet can feed these things and create something that over time can grow into a breast or a colon cancer tumor. So, insulin has those effects. It also has -- !

Blood sugar has a big impact on the heart. For so many years, we heard that it was fat that we should blame for heart disease. But really sugar is what's to blame because of the oxidation and making our LDL sticky and

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damaging our cholesterol in a way that makes it adhere and create those plaques. So that's a big one. !

Visceral fat, your insulin levels go up and you tend to store fat right in the middle, and that's the most dangerous place that we can store fat. It also affects your brain. As we talked a little bit earlier, it has a lot of really odd effects on the brain in terms of memory. !

It's even being called Type 3 diabetes now. Alzheimer's is being called Type 3 diabetes because it's so closely linked to blood sugar. So all of these things are good reasons to obviously reduce or completely eliminate your intake of added sugars, of course, but also try to adopt a low sugar diet in general. !

Neely: Right. You talked about diabetes a little bit. Do you want to go into that a little bit more? Because one of the things that I want people to understand is that even if you're not diabetic, even you're not pre-diabetic technically, you could be on your way. If you keep doing what you're doing, you will be diabetic. It's kind of just a matter of time. !

Kelley: Absolutely. !Neely: Do you want to talk about it a little bit more? !Kelley: Absolutely. Yeah. The interesting thing, the point that you made is that

diabetes is a number. It's not like you take a scan and there's a tumor and so you know that you have cancer. It's just this number. !

The idea, there's this arbitrary number that's like a line in the sand. It doesn't mean that all of a sudden that's when the bad stuff starts happening. It's before that. You're developing insulin resistance and all of these things long before you have diabetes. !

Some people may never be technically diabetic, but they have these low blood sugar imbalances and issues and metabolic syndrome-type effects from a high sugar diet. So I think it's really important for healthy people to monitor their blood sugar and see where they are because I think its prevention. It's all about prevention and knowing where you are, what foods you can tolerate and what specific quantities to keep your blood sugar level over time. !

Neely: Right. Because what happens to your body when you eat too much sugar and you are on your way to diabetes? How does that work in layman's terms, just very simply? !

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Kelley: Well, typically, in a healthy person, your blood sugar will shuttle into your muscle cells. But when your muscle cells have taken all they can then it gets shuttled someplace else; your belly, your butt, your thighs. Those are all the places where we don't want it to show up obviously. Your belly is the most dangerous place because you have this visceral fat. !

You become resistant to insulin so your body stops really hearing the message that it needs to release insulin, and the pancreatic cells wear out. When they wear out then you can become Type 2 diabetic. So insulin resistance and blood sugar, this is all a continuum. !

It takes time for it to happen but if you don't keep it in control even when you're healthy, you can slip into insulin resistance very quickly if you're eating a higher carbohydrate, higher sugar diet. !

Neely: Right, okay. So what do we do? What do people do about this? !Kelley: Well I think Paleo is a great place to start because many people think

they're doing a great job at eating healthy. They're having whole grain cereal in the morning. They're having sandwich at lunch with whole grain bread. They're having dinner with whole grain pasta. !

Eliminating those things is really important because, as we know, whole grains and grains in general create blood sugar spikes a lot like sugar. So that's number one. I think that eliminating grains is very, very important. Also, once you've done that, also taking a look at the starches in your diet and the sources of sugar that might be natural like fruits. !

Some people think that eating three, four, five, six servings of fruit a day is okay. Some people even tolerate it, but those sugar grams add up pretty quickly. You can achieve 50 grams of sugar very easily if you have four, five, six pieces of fruit in a day. My focus on fruit is -- I think fruit is awesome. I think it has a lot of benefits if you're choosing the right fruits. !

I like to say choosing foods that have the most bang per bite, so really how much nutrients are you getting. It's nutrient density. So like berries are a much better choice than, say, perhaps a banana because they are loaded with antioxidants and more fiber. They're naturally more low-glycemic. So those are the kinds of fruits that I would focus on and not having those in extreme quantities either. !

The Paleo sources of sugar; the honey, the maple syrup, the dates, all of those things are very concentrated sources of sugar. Honey is about 50%

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fructose, and that's not far off from high fructose corn syrup which I think is surprising to many people. !

They go Paleo, and they start making Paleo desserts with coconut flour and honey and almond flour and these things. They put a cup of honey into a dessert. That's ten grams of fructose in one serving, for example, which is a lot. So I think eliminating those and really taking a good look at how much sugar you're eating and the sources of sugar is important. !

Neely: Okay. So what do you eat instead? !Kelley: Well, I think in terms of your daily diet, keeping with the ancestral diet

of meats, healthy fats, low starch vegetables. That should be your core. That should be your base. Then when you want something sweet, of course, berries are an excellent choice, organic berries. !

But you can make low-glycemic, low-sugar, grain-free treats using Stevia as a sweetener which is really a fantastic sweetener. I don't know if you've had a lot of experience with using Stevia on its own, but it's a wonderful sweetener because it has a lot of intensity. The problem with Stevia is that you need to combine it with something because it is a high intensity sweetener. !

It's about 300 times as sweet as sugar. You could put it in your coffee. But it needs to be sort of cut with something. What I like to use it with is erythritol which you may have heard of. Wholesome Sweeteners is a great brand that makes it. It's a natural polyol or sugar alcohol, and it has no calories and has a glycemic index of zero. So it has no effect on blood sugar which is pretty amazing. !

It's about 70% as sweet as sugar so when you combine erythritol and Stevia, you get this synergistic effect. It tastes a lot like sugar in your baking, but you don't have all of the sugar. There's no fructose. You get the benefits of having a sweet treat without spiking your blood sugar and having those concerns for your health. !

Neely: So you can just buy erythritol in a store? !Kelley: Absolutely. Whole Foods Market sells the Wholesome Sweeteners brand

which I love. It's actually extracted from sugar cane. It's not a cheap ingredient, but I think that these things should be used as a complement to your whole foods diet. You shouldn't be eating a ton of these extra things. They should be used as a treat anyway. You can purchase these things, I think about $12 to $14 a pound and then you can blend them. It's really amazing how much like sugar it tastes. !

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The chemical properties are a lot like sugar. It's hygroscopic so it keeps moisture in things. It's a natural sweetener. It's found in pears, watermelon, grapes, soy sauce and sake. It's something that is recognized by our body as safe because it's in natural foods. It's not a chemical like sucralose which is an organochlorine or aspartame or any of these other things. !

Neely: Right. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you if there are -- are there any dangers of it? !

Kelley: No. Actually, there have been no issues found whatsoever for erythritol. Some people do not tolerate polyols quite as well as traditional sugars, but that's more with maltitol. When you say sugar alcohol, I think a lot of people say, "Oh, I can't do sugar alcohols," but they're probably talking more along the lines of maltitol. !

Sugar alcohols can have some digestive benefits as well because they're excreted in full form. They're not really metabolized. I think that there are a lot of benefits to erythritol, and it's different than the other sugar alcohols. It's also an antioxidant that's been found to have some benefits for people especially diabetics. It acts as an antioxidant in the vascular system which I think is pretty fantastic. !

Neely: Yeah, it is. When I think of sugar alcohols, I think of Zevia. I don't know if you've ever had that. They're sodas that are made with Stevia with the mixture of erythritol and maybe another one of the sugar alcohols. And it tastes like soda. !

Kelley: It does. It does. There is a lot of sugar alcohol in the liquid drinks. Anything that's liquid, any kind of canned drink or soft drink made with erythritol will have a higher amount of erythritol in it just because it needs to be there. You can actually use a lot less of erythritol in your baked goods to achieve the sweetness you want. Because I know some people say, "Ah, there's a lot of erythritol in there." I kind of agree with that. I think that you can use less erythritol in baked goods than you do in, for example, Zevia. !

Neely: Okay. So you have a cookbook for these -- what's it you called, Guilt-Free Desserts? !

Kelley: Guilt-Free Desserts. !Neely: Do all of them use that combination of sweetener or do you use other

sweeteners too? !! 12

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Kelley: Yeah. Actually, there are probably five sweeteners that I like to use. Erythritol and Stevia are probably the two that I rely on most. Inulin is a great one that a lot of people really like and have a lot of success with. It is a fiber. It's made from chicory fiber. Have you heard inulin? !

Neely: Mm-hmm. !Kelley: Yeah. A lot of people just use a little bit, but you can really boost the

sweetness and get some fiber benefits with that. Coconut sugar is one that I like to add in combination with the erythritol and Stevia just because it is a sugar. I tend to use that in small quantities to get kind of a brown sugar effect to my baked goods. !

Lo Han Guo is another one which a lot of people aren't quite as familiar with as a Stevia, but it comes from a melon. It's a very, very sweet melon that's native of China. It's about 300 times as sweet as sugar. So, again, use it in small quantities like you do Stevia. !

Neely: Yeah. Wow, that's cool. I don't hear very many people were using -- what is it, Lo Han Guo? !

Kelley: Lo Han Guo, yeah. !Neely: Inulin, I'm sure you know this, but it's a prebiotics so it feeds probiotics

which is really cool too. !Kelley: Absolutely, yeah. !Neely: Okay, so Dave from PaleoHacks told me before this interview that

everything that you make is like a miracle. He said that it's amazing and delicious. !

Kelley: That's really sweet. !Neely: Yeah. So, tell me a few of your recipes. I mean, you don't have to tell

me exactly what the ingredients are and how to make them, but just can you describe the kinds of things that you're making? !

Kelley: Sure, yeah. Well, everything; brownies, cakes, cookies, pies. Anything that you can create with sugar, you can create with erythritol and Stevia. I think it's not only the blend of the sweeteners, but it's also the blend of the flours because going gluten-free, as you know, has a lot of benefits, but it also is kind of tricky. Do you remember the first gluten- free breads that came out? !

Neely: Yeah, they were awful.

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!Kelley: It was terrible. They were terrible because they weren't combining the

flours rights and they didn't have the binding. Gluten has a lot of benefits in baking for keeping things together, and you lose that. So I've worked on a number of different ingredients and incorporating them in ratios that really can mimic the effects of gluten. !

It's fun. It's a lot fun. It's a lot of trial and error, but it's using things that you already have in your kitchen like coconut flour, coconut oil, organic coco powder, dark chocolate chips and then utilizing these new sweeteners so that you'll have a low glycemic effect. Almond flour is one that I love. !

So, really, you can do anything; brownies, cookies, cakes, pies, ice cream. Pretty much anything under the sun you can recreate in a gluten-free, low glycemic Paleo way. !

Neely: Okay, when you say all of that, it makes it sound like you could be eating these things everyday and it would be fun. What is your thought on that? !

Kelley: Well, I think in moderation. I think if you have one cookie or one piece of bread because I'm far along in the spectrum now in terms of my health and where I want to be in terms of my body composition and whatnot. But you can eat these things and notice that there's very little impact on your blood sugar. !

A lot of them are even suitable for ketogenic diets, which is pretty amazing. So that you can have a chocolate cupcake that tastes sweet and it actually falls in line with the ketogenic very low carbohydrate diet. Just because my concern is I don't want people to displace their main component foods; their healthy organic vegetables, their grass-fed meats, their wild fish with sweets. !

That's not going to help people understand and how they can incorporate these in their healthy diet in a way that isn't going to create these blood sugar spikes and it isn't to create this cycle of deprivation and binging. I know a lot of people like to try to do that as well. !

They sort of go very, very low carb and then have a day where they binge, and they consume a ton of carbohydrates, may work for some people. I don't think it works for most people. So this is a way that you can incorporate a sweet treat into your diet on a daily basis. I think it's perfectly within reason. !

Neely: Yeah. I'm a big fan of that too, especially for people who are just transitioning over to this kind of eating. We're so used to having

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whatever it is, Snickers bars, brownies, or cookies everyday that it's like, well, if you go from that and just eat meat and vegetables -- I know a lot of people will get mad at me for saying this -- it's hard. !

Kelley: It is. !Neely: It's not sustainable for a lot of people who are just accustomed to it. So I

think it's a great idea to have these sweet treats that aren't actually that hard on your blood sugar so you can transition. I have a feeling that, over time, you don't really eat very many of these things anymore because -- is that the truth or… !

Kelley: Yeah. I have probably a sweet treat or a piece of grain-free bread once a day. I share with friends or I freeze them so that it comes out in small quantities. You have to know your own body and your own cravings. I think some people, if there's a pan of brownies they'll eat them all. It doesn't matter what they're made. !

There are these other people who are very good at just taking a little bit and being satisfied with that and then going about their day. But I think everyone's different, and I think that it is an excellent way to transition. It's a great way to enjoy these things that are safe for most people including diabetics. !

Neely: Yeah, I think so too. Maybe anecdotally here, I was a person who would actually eat a whole pan of brownies or blondies or whatever they were, even gluten-free. Once I transitioned over to Paleo, somehow those synapses stopped firing or something. I just don't have the need to do that anymore. So you do, your palate does change. !

Kelley: Yes, absolutely. !Neely: Which is pretty cool for all those people who don't think it ever could. !Kelley: Oh, it does. Right, it does. !Neely: Yeah. So while we're on the topic of carbs which is basically what we've

been talking about this whole time, you did bring up athletes earlier. I want to know your opinion on what you think athletes should be doing in terms of carbs. !

Kelley: That's a good question. I think it depends on the type of activity they're doing. I think it depends on the length that they're doing it. I think it depends on obviously intensity. If you're doing high intensity interval training, if they're short bursts -- !

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I don't think that there's a huge need to replace the glycogen as opposed to a long distance runner or a cyclist. But I think people are gearing more towards the shorter duration exercises now. I think that really falls in line with the Paleo mentality as well, the CrossFit type of workouts because the long duration exercise is just not really what we're geared to do. !

Typically, most people that I've talked with and that are adopting this type of lifestyle are also adopting that mentality as well. I don't feel that there is a huge need for carbohydrates in the diet. As I mentioned before, I think Grain Brain is really fantastic and a lot of the things that Dr. Perlmutter says in there about us becoming more ketogenic and adapting to ketones and how much it impacts our health is really right on spot. !

I used to eat a sweet potato a few times a week and have some kind of starchy carb with every meal. I don't do that anymore. I don't crave it. I don't need it. I think that a lot of people think that they need those starches, and they need those carbs, or they need to replenish them right after a workout. !

I think that science is kind of coming around with that concept that we really don't need as much as we think we do in terms of carbohydrates. !

Neely: And that's as long as we're getting enough fat -- !Kelley: Right. !Neely: -- to fuel us. !Kelley: Absolutely. !Neely: Because you brought up ketogenic and I don't know if there are people

listening who don't know what that means. It basically means that your body is good at making fuel out of fat. !

Kelley: Right. Right, absolutely. !Neely: Okay. On a personal note, what kinds of exercise do you do? !Kelley: I pretty much stick with high intensity interval training, and I do that

three to four days a week. I weight train on the alternate days. My sessions are short. They're 15, 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes at most. I love to hike and be outside and do things with my little boy that are sort of exercise but not really focused, intense exercise. I think that's sort of what we're geared to do, long walks and short bursts of exercise.

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!Neely: Yeah. Are you lifting heavy weights or varying it? !Kelley: Yeah. I really try to focus on squats and the lower body muscles for the

benefits in human growth hormone that we get from that. I do try to lift heavy, but I think there is a balance. I've over-trained before to the point where I would come home and need a nap, like a two-hour nap. I was like, "This is not good." I might be gaining muscle, but there is a trade-off I think. !

I'm still trying to find that balance, but I feel great when I do the short intense workouts. I'm like I'm ready to go. I notice faster changes in my body, in my sleep. I think hormonally, I think it's probably the best method for me. But I've done all kinds of exercise. !

I've done cycling. I've done dancing and all kinds of running, the typical types of things that people do, aerobics, step aerobics. I think that overall, my body and my natural rhythms are better when I'm doing short duration exercise and lifting more on the heavy side. Yeah, I try to do, to failure, like eight to ten reps as opposed to five-pound weights for 150 times. !

Neely: Which takes a long time too. !Kelley: Yeah, and it doesn't really do anything for you, so. !Neely: Exactly, yeah. Cool. So it seems to be working for you. Would you say

that this is what works -- you did say that --this is what works fast for your body after having tried a whole bunch of other things? !

Kelley: Absolutely, and after having a child. I was exercising right up until about two weeks before I had my baby and getting right back into the high intensity interval training as soon as I was out of the sleep deprivation of having a little one. It's amazing how fast your body responds again. You create those muscles and the muscle memory. It's really something that moms can do as well because it's fast. You don't have to go to a gym and spend an hour there, an hour back. It's very easy to insert into a very busy lifestyle. !

Neely: Yeah. That's actually a really good topic. How old is your child? !Kelley: He's two-and-a-half, almost. !Neely: Okay, so you were doing this like before you had him and since then. !Kelley: Mm-hmm, yeah.

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!Neely: Can you talk to us a little bit about that, like what your pregnancy was

like and then how long it did take you to sort of lose the baby weight? !Kelley: I didn't gain much weight during my pregnancy. I gained about 30 pounds

and five days after having him, I'd already lost 22 of it. !Neely: Wow. !Kelley: It was a lot of baby and fluid. He was an eight-and-a-half -pound baby

which was pretty big for me. I'm a pretty small person, but he was a big baby. I exercised -- towards the end, I couldn't really do a whole lot and I wasn't doing high intensity. Probably at about six months, I stopped doing anything real high intensity. !

I was doing cycling, but I was varying the intensity. I was doing interval training in a spin class on my own pace. I would do intervals while the rest of the class might have just been going up a hill. So I did that and then I lost my baby weight within, I'd say, two months probably of having him. !

But your body changes, you have -- all of these muscles in here have to get back to where they were. I had a diastasis which is where the muscles actually open like this and create a little space, so that took time to close back. !

I ate Paleo my entire pregnancy. When he started eating foods at five months, his first food was bone marrow, and he loves it. He eats sardines which I ate a lot of during my pregnancy. I think all of those things really helped him to be a very strong, very healthy baby. I think it's the way to go. It's definitely the way to go. !

Neely: Do you think you just got lucky with all of these or do you think that that really did have something to do with the way you're eating or working out? !

Kelley: Absolutely. I think, without a doubt, the way that I was eating and keeping with my physical activity and doing as much interval training as I could, prepared me for the birth and everything of motherhood. Also, a lot of women get tired during pregnancy and they just feel run down. I was wearing mini-dresses. I really wanted to stay in shape so that I would be as strong as I could be for his birth. I didn't want to have to lose all the baby weight. !

A lot of women, I think, they just put on the weight and they think, "Well, I'll lose it later." I think that's a sort of a bad idea to go into

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pregnancy that way because why not just go in with a healthy attitude and try to keep your body as lean as possible, and you'll come out a lot better off. !

Neely: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really great. As a person who is considering having a child, it's really encouraging to hear that. !

Kelley: It was a great experience, yeah. !Neely: Okay, so any last words for women who are trying to lose weight in

general? !Kelley: Keep your blood sugar levels low. Stabilize your insulin. Avoid sugar. The

cravings will go away. Focus on those healthy foods. When you want a sweet treat, opt for something that's naturally sweetened with Stevia or erythritol because you really can have your treats and stay in line with the big Paleo picture. !

Neely: Right. You can have your cake and eat it too. !Kelley: That's right. That's right. !Neely: Okay. Where can people find you, once again? !Kelley: guilfreedesserts.com. !Neely: Okay. You have another site though too, right? !Kelley: I do. Our main site is healinggourmet.com. !Neely: Okay, and what kinds of things can they find there? !Kelley: Recipes, menus, information on hundreds of foods, packaged foods that

are healthy, packaged foods to avoid, health information, nutrients. It's sort of a whole world of healthy foods and what to eat and what to avoid and what to watch out for. !

Neely: Perfect. Well, you're a great role model, an awesome face of that site. !Kelley: Thank you. !Neely: Thank you so much for your experience and wisdom today. !Kelley: Thank you, Neely. I appreciate it. !Neely: Yeah, have a great one.

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!Kelley: You, too. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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