How to Lose 100 Pounds at 17

Joshua Weissman is the author of “The Slim Palate Paleo Cookbook,” a popular food blogger and photographer, and he’s just barely out of high school.

What kicked Joshua off on his incredible journey into real-food cooking and health? He was a fat kid.

Joshua was getting bullied. He was ushered from doctor to nutritionist to the teacher of his health class that promoted an out-of-date food pyramid. When nothing worked, he took his health into his own hands and lost over 100 pounds in a year and a half by ditching doctors and diets and just eating real food.

Now, he is a successful author and one of the leaders of the Paleo movement.

On this show with Joshua, you’ll learn:

• How to dodge junk food, even in high school
• How our children are still being taught the wrong information in health class
• Why Joshua’s nutritionist gave absolutely no advice about nutrition
• Why chubby kids are the new normal (and what we can do about it)
• How a kid with a pan can change the world with real food
• “The flamboyant salad” and more

Joshua Weissman: Fat Kid to Food Hipster, His Incredible Journey

Abel: Joshua Weissman took charge of his life in his mid teens, lost 100 pounds, put an end to bullying and now dedicates himself to helping others to do the same with his terrific recipe blog Slim Palate.

Joshua has an awesome story. It’s powerful stuff because I think a lot of us can relate to feeling awkward and uncomfortable and not really sure of ourselves and who we are and who we want to be, especially in our teenage years. And you just turned 18 years old (at the time of interview) and you’re dramatically different from who you were just a couple of years ago.

Can we start with that? Can we start with basically who you’ve been your entire life and the choices that you’ve made, and how that’s changed today?

Between the ages of roughly eight or nine years old, I started drifting away from healthy food. Obviously, my parents can’t control everything that goes in and out of my mouth.

And then what goes on is that as you get older, your parents are going to start letting you explore and do stuff on your own. So, I would hang out with my friends as a kid, and we’d go to the fast food places and what not.

And there was no problem for the first few years, and I figured, “They’re eating it, so why not me?” Of course, I’m going to be doing whatever my friends are doing.

I played a lot of video games. We went out every once in a while, but I would say there was more inactivity than there was activity.

We ate a lot of fast food, and I slowly started to become overweight.

It wasn’t really something that I saw as a problem. I never really realized it until people started making fun of me and then I was like, “Wait, what’s going on? I didn’t know that there was a problem.” I thought I was always the same. I didn’t really think anything had changed.

Progressively, as I got more and more overweight, the ridicule and the harassment kind of got more and more pronounced.

And then it started to hit me and I was like, “Oh, well, something clearly isn’t right in this situation.” And I think right around 14 or 15 was when it was its absolute worst. Because once I started to realize all these problems, I tried different things, like I tried… I don’t remember the names of them, but little frozen packaged meals that are supposed to be healthy for you and their calculated calories and all that. I ate those and that didn’t help.

And I tried personal trainers, I went to doctors. Surprisingly, the doctor was the least helpful out of all of them.

Abel: Yeah, and I can relate to that.

Yeah.  And so I did that and nothing was working. And then around 14, I kinda just gave up trying to fix it. And that’s when it was my worst and it was really bad, and a lot of depression .

And then there was sort of this moment of enlightenment, I guess, at 15, where I stopped being so analytical. I was just analyzing every single thing and trying to be really perfect about it. And I was trying, “Oh, well the government says to eat this much, this many whole grains and why is this not helping me?”

So I started reading into some other things. I read some different books. And I came to the conclusion that if I just shift my eating to real food rather than going straight to the frozen foods aisle for the Slim 100 or whatever, that’s when I started seeing changes.

I read up a little more, read some more books. One of the books taught me a lot, granted I don’t really support 100% everything that he says, but it’s called, “The Belly Fat Cure” by Jorge Cruise . And he talks about insulin and carbohydrate consumption.

I started monitoring that, and that’s when I started realizing that it’s easier to just eat vegetables and bacon, and not really have to worry about the fat. And I started actually eating more fat . I moderated my carb intake. And I really started eating a lot more fat and I was a lot more conscious about where I got my food.

And it progressed more and more and more and then eventually, I lost over 100 pounds.

I learned not only a lot about how to eat, but I learned a lot about what is good and nourishing for your body.

Abel: That’s pretty powerful stuff and so rare, especially at your age.

In this world that we live in today, you being overweight, growing up, being a teenager, you might have been bigger than other kids but it’s still pretty normal. Most kids who are your age these days aren’t strapping, athletic, slim people like they used to be.

It’s kinda the norm that you’re a little bit soft or pudgy, but you were just on the bigger end of that scale. So that’s where the ridicule came from.

But usually, where that ridicule comes from is insecurity in the other people, as well. Because I’m sure if they’re carrying a little bit of extra fat, especially being a teenager, it’s rough on your psyche.

Let’s talk about how, psychologically, you were in a place before, and that’s who you were. And you realized that you were getting ridiculed and stuff. What does it feel like to be a fat kid?

It’s pretty horrible.

And I’m not saying it was the ridicule that made me completely change my mind, but I think that played a big role in noticing that it was there.

I thank all the people who said the things they said and all that. It steered me in the right direction in a way, and it was a big slap in the face.

So, to me, being a fat kid was really depressing and it was difficult. If they didn’t say anything, I would have found out one way or another, specifically since I was having trouble going up the stairs. I was getting winded just going up the stairs.

And my friends would go out and play basketball or football or whatever, and I would be winded, and I’d be like, “Alright. I gotta relax for a second”.

So, along with the depressing feeling, it just feels like you’re lacking something as a person. You don’t know what it is, you can’t really identify it, but there’s something that’s missing. Like a human link that’s just missing.

Like, “You should be able to do all these things, why are you not doing them?”

So, even if there wasn’t the ridicule, I feel like there would have been a specific point, but it might have just been later that I had realized it.

Why Exercise isn’t the Solution

Abel: Do you start exercising at the same time as you were playing with your diet or did that come later for you?

That actually came first before I even started dieting.

I went to a nutritionist right off the bat ’cause we lived in California. And so there’s nutritionists everywhere and my parents knew so many nutritionists so they were like, “Oh, well, you know, we’ll just take him to a nutritionist and they can teach him everything he needs to know because we don’t know everything.”

Ironically, they didn’t say anything about nutrition. The first thing they told me was to go start exercising.

So I exercised myself into the ground. I was just a kid, so I did everything I could to be active.

I probably rode my bike as hard as I possibly could at least six hours a day and I was just a kid.

I was exercising more than some of the athletes at my school. I was exercising more than them and that wasn’t working.

So, that’s when we started focusing on nutrition, and that still wasn’t helping.

I don’t know if they thought because I was a kid, I could handle it or not. But it was a lot of fruit and there was a lot of smoothies and stuff like that.

Which now that I look back at it, I would always go get a medium smoothie from one of the smoothie joints. I looked at the nutrition facts a few months ago actually, and it had 80 grams of sugar in one smoothie, and I was like, “That’s ridiculous.”

And I was having that after every workout thinking, “Oh man, I’m having this workout, having this healthy smoothie,” and I didn’t even like them that much.

Abel: Really? Wow. It’s like drinking two sodas.

And that was every single time I worked out and I was wondering why nothing was happening.

Abel: Yeah. Well, that’s so difficult. But let me just get this straight, so you went to a nutritionist because you were dramatically overweight as a teenager. And the nutritionist said, “Go exercise,” without giving you nutrition advice?

“You need to be more active. You need to be more active. You’re a kid, your genes can handle what you’re eating. You’re eating just fine, just go be more active. You’re clearly not being active enough”.

How to Change Your Diet, When Healthy isn’t “Cool”

Abel: Would you say that you were eating a lot back then and that was making you fat or was it something else?

I was eating a lot at a certain point in time. But when I was originally starting to realize like age ten and eleven , that’s when it was it’s worst.

I wasn’t eating a lot, no. I was eating poorly though. It was a lot of fast food, a lot of processed carbs and stuff like that. It wasn’t a lot of food but it was a lot of carbs.

It was a lot of carbs and it was a lot of sugar, a ridiculous amount of sugar.

Abel: So, what would a typical day’s worth of eating look like for you then?

 

A lot of bread, and a lot of pizza, McDonalds, Burger King.

Pretty much if I didn’t have time or didn’t want to have food at home, because my mom, she’s southern, she’s a southern cook, and she cooks all the time… Just ’cause she’s southern doesn’t mean everything is chicken fried steak, FYI.

I’m just saying, she did really good, home-cooked meals even though they weren’t technically Paleo, they were nourishing and they weren’t horrible.

But as a kid growing up, you really don’t always feel so accustomed to real food.

My friends would be like, “Hey, we’re gonna go to Burger King, do you wanna come with us?”

I’d be like, “Yeah, I wanna go!” and I would go.

So, yeah, really it was probably at least 60% fast food in comparison to how much I had home-cooked, and that’s just a guesstimate.

Abel: Interesting. Did you have a moment where you were a normal kid, and then you became a fat kid?

I’ve actually thought about that a lot, and I can’t really remember the point in time that I remember being a normal kid. I just remember the fat me when I was a kid.

Every time I think about myself at a younger age, I can’t really think about anything other than when I was fat, or when I was overweight, or when I was getting made fun of.

And that’s what kind of drove me to start eating healthy. I was like, I can’t remember any point in time that I wasn’t overweight, even though there was.

Abel: Did you eat school meals?

I did. Actually, yeah, I’m glad you brought that up.

Now that I think about it. It was maybe 10% to 20% of the food that went into my mouth was home-cooked. Because my lunch was always school lunch, and then my dinner was either fast food or was home-cooked, so most of the home-cooked meals that went into my mouth was breakfast, and not lunch or dinner because of school.

Abel: Gotcha. So what did a typical school lunch look like for you?

Pizza.

Abel: Pizza?

Pizza.

Abel: Like everyday, or?

I mean, almost everyday was pizza day. So, I always went for the pizza.

If it wasn’t pizza, then it was chicken tenders or the, what’s it called? It was like Asian chicken, in other words it was sugar-laden chicken cubes…  I would say breast, but I don’t know.

Health Class Nutrition from 1970’s: Still Taught in School

Abel: Right, yeah, who knows what that is, but, did you take a health class while you were growing up around those times. Did they teach you about how to eat or what nutrition was or anything like that?

I did, last year.

Abel: Oh, okay.

That was the first time I took a health class.

I had already lost all the weight at that point. I knew a lot for my age about nutrition.

You know, they pull the projector out and put up the food pyramid up, and ironically, when he did that, I don’t know what came over me, I could’ve just kept my mouth shut, I don’t know why I did this, but I looked at him and I raised my hand and he was like, “I’m not done with the lesson, but do you have a question?”

And I was like, “No, it’s more of a statement.”

And he was like, “Okay, well?”

And I was like, “Well that’s wrong. That’s not right, that doesn’t make sense.”

And he was like, “What do you mean it’s wrong, you don’t know what you’re talking about, what do you mean it’s wrong?”

And I was like, “Alright, well, I just don’t understand how they can emphasize that they want the bulk of your calories to come from grains when, ever since this was introduced, obesity and heart disease and all that has skyrocketed through the roof, and they still advise this? I mean, I thought we were past that.”

And he was like, “How do you know that?”

And I was like, “Well, I lost over a 100 pounds.”

So, he was like, “Okay wait, wait, wait, we gotta talk about this after class.”

So we went through the class then I went up to him and I talked to him about it and he was like, “You may be onto something,” and I was like, “Okay?”

That was it. It never came back up in class, so.

Abel: Wow. That’s really cool. Good for you for bringing that up.

It was a really interesting situation because there were kids in the background that were like, “This kid’s not very intelligent. He’s arguing with the government right now.”

I felt really weird about it.

I’ve never done that before, so that was a significant moment that I had some clarity.

Abel: You know much more than you think you know. That’s for sure.

Yeah, absolutely, and it was interesting to see his response because I thought he would ignore that I had even mentioned it. But he seemed relatively interested and he did seem like there was something… I knew something. I wasn’t just spouting words out of my mouth.

Abel: Yeah, that’s so interesting. I remember my 7th grade Health Class. My teacher was teaching about nutrition and pulled down the food pyramid… and she was obese. I remember thinking, and I didn’t say anything, but some of the other kids did, they would make fun of her for being obese.

I remember talking to parents because my mom is a nurse practitioner and she was always really interested in food and health and that sort of thing.

I’m just like, “Mom, why is the person who is teaching me Nutrition obese?”

At that point, when I was growing up I had some baby fat for sure. I had a similar moment at like 11 or 12.

I remember my dad, he said, “You have the genes, in our family, we can easily get fat.”

And he said, “You’re about to glide into puberty and this is the moment where you need to decide, are you going to be fat or not?”

I didn’t take it that personally because like you said, when you’re that young, you don’t really think about it that much.

But I knew that I wanted to be an athlete and I wanted to be really good at whatever I did, and I loved ninja turtles so I wanted to do Karate and stuff.

So, can you tell me a little bit more about the person who was teaching you kids nutrition, like what was his background?

He was a coach. I guess I can see that working, a coach as a health teacher.

But the thing is, in the class some of the material… Actually no, all of the material was pretty off.

The only stuff that I didn’t have anything to disagree with was either something I didn’t know about or it was just standard, the heart pumps blood. Everybody knows this.There’s not going to be much to argue with there.

But, it was so bad with some of the stuff they were teaching, I had to tune them out. I couldn’t listen because I was like, “This is gonna stress me out so much right now.”

It was actually stressful to me, just to listen to him because it was like, “He is telling all these kids this stuff.”

And then after the lesson they’re all chattering back and forth about how they’re going to be healthier and eat more whole grains and up this and up that and all the while, they’re all getting older and their metabolic rate that has been like on overdrive lately is not on overdrive anymore and they’re all kinda starting to get a little bit pudgy, some of them.

And I’m not trying to talk crap or anything like that. I’m just saying, it’s clear that their metabolic rate is not as superior as it was three years ago. It’s not, because they’re all getting older, they’re all almost adults.

There was actually another video that he showed, and it was actually talking about obesity. And it was talking about how it was a problem and I was like, “Okay, alright we’re on a better slope here, I’ll listen to this one.”

And we were watching the video and it was actually almost like a documentary type style and they had a camera in somebody’s house and they were trying to lose weight and they’re like, “Oh, we’re trying really hard.”

They started talking about nutrition after they got past their background and they went to their nutritionist and they’re like, “So, this is our go-to healthy meal, it’s two slices of toast with margarine and some orange juice.”

And I was like, “Oh my god, no, no, no, don’t put that in your body.”

They didn’t even mention whole grains in this, they just mentioned eating as many carbs as you can, and eating as low fat as you can.

And when I heard them suggest that to the people, they’re all like gloomy in the eyes and they’re like, “Well, just make sure that you eat a lot of carbs and no fat at all.”

I was like, “I can’t believe they would say that. I can’t believe that they would suggest that.”

And they’re still teaching this to kids, because that was last year so I know that they’re still teaching this.

And by the way it was funny because the video was like the old 70s videos, that zoom in and out really fast and they’ve got that weird noise in the background. So it was outdated and they’re still teaching stuff from the 70s, in terms of nutrition, to kids now.

That’s going to continue just passing on unless they change the curriculum.

Which, you know how long that takes, that’s not going to be an easy move.

Abel: Yeah, and it’s so interesting because that’s when they started teaching nutrition as a field, especially to kids, was in the 70s.

And if you look at a graph of what happened to America, especially kids as well as adults, the obesity rate just goes pretty much straight up.

We didn’t have a whole lot of problems as it turns out in terms of obesity or even a heart disease, and a lot of these things that we assume to be a side effect of eating too much fat—we didn’t have any of these problems before we stopped eating fat and started worrying about it so much.

And so that’s fascinating that they’re still showing the same stuff that basically caused all of the problems that we have all today, or at least a lot of the problems. So it’s also worth commenting on this part.

I’ve mentioned this in a couple of other shows and my presentations, but I looked at the diet of sumo wrestlers who are trying to put on as much mass as they possibly can, a lot of fat as well as muscle.

And basically what they do is the same exact thing that’s recommended by the government and nutritionists who are teaching kids, which is to eat as little fat as you possibly can and as many carbs as you possibly can and that gives you the sumo wrestler physique if you’re exercising a lot. And if you’re not, then it gives you obesity.

That’s a prescription for obesity, and some people with different body types, especially when you’re younger, some of them can get away with it. But most people, as we’re seeing all around us, really can’t.

How about when you see a kid who’s overweight today, do they come to you for advice?

Is it pretty widely accepted at your school that this is something that you’ve done, or is it just behind you and no one really cares or worries or even knows that you’ve lost 100 pounds?

Not everybody knows anymore, because it’s senior year.

The only people that would know me is the seniors, everyone below us are new. Not anymore.

But when I did lose all the weight, it happened really fast. It was a year-and-a-half total to lose a 100 pounds. That’s pretty fast.

Abel: You lost a 100 pounds while you were growing. I assume you probably got bigger at that time. Is that right?

Yeah. That might have contributed to how fast that I lost it, because I was growing at the same time.

But I know it was the diet adjustment, especially.

But anyway, you think about it like you go to school for four or five months, then you take about two weeks to four weeks off for winter break and stuff like that, and then go to school for another four or five months and then take summer off, and then you get like two months off.

It was almost every single time that we would take that break, and then I would come back, people would be like… They wouldn’t even recognize me.

They literally did not even recognize me.

I would pass at my friends in the hall and I would wave at them, they’d look at me and be like, “I don’t know who that is, but okay.”

Eventually people started realizing why I was looking different, and I explained what happened.

It started getting pretty well-known around the school that I had lost a bunch of weight.

Pretty quickly after I had lost pretty much most of it, and I had hit that 100 mark. I think that number right there really triggered something in everybody’s brain, but it was weird because people were coming up, it wasn’t just overweight kids, but it was kids that wanted to gain weight, kids that wanted to get healthier.

Whenever I see a kid that’s overweight, I feel overwhelmed with wanting to help them.

There’s not really an approachable way to do it without seeming like I’m pushing myself on them, or I don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable.

If they want to fix it, really it all comes down to how badly you want it.

It’s a lot of self-discipline, and if you want it, you’re going to find a way to get it. And if you do want it, but you don’t want it bad enough, then you’re probably going to try it for a little bit, and then you’re going to drop off and forget about it.

There’s got to be a certain point of wanting it, that you’re going to really put forth that effort.

I did get approached by a couple of friends who were overweight and they asked me some different questions, and I tried to explain it to them.

But through my explanation they’d say, “Yeah, yeah, no that makes sense I can do that. Okay, I’ll do that, I’ll do that,” but they never did. They never corrected it.

I’m not going to go up to them, “So what did you eat yesterday.” I’m not their nutritionist. If they want to stick to it, I recommended the different books and stuff like that so that they could do it on their own.

I just gave them a brief explanation like, “Are you eating this, this and this?”

“Oh yeah, I eat that all the time.”

“Okay, that’s the problem. You need to stop drinking soda every single day and not eat 20 chicken flautas when you go to Taco Bell or whatever.”

I think that they got the message, but they just didn’t want to commit.

It was too much for them to commit to.

I think that is the problem with the majority of the kids that are obese nowadays, it’s a really long ride and it’s a really really humongous commitment.

I mean, think about all their relationships that go in and out of high school. I mean they fly by, they last two or three weeks and I’m talking like at least a year of commitment to something.

So, I think it’s a little bit overwhelming for some of them, and I think they just kind of push it out of their brains to avoid the stress.

The Flamboyant Salad: How to Make “Healthy” Cool

Abel: I would imagine, especially being a teenager, everyone else is eating whatever they want, pretty much. And food is a social thing, it must be really hard when you know that going to a pizza place, for example, is not going to align with who you are and who you want to be. Which means you have to not hang out with your friends, and not eat something, or get a salad.

I’m a guy, and when I first started this and eating this way, I would go out and not eat the nachos or the chicken wings or whatever. My guy friends would eat me alive, and I was in my 20s, so we’re already way past the teenager thing.

But I can’t imagine what it’s like for you when food is this social thing. You’re at school eating your lunch or whatever, if people don’t know that you’ve lost 100 pounds, and they’re just like who is this kid eating weird stuff?

What is that like? Can you walk us through what it’s like to be a teenager and eating in this weird way that no one really gets or agrees with?

You have to just not care what anybody else says or thinks. You have to completely ignore it. Click To Tweet

You have to be able to push through that initial sense, because I mean I know everybody has it, that initial sense where it’s like, “Everyone is looking at me, everybody’s thinking all these horrible things about me,” and then it’s just like a long list that runs through your mind.

You have to shut that off. As soon as you do, it’s going to be so much more enlightening and you can really take a minute to breathe.

You realize, “I’m doing this for myself, it’s not for them so they’re not relevant to this, and who cares what they think. This is about me, this is not about them. It’s weird that they would even care what I’m eating right now.”

So that’s what I would think about, and I would just eat anyway.

Sooner or later, lucky for me, I eventually took on the persona of the healthy kid at school, the healthy-eating kid.

That was incredibly relieving.

Because they’re just, “Oh he’s healthy, he just eats organic, he’s like a food hipster.”

Abel: I’ve never heard that before. That’s hilarious.

The healthy food hipster of the school.

And it worked out great actually, it worked out really well.

It was like people saw it as almost like a taboo thing, like, “Oh that guy is so cool. He eats so healthy all the time and look how dedicated he is to eating healthy. I wish I could dedicate myself to eating healthy like that.”

People knew me as the food hipster. They saw it as taboo ‘Ooo that guy’s so cool, he eats so healthy.’ Click To Tweet

Abel: Dude, that is so cool. Good for you.

So it worked out really well for me. I just had to manipulate it in a way that made it look like I wasn’t just doing it to lose weight and become healthier.

Abel: Yeah, like watch me eat this stick of butter.

Granted, I’m like at home slathering everything in butter and then dousing it in olive oil or something like that.

But I bring a gigantic and completely ridiculously sized salad , like a flamboyant salad everyone could see.

Because eventually once they realized that, they’re like, “Oh, there goes that healthy kid with his ridiculous salad bowl that he brings to school that has like a retractable knife on it and all this interesting stuff.”

And so it worked out for me.

But I don’t know if that would be the case for everybody. I think I just got lucky.

Abel: I think it worked out because you dedicated yourself and were basically gritting your teeth for a year and a half. All the amazing things that have happened because you dedicated yourself.

You’ve learned some really important lessons, and I think that you have so much to share with the people around you, just through your example.

It’s definitely not luck. You are kicking the world’s butt because you’ve decided that you want something, you know what it takes to get there, and you’re doing it.

Advice for Teens Wanting to Lose Weight

So, you said that you need to want it. If that kid who’s overweight comes up to you, you need to want it for sure, but you also need to follow the right advice.

So what do you do about that?

Some of those people out there who are watching this video or listening to the podcast might even be watching this show for the first time, so they don’t even know how to lose all this weight. What is the advice that you would give to someone who wants to lose 100 pounds?

Well, I think that it varies from person to person, but at the same time, I think there is a consensus of bad eating right now with obesity.

And I’m not the one to demonize carbohydrates straight up. I’m not going to say carbs are bad, invariably. I don’t think that that’s true. I think that they can be useful in certain situations, it depends on how active you are and how much body fat you have on your body and stuff like that.

The more overweight you are, the less likely you’re going to be able to metabolize a butt-load of carbs in one sitting. Click To Tweet

So, I think the first thing that someone could do is probably eliminate all of their liquid sugar drinks like soda and stuff like that.

That was one of the hardest things for me to do.

I thought I was never going to be able to give up soda .

I mean it was literally like a drug. It was so hard.

I literally broke down and cried about it, several times.

Abel: Was it all sodas or was it one in particular? And was it regular or diet?

Anything that was sugary and fizzy that I could drink. Anything.

And I just thought, how am I supposed to do this without soda? Water is so boring, it doesn’t taste like anything.

I actually remember every time I would have dinner or something, my mom would be like, “Oh Josh, I made you water.”

I’m like, “Mom, you know I gotta have something sweet with this, cause this is salty and I gotta have something sweet with the salty.”

To balance out the flavor, and so I had to have like a some sort of sweet drink whether it was a juice or a soda. And giving up that soda was really difficult.

But, once I finally got past that and I knew I could give it up, then I realized, okay now I can take the next step.

So, once you’ve eliminated those really sugary soft drinks, that starts the pedaling, sort of, to get you moving in the right direction.

Then after that, start looking more towards reducing your carb intake and stuff like that.

I think that a lot of people want to jump straight to low-carb, like ketogenic low-carb, something like that. And I think that that’s great, but I think it’s too confusing to start someone off.

So, I started moderating my carbs during the first three or four months of my weight loss. I still successfully lost it even though I wasn’t eating, you know, gluten free or Paleo, yet.

And granted I wasn’t losing it as fast as I was until I started doing that, but I was still losing, because I was moderating my carbs enough.

So I think the point really is reducing those carbs.

Especially sugars. Most people can handle carbs better than they can handle sugar.

Because one goes to muscle stores and then the other goes to your liver glycogen. And that’s a tiny little depot that’s not going to let much storage. Yeah, watching your sugar and your carbs, it’s everything.

Watching your sugar and your carbs, it’s everything. @therealweissman Click To Tweet

And maybe slowly messing with the numbers and decreasing it over time, and see what does best for you.

If you feel like crap at this level, and nothings happening then don’t do that. Maybe bump it up a little bit.

Okay, you feel good here. You’re losing at a steady pace, stay there for a little bit.

Also over time, I actually noticed a stall for a while when I was really low carb and I was like what’s going on? This should be like go-train 100% of the time.

Then I started introducing more carbs, and then it picked right back up.

So it was like that for really long time. Nothing but low-carb.

I mean I didn’t even eat a banana for a year. I’m not even kidding.

I didn’t touch anything sugary or carb-y at all. It was just non-starchy vegetables, meats, healthy fat, stuff like that.

And I never touched anything other than like a raspberry, blackberry or a strawberry, specifically, nothing else. Not a banana, not a mango, nothing.

Then after a while, my body stared to crap out and was like, “Okay. Well you’re not going to lose anymore fat at this point in time.”

And then I started introducing more carbs, started eating potatoes and stuff like that. And not everyday, but after a workout or something like that.

And I think that boosted those leptin levels back up to let my body know it was okay to continue going.

So, like I said, it’s more of a experimental thing, you’ve got to play around with it and see how it works with your body.

Abel: That’s brilliant.

Basically throughout all of this journey, you’ve also become an amazing cook and photographer.

And you have a new book coming out, you have a wonderful blog at SlimPalate.com . Why don’t you talk a little bit about that, what does your cooking journey look like?

My cooking is pretty much all over the place right now. I mean, ever since I was a kid I loved cooking.

It was only up until I started becoming obese that I kind of disconnected from that because I was disconnecting from food in general.

So, I guess after I had gone through my journey I reconnected with food and I started dabbling back in my cooking that I did when I was a kid.

And right now I really, really, like my current cooking quota for the day usually is anything braised. Probably cause of the weather, cause it’s so cold.

But, I really like messing with different regional type cuisines. I really like Asian. Anything like Thai, I use a lot of fish sauce in my cooking.

My book is a little bit all over the place in terms of recipes.

It’s more of like a real food book, rather than a specified type of cook book like, oh, Chinese food, or whatever. It’s got all kinds of recipes. It’s got different classic ethnic foods. It’s got some classic recipes that a lot of people know like Ossobuco, a lot of people know that recipe. It’s just kind of my take on it, I guess.

And then there’s also some of my own recipes that I’ve come up with, like there’s a lamb shanks recipe in there for a coffee and ancho chilli braised lamb shanks…

Abel: Awesome.

They’re so good. Man, they are so good.

Abel: You’re making me salivate all over my desk right now.

And there’s another one for steak and brussels stir fry, and I tried to make sure that there was a good balance of everything in there.

There’s a good balance of meat to vegetables.

There’s actually, I think, more vegetable recipes than meat recipes, but that wasn’t exactly my plan per se. There’s a lot of versatility in it.

Where to Find Joshua Weissman

Head on over to the Slim Palate Website where you can find Joshua’s book, The Slim Palate Paleo Cookbook, as well as blog posts, recipes, and a Slim Palate store.

Before You Go…

In his first four weeks on the Wild Diet, Kurt lost a whopping 37 pounds while eating delicious foods like bacon cheeseburgers and chocolate, and even putting a hunk of grass-fed butter in his fresh-roasted coffee!

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What did you think about this show with the incredible Joshua Weissman? Add a comment below or hit me up on Twitter .