Oh God, this is so weird. Oh, I hate saying this. I can viscerally remember what it felt like. Oh my God. I literally did not know that I said this. I have no recollection of saying that. Hello there, my beautiful internet friends. Before we dive into this video, I forgot to film a very important part. And by the way, the reason you're not seeing my face right now is because I feel pretty sick. What you're about to watch is me reacting and reviewing videos that I made when I was trying to make the decision to cut my leg off exactly two years ago today. October 11th is the two year anniversary of my leg amputation, which is crazy to think about. And I'm about to go through all the videos that I made while I was trying to make that decision. But if you allow me 30 seconds before we dive in, I just wanna thank some really important people, namely my husband. When you go through something like losing a limb, it's not just you who experiences it. He has been by my side for everything, for every up and every down. I can never express my love and gratitude for that, Brian, thank you so much. My family has been beyond incredible. My mom and my dad have been vital in me being able to go through any of this. Do so many friends. I can't tell you how much you mean to me and how much you've helped this whole process. I can't name everybody. I'm gonna put some names up on screen, but I just wanna say you all mean the world to me and I'm so grateful. And you guys, you who clicked on this video and is watching this, you have been such a vital part of my healing and my journey getting here. So thank you. In reviewing the past two years, it's not just me. There's no way I could have gotten here without all of the support from so many people. I'm so grateful for them. Okay, enough with the sappy. Let's dive into this video. I'm really excited to share it with you. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, talented, delightful internet friends. Welcome back to Footless Show. I am Jo. I am missing a meat foot and today, October 11th, marks exactly two years since this happened. I've been invaded. I took that step exactly two years ago. I still very distinctly remember the day that I walked into the hospital and I knew I wasn't gonna be able to walk back out. I knew that there was gonna be a part of my body that was gone. But in the weeks and months leading up to that, I had to do a lot of serious thinking. No one really prepares you for how to make a decision to chop a body part off if it's not serving you well anymore and there's no hope left for it. And it was the biggest and scariest decision I've ever made and the biggest risk I've ever taken. If you don't know me or my story, the long and short of it is, is that when I was 13, I had a bad horseback riding accident. It shattered my ankle. They fixed it up and it didn't heal right. So they had to do surgery again and it didn't heal right. So they had to do surgery again and that pattern continued for quite a long time. And by the time I was 27, I'd had over 10 surgeries and procedures on my ankle and it just was trash. It felt horrible, it was so painful. It made it so that I couldn't really live life. I was still walking around, I was still doing stuff, but I was in a lot of pain and all of the activities that made me me, all the things that I wanted to do, I was no longer able to do. And so after extensive thought and consulting with friends, consulting with surgeons, we made the decision that a baloney amputation was my best hope, was my best chance at a life that was less pain and more something I actually wanted to be around for. So one of the ways that I kind of processed this decision and helped figure it out for myself was by talking into a camera. True story, I recorded myself in some of the videos you're gonna see talking about this decision process, talking about what I was thinking and feeling and all of that. And I didn't really have any intention of ever publishing it on the internet. I mean, I recorded it with the purpose of it could be used for that one day, right? But I thought, this is so obscure no one's gonna ever wanna hear about this. Who has to make the decision to cut their own leg off, right? Apparently a lot of people being an elective amputee is not that rare of a thing when it comes to amputees. And when I made the decision that amputation was the best choice for me, I decided to publish those videos. And what came next, I never could have expected. I continued to make videos kind of going through the hospital and coming back home and recovering, it was really therapeutic for me to do that. And that became this YouTube channel but I have not watched back those videos, those first videos that I've published since I published them. I've seen like bits and pieces if I went in to check on comments or something like that. But I've not actually watched myself from two years ago making the weirdest, most bizarre, uncomfortable, terrifying, exciting, mostly terrifying decision of my life. So today we're gonna take a journey back in time and watch those videos. As we dive in, if you feel like giving this video a thumbs up, hitting that like button, it helps this video get out to more people. And if you wanna see more of me, hit that subscribe button, I'd really appreciate it. Hey guys, my name is Jordan and right now I have two legs but in a few months I may only have one. I am actively in the process of trying to decide what the best option for my future is and I may be having my leg amputated. Just a cosmetic note to start off, I look like I haven't slept in days and also I've not seen the sun in weeks here. Maybe you should get outside, Joe. I am recording this video to start my journey and if I do decide to have this leg amputation I will probably start publishing these videos as part of sort of my journey of healing. So that brings up a really good point actually. If you don't know, this is actually my second channel. My first channel is Trauma Talk and I was running that channel for about a year before I recorded this video and on that channel I talk about difficult subjects like life and the aftermath of trauma and I realized that putting things into words for other people helped me make sense of my own life and my emotions and my experiences. And so when I knew I was gonna be facing this kind of bizarre decision, this kind of life change, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna use that tool that I've recently discovered. I'm gonna talk into a camera and see if it helps me process things and it turns out it really did. I got through the surgery a few months later at the follow-up appointment. My surgeon walked into the room and was basically like, how's it feeling?  And he was like, oh, okay, well, you have no options left, bye. That's actually a true story. I appreciate the surgeon who did work on me for that surgery in March. But when I went to the follow-up appointment at the time that it should have been all healed, he literally told me, yeah, there's no good options left, bye. I guess what I'm saying is he could really work on his bedside manner. But I think that conversation was what really got me thinking about, okay, you're saying there's no options left, but there has to be something and I'm gonna find that something. And I did find that something. I have been dealing with this for over half my life. I have been having surgery, after surgery, after surgery for half my life, trying to save a piece of my body that hurts constantly. And I am wondering if the best option isn't just to admit where it is. And if the fastest way to life that I actually get to live is not just to have it amputated. And I know that probably sounds bizarre to people and I know that a lot of people will probably comment that I'm insane or ungrateful and I'm not. And they have commented that I'm insane. I seem so analytical and serious here. Do I always seem analytical and serious? I'd like to think maybe not all the time. To be fair, this was a very analytical and serious decision to make. Everything hurts all the time and it's affecting other joints in my body. Something that I think is interesting is there's like a lot of, I remember how I felt here and you kind of see it in the video that there was a lot of justification of like, listen, I know this sounds nuts, but I know this sounds crazy, but things hurt, things really hurt. Like you need to understand that they hurt. I've always had an issue validating my own pain, validating my own experiences. And when it came to making this serious of a choice, I felt like I had to convince other people that what I was feeling was real because no one else could feel my body and saying like I'm going in, I'm walking in to have my leg amputated sounds nuts to a lot of people. And one thing that I've learned over the past couple years is that I don't need to justify my choices and experiences and my physical experience to everyone. I'm young and otherwise healthy and I don't have kids right now and I have a great support system. So it makes sense to me to have a leg amputation now. So that was a huge decision factor for me was kind of the timing and the age. I knew, listen right now, I have great health insurance, I have a support system, I'm young and otherwise healthy. I have no idea if that's gonna be the case in a few years and this amputation is gonna happen regardless like short of some kind of medical miracle. I am going to need a leg amputation, whether it's now or in a few years after we've gone through more surgeries that aren't gonna fix it but maybe just sustain it. And part of my thought process was like, if it's inevitable, why not just tackle it when I can choose the timing? But I don't know how to measure the emotional impact of it, the emotional impact of being a 27 year old girl with no leg. I think the answer with that one is there's no way to really put a number to it or measure it. The emotional impact is huge. It's life changing. It affects you and everyone around you. This is all kind of freaky and scary and frightening to think about. But part of me is also excited at the possibility of maybe in two years, like after the recovery is mostly done, like being able to run and being able to do. Oh my God. I literally did not know that I said this. I have no recollection of saying that. Maybe in two years, when it's all recovered, it's literally been two years and I'm just now maybe starting to run. I was a bit of an oracle. Now, September 7th, so it's just a few more days before the appointment, which we'll find out some more information about whether or not I'm moving forward with the imputation and I've discovered something. People really like giving their opinion about my choice and the consensus seems to be that I'm making a bad choice and even considering this at all. As much as I would like to say that that doesn't affect me because it's my choice, my body, it's my story, it does. Yeah, so let's just pause there for a moment. That was something that was a little challenging, especially as I was really in the decision process and talking to people about it and this was actually like a conscious spoken consideration. Everyone had their two cents and I mean this is true with any major life choice or change, people will like input their opinions whether they're asked for or not. But I had lots of people who knew nothing about my actual medical history or what I was experiencing, hearing that I was thinking about this like at work and coming out to be in me like, listen, there's this alternative medicine thing that you really need to try. You should never, you should never cut up a part of your body, it's a part of your body, you should keep it. Try this miracle thing that my friend found that situation is kind of maybe similar to yours but not really and you'll be fine. It was hard getting everybody else's input at a time when I was trying so hard to filter what I actually wanted. I didn't have a lot of experience making decisions for myself about my life and my body and really having, really claiming my voice with that and I was trying to do that through this process. It's hard to have people who don't, who haven't been here for the last half of my life telling me that I'm wrong and then I have people sharing miracle doctor stories and ones that don't even like relate to my situation and I would say that if you have a friend considering something that you haven't gone through, maybe try to listen a little more than you speak because it's hard to have people who literally know two minutes of my story telling me what I should do. So the whole other people's opinions thing did weigh pretty heavily on me, especially because it's always been my nature, it's always been sort of what I've bent towards to please the people around me to make them more comfortable. So when I'm considering this really uncomfortable thing that's very scary for me and other people are made uncomfortable by hearing about it through the grapevine and are telling me what I should do, it was really hard to separate like what I actually wanted and what I thought would be good from the noise of what everyone else thought. It took, it was a process, that's for sure. I still stand by that by the way, if you have a friend who's going through something that you haven't personally experienced, I do generally think that it is a wise idea to listen at least twice as much as you speak. Check it out guys, all right. Oh God, this is so weird. This is my messed up. I hate saying this. Kind of hard to see here, but I've had two major surgeries there, two major surgeries there. That's the most recent one. I can't describe to you how weird and uncomfortable it is to see me like touching that part of my ankle and pointing it out and to see my ankle because I can viscerally remember what it felt like.  That's not what I expected to feel. Let's continue. One there, back there. Oh God. Got a couple heavy. I did like those scars. Those ones didn't hurt as much. So that's the leg that we're considering removing and it will like click and pop and it's not like hell out of nowhere and I spend every night icing it. That was one of the worst parts is that it was kind of unpredictable. I had some good days with my ankle for sure and I'd be like doing great and then something would shift in there and it would be really bad pain and I would not be able to do much of anything for the rest of the day. It was always a guessing game and I never knew if I was gonna walk somewhere and then not be able to walk back or walk somewhere and then be in a large amount of pain trying to get back. So I just wanted to show it to you guys before we kind of go any further and maybe just have visual record that it existed. If I do, go ahead and remove it which is a weird thing to be saying. So yeah, at this point I'm thinking it's probably best. Given the information and life I'm living right now to go ahead with a lower leg amputation. But we'll see. That's a weird thing to say with a straight face, isn't it?  So today is the day, the day. I'm going up to Denver. Ooh, I'm meeting with my surgeon. I'm gonna chat with him about the conversation whether or not we are going to amputate my leg and make a decision on if we're gonna move forward with other surgeries or just go to the finish line and have it amputated. And if we did that option, every day things would be getting slightly better. That was another really big thing that there was no hope of my ankle recovering or healing or getting better. Like I said, there was hope that it might be able to be sustained with some other surgeries and things like that. But it wasn't gonna fix itself and there was nothing that could fix it because it was too far gone.  And hope is really important to me. And I think it can be found in so many places but looking down this dark hole of my ankle is only ever going to get worse was really challenging for me knowing that maybe there was this other thing that might render a better result. And I am in a position right now where maybe I could make this choice. I'm never sure how to articulate this best but it was really important for me to have this choice over my body. Gone through trauma as it relates to not having control over my own body. And I think that that definitely was a factor that played into my decision process here that like I didn't wanna be forced into something that was so life-altering. I wanted to be able to like choose the time and the place and do it on my own terms. I think a big reason that I've been able to go through things and get through things in the manner that I have is sort of this mindset of I'm gonna do this on my own terms. This isn't something I'd ever have wanted. I never in a million years would I choose this in a perfect world but this is the world that we live in and I'm gonna take control of my life in whatever small way I can. And if that's choosing when as opposed to waiting and having no real choice left even though it might just be like a mental trick I'm going to take the option where I get to say when I get to make that call. Hey guys, it's Joe. So I wanted to update you cause I'm doing it in nine days. I'm going to have it below the right knee. Remember the right side. Honestly, the decision eventually came down to trying to quiet all the voices and listen to myself and what I really want. And that's foreign to me in a lot of ways but realizing that if I'm making this decision for myself and my body it's what I need to do. And so yesterday I made that call. Was it really just 10 days from when I made the call to when they actually did it? I feel like I remember that as like weeks in between. Yeah, nine days I will have my lower leg removed and start a new chapter of life. I forgot that I published this video. So this video is one that I posted on Facebook once I had told like all my immediate family and like really, really close friends what I was going to do. I didn't want to talk about this decision a million times. And so I made a video and I posted on Facebook and I was like, here's what's up guys. And I don't actually remember what I said. I remember I was wearing earrings I really liked that day though. Let's see if I still like them. Hey guys, it's Joe. So I thought I would put out a quick video in conjunction with this message as I do a lot. Do you like how chipper I am?  Hope that's cool, bye. And I do, I do still like this earrings. They're very cute. If you read the message, you'll know that in a few days on October 11th which is Thursday, I am going to have a below the knee amputation on my right leg. I have had over 10 surgeries on my ankle. If you know me pretty well, you'll know that I'm generally kind of limping around. It hurts all of the time even though I try to live normal life. I try to be active. I try to do stuff. And over the last year, it's gotten to the point where I cannot do anything. I was really frightened of people giving me all their thoughts and opinions. And so this video was my way of being like, I have made the decision. Do with that what you will, but this is happening. And I didn't, I didn't want, I didn't want everyone to be like, no, don't do it. Or here's my two cents. Or like I was saying in the earlier video, like this person has this miracle cure that may or may not be related to what you're going through. After a lot of consideration and a lot of talking to people and consulting doctors and consulting other people who know what they're talking about and a lot of thinking, I along with my surgeons have come to the conclusion that this is the best choice for my life and for what I want my life to look like, hopefully. But I wanted to let you all know so that no one is particularly shocked if they see me in person in a month or two and I don't have a leg. I also wanted to say, I don't mean to sound like a jerk about this at all, but a lot of people have, as I've kind of been considering this just like random people.  But like if you have strong opinions on whether or not this is a good option for my life, I would kindly request that you keep them to yourself because this is a very emotional decision for me. I like how diplomatic I'm being about this. I was really trying hard to very kindly be like, please for the love of God, don't come at me with your cabbage diet miracle cures. Just please, please don't do that. That being said, I would love to see you guys after surgery. If you're interested in stopping by, I would love to talk to you. I mean, all things considered, I think this was a decent way of announcing it. People were actually very respectful. Once I was like, this is what I'm doing. I have decided this end of story. People were incredibly kind and supportive. I just want to pause for a moment and say that I'm really, I'm really glad that I documented this. It's therapeutic and helpful for me to look back on how I came to this decision and why I made this decision and where my thought process was and to kind of be reminded of, hi monkey, be reminded of some of that. And this video meant a lot to me. This was literally 24 hours before I was going to go to the hospital for this amputation. And I was like completely numb. And I was doing, I was doing all right, all things considered, but it was obviously a bizarre, I keep using that word, but very bizarre thing to face. I wanted to have a record of who I was before this. And I do have that record and I am very grateful for that. So with that being said, here's the last video I published of me with two legs. Hey everybody, it's Joe. It is now one day before my ankle amputation. We are headed up to Denver tonight to get everything prepared. And at seven, 30 tomorrow morning, I will have my right lower leg chopped off, amputated, taken off. I've gone through a lot of trauma, but I've never walked into a situation where I knew it was going to change my life forever. And this will. It was a very odd realization for me because like I said, I've gone through some traumas in my life. I have experience with moments where you realize there was a before and an after and things changed, right? But I never knew that they were happening at the time. I never knew that today I'm going to wake up and I'm never going to be the same at the end of this day, right? Like things will now be in terms of a before and an after. And I knew that I was walking into that. I knew that in 24 hours from filming this video, there was going to be an after. I was going to be in the after. And it's true. I mean, my life is very much segmented into before amputation and after amputation. It's a pretty clear change to make note of. I know that it will be really, really hard in a lot of ways. And I know that I can't prepare for that. I know that I can't predict my reaction. And I know that I'm walking into this. I'm literally going to walk into the hospital tomorrow. And I've had like, I've been like assaulted and I've had my house burned down and stuff like that, where it's changed my life forever, but I couldn't predict it. So it just happens and you just have to respond. And with this, it's weird knowing that this is going to happen. It's weird knowing that I'm anticipating an event that is changing my life forever. We've done everything we can to get ready and we're going to see how it goes. So I will post a video as soon as I can after surgery. I'm not sure how I'll be feeling. People report very different outcomes as far as pain after surgery and how they feel after surgery. So as soon as I know anything, I will let you guys know. I kept trying to figure out like, how much pain am I going to be in after my leg gets chopped off as compared to ankle surgeries? I never really could find a good gauge on that. All things considered, they did a decent job of controlling pain in the hospital, except for the moment that I woke up from surgery, which I have talked about before where the nerve block didn't work and I felt everything and they couldn't get pain under control. And poor, poor Brian, because he had to be there to see all of that and it was not fun or pretty. But in the end, they did get things generally under control and compared to other ankle surgeries I had, I would definitely rate this as by far the most physically painful. I'm feeling hopeful and terrified and we'll see how things go. Yes, I think we'll see how things go is really the only statement that could be made at such a time. So interesting to look back at. Okay, I'm gonna do a little bonus video here. I wanna see the first video that I did after I got back from amputation. Hey guys, it's Joe. So I am in the hospital. It is day two post amputation. I was so drugged up here. Cheered up. I've got an awesome purple cast curtsy of my surgeon. He was gonna make it boring and white. But then he had two special four to get me a purple cast. Anyways, surgery went well. The amputation went really well. No complications, which is awesome. Pain was really difficult to get under control after amputation. That's an understatement. Because the nerve block didn't really work and so I woke up and was in a ton of pain for hours and kind of like panicking also. Not from the amputation, but just like from the pain and from all the drugs and everything. So my husband came in and they were trying to get the pain under control for like three hours that I was like freaking out. But it went well after that. They put in, I can see these little cancels. Oh yeah. They put in a permanent, semi-permanent. I forgot about that. That's right.  And they kept that in, I wanna say like two weeks after surgery. It really was helpful. It was kind of a game changer. It really helped get pain under control. I don't remember if I left the hospital the second time, the second amputation with that or not. By the way, if you are new to my channel or you haven't heard my story, this surgery went well, but the healing did not go well because I had a fall that really messed things up thanks to a restaurant. And I developed a bursa that had to be removed and then that still didn't work because the bones hadn't healed properly. And so August of 2019, so a year and a few months ago, I had to have a revision where they chopped off my leg again, a little bit higher up. Still got to keep my knee though. That's the important part. I remember picking up my phone and wanting to like document this, wanting to make a video. Making videos was so therapeutic for me going through this process. It like gave me a reason to do something that day. It gave me a reason to try to frame things in my head and maybe a better light than what I was thinking or at least have a moment of checking in with myself and being like, okay, let's just think this through kind of thing. But those are all my pre-amputation videos. Those are all my decision process videos. Man, I'm really grateful that I can look back now. And it was worth it, but in the end, I am in less pain. There have been a lot of consequences, both good and bad from this decision, but all in all, without a shadow of a doubt, I can say that for me personally, I am so freaking glad that I got to make this choice for myself. There's no way I could have pictured everyday life as an amputee when I had both my limbs, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is better than that ankle that you saw in that video that still makes me a little eugh, queasy to think about. I know I said this in the video that I did that was like, you know, my year anniversary of the second amputation a couple of weeks ago, but I know some of the people commenting on those videos as I put them up right before surgery. Like, I remember your names, I remember some of the conversations we've had, and I know some of those people are still watching my videos to this day. I may not have met you in person, but the fact that you have cared about and listened to my story for two years, absolutely floors me. I don't think I have a way to properly even conceptualize or try to put into words how crazy that is to me in the best possible way. And people who came in a few months, you know, into this whole process and have been watching videos since then. And you all have been such a huge source of support to me. I don't know how this would have gone had I not decided to put my story out there and see what happened, and this community that's grown up is beautiful. And you really are all my beautiful internet friends, and I am so grateful for you watching this. Like, sincerely, when I say at the end of every video you could be anyone in the world doing anything right now, but you chose to spend a few minutes with me and I'm really grateful. I truly mean it. Time is one of the most valuable assets anyone has, and you've given me some of your time, you've given me some of your time today, and many of you have given me a lot of your time over the past two years. And I am forever grateful, truly. Thank you. I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up there and enjoy this anniversary and be really freaking grateful for it. Also, a huge, huge, huge thank you to all my patrons over on Patreon who have supported me throughout this journey, who continue to support me as I continue to try to move forward. I really appreciate your financial support and your emotional support, and just that community, thank you guys for being there. If you're interested in checking out Patreon, link on screen or down below. But with that being said, I'll just say it again, thank you so much for being here. You could be anywhere in the world doing absolutely anything, and you chose to spend a few minutes out of your day here with me, and that means so much to me. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you, and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys. Monkey says bye too. We got ourselves a little sleepy Sophie. A little sleepy Sadie. The whole gang is here. Anyways, bye guys. Have her from the sky.


Implementing DKIM on Office 365 is pretty simple, there's essentially these five steps which I'll discuss in detail in a minute. First thing that we have to do is collect a little bit of information about the domain that we're going to be using. This is all information that we can discover in our Office 365 tenant or by using tools to go check different records in DNS. After collecting that information we have to compile that data into two records, two DKIM records that we're going to publish into DNS. Next step would be actually publishing those records into DNS. After publishing those we want to do a quick test to make sure that everything is working correctly. And then we want to enable DKIM signing in Office 365. There may be an additional step depending on the domain, depending on how you're sending your mail, there may be an additional step. If you're using other sources for sending email other than Office 365, so you're using a constant contact or survey monkey or something along those lines, then you may have to perform some additional configuration to ensure that those sources are also signing the records or signing the emails rather using DKIM.


Christopher Gardner I've known him intimately for 52 years. I'm as stunned as he is that he's on the podium today because originally he was a philosophy major undergrad and all he really wanted to do was have a vegetarian restaurant. Somehow he ended up with a PhD in nutrition science and SPRC gave him a shot and he took it and he's still here and he's recruited 1,100 people and fed them and bled them. He's given them garlic and soy and ginkgo and vegetarian diets and the Atkins diet and now he'll share some of those insights with you. Thank you very much Dr. Gardner. It's a pleasure to be here. Alright so a few insights on tailoring dietary approaches for weight loss. I think you'll get a kick out of some of this. I don't know if you've seen all this that we've been doing. So I was actually never really interested in weight loss. I wanted to be doctor phytochemical. That was my goal in life for a while until everybody kept asking me if I thought Atkins or Zone or Ornish were better and I decided to jump into this foray and try to help people sort through the fiction versus non-fiction diet books. I don't know how successful we've been. There's a long way to go but we did do a large study that's been cited many times and we picked a spectrum of popular weight loss diet books. One of them in the middle is actually a health professionals approach, the learn manual. It's got a nice publication in JAMA which caught me a brief moment of fame that introduced me to some really interesting people. I'm going to share the main result with you which is the least interesting part of this whole story. So the main result after 12 months among 311 women among whom 80% came back 12 months later was that the Atkins group fared a little better. It was only statistically significant versus the Zone group and the weight was coming back on faster than the other groups so maybe that would have gone away and I don't really want to hang my hat on this other than to say yeah on average they got some modest, very modest weight loss and with a modest weight loss they actually had a lot of improvements in triglyceride, blood pressure, things like that but I've shown this slide many times. It was never in the paper and I can't tell you how many people have asked me for this slide because this is the 300 women in the study each one represented by a single bar. This is their 12 month weight response and so instead of capturing the average this captures the heterogeneity. So even though there were some modest differences between groups or among groups, I think what's most striking is in all four of the diet groups with very different sets of recommendations, some women lost 20, 25, and 30 kilos and within those same groups some women gained 5 and 10 kilos and so really I think what's much more striking than the very modest differences among groups is that within every one of these four diet groups there's a 30 kilo range of weight change over 12 months and it seems like that's much more interesting than these modest among group differences and so I've seen a couple other folks report the same thing. Here's Bill Yancey decided to plot these graphs out. The red line is obviously the average and then all the individual very narrow black lines are the individual responses which is just this huge enormous variation and in another study that compared some popular weight loss books the average is the line that goes below zero but really look at that amazingly different response of the people assigned to these diets which is what this graph represents. So it's really not true that everybody who's overweight or obese are the same as you've heard again and again from some of our speakers today. In fact it really looks a lot more like this and maybe this is part of the puzzle that we need to go after. Are there ways to target people? Can we use the TGHDL ratio or some other simple method? So looking at this very crudely and Jerry don't get mad, I mean this is all I had. I had fasting levels I'd love to have your SSPG but we didn't. I'm going to show you some of our data but first I'll show you what got me started on that. I thought three different papers, good investigators, good journals who found one way or another to get a hint at insulin resistance or insulin sensitivity and it's amazing how it varies. I'm sure Jerry will agree. Some did 30 minutes into an oral glucose tolerance test splitting at the median of the insulin level. Some did a fasting level where they broke them into less than 10, greater than 15 and got rid of the group in the middle. But however it was, they found that the insulin resistant, the more insulin resistant like folks were different in weight loss on low carb versus low fat diets which you wouldn't see if you lumped everyone together.  So these were our two extremes the Ornish and Atkins group and that's the overall 12 month range of differences that we got but we went back and took simple insulin turtiles and Jerry I did this for TG over HDLC it was the same. I did it for TG turtiles didn't really matter. So what we've got in the top two lines are the most insulin sensitive turtile by virtue of a fasting insulin less than 7 and the bottom two are the most insulin resistant. The fasting insulin is greater than 10 and so really what you see here is despite our main finding that there was a modest difference in the insulin sensitive group they lost the same amount of weight even if they're on Atkins or Ornish didn't really make any difference and the one group that really stuck out was the crudely measured more insulin resistant people assigned to Ornish that was the biggest difference relative to those who are insulin resistant who are assigned to Atkins. So that's an enormous I mean they almost lost no weight at all if they went on the Ornish diet. I have to say they did not follow the Ornish diet very well I'm not going to show these slides but shooting for Ornish and falling short puts you smack dab in the middle of the national guidelines for a 30% fat diet and so this is the 30% fat diet that we've been recommending for decades and it looks like a third of the population this might be exactly the wrong diet especially as our population gets heavier and heavier and more and more insulin resistant. So to follow up on that this is going to seem like a sidetrack but bear with me. One of our postdocs Sophia Alhassan looked at our data we have four diet groups one of them doesn't have a good metric for adherence but for the three popular diet books we had adherence measures and this is going to be stunning I know several of you are going to fall out of your seat this slide says if you followed the diet you were assigned to you lost weight if you didn't follow the diet you were assigned to you did not lose weight got that published can you imagine that we got that published but really what crosses your mind when you think adherence or lack of adherence when you hear lack of adherence do you think weak will not ready things going on in your life so we follow that up a little more especially in terms of this insulin resistant versus more insulin sensitive group and this is what Arianna McLean has been working on so sorry Arianna to steal your results they're almost published she revised and resubmitted them and they'll probably be accepted any day now she has a different graphic so I'm not reproducing her graphic but picture this this is the 12 month change in carbohydrate and fat intake in just the Atkins group and just two of three turtles the lowest in the highest turtle of fasting insulin so this is the crude measure the proxy for insulin resistance it doesn't really matter at two months they really lowered their carb and raise their fat and then we have some recidivism but at at the end of 12 months they're still quite a bit different than they were at baseline so make sense they all got the same advice they didn't know if they were insulin resistant or insulin sensitive so wouldn't that same thing happen if you were assigned to Ornish but apparently not apparently not even knowing if you were insulin resistant or insulin sensitive led you if you were insulin resistant to not adhere to the diet that you were assigned to so by 12 months they don't have their diet isn't any different than baseline so it's fascinating we've been telling all these people to go on a low fat diet which they have a hard time adhering to and are losing weight so could we quickly clinically identify these people yes Jerry just told you how you can do the SSPG if you have lots of time and money or you can do a fasting measure of TG over HDLC and you may be able to identify people who would do better on a low carb high fat diet which is completely contrary to our public health recommendations for so long now I don't have time to show these results because I'm going to try to stick to my 10 minutes we have some really interesting genotype data where a group from Massachusetts came up with this three snip multi locus genotype and genotype our study population retroactively and looked at their response in weight loss to low carb versus low fat diets and it worked they could actually predict who would lose more weight based on this multi locus genotype and we probably got an R01 funded we're in the 10th percentile the project officer has been asking for all my just in time materials Abby and John Yonidis are and Manisha are collaborating on this with me and we'd be anxious to hand our blood samples over to the immune group for immune profiling or give Tracy some fat cells so that she can look at some adipocyte differentiation so that's coming and and later in the day if anybody has an ideas we haven't started this it'll be 300 or 400 people we're going to genotype them we're going to randomize them to low carbon low fat they're going to lose some weight some will be more insulin resistant to start with some will get better after they lose weight so it might be some fun follow-up here and lastly I'm just going to whiz past this one we did a study that didn't work very well with sleep we recruited insomniacs who are overweight and didn't tell them this was the purpose of the study but we randomized them to cognitive behavioral therapy so we'd fixed their insomnia before they tried to work in their diets in a matter of time so I'm not going to show that one and I will just say that I'll do a shameless self promotion a month from today in the same room will hold food summit to well we'll get beyond diet as nutrients and look at diet and that economic legal educational or science perspectives that drive people's motivation as much as Tom is just speaking about thanks the proceeding program is copyrighted by the board of trustees of the Leland Stanford junior university please visit us at med.stanford.edu


Hey everybody, it's DJ B, and I'm filming from the studio floor. Fun. I shouldn't be going to bed, but instead I am opening Briar's. And I have this big box. Essentially, this big box actually came from the Briar Horse website, which I never order from Briar Horses themselves, minus the Premier Club models. I mean, this shipping is really expensive to Canada. The models are pricier than like other alternative locations that I generally go from. I had something I wanted, and then I added too many other things to my cart. And here we are with the giant box. So the first thing on top is this magical box. That's so fun. So this is a holiday special run that I've ordered. I didn't really want this one, but I kind of was just like, I'm already ordering. So I might as well just like add it to my cart. That was a good choice because these sold out shortly after. So it's this like cute little box. So like ideally you would buy this for someone for Christmas. Here I am buying it for myself for Christmas. Let me open them up. It's a little gingerbread pony. How cute is that?  I'm glad I got him because he's really hard to find now and obviously very popular. So then I also impulsively bought another Theo. So I received one of these guys a while back and with the intention of customizing him. But when I pulled him out of the box I was like, I really can't customize him. He's actually really cool. I'm not a fan of this mold normally, but in this color it actually does it pretty decent justice. And I think it's because they didn't add eye white so that you can't tell that his face is lopsided. I also impulsively bought this. This is the Briar 70th anniversary Christmas ball. Whoa! It's huge! Like it's actually really big. I was not expecting that. So it says 70th anniversary. That's actually really awesome. I'm into that. I probably will hang that in my studio somewhere. All right and the fourth and final thing. This is actually the original thing that I wanted off of the Briar site. All three other things were editions. This is the secession and then obviously the little fires but they are the like special web special unicorn horses. So I don't like unicorns. The only unicorn that I have is on the Croy mold and I like that one because it's kind of a glaring blue. I wasn't into this promo photo at all. I purely wanted them for customizing because they were 75 bucks to buy off the site and that's cheaper than I've been able to find anybody's. So I don't hate her as much as I thought I would. She's kind of pearly but I don't love her. I don't know. She's kind of she's kind of plain and I'm not really into unicorns that much. Now the photos of this guy have been really cool. He is really cool. He's really iridescent. Here is the pony and he's really cute. It's actually the mare variation so the shading is like not perfect and she's got a big seam on her face and she actually does have quite a few blips on the off side so she has some flaws on the barrel but I'm not too upset about it. She was pretty inexpensive but this little blanket is quite cute. It's pretty adorable. Additionally I opened my Theo. He is actually flawless. He has no blips on his off side whatsoever. I'm not sure in comparison what he is to the other one because it's in a location that I can't get to currently so once I have him down I'll decide which one I'm gonna customize but this one is like perfectly mint. There's not a flaw on him. And then here's Mama Unicorn whose has soft blue undertones. Her nose is a little bit smushy and weird but yeah she's not terrible. It's just not really my thing. And this is the baby who is cool. I just don't feel like it's super well executed. Like you can tell that it's like spots of purple and spots of blue and iridescentness which he is color-shifty but I'll leave them on my shelf for a little while and they're good to have his bodies. And then additionally here's the briar Christmas ball that I ordered. Thanks so much for watching and I hope you enjoyed.


So before I get serious, when I taught, I was serious. But before I begin the talk today, I just wanted to share one anecdote with you. It seemed to amuse many people, and so I thought I would pass it on. In 1975, I was one of the people that Father Michael Scanlon invited to come here as he began his tenure as president of Franciscan, and we were very small at that point. But he invited a number of us here to support by prayer and by ideas and by our work with young people, just a helpful support as he began his tenure. And so I came, and what he actually said to us, I will now make public, he said, I can give you, I'll give you free room and board, I'll give you $10 a week. That's all I can afford. And my superior said, yes, go. And there were about 16 people that responded to that. We were in Thomas Moore, Tommy Moore building, which was vacant at the time. I think there was something like 51 students living on campus. There were a number of commuters, but 51 living on campus, so it was quite a time. And one of the things that happened was Father Michael began the conferences very soon after his coming. And I don't know if he intended it or not, but it certainly did shine a spotlight on the University of Steubenville over the years. So he began these conferences. And the first conference had just ended. The first conference was a priest conference. It had just ended 1975. And Father Michael apparently was starting to talk about another conference that he should do for youth. And there was a priest who was a Franciscan friar here who I had known in high school. And so he knew me very well. And he came to me one day and he said, I just, I can't figure this out. Why would he take on another conference when we just got this conference off the ground? We have so much work to do. And it wasn't like he was bitter or anything, he was just puzzled. Why would he take on another conference? There wasn't a big staff, there wasn't a staff, it was just us. And he said, what, what is he thinking? And I said, well, I kind of think I would trust his instinct right now. I know he's praying a lot and he said, yeah, I do too. And I said, well, I trust his instinct. And this priest looked me in the eye and remember he had known me from high school. And he looked me straight in the eye and he said, I will believe that this is from God. If a Boy Scout troop from Japan shows up at the youth conference next year, I'll believe it then. And he kind of stomped off, I mean he was friendly but he just made his statement. So I just kind of tucked that in the back of my mind. So the following June, I was one of the people standing at the, when you come up the hill there, standing there to greet people as they reached the top of the hill. And I looked, I looked down the hill and there was a Boy Scout troop from Japan, literally. I believe they were from Tokyo. They had a long banner and their Boy Scout uniforms on and they had a big banner they were carrying. And I took one look at it and they were just coming up the hill, but I took one look at it and I ran. I ran to the monastery and I got this priest and I said, Father, you have to come. You have to come now, right now, because things were moving. And he said, what? And I said, just come. So I brought him down the hill there and they were just coming up, it was perfect. They were just coming up over the hill. And he looked and he said, did you have anything to do? And I said, no, but God did. So I saw God's sense of humor too. I think that I learned, especially from that experience, that God has a great sense of humor and I am delighted to know that. What I want to speak to you about this afternoon, I want to speak to you about hope, hope in a time of war. And I'm going to come at it from a couple of different angles, but I think you'll be able to see how it all fits. I don't think any of us doubts how difficult things are right now. We have a whole generation, as we know, not the entire generation, but a whole age span that is almost wholesale leaving the church. And in the statistics that we have seen, and I'm sure you have seen many of them, but the statistics indicate to us by the Cara Institute at Georgetown University. They said the Catholic population in the United States has gone along with the general population of the country in recent years. More Catholics, however, are leaving the church than ever before and more so than any other Christian denomination. Of all major denominations, Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes. And then they go on to say the percentage of use that have left the church. We know these things, but I just thought I would line up some of the statistics here for us because it is for us essential to see the battle that we're in. And at the moment, and I don't have state to say this, at the moment Satan, I think, thinks he's winning. He hasn't contended with you. Well, maybe he has, personally. But in this issue, I want to put out a challenge to you to be willing to fight. You've had to fight a lot of battles in your life, I'm sure. But be willing to fight this particular battle for the salvation of a generation. They have a lot to give us, many of them. But many of their peers seem to be lost. From 2000 to 2010, one archdiocese, a major archdiocese in this country, reported the following. Infant baptism declined 42.4%. Adult baptisms declined 51.2%. Catholic marriages declined 45.3%. And those seeking full commitment with the church dropped 43.6% in a war. And there's a war on a lot of levels. We all know this, and I don't need to repeat it all, all that we're experiencing in our country right now. The divisions, turmoil, the unrest, the confusion, the lack of accurate reporting, balanced and slanted news articles that don't give us the true picture. We're facing a very difficult time. And the question is, what are we to do? Where is our hope? Our hope is in God, yes, absolutely. But how do we find that hope? How do we kindle it into a fire that is undaunting, that no matter what happens, we're not going to back down? We're going to fight for this generation and the generations to come by prayer, by personal sacrifice, by faithfulness to God, by our intercession. We're going to fight. And God will never be outdone in generosity. When we give him all we have, he in turn will give us everything we need. I'm sure that there are a number of you here who have nieces and nephews, grandchildren, perhaps children, but certainly grandchildren. Children that you have been God parents for, many, many turning away. And the future of all that does not look very bright. But here's what Pope Benedict said. I'm sorry, this is Gregory of Nisa. He said, man is a reflection of the original beauty which is God. Man is a genuine reflection of the original beauty which is God. Everything God created was very good. Man was honored by God and placed above every other creature. The sky was not made in God's image, nor the moon, nor the sun, nor the beauty of the stars, no other things which appear in creation. Only you, only you were made to be the image of nature that surpasses ever intellect, likeness of incorruptible beauty, mark of true divinity, vessel of blessed life, image of true light, that when you look upon it, you become what he is. Because through the reflected ray coming from your purity, you imitate him who shines within you. Nothing that exists can measure up to your greatness. That's Gregory of Nisa. Do you understand, really understand who you are? Do you understand that you honestly reflect the image and likeness of God? That when God, when people interact with you, they should be drawn closer to God. And that doesn't mean everything has to be a religious conversation. That doesn't mean that at all. But that your life is clear and that God can shine through you. That honestly can happen.  And I was stunned by this. And it's what helped me to know that it was real. I was, I've had a couple of experiences of this in Ann Arbor, which is a pretty secular city.  And so I was just mumbling and groaning to myself. And I got to the door of the gas station to go in and pay the bill. And they, all the pumps were full. Places where everybody was out there, but nobody was inside. Very interesting. And I opened, as I put my hand on the door, I heard these words, not audible. So don't think I'm crazy. But I heard these words in my head. Remember who you are. I'm your daughter. I'm a spouse to your son. I'm a temple of your Holy Spirit. Got it. And I opened the door and I went in and the counter was up this way. And so I turned and not a soul was in the store. Just amazing. Every pump full outside, nobody in the store. So I turned and I walked up the aisle and this young man that I wasn't sure, he was Middle Eastern and I wasn't sure if he was Chaldean, which would make him a Catholic or whether he was a Muslim. I didn't know. And as I walk up toward the counter, I'm about three quarters of the way up the counter and the Lord remember, has just told me, remember who you are. And I'm walking up the counter and this young man leans over the counter. And this is what he did.  I don't know what I'm speaking into. And so I just said to him, well, my name is this and I work for an organization called Renewal Ministries. We do Catholic evangelism around the world. And I'm the words are coming out. Do you know how you're just not sure? Am I getting across or not? And he leaned across the counter and he said, just right then he just stopped me. And he said, I want to make something out of my life too. What did he see? That would make me a stranger walking in there, cause him to ask that question. I'm not a saint. Ask anybody who lives with me. I'm not a saint. But I wish to be. And God takes the little that we are and he multiplies it. The world needs to see the light that shines in the darkness. I'm glad you're getting degrees. I'm glad you're getting all the education that you're getting, but for God's light to shine through you, you simply need holiness of life. Simply. Holiness of life and repentance for your sin. And he can work through you. And he'll do it in his own way, in his own time, what you say is I'm available. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. He loves you. And because we're having such a decrease in people coming to church, many denominations are experiencing this, but Catholics are experiencing it more than any other. Because we're having that people are saying, who cares if there's something else? I don't know, I'm just gonna live this life. The rest doesn't matter. I live for today. You bring the light into the darkness. I know that sounds poetic, but it's very real. Because God in his mercy chooses to work through us. He didn't have to. He could just come and do whatever he want, but he chooses to work through us. So how does that happen? How do we become the light that shines in the darkness? How does God work in us? How do we become what Gregory of Nisa says we're called to be? First thing that I wanna say to us is that we need to know God as our father. We need to know him as father. Whatever your relationship with your earthly father, and we have a dearth of true fatherhood right now, God wants to reveal himself as father to you. And he wants you to be able to impart to others the faith that you have in your heavenly father. He's calling you into a deeper personal relationship with him by the Holy Spirit to know God as father. For you, Abba, daddy. Father Francis Martin, who taught here many years ago, he spoke, I don't know how many languages, one priest asked him one time here, while we were preparing for our conference, this priest said to him, Father, do you have the Bible memorized? And he said, I think so. And father kind of joking, said to him in the original language, and he said, yeah, I think so. He taught here for a while. I don't know how many languages he spoke, but he did. And he knew it. And he always said, it's knowing the God the father as Abba, protector, guardian, defender. Do you know God the father as that for you, that he is your father? That you can come to him as father. No matter what your relationship with your earthly father, do you know him as father? Ask the Holy Spirit. Help me to know God as my father. Help me to know him. Help me to love him. Help me to draw near to him, because God wants to be your father. That's what gives us confidence. That's what gives us protection. And God wants to impart that to us. He wants to be your father and mine. I was very blessed with a very good earthly father. We didn't have much money. Wasn't like he could give us the world and everything we wanted, but he gave us himself. He was a very good father. And I'll give you one example of how good I knew that he was when I was about three years old and I was sleeping in my own little bed in my own little room and I was the first child. I woke up in the middle of the night and I was terrified. I didn't know why, it was just dark and I couldn't see anybody and I wasn't used to waking up in the middle of the night so I jumped out of bed and I went over to my parents' bedroom and they weren't there. And that scared me, even at three. But for some reason I didn't call out for them. I just went looking and I came into the kitchen. And in the kitchen I saw my father standing at one end of the kitchen and I saw a man next to him who was our neighbor standing there with a knife, like a butcher knife in his hand.  So I hid behind my mother's legs and she didn't even know I was there which was unusual but obviously the situation was so difficult. They were neighbors of ours in an apartment complex. And my father said, Joe, give me that knife. Joe didn't budge. And my dad waited a moment and he said, Joe, give me that knife. He waited a few more minutes and he said it again, Joe, give me that knife. And Joe reached down and he started sobbing. And he handed it over to my father. About 30 years ago I went back home for a visit with remaining relatives in the area and I saw in the paper that that couple was celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. How did that happen? Because my father protected us and then he went to care for them. My mother and my father became good mentors. The man was terrified. There was no money. It was the war. Everything was very difficult. I learned concretely what it was to have a father who protect it. We need to know all of us, men and women, but especially as women, we need to know we're protected. That's when we have the strength and the courage to step out, to do what God is asking us to do. You have a father who will protect you. A father who will guard you, guide you. Ask him, ask him every day. Papa, what do you want? However you want to speak to him, but talk to him. Build a relationship with your father. And what did the father do? What did the father do for you and me? He gave us his only beloved son, his only son. He gave him to us knowing what we would do. But he gave him to us that we might be saved forever. We know this, but what I want you to do is understand it personally that God in Christ died for you. He didn't die for billions of people. He died for you.  He knew you and loves you. This world today, our world, at least the Western world, we need to know we're loved, honestly, genuinely. We're trying to make our way and make a name for ourselves and do this and do that, and above all make as much money as we possibly can. What do we really need? We need a father who loves us. We need a father who walks with us, who gave us gifts, who gave us gifts to use for the rest of his family, for his children, for us. He loves you. And he loves you with a everlasting love.  He has no limits like we do. He knows you by name. Do you know he really does know the number of hairs on your head? We don't. We might try to guess, but we don't know. He knows you intimately, and we just use those external images because the scripture mentions them. But if he knows that kind of thing, what does he know about us? He knows our struggles. He knows our triumphs. He knows our joys. He knows our fears. Bring everything to the Father. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, come to me. I will give you rest. I'm sure that all of you in here are carrying burdens. I'm sure of it. We all are. And you may be discouraged. You may be fearful. You may be anxious. You may be angry. You may be frustrated to the end of your rope sometimes. Come to me. Bring it to me. Bring the need. Wait upon me. I will show you. I will teach you your Savior, His Son, the Father's Son He gave. Just gave Him to us. His only beloved Son. I've seen fathers lose their only sons. To lose any child is horrible. Any child. But I've seen fathers, two fathers in particular lose their sons and it's the pain is inexpressible because it's your flesh. And God the Father willingly gave His Son for you. Not for the world, for you. He loves you.  That's why my heart breaks and I see so many people leaving. Because I know they don't know. And yes, as a church, we've made a lot of mistakes. Yes, there's no doubt about that. And for that, we are culpable. And for that, we need to repent. But it's also true that God's love has not been exterminated or extinguished for us. He's there and He loves you. I remember many years ago, and this is one of those examples where you pull out of the storehouse, both the old and the new. And one day, a number of years ago, I knew a family very well. And they had a number of children, two sons and I think three or four daughters.  He's quite a guy. And he was sitting in this chair. He said, come on in, come on in, sister. And he got me something to drink and we just sat down to talk. And we were talking about car racing. My father was an auto mechanic, so I got into all that kind of thing. And so we were talking about racing cars and what was on the dock for that week. And we were just having a great discussion and it was a lot of fun. And then right in the middle of it, I had this sense of the Lord tell him to run after me. How do you change a conversation? From speeding cars to, but again, do you notice the personal love? Listen to this, listen to this. I said to him, Tim, I think God wants to say something to you and he was leaning back on his chair, you know, just on two legs. And he's leaning back and I said that and the chair slammed down and he said God wants to say something to me and I said, yes, he does. And he said, what?  Win the race, outrun me. Does that mean? And I just gave it to him. Two weeks later, he said to me, he was a good kid and he said to me, okay, it's a deal, I'll run it. In two weeks, three weeks later, he was on a fishing trip with his father for his 16th birthday and he got caught by a shifting current in Lake Michigan and he drowned. And I saw the pain of the father. And even today, I still know that pain. And yet, God the father weeps for every one of his children who've walked away. It's a death and he weeps for that. If you've got sons or daughters or nephews and nieces or God children who are in that trajectory at the moment, you just pray because you are not alone. God, your father, prays with you. Jesus, before the face of the father, prays with you. Don't ever give up, pray. About the day before his funeral, I was helping out the family in the kitchen and was washing dishes. And I looked up and you can test me out. I think I'm a sound mind and sound body, I think. But I clearly heard him call me by name. And I was washing dishes and I turned because he would always talk to me from this particular corner of the kitchen if I were visiting the family and I was helping out. He'd be right there. And so I just kind of automatically turned and there was nobody there that I could see. But this is what I heard rejoice with me. I've won the race. And you can say, oh yeah, you really made that one up. I wasn't capable of coming up with anything like that. At that point, I've won the race. Isn't that what we want for our children and our grandchildren? Isn't that what we want for all those we teach, all those we relate to, pray, pray, pray. The forces against them are great, but they're not insurmountable. And your prayer is one of the key pieces you play in addition to teaching, in addition to encouraging, in addition to, I was gonna say monitoring, I don't, mentoring. And all those things which you do, do them. But the most important thing you can do for them is to pray, to pray that the desires of the world and the things that the world offers won't take them away from him. Pray for it, pray for it every day. You could do no better thing for the people you teach, the young people you teach, the older adults that you teach. There's nothing more you can do for them, nothing better, I mean, that you could do for them than to pray. It's a battle, it's a fierce battle. And it's become a war right now. And it's very easy in our families, it's very easy to lose hope. It just is. I've given them everything I can, I've done everything I can, and they're still gone.  It is a fierce battle. It is a very fierce battle. It's a battle for eternal life. So, I think that there's something in particular that the Lord wants us to do and it has to do with prayer. Let me give you one more example of what I mean. Here in Ann Arbor, one day there was a windstorm while I was working here back in the 70s and early 80s. There was a windstorm. And after everything calmed down, I was walking home, I was about six blocks, eight blocks from the university here. I was walking home. And when I turned the corner onto the street on which we lived, it was a street that was lined for about six blocks with maple trees, beautiful maple trees. And every tree for six blocks had been uprooted in the storm. The storm was strong, but short. But the one tree had hit the next tree, had hit the next. And I saw roots that were about this long. And I thought, I grew up around maple trees. I've seen the roots on maple trees. They're big. These can't be maple trees. I must be wrong. I asked around and people said, no, they're maple trees. I said, why are the roots so small? And nobody could tell me. So about three months later, I was speaking in Nebraska. And so I raised the question and I said, here's my experience, all you farmers out there, tell me. And this one man walked up and he said to me, describe the leaf to me. And I described the leaf. And he said, yep, that's a maple tree. And he said, show me the roots. And I said, they were about that deep. So they were easily uprooted. And nobody said, he said, sister, that's a maple tree. And the roots are very shallow because they didn't have to fight to find water. Water was easily accessible. They had everything they needed. They didn't have to go deep. That's where we've been in some ways. We have not had to fight the kind of battles that may be before us. I've gone to country after country, Eastern Europe, the part of the East. I don't name countries for obvious reasons sometimes, but I've been in a number of countries. And one of the things I see in them is a realization of what a gift faith is and how hard they have to work to protect it. And we, in what is an affluent society, generally speaking, we don't have to look hard to find water. It's easily accessible. Mass is right there. We might have to drive a little while, but it's not that bad. We have more masses on Sunday. We have this available, that available. We have to make some sacrifices, but it isn't that hard. Just it goes against our wishes sometimes. But they didn't have anything. Part of the Eastern part of the world, I was with a group of people who were, we were having mass celebrate. A priest was celebrating mass for us one night. And it was very, very challenging because it was unlawful to do it. And we were gathered in this little room, and the priest was probably in his late 20s, early 30s. And right before the consecration, or I'm sorry, right after the consecration, there was a pounding on the door. And it was frightening. And I thought, well, I'm gonna be sent out of the country and I won't get back, but for these people, it's gonna be a lot more difficult. And it turned out to be a neighbor and the situation was resolved, but what happened was when that knocking came to the door, this priest, who was, by the way, 30 years old, and his name was Peter, he stood up and he laid his body across the coffee table and covered the chalice and held the host. He just stretched out on the coffee table. And I looked at him, and I thought, this is real. He's laying his life down. It wasn't just an image. He was laying his life down. And after mass was over, I went up to him and I said, Father, I don't think I've ever been to a more beautiful mass than this. And he said to me, gladly will I give my life for the sake of the Eucharist.  Just a simple statement. He knew what the Eucharist was. He knew it and he was ready to give his life. I don't know that I'm ready. I want to be. I wanna practice what I'm preaching. But how real is my faith? How real is your faith?  I know that sounds dramatic, but I think we really need to look at it. Our roots are shallow because we haven't had to fight for it. It's easily accessible. Our roots haven't had to go deep. Just like the trees up there. Just a few blocks from here. Their roots didn't go deep because they had such easy access to water. We have easy access. God wants our roots to go down deep in him. In him. There is a beautiful, how much more time do I have? Seven minutes. Okay, all right. I'll get it to you in seven minutes. One of the things, in fact, probably the most important thing that we need to know has to do with our life prayer. That's where it all begins. That's where do I really believe when I come to pray? Do I honestly believe that Jesus is here, that he is present? And that when I pray, I am heard. Do you remember the passage in Mark, in the Gospel of Mark, where it says that Jesus went up on a mountain to pray and then it says he called those he wanted to come and be with him. And then it says, and then he anointed them and he called them to be his disciples. There was a process there. Jesus called them, and if you, the scriptures, most of the translations just say, Jesus called them to be with him and he appointed or and he called forth so and so and so and so. But if you really look at the translation, accurately at the translation, what it says is he called them to be with him. And then he called them to be his disciples. He called them to be with him. So my question to you and the most important question, for you, for your families and for all those you teach, all those you deal with, how close are you to the Lord? Are you with him? Or do you just say reporting for duty, pray for this person, pray for that person, pray for the other person. God to go, God to give this talk, God to handle this. Thank you, God. There are times when God will accept that. But every day, brothers and sisters, every day before God's face, give him time, whatever the cost. Give him time every day. Pray for others, pray for those you're teaching, those you care for, those you love. Yes, absolutely. Read the scriptures, read the scriptures daily, the living word of God.  Every day come before him. He called them to be with him. That means live with him. Live your life with him.   I give him everything. Read the scriptures daily. Repent of your sin when you fail, don't hide it. If you wanna be light shining in the darkness and that's what God has called us to be, light shining in the darkness. If you want to be that, as I hope and pray you do, because we need light right now in the darkness of our world. The stupidity, I won't, I'll be careful what I say, but the stupidity of what's out there, we should be able to see through. We should be able to see through. I wanna urge you, come before the Lord and say, teach me what to do here. Teach me what your priorities are for today. Teach me what I should focus on. Teach me, help me, and ask the Holy Spirit, walk with me. Walk with me, accompany me. Do you know that God really wants to do that? He wants to walk with you and you say, I'm a sinner. Well, we all are. We all are. And go to confession as fast as you can because as I said at the beginning of the talk, if you don't, what happens is that your eyes become dimmer.  You can't see and you can't hear as clearly as God wants you to see and wants you to hear. He wants to reveal himself to you. He loves you. He loves you as though you were the only person on the face of the earth. He can do that. We can't, but he can do that. He loves you totally. You don't in a sense have to take less love from him because he has to give it out to somebody else. He has infinite love and it's all for you, every bit of it. But he needs us, he needs each one of us to give him time every day with the scriptures. I'll add in that you might want to take a look or listen to my radio program, Food for the Journey. It's just 15 minutes a day. It's the readings of the day. And on Fridays I do the readings for the following Sunday. It's just a 14 minute, 30 second. But people tell me all over the world that it's been very helpful to them. So I want to bring it to your attention. You just go to renewalministries.net. Renewalministries.net. Click on Radio. My program is called Food for the Journey. We keep five up at a time, sometimes seven so you can catch up if you're behind or go ahead if you need to.   And it has, I'm still in process, very much in process. But I want you to walk out of this conference saying, okay, okay Lord, use me. I want to be used by you.  And may many, many, many souls be saved because you were willing to grow deeper so that those trees out there that had such shallow roots, when the storms come for us, your roots will be down very deep and you will withstand the storm very well. That's what God has for us. It's an analogy, but I believe it's true. He wants to use you. He wants to save us, to save the church. We're all in difficulty right now in both faith and hope and love. We're in difficulty. So come, as Jesus said, come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened. That's us. And I will give you rest. He will give you himself. And when he gives you himself, you have all you need. May he be glorified in you and through you for the honor of the Father. Amen. God bless.


So why is keto bad for athletes? Well, first off, it's not. So if you just look this one up and you're like, why is it bad for athletes? It's just a misunderstanding or understanding of how keto really works. So the reality is this, is being in ketosis is a superior way for the human body to function. Doesn't mean as an athlete that you should always be in ketosis. We have to understand what keto is before you decide if it's good or bad for anybody. The human body has literally been in ketosis for all of our existence, majority of the time. So for an athlete not to spend time in ketosis, that's a big mistake. But for an athlete to be in ketosis all the time, that may also be a big mistake. And I want to explain why. So first off, hey, my name is Dustin Schaefer. I've been in the human performance space for over 20 years. I've been fortunate to work with the top researchers, coaches, doctors, globally, human performance coaches. And I've got to learn from the best of the best. But I also have my own personal experience. As a former recombinant college athlete, I'm huge into fitness, I'm huge into performance. My whole focus is around performance. And it's not just high level athletes, it's everybody perform better. But the one thing that's been really cool over the last five years is that I've been kind of leaned on globally from the top soccer players, Olympic athletes to basketball players, football players, you name it globally, have kind of leaned cyclists, runners, marathon runners and endurance athletes have leaned on me because they want ketones, but they don't know how to do it. How do you get into ketosis and then maintain the high level performance? Well, I'm gonna paint a little picture for you all so you can kind of understand where you could fit in this as an athlete, as whatever athlete that you might think you are or you are, I'm gonna kind of paint a picture. Science right now is showing and proving that majority of endurance athletes, so an endurance athlete is somebody that extended amount of time, typically where they're maintaining a heart rate, let's say about 50%, 55%, some would go a little higher than that for a sustainable amount of time, even 40% for some of your long, long runners. So you're maintaining a heart rate up to, let's say you maintain your heart rate right here, not at a max heart rate, but you're maintaining a heart rate for a sustained, a longer time. What is sustained amount of time? That can be literally over five minutes. It doesn't have to be super long, but most endurance athletes are going for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour, two hours, some 16 hours. True story, 16 hour endurance athletes, it's crazy out there, right? Well, that person, think of it as, they're gonna run more efficiently on fat. Fat in your body will ultimately produce ketones. Now we can drink ketones too, which we'll talk about in a second, but think of it this way, it's like a diesel truck driving across America. A diesel truck basically is a huge, low truck, they don't drive fast, it's not about performance, it's about long, steady, consistent, right? Well, ketosis is a great way to do that. It's very efficient, utilize less oxygen, you get this really efficiency of the cell. Biggest reason why, and a lot of people miss this, is ketones are a cleaner fuel source. So there's less byproduct and waste product. Also, if you're in ketosis, typically you're not loading with a bunch of glucose and carbs, so you're not heavy on the GI tract, which now distracts the muscle system when you're over consuming food, but it takes time. So so many endurance athletes are trying to figure out how to go keto, and we're talking about the diet for right now, I will talk about drinking ketones, because that is another factor that you can play around with, but, and you're going into the diet, it takes, I always encourage my endurance athletes, keto works, if you get, if you understand it, you get your body there as an endurance athlete, you can perform at a higher level, longer, better, and it doesn't mean you have to eliminate all your carbs because you are using them, but you want to maintain a level of ketosis that is very efficient. To do that, you want to start on your off season. You don't want to do this in season, you want to start on your off season, give yourself six months to figure out how the diet's gonna formulate for you, and it's a process. It's a higher fat, moderate protein, low carb diet, and the cool thing is you can do longer runs with less food.  Your longest fastest run might be a fasting, because now your GI tract doesn't have to worry about anything else, but burning ketones from your fat source, that's it. It's just, it's a burning efficient fuel source.    You might not hydrate effectively. There's all these other reasons why it might not work. That's not bad for athletes, it just means that you didn't go about it from an intelligent perspective, not to say you're dumb, you got excited and you just decided to go do it, and no, as a coach, you gotta take people through a process. You're changing the way that you're doing everything from a nutritional perspective, doesn't make it wrong, just means you need to figure it out. Statistically, you're better off as an endurance athlete going keto for long-term results. Now here's the catch 22. Anerobic athletes, sprint athletes. Athletes that have short bursts where their heart rate goes up high, where they're going and tapping into ATP really fast. Now, keto does increase ATP production, but here's the challenge is you want some glucose present. So this is where it gets obstacle. This is where it gets really challenging, and why the ketogenic diet is not really the best for anaerobic athletes, in general, is because sometimes you want a little boost of glucose.  I look at glucose that I use to drive snowmobiles, so it's ether. You pop it in the carburetor and it goes, whee, really fast, but then it just dies off. Well, that's great for 200 meters. Like, that's awesome. I want that extra boost for 200 meters, because after that, I'm just gonna sit down. I'm gonna rest. I don't need the energy then, but if you don't have glucose available in the system, then your body doesn't have, it's not readily available, right? You can find it, but it's not as easy. So, ketones are great though, because ketones are still gonna help with oxygen efficiency, it's gonna help with ATP production, and more importantly, helps with recovery, but with anaerobic athletes, we can time it. From a dietary perspective, what we do with athletes that wanna go keto is off-season, we might do more keto, we might train them that way, but prior to, if they're really keto and they're doing a ketogenic diet, during training, we might tease in some glucose, and now it's just, you have to learn. You have to learn the balance of how much you can get away with, and literally, you can train, maybe you're doing anaerobic training, or you're a powerlifter, or maybe you're a strongman competitor, whatever it is, we add glucose prior to your workout, we gotta figure out how much, what source, that's a process, it's gonna take time, and you're like, I felt strong and powerful, but then an hour or two hours after your workout, you're back into a low carb lifestyle, keeping your weight down, your energy efficiency up, your sleeping isn't better, your recovering faster, and so there's a process in there that you can figure out and you can do. Now, it's gonna take a lot of time, so let's bring in the third component. So over the last few years, we've been doing this, and this is what I coach most people on, is how do you drink ketones? So, we have drinkable ketones, it's the only one in the world that I will recommend, it's the only one in the world I will personally drink, because it's the only bio-identical ketone supplement I can prove exactly how it's gonna work and how you're gonna, from an energy efficiency, and so if you're an endurance athlete, what we do is we just introduce that into your body, we might not adjust your car as much, maybe just reduce them by 30% or 20%, not go full keto, and you might see an even better improvements in your endurance running, you might still decide to go in the ketogenic diet and use that in conjunction, so you don't have to be perfect, so it's gonna fill the gaps, instead of being perfect and have a bad day, you just have to be close and you always have a good day. Anerobic athletes is even better, because anaerobic athletes, we're like, hey, listen, let's use your glucose strategically, but we can be a little higher, a little low, and it's not gonna really make a big difference for us, and we can use this as a performance tool, but more importantly, as a recovery tool. So the coolest thing, if I would have had this back in the day, I don't know, I don't know how far I would have went, but I tell you what, life would have been way better, way more easy, I would have stayed lean, I would have stayed stronger and I would have recovered way faster, so utilizing this tool is a great combo. So when somebody says why athletes shouldn't do keto, they don't understand it. Ketones are efficient fuel source, they have a higher amount of energy, poor caloric, poor gram of higher amount of calories per gram of ketones, they're very efficient. They help with signaling of the cells, they help with cognition and focus, that's great for every athlete, right? They help with oxygenalization, recovery and ATP production, to think that that's not an athletic thing that an athlete shouldn't use, it's just an ignorant statement. The reason why they don't think it's good for athletes is they don't understand how an athlete can do it and still perform, right? And that's gonna take time, you need to find a coach that understands that, you need to find the right, and there's not many out there because this is a pretty new conversation, but I promise you this, the research is clear that if you can elevate your ketone levels while you're performing, even if you're using glucose strategically at times, right? More importantly, just use that with the strategic glucose, you will perform better than you ever can imagine and you're gonna see a lot of breaking records over the next four or five years because of this concept. So, y'all, athletes should have ketones in them. The question is when, where and how. That's the question you should ask yourself. So, hey, to learn more, hey, subscribe to my channel, hit me, PM me. Let me know. I'm here to help you and support you getting there and we'll take care of you as an athlete. I want you to perform at the highest level possible, y'all. Thanks.