Summary: Today is my pleasure to interview very special guest whom many of you already know, Jimmy Moore. And if you don't know who Jimmy Moore is, you should because he is one of the leading health bloggers in the United States, and produces three wonderful podcasts: The Livin' La Vida Low Carb Show (LLVLC), Low-Carb Conversations, and Ask the Low Carb Experts which all discuss various aspects of low-carb dieting. Jimmy has been doing this for a long time – he has created well over 600 shows for the LLVLC show alone – and as a result, he really is a master at what he does. As a person, I respect him immensely on many levels, which include him being honest and forthright in his own successes and struggles with weight loss, but more importantly I respect him creating something so high-quality and informative out of blogging and podcasting. It's not an easy thing to do, as I learned trying to set up a blog and now, a podcast, myself. It takes both a lot of work and a lot of passion, which Jimmy has an overwhelming abundance of. Getting high quality guests, and performing high quality interviews, and then on top of that, writing highly informative blog posts, that are easy to read and very entertaining, is simply no easy task and I think Jimmy should be highly commended for that. But that isn't always the case. When I started reading Jimmy Moore's blog, I could never imagine that anyone could dislike this sweetheart of a guy. From my perspective as a doctor, I simply loved what he was doing! He had high quality guests from not only the blogosphere, but everywhere! And these were guests that didn't always agree with him or the low-carb approach to dieting. Some even despised him! And they questioned whether he was' legitimate' or not. To be clear, that is a completely juvenile and specious claim. Anyone who listens to his show or reads his blog is well aware that Jimmy is not a scientist or a doctor. He is a blogger, and to the dismay and the chagrin of many who hate him, he is not only a good blogger, but he is one of the best. He has some of the most interesting and well renowned scientists and doctors (and journalists) on his show, including Micheal Eades, Eric Westman, Stepen Phinney, Jeff Volek, William Davis and even Dean Ornish and Neal Barnard (both committed vegetarians). He also has many fitness professionals who have contributed an enormous amount to developing different facets of a lower carb lifestyle, such as Mark Sisson and Robb Wolf. And as I mentioned on the show at the very end, I would not be surprised to see Jimmy having a syndicated radio show that can be heard across the country in the future. Jimmy is passionate about his craft, and he has made it into something that is highly commendable on many levels. Those who criticize it, well, they are simply jealous. The fact is blogging lends itself very easily to self important bombastic whining, and though I love listening to rants, especially when they are funny or satirical, the rants that you see on most blogs are simply dumb, or worse yet, hateful. We talk about this briefly on the podcast, and the fact is, Jimmy is too much of a southern gentleman (and too smart!) to engage (or even mention) his enemies at all. I asked Jimmy briefly whether he thought radical vegans and vegetarians were more a threat to spreading the message of the low-carb movement or many of those involved in the paleo/ancestral health movement. Jimmy thought it was definitely the vegans. But from my perspective, I get a little bit concerned about 'activists' within the community, which, to be clear, includes both Low-carb and Paleo. Why? Because psychologically, it is such a powerful ego boost for many people to brand themselves distinctively within a community as different (or in most cases more authentic), and then once they do this, attack all the others around them for not being that way, all under the guise of being 'open-minded'.
