Jimmy Moore Interview Page 2

3. What's your best advice for people who are having difficulty sticking with their low-carb way of eating?

I get this question a lot from readers all the time, Laura, as I'm sure you do too. They'll say to me they've been on low-carb for a month and ONLY lost 10 pounds. They fully expected to have lost much more than that by now and wonder why the scale isn't moving any faster than it is. In the meantime, they say they're feeling fantastic ... better than they ever have in their entire life and have energy coming out their ears!

So what's their problem? EXPECTATIONS!

People put unreasonable expectations on themselves to perform a certain way on a low-carb diet. I still haven't figured out why that is. And it goes back to your earlier question about diet vs. lifestyle change. If you are eating a certain way just to lose weight, then you are in for a shock when you don't do well. But it's completely predictable that you will almost always fail when the focus is on weight loss. What people who start low-carb should try to remember is that they are eating this way first and foremost for their health, because it is an extremely healthy diet to be on. Yes, all that fat which can comprise upwards of 60 to 70% of your calories in a day is perfectly harmless to you when you keep your carbs limited.

Then something remarkable begins to happen when the focus is on eating healthy: a funny little side effect called "weight loss." And that's the payoff I tell people to wait for. If it doesn't come quickly, that's okay. But it will come when you follow a specific guided low-carb plan exactly as prescribed by the author, follow that plan with little to no deviations and stay on it. If you can't do it forever, then find something you can that will allow you to attain your health goals. If you want low-carb to work, then you have to make it work for you. Do the substitutions that get you through the day and soon you will find all those foods you think you couldn't live without are utterly disgusting to you. That's what happened to macaroni and cheese for me! And sugar is rat poison now!

4. You have interviewed almost all of the heavyweights in the low-carb community: physicians, researchers and authors. Can you share some moments from your personal "highlight reel"?

I've been privileged to speak with a lot of people on "The Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore" podcast over the past couple of years, and I consider it a true honor to talk to people like Dr. Mike Eades, Gary Taubes, Dr. Richard Feinman, Dr. Mary C. Vernon, Dr. Jonny Bowden and many others. These people don't have to give me the time of day, but they do and that speaks volumes about the kind of people they really are.

(Links are provided to the podcasts Jimmy mentions below.)

You'll never guess who my first recorded health interview EVER was with — Dr. Dean Ornish (Part 1 and Part 2). I tried for six months back in 2006 to get an interview with the king of low-fat diets just to hear what he had to say and share it with my readers. The week I interviewed him was actually the same week I debuted my new podcast show ironically, and I didn't air the interview until late last year. But that first contact with him enabled me to get another interview with Dr. Ornish earlier this year that was a bit more confrontational than the first (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). Let's just say that intense head-to-head interview with someone I had very little philosophically in common with is one I'll not soon forget. It's almost impossible for me to pick and choose my favorites from all the interviews I've conducted, since I try to glean something I can apply in to my own life from each one. Definitely my interviews with Gary Taubes (author of the important book, Good Calories, Bad Calories Part 1, Part 2), Dr. William Davis (Part 1, Part 2), Jackie Eberstein (Part 1, Part 2), Dr. Steven Gundry (Part 1, Part 2) and Dr. James Carlson (Part 1, Part 2) are ones that stand out above the rest.