Introduction
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka, Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show about a private chef for DC films becoming an FDN.
Alright. Hello there Erin, and welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?
Erin Blevins: Good, how are you?
Detective Ev: I can hardly remember a time I was better. Thank you for asking.
That’s kind of my catchphrase. That might throw you off for someone I just met a few minutes ago. You know, it’s a good little affirmation of sorts cause people usually ask how you are.
So, what we like to do on this show to get started is, it’s kind of always similar, I love to know what the person dealt with health-wise because, generally speaking, we don’t get into this space by accident. Usually something pulls us into it. So, I’m going to go out on a whim and assume that you dealt maybe with some health stuff. And I’m just curious, what was that and what did that look like when it began?
[00:00:37] Erin Blevins: Which led me to FDN.
Well, before that, I’m going to have to start with, I have been in this space for about 15 years. I started as a chef, and I moved into the aesthetic space. So, I started cheffing at a pretty high level. I cheffed for DC films, so I’ve worked on Justice League, multiple DC films.
A Private Chef for DC Films: More Rewarding Work
I was able to take what I learned with my dad, who’s a restaurant owner, and develop that into cooking delicious food that has an aesthetic purpose or an athletic purpose. And then, working into my practice after every time I get off of a movie set and there’s anything published in Men’s Health or Men’s Muscle and Fitness, people get ahold of me. They want me to work with them on their nutrition.
Most of the time it’s CrossFitters; I just want to perform better; I just want to have abs or some of these things that used to be really fun for me until I had a client who called me from the Seattle Children’s Hospital. She said, I’m in the Children’s hospital; I have cancer. She’s about 15 years old.
I said, you know what? You’re up in Seattle. Let me find someone who would be a better fit for you. Like, let me find someone who works in this area. And so, I started reaching out to a couple coaches in her area. She emailed me back and said, you know, I know that you’ve worked with Wonder Woman, I know that you know you work with Superman, and I’d really like to work with you. I don’t want any more hospitals. And I was like, crap, I’m going to have to figure out a way to help her.
So, day by day I’m doing research, getting on the phone with her, and we’re changing her diet and we’re changing her blood work. I’m like, okay, this is cool. Working really close with her mom cause she’s a young girl, going through that process, I was like, you know what, this is so much more rewarding for me than just aesthetic stuff.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Tragedy Out of Nowhere
You know, the movie stuff is cool. Getting to see your work on the big screen is really cool, but this is affecting someone where like, they’re living in the hospital and they might potentially be able to get out, which she did. Her main goal was she wanted to graduate high school. She wanted to go to high school and graduate, and she is now in college. So, she’s doing great! And I’m like, wow, this is so much better of a process. Like, I want to work in this area. And so, my practice naturally started to gravitate towards that.
In the meantime, I was still doing movies and still doing projects like that, and my daughter got really sick. My 13-year-old daughter got really sick about a year and a half ago. She was with her dad. And I said, take her to the hospital. You guys are close just take her to InstaCare. It sounds like she has meningitis.
Took her to the hospital, sent her to another hospital. Within four days she passed away out of nowhere. You know, she was at school Friday, no symptoms whatsoever. We found out that she has an extremely rare, I don’t want to call it autoimmune, but it acts like an autoimmune, called HLH. I don’t know if you’ve heard of HLH.
It’s an accumulation of white blood cells in your organs. Once it’s turned on or triggered by an infection or a virus or a bacterial infection, without treatment or without them figuring out what it is, because it does act like an autoimmune, the fatality rate is high. It’s like 99.9% once that’s been spun into process.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Introduced to FDN
So, coming back to the drawing board, I’m like, wow! I’m helping all of these people, I work in this field, I work in autoimmune, I’m dealing with people with cancer, but I had no idea. I couldn’t figure this out. So, I started my own personal healing process and started learning more doing various certifications.
And the cool thing about the direction that I went in the past is, up until this point, I had so much experience, 15 years of experience at a really high level. And now I really wanted to dive into the education piece so that I could have both you know, traditional education, I should say.
Someone actually came into town for a seminar that we were putting on. And he said, you know what would be really interesting is if you were able to legally read blood work, because I read blood work all the time. You know, people come to me with blood work. He said, one of my coaches has their FDN, supposedly, it’s really cool. I don’t know too much about it. And I started digging into the FDN and looking at all of the courses.
Actually, I found the Oxalate Course first, which I thought was really cool because I recently wrote a book about carnivore diet. And I’m like, oh, this is really in line with some of the things that I’ve taught. And diving into blood work has been so interesting just to come back to something where everything resonates with me. Like, this is so helpful. I can add so much to my practice. So, that was kind of my introduction to FDN, long-winded.
[00:05:44] Detective Ev: Well, yeah. It’s a heck of an introduction.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Helping Others
[00:05:47] Erin Blevins: Yeah. And I haven’t shared too much about my daughter on podcasts, I do podcasts all the time.
I just want to let you guys know I’m so grateful for the knowledge and education that I’ve gotten this far. Because I really do think that once we can deep dive into some of these other issues that are on standard blood tests, we can figure more out. The more we know, the more we can help people out, the more we can change for the better. So, I’m super grateful.
[00:06:18] Detective Ev: I respect the heck of out of having that mindset through all of that. The mindset that you have is that I’m grateful about it. And we’ve all been through our own stuff. I’ve never been through that, that’s for sure. But it’s the only way to make sense of it.
You have to use this stuff to help others or serve others, otherwise it will never make sense. And maybe it never makes sense. Maybe that’s not even the right word. But you’re making the best out of a situation that has otherwise nothing good about it and trying to do something with it and help others. So, I commend the heck out of that. That’s incredible.
So, are you graduated FDN, are you finished with it now?
[00:06:49] Erin Blevins: I’m not done yet, not quite.
[00:06:52] Detective Ev: I wanted to comment on the job too. What a unique thing. I’ve never heard anyone that was in that position for the movies and stuff. That’s very cool. Just out of curiosity, how did you get into that originally? Just wanted to do that when you were younger or just fell in your lap?
A Private Chef for DC Films: The Right Skill in the Right Place at the Right Time
[00:07:05] Erin Blevins: Not even a little bit.
So, I also co-own a gym in Salt Lake City, a private gym. My husband and our business partner – our business partner is Mark Twight. Most people know him because he was the guy that facilitated 300. So, all of the big guys on 300, that was Mark Twight. Mark pulled my husband on as an assistant.
My husband and Mark were both working at Gym Jones. Mark was the co-founder of Gym Jones. And like I said, they’re well known for training military and 300 was their first big movie that they did. So, Mark pulled my husband Michael on to his next project, which was 300: Rise of an Empire. And then they continued to make movies.
Then Michael and Mark pulled me on for Justice League. They said, you know, we’re all friends with Henry. Henry loves your food. You know about nutrition. Let’s put it all together. And I was like, okay, let’s do this. But up until that point, I had never done a facilitation of that magnitude.
So, it was really stressful. It definitely teaches you how to do your job really, really fast. So, it was kind of like, you know, having the skill, but being in the right place at the right time. Then from there we did a good job and it just kept growing and growing.
[00:08:31] Detective Ev: Yeah. And that should not be underplayed in any sense to people listening. Because I think there’s a lot of times I’ve been focusing more after, whatever this is, 250 something episodes, we start with just health stuff. But we realize one of the necessities of our audience is getting the business side down too and learning those types of things.
A Private Chef for DC Films: It’s Better to Be Prepared
You did have the skill. That’s the point, right? So, it’s like the opportunity came because you had the skill. Now, is it possible that some people could have the same skill and never get the opportunity? I mean, sure. But if you don’t have the skill, it’s guaranteed to not come. And that’s how I always kinda look at things.
We’ve been doing a lot of content this month, especially when this comes out. This will be right after our Summer Open House. People know we’ve been talking about business a lot. It’s never as lucky as people think. There’s always preparation, meeting opportunity, and so, you’re way better off being prepared.
There’s the one motivational speaker, Les Brown, I love what he says. He said, I’d rather be prepared and not have an opportunity, then have an opportunity and not be prepared. So, you never know what’s going to come your way when you’re ready for this. I mean, I’m lucky enough to get to do this as a job for FDN, the podcast.
But there was two years of podcasting where I paid to do it. I was actually literally paying a radio show for the opportunity to be there rather than getting paid to do it. So, does that mean FDN is going to find you? Not necessarily, but you got a lot better odds if you do it that way. So that’s cool.
When you’ve been going through the course so far, what have been some of like maybe the biggest insights or revelations to you? I know you’re very passionate about this health thing, so obviously there’s plenty to learn. What’s been some huge insights that you’ve had so far?
A Private Chef for DC Films: Tweaking for Metabolic Function
[00:09:54] Erin Blevins: Some of the big insights have been metabolic function, well, especially because I work with athletes, right. A lot of times it’s like, okay, you just have to eat carbohydrates. Eat carbohydrates, it’ll fix everything. Obviously, you and I know there’s so much more to that.
I think FDN, for me, has been kind of like peeling back an onion. There are so many layers that could be a contributing factor to how somebody feels or how somebody’s machine functions. And, getting into some of the panels that we have access to order has been really cool. Especially the adrenal function stuff, that’s been really interesting to me.
Working on a movie set, some of these people are smashed and they’re just pounding caffeine. It’s interesting because I look at these big projects like a sporting event, right? You prepare for this thing. It’s this long, hard, almost like physical effort and then you’re done. And some of these people don’t ever have like an offboarding of like rest and recovery.
I think years and years and years of that, you look at these people that are so creative and they’re doing all of these amazing things and they’re so overweight. They have such health problems. It’s like there’s gotta be another answer to this.
I think some of the biggest things that I’ve seen so far is how these things actually play out on a metabolic level or a CNS level. Little things we can tweak to make a bigger outcome within three weeks or within four weeks instead of just continuing on that path of never-ending caffeine. There’s going to be an expiration date to that somewhere.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Benefits of Changing Things
I can’t wait to start using my FDN and having that in play on some of these bigger projects. It’s going to be really amazing.
[00:11:46] Detective Ev: Cool. I don’t know anything about those people, I guess directly. But just my perception would be, if you’re a high-level actor or actress, going back to your sport comparison, it would be the same where you’d think that these people want to optimize and be on their game.
They want to look good as long as they can too. So, sometimes FDN is best sold with vanity if nothing else. You know, it’s not going to make anyone a 10 out of 10. It didn’t do that for me, but it made me look a little better. Right? I had some skin issues go away and stuff like that, so.
Erin Blevins: Oh, absolutely.
Detective Ev: I think maybe that’s a motivating factor for some people too, if they know that they can perform at a high level for a long period of time, look healthy and stay healthy. I think that actually might be a motivating thing for them.
[00:12:22] Erin Blevins: Absolutely. And right now, nootropics are huge. You know, take this pill, you’re going to think better, feel better, and have a bigger capacity mentally to do your job.
But side effects of actually changing things could be, better skin, thicker hair, thicker eyelashes. That might be so minute to some people. You know, I just cover it up with makeup, but people don’t have access to that all the time. And I think it feels good to feel good, right.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Getting More Education
[00:12:48] Detective Ev: Then just so I’m clear right now, you’ve kind of blended a couple things in. You said that you work with these athletes, so what does the work currently look like before you graduate from FDN and add that on maybe?
[00:12:59] Erin Blevins: What is my work? Okay, so I just finished Rebel Moon, Zack Snyder’s New World which will be coming out on Netflix. It’s really cool sci-fi. We filmed season one and two and I believe that’ll come out at the end of the year. So, you’ll start seeing trailers for that.
Rebel Moon has been my current project. Actually, during the end of Rebel Moon is when I found FDN. We got to a point where I’m looking at blood work and production’s kind of seeing these emails come back and forth. At one point someone said, are we listening to Erin or are we listening to the doctors?
And I’m like, don’t put these guys on medication. Like, oh my gosh, we can fix this so easily without. At one point, one of the producers said, hey, we’ve been working with Erin for 10 years. Let’s go with what Erin says. And I’m like, shoot, I gotta cover myself legally. You know, it’s not just from a legal standpoint, but hey, I want to back up what I know with some more education. So, that’s a project that I’ve just wrapped up since I started FDN.
Hopefully, if the timeline ends up being right with another project, I have two other movies coming out. One of them is Rebel Moon, the other one I’m not able to talk about quite yet. But it’ll be a really cool military project, which is a cool military movie.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Acknowledging Trauma
I’m wrapping up my book, so I have my second cookbook coming through right now. We’re teaching a big seminar tomorrow and that’s about it.
[00:14:38] Detective Ev: I have another question. It’s odd doing these podcasts, but you get very serious in terms of the topics. Like, this is a health thing, right? And you do get serious stuff on here. We’ve only known each other for a few minutes, so I kind of go with my gut on where to go or not go with certain things. But I get a feeling it’s okay.
I wanted to ask this before, and I’m going to ask it now. The situation with your daughter, well, let me preface this. There are so many people that listen to this show that their health issues came after something pretty severe. It was traumas in their life, it wasn’t a joke. And I think some people might listen and hopefully, be inspired to hear that you’re taking this and making the absolute best that you could of it.
You’re still working, you still have things going on. And I know that it’s a year and a half later, but for some people, I mean, this is debilitating long term.
Erin Blevins: It’s not that long.
Detective Ev: Right. And I want to know, what is your advice or what can we say to the people out there? Because this is a lot of our listeners that are just stuck, I mean, debilitative and paralyzed from the traumas that they’ve dealt with in their life. And I hope that that’s okay to ask because actually I mean that as a compliment. It seems like you are being productive with this and doing things. So, I’m curious about that.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Working Through Trauma Safely
[00:15:44] Erin Blevins: So, I’m an athlete. I’ve been competing for probably close to 20 years in multiple sports at a pretty high level. My normal with anything stressful, anything traumatic, is I’m going to train through this. I’m going to work out, I’m going to clear my head, I’m going to do moving meditation. And after the death of my daughter, I was kind of like stuck in this weird, like numb. I had energy, but I was kind of like, if I do something, I feel like I’m going to get hurt. This is really weird.
There’s a lot of literature written about trauma and physical manifestation of injuries, right? So, I started working out one month after London passed away. My daughter’s name was London. I had signed up for a competition and I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to go do the competition. I already signed up for it. I’m not going to be competitive, I’m just going to have fun.
And my body’s like breaking down. Emotionally, I don’t know if I wanted to do it. But I’m like, maybe it’ll be good for me. Maybe it’ll be fun. Like shoulder pain and weird stuff was starting to happen. I realized I need to slow down. You know? Now we know, like CNS system is taxed, right? Something like this happens and you’re already just maintaining just to be alive.
So, I changed some of my hard efforts and hard exercise to, hey, I’m going to go for a walk. I’m going to go for a jog, but it’s going to be zone 2 pace.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Part of the Healing Process
We know zone 2 helps recover the CNS system. Walking’s really great for the CNS system. It works similarly to EMDR therapy, you know, rapid eye movement and left brain, right brain. I switched over to doing some things like that and my body started to feel better. Obviously, I’m not lifting weights and doing some things like that. And I kept working and I kept writing. I kept trying to be creative.
Because my work, I also have a full clientele of nutrition clients. And I didn’t want to say, hey, all of you clients that I’ve had for a while that are dealing with all of these various things, I can’t help you guys anymore because, I need some time. And maybe I should have taken more time off.
I did take a little bit of time and obviously my clients were very flexible with me. But I found that if I doubled down on what I could teach my clients and help them become better, it was actually part of my healing process.
And writing this book about carnivore diet, do I think carnivore diet’s the only answer? No. I have clients that do all different things. But if I can give a little bit of information to someone and help them with their autoimmune or arthritis, that was a little bit of healing for me. So, I think it’s just a change of mindset, you know.
Obviously, the death of a child, I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. It’s a really, really hard path, a hard journey. But I think my process is to turn around and teach other people how to go through hard processes. And that’s kind of what I want to do.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Different Mentalities in Trauma
[00:19:06] Detective Ev: Gotcha. Well, I thank you for answering that. Cause I think that’s actually, conceptually it’s simple, but in practice it’s not. And I never want to project, because again, we’ve all had our stuff. I’d certainly take my stuff over that personally.
But I have found those times where I’m just stagnant and I’m not doing anything. Like there’s a time and a place for that. You gotta digest things; you don’t want to hide from it either. But I don’t find that that’s particularly helpful long term. And I feel so bad for some people that I talk to cause it’s like years after stuff and their entire life, it’s still completely different because of it. And I know mentally it’s always going to be different; I get that. But I sometimes wonder.
Because when I hear you, you can kind of pick up on someone’s energy. I don’t know if that’s just me or other people can do that. But when I heard you say it originally, the way that you said it, like instantly I can see, okay, that’s not someone repressing something. That’s someone who has actually made tremendous strides in a year and a half. And maybe I’m like talking out my butt, but I feel like when I hear those things, I can just pick it up instantly where the person’s at emotionally.
So, I was like, whoa, this is really impressive and potentially very useful for others that are going through stuff. Cause I know, I feel like I would need to be moving and shaking and doing my routine stuff at least to some degree to have that level of normalcy and to feel productive.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Erin’s Clients
Because if those things were making me happy before and bringing me fulfillment, and then I just take them all away and now I have this serious trauma to deal with, I mean, it seems like it’s just adding fuel to the fire. So again, thank you for that.
Erin Blevins: Yeah, of course.
Detective Ev: With the clients that you’re working with, nutrition wise, since you didn’t have something like the FDN certification beforehand, you focused on the blood work, and you have the interest in carnivore. I’m curious, what does the nutrition side look like with them?
Not that someone needs a certification for their stuff. There’s plenty of people that go through this program that have been doing the same thing for years with great results. Let’s be honest, it’s not that hard to beat the US government in terms of nutrition guidelines. You could just put a hundred diets on the wall, blindfold yourself, and throw a dart, whichever one you hit, you’d still be a little better off than what they’re doing.
So, I’m curious, what does new nutrition work look like? Are your clients people that are a little more open already to nutrition and doing things right and need adjustment or are they coming from total standard American and you gotta transform it?
[00:21:14] Erin Blevins: I get both. Some of my clients are well-read, well-educated and also have tried a million different things. Obviously, sometimes being more educated is harder because maybe they’re educated in all the wrong things for them specifically.
So, a couple things that I start off with is a conversation. Like how do you feel? You know, similar to the FDN, like let’s go through a questionnaire. Let’s see how you feel.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Monitoring Clients’ Progress
Although I’m not testing them with blood work or actual metabolic testing, some of my clients do bring that stuff to me, but it’s not required. And I kind of go down the checklist, ask really good questions. Obviously, after doing this for a while, there’s some things that I can pick up on and be like, hey, let’s change this.
And as we change, we also see how they feel. How do you feel, how do you look, how does your skin look? You know, is your skin clearing up? Is your energy getting better? And so, I think it’s similar, but without the like, you know, here’s a test that shows you this, which is really cool. I’m super excited for that.
It’s similar, but more just based off of, you’ve gotta be really honest with how you feel at that point. And the problem is, some people don’t know how they feel, you know? So, I kind of have to teach them. I had this client once who, he’s like, you always ask me how I feel, but I don’t really know how to tell you how I feel. He was an athlete.
And I’m like, okay, now we’re going to do some tap tests. We’re going to see how well you’re sleeping, see what your heart rate looks like during your workouts and after your workouts, when you wake up. So, there are other metrics that we look at that aren’t necessarily the same things we test for in the FDN, right? It’s probably a longer process.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Modifying Nutrition
Normally, I work with a client for about six months, and I talk with them weekly. So, every week it’s like, hey, give me an update. You know, how is this process going?
To get a little bit more in depth with it, we teach energy systems. So, if somebody comes into our gym or our private space, we get a lot of military guys, we start with energy systems. Like, you are this type of military unit and you guys need to be able to go really far.
So, now we’re looking at endurance, the endurance system. That system loves a little bit lower protein, some carbohydrates, and mostly fat, theoretically. Obviously, everyone is a little bit different. And so that’s kind of where I start. Then we kind of modify it from there just depending on how the client or the person responds. That’s one other way that I kind of go about my practice on a weekly basis.
If I get someone like a CrossFitter, usually CrossFitters have adopted the paleo diet, which is great. But they tend to be doing a lot of intensity on a high fat diet and sometimes we flip flop it. We give them some carbohydrates around training and bring their fat down and they feel great. They actually have more energy during the day.
After that process starts, then we kind of narrow down what foods work for them and what foods don’t work for them.
[00:24:22] Detective Ev: That’s interesting that you said that you adjust the CrossFitters in that way. When you said around training, do you mean then specifically just around training and not the rest of the day? Because they’re usually a little bit higher on the fat side compared to many other things.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Nutrition Variables
[00:24:34] Erin Blevins: It depends on the client. I still have some clients that are doing high intensity training and generally CrossFit is short, right? Thirteen minutes, you might be at a higher heart rate. And then after that, like your body should be able to recover from that fairly quickly.
Obviously, there’s some scenarios. I mean, I have athletes that do an all-out minute of work and that trashes them for weeks on a neurological level. So, there’s different variables to this. But my clients that don’t do well with carbohydrates, like I have plenty of CrossFit athletes that are actually diabetic. And so, recovering a little bit around training and then going back into blunting that blood sugar spike and giving them fats throughout the day is beneficial for them.
I don’t like eating a lot of carbs. I actually do really well with them. So, I shoved my carbohydrates before and after my training and then I kind of trickle them off the rest of the day. And I eat mostly proteins and fats.
[00:25:34] Detective Ev: I was wondering cause at FDN we do the metabolic typing thing and it’s interesting how that can be adjusted. But I found even just in different seasons of my life, it’s been wise to adjust it.
I just thought it was interesting that you used the intensity phrase. Because when I’m doing this crazy stuff, like boxing or whatever it might be, the idea that I’m going to eat a high fat meal before that just doesn’t work a lot of times. You could feel it in your stomach. We know this. It’s one of the reasons it creates that satiety because it does take a lot longer to digest. So, it needs to be mixed.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Nutritional Balance
Then I’ve had times in my life where I wasn’t actually doing that much. I mean, I’m always active, but it was never the intense boxing type of thing. And yeah, the high fat, like ketogenic type of thing, worked very well. So, I’m a believer that we should be able to get into a state of ketosis. I think that’s relatively healthy.
Now, whether or not we do that every day, long term, is a different question. I’m more worried if the person doesn’t eat carbs for three days and is still not in the state of ketosis, that doesn’t really show good metabolic flexibility to me.
Erin Blevins: Right.
Detective Ev: But I took it too far. Cause I was like, all right, I’m going to do keto. I’m going to stay in this until I get all the way better. And what I realized is, okay, it’s the balance. It’s the fact that when you first started this, you couldn’t get into ketosis at all. Now, I mean, if I just went one day low carb and did some intense exercise, I’m back to shooting up a 0.5, 0.6 on the ketone meter. Right?
Erin Blevins: Yeah.
Detective Ev: That’s the flexibility so, that makes sense.
I just thought that was good for people to hear that sometimes with the intensity you think it’s so simple with how complex we get with all these labs and fancy things. But it’s very easy for us, even as functional practitioners, to still get dogmatic. We forget that we’ve got three macronutrients for a reason. They’re all supposed to be used in their time and place. And if you’re going to go beat the heck out of your body, you need to do that.
A Private Chef for DC Films: When Carbs are Needed
I find even with work, I need higher carbohydrates a lot because I’m calm on camera and stuff but even if I feel calm nowadays, there’s no way it’s not doing something to me physically. Because I told you I had, like, it’s not a normal day. I had like two hours of Lives before this. We have this right now, I got a call after this, and by the time that’s done, I know I’m like going right now, but I can already predict, I’m like, whoa. I found I gotta buff up the calories and carbs those days and I feel like light years better. It’s kind of interesting.
[00:27:43] Erin Blevins: Yeah. Well, the brain, we know the brain likes glucose, I think just to kick jumpstart it, I should say.
Just out of curiosity, how would you feel doing like two back-to-back or three back-to-back podcasts on keto diet? Would you feel good, or would you start to crash a little bit?
[00:28:00] Detective Ev: It’s a good question. I’m trying to think when was the last would’ve done a podcast on that?
[00:28:04] Erin Blevins: I need carbs too, to be honest.
[00:28:06] Detective Ev: Yeah. If I’m in it and I get the hydration right, like my best days ever are with that. But if I want it consistent throughout the day, like it does kind of do nice to kind of mix everything in a little bit.
But man, I usually do a lot of public speaking, like it’s a separate job, but in schools and stuff. And I hate doing it late in the afternoon, cause then I would’ve had to eat throughout the day.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Adapting Fuel Sources
I love going in in the morning fasted, but super well hydrated. Right? I got the potassium, sodium, magnesium, I got all the minerals in. My brain just flies. The words are perfect. I don’t use um, like, and so. And so, I do that in ketosis.
But yeah, if it’s like six presentations back-to-back-to-back, which I have done, then I need the fuel. Otherwise, this is not going to work the rest of the day. The first one’s going to be great. The other five are going to suck.
[00:28:51] Erin Blevins: Right, right. I get that. The keto diet, I think is a great tool.
Oftentimes I hear people that say, you know, seven years ago, my leanest I’ve ever been, this is what I was doing. And I think people need to realize like maybe seven years ago you didn’t have a job, you didn’t have the extra stress, you didn’t have kids. You’re able to do whatever you want whenever you want.
And I don’t think it necessarily has to do with slow down, metabolism, or age, it could be you’re training your body to do something totally different. Maybe you were walking to commute and now you have a car. You know, all of those different factors play in. And I think as we go through life and change and we train our system to use different fuel sources, we obviously have to adapt.
I like to think of myself as a very active person. Like I said, I’ve competed in multiple sports. But a lot of times during the day I’m sitting at my desk, so I’m not carb loading all day. You know, I just don’t need it.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Zone 2 Training & The CNS
Where three or four years ago when I was competing internationally and CrossFit, I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to. I was training two, sometimes three times a day. So, the scenario might have been different.
Could leanness be achieved doing something totally different than you did seven years ago? Absolutely. It needs to match what you’re doing at the time. Yeah, I like that you mentioned that.
[00:30:12] Detective Ev: I’m also glad that you said the walking versus driving, your commute, because it triggered something from before.
I didn’t want to stop you, but I wanted to ask about that cause I fully admit, I did not know. Obviously, I know walking is good for us, that seems like common sense. But I did not know the benefits to the CNS. And I also want to focus on that zone 2 thing. This is a concept I’ve heard before. I couldn’t tell someone what it is by definition. So, can we touch on what zone 2 training is and how this helps the CNS? Cause I find that fascinating.
That’s probably very validating for the practitioners out there that, sometimes we feel like bad almost recommending it. And you’re learning this in FDN if you didn’t already know it, and you might have been with your experience. But like some clients come back and they’re so darn sick and their hormones are so off that the recommendation really is like, yo, you gotta chill on the exercise and just do the walking. Which always made sense to me for a different reason.
But now that I know that it can help regulate the CNS, I’m fascinated by this and how this works.
A Private Chef for DC Films: The Reliable Zone 2 Base
[00:31:04] Erin Blevins: So, the zones are relative to like, zone 1, zone 2 zone 3. I want to say it goes up to zone 5, would be, you know, your all-out pace, like your lactic system is going to shut you down in seconds. A 20-, 30-meter sprint would be maybe that system. And they correlate with your heart rates.
Everyone’s heart rate is a little bit different. I actually have a high heart rate. I can flush oxygen at a fairly high heart rate, so it looks like I’m in a zone 3 or 4, but I’m really in a zone 2 to 3. So, everyone is a little bit different, but these are like general little zones.
Let’s say you were training someone to run a half marathon. You want to start them at a zone 2, you want to build this base. It’s time on your feet, it’s this slightly elevated heart rate, but it’s not taxing you. It’s not stressing you out, it’s not sending any signal to your system to shut you down and stop. Right? And eventually that zone 2 gets pushed to a zone 1 because you naturally start to get fitter, right?
So, if I had an athlete that came to me and they were like, hey, I train 10 times a week. What else can I add? Because, you know, I can do these five-minute efforts, I can do these 10-minute efforts. The first thing I’ll say is zone 2. Add zone 2, and eventually, again, that’s going to push all of their intense portions of their training up. And it’s going to make their middle ground seem like it’s not quite so hard. So, it’s always the pace that you can rely on.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Zone 2 for Recovery
Going back to the walking, walking is always something that you can rely on. Hopefully, you know, for the most part, people should be able to go on a walk. They should be healthy enough to go on a walk.
Maybe you’ve seen this in your own life, maybe a walk feels so good that you pick up the pace a little bit. You know, maybe your normal walk that you take after dinner is naturally getting a little bit faster and faster. And maybe it feels really good to jog that sometimes. That’s the natural progression of fitness without any kind of stress signal being sent. Your system is just saying, hey, I feel fit enough and I’m able to do this.
So, we always bring people back to zone 2 for recovery if they’re overtrained and they can’t sleep, they have no appetite, but they’re actually overtrained. We bring them back to zone 2 for maybe a full week. And that’s always something that we can rely on to get someone back to the state where they’re recovered enough to train again.
[00:33:34] Detective Ev: It sounds like, again, one of those things it’s like kind of straightforward and simple enough. But 250 episodes, I don’t think anyone’s ever brought that up. And I guess the walking thing, it clearly must do more than meets the eye. Because if it’s not summer and I’m not in like hiking shape, cause I do exercise throughout the year, but hiking’s different, right? I’m not going to go just recreationally, walk 12 miles. That’s not my favorite thing.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Benefits of Decreasing Exercise Intensity
But if you do have a day where you gotta walk like 6, 7, 8 miles, it’s kind of hilarious how many other activities I can do totally fine, but you walk the seven or eight miles and you’re like, I’m pretty glad I’m home. Like I’m a little tired from that.
So, clearly, it’s doing something and that makes sense that it can be a very simple part of a progression to get the fitness back or if you’re overtrained at the time, to kind of just do something, be productive, but also allow some time to heal and recover too. So, that’s cool.
Again, it’s validating for our coaches that feel so hesitant recommending, like just do some walking right now. I tried that. I remember when I first got my results back, I was only 21 and I was in the exhaustive phase of HPA Axis Dysfunction.
Erin Blevins: Holy cow.
Detective Ev: Brandon Molle had talked to me and he’s like, listen man, I need you to back off some of the exercise stuff for a little bit. And I didn’t listen to him. I broke my foot like two days later. So, that worked pretty well to get me to stop doing things.
You’d think I felt worse cause I’m sedentary now. I got the foot broken, whatever. Six days later I woke up and it was just like the first day in probably years that I woke up and I feel really good. Like I got good mental energy, I was ready to study the course that day. I didn’t feel like I needed to down the chocolate or the other things and stimulants to keep going. It was really interesting. And that was only six days of really giving my body some rest.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Contemplating Changes
Again, nothing rocket science here, but people forget that the physical stuff is a stressor on the body. There’s a reason you can’t go exercise 12 hours straight. That’s not going to work for most people. I mean, I guess the ultra-marathoners can pull it off. Most of us, unless we’re very, very well trained, that’s not going to work. Unless it’s David Goggins, you don’t see him running an ultra-marathon every single weekend. Right? For most of it’s not going to work. But cool.
How will the coaching change for you now that FDN is going to be a part of it? Like, are you just going to automatically upgrade and every client’s going to get all the labs? Or will you still do a mix of both? Like what’s your vision for that?
[00:35:41] Erin Blevins: I hope so. I mean, at first, I was thinking that maybe I would just take my harder clients and do these tests. But the more and more I go through the FDN, the more and more I just want to change my practice and say, look, from the get-go, everyone is getting this. And maybe for selfish reasons, because I want to know what’s going on.
But I think there’s a lot of people that do the intuitive like, hey, let’s try this and let’s throw this out there. Obviously, I do feel like I have a little bit of an upper edge because I have so much experience. But I think it’s really going to set everything apart.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Validating-Data
I think in FDN, they say, we don’t guess we test. And I love that. I love that so much because I don’t want to guess; I want to see it and I want to know exactly where to go from there. And I want my clients to see it.
You know, I have clients that go through a whole six-month process. They lose 30 pounds, they’re sleeping better, they’re off caffeine and they’re like, well, I just don’t know how I changed. You know, I didn’t hit my 50-pound mark. And I’m like, oh my gosh. So, I think it’ll be useful for clients like that as well.
[00:36:52] Detective Ev: It provides a lot of validation too when they feel like crap and then they can see objectively why they feel like crap.
I remember I was talking to my acupuncturist one time, and he wasn’t challenging it, he just loves going back and forth and so do I. And he said, Ev, do you think those lab tests are ever hurting some people by like putting something into their head that’s not there? And I said, no, the opposite.
People that I’m working with, it’s validating for them to finally get shown why they feel the way that they feel. I promise you; they already feel like crap, they know something’s wrong with them. But it’s worse because no one’s validated it. So, I don’t think it’s hurting them to do the labs. It’s quite the opposite.
Also, I don’t think it’s selfish at all for you to want to know what’s going on. Why would you even want to know? So, you can serve them at a higher level.
Erin Blevins: Right.
Detective Ev: That’s what that does. I think that’s pretty selfless.
A Private Chef for DC Films: High Quality Investment
And what’s really cool for you, I say this all the time on calls if I’m talking to someone considering the course, you’re pretty much in the best spot that you could be because FDN works, the system’s great. The hardest part for people is if they’re not experienced with the business side, that’s a new skill that they have to learn.
Not only are you experienced in business, you’re experienced in the health business and have clients. So, the fact that now you can just have this very organic conversation with many of them and say, hey, you know, I added this on. Would you like to do this now? I mean, there’s such low hanging fruit there for people to help. Then allows you to raise the income. It’s kind of great, everyone wins in that sense.
[00:38:11] Erin Blevins: Exactly. I mean, and just being able to go into picking up a new contract for a movie, I bring so much more to the table. Because production, they want to know where their money’s going. And if their money spent is going towards something that’s really, really useful, it’s really hard for them to say, are you sure? You know, we’re paying this big chunk of money.
For me, you know, I’ve done movies. What I’ve done has worked so far, so it’s a little bit easier for me to come into another production, and they know that I’m going to do a good job. But now I’m coming in with my FDN and they’re like, oh yeah, this is a no-brainer because we get to cut out this step and this step and hire this one person who can do all of these things.
A Private Chef for DC Films: A Referral-Based Business
Sometimes these guys are in stunts for five or six hours and then they have to go give lines. Then they have to go weight train and have to wake up at 4:00 AM. You know, they’re taxed, they’re burning the candle at both ends.
It’s cool to say, hey look, this is what your metabolic tests are saying; this is what your blood work is saying. How can we help you right now over the next two weeks because there’s not really any breaks in this next two weeks? What can we give you nutritionally so that you can feel better right now? You know, what can we do to support your brain function?
I love that you said electrolytes, because electrolytes will just turn your brain on in such an instantaneous way. But I think that brings so much more to the table and not just with movies. Obviously, that’s not a position that everyone is in. But you have to realize these are just people. Outside of a movie, they’re just people that also want to feel better. These guys get off of a movie production, they go home, and they still want to know how to feel good.
A lot of times I’ll work with someone and they’re like, hey, can you work with my wife? This is what she’s dealing with. Of course. Like, let’s help her to feel better too. So, I actually have not posted or told anyone, I’m open, I’m taking clients. Because I have not had anything other than a mouth-to-mouth referral in over 10 years. So, as soon as you can get people who are feeling great, they’re going to send you their mom and they’re going to send you their grandma.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Walking Billboards
Everyone in their close system wants to do what they’re doing to feel so great. I think playing up those positive feedback loops with your client, like, hey, you’re feeling great. Let’s talk about all the positives this week. Then they’re going to go out and talk to all of their friends and all of their family.
[00:40:45] Detective Ev: Yeah, I keep telling FDNs that, because again, the business conversations have been a main thing especially lately.
One of the things I try to tell him is, the first 10 to 20 people, that’s always going to be the hardest. And not because you can’t get your family, you technically could. I mean, first 10 to 20, like full paying, ready to go clients, they’re usually the toughest. But after that, I mean, our clients become walking billboards for us, basically. Cause they can’t help but look better and feel better.
And then it creates a very organic conversation where people start to ask, hey, what are you doing? Oh, hey, I’m working with Erin. Hey, I’m working with Evan, or whatever it is. And so, I mean, yes, you’re probably going to have to do some extra marketing and stuff like that still.
But I mean a lot of FDNs that have been doing this long term, it’s the same situation as you. It’s been 10 years and no, they can run completely off referral base. That’s amazing.
As we kind of wrap up our time here, I wanted to go back to the book that you’re working on in addition to where people can find you in general.
[00:41:37] Erin Blevins: Can I give you one tip really quick, just because my background is actually in media and marketing.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Sharing What You’re Learning
Detective Ev: Sure. Please.
Erin Blevins: One of the best things that you could do is change yourself and use yourself as your own billboard. Post what you’re learning on Instagram, post what you’re learning on Facebook. Talk about how good you feel, talk about, hey, this week I didn’t only lose weight, but my skin looks good. I feel good, I woke up before my alarm. Like, post that stuff, talk about it. Because that’s going to resonate with someone, and people will start reaching out to you.
[00:42:07] Detective Ev: That’s a great tip. It’s like some of the other people who have come on here and said something similar. You just gotta do it, get over your fear. It’s like they’re all afraid to share their stuff on social.
I’ve said, one of the best plans, not that I came up with, that I’ve heard from people like you that’s worked for them, they actually start posting their journey of FDN while they’re going through the course. Never selling anything, no offer. Didn’t say, click here to book a call. Just like, hey, here’s what I learned this week. Here’s what I thought was cool.
So, now by the time you’re done with the course, you got like 26, 30 weeks plus of content. And then you finally can leave an offer if someone hasn’t already reached out to you to work with you. You don’t gotta be super salesy, it’s just sharing this information with people. I think that’s amazing.
We might go a little over the two minutes right now. It’s totally fine. I wanted to briefly touch on that carnivore diet book, because you had actually talked about you noticed that you do better on carbs sometimes and you kind of feel good with that.
A Private Chef for DC Films: Expanding the Carnivore Diet
Carnivore naturally gets people into ketosis normally and it’s more restrictive. So, are you writing that book to be used as a therapeutic diet or how do you view carnivore?
[00:43:08] Erin Blevins: Yes, more as a therapeutic. I don’t recommend this to everyone, but for some people it resonates and it’s useful. I think it’s a reset.
The more I learn about hormonal balancing and thyroid function, I think it’s important to have a little bit of carbohydrate in there, especially if you’re training, doing anything active. I like just a little bit in there.
So, carnivore to heal gut disorders, to reset some of that stuff. If nothing else, just so as people are adding things back in slowly, they know, okay, that didn’t work. Okay, that actually does good in my system. Then we can test people with the FDN. But I love that process.
I’ve adopted and expanded the hardcore carnivore of just meat, salt, eggs, more of the high protein, high fat. And I’ve gone towards a little bit of fruit, super low oxalate, bitter fruits and squash, a little bit of honey, mostly because I still want to train. I still want to keep all my muscle. I’m super long and lengthy.
The first six months of carnivore diet, I did a good job of keeping my protein up, but I had a little bit of muscle wasting. So, looping back around it was important for me to put some of that stuff in. I touch on that a bit in my first book, and I’ll touch on it a more in my second book. My next book is a bit more variety.
Where to Find Erin Blevins
[00:44:42] Detective Ev: Cool. All right. Well Erin, where can people find you and the books? What are the titles and stuff?
[00:44:47] Erin Blevins: Yeah, so the Essential Carnivore Diet Cookbook is my first book. I am on social media, so I’m on Instagram. I answer lots of questions there actually. I’m @shutup_eat. And then my website is shutupwork.com.
[00:45:06] Detective Ev: Sweet. I will have that in the show notes for everyone.
And today we have the signature question for you. We do this every day but it’s your first time on the podcast, so I always like to end with this.
Signature Podcast Question
The signature question is this, if we could give you a magic wand and you could wave it and get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, so what you can do is you can get everyone to do one thing or you can make them all stop doing one thing, it’s one or the other, what is the one thing that Erin would get them to do?
[00:45:35] Erin Blevins: Stop eating seed oils. That just comes to my head first. Obviously, there’s a lot of other stuff, but stop eating seed oils.
[00:45:46] Detective Ev: They’re terrible for you. Yeah. You guys should look into that if you somehow don’t know about those yet.
Well, I think a lot of practitioners know about it, but they don’t know how bad it actually is. Because I did not know until I heard this gentleman, Ben Azadi, talk at a conference. He had actually said like, the half-life of them or something is over a year or something ridiculous. They stay in your body seemingly forever.
I knew it was bad, but when you know it’s that bad, it’s one of those things that, yeah, maybe I don’t cheat even once a year with stuff like that, considering how gross it is.
[00:46:13] Erin Blevins: Yeah. The cool thing is I think that we’re starting to realize how bad they are and there’s so many more products that take it out. It’s in everything. The best you possibly can, pull it out.
Conclusion
[00:46:24] Detective Ev: Yes. Thank you so much for coming on today. And I would love if we could get you back on once you’re done with the course.
Erin Blevins: Absolutely.
Detective Ev: That would just be awesome to kind of see the journey and then all the additional things that you like.
[00:46:32] Erin Blevins: Cool. I would love to. Thank you so much.
Detective Ev: Thanks.
You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com. Our Instagram handle is @fdntraining.
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