Staying healthy during the holiday season can be a challenge, especially with the temptation to overeat and indulge in unhealthy foods. One day of indulgence typically isn’t the issue, but rather the long-term habits formed during the holidays, such as frequent consumption of sugary or inflammatory foods. Healthier cooking options, like using beef tallow instead of seed oils, are discussed, along with the benefits of fats, particularly animal fats, for overall health.

Exercise plays a crucial role in maintaining good health, especially as muscle building supports metabolism and enhances overall physical appearance. Even small efforts toward regular exercise, such as daily movement or a brief workout, can significantly improve fitness levels and long-term well-being. Combining this with a balanced approach to nutrition provides a more sustainable path to better health.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:01 – Introduction & Holiday Diet

01:32 – Beef Tallow vs. Seed Oils

02:09 – Fat’s Role in Health

04:20 – Exercise & Muscle Building

06:25 – Skinny Fat vs. Healthy Fat Loss

09:07 – Dr. Chalmers on Bodybuilding

10:18 – Conclusion

Host James Parker [00:00:00] Happy Black Friday. How was your Thanksgiving? Did you blow your diet? There’s no such thing as calories during holidays and there’s no such thing as calories on vacation. But that’s in the world of your host, James Parker in the real world. A lot of these holidays and lack of discipline is going to really put people back. And I’m thinking about, you know, Miss Parker worries about such things. She’s like, I’ve lost like 10 pounds in the last six months and I don’t want to lose all that that that progress I’ve made just in, like, two days. All right, well, let’s talk to a doctor about it. Dr. Matt Chalmers back on the James Show. His website is Chalmers wellness.com. I told you that I’d have you back on soon. Your thoughts on people busting their diet with Thanksgiving. I mean, could one day really make that big of a difference?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:51] We should all be able to have the holidays and eat as much as we want to on that one day. The thing that really breaks us is when we have the Halloween candy that we kind of, you know, delve into here and there from Halloween all the way through Christmas and all the Christmas parties. And, you know, we make one day into 30 days. And that’s really what’s actually causing the biggest issue.

Host James Parker [00:01:10] I hear you. The other health issue of the day that I was laughing at is RFK Jr. Had a video of him dropping his turkey into his big oil fryer, but he was using beef tallow because he’s not a big fan of seed oils. And some people were criticizing him for that. Do you have a strong opinion on beef tallow versus seed oils when you’re trying to turkey?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:32] Absolutely. The seed oils cause a lot of inflammation and a lot of breakdown inside liver animal pathways. Beef tallow is fantastic for you. If you’re going to fry anything. Tallow is probably one of the best things You can try it. And it also tastes fantastic.

Host James Parker [00:01:47] Why thought fat was bad for you, Matt?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:50] Fantastic. Fantastic for your brain is made of fat. Your liver runs on side. Your whole body can run on fat. And it’s one of the best things for your body to run on. The lower we get our sugars, the healthier we are. So that’s where a lot of the keto and carnivore diets actually are as your body is running on fat. It’s a much more efficient, much cleaner system for the body.

Host James Parker [00:02:09] Well, what you just explained to me right now, my takeaway from that is that the superfood I am really looking for is bacon.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:19] And bacon is actually quite a bit better for you than people think it is. You know, it’s not probably the best thing in the world to eat, but it is actually quite, quite decent for you.

Host James Parker [00:02:27] So why did Tallow go away? Why don’t we use it as much?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:31] We got a really we got a bunch of really bad science and information that we try to push everything towards vegetables because they decided that vegetables were better for you. They did. They did some bad research that showed that people who had heart attacks had cholesterol. And the actual research on heart attacks and cholesterol was done in 2009 by UCLA Med. They looked at 136,000 people who were in the hospital because they had a heart attack and over 75% of them had good cholesterol levels. So what’s actually going on is it’s not the cholesterol, it’s the damage to the cholesterol from inflammation, things like seed oils from vegetable oils, which is kind of ironic that we kind of get in this position trying to be healthier.

Host James Parker [00:03:11] So if I if I go through seed oil or vegetable oil, you only had to choose one, which would you tell me to cook with?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:18] Well, both seed oils and vegetable oils are basically the same thing. They’re both high inflammatory. Either one of these. So if you’re going to cook in something tallow, ghee, butter, etc., olive oil, coconut oil, those avocado oil, those are usually better to cook.

Host James Parker [00:03:35] I do. Country. Country crock. Is that a bad thing?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:38] That’s that’s that’s not good for you. That’s I would I would skip away from any of the any of the fake butters or, you know, sort of stuff. Just real solid, straight up. I’m a big carries out there myself.

Host James Parker [00:03:48] But it’s so good. I love Country crock. My my my body is probably about 10% molecules that originated from Country Crock.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:57] You don’t that might be because those things take a long time to break down and they don’t get out very easily.

Host James Parker [00:04:01] You’re right. My jokes not so funny anymore now. Dr. Chalmers. All right. So let’s talk about the another theory I have that’s not very popular is you can really relax how good or bad you eat. If you would just exercise, that’s going to take away some of the problems that people are trying to fix with their diet.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:20] Well, so exercise is critical. And one of the big things we’re learning in research is that a lot of us are not so much as much over fat as we’re under muscle. Yeah. However, the old expression, you can never out train a bad diet is 100% of fat. So we do need to wash the chemicals we put in our body on a daily basis first, and then we need to add the exercise on top of that.

Host James Parker [00:04:40] Yeah, I have a similar, but I don’t know, maybe even opposite effect. I say it doesn’t matter how good your diet, if you don’t exercise, you can only look so good.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:50] Well that’s one of the things we do a lot of work with, you know, the guilty ones and the Olympics and stuff like that. People lose muscle fat. So the problem is that I don’t look the way I want to make. Well, that’s because you have to build the muscle up to actually look the way you want it. So again, you do the diet, you lose the fact that you got to build the muscle. If you want to make your body look the way you want it to look.

Host James Parker [00:05:07] Do you have a smarter taxonomy as a doctor? For my system, where I classify people as you’re either strong, thin, strong, fat, weak, thin or weak fat, and, you know, you can just picture these people in your head when I say them. But but what’s that really call from a doctor’s perspective?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:27] Well, so a lot of what you’re talking about is more of what’s called the simoneau type. And so doing it actor morphs, nasal morphs in no more. Yeah, yeah. And usually the anymore for the guys who are really you know they’re, they’re big, they’re heavy but they’re really strong. That’s what you’re going to see more in those in the more guys where they can’t lose the fat but they can build the muscle role. Well that be a little bit better taxonomy for it.

Host James Parker [00:05:52] Right? So so that’s like your offensive lineman of the world.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:55] Exactly. Yeah.

Host James Parker [00:05:57] But I find, you know, these people, when they lose a whole lot of weight, you know, you do need the muscle. You can you can take the cheat, you can take the cheat shot and lose the weight. But if you lose the weight by exercise, you get a much better result. And and I felt that way. I don’t know. I started I started classifying this, I think, after the Atkins diet because there were a lot of people who were weak fat, and then they went too weak then. And I’m like, You’re not even healthy or you’re just kind of dying.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:25] Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of what we call skinny fat where people are. They’ve lost the weight, but they’re just soft. And like when they move their arms, arms slap around and that’s, that’s just as bad because like we said, you know, if you lose the fat, that’s great. But if you don’t build the muscle, if that’s where your metabolism is, this where your immune system is, that’s where everything beneficial is. So we really do need to build the muscle.

Host James Parker [00:06:47] And don’t don’t walk away thinking I’m some sort of triathlete or anything. I barely exercise and I barely watch what I eat. But just the small efforts, I feel like I’m in better shape than like 70% of the country just because I do anything with exercise.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:03] Well, a lot of times that’s it. Like there’s a bunch of stuff where we start off with, I’m working with the diabetic patient right now and I’m having to walk around the building and then stand up from her chair, you know, three sets of ten couple times a day. You know, as long as we start moving, we can always move a little bit more. But getting that habit going is really, really important. Like I told people, if you’ll just go to the gym three days a week, I don’t care if you answer emails or sleep on the bench, as long as you’re there, get the habit of doing all right, then we’ll build up from there.

Host James Parker [00:07:32] Yeah. You know, I every year on my birthday, on the James show, I do a lecture and I only do it once a year because I don’t want to browbeat people. But I say if you’re not exercising, start exercising. And if that sounds like too much of a mountain to climb, then just just commit to exercise one minute a day. Can you do one minute of exercise a day? Because if you’re saying you can’t do that, it’s not believable. Now you’re just being lazy. And if you want to work up from there, fine. But I’ve had the hardest time getting the people to take that first step.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:04] You know, But that’s the thing is like if we can just get somebody to just make the initial effort to just start moving. It really does get easier because people look at me and they’re like, I don’t want to be a bodybuilder. And I’m like, You don’t have to be.

Host James Parker [00:08:14] Like, you’re not going to be you’re way too lazy and that’s way too much work. Have you known a bodybuilder like one of those big, big beefed up guys? They lift weights twice a day.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:24] Matt Yeah, well, I compete as well. And so it’s, you know, in our hour and a half workout, you know, six days a week is kind of where you if you turn up to 11, that’s kind of where you are. But you can always start off with, you know, ten, 20, 30 minutes a day at your house and just start kind of working yourselves up into the into wherever you want to go because a little bit is a lot better than nothing. And what’s funny is people come in if they’ve done a little bit and they go, Hey, you know, I said, I didn’t need a six pack. I’m like, Yeah, right. Well, what’s the plan look like? If I did want a six pack? Because as soon as you start putting some effort in, you certainly some will turn on that investment. You’re much more willing to put more into yourself to get more out.

Host James Parker [00:09:07] Yeah, and don’t worry if because I have days where I’ll go to work out and I’ll do like two minutes and I’ll be like, you know, I’m just not feeling it today and I’ll walk away. And for those people who were concerned, I don’t want to look like a bodybuilder. Don’t worry, pal, You’re not going to look like a bodybuilder. That takes so much effort. But my point is just do something You said you lift. Dr. Thomas.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:31] Yeah. So I looked about 90 minutes a day, six days a week. So I’m actually training for bodybuilding.

Host James Parker [00:09:38] Okay. What’s your Max on the bench these days?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:41] So I don’t do them first because it’s a it’s a it’s a loss making mechanism for the shoulders of soldiers. I do a lot of l do 95 pound dumbbells.

Host James Parker [00:09:49] Okay. That’s what I do, too, because I like doing the butterflies, too. They, you know, you get that good stretch that you can’t get with the bar. I also I also don’t use the bar because I work about myself and I don’t have a spotter and I don’t want to kill myself.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:02] You know, that’s a that’s a pretty solid rule. I the way I have my grip is actually called a suicide grip. And I’ve actually dropped the ball and almost killed myself. So, yeah, working with a spotter is really important.

Host James Parker [00:10:12] All right, Dr. Matt Chalmers, we got your website here. Chalmers wellness.com. Who needs to go there?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:18] Yeah, anybody who’s looking to, you know, just to better themselves. I do. I do a podcast every morning on X and Facebook under DrChalmers1 trying to get people just getting more information on how to choose your health care team. And so, you know, there’s a lot of stuff if you’re just wondering, you want more information, go check it out.

Host James Parker [00:10:34] All right. And listen, even if you do work out, don’t think that you have to start wearing affliction and Ed Hardy t shirts. You can still be a normal non-meat head. Nice guy. You don’t have to turn into one of those.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:46] No, absolutely not.

Host James Parker [00:10:48] Do you have any affliction shirts? I didn’t just opinionated this.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:51] I actually don’t.

Host James Parker [00:10:53] All right well don’t art charmerswellness.com. Thank you doctor Matt Chalmers

As always if you have any questions, please send them to [email protected]

Check out Chalmers Pillarsofwellness.com for Wellness updates! And ask me any questions you have at [email protected]. I answer all of them and look forward to hearing from you.

The Chalmers Wellness Stubstack just launched. Comment, Like, and Interact with other people on their wellness journey. Communities can make a difference.     DrChalmers.substack.com

Dr. Matt Chalmers

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only. Before taking any action based on this information you should first consult with your physician or health care provider. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions regarding a medical condition, your health, or wellness