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Summary
On episode 284 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Dr. Sarah Myhill, a physician who has practiced medicine for over 35 years focusing on treating disease through diet, supplements, and avoiding toxic stress, and the author of The PK Cookbook: Go Paleo Ketogenic and Get the Best of Both Worlds.
Sarah argues that humans evolved to run on a paleo ketogenic diet, cycling between burning fat and fiber most of the year and using seasonal carbohydrates during autumn abundance. In a world of permanent access to sugar and starch, that same evolutionary advantage has turned into addiction and metabolic syndrome.
The conversation covers her green, amber, and red vegetable system, her paleo keto linseed bread recipe, why she cooks with saturated fats but drizzles oils cold, and why artificial sweeteners still work against weight loss.
Links
- https://www.drmyhill.co.uk
- Episode 474 – How to solve your energy equation with Dr. Sarah Myhill
Key Takeaways
- Humans evolved on a paleo ketogenic diet. Sarah's position is that the starting point for treating conditions ranging from irritable bowel syndrome to dementia is a paleo ketogenic diet, because it matches how the human body evolved to run.
- Modern life is a permanent autumn. Primitive humans got a carbohydrate season in autumn that let them store fat for winter. Today those carbohydrate foods never run out, so the same insulin response that once conferred survival now drives constant fat storage and cravings.
- Carbohydrates and sugar are eaten addictively, not for flavor. Sarah tells patients to separate the psychological “carbohydrate hit” from genuine taste and texture. Once people can tell the two apart, they realize a standard Western diet gets 70 percent of its calories from just wheat, potato, rice, and sugar.
- Vegetables are sorted green, amber, and red by carb content. Green foods are under 5 percent carb and hard to overeat (leafy greens, avocado, linseed bread). Amber foods need portion control. Red foods, grains, pulses, and root vegetables, are best avoided because a few bites can switch addictive eating back on.
- Cycling out of ketosis on purpose is fine. Sarah agrees with planning windows of carb eating, such as social occasions, because metabolic syndrome takes decades to cause damage. The hard part isn't the lapse, it's getting back on the wagon afterward, since carbs can reignite addiction the way one cigarette does for a smoker.
- Her linseed bread recipe solves the biggest paleo keto complaint. Made from finely ground linseed, water, and salt only, mixed until it turns from watery to sticky dough, shaped by hand with lard (never kneaded), and baked at high heat for about an hour, it produces a loaf that toasts and fries like real bread.
- Cook with saturated fats, use oils cold. Saturated fats are chemically stable and don't denature when heated. Unsaturated oils are curved “cis” fats that can flip into harmful “trans” fats when heated or hydrogenated, so they belong drizzled cold on food, not in the pan.
- Artificial sweeteners still trigger the fat-storing insulin response. The body anticipates a sugar hit as soon as it tastes sweetness and releases insulin in advance, which shunts blood sugar into fat and then drops it again, driving more cravings. That is why sweeteners haven't helped people lose weight.
- Insulin and ketosis are opposite metabolic states. High insulin drives the body to lay down fat and blocks fat burning, while low-insulin ketosis (driven by thyroid and adrenal hormones) is, in Sarah's view, the evolutionarily correct fat-burning state to live in.
“All those vicious cycles that spiral us down can be very easily turned into virtuous cycles that spiral us back up again.”
Dr. Sarah Myhill
