Welcome to Episode 415 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.
SPECIAL GUEST BIO
Matthew Lederman, MD, is a board-certified Internal Medicine Physician and a pioneering thought leader in holistic health. Renowned for his innovative integration of plant-based nutrition, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), trauma-informed care, and lifestyle medicine, Dr. Lederman's work highlights the profound interconnectedness of physical, emotional, and relational well-being.
Dr. Lederman is the co-host of the webe Parents podcast, a platform dedicated to equipping parents with tools and insights to foster emotional connection, resilience, and well-being in their families. His latest book, Wellness to Wonderful, weaves together medical science, psychology, spirituality, and life wisdom to guide individuals toward lasting health, vibrancy, peace, and joy.
He has co-authored six books, including the New York Times Bestseller Forks Over Knives Plan, and was featured in the acclaimed documentary Forks Over Knives. Through these works, he has shared his transformative approach to wellness with audiences around the globe.
In addition to his roles as a clinician, educator, speaker, and corporate advisor, Dr. Lederman has served as Vice President of Medical Affairs at Whole Foods Market, lectured for eCornell, and provided adjunct faculty instruction in medical schools. He also co-created the webe kälm device, designed to promote emotional regulation and soothe the nervous system.
webeKalm.com | webeParents.com | connectiondocs.substack.com
Books:
The Forks Over Knives Plan: How to Transition to the Life-Saving, Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet
WELLNESS TO WONDERFUL: 9 Pillars for Living Healthier, Longer, and with Greater Joy
The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity
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Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.
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Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.
Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.
TRANSCRIPT
(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)
Melanie Avalon
Welcome to Episode 415 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat, with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine. And I'm joined by my co-host, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with B.C. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. This is Episode 415, and I am here today with a very, very special guest. I am so excited about today's episode. So the backstory on today's show, I met Dr. Matthew Letterman, I don't even know now, probably a few years ago, I think, because I've had him on the Melanie Adlon biohacking podcast twice. The backstory is I received information about his work, and I was an immediate yes, because I was so familiar with his background and what he does. So he has co-authored six books, including The New York Times bestseller Forks Over Knives Plan, and he was also in the acclaimed documentary Forks Over Knives. He also authored the book The Whole Foods Diet, and he did that with John Mackey, who's the co-founder and former CEO of Whole Foods. And I'd read that book before I explored Forks Over Knives, so I was super familiar. And when his people reached out to me, it was for his new book at the time, which was called Wellness to Wonderful, Nine Pillars for Living Healthier, Longer, and with Greater Joy. So I had him on the show. We talked about that book. That book was incredible. It was such a holistic approach to health. It went into all the things to work on, you know, when it comes to health. So diet and nutrition and sleep, which Matt and I were just talking about before this, as well as a lot of mindset and social things. And I, because when I started reading that book, Wellness to Wonderful, I wasn't anticipating just how much of it was going to be the mental, emotional, social side of things. So I was really interested in that. So that was a great interview. I will put a link to it in the show notes. And also during all of that, I learned about Matt's incredible products called WeBeCalm, which we will definitely talk about today. It's a really cool device that helps you gamify breathing exercises for kids and adults. I actually gave one to my mom for Christmas. And it's a way to just instantly bring some calm into your life. So that's really amazing.
Melanie Avalon
So I had him back on the show for both that, as well as his podcast, the WeBe Parents podcast, which he co-hosts with his wife, Alana, they actually both wrote the Wellness to Wonderful as well. That was a lot. Matt, by the way, he's also a board certified internal medicine physician, a specialist in something called Nonviolent Communication, which I bet we will talk about in today's show. And he's just super savvy, super knowledgeable and so many of these tools and techniques that can really boost people's health. So I knew we had to have him on this show. So Dr. Letterman, Matt, thank you so much for being here.
Matthew Lederman
Wow, what an introduction. I hope I can live up to all that. That was amazing.
Melanie Avalon
No, no, you definitely, definitely will. I've just so enjoyed having you on the shows and really, really appreciate your work. I was thinking about this before we started. I don't think we actually talked and we might have, but in any of my prior interviews with you, I'm really curious, you worked for, what was your position with Whole Foods for like a long time? What was your position there?
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, I was the vice president of medical affairs there.
Melanie Avalon
Yeah, that's okay. So that's like a very impressive title. I wasn't even aware that that was a role at Whole Foods. Like what did you do in that role? That's so cool.
Matthew Lederman
Me and Alona, who's my partner at work and in life, worked for them for 10 years. We helped them open medical centers that treated employees with this comprehensive paradigm. There was doctors and more time with patients. There was a more holistic team with health coaches. There was acupuncture, mental health support. And then we partnered, I mean, as nurse practitioners to different level providers. And then we partnered with like-minded healthcare systems that were focusing on optimizing health and wellbeing and minimizing overtreatment and all of the harmful, unnecessary care that happens in a lot of the conventional healthcare systems. And then we would get specialists that also were focused on dealing with the overtreatment problem. A lot of people think the key to getting good specialists is someone that knows about the obscure diagnosis, but more often than not, the bigger problem is finding specialists that don't overtreat, which can only hurt people and doesn't help them. So it was trying to put together a network. We helped them create an insurance plan that incentivized this type of care and put all that together with them.
Melanie Avalon
Wow. Okay. That is so cool. By the over-trading, do you mean specialists where it's like if you have a hammer, everything's a nail, like they see the thing everywhere or actually over-trading once they diagnose it?
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, so there's a lot of things that like blood pressure, it's used blood pressure for an example, they'll give you way too much medication to try and get your number significantly low and make your number look normal. But data shows that if you try to give someone a normal looking blood pressure number with medication, you actually can increase strokes, heart attacks and death. So if your blood pressure is really high, medication is great to get it down as far as decreasing strokes. If it's getting a little bit lower, but getting it to look normal would be considered over treatment because the data shows that it can't help you, it only hurts you. But everybody thinks a normal number means normal health. And if you're getting normal numbers with medication and not die in lifestyle, then that's actually harmful. So that would be an example. There's a screening for cancer, a lot of screenings, there's harms that are not explained. So we inflate the benefit of screening and we under represent the harms from screening so that people can't make an informed decision. So there's two back surgeries, another one way too much happening, using back surgery to treat pain doesn't work. And yet, millions and millions of dollars are spent on doing that to patients who just feel terrible and it doesn't help them.
Melanie Avalon
Wow, statins, would that be one maybe?
Matthew Lederman
Statins for secondary prevention, like if you've had heart attacks or strokes, the data's pretty good. But a lot of people take statins and think, oh, my cholesterol number's down, I'm good, I can eat whatever I want because I'm on the statin. And it doesn't work that way. So just because you have a normal cholesterol number with a statin doesn't mean you have the health of someone who has a normal number because of diet and lifestyle. So they do benefit people, particularly if they've had a heart attack or stroke or something like that before. But it's definitely not, to me it's something you do as an adjunct, not the primary focus of the treatment.
Melanie Avalon
Yeah, that actually happened to my friend yesterday. He had a heart attack and he didn't see it coming at all and he had completely normal cholesterol levels.
Matthew Lederman
And that's the thing we'll tell people, we'll say, we don't know what normal is for you. I know what your normal is when I put you on a whole food plant-based diet and some exercise, and after six to 12 weeks, I see what your cholesterol does. Because I've had people who have a cholesterol of 200, and they go down to 180 on these diet and lifestyles, and that's a normal cholesterol for them. I've had people that are 140 total cholesterol, and they get down to 190. So 140, even though for most people they'd say, that's great for this person on the American diet with a 140, they actually needed to be down at 90. So it's an indicator, it's not a definition of health, it's an indicator of how your health is doing. Given the other circumstances though, you need to take those into account.
Melanie Avalon
to clarify that was for the employees at Whole Foods that could engage with it.
Matthew Lederman
Yes, that was for the employees, correct?
Melanie Avalon
That's so cool. Did that continue on after you left?
Matthew Lederman
It was great. It showed a 20% reduction in health care cost, health care spend. And then it was Whole Foods was bought by Amazon and it's just a big, big company. And they were looking into, they were started expanding it. When we left, it was sort of, we showed that the pilots worked and they wanted to expand it. But I was, me and Alona were not as excited about just reproduction. We wanted to be more in the creative side of things and adding to it. And we also wanted to expand into what we call connection medicine. And basically once Amazon came and some other things started changing, we decided to go out and do what we wanted to do, but do it on our own so we didn't have to work within the confines of a big corporation and legal systems and things like that. So now I think Amazon, it's so big, they wanted something that they could create and spread very quickly. And this was more grassroots. So I don't know if they continued it in any capacity, but we left five years ago. So I'm not sure what's happened since then.
Melanie Avalon
Gotcha. Yeah, I'm I'm super curious because I've been a whole foods girl for quite a while and it's been interesting to see especially with the Amazon merger and the change and everything. It's been interesting to see it. It's definitely I appreciate now that I can use all my Amazon benefits and it's actually helped. It seems some prices and things like that. I always wonder what's happening behind the scenes though with everything. So very interesting. Okay, so you hinted at it a lot, which is that there's so much to health beyond just like diet and beyond just, you know, what you see in your blood work and things like that. Before we get more into that, I am super curious. This is the intermittent fasting podcast. What are your thoughts? Because you're you come from a whole food plant based diet approach to to health and wellness. What are your thoughts on intermittent fasting for health?
Matthew Lederman
I think the most important thing is that you eat whole plant foods and you minimize or eliminate the processed foods and that includes extracted added oils, extracted added sweeteners, added sodium as much as possible. And the same thing with animal products. You don't have to be, for a majority of chronic illnesses, you don't have to be vegan, but we eat way too many animal products. And there's a lot of reasons that eating no animal products can be a good thing, but regardless of what you decide to do on that end of your own, people have to eat significantly less animal products. I don't know what your thoughts are, Melanie, on animal products or what your audience, do you have a sense of what your audience's view is on animal products?
Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I was just thinking how I'm excited to be having this conversation because I feel like we heavily, the majority of the guests that come on are often in like the paleo or you know, keto type world. And then my former co-host and my current co-host, we're all very big supporters. So I like to say that I am dietary agnostic. I'm dietary agnostic in that I think people can follow diets that work for them. So some people do do well on vegan. I think a lot of people struggle to get enough protein or certain forms of nutrients that might be higher in animal-based foods. Some people do really well on a more animal-based diet. Some people do well on, you know, a very omnivore type approach. So I think it's about finding the diet that works for you. But then I think when you step back from that, there are some key tenets that apply. So and you probably just said all of them, like whole foods, so, you know, cutting out these processed foods, avoiding these additives, this added, you know, sugar and flavors and added sodium and just all these different additives and preservatives, just not good. And then the third thing is I do think it's really important to focus on protein. So that's why I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on protein because I think people get very confused, especially on this show because we talk all the time about the importance of protein. How do you feel about protein intake?
Matthew Lederman
My view on protein is probably going to upset most of your viewers. So I'm trying to make sure that I say clearly up front is that, you know, what feels best for your body. And when I work with clients, ultimately, that's what I want to do is help them check into their bodies and see what feels good. And then I also want them to isolate the variables. So sometimes they make a conclusion because they have compounding variables or there's confusion. For example, some people who start on a plant-based diet, the calorie density is significantly lower. So they can go from 2000 calories per pound to 500 calories per pound, which is a quarter of the calories per pound of food. And if you try to eat the same portion sizes over a period of days, you'll start to have calorie deficiency and you'll feel lower energy and fatigue and cravings. And then they'll go out and they'll say, it must be the protein. I need animal protein. And then they'll go out and eat a big burger, which is like a calorie bolus. And then they feel better. And they say, see, it was the animal products. And what I have to explain to them is you can eat animal products if you want, but what helped you there was the calorie bolus. And we need to adjust your diet to deal with the calorie deficiency. It's not an animal protein deficiency. And then they can still choose to eat animal products, but I want them to do it for the reasons, for the right reasons, if you will, but that makes sense. So I want to make sure people have information. They take that information can make an informed decision about what works best for them. So with that caveat, I tell people that protein should be the last thing you were, it's the first thing everybody's worried about. For me, it's the last thing. In fact, I'm working on ways to get less protein because I eat a whole food plant-based diet. I'm getting excessive amounts of protein. And when we're talking about protein, what we really care about is the essential amino acids. And I'm, I'm blowing away if because of my diet is full of whole foods, there's no added oils and sugars, which are, those are actually devoid of protein oils and sugars give you calories without any protein. So if your diet has a lot of oil and sugar, you can start to get, it's still probably hard, but you can still, you're definitely getting a significant portion of calories without any protein. I don't have that problem because all my calories come with essential amino acids because I'm getting them from whole plant foods. So the problem with too much protein is that you don't store it. It doesn't, it doesn't magically, you know, get stored in the body. It doesn't, you know, you can't eat protein and all of a sudden gets pushed into your biceps. It's floating around and your body eliminates it. So you'll, and that puts stress on the bones and the kidneys and the liver. And the more protein you have that you don't need, the more your body has to work to eliminate it.
Matthew Lederman
And then I have a whole slideshow that I take people through to show them how they determined what is the minimum safe requirements. And then what they do is they put a buffer in there. So the minimum like different organizations that have recommendations for protein for populations, they put a safety buffer in there because each person's a little bit different, but they put something in the, you know, so they'll double the amount that made that the person who had the biggest protein requirement of the group in a test study, they would double that amount. So that's more than double what most people need. So if you're getting what's quote unquote, the minimum requirement, you're still getting a safety buffer of twice as much as you need. So knowing that even if you're getting the, you're just meeting the minimum requirements, you're going to do fine. The recommendation for populations with these minimum requirements is basically saying, if we make this requirement to a population, almost all of them not going to get into any trouble if they follow that. And that's the answer. Yes, they're all going to do fine. So knowing that if I'm working out more, I'm going to eat more calories because I'm going to be hungrier and because I'm burning more calories. And when I eat more calories, guess what? If they're whole plant foods and not oil or sugar, I'm getting more protein. So if I work harder and expend more energy, I'm going to eat more calories and I'm going to get more protein.
Melanie Avalon
I so appreciate this conversation and I think it's really helpful because what's really important to me in life is to interview and talk to people of all different perspectives because if not, I think we get really siloed and it can be hard to know if we're being biased or cherry picking or whatever it may be. So I really appreciate having this conversation. So the first point you made, I want to communicate that I understand it and I see it go the other way as well. So you made the example of how people, you know, might be needing calories so they eat a burger and then they think that they think it was like the protein that made them feel better but really they just needed the calories. I feel like that happens and then I feel like it also happens on the flip side where people might cut out, maybe they go completely plant-based or vegan and they cut out everything and they feel massively better and so then they think that going that restrictive on plant-based only was what it was but maybe it was cutting out all these other things and then in the future they might need to bring back selectively some animal-based products if they need certain nutrients that they're not able to get enough of. So I feel like it can happen both ways.
Matthew Lederman
What are those nutrients that people are worried about, would you say? Because I think they can, I think people can add some animal products back and still be healthy. But what other than B12, what nutrient would you say that people can only get if they eat animal products?
Melanie Avalon
Well, so the only one that they can quote, I guess only only get would be, like you said, be 12, but then people can have like spirulina.
Matthew Lederman
But just to clarify, B12 comes from bacteria. And the animals get the bacteria and make the B12. And then they accumulate the B12. So animal products are basically like a supplement. It's not like the animals make the B12 either. So to me, I just wanted to add this in about the B12, that it's made by bacteria. And then we can either get that from a supplement that stores this B12, or we could get it from an animal product that stores B12. Or we could, I guess, potentially stop eating really, really clean food and maybe get some B12 that way. Just to clarify, because when I said B12, I just wanted to make it clear that for anyone listening that I'm not saying that they can only get that from animal products or that animal products are producing it.
Melanie Avalon
Right and kind of kind of the same way like meat from animals they ate grass and turn it into meat so similar concept actually.
Matthew Lederman
Right. I just want to make sure vegans don't hear this and say, oh, I could eat lettuce and I'll get my B12. If you're vegan, they're going to get into trouble without a B12 supplement. So just to be careful that, yes, if you're eating animal products, sometimes they even need to supplement B12. Even eating animal products isn't enough for some people. But yeah, you definitely need to supplement B12. You can't get that. Even if you don't wash your lettuce, it's not enough.
Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I'll do a shout out for my spirulina because it's super high in B12 and it is vegan. So there is a solution for people.
Matthew Lederman
Who don't want to eat animals or take pills, yeah.
Melanie Avalon
The other nutrients I'd be thinking, I think there's quite a few nutrients that are just easier for people to get and assimilate in the plant-based form. So EPA, DHA, so with their omega-3s, getting them in the plant that like from fish compared to converting it from ALA and plants, some people genetically might not have the best conversion there. And then with a lot of fat, soluble vitamins are easier to get in from animal products. Creatine from animal products and protein, I think if you are going and getting just direct animal meat, like lean protein, you're getting those amino acids in a form that I think will be a lot better for stimulating. I know it's ironic because we're talking about anti-aging and reducing protein for reducing IGF-1 and reducing mTOR and increasing AMPK for longevity. But when you're intentionally in the growth state and wanting to support muscle mass and support building your body, I think a lot of people can assimilate and get that better from animal-based protein, easier for them. And a lot of it depends on your gut microbiome, like how good they are at what they do with plants or not.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, I mean, people can stay if your goal is to stimulate growth, it's a different goal than if your goal is health. And I think at that point, like you're saying, maybe you want to do if you manipulate the diet, when taking isolated protein powder is going to stimulate IGF one insulin like growth factor, which is going to stimulate growth, you know, getting hormones that are in your animal animal products is going to stimulate growth. So there's different ways we can stimulate growth. But I'm helping people, if you're trying to avoid cancer, stimulation of growth is something you want to avoid as well. So it's just a matter of balancing like, hey, what's your priority, and then helping people meet their needs around that party, because I don't want to come across like, I'm saying this is the right way to do it, and everything else is wrong, it's really important to check in with people, what they want, and what works for them. I just, I just also want to make sure I get people, even if it's another view, like there's some people say, oh, I'm getting older, I can't absorb animal products as well if they're from plants, or I can't absorb protein as well if it's from plants versus animals. That is not my experience. That's not what I see in the data. I know people will talk about creatine, even though that's naturally synthesized in the body from amino acids, arginine, glycine, and methionine, primarily in the liver, kidneys, pancreas. So it's not an essential nutrient. Now, if people for somehow take creatine and they say, wow, my life is amazing, and it's so much better. Like, that's great. I just want to make sure that people who feel great already don't say, oh my God, I need to eat animals, I need to eat creatine, and I need to get more protein, or I'm going to be hurting myself. I think that's what I worry about are the people that are feeling great that are then second guessing themselves. But if on the flip side, you're having a problem, or you somehow you do something and you feel better and it still feels safe enough, you knock yourself out. My worry with animal products is, hey, now it's cholesterol, no fiber, environmental contaminants that are in there that bioaccumulate as they eat up the food chain, and then just the effect of some of the animal products and the more acidic amino acids that tend to be from them with the sulfur-containing amino acids. So I tell people, if you feel better doing this, that's ultimately what you should trust your body. But if you're feeling great and you hear something and it makes you second-guess yourself, then I have a higher bar before I would switch anything.
Melanie Avalon
I so appreciate your communicating everything really clearly. I so appreciate your perspective. I love that you have this perspective, and I think it's really valuable that people hear all different sides of the coin. I really like the central tenet of listening to your body and finding what works for you and being smart about it and seeing what nutrients do you actually need. And we can go more into listening into your body. That's a good segue. But before that, I just have a few other thoughts. I am literally haunted by this protein aging question. Anytime I bring on anybody who remotely might have an idea about it, I ask them. So I've had a lot of people, I don't want to make it like camps, but I've had people with similar viewpoints to you that I've interviewed, so like Dr. Michael Gregor, Neil Bernard, and Walter Longo. And I'm always asking them this question about the trade-off with a high-protein diet and IGF-1, mTOR, aging, and then also this question which you referenced. And I'm curious. It does seem to be pretty accepted that after the age of 60, that people do need to increase their protein intake. But you're saying you've seen some people that don't need to increase as they get older?
Matthew Lederman
Do you see a question you're saying it to people over the age of 60?
Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I think that's the cutoff that they give usually for when people need to increase their protein intake.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, I don't I don't see that if if somebody I if people are meeting their caloric needs With whole plant foods meaning they're not getting a lot of processed foods I don't I don't know of a Disease some people will say oh their muscles are wasting and they're they start losing muscle mass They lose muscle mass because they're not active because they're not well There's there's some changes that happen just as you age But as far as a majority of the the the damage it will be When they are not as active they're not doing the resistance. They're not doing flexibility training all of which Are required if you don't use it you lose it, but it's not because they're not eating animal products It's now maybe there's this one, you know, i'm not going to say never But I don't think the majority of people as they get older 60 All of a sudden need to either eat animal products or somehow start supplementing protein powders or they need to Push the caloric intake beyond what they feel satisfied with because that's essentially what I would imagine what happened If you're saying that they're not you or experts are saying That when you hit 60 you need more protein Then to me what they're basically saying is don't listen to your hunger signals Even though you're you're good at you need more than that And or you need to start taking some A non-whole food some type of isolated protein powder Or you need to change the concentration of the protein. So instead of eating, you know You gotta gotta pack in all of these beans, let's say and I don't think any of those Are needed or make people healthier, but I do believe there's problems with people as they get older with not being active Not doing the flexibility training not or not doing it correctly or both And have not getting in the sun or getting the vitamin d so there's there's other issues But I would I would put my focus a little bit differently
Melanie Avalon
I agree completely that it could be causation correlation with people getting older and not getting the stimulus they need to, you know, maintain, definitely not grow, but at least maintain that muscle. The other thought would be, I can also see the issues that you mentioned with animal products like contaminants and things like that. I feel like that goes across the board though, like you could have, you know, pesticides and issues and plant-based foods. And then on the flip side, you could choose. So I pretty much just eat, you know, responsibly raised, toxin free for fish. I only eat low mercury fish because I'm very much concerned about heavy metals. So I think that can be navigated and then the cholesterol thing, I feel like that is more
Matthew Lederman
Could I speak to the environmental contaminant thing? Yeah. So the problem with anopox is that there's bioaccumulation. So things like dioxins and PBDEs, and also they accumulate and break down just based on their half-lives. So you can't eliminate them. They can be passed to the baby through the placenta and the milk, but essentially, you have to just wait for it to break down. When an animal, so let's say there's a grain that has so many parts per million of an environmental contaminant, and you eat that grain directly, versus if you eat an animal that had to eat 10 times or 20 times the amount of grain to get to be the big animal, you're basically eating 20 times in a serving of animal products. You're eating 20 times the amount of that environmental contaminant than you would if you just ate the grain directly. So again, I'm not saying people have to eat grains, but if they look up how biomagnification works, that's the problem with animal products. And eating even organic animal products, it's getting passed down from the mom to the kid. And it's just something that it's hard to avoid. And I wish there was a way where that wasn't an issue, but I have not seen any example where you don't have to worry about environmental contaminant, the biomagnification issue.
Melanie Avalon
So there are like measurable levels of these if you find the best of the best sources with organic pasture raised animal products.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, that doesn't it doesn't matter. And you can look I mean, we'll have to talk offline afterwards. I can show you there's even graphs where they look at this and they know. I mean, milk was one of the biggest as far as dioxin contamination, like it's just because it gets passed down for the mom into the milk. So keep every time it's getting more and more concentrated. So it's just it's just hard to avoid. And that's why you want to eat as low on the food chain as possible, or at least have as much calories as you can tolerate as low on the food chain. Like I said, I'm not against people eating animal products. I just want them to know about all this so they can decide, hey, which one is it worth it? And when is it not?
Melanie Avalon
I'm very concerned with the environmental toxins and especially in the seafood. So hard to get clean, yeah. I had mercury toxicity in the past and that was just from fish and after that I became so aware of it and I think people don't realize, they don't realize that if you have a piece of fish high up on the food chain on your plate, you can't see these toxins. So you can't see just how much can be in there and you don't realize that, oh, if I have a piece of swordfish that could have hundreds of the amount of mercury of like a piece of tilapia that's way lower on the food chain. Like if you look at the charts, it actually can be that much of a difference and that's just mercury. So yeah, it's upsetting.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, it's really tough, and it just makes the higher up on the food chain these toxins multiply. So the same way smaller fish to bigger fish is the same thing when you're eating a plant to an animal that's eating the plants. So the higher up you eat, it's a cow eats thousands of pounds of contaminated grain and grass over its lifetime, concentrating the pesticides and heavy metals in its meat and its milk. Just like you said, tuna, it eats hundreds of smaller fish that are all filled with mercury, making its flesh one of the most contaminated foods. So you can either choose to eat the small fish, which are going to have less, which unfortunately our oceans are so polluted, even the small fish have it, but at least it's not being concentrated when you eat the fish higher up. So basically plants don't store up the toxins in the same way. So eating the lower on the food chain, the fruit, vegetables, grains, legumes means fewer contaminants. And it's all because there being the pollution from the environment getting into all this stuff. So it's not the animals or the plant's fault. It's just what we have to deal with now.
Melanie Avalon
Could this be mitigated in part, since toxins are preferentially stored in fat, what if people ate very, very lean, you know, organically raised, free-range meat, like very lean, like bison and chicken breast? That might, I feel like that would eliminate a lot of the exposure to the toxins.
Matthew Lederman
Yes, even if someone eats lean, organic, free-range meat, they still accumulate more toxins than someone eating plant-based. It's organic, free-range animal, still eat plants, grains, or smaller animals that have been exposed to the environmental toxins. So that's the challenge, is if whatever they're eating has toxin, then they're going to accumulate it. And since they don't break down very easily, they build up in the animal's body over time, even if the feed is organic. So even lean meat still contains the toxins, but many toxins like dioxins and PCBs store in fat, but they also bind to muscle tissue. So even lean meat is not free from contamination. Mercury in fish is found directly in the muscle tissue, meaning that choosing lean fish doesn't reduce exposure. Poultry containing arsenic used historically in chicken feed, organic standards don't fully protect against environmental contamination. So you just can't get away from it if you're eating things that eat other things. You're just, you're going to be exposed to it, but you can at least minimize by not eating things that eat other things that eat other things. So the little fish still eat the algae that's contaminated. So the little fish are still accumulating, but then the big fish that eat the little fish are accumulating even more, because they already have a level of concentration just from the smaller fish when they eat the algae. So does that make sense? Like the free range organic meat is better. At least it'll have fewer antibiotics and pesticide residues than factory farm meat, but it still concentrates environmental toxins and it doesn't protect against bio magnification, which is just a natural process that happens in the food chain.
Melanie Avalon
It does. I would like to look into this more and look at samplings. I'm curious what this practically looks like, because I understand what you're saying, that it's still in there if we choose the best of the best. I would like to just actually see the numbers of what that practically looks like, just because I don't have that much.
Matthew Lederman
That's a good exercise because then you can make an informed decision about how much you want to eat I mean, we're all getting chemicals. We're all getting stuff from our mind. That's why we want to optimize our immune system It's it's gonna be taking hits every every day from all different, you know from the air we breathe the water we drink So you just try to minimize the hits and you decide what's worth it and certain meals certain dishes certain types of food Really bring a lot of joy and pleasure to people So it's more a matter of understanding all this stuff and then making an informed decision about what works for you
Melanie Avalon
And just for the cholesterol piece, I wouldn't be concerned about dietary cholesterol and animal products raising cholesterol. I would be more for me the saturated fat, which you could get from plants as well.
Matthew Lederman
this is this is a common thing that people say and it's I've learned over the years to not spend a lot of energy trying to convince people like like I'm just like if that's the belief that they feel good about then that's great my read of the data and my read of working with patients that it's they can get saturated fat from eating whole coconut and it will not affect their cholesterol the way it will if they get eating animal products and at a certain point you can keep eating more animal products and it doesn't you know we we saturate pretty quickly as far as the amount of cholesterol that any more than that doesn't matter you know you have it's like saying if you're smoking one pack of cigarettes and then you add a second pack well you've done so much damage from the first pack that adding the second pack it might make things a little worse but you know so so if you so you could do a study that says let's take them from two packs of cigarettes down the one pack of cigarettes and there's not much a difference so therefore cigarettes have no effect on health when in fact if you went from two packs of cigarettes to no cigarettes you would see a big difference so I think you got to look at the studies and when you remove dietary cholesterol it's it's clearly a problem but at the same time there's so much so much of the dietary cholesterol comes with saturated fat too so I think they both have their issues but I really don't like in the end I don't like talking about individual macronutrients when we're trying to direct people's health because nobody sits and eats a bowl of cholesterol or eats a bowl of saturated fat and all these foods have all the different I mean bananas have saturated fat in them so it's not like you're gonna pick one type of the other it's it's to me what foods are health promoting and what or not and which foods feel good when you eat them and what foods don't and you put all that together and find a diet that works for you but I don't I've stopped over the years arguing I just want to make sure people hear that maybe there's more than one opinion out there and if they think if they will feel strongly that cholesterol dietary cholesterol doesn't make their cholesterol grow up great and you know they can do an experiment eat one diet and then try to try a couple of weeks without dietary cholesterol and check your blood cholesterol again and do it in yourself but be really you know strict about it so you get a good study and what I imagine is that people who all they do if all they do is change the dietary cholesterol which again I like is hard you can't just eat a bowl of cholesterol my guess is they're going to see a difference if they go from down to zero cholesterol for a couple of weeks just to test it out so do your own little study
Melanie Avalon
So appropriately enough, I've done almost that. But first I just wanted to comment really quickly. I am the same way. I literally have zero interest in convincing anybody of anything, like zero interest. I just wanna explore and hear different opinions and people make your own decisions. So we're on the same page there. It's interesting for me, because so I have done, I'm really intense with what I eat. Like I pretty much eat, I eat very strict whole foods based diet and it's really just a few similar foods, no additives, meat, fruit, cucumbers, things like that. But point being is what I currently am eating and have eaten for a long time, it's very high animal protein, but it's high lean animal protein and it's tons of fruit. When I do that approach, I have very low cholesterol. So LDL will be in the 40s, total cholesterol hovers around 100. When I make a change, and the only change I make is I get rid of the fruit and I add in lots of like coconut oil or MCT oil, all my cholesterol levels like shoot up, which has been really, really interesting to see.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, oil will definitely get cholesterol, even oils that have more, if you go from an oil that, whether it's high saturated fat oil or high monounsaturated fat oil, you add a ton of oil to someone who's not having oil, their cholesterol is going to go up.
Melanie Avalon
Yeah, so and that's like a plant-based saturated fat, but for me it makes my cholesterol like go really high.
Matthew Lederman
All right. I'm saying is if you're going to test in yourself, test it with a whole food. If you add an oil, I don't care what kind of oil it is, it's going to cause problems. But if you, I would say eat like whole coconut.
Melanie Avalon
Okay, which I don't like, interestingly, like I love all foods and I don't know why.
Matthew Lederman
But I would say do the study with whole foods. So do a study with its high saturated fat that's a whole food, not even coconut milk. Do the whole coconut with the fiber and all the other stuff that comes with it. And compare that to an animal product that's high in dietary cholesterol. And then compare that to a diet that's whole food plant-based without concentrated saturated fat or concentrated cholesterol. And do that experiment for a couple of weeks. Do a before and after. Everything else controlled, if you're interested.
Melanie Avalon
controlled dietary studies are, like you said, so difficult because you can't really isolate one nutrient. No, well, okay, that was fun. So now, it's funny, we get a lot of feedback from listeners and they're always like, I'm so confused because, you know, I hear this one thing and then I hear another and I agree that it can be really confusing, but I like to see it all as benefit. Like it's more information of things that can potentially make you feel better. So do your labs and see how you feel. It sounds like, though, we do have a few overlying, you know, things we believe, which is whole foods based, removing these processed foods, you know, focusing on minimizing the environmental toxins as much as we can.
Matthew Lederman
as low on the food chain as you can, eat as much whole food as you can, which includes not having added oils and added sugars. So whole food is close to its original form as possible. And then, I mean, I don't know where you stand, but I think if you're going to eat animal products, make them count. But again, I don't know where you are on that as far as like, how much do you really need. And then, most importantly, check in with your body. Eat these whole plant foods, add whole animal foods if that's important to you, and then check in with your body. And then, if you're going to do an experiment, really isolate the variable. So if you want to see how you feel with animal products versus, or more versus less, or oil versus no oil, make sure everything else is the same for that two-week period so you can really isolate the variable.
Melanie Avalon
So actually, going to the make it count part, we kind of do overlap indirectly. It's kind of a weavy path to get there, but you were talking about the for the anti-aging benefits, you know, not having this abundance of protein. And it's ironic because on this show, we talked about the importance of protein, or a lot of people eat like a moderate to high protein diet. But by pairing it with fasting, it's actually getting to the same end result where you're not constantly stimulating your body with with mTOR. And I think you can still get the anti-aging benefits. So you're making the protein count by having it in this concentrated eating window. And interestingly, I hadn't thought about this yet, the implications of this, but so I do Matt, I eat a very high protein diet, it's, it's very high protein, but it's in an intermittent fasted pattern every day. So I fast every single day and I just do one meal a day in the evening. And I recently got back and like I said, I'm haunted by this longevity question with this. And I recently interviewed Dr. Matt Dawson, he is the founder of True Diagnostic, which provides an epigenetic age test and they have three of them ones in partnership with Yale ones with Harvard and ones with Duke, I think. They're all epigenetic, they all look at different markers for aging. And he told me in real time when I interviewed him that my results were some of the best he's ever seen with epigenetics showing that I'm aging slowly. So that was really validating to know that I can still have a high protein diet, but by having it in an intermittent fasting and you feel good and feel good, yeah.
Matthew Lederman
You said you feel good. You have you eat one meal a day, you said.
Melanie Avalon
Yes, but it's over a few hours in the evening and it's a lot of fruit, a lot of lean animal protein. Do you publicly share your age? Sorry, there's a funny story there. I wasn't and then CNBC wanted to do an article, like a profile piece on me and they asked if she asked me last minute, she was like, is it okay if we include your age? And I was like, I haven't put that out there publicly. And my background's in acting, which is where you don't say your age and all this stuff. And I was like, so I'd rather not, but if you think it'll benefit the story, I understand. And then she published it and she made it the title, like the title was my age. And so I was like, okay, I guess it's out there. So that's when I was 32. So I'm, oh gosh, I don't even know how old I am, I'm 33.
Matthew Lederman
So, so you're been doing this for a while, you feel really good. You're, you're getting the calories you need. It's not like you're walking around hungry. And I think that's what's most important. Now, we all are trying to do our best to guess what's going to be good for, you know, what do we do now that's going to help us 20 years from now, essentially, or 30 years from now. And it's really tough to know for sure. I mean, you can look at other culture, other populations, and what they ate. That doesn't mean that's what's best. We're just making our best guesses here. And a lot of these studies, they look back and they'll follow people for, for populations for a while, but they don't do this, like, randomized, well, we have this population following this and this, because it's just so hard to do it's so hard to control. So I think the most important thing is that you feel good about what you're doing, you feel good about, you know, you're not stressing out about it. And you're minimizing the stuff that we all clearly agree is crap, all of the processed Twinkies and the cookies and the added sugars. And I don't know what you feel about oil, but I think of added oil, the same as added sugar, that it's an isolated, extracted macronutrient, devoid of all of the things that are naturally in the food. So I don't know if a significant portion of your diet is coming from anything like that, and you don't have to answer, but that's what I'm telling people. I think the most important thing is how you feel. And it sounds like you feel great.
Melanie Avalon
I do. And it was really nice to see that like epigenetically in real time picture of how I'm aging. I'm on the same page as you with oil. So I think I really don't see the reason to add these refined processed oils to things. The only exception is I can see, I mean, there's a lot of really interesting data on olive oil. So I could see if you're having like a little bit of that, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't douse the food in it. I think I don't add oil to my food.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, I mean, to me, it's again, it's like if you don't need to, then don't. And if you're going to use it, there's like the good better best to me, the good is minimum, you know, you a little bit, the better would be like, maybe you're almost like putting it in a spray bottle and just in. And to me, the best is eat, you know, eat an olive or something, that's the whole food version of it, you know, eat the avocado instead of the avocado oil. So it's not a low fat or fat free diet, it's just a low extracted fat diet.
Melanie Avalon
Yeah, oftentimes people will be doing like keto or low carb and say they're not losing weight. And one of the suggestions I'll make is you don't need to add all this fat, like you don't need to be adding all this fat. You can just eat food, like in its real form.
Matthew Lederman
Exactly. See, so we're on the same page there, I think. And there's just, if you're feeling great, that's the bottom line here. Now, what are the challenges, though, when I was in my early 20s? I mean, you could eat anything and feel fine when you're really young. But as you start to get older, your body can't handle that anymore. So, and actually, kids will say they feel better when they clean up their diet. And, and that's, like I said, you do not need to be vegan, but feel great and be healthy. But I think getting rid of the processed foods, everybody would agree with.
Melanie Avalon
I think so. So segue, we keep talking about how there's so much more to it than just diet in your book, like I said, in your books. But most recently, the one I read, which was Wellness to Wonderful, you go on all these other pillars of, like I said, emotional health and mental and social and all of these things. And you have this We Be Calm product, which is incredible. So what role does that play in all of this health picture?
Matthew Lederman
Actually, before we go on, I just want to make sure I realize I didn't answer your question on intermittent fasting. And I just want to say that, again, it's what helps you feel really good. I think it's very important. Fasting in general, I think, is really good for the body. And I think giving your body downtime to do its repair and restoration is really important where it's not trying to metabolize calories. And I personally, for whatever reason, just naturally gravitated a long time ago where I wouldn't eat. I never felt good eating breakfast. So I would eat my first meal, 11.30. I eat my dinner around 5.30. And that's all I eat. So I think I'm naturally doing some long periods of fasting every day. And then getting low. I think we overall eat too many calories. So that's what I like about low calorie density diets. Whole food plant-based diets are naturally low calorie. And oil is the most calorically dense. So someone who's trying to decrease their caloric intake and fast or intermittently or it's adding oil would be the last thing I'd want to do. It's like 4,000 calories per pound. So that's just another plug for trying to get rid of processed or refined oils. But yes, I think giving yourself time is a really good thing. But there's some people that if they feel better, if they eat three meals a day or they sort of snack throughout the day. And I think that's, again, a personal experiment. If you really have terrible cravings, or you're struggling, or your energy is different, and you feel better eating three meals or snacking during the day, I think the bottom line is trust your body, especially if you're doing that with healthy whole foods. But if you're snacking and eating Lucky Charms for breakfast and snacking all day. And well, then I think we have other things to talk about. So bottom line, yes, I think intermittent fasting is great. But I don't think someone who's feeling good and healthy and loving life needs to force themselves to intermittent fast if they're doing really well, unless they want to play around with it and see how they feel. So that makes sense. I don't think the data is so clear that we have to tell people, if you're not doing it, you are in serious trouble. But it might be something that's worth exploring.
Melanie Avalon
I agree completely makes sense and it might come as a surprise to people since I have a show called the Intermittent Fasting Podcast, but I feel the same way that I think it's a tool that works really, really well for a lot of people and it can be a major game changer and some people in the end, it's just not the thing for them. I definitely don't think everybody needs to be doing it, but I do think it can benefit a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely.
Matthew Lederman
And I say try it too, like you have nothing to lose. What's the worst thing? You skip breakfast and see what happens. Like I love that trying and that's how I do everything. I just experiment on myself. I see how I feel. What do I like? What do I not like? And I wish more people, in fact, that could segue into this other stuff. To me, that's one of the biggest things that I have to help people with is connecting to their own bodies and using their internal value system and their internal felt experience to direct what works and what doesn't work. Instead of looking outside and having these external markers of success and health and then trying to live up to those. So it's really retuning our ability to check back in with our body and let their inner wisdom guide them.
Melanie Avalon
Yes, I love this so much. And so practically, what does that look like? And a lot of what you do, and I'm so grateful, I love that you are, you know, creating this education, spreading this awareness, products, books, all the things for people, but you also have or and you also have a big focus on raising the next generation. So, you know, instilling this mindset and helping, you know, being a parent and helping kids. There's so many ways we could go with this, I guess I'll just start with a fairly basic question. When did you launch your we become product?
Matthew Lederman
we become, I love this tool, it was we created it to help people learn how to regulate their nervous system. And we did we count with this idea of probably four or five years ago, I've been thinking about it for a long time. But over the last five years, we started figuring out how to design it and make it work and then put it together and market it. And, and the reason this is so important is that regulating your nervous system has and which basically means turning on the parasympathetics and telling the sympathetic they can take a break. So parasympathetics are natural calming, that's how we can turn on rest and digest and reproduce functions. The sympathetic or your fight flight frees faint when there's a danger or threat. And we don't want to have those on unless you really need them on. And many people struggle to turn on their Paris or to yeah, turn on the parasympathetics and sort of put a brake on the sympathetic. And breathing particularly slow, along the exhalation is one of the best ways to turn on the parasympathetics. And that's when we let's create a device that you can only exhale through slowly, it's not comfortable to try and blow out fast, along with an indicator that holds a ball loft, as long as you're exhaling, so you can try and keep that ball loft for 10 seconds. So then we said, there's a little bit of white noise that comes out for auditory regulation. So you have three different pathways that stimulate parasympathetics, you have the slow exhalation with the tube, you have the feedback device where you have focused attention on the ball, and that's, it's triggered similar pathways as to all the mindfulness practices. Then you have the white noise that comes out the back, the auditory regulation feedback. And you put all those together and you're activating three different parasympathetic, three different pathways to turn on the parasympathetics. And I tell people put that by your nightstand and do five breaths, five exhalations, five repetitions before bed, you can do another set of five if you want, and do it every night. And the key is doing it every night for months. And after that, you start to build this muscle memory, these neural pathways, neural networks that are created that are basically linked from your breath to turning on calm. And then at any point during the day, you can say, Oh, I'm just going to take a weeby breath. And you do that exhalation and your body now trained by this tool that's giving you feedback of what a correct breath, correct weeby breath is. Then if you take that same breath at any time during the day, you now have this strong neural pathway that can immediately turn on calm. That's been super exciting because it works really well for kids and adults. And you can, and you just have to do it before bed every night and you'll see some amazing results.
Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I love this so much because there's so much stress in our world and there's a lot of different ways that you can approach it. So, you know, bottom up versus top down and so things like meditation and doing, you know, mental exercises and therapy can be really helpful. And at the same time, you can use devices like this where you can literally, like you said, instantly turn on this parasympathetic state. So well, first of all, demographics wise, so is it mostly kids using it or are you saying for like us adults and parents and such and people in general to use it as well?
Matthew Lederman
Oh, everybody, it's marketed towards children because that was the easiest demographic to target. But my kids and I use it before bed every night. And it's really amazing. My daughter, who's 11, called me from school, hysterically crying. I couldn't even understand her. And I said to her, hey, I'm hearing something's really upsetting you, and I can't understand you. Can you take a weebie breath, and then maybe we'll be able to understand you better? And she immediately, just from even asking her to take the weebie breath, she was able to sort of, I could hear it start to come down a little. And then she stopped, she did the breath, and she was like, ah, so dead. And it was like a switch. And you can't do that if you don't have the training. It's almost like trying to tell somebody to bench some weight, bench press some weight, when they need the strength versus months and months of training, and then they need the strength, and they can do it easily. The key is, even though you know how to breathe, you want to train and give your body that feedback so that you're doing it exactly the way that stimulates the parasympathetics, and that it's a practice. And when you see that tool, the weebie calm device on your nightstand, it takes 30 seconds, 40 seconds, and to do five repetitions, probably actually, if I'm being honest, probably 60 seconds. It takes a minute, but it's still worth it. And you do that every night. It's so amazing. I tell people, just do an experiment. Do it for a couple of months, and then randomly try to take weebie breaths throughout the day, and notice that felt sense in your body.
Melanie Avalon
It's so amazing that like it's a practice, but you don't have to have the cognition to make it work. Like it's going to work if you do it. It's a physical thing that you do, and then it's going to have that effect. And then I love this fact that the brain will then anticipate and the benefits will only grow from there.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, it's a real, a real strong association by doing every night, you make these all these associations and this neural network just fires and it's like going down a slide and you just slide down the slide at that point because you've created this beautiful neural network.
Melanie Avalon
It's kind of like how even with things like dopamine, we know that when you have an addiction or a habit or something that you do all the time, you actually release those feel good feelings before you even do it. Like once you get into the habit of doing it, it's the thought of it that actually, you know, releases these feel good compounds. So it sounds like the we become can become not that it's like an addiction, but it can become entrained where it immediately will signify to your body these the state to go into.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, it's a really beautiful thing to watch.
Melanie Avalon
so amazing. And I love that it's so like portable and affordable. Literally, it's like the perfect gift to give to everybody. My mom before, like I said, I gave one to her, because before she'd been using a straw, breathing through a straw. And this makes it so much easier to, like you said, it's multiple thing, it's three different things, not just the breathing. And then you like know what to do, you're not having to like come up with the paradigm that you're fitting into it actually with the thing, like it makes it like easy to follow like step.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, yeah, when you see the ball and you know you're getting the ball off, that's as hard as you have to blow. And then you exhale until you don't have to anymore, at least the 10 seconds. And it gives you this, it's this form, it's a container around the breath that otherwise it's hard to know exactly if you're doing it correctly, especially for kids, but even for adults. So by using this device, it sort of holds the breath the way you need to do it so that you know you're doing it correctly. And then you just do it every night, 60 seconds. If you want to do another set, it's two minutes. It's not a big investment to be able to have calming at your fingertips.
Melanie Avalon
That's incredible. Can you, this is random. Can you use it for things like cravings or people are experiencing like any sort of feeling that they're experiencing where they want to come back to a state of presence? Like what are other things people could use it for?
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, you can use it any time your body is dysregulated and you want some regulation. Some people with cravings, they are feeling stressed, they are feeling their nervous system is mobilized and chewing and swallowing is one way to trigger the vagus nerve that turns on the parasympathetics. So it makes sense that people like chewing, swallowing, sucking to calm themselves. That's how kids do it. They suck on and pacifiers. So it's not wrong, but it gets in the way of your health when you use food and swallowing and sucking, especially when you're stressed out, you tend to want high calorie density foods. So it's going to get in the way of your health if that's your go-to calming mechanism. So instead, try and calm other ways. And then on top of that, we ask people to connect to what's going on inside. What's going on with their feelings and needs now shifts into nonviolent communication. But what's going on with their feelings and needs that's causing them to mobilize in the first place? And is there something a request we can make of ourselves or other people that can better meet our needs so that we regulate, again, getting out of that fight or flight mode? So it all starts to come together.
Melanie Avalon
That's a whole nother topic that I love that you talk about, which was the nonviolent communication. I was so fascinated by it, reading your book and listening to your podcast, this idea of needs and wants and requests, and there's so much there. It's a whole nother world. But you talk about it a lot on your podcast, the We Be Parents podcast, so people can check that out in your books.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, the podcast is, the contest is fun because we, it's all focused on bringing connection and that sense of safety, which is really important for kids, their physiology, helping to regulate kids and connect with them. We call it collaborative non-permissive parenting that we teach. And it's all, that's what the podcast is all about, how to bring that into the household. And it's not that, I mean, I'm getting it, getting it right, you know, quote unquote, right, about 50% of the time. And then I know how to clean up the messes that I make. So it's, I mean, it's tough being parents and it's, it's just about doing the best you can and trying to bring these skills into the household, not only for your own wellbeing, but it really contributes to the kids and what the kids learn and bring into their adulthood.
Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I was fascinated by this whole approach and there's this idea where you're not forcing kids to do things that they quote, don't want to do, which is a really, at surface level, it's like, oh, well, then kids aren't going to do anything. But once you get a bigger understanding that, you know, everything is driven by wants and needs and what's being met and you can talk to your kids and come to a place with the goal in mind, usually where you can accomplish said goal that is needed by the by everybody. Once you talk through what people actually want and need, and I'm using a lot of words, but it's really, really interesting. And it was a paradigm shift for me for at least what I see of parenting and how parenting is typically done.
Matthew Lederman
Yeah, I think that's very well said and it's you have to shift your paradigm. If you believe that kids are inherently bad and you need to force them and mold them to be good, this isn't going to make sense. But if you believe, as I do, that kids naturally want to contribute to the well-being of others just like adults do, but sometimes they're not connected to that or their own needs. There's other needs of theirs that are preventing them from doing that. So when a kid says no, instead of trying to force them to do what you want anyway, try and care about what needs of theirs are preventing them from saying yes. And that's the beginning of the connection. And then you can collaborate and say, hey, how can we care about that need of yours that's making you want to say no, while also caring about my need, which is behind me asking you to do this thing that you're saying no to. Can we both care about all that together?
Melanie Avalon
I love it so much. It's really definitely a paradigm shift and it's really powerful.
Matthew Lederman
It is. It is. And for some people, they really like the authoritarian parenting style. And like I said, I'm not here to tell everybody what's right or wrong. This is just making life a lot more wonderful for us and a lot of the people we work with. So that's why we do it.
Melanie Avalon
Listeners, I cannot recommend enough getting a Webby device for you, for the people in your life, for your kids. Honestly, this is another little hack I do in my life. I like to stock up on Christmas presents throughout the year for people. So then come Christmas time, I already have all my shopping done. Literally, it is such a game changer. So just stock up on these and you can give them as Christmas presents to so many people. So Matt and the team are so kind. They have a discount for you guys, you can get 25% off. Just go to ifpodcast.com slash Webby, that's W-E-B-E. So ifpodcast.com slash Webby, W-E-B-E. And when you go there, it will bring you to the main page. There's a pop up to get on the email list and that will get you a 25% discount on the product. There's also a little button in the corner that says save 25%. So you can click that as well. So definitely check that out. That will be at ifpodcast.com slash Webby, W-E-B-E. All right. Well, thank you, Matt. I really, really enjoyed that conversation. It was exciting. It was nice because I think in our two prior episodes on the other show, we did more focus on stuff that we got into at the end. So if people were interested in that, definitely check out those other episodes. I really enjoyed talking about the diet stuff with you. That was super fun. And I really appreciate your perspective. The central tenets that you think are important, I really love that you understand that different things work for different people. And I think this conversation will be really valuable for people and exposing them to different paradigms and ideas and helping them really find what works best for them. So thank you for what you're doing.
Matthew Lederman
I appreciate it and I really hope people listening because way back when I remember listening to different shows and I would think that person doesn't agree, I don't, yeah, I would just stop listening. And I think it's really helpful to listen to everything and then just pick what works for you and make that your program versus, you know, you have to agree with somebody 100% or, you know, if they don't agree, you know, throw them away. And maybe there's, you know, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe there's some things you like and other things you don't like. So I really invite the audience and in general, I invite my audiences when I'm talking to just pick what works for you. You know, here's my opinion, you know, Melanie, you have your opinion, but you've ultimately figured out what works for you and that's why you have this opinion. But it's different than probably all the experts that you've talked to. There's some differences in what you do compared to each of those experts. And I think that's the way to be successful.
Melanie Avalon
I agree so much. I actually actively, one of the podcasts I listen to is Rich Roll, he's very vegan. And it's because I actively want to make sure I listen to perspectives that are very different from what I actually eat or overlap, like we talked about as well. Yeah, find what works for you, leave what doesn't work for you. Yeah, this has been amazing. So again, listeners, go to ifodcast.com slash weebie and click that little button in the bottom right hand corner to get 25% off. And yeah, this has been super, super awesome. So thanks, Matt, we'll have to have you on again in the future. There's just so much more we could talk about. So thank you for everything that you're doing. Oh, and oh, by the way, can you give links for people? So how can people follow you? Listen to your podcast, all the things
Matthew Lederman
Yes. So people can find us. Our website is connectiondocs.com. And the calming device and the breathing device is through webeecom.com with a K. W-E-B-E, Caleb.com. And our podcast is webeeparents.com. And then our book Wellness to Wonderful is on Amazon. And you can follow webeecom.com on Instagram and Facebook as well.
Melanie Avalon
Awesome. Awesome. So we will put all of that in the show notes. Again, thank you so much for the conversation and everything that you're doing. And yeah, we'll have to talk again in the future. This was really great.
Matthew Lederman
That's great. Thank you so much, Melanie.
Melanie Avalon
Thanks, Matt. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent Fasting podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice, and no patient doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders. See you next week. you