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CarbSmart Podcast Episode 23: Refusing Holiday Food and Staying Low-Carb can be tough at first but you can do it to avoid the Food Pushers. The holidays are straight ahead, and with them piles and piles of carby junk, and worse, people nagging you to eat the stuff. Why so many people think that saying things like "But you have to eat it! It's traditional!" and "I worked all afternoon making it just for you" constitutes an expression of holiday goodwill, I have no idea, but sadly this behavior is all too common. You need to think ahead about how to respond to this sort of thing.

Autumn. The cool, crisp air. The brilliant leaves. The cozy sweaters. And the advent of cold and flu season. What does this have to do with our low-carb diets? More than you might think at first glance. Between cough syrup and cough drops, multi symptom cold relievers. And the oft recommended tea with honey and chicken noodle soup, there are pitfalls here.

Recently, on a website I frequent, there was a discussion of Halloween plans. There I first encountered the concept of "trunk-or-treat," a Halloween event that is apparently gaining popularity across the country. People dress their kids up in costumes, pack candy in their cars, and go to a predesignated parking lot. There the children run from car to car, collecting candy.

In today's three question interview from CarbSmart. Dana Carpender interviews Fred Hahn, owner of Slow Burn Fitness and author of The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution and also Strong Kids, Healthy Kids. He's also a long time low-carber. Let's hear what Fred has to say about low-carb nutrition and fitness.

I have, over the past many years in general, taken some heat for not being a low-carb purist. Not pure enough, or restrictive enough, or something enough about the diet I eat and the ingredients I use in my recipes.

Salt is an essential nutrient - our body needs sodium. The take-home message here is that despite the demonizing of sodium, it is an essential nutrient; without it we die. Low carbohydrate diets both normalize the body's ability to excrete excess sodium and dramatically reduce our intake of processed foods, baked goods, chips, and other "snack foods," the biggest sources of sodium in the modern American diet. So pay attention. Be aware, too, that having elevated blood pressure does not necessarily mean you need a low sodium diet.

CarbSmart Podcast Episode 17. I told you eating low carb was slowing my aging process. Now we have University of California gerontologist Cynthia Kenyon, with an animal study showing exactly that. She's actually discovered what she calls the Grim Reaper gene, and another she calls the Sweet Sixteen gene. The switch that turns on the former and turns off the latter? Insulin. Which means that by cutting carbs and lowering insulin, you can reverse the process, switching off the Grim Reaper and turning on your Sweet Sixteen. Or at least she can in roundworms.

Years ago, a reader told me that they admired me because I had stuck with my low-carb diet even though it had not given me the body of my dreams. Surely you’re familiar with the Alcoholics Anonymous Serenity Prayer – “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I don’t care if you’re a praying person or not, nor to whom you pray if you are. But there is something important here. Eating right, which for so many of us means avoiding excess carbohydrates, can make you slimmer, healthier, happier, more energetic, and more confident. That has been enough for me. I urge you to let it be enough for you.

There is a long-established truism that weight loss is all about “calories in, calories out,” and along with it the apparently unshakeable assumption that all calories are created equal. It’s all bunk. Sheer bunk. But it’s bunk with so much weight of belief behind it that it’s very hard to shake people’s faith in it, even people who should know better.

I frequently see questions about cheat days – most commonly, “How often should I have a cheat day?” There seems to be an assumption that cheat days are a good idea, something that should be built into a low-carb diet to keep people from feeling deprived.