Ask Me Anything: Strength, Snacking & Why Instagram Deleted My Account with 40,000 Followers

 
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In this very special episode, I’ll be responding to your questions in an AMA-style free for all.

Most of these questions came in through the newsletter. If you’d like to ask me your question in an upcoming episode, make sure that you’re signed up for the newsletter.

As a thanks for signing up, I’ll even send you some delicious recipes for low-sugar cookies, a quick-start meal plan and other goodies to get you started eating Wild.

I know some of you have been doing The Wild Diet and Wild lifestyle for many years now, maybe on and off, so the free downloads you’ll get for joining the newsletter can be a great reminder with quick tips on eating Wild. So, be sure you’re signed up.

So, let’s go ahead and get started. In this AMA, I’ll be answering your questions about…

• Strength training and maintaining muscle mass on a keto diet
• How to snack and eat healthy on the road
• Why Instagram completely deleted my 10-year-old account with 40,000 followers
• Dairy-free snack options
• Benefits of eating real food based on the ancient traditions and ways our families ate just a generation ago
• And more…

I hope you enjoy this one. Let’s hit it.

There are some hard ones in here, so let’s go ahead and get started with some easy questions that came in, because man, is it tricky these days.

Yes, there were a lot of questions about why Instagram completely deleted my 10-year-old account with 40,000 followers, I’ll be answering that in just a minute—it’s one of the harder questions.

Strength Training & Maintaining Muscle Mass on a Keto Diet

But let’s start with this one here that came in from Ed. He wrote in from the newsletter to ask, he says:

I have been on a ketogenic diet for several years. My concern is maintaining my muscle mass, or even building muscle mass. Because I lost about 10 pounds on my ketogenic diet. So I’m interested in the strength training that you would recommend.

Thank you!

Ed

Ed, this is a really interesting question because especially in the past few years, you don’t need me to tell you that the ketogenic approach, the keto diet is everywhere.

Everyone’s talking about it, everyone’s selling keto meal plans and keto recipe books and keto everything, keto products that have sugar in them and totally aren’t keto and all this other stuff.

Anyway, we have to ask, what is a ketogenic diet?

Well, what it’s supposed to be, generally speaking, is that you keep your carbs, your net carbs, and especially your sugar very, very low. So low for some people, that it’s less than 20 grams of carbs a day for a strict ketogenic approach.

And that sort of approach, when you’re training hard or trying to build muscle, actually might not be the best way to go about it if those are your goals.

Now, if you’re looking to lose fat and transform your body composition in a relatively rapid way without doing a heck of a lot of exercise, the ketogenic approach can be very useful if you get sick, you’re feeling a little bit under the weather. Leaning into the intermittent fasting and low carb approach can help get those extra pounds off.

And I find that, every once in a while, when I do feel under the weather or I need a recovery from working out hard or going on big adventures, it can be very advantageous to undereat for a little while, but specifically under eating carbs is what we’re talking about.

'It can be very advantageous to under eat for a little while, but specifically undereating carbs is what we're talking about.' - Abel James Share on X

But many of you know, who’ve been following the show for a long time or following my work, many of you know that I’m not strict ketogenic. And I really haven’t been for a long time.

Yes, I do dip into ketosis quite often, mostly through intermittent fasting and that approach.

Generally speaking, I’ll do about a 16-8 style fast, sometimes a 20-4 style fast—the one meal a day—but lately it’s been more the 16-8 type approach.

But the key to that, especially if you want to build muscle or retain muscle, is focusing on protein. So yes, you want to dial down the carbs for the most part, but that mostly means just not over-eating carbs.

There’s a big difference between eating 50 grams of carbs a day, or 150 or 350.

Now, some people who are working out like crazy, can get away with disposing of hundreds and hundreds of grams of carbs through their workouts. And because they have a quick metabolism or they’re younger or whatever it is.

Yeah, that can totally work for some people, and you can build a lot of muscle and get great performance by fueling with glucose and sugars, especially if you keep it in check and manage it really well.

But if you try to err too far on the side of, “Oh, I’m gonna eat less than 20 grams of carbs a day, and I’m gonna make sure that I get big legs and big biceps and put on all this muscle,” a lot of people totally bonk out.

They run out of carbs, they run out of sugar.

And what happens when you go to low carbs is that you get, or at least for me I start running a little bit ragged.

It’s like I start craving sweet potato and I need something to get me through the rest of the day or to get me through the workout.

And if you are feeling just kind of down that way and you have been ketogenic for a while, go ahead and hit that sweet potato, especially post-workout, sometimes pre-workout that can work too.

'Hit that sweet potato, especially post-workout.' - Abel James Share on X

But Ed, if you’ve been keto for several years and you’ve already lost some weight, then now is a good time to experiment with adding in some glucose, some simple sugars, especially post-workout to help make sure that your body is getting the glucose that it needs to build muscles.

And when I was running marathons, that’s when I really learned about glucose management and looking at your blood sugar. Looking, as well, at how best to recover.

Because you may be able to lose weight and eke it out by not really focusing on carbs. Many of my peers and friends in the space have competed doing low carb for a long time, and for the most part, their performance suffered and sometimes your emotions will suffer, too.

So for most people, there’s nothing wrong, especially after a big workout or if you’re trying to build muscle, with hitting some carbs again.

So if you are looking to refeed and do a carb refeed, cyclic ketogenic dieting is really the approach that I favor as opposed to long-term, strict ketosis.

'Cyclic ketogenic dieting is really the approach that I favor as opposed to long-term, strict ketosis.' - Abel James Share on X

So, in the Search Bar at the top of this page, look up “cyclical” or “keto diet” or and you’ll see many of the conversations that we’ve had about that.

But long story short Ed, if you want to make sure that you’re building muscle and keeping your weight in check at the same time, keeping your fat composition in check, then take a look at what carb sources you’re prioritizing and start to put some of those in there.

Sweet potatoes, oatmeal, quinoa, wild rice can be helpful for some people.

And here’s a quick tip, if you heat up the rice, sweet potatoes and oatmeal and other carbs like that, then you let it cool in the fridge, then it develops resistant starch, which is really unique in terms of the dietary component for what you’re eating in most people’s diets.

Historically, we used to eat a lot more, but the advantage is that it helps you build good belly bugs, your microbiome is really the thing in many ways that drives your metabolism.

So if you starve your body of sugar completely for too long, then you’re missing out as well on fiber and resistant starch. So add a little bit in at a time.

Ed, let me know how you feel.

But here’s a big difference between eating one sweet potato and eating 15. So it’s not like you can go out and slam a bunch of pizzas or just go nuts on rice, unless you really are pre-season training for the NFL or something like that, doing double a days or triple a days workouts and that sort of thing.

For most people, try to dial it down, go into ketosis sometimes, especially if you’re looking to lean out.

And then, when you want to build up again and hit your muscles with some nutrients that’s going to help them grow, then go ahead, hit the sweet potatoes, the oatmeal, a little bit of rice and all of that.

One thing I might challenge you to do is see what the difference is and how you feel pre-workout fasted or low carb, compared to eating a sweet potato or just a little bit of carbs, 20 or 50 grams, maybe tops, pre-workout.

See how you feel, don’t be afraid of experimenting and hitting the carb, sometimes they’re truly not your enemy.

But dialing the sugar down and the simple carbs for most people, that’s going to be a giant win.

How To Snack & Eat Healthy On The Road

Alright, this one is from Katja…

Dear Abel,

My name is Katja and I live in Germany however as U.S. is going to open up soon I have already planned my vacation there. As I will be exploring the west coast including a lot of the national parks.

Due to a lot of allergies against gluten, dairy, egg I am basically living gluten-free and semi-vegan and try to follow a healthy diet including also certain Wild Diet foods.

Therefore I am a bit concerned that I won‘t find many healthy options or snacks while spending a lot of time on the roads and not close to big supermarkets offering a lot of healthy choices and that’s why I would like to reach out to you and ask for some advice, as I really appreciate your tips and interviews in your podcast for some time now.

I know that you and Alyson also spent a lot of time travelling/not close to big supermarkets.

It is not allowed to bring most of the food into the US and certainly no homemade products where no label about the content.

Do you have any tips on healthy food choices or easy recipes for me?

Kind regards
Katja

I love this question, and it does get tricky when you go to different countries.

Yes, in our experience, we’ve had to look around in little villages somewhere to try to feed ourselves, other times in giant foreign cities and we can’t even read the labels because we don’t speak the language, and we get it.

It gets really complicated as well as the fact that Germany, and Europe in general, has completely different labeling laws and different laws about what ingredients can be in products.

And I’m not very familiar with how Germany in particular handles that, but the U.S. does have pretty low standards compared to a lot of countries. They can sneak all sorts of nasty food chemicals and additives into the product without telling you or without full disclosure.

So that’s something you want to be aware of when you’re eating junk food.

There are a lot of people who, and I actually experienced this as well, you go over to Europe and you eat some of the breads and the baked goods and France or in Italy, I remember the pizza and the breads in Italy were completely different than the ones you would find here in the U.S.

So if you do have a favorite food in Germany and you try to order it in the U.S., keep in mind it might be made of something completely different.

Our flours here are terrible for the most part. They have all sorts of additives that give me a lot of trouble, whereas many people who go to another country, especially Europe, don’t have as much trouble with the baked goods, the flours, the breads, mostly because they’re fermented, they’re prepared with the more ancient sourdough technique, and they’re not using these ridiculous GMO yeasts and additives, dough conditioners and all the other things that they throw in there.

I’ll warn you that it might be a little bit tricky, especially if you’re looking for junk food or fast food. So I would encourage you to avoid those as you come here to the U.S.

But no matter where you are, there’s always going to be some way to get something nutritious.

And so as always, I encourage you to start with protein, that’s going to fill you up more than anything else.

And no matter where you are, generally speaking, you can find some little store, some corner store, some little health food store, maybe a small supermarket where they have salad greens, they have eggs, and they have some sort of protein, as well.

So when you’re building out your meals, focus on that protein especially the store-able protein first.

'Focus on protein first.' - Abel James Share on X

My wife and I love going on road trips these days, but for many years, we were flying all around the world to dozens of countries, and of course you can’t bring much food with you.

You might get arrested for trying to bring an apple with you off the plane, speaking from personal experience.

Actually, Alyson got in major trouble one time, but we’re not going to go there. You don’t want to be smuggling food across borders, especially these days, even if it is accidental and it is your lunch or whatever.

So we are very sensitive to that point.

But when you are building out your meals, here are some of the proteins that I like to bring with me. And if you can cook anything in advance, that’s one thing, but usually you can’t, especially if you’re going internationally.

So one of my favorites is grass-fed beef jerky sticks. PaleoValley is one that I’ve talked about before. They are some of my favorites. They do a great job at PaleoValley with beef sticks. They also have bone broth protein food bars, like snack bars, and that’s never going to be quite as good as real food, a fresh meal, but they have saved our butts many, many times.

Let’s see, what other companies make those? There are Dang Bars, those are more on the vegan or vegetarian side, nut-based protein bars. I think Dang does a pretty good job. Pretty dang good job.

And especially something like a snack mix, a GORP, or something like that, is a lot of times easy to purchase. Just watch out for too many raisins and dried fruits which can be super high in sugar.

So make sure that you’re focusing more on the nuts and watch out as well for some of the oils that they’re cooked in. Because sometimes if you go for the cheaper bagged or canned nuts, they’ll be cooked in a low quality seed oil or a GMO oil in some cases, or it’s kind of a rancid, old oil, and there’s too much salt and they’re just junkie.

So try to go for more of the bulk options, and if you do want to salt it, then typically we’ll salt it ourselves. So, homemade GORP, trail mix, nuts, canned sardines. Not everyone loves those, but I’m a huge fan and they’re great nutritionally, they last for a long time.

It’s super easy just to throw in your bag, canned oysters, clams, sardines, anchovies, wild caught salmon, and other things like that. Great source of protein.

It’s amazing how much it can fill you up, too.

Sometimes I’m just absolutely famished, it’s the afternoon, I haven’t eaten anything, we’ve already driven for 8 or 10 hours or something like that, and we’re running ragged. Hitting up some canned oysters, there’s almost nothing more filling and sometimes satisfying and that it’s amazing how your cravings can change.

Now, if you’re trying to stay away from eggs, obviously, you don’t want hard-boiled eggs or anything made with eggs, staying away from gluten, fair enough. Pretty easy, for the most part.

That’s what we do as well.

Staying away from dairy—cheese can be a pretty easy go-to snack that could be kind of filling, but easy to get carried away, so it’s actually better if you just kind of remove that as an option anyway from the beginning.

Jerky, that’s another storable great option for protein.

And then, of course, there are protein powders. And for a long time, I was kind of against it as a gimmick, but over the years, coaching a lot of people, especially those who don’t have the space or ability or time to cook a high protein meal, or if they don’t have protein as snacks available, then getting a high-quality protein powder—collagen protein can be excellent. Katja, stay away from whey,  obviously, because that’s dairy, but collagen should be great for you.

Collagen protein is a great one, because it’s dairy-free, and typically you can find unflavored varieties in a lot more places than you used to be able to.

And collagen is pretty much our favorite go-to protein.

There’s also bone broth, some of that is storable, you can take it with you.

Powdered protein, powdered greens and powdered nutrients or supplements that you bring with you can also really help.

We travel—have been for years—with a bag of supplements. And I find that if you are topped up on your nutrients, if you are on a daily basis, making sure that you’re getting your vitamin D and your omegas and vitamin C if you’re feeling a little bit rundown and you’re hitting protein, as well—you’re getting 20 grams at a time in a shake or a little snack that you make out of the protein powder or what have you, and then maybe you can add in some greens and fruits that are powdered, that you can bring on the road.

Having nutrients on hand, that helps ensure that you’re not going to be absolutely ravenous with your body screaming for all nutrients by the time dinner comes around, and then you just slam a pizza or tacos from Taco Bell.

Now, let me think, are there any fast food joints where we would eat?

Not so much, but if you had to then going to a Mexican or a Tex-Mex type place, sometimes BBQ-type places, you can get protein, you can build your own bowl, you can build your own burrito or wrap of some kind with a gluten-free wrap or something that’s lower carb.

There are ways to get creative at some fast food places, but that’s really a last resort. We don’t typically go for fast food.

But if you had to, making a Mexican food with some, with a protein like chicken or beef combined with some beans and some veggies and some grilled onions, and then some sauce over the top, that’s been a fall back for us many times on the road, and we hope that helps you.

Why Instagram Completely Deleted My 10-Year-Old Account with 40,000 Followers

Okay, so next, let’s tackle one of the harder questions…

Why did Instagram delete our account of 10 years?

What did we do to violate the rules or the terms of service, or how did we say something that we’re not supposed to say?

Well, this is what Liza asked in response to why Instagram deleted my 10-year-old account where she says:

That’s really stupid, Abel!

Why did they delete your Instagram account?

Liza 💕

Joyce as well asks:

what reason did they give for deleting your account?

joyce

Well, it’s a little in the weeds. But it didn’t make sense to us at all.

Essentially what happened was, anyone who’s followed us on Instagram knows that we’ve been putting out episodes of the show in video form for a while, we also put out little quote images.

So when someone makes a humdinger quote during an interview on this show, Alyson typically likes to create some sort of visual picture that goes along with it, with the quote that we both pick out together and pick out together as a team.

We’re just like, “Alright, this quote is something that is interesting or rousing or sums up the interview or whatever it was.”

And so a few weeks ago, we had Jessica Viker, a Registered Nurse on the show, and she was talking about how for-profit medicine doesn’t typically have the best interest of the patient in mind.

So here’s what happened when Instagram tried to delete us.

We were sent a bogus copyright claim. So basically, Instagram said that we have found copyrighted material on your account pointing to a picture of our quote image from the Jessica Viker interview.

And sometimes we’ll use visuals like a picture from a stock photo photography website. We’ve been doing this for 5 – 10 years now, and just use it as the background of the quote, because we don’t always have pictures from our own library to do that.

But anyway, we always purchased the licenses.

We’ve spent thousands of dollars on stock image photography over the years, just buying credits and posting it and have had, I think zero problems. We’ve never had a problem buying the rights to an image and then using it on social media, which is the whole point.

That’s why you buy, and that’s why we’ve spent all that money on stock photography. But we rarely do it, and usually just for these quote images really.

So Instagram sent us a copyright claim saying that, “An image of your album is reported to contain copyright content. If no obligation is made about the copyrighted work, we will need to remove your account,” or something to that effect.

And then we kept running into errors when we tried to object, and we’ve sent so many emails to the Instagram team.

This actually happened many weeks ago, we’ve given them a chance to reinstate our account in case it was an error.

We gave them a chance to un-delete our entire account of 10 years. That’s a lot of stuff, including every record of our existence on Instagram, essentially every episode of the show, everyone I’ve ever interviewed, from Dr. William Davis to Jessica Viker, to Mark Sisson, to Robb Wolf, Tim Ferris, all these other people completely gone from the entire body of work that we ever had on Instagram.

But anyway, so we kept running into errors, they kept not responding, essentially.

But just in case we made a Data Download request and tried to download our account before it was deleted.

We were locked out, the account was deleted, the Data Download request was never fulfilled, and we’re still waiting to hear anything from Instagram, to be perfectly honest.

And sadly, this isn’t new either.

I’m not the first person who has just been inexplicably deleted from Instagram.

Back in October of 2020, in fact, I had Mike Gorman aka Gormy on this podcast, and we had an incredibly inspiring conversation about his journey of losing an astounding 300 pounds.

He lost over 300 pounds, and just a couple of weeks after we posted his appearance on the Fat-Burning Man podcast, his Instagram account was deleted.

And so essentially what it looks like though, is that the account is still there, it’s just set to private now and it has no posts, all the posts had been deleted.

So that’s what happened to Gormy.

And I was just like, “Man, what did he say? What did he do?”

And I couldn’t really find anything.

But this is what he said:

“If anyone follows my IG, it has been disabled by them with no warning, I’m working on figuring out the appeal process.“

And to my knowledge he never got any sort of response. He never got his account reinstated.

I’m not expecting that we will either.

In response to Gormy, once he posted that, our good friend and also I’ve had her on this show multiple times, Anna Vocino, she’s a wonderful cookbook author as well as comedian. She joined the conversation responding to Gormy sharing that her account on Instagram had been completely deleted without warning that same month…

It seems like they’re going after health-focused accounts absolutely.

And the censorship and shadowbanning of leaders in health and fitness, doctors, PhDs, coaches, this has been happening for years.

But it’s become so obscene and egregious, and now they’re just deleting our accounts for no apparent reason, also with no recourse.

And it’s a little grim to watch this go down because these platforms don’t really have a leg to stand on when they start deleting PhDs and doctors and all this other stuff, especially with no explanation.

'It's a little grim to watch this go down because these platforms don't really have a leg to stand on when they start deleting PhDs and doctors with no explanation.' - Abel James Share on X

Some people have also asked like, “Why don’t you just make a new account on Instagram?”

And the answer is, it’s a lot of work, I don’t enjoy it. And more than anything else, Instagram is bad for your health.

'Instagram is bad for your health.' - Abel James Share on X

There’s a lot of research now that has come out saying specifically that Instagram increases rates of depression, it’s destroying our minds and our emotions and our spirits, and I never really loved Instagram to begin with.

At the beginning, it was kind of fun, you know, we could share some food photos, we could have conversations with people back and forth about the nutrition of various meals, and it could be an educational tool, especially when people who subscribed to you on social media.

You know, our community that we had built on these multiple platforms, it was really nice when we had the ability to reach our people who had subscribed to us.

And a lot of you I’m sure have noticed, as well, that just because you subscribe to someone, it doesn’t mean that you stay subscribed.

You might be un-subscribed without knowing it.

But even more often, you’re simply not shown these people’s content anymore. You may be subscribed to them, but Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube will never, ever show you anything that they’re doing.

But why is Instagram and social media so unhealthy?

Well, I think part of it is that the people who remain aren’t able to practice free speech, they’re not able to be themselves, they can’t really speak the way that they would if they weren’t on Instagram or recording for Instagram specifically. So the conversations have become very benign, useless, and waste a lot of time and energy.

'The people who remain aren't able to practice free speech, they're not able to be themselves, they can't really speak the way that they would if they weren't on Instagram.' - Abel James Share on X

Yes, if you’re a butt model, you’ll probably do very well with your butt implants on Instagram, but unfortunately that is the truth, Instagram is terrible for our health.

The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and the Young Health Movement (YHM) conducted a study showing that Instagram is actually ranked #1 as the worst social media platform in terms of the detrimental effects to mental health for young adults.

And even Facebook’s own research on Instagram found that Instagram use negatively impacted young adults body image, especially young women.

So if Instagram is harming young women actively on purpose in full knowledge of what it’s doing, then frankly, I’m glad I’m not on the platform anymore.

'If Instagram is harming young women, actively on purpose, in full knowledge of what it's doing, then frankly, I'm glad I'm not on the platform anymore.' - Abel James Share on X

Once they deleted me from it, and I talked to Alyson about it, we’re like, “Oh, we don’t have to post to Instagram anymore. Actually, this is kind of great, maybe we can focus on something that is useful to the world that isn’t hurting people.”

And you may remember years ago, I didn’t post to Instagram for a good year because I had come across some of this research, and I do not want to be a part of the problem, even if it means that we don’t exist on the platforms that are actively hurting our mental health and censoring us and all of that.

Why would we be there? If they kick all of the cool kids out of the party those cool kids will start another party and it will be a lot more fun than whatever Instagram has become now.

So anyway, if you did follow us on Instagram, you probably won’t be finding much of us there.

You might find some impostor who’s not me posting stuff pretending to be me, scamming people or something. There’s a whole lot of that and they never seem to delete those accounts on social media.

But more important, I think, is focusing on some of the new emerging platforms like Rumble, Telegram, Odyssey, maybe BitChute. I don’t know. There’s no clear winner.

But we’re trying to put our shows and our content on these alternative platforms that are emerging now.

I would encourage you, anyone who is on Instagram, know that you are not getting the full story anymore. It’s highly censored and it’s not fun anymore.

It hasn’t honestly been fun for many, many years on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, and some of these others.

So don’t go there for the truth.

If you want to go there and just kind of hate post and get into little squabbles and fights with other people or post pictures of butt implants, then I guess Instagram and Facebook can have at it.

But if you want to have real conversations, educate people, build communities, it’s not the place where it’s happening anymore.

So if you folks want to find me on a platform where I don’t exist yet, then make sure that you send me an email.

I’ve heard a lot of you say, Rumble. We are on Rumble.

We’re on Odyssey, a few of the others. We’re trying to get up there, but we have hundreds and hundreds of videos and it’s a process.

So if any of you are psyched about an emerging social media network or a platform where you think that we would fit in well and you want to see us, then please hit me up.

Some other people, like my friend Sid got in touch after I announced that Instagram deleted our account and he piped in saying:

“I got deplatformed by Linkedin with 10,000 contacts. Going to start working more on Gab, Gettr, and Minds now.”

– Sid

There are lots of alternatives, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear winner with a cohesive critical mass of people yet. I’m sure that’s not true, but let me know. You know better than I do.

Kotch wrote in and says:

“UN BE LIEVE “ABEL”!

So sorry, dude.”

Mark reached out, and here’s what he says:

Hi Abel

I am so sorry to hear you’ve been censored and blocked by instagram.

I know you must be aware of both Locals and Rumble. Quite a few of the people I listen to podcasts from were also banned or blocked or suspended for no good reason are now moving over to one of those two.

Wishing you all the best ! I love your content.

– Mark

Mark, thank you so much for sending that.

And all of you who got in touch after this happened, I really appreciate it.

We’re not going to stop, but we will stop on Instagram and other social media accounts for the most part. At least, until we figure things out, and at least until I can talk and use words.

I’m going through my mind right now, with all the words that I really shouldn’t say if I want this episode to go anywhere and not get completely banned right away by the remaining platforms…

And there are a lot of words… I’m just looking at you right now, I’m looking at the camera. There are a lot of words, trust me, that I cannot say right now or that just wouldn’t be a good idea to say right now, but I think you know what some of them are.

We’re looking forward to new ways of getting out there, meeting new people and creating new communities outside of these old big tech platforms that are so heavy-handed that I don’t think they’ll exist in this form, or they certainly won’t be the big dogs for much longer.

And I can’t wait for someone to come in and eat their lunch.

Dairy-Free Snack Options

Alright, we have time for a couple more questions here today.

Danita asks:

Good morning,

1. Would you and Alyson be able to provide various dairy-free options for those of us who can’t tolerate dairy?

My biggest problem area is with snacks. Dairy snacks are so easy and quick, with both fat and protein, and I have trouble finding viable and equitable substitutions.

I get tired of having jerky and carrots constantly, and I try to keep the nut intake lower per your recommendations.

The other problem I find is that I find I have trouble feeling filled/satiated on Dairy-free items (veggies!). Any tips you have for us dairy-free people would be greatly appreciated!

I have a young child who is very busy with sports and other activities. As a result, I am constantly on the go. I need easy to pack, easy to eat, filling, dairy-free snacks!

For the past few years I have very much enjoyed Alyson’s diary-free versions of desserts. I’m hoping that the two of you have some good options for dairy-free on-the-go eats!

2. I have also enjoyed the 28 day challenge. Will I still have access to the recipes and content once the 28 days is complete?

Thank you very much for your time and consideration,
– Danita

Danita, thank you so much for writing in, and for these questions.

Yes, dairy is super easy and very tasty, but once again, maybe not the best option if you’re looking to lean down.

It’ll fill you up in some cases, and maybe a lot more than veggies do, but the good news is that there are many, many options, especially the longer you do this, the more options you’ll find.

So here are some more ideas, I’m just going to go through the list of some really helpful snacks if you are on the go, you’re traveling. This also goes back to the earlier question that came in from Germany.

So, go for soup or bone broth, canned seafood like I mentioned before, like sardines, oysters or wild caught salmon.

You can also pack up a salad and you can keep the dressing on the side or just bring a little container of olive oil and vinegar with you.

And sometimes we’ll even shake that up, put some salt and maybe some garlic powder in there and make our own little custom vinaigrettes or something like that to put over the salad and to improve the taste of various veggies that we’re eating.

Because when you add the oil to the veggies, especially olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil or avocado, when you add that high fat to the veggies that’s the trick, that helps you fill up, especially with a little bit of salt, it can really be helpful.

Yeah, and check out some of the salads, we have a lot of different filling on the go salad options here on FatBurningMan.com. Just type it into the search bar. You’ll find:

• The Fat-Burning Chef Salad
• Wild Smoked Salmon and Kale Salad
• Chicken and Arugula Salad with Watermelon
• Avocado and Cucumber Dill Salad with Steak

Sometimes we’ll even, when you buy those organic greens in a big plastic container, we’ll use that as a container to bring with us and create a salad over the top. And that will be a salad that feeds definitely the two of us, sometimes for multiple meals, sometimes a whole family you can fill up that way.

But saving the same container that the greens came in or that your veggies came in can be really useful.

Don’t forget to bring your fat a good high quality olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, can be great on the road. But coconut oil is a little bit more tricky because it’s solid at lower temperature. Usually at room temperature, it’s going to be solid unless you live down in Austin or somewhere and it’s hot all the time. Coconut is another great one.

Just in general, coconut manna or coconut butter can be extremely filling and delicious, just eaten straight up as a little treat.

Avocado sprinkled with salt and pepper, you just cut in half and sprinkle a little bit of spices over the top, maybe a little olive oil, balsamic, or fresh Basil is great.

Hard boiled eggs or making some homemade deviled eggs, bringing those with you, or low-sugar protein powder.

If you are going to have protein powder or powdered shakes kind of those convenience foods or protein bars, make sure that they’re low sugar and they don’t have too much junk in them.

Then there are homemade protein snacks, we’re a big fan of, like making your own power cookies, making green smoothies or green juice for the road, broccoli with hummus, guacamole with carrot sticks, leftovers.

There are all sorts of different ways to make it interesting for you. So I hope that helps.

Benefits of Eating Real Food Based on the Ancient Traditions & Ways Our Families Ate Just a Generation Ago

One last quick comment that came in from Anne Marie, she says:

So, I bought your book off of Amazon and found my way to your website.

The most interesting thing that I have learned in the almost 100 pages I have read of your book (I got the book yesterday), is that the “diet” that you describe is how I was raised. My mother, who is now 92 years old, always spoke of nutritious foods. We did not have packaged anything in our house (I went to my friends for that).

So, I will attempt to return to my roots and change my diet to what Mom knew years ago. We’ll see.

BTW, I listened to two of your podcasts as I work on my dissertation. Very interesting. I will listen to more of them.

– Ann Marie

Anne Marie, thank you so much for writing in.

Yes, what we talk about in terms of eating real food is very much based in the ancient lineage of eating, the ancient tradition of eating or the way that most of our families used to eat generations ago, and we need to keep that alive.

It’s very important that we go backwards when we’re in such a precarious time, to look for health cues and what will keep us lean and healthy.

And until very recently, all these Franken foods and chemical concoction foods weren’t a thing. We didn’t have to worry about them.

Also obesity, diabetes, cancer, and all these giant problems that we have now, weren’t so much a thing when we look back to the past, and there are many reasons for that.

So good on you for getting back in touch with your roots.

'Good on you for getting back in touch with your roots.' - Abel James Share on X

Once again, this is Abel James, thank you so much for listening.

You can always check out more of our work here on FatBurningMan.com for free with more than 400 episodes of this show.

Once again, this is Abel James signing off. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen here today.

Before You Go…

If you’re in search of vibrant health, one area that often gets overlooked is getting quality shut-eye.

It would be great if we could all turn off technology after sundown, but in real life it doesn’t always work out that way.

So here are a couple of quick things that you could try.

Number one, thankfully, after many years of this, there are a lot of apps or even built-in modes for PC’s, Macs, Androids, Apple phones, and the rest of it, that pull out the worst type of blue light after dark.

And so sometimes it’s called night mode or dark mode, there are different apps that can do this automatically, like f.lux for desktop and other platforms.

Look into enabling that mode deep in the setting somewhere on your different devices, your phone, your tablet. Your desktop and portable computers can all do this at this point.

So that can really help improve your sleep, reduce eye strain, and much, much more. So look for those options, make sure that they’re enabled.

And then in addition to that or instead of that as well, you can also look into blue-blocking glasses and make sure that they’re blocking the right wavelengths of light

Because there are a lot of cheapo knock-off versions out there now, but we’re really happy to say that we teamed up with a group of specialists to create our very own blue-blocking glasses called WildRx.

Save 10% Off WildRx Blue Blockers with code YOUROCK

If you’re new to blue blockers, please check out the daytime variety yellow lenses. In 9 out of 10 cases, most people will want to start there with the yellow lenses.

But if you are more advanced and you want the campfire effect, the red lenses for after dark are really excellent. I use these a lot of times in the morning when I wake up before the sun is up.

I like to be on my synthesizer and keyboard, which is attached to a computer, playing all the instruments.

Looking into the monitor when it’s that dark, it really does cause me a lot of eye strain. So I like using these for intense moments like that.

But most of you want to start probably with the yellow lenses.

So if you’d like 10% off and to be one of the very first people to try WildRx, use the promo code YOUROCK for 10% off your entire order.

Please go check it out at WildRx.com, and don’t forget to use the code YOUROCK to save 10% off.

I really hope you like them.

And don’t forget to write me, let me know how you like the yellow lenses or the red lenses, because they are quite different and quite unique.

I hope you dig them.

>> Yes, Claim 10% Off WildRx Blue Blockers with code YOUROCK

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