The Gratitude Cure: Why Your Body Can't Heal Under Stress - Ben Azadi

Your body cannot release stored fat or heal itself when it perceives threat; gratitude is the measurable physiological switch that lowers cortisol, raises oxytocin, and allows metabolic transformation.

DESCRIPTION

Ben Azadi lost 80 pounds and reversed suicidal depression through metabolic healing. His father wasn't as fortunate—a preventable decline into type 2 diabetes, neuropathy, and stroke in 2014. That loss forged his purpose: reach one billion people and reverse type 2 diabetes in a million within a decade.

But Azadi's message diverges sharply from the biohacking mainstream. While cold plunges and red light have their place, they're secondary. The foundation is unglamorous: gratitude, sunlight, grounding—all free, all measurable in blood work and heart rate variability.

The science is stark: stress elevates cortisol; cortisol packs visceral fat around your organs. Gratitude does the inverse. Peer-reviewed research shows intentional gratitude practices reduce all-cause mortality by 9 percent and cardiovascular death by 15 percent.

KetoFlex Revised, his new book, merges this psychological work with metabolic flexibility—teaching your body to burn fat instead of remaining locked into sugar dependence. His thesis: most people major in the minors, chasing complexity while overlooking what actually works.

Ben Azadi Contact Info:
https://KetoFlexBook.com

Social Media Links
Instagram: instagram.com/thebenazadi
Facebook: facebook.com/thebenazadi
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KetoKamp
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebenazadi

WEBSITE: Stay Off My Kitchen Table

Like what you hear? Head over to IFixHearts.com/book to grab a copy of my book, Stay Off My Operating Table. 

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Ready to take control of your health?  Grab Dr. Ovadia’s brand new book Stay Off My Kitchen Table now! 

This isn’t just another diet book; it reveals why it’s not just what you eat, but what your body actually absorbs that determines your health.

If you’re struggling with low energy, stubborn weight, or feeling like “healthy eating” isn’t working… this book shows you exactly how to fix it.

• Learn how to reset your gut
• Eliminate hidden foods sabotaging your progress
• Unlock real energy, metabolism, and longevity

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Take action today. Get your copy of Stay Off My Kitchen Table now.

Learn More:

• Take Dr. Ovadia's metabolic health quiz: iFixHearts 
• Dr. Ovadia's website: Ovadia Heart Health

Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings

Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent from Dr. Philip Ovadia.

Transcript

0:58

Hey, welcome folks. If you are looking for Stay Off My Operating Table, you're in the right place, and if you landed here accidentally, you're gonna wanna stay'cause this is gonna be a pretty terrific conversation. Dr. Philip Ovadia, we've had we've had this guy on before, and I was just sitting here looking at the two of you thinking,"Between the two of you guys have lost an entire person." That's all I've got to say here. Phil, introduce our guest. Yes, we have. And for anyone who's watching us on YouTube, you're gonna notice that it looks a little different because I have the honor of being in person with Ben Azadi which is always fun. We just got done recording an episode for his podcast which will be coming out next week. This podcast, our episode will be coming out to coincide with the release of Ben's new book that I am very excited for. The book is called Keto Flex Revived, and it will be available, I believe, tomorrow as this episode gets released. So definitely go out if you want to pre-order it today, that would be awesome, or make sure you go out and get it tomorrow as well. I don't think Ben needs any introduction. He's been on the show a couple of times now and really excited to be able to have an in-person conversation with him. Let's start off with what Jack just mentioned. Everyone who listens to this is very familiar with my weight loss journey but you have an equally impressive one. So let's go back to your origin in all of this and how you discovered the power of metabolic health and keto dieting. It's good to be here back with you guys, by the way. You're at my studio. We just had a great conversation talking about your brand new book. We do have similar stories. It's really interesting. Jack's right, over almost 200 pounds or so of weight loss combined between us, which is like an, a, an adult human being. I'm somebody who struggled with my weight and health for most of my life, 20 plus years. Followed a standard American diet, did the low-fat thing like you, Dr. Phil. And in my early 20s, I was dealing with high blood pressure, erectile dysfunction, pre-diabetes- Got it inflammation, depression, suicidal thoughts, and I was desperate for an answer, like so many people are. And I went to my doctor and I explained, "Here's what I'm dealing with, Doc." And I explained symptom after symptom, and my doctor never asked the question, "What are you eating? How's your sleep? Let's talk about your lifestyle." That was never the question. The question that he was thinking was, "What can I prescribe for this 23-year-old man?" And he suggested certain medications, and I thought,"Man, I'm too young to go on these medications, and do I have to take this for the rest of my life?" And he's "Pro- possibly." So I actually declined them, and I wanted to give up, honestly. I was tired of living, and I was gonna take my life, but I kept thinking about my mother, and I kept thinking about the devastation it would've caused her, and it stopped me from doing that. The only thread that I was hanging on back then And I knew I had to figure things out. So I said, "I'm just gonna move my body," and I started walking daily, and then biking, and then playing basketball, which I love to do. Then I started eating pulses. I wasn't focused on any sort of diet at the time. I just said, "I'm gonna just eat more real food." And I started to have more energy. The weight started to come off, and then I started to get this momentum that I never really experienced before. And then nine months later, I know I, I dropped 80 pounds of fat. I went from being obese at 34% body fat to as low as 6% body fat. A dramatic shift in my physical appearance. But more important than the physical transformation was the mental transformation and what it did for my mental health. I think a lot of people don't understand that your food directly impacts your mood. You eat crappy food, you have crappy thoughts, and it's this vicious cycle. So it transformed my mental health. I developed a physical and mental six-pack, and the mental six-pack is more important than the physical one. And that was 18 years ago plus. I've been so fascinated with metabolism and fat loss and health and visceral fat and all the things you like to teach, Phil. And I've been blessed to be in this space for that long. And a lot of stuff I had to unlearn and relearn, like yourself. And I think what separates you and I from other people that are teaching health is that we lived it ourselves. We're not just somebody who's looking at research. We've actually lived through it ourselves, and that was my story. And I'm grateful I went through it, even though it was super painful, because I could be empathetic and I could relate to the person who's struggling now. So that was the origin story for why I'm with you today. And, looking back on that, do you have… where do you think that instinct came from, right? Because you weren't in the health field. You didn't necessarily, know about health or think about health, right? But you had an instinct essentially that told you,"Eat real food. Move your body more." Any idea looking back where that may have come from? Yeah. It's interesting because I think the only thing that I could recall is I just looked at a packaged food, like potato chips, and then I looked at a potato And I was trying to look for the ingredients list of the potato, and there was no ingredients list. But the potato chip, there was like 25 ingredients, and I thought, "Something is very different here." So I just started to eating, the single ingredient foods or minimal ingredient foods. It was just instinct. It was just like it made sense that this is something that my grandmother ate and my great-grandparents ate, and this is something that's new. I wasn't taught that back then. It was just something that I felt was common sense And then taking it to the next step, right? So it's one thing when people get health improvements for themselves but it always fascinates me the people who go beyond that, right? And you start saying if I was able to benefit myself, can I benefit others?" What kinda gave you that drive to say, it wasn't enough for just you to improve your health- But you wanted to start helping others and get that message out there? When I lost the weight and I experienced the transformation, I had some friends who were asking me like, "How did you do it?" And I was working at a, as a manager at a packing and shipping store here in Miami at the time. So I even had customers coming in who would be regulars, and they would ask me like,"How did you do it?" And I thought, "I should probably turn this into a business. I should probably train them and do personal training and teach them what I did for myself." And that's exactly what I did. I first became a personal trainer. So I would drive to people and do mobile personal training. I would train them at a park. I would train them at their apartment building where they had a gym. Pretty much anywhere there was an open space, I would train these individuals. And I kinda treated it like a hobby personal trainer. It was a full-time job after I left the packing and shipping store. But it wasn't until my dad got really sick in 2013, where he had type 2 diabetes for most of my life. He immigrated to the US from the Middle East, Iran. He, my parents are from I-Iran, and I'm first generation American, and he started to follow a standard American diet. Sweet teas Burger King, McDonald's, KFC, where my mom actually worked at, and he started developing insulin resistance and then, of course, diabetes. And in 2013, his diabetes got really bad. His neuropathy was so bad that he had trouble walking to the restroom. So much so that we took him to the emergency room 'cause of his neuropathy still, and he ended up in the actual hospital suffering a stroke. And what's really interesting about the story is that the doctors and nurses didn't even know he suffered a stroke in the hospital. I don't know if I've shared this with you before, but I walked in one morning. He was there for a few days. I walked in one morning."Hi, Dad. How's it going?" And he's just looking at me "Dad, how are you doing?" And I could tell he's trying to speak to me, but no words are coming out. He's just kinda, just looking at me. A-and I'm thinking there's something wrong with my dad. So I flagged the nurses. I'm like, "He's not speaking to me. Last night I saw him, he was speaking to me. What's going on?" They run a whole bunch of tests, suffered a massive stroke in the hospital. They didn't catch it, paralyzed him from his entire right side of his body. He lost the ability to speak. And then nine months later, he passed away. And when that happened, this is August 12th, 2014 when he passed away. When that happened, I was pissed at the medical system. I was angry. I was also mad at myself'cause I felt like I could have done more. But then I took all of that anger and resentment and bitterness, and then I thought,"Okay, if this happened to my dad, it must be happening to a lot of other people. So how can I help that? How can I be what Einstein said, a genius instead of somebody who's just an intell-intellect?" He said, "Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." So how could I empower people to be geniuses? And that's where I thought,"Okay, I'm going to set out on a mi-- I'm gonna go on a mission to educate one billion people, so they don't have to suffer the way that I suffered, the way that my dad suffered, because a lot of this suffering," you know this, "is 100% preventable and reversible, like type 2 diabetes." So that's the point of my life where I took this health and fitness education, if you wanna call it that, from a hobby and a to a purpose and a passion. And ever since that happened, that's why I'm lit up every single day like you are to get the message out there. I'm gonna let Jack jump in. I know his marketing brain is going crazy on this Oh, man. I'm… i've got a bunch of different thoughts. But one of the things that that I found extraordinary, Ben and I apologize, I didn't check the date we last talked but I don't remember having read this when last we talked, and that is your mission. I know Phil is on a mission. He- with his with Ovadia Heart Health, he has a mission that he is actively working to execute on to save, what is it? A million lives Prevent a million heart attacks to- Prevent a million heart attacks. And that's a, that's what we call a BHAG, a big, hairy, audacious goal. But he's actually executing on it. And as I was reading your biography, which if it was there the last time we talked, I apologize, I forgot. You have a similarly audacious mission. I would… I'd love to hear you just explain what your mission is, and more importantly, explain how you're executing on that. Thank you, Jack. Yeah, I'd love to share that, and I love your mission. It's inspiring. The overall mission, my lifetime mission, is to reach a billion people to get this information to them, to inspire them to take ownership over their health. That's the overall mission. There's a mission in- inside of that mission, which is I wanna help reverse type 2 diabetes in a million people in the next 10 years, similar to your heart disease, right? And what's interesting, back in 2014, 2015, when I started to get really passionate about this, I would speak at anywhere. If I had five people that would listen to me, I had an audience, right? So I would speak at grocery stores, I would speak at hotels, I would speak at WeWorks and bureaus, these shared office spaces, and I would just show up, give a lecture, and there were sometimes three people, there were sometimes 12 people, which was like a full room to me. And I would start out the presentations by saying, "Hey, my name is Ben Azadi. I'm on a mission to educate one billion people." And then I would pause, and then I would look at the room, then I would look at the faces, and I would see people roll their eyes. I would hear people laugh, and even sometimes people would sh- speak and say, "Wait, did you say a billion people? Nobody knows who you are." I would be heckled. But I kept going, and I would show up to three people the same way I show up now to 3,000 people. And now, fast-forward, Jack, we look at the numbers, we've reached hundreds of millions of people just with our YouTube channel, right? So the goal is a billion people. We're already around 200 million, and I still have many more years left to go, right? I'm inspired by your mission. Our… it's we're doing this together. They go hand in hand. Heart disease and diabetes go hand in hand. So I'm excited to collaborate with you on this, and every day I wake up, and I think it's the same reason why you're so consistent. You think about the people, you think about the mission, and the days you don't feel like doing it, it's not about you. Because if you skip a day, that's… Somebody could have died that day, or even dozens of people that could have died that same day because you decided not to show up, and that's the way I look at it, and I think that's the way you look at it too. Yeah, It's easy to get mired down in all the negative stuff in our world today, right? And when you look at health in particular it would be easy just to say, "This is an unsolvable problem," right? Everyone is unhealthy. Everything around us is making us unhealthy. And we go down the list of the food and the, the water and the toxins that are in the air all around us. And it'd be easy to be discouraged. I don't remember exactly when we first met, but what I do remember is You were the most positive person in that room where we first met, whatever conference it might have been. And in every conference we've been at together since then you are consistently the most positive person. And you really from my standpoint have bought vitamin G into the discussion as you always talk about gratitude. Why do you view gratitude as, essential to this mission? Most people wouldn't tie gratitude to health. Talk about why it has become so central to your messaging and to the mission that you're on. Gratitude, what as we call vitamin G is the gateway to your heart, to your soul. I call it strength training for your soul. And we hear, yeah, be grateful, practice your gratitude, and it-- and it… We hear that all the time. But when you truly feel gratitude, not treat it like a checklist or a practice. You're not practicing gratitude, you're feeling gratitude. When you truly feel gratitude, your body is automatically shifting into a healing parasympathetic, anti-inflammatory state. This is not woo-woo. This is not hypothetical. This is bodies of research that I looked at. I'll give you some examples for those left-brainers who want the research. Harvard published a study in JAMA in twenty twenty-four looking at forty-nine thousand two hundred and seventy-five nurses, and it showed that the nurses who intentionally had a daily gratitude practice I'll say feeling, had a nine percent reduction in dying from all-cause mortality compared to the nurses who didn't, and a fifteen percent reduction in dying from cardiovascular disease. Martin Picard has a study looking at caregivers, Dr. Martin Picard, looking at caregivers, and he has seen… first of all, caregivers live a very stressful life. It's very difficult to be a caregiver. And the caregivers that had a gratitude practice at night, when they measured their mitochondrial health the following morning via something called the MHI, the Mitochondrial Health Index, they had healthier mitochondria in their bodies because of gratitude the previous night. We live in a world where we're constantly being dinged with artificial light, with notifications on our phones. You just mentioned all the things that are working against us, the tap water, the toxins, the processed junk food. It's so surprising we're not dropping dead left and right. It's a testament to how incredible the human body is. What if there was a free supplement you could take that helps with all of that? Regardless of your religious beliefs, regardless of your political beliefs, regardless of what diet you follow, that's where gratitude plugs in. If you simply had a daily practice of feeling the gratitude, you lower cortisol, you raise oxytocin, you put your body in a healing parasympathetic state, you support your immune system To me, gratitude is the most important supplement that is missing in our space, in the low carb carnivore space, in the biohacking space, in the anti-aging space. And I think the reason why n-not enough people talk about it is because it sounds too easy to do, which makes it easy not to do. We've heard it before, be grateful. But it's a universal law that states what you appreciate, appreciates. What you feed energy to, expands. You literally rewire the reticular activating system in your brain, which is the size of your pinky right in your brain stem, to start seeing more things to be grateful for. So many people are the opposite. They've trained that RAS to see all the things that are wrong with the world, all the things that are wrong with their health, then they keep seeing evidence of it. When you shift that to feeling gratitude, you now start to see things that you appreciate that you used to look at as a problem that's now an opportunity. So a simple way to get your vitamin G is first thing in the morning. Before you look at your phone, before you do anything, just think about a person a memory, anything that you're grateful for and live in that for a minute. If you have a tr- hard time doing that, think of your liver that's detoxing every single day for you. Think of your kidneys that are filtering for you. Think of your mitochondria that are producing energy. Have gratitude for this amazing body that's functioning at a level we can't even comprehend. There's always something to be grateful for, and as you think about it, and as you think about it, you're gonna bring about more of that in your life. So for me, gratitude is where it's at. You say that I'm a positive guy because I've trained that RAS to see the good in everything. And it's a choice. Like faith and fear are the same thing. Why not choose the faith? Why not choose the positive outcomes? That's the way-- That's the reason why I am the way that I am Phil. Ben for those who are willing to take that step, who are willing to suspend disbelief and say okay, I'm going to try this gratitude thing." There's a… The first time most folks will try this, there's gonna be something there's a step that has to be taken that might not be blindingly obvious And that is the feel what you're feeling step. I remember when I first started doing this idea of paying attention to what I felt seemed, It may as well have been in another language, the instruction. I understood the words, but I didn't have the foggiest idea how to go about paying attention to what I felt. Maybe you could unpack that a little bit for those who are saying like I did,"Okay, I'm willing to try that," but they're gonna run into that particular feeling what you feel for lack of a better description. Yeah. Good point, Jack. And I… some people do struggle with it in the beginning, especially too. When I first started doing gratitude, it was very mechanical. I was not feeling it at all. It was, I'm grateful for my hands, I'm grateful for my house. And it was just very mechanical, and I treated it like a checklist. And that's okay to get started that way. That's the way I started. That's totally fine. And as you do it more consistently, I would say instead of writing down 10 things you're grateful for as a checklist, man choose one thing that you're grateful for and spend an entire minute there and bring as many feelings and emotions as possible. That is the secret. It's the feelings and the emotions. So I'll give you an example of how this works. Like it could be you could bring somebody in your life that's passed away. Like for me, my dad. My dad's gone, as I mentioned, but I could have gratitude for him. I ha- I could have gratitude for the memories I had with him. I would sit there for a minute and I'd close my eyes or leave my eyes open, and I'd think about a memory with my dad. He used to love the Olive Garden. We used to go to the Olive Garden all the time, and he would always wanna pay for dinner, right? And he would say things like,"Hasta la vista, baby," from the movie The Terminator, and he would call friends amigo because he lived in Miami. He was learning Spanish. So I could think of these memories. I could feel-- I could see my dad's eyes. I could see his smile. I could see his mustache. That's why I have my mustache, to honor him. So you could go back and relive somebody in your, a relationship that was in the past or a current relationship. And if you still have trouble doing it, then this might be an extreme thing to do, but you could remove something from your life and then bring it back to have gratitude. For example, remove your right arm. Imagine if your right arm was taken from you today and you only had a left arm, all the things you couldn't do anymore. Obviously, that's not the case, and you bring the right arm b-back and you're like, "I'm so grateful I have both hands and I have my right arm." So you could subtract a limb or a body part or a person from your life and bring them back in if you struggle with gratitude. But it's okay to start off with it being mechanical. Eventually, instead of treating it like a checklist and doing many things you're grateful for, just spend a minute or two on one person, memory, et cetera, and that's where you get most of the benefit One of the things that was interesting for me and I learned how to do this with the help of a a trauma therapist who used a similar technique, and he s- and he specifically told me to pay attention to my body. Pay attention to sensation, I think maybe was the word that helped me to connect it. As you, as I give thanks, what is, what am I feeling in my body? What are the sensations in my body? And it got me actually focused on the physical, the visceral experience in the moment. And when I started doing, do the gratitude exercise, I went back to that same guidance from the trauma therapist, paying attention to the visceral experience in the moment. And what I began to, to… For me the visceral, the physical experiences very well may be different for other people, but what I began to be able to do was to connect emotion to the actual sensation, the visceral experience. And apparently, from the research I've done all 10 minutes of it it's actually paying attention to that, to the visceral, the sensation that helps to carve those neural pathways, to reset those neural habits. There's a sequence of things that occur. I, it's not my specialty. But I got stuck there at the beginning, and what got me through it was paying attention to the actual sensations I was experiencing in my body. That's great. I love that. It's con- consciousness is being aware that you're aware. Yeah. And that's exactly what you were doing. You were just aware of the sensation. So maybe that's putting your hand over your heart and feeling the heartbeat. Maybe that's listening to your breathing or whatever it is the sensation that you mentioned. The feeling is the secret, though, and- Isn't that weird? Yeah. Isn't that… Doesn't that- It is … doesn't that kind of… i, it irritated my hyper-rational Spock worshiping brain. And I realized- Just writing it down, that's it. That's the benefit- Yeah … of journaling, to do it Yeah. And, and talk about how that kind of magnifies, right? So there's a lot of aspects of health that we both talk about, right? We talk about the food that we eat. We talk about the activity. We talk about things like red light and, sauna and cold plunging. What have you found in terms of what are the benefits of adding gratitude to all of this? How does it magnify the effects of all of that stuff? I'll speak to it from an area that I see a lot of people struggle with, which is belly fat, visceral fat, and just being overweight and obese. We see all these fat loss books on the bestseller list'cause every year people wanna lose weight, right? What most people don't understand is that you can't let go of fat. You can't release fat and get to your goal weight if your body feels unsafe and threatened. And that is not just a fat loss thing, that's a health thing. Stress, as is a contributor to heart disease. Stress is a contributor to a lot of things. So how do you lower the stress? You raise oxytocin. You raise these feel-good chemicals and hormones. How do you do that? Gratitude fits right in. And if one of your goals is to lose belly fat, especially the visceral fat around your organs, you better master your stress levels because there are receptor sites in those organs, the heart, the pancreas, the kidneys the visceral fat has these receptor sites that are three times more in your visceral fat for cortisol than subcutaneous body fat. That's why it's called the cortisol belly. The more stressed you are, the higher levels of cortisol, the more fat you're packing around your organs. Gratitude is the antidote. Gratitude lowers cortisol by raising oxytocin. If you track something like heart rate variability, which I track with my Oura Ring, what you're gonna see for all these people who do these biohacks you mentioned, the cold plunge, the red light, the sauna, and I love all of them. That I have them all, right? But we violate this principle of hormesis, which is… Hormesis essentially is when you apply a stress to the body and you adapt to the stress, you're now stronger and better. Exercise is a perfect example. But all these biohacks are also stressors, including red light, including cold plunging, including sauna. So many people do too much of it, and now they're not adapting to these stressors, and now what they're gonna see is their heart rate variability, which is a gauge of how healthy they're adapting to stress, their heart rate variability is gonna drop, which is not what you want, which means the body's under too much fight or flight. So gratitude is what you can do to fix that. Feeling gratitude will raise your HRV. Feeling gratitude lets you do more of these stressors. It lets you adapt to them better. So it plugs right in. And there's a lot of research on it for those who really want it, the left-brainers. Dig into it. I talk about it in Ketoflex. I also talk about it in Metabolic Freedom. Yeah. As a left brainer a- and, specifically as I think about heart disease, right? And, one of the struggles I've always had around this, right? Is, everyone says stress, causes heart disease," or, "Stress is one of the contributors to heart disease," right? And I'm always like but we can't measure it, right? We don't know what stress actually is. And it's been interesting, I've gone through this sort of transformation where, like I said, at first it's okay, we need something, right? And you start to latch on to, okay we know that stress ri- raises cortisol. We know that cortisol raises blood sugar, and we know that blood sugar damages the blood vessels. And okay, this is how stress is causing it. But in the end you come to a kind of you get stuck at some point. And the reality is that we can't maybe actually measure what it is, but we know it has an impact. And when you do start things like gratitude practices and you start paying attention to the woo-woo stuff that was never really supposed to enter into my brain as a heart surgeon you just can't, you can't avoid it, right? You can't avoid the role that it plays in all of this. And something as simple as, I think back, when I was a heart surgeon and we always are trying to assess what is the risk of an operation? What is the predictor that an operation is not gonna work well? And the number one thing, the scariest thing you can hear as a heart surgeon is if you're talking to a patient before surgery and they say, "I'm not gonna make it through this." Or, "This isn't gonna end up well." And it's amazing that, th- they're almost always right. And on the other side of things- Yeah … you have people that are going into an operation that you know is super high risk, and they have all the risk factors working against them, right? But when they, before the operation, tell you, "I know this is gonna work," right?"I know this is going to, improve things. I know I'm gonna come through this fine," again, they're almost always right. And, stuff like that throughout my career I see over and over again and, it ties right back to everything you've been talking about. That's powerful. Yeah, like that's the pla- placebo effect versus the nocebo effect. Our thoughts are very powerful. I love that you shared that even as a left-brainer, and you were just on my podcast and you expressed gratitude for what you're grateful for as well. And I would say, if you're skeptical about gratitude, not you, but the audience. If you're skeptical about gratitude I would say what my mentor once said. He said, "If your way is not working, why don't you try mine," right? Do a 30 day and see what happens, right? You have nothing to lose but only something to gain here. You know what struck me and I've e- personally experienced b- this, but also seen it in effect what you practice more of tends to increase, and that goes both ways with es- especially with something like attitude, gratitude. We all probably can think of people who are reliably, consistently negative in their output, out- outlook on the world, and Bad stuff tends to happen to them more And i- if you take the attitude that you don't have any control it's probably easier to say yeah, I'm grumpy because bad stuff happens to me," rather than taking the attitude of "I will find things to give thanks for and to feel gratitude for, and I will affect my experience of life." There Ben, there is in fact science to indicate that, that that's not merely a woo-woo outlook on life, that it changes our neurology. And as we change our neurology, it changes our biochemistry, and as it changes our biochemistry, it changes our emotions, and changing our emotions changes our experience of life. All of which to me is just awesome as somebody who is fundamentally fairly healthy. But if I was dealing with a lifelong health issue as well, and this can actually dramatically help in that regard And I'm asking, I'm not telling, because you two guys are the ones who've lost a, an entire human between you. I agree. The study of disease has brought more disease The war on cancer, right? Yeah. The more you focus on something, the more you get. So you don't bring in health by focusing on disease. You don't bring in wealth by focusing on poverty. You focus on the thing you want, right? So when you… you're right, Jack, when you think about the person who's negative, who's pessimistic, who's the victim, they have trained that RAS in the brain to give them proof that they're the victim, that everything is stacked against them. I was that person for 23, 24 years of my life. It was completely different than how I am now, and I've retrained my mind with my thoughts and my practices and my attitude to change that. I am not a victim. I don't react, I respond. In even the most craziest situations I respond. And I learned about this through Bob Proctor, who's this guy right here who passed away, but he's in the office with me here 'cause I love his work. He talked about a three-step approach to handling any situation. He said, "Number one, it is what it is. Accept it." Whatever it is, whether it's a health scare being fired from work, whatever it is what it is. Accept it. Either it's going to control you or you're going to control it. That's step number one. Step number two is harvest the good in the situation. And the more you look for it, the more you're gonna find. There's always a good for something bad. It's the law of polarity. Up, down, left, so harvest the good and God's good all the time. Number three, for- let go and forgive and just let go of the rest. Just completely abandon, let go of the rest, right? So if you think about that philosophy, that's the way I live my life. Anything that happens to me, it is what it is. Accept it. I'm going to control it. It's not gonna control me. Where's the good in this situation? And then I'm letting go of all the rest. If you could just live your life that way, it transforms the way you think, it transforms your relationships, your attitude, and yes, even your health to your point, Jack. It has to because you have all those thoughts every single day. So I hope that somebody adopts that three-step approach as well after they just heard me explain it. Yeah, I think it's a great framing, or a great way to reframe h- how you're approaching life. And we see it play out over and over again. Again, one of the things that always impresses me, and I know you see this all the time with the people you work with, right? Is whatever it is that starts their journey, right? Some people it's, "I need to lose weight." Some people is, "I have heart disease,""I have cancer," "I have diabetes," whatever it might be. When they're successful in making improvements in that first thing, it then leads to so much more. And they start things that they weren't originally thinking about getting better, improving with the change in diet or the change in activity or whatever, they underwent it's very rare that it doesn't spread out from there. So true. That was my story too. It started off with like weight loss. Actually, it started off with me wanting to show my ex-girlfriend like what she missed out on "Here are my six-pack abs." It was very shallow and superficial, but then as you see, it's transformed to something even more powerful. Amazing. Let's talk about the new book KetoFlex Revised being released as this episode is being released as well. A week right before your book comes out. Yeah, exactly. July's book baby. Exactly. What's the book about? Who's it for? Talk about how maybe it's a little different than Metabolic Freedom. Yeah. So Metabolic Freedom came out last year and it was written for the masses. It was written for the general public. The KetoFlex Revised is more of a customized approach to metabolic freedom. So who is it for? For 93% of Americans who are dealing with insulin resistance or some form of metabolic dysfunction. The flex in KetoFlex … So my approach to keto is different than a lot of our colleagues, for example, like even carnivore. I love keto, I love carnivore, but I personally do not believe in continuous long-term ketosis or carnivore, personally. So the flex is flexing in and out, right? 93% of Americans are metabolically inflexible because they're stuck burning sugar, so I want to teach them to burn fat. So in the book, there's a 45-day approach through four pillars. The first pillar is called adapt, which gets you fat adapted. The second pillar is called fast, which we implement fasting strategies. The third pillar is called phase. We phase out all anti-nutrients and use some carnivore. And then the fourth pillar is flex, where we flex in and out. But it's not the same for everybody, so there's a chapter in here on how women who have a menstrual cycle practice keto, fasting, and carnivore, a separate chapter for women who are post-menopausal, how they practice it, and then a different chapter on how men practice it. But then there's also sections on how to do this if you're diabetic, how to do this if you don't have a gallbladder, so troubleshooting different things. And it's based off of the 10,000-plus people I've taken through my what was called Keto Camp Academy, now it's Fat Loss Academy. I had all this feedback from them and I saw all these stories and what worked, what didn't work, so I put it into this book. This book originally came out in 2021. I self-published it. Last year, Hay House, my publisher, reached out to me and they said they, they wanna purchase the rights to it and they want, wanted me to update it, so this is the updated version. There's recipes in the book as well. You're gonna learn more about fasting and ketosis, and how ketosis is a Beneficial stressor to your body and how that helps your mitochondria produce energy, and how there's a lot of misconceptions around keto, so it helps you really understand this metabolic process of ketosis. And at the end of the book, there's some recipes. I know your book is loaded with recipes too. So anyways, if you want a customized approach, if you read Metabolic Freedom, want to take it to the next level, that's what Keto Flex Revival is for. Yeah, I think the flexibility is something that people miss when they're thinking about keto, right? They think of it-- most people think they're going on a keto diet, right? And they're gonna be locked into that, right? The only way to succeed is to stay locked into that. And it's interesting that the default state these days being metabolically unhealthy ninety-three percent of people metabolically unhealthy that's actually an inflexible state, right? Those people are one hundred percent dependent on burning sugar for energy. They can't access fat to burn for energy. It's one of the kind of conundrums of being metabolically unhealthy. People that are overweight, they have, significant amounts of body fat, and yet they can't access it. They can't use it for energy. They are stuck on sugar. And it turns out that being in ketosis is the more flexible state, but most people don't recognize it as such. That's right. Yeah. In order to be in ketosis, you have to be burning fat. That's what unlocks keto, right? And what's interesting, you're one hundred percent correct. Ninety-three percent of people are sugar burners, and that's not good when you're locked in burning sugar. But that's not the way we were born. When a baby is born into this world and fed breast milk, that baby is naturally in a state of ketosis. It goes in and out of ketosis. But what happens is the baby grows up and now consumes a standard American diet, carbohydrates, processed junk food, eating every two to three hours. Now it's an adult, and we're now eating like a child. Meaning if you're an adult, you're not supposed to be snacking all day long. That's for growing kids, right? Eat an adult. And my colleague, Dr. Don Plumb, did a patient population survey where he had his patients, hundreds of patients, just write down every time they ate something, snack or meal, and the average person was eating seventeen to twenty-three times a day Glucose and insulin. Glucose and insulin, they're stuck burning sugar. They have forgotten how to burn their stored fat. Enter ketosis. Keto is not a diet, it's a metabolic process. Ketones are simply a byproduct of ac-accessing stored body fat. You mentioned those 93% of people, they have all this fat, they can't burn it, they can't access to it. They have no access to it, so there's a dilemma there. So how do you get access to it? You gotta lower your insulin levels. Insulin is the key that unlocks fat burning. How do you lower insulin levels? Okay, let's look at the three macronutrients, carbs, protein, fat. According to the studies that have done blood tests and looking at blood insulin levels after you eat these macronutrients, which macronutrient raises glucose and insulin the most? Carbohydrate. What about protein? Very moderate response. What about fat? Very minimal response. So by flipping it around and consuming a lot less carbs and more protein and fat, keto, you lower insulin, you lower glucose, you now access stored body fat. That body fat is sent to your liver. Your liver produces ketones. You're now in ketosis. Your body remembers how to do this. Nothing new, it's just nuanced. So that is the goal of the book, to remind people you were designed to burn fat. Here's how you do it. Here are the 45 day 45-day step plan to do that Apologize folks there, I accidentally muted myself and started yakking and you couldn't hear me. Ben, how does the book… A- and I realize this is a slightly unfair question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway'cause that's my job. How does the book help you execute on your vision? On my vision? First of all, this book's gonna reach tens of thou- tens of thousands of people. It's gonna reach those who are insulin resistant and diabetics, which are the exact people I wanna reach. So by getting this book into the hands of as many people as possible, them reading it, listening to it, and I wrote it in a way where the plan to do it, I believe, is very easy. It's a step-by-step plan, and there's a beginner plan and an advanced plan. You can choose your own adventure. The goal is just to get into the hands of people, just like your goal, right? You gotta get your hands, get your book into the hands of as many people as possible. So when we do that, we know there are-- a good percentage is gonna read it, a good percentage is gonna listen to it, and a good percentage is gonna actually follow the steps in the book. It's not the information in the book, it's if they take action with it. So this is right, totally aligned with my goals, totally aligned with the people I wanna reach. It's those that are insulin resistant, those that are diabetic. And y- as Phil writing a book is a labor of love. It takes a lot of time. There's a lot of hours behind closed doors that people do not see. You're the only one who knows that, maybe your family. And there's research, there's writing, there's editing there's fixing different lines and rewriting. There's a lot of back and forth that goes way above what most people think of when it comes to writing a book. And once it's done, you wanna get it out to as many people as possible, right? That's why you came on my podcast, that's why I'm on your podcast, that's why we're doing what we need to do to get the job done. So it's totally aligned with my mission and what I wanna accomplish, and I'm grateful to go on your pod- come back on your podcast to talk about it, my friend. Yeah. Awesome. We certainly love having you back on. As we start to wrap up here, I'd love for you to… you are you do a lot of things, right? You're very involved, you speak at a lot of conferences a lot of stuff around biohacking, longevity, all of that. What's maybe one thing one, maybe it's a tool, maybe it's a practice that's a little bit under the radar that you've seen out there that you want people to know more about? In the biohacking space in particular? Sunshine. Getting sun. Honestly I feel so good when I get sun. I know we live in Florida, so who are we to talk about sunshine? But it's so underrated to just get outside. Even if it's overcast, to just get outside. There's other benefits to it, the fresh air and all the other things that are happening. But just getting that sun, hitting your skin, going through your eyes, especially first thing in the morning. If you could start your day with 10 to 20 minutes of morning sunlight directed through your eyes, you start to set up your day for a win. You make better decisions. You- your circadian rhythm is more balanced. So it's not a paid biohack, maybe it's not even a biohack to some people, but to me it's like when I get sunlight, I feel it right away. So that would be my favorite thing, and it's free, and I hope everybody does it. Yeah. I love that, two, two big things that you focus on, right? And they're free, right? Having gratitude, getting out in the sun. People always again, getting back to what we were talking about earlier, right? People always look for the barriers, right? The reasons they can't do something or shouldn't do something. That's right. And, so often something will come up it takes too much time. It's too expensive," right?"It's too complicated." And, you've mentioned two things that I agree have massive impacts on health, and they cost nothing. They don't take a lot of time, and- You do them together, too… you just… Exactly, right? Go do your gratitude practice out in the sun in the morning- That's right and you're gonna have a great start to your day. That's it. Now, if you wanna talk about fancy biohacks, we could get, we could go there. I have my PEMF mat, I have my red light, I have this nice non-toxic pool you saw outside with the the cold plunge. But those are, I think a lot of people major in the minors, right? They they go for the cold plunge, they go for the red light, they go for the sauna. And all that's great. I have all of that. But you don't start there. Those are additions to the fundamentals, which is the gratitude. It's the real food thing you talk about in your book, the sunlight. Get the foundation taken care of, then add those sexy biohacks. Amazing. That's one of the things that I, has- I'm trying to find the right descriptor. Puzzled me baffled me is what you call majoring in the minors. All the piddly-ass little things that folks will try without trying the obviously single most powerful things and then complain that this doesn't work. I'm talking to you people. Listen to me. If you're not-- If you're stuffing shit in your… can I say that? Hey, I'm the producer, I can let it go. If you're stuffing crap in your, stuffing crap in your mouth day after day, don't complain that the cold plunges aren't working for you. Don't do it. If you spend all day sitting on your butt inside under fluorescent light bulbs without, I don't know, walking outside and standing in the grass in the sun, and complain that this gratitude stuff doesn't work, shut up. All right, I guess I'm a little bit grumpy. Oh, you know what? That, that, that brings me back to something I wanted both of you to comment on because I've recently started actively intentionally doing this. I'm fortunate to live in a place where we have about 320 days of sunshine a year, which I realize is a blessing, and I'm gra-grateful for it. But I've also intentionally started doing this thing of getting up in the morning, walking outside barefooted and standing in my grass looking at the sun. I think it was Scott Adams who talked about grounding. He was the first one I heard talk about grounding, and he said, "If you believe it works." And I thought, "That's weird. I don't understand that." But I've started doing this and- This, it seems to me like it's a similar kind of thing as what I've experienced with the f- noticing the visceral experience I'm having in my body. Not looking for anything woo-woo, just where am I feeling something in my body, whatever it happens to be. I've stan- I've stood in the grass. I always thought that I'm open to these kind of things, but to be frank, I thought the grounding was just a little bit nutty. And it may be nutty, but I've recently been going out in the yard in the morning and standing there with my coffee in my hand and just as the sun's coming up, and barefoot in my grass, and just trying to notice what am I feeling in my feet, in my legs, and all the way up through my body. Guys it's weird. Something's happening A- and it irritates me'cause I can't explain it but I, there's something going on there I agree. I'm with you. I do the same thing. I ground every single day. It's another vitamin G, vitamin grounding.… It's like taking a handful of antioxidants. It feels so good, and I do it every day. My, my buddy Chris sees me all the time. I'm on the grass here grounding. If you could stack it, if you could stack it like you're doing it, Jack, so morning sunlight, grounding, and gratitude, like that's quite the stack right there, and then add your coffee at the same time, man that's great. I don't know if you do any grounding as well. You're… You do? Okay. Yeah, and again, free-… Easy. Not, not complicated. And it just it's one of those simple habits that really pays dividends that I think most people when you first talk about it, they're like, "Nah, no way that's gonna do anything." Hippy-dippy stuff. Yeah, exactly. Go hug a tree. Yeah. Actually, there's benefits to hugging a tree too. You actually ground when you hug a tree. Anyways, I'm with you guys. Awesome. I love it. This has been another, a great conversation. Awesome to be able to have it in person with you this time. Tell people where they can find the book, where they can find you. The book is available over at ketoflexbook.com. If you wanna get the bonuses, you can go there. We're giving away two PDF downloads and a sample audio chapter for the audiobook for KetoFlex. So the book's available on paperback, Kindle, Audible, and Spotify. I narrated the entire Audible myself, audio myself. If you want the bonuses, go to ketoflexbook.com, or you can go to Amazon, go to your local bookstore, Barnes & Noble wherever books are sold. It's called KetoFlex Revised by Ben Azadi. And I wanna thank you, Phil, for having me back. Thank you, Jack, for hosting us as well. This is a cool format. I'm glad we pulled it off here. I love the work that you're doing. Congratulations on your book. So if you're gonna buy my book, buy Phil's book. Add them both to the cart and just get them both. Do them both. This has been fun. A- aside from the technical issues, which we may or may not solve I really hope we can just do this format again. This is really good. Cool. All right, folks, those of you who stumbled here and stayed, aren't you glad you did? This has been Stay Off My Operating Table with Dr. Philip Ovadia. Our guest has been Ben Azadi. All the contact information will be available in the show notes. We do this every week. Come back. We'll talk to y'all next time.