ArchiveFM

Low Carb MD Podcast

Episode 102: Alyssa Gallagher

Duration
1h 5m
Broadcast on
20 Apr 2020
Audio Format
other

We are excited to be joined today by Alyssa Gallagher. Alyssa is a registered dietician working at on out-patient diabetes clinic. She was introduced to low-carb seven years ago by a dietitian friend of hers at a time when she was starting to become frustrated that she was unable to help her patients lose weight or come off of insulin using the standard American diet. Having begun to see results with low-carb in her own life, she began using the dietary approach to combat diabetes and obesity with amazing results. We discuss the susceptibility of metabolically unhealthy people to disease and sickness, the importance of transparency and sharing evidence and data in a doctor/patient relationship, and tips for sustainably overcoming carb addiction.

Contact Info:

Alyssa Gallagher:

  • Instagram: @alyssag_rd

Dr. Brian Lenzkes:

Dr. Tro Kalayjian:

Welcome to the Low Carb MD podcast where we seek progress, not perfection. Hello and welcome back to the Low Carb MD podcast. Today's kind of a fun day for us. For me actually, Troke couldn't make it. He's tied up in another interview. I have Alyssa Gallagher here who's a registered dietitian, a certified diabetes educator. And you know, it seems like we are at war with each other all the time unnecessarily. She was in the movie Fat Fiction. As a matter of fact, when I saw the screening and the rough cut, I was like, "Oh my gosh, she's awesome." And I feel like I know her. She's so familiar. And then I reached out and Alyssa's like, "Brian, we met at Denver. We were talking to the background." And sometimes when it's out of context, you don't think about it. Then as soon as you said that, I realized, "Oh my gosh, we were standing in the back and we were talking. I totally had a great conversation." And then, so it's so cool. Thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. And I love what you did on the movie. And maybe you can give people a little synopsis of what you're doing. And you wrote to get where you are now because I think that's critically important because a lot of us go through school and we read books and we read stuff and we're taught stuff and then we think that's the way it should go. And we come out and we have our nice pressed coat and things don't go that way. So that was kind of your experience too. And I wanted to let people know what was your experience when you first started and where are you at now and what's your mindset? Well, yeah, I work at an outpatient diabetes clinic, integrated with endocrinology. So I work with physicians and nurse practitioners and other diabetes educators, as well as dieticians. And they snagged me right out of my internship. So I have been at this clinic for almost a decade. So I've traveled the road with this amazing clinic. And I definitely didn't start out low carb. I didn't start out where I'm at at all. I started out with the guidelines listening to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, American Diabetes Association. I mean, you had to eat carbs was, you know, my, my MO in the beginning. And I have to give a shout out to one of my best friends, Emily. This was maybe six, seven years ago or so. And I'll never forget this moment. You know, you have those moments in your life that changed everything and you can't forget. I was at the farmer's market with her eating a crepe. And she told me she was trying low carb. And she was doing less than 100 grams of carbs per day. And what did I think about it? And I told her, you're, you're going to die. Like you can't do that. That's impossible. But it got me thinking because I was also at the same time in my career, realizing I wasn't helping my patients. I was not getting anyone off of insulin. Everybody came to me to want to lose weight and nobody was losing weight. And if they did, I just felt like I'd gotten lucky. So I think I was hungry for a change when the evidence for low carb was presented to me. And so how did you, once she said that, what did you, how did you educate yourself? What did you start learning? Who did you look at? I'm sure you might as well say Jason Fung is going to be part of it. I know that it's a standard thing. Everyone goes, yeah, Jason Fung. And then just like me, all of us, you know, we started learning. Of course, like Tim Nokes. I mean, all the names, Big Fat. Big Fat Surprise Nina's book was one of the first ones I started reading going, oh, okay, this stuff kind of makes sense. I'd read the Ansel Keys research, of course. And I was definitely still Team Fat was bad for quite a while, but Emily is a questioner. So she had a bunch of research studies just ready to email me that night. So I started reading it and... And by the way, is Emily have a nutrition background or she's just a regular? Emily's a registered dietitian. Yeah, I should have started with that. So she started converting me quite a number of years ago from a really evidence-based standpoint. And as registered dietitians, we're taught, you are the nutrition expert. And if somebody doesn't have a registered dietitian behind their name, they have no business talking about nutrition. And they definitely don't know what they're talking about. So I went to school and just received that dogma and was only taught, you know, plate method and all of that. In fact, I really wasn't taught much about diabetes period. So I had that mentality and then all of a sudden it's like, wow, I have access to all this evidence that's saying I might be able to help my patients in a more effective way. I was in some consults

Transcription truncated.