Yuri: Very cool, very good points. Now, this might be a little bit tricky to answer based on, you know, your approach with metabolic typing, but what would you, in general, what would you recommend as five foods that the majority of people avoid or remove from their diet and why?

Andrew: Whoa, five? That is a little tricky question. I’ll do my best with that. What you find when you do go through the metabolic-typing process is that there are some foods that are gonna be restricted from you even though they’re good foods.

So, the first thing that really jumps into my mind right now is a quote by Jack LaLanne, who I don’t necessarily know his nutritional approach other than this quote I’m about to say, but I know the man’s in superior shape at a pretty old age and sells a lot of juicers, but that’s neither here nor there.

He said, “If man makes it, don’t eat it,” and that’s a great, you know, a basic definition of food. So, if it comes from Mother Nature, that’s a food, first and foremost.

What you have to do and what I have a lot of clients do is take anything refined out of their body to start off. Some people, like you said, can handle certain pastas or grains. What I do is kind of take that out immediately and start to add some foods back in if they’re able to.

So, the first one that pops into my mind would be breads. I would take breads out and incorporate something such as a sprouted-grain bread. The best one I found out there is Ezekiel bread. The spelling is just like it is in the Bible, Ezekiel.

They have different flavors, if you will, low sodium, sesame, cinnamon raisin, and the benefit of that it’s sprouted and the grains have gone through the necessary process to be assimilated or digested properly. What you find in a lot of those refined carbohydrates is that it spikes the insulin up quite a bit, the blood sugar raises, drops, and then you’re hungry for anything.

You’re left full from, like, a stomach perspective, but at a brain level, you’re not, ’cause you’ve eaten a lot of calories in bread, you know, refined carbohydrates, and you haven’t gotten any nutrition in there.
So, breads is one of the things I would take it. I talked about it before, nonfoods. So, once we get a good definition of what a food is, what a food isn’t—feel free to use that Jack LaLanne definition. That would be a great approach to, if you don’t know what your metabolic type is—to start making conscious decisions.

Big, huge controversial topic, which we could probably discuss on another series for hours, which would be supplements. I would take not necessarily supplements, but protein shakes, protein bars out of the diet. That’s not to say that I haven’t recommended a few to clients, but those are very few and far between.

Most of the people that come to me aren’t eating as much natural, organic, healthy foods as they should be, and they’re relying a lot on these quick, easy bars and protein shakes, most of which are garbage.
I would get those things out of there, and then talk to somebody if you really have a true need to incorporate them back into the nutrition. What are we at? That was maybe three of them?

Yuri: Three. Two more, buddy.

Andrew: I can do it. Fat-free foods. Fat-free; if it says fat-free, get away from it. There is a direct correlation between the onset of fat-free foods being marketed—at least in the United States—and the rise in obesity, both child and adult.

Fat-free is a marketing ploy; fat is essential to our bodies. You need to eat fat to lose fat. The trick is what kind of fats are those. So, without, again, going into healthy fats or unhealthy fats, I would stay away from things that are marketed as fat-free.

If you have to market something that it’s low in fat, you know, it really shouldn’t be presented that way in my opinion. Fats are there for a reason, and if it’s an organic, good-quality source, than the fats are good.
I have to borrow one more definition ’cause it’s on my mind right here, from Paul Chek. He gives it the eyes test; so, if something has a set of eyes, then it has good fat in it. There’s an exception, such as nuts and avocadoes, which would also be good fats.

But what you have to question is what kind of fats are in that animal. If it’s not free-range and organic, fats attract toxins, and that’s where the danger lies. Not in the animal or the fat itself; it’s with the raising of the animal. Again, that may be another topic that we might or might not wanna get into right now, but, again, I would stay away from these heavily marketed fat-free foods.

I’ll give you an example: rice cakes. Some of the worst things you can put in your body; it would spike your insulin up even faster than table sugar, but it’s marketed as a low-carb, fat-free, healthy food. And they can get away with this because there’s a lot of money involved. So, those are the things I would stay away from there.

Yuri: Interesting, interesting. What about, you talked about replacing traditional breads, refined breads with sprouted grains, Ezekiel and stuff.

What are some other, maybe three or four other healthy foods that you would replace some of the foods you just mentioned with or maybe just, you know, adding back into the diet of people who are already eating these foods? So, what would be, like, maybe three or four really good foods?

Andrew: Great question and what I’m gonna do is kinda go a little bit off the beaten path, so to speak, because a lot of the resources can tell you, you know, “Eat more chicken; eat more this, that, and the other thing,” but that’s fairly easy, and to truly understand that is not that difficult.

I would start off with things such as whole eggs, free-range, organic whole eggs. A lot of people get into the habit of, for whatever reason—well, I know the reason; it’s the fear of fats—getting away from whole eggs, and they throw the yolk away.

Yet if you take a look at, you know, the benefit of yolks in nutrition, it’s not even a comparison when you’re comparing what’s in the yolk compared to the white. In the yolk you have Vitamins A, D, and K, you have magnesium, zinc, copper, phosphorous, iron, fats, proteins. I can go on and on.

You have very little nutrition—maybe some protein—in the white. These are meant to be eaten together. The fear of fats, I think, is one of the biggest problems with the traditional American diet, and that is something I would incorporate in—free-range, organic, whole eggs.

If you think you’re getting too much calories or too much fat from that, meaning your metabolic typing shows you that you shouldn’t be eating that much fat, have one less egg. Little side note too: The best way to prepare an egg would be anything other than scrambled.

Sometimes what you do when you scramble the egg is vigorously mix the proteins, the nutrients together with the white and the yolk, and it makes it a little bit harder to digest and to assimilate. So, I would, you know, have it fried, poached, hard-boiled, soft-boiled.

Another food that I would introduce would be coconut oil. I think we’ve gotten into a habit of cooking in nothing but olive oil, for those who are making healthy choices. I think it’s pretty well-known now to stay away from a lot of these vegetable oils and a lot of these deep-fat frying oils.

But coconut oil is something that got a very bad rap years ago, and, you know, the history of that goes back to the sixties, when the edible-oil industry started marketing this whole “stay away from saturated fats” approach, which, again, there was a lot of money involved, and coconut oil kind of fell into that category.

But coconut oil has a much higher smoke point than olive oil; it’s a more appropriate oil to cook with at high heat, and the benefit of that far outweighs most of the oil out there today. So, coconut oil would be something I would incorporate immediately.

Dark-green vegetables, I think that’s something people don’t get enough of, dark-green, organic vegetables. Certain vegetables you do wanna cook, though, dark-green, for example, like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, and spinach.

What they do is contain what is known as goitrogens, which are enzyme inhibitors. So, if you’re not bringing them up to a certain temperature—you don’t wanna burn them, but you wanna incorporate them into the diet either sautéed, lightly steamed, or very, very lightly baked, you know, at a lower temperature.

And a couple other would be beets; beets is a great detoxification food. That’s something I like to incorporate raw, actually, in the form of a juice.

I think it might be a little difficult to eat a raw beet as a human being, but that’s something that is incredible for the kidney, incredible for elimination, and also a category that I call a super food. So, a red, specifically, if not a golden beet.

And I think the last, which could even be first on this list, would be raw butter or raw dairy in general. One that is not homogenized, not pasteurized, and contains all the nutrients in the form in which it’s supposed to be available to us.

It can be a little difficult to get, at least here in the United States, raw dairy, but if you wanna look at the Weston A. Price Foundation site and do a little research there, they may be able to help you find raw dairy.

Yuri: Very cool. It’s always interesting to see different points of view. I think at the end of the day, whoever you’re talking to who has any kind of idea about holistic and whole food nutrition usually come back to the same points, which, for everyone who’s listening should be a little ding-a-ling-a-ling, a light going off.

So, that’s some awesome stuff, Andrew. Just before we finish off, where’s the best place for people to follow your stuff? Is it Andrewfit.com? Is that the main site?

Andrew: Yeah, that’s the site that you can go to get any information on me, contact me, and I do still see clients, both exercise and nutrition. So, you can go to Andrewfit.com, and feel free to reach out.

Yuri: Cool, awesome. It’s been a great interview so far, and I just wanna thank you again for taking the time. Is there anything else that you wanna just kinda leave us with that we haven’t touched upon?

Andrew: Wow.

Yuri: We pretty much covered everything.

Andrew: Yeah, we covered quite a bit. All I would really urge people to do is: Don’t be overwhelmed. If you’re trying to make a change in your lifestyle, whether it be how you look, how you feel, how you perform, one step at a time.

Link up with a good practitioner, don’t be overwhelmed. ’Cause sometimes it’s just that first step, incorporating one thing each meal that’s organic. If you’re working on a budget and organic food can be overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be your entire meal right off the bat until you can get to that point. Incorporate one thing, you know?

Sit out and plan on a Sunday, Wednesday, whatever day you choose, say, “Hey, I’m gonna go shopping on this day, and I’m gonna start making some healthier choices. I’m gonna put in the back of mind that hey, I’m gonna start eating natural foods. Not ’cause the can says it’s natural, but ’cause I know this came from the earth, it came from a tree, it came from, you know, a field, raised the right way, organically,” and go forward from there. Don’t be intimidated; it’ll come.

Yuri: Awesome. Well, that’s great advice, guys. And again, if you need to get in touch with Andrew, which I highly recommend you do at least check out his stuff. See what he’s doing at Andrewfit.com.
Again, I just wanna thank you very much for taking the time tonight, and I look forward to seeing you in Vegas in a couple weeks.

Andrew: You’re welcome, Yuri. I’m looking forward to it, as always.

Yuri: All right, buddy. Have a good one.

Andrew: Excellent, take care. Thanks a lot.