Let's Say Hello

[00:00:48.630] – Allan
Hey Raz! How are things going?

[00:00:50.850] – Rachel
Good. How are you today, Allan?

[00:00:52.980] – Allan
I'm doing OK. You know, it's been some busy times. The 12-week program is going on, and I'm just loving that. I just I draw so much energy from those guys. I can't tell you enough how much fun it is to just be working with people and then, the gym open. And it's been a slow growth. But, I was sitting there on Sunday and just thinking about the month (we record a couple of weeks in advance) and accounting stuff. This was not a bad month.

[00:01:34.050] – Rachel
Oh, good.

[00:01:35.370] – Allan
In February we reopened on the first. This was not a bad month. Tt's not a great month because we don't have the tourists, so the drop-ins were about one-seventh of what we would normally see for drop-in revenue. But the the membership was strong. And we've got a lot of new members and faces that we didn't have last year before we closed. So I feel pretty good about where the gym's going and how that's growing. And I was thinking it kind of a blessing for this slow growth because it happened and it was still generally a good month. And it wasn't overwhelming at the gym. I think that was kind of the cool thing.

[00:02:18.450] – Allan
But, like everything else, we've got to be careful with Covid as we start getting bigger. I had one night I was working a shift and we had seven people and they were all in the free weight section. And so it was just a little crowded back there. And I was like, okay I can't let anybody else on this side of the building. If someone wants to go and do some some of the cardio equipment or on the other side than they're more than welcome to go in there. If someone comes in and they want to lift weights, I'm going to make them sit on the bench and wait. Just to make sure we didn't get things too crowded in there.

[00:02:50.520] – Allan
We don't really have a capacity limit. But I kind of learned that we kind of do have a capacity, just everybody being two meters apart.

[00:02:58.560] – Rachel
Right.

[00:02:58.950] – Allan
We just have to be responsible about that. So, if you are going to the gym now, the gyms have reopened. Just be cognizant of the two meters. Wipe down your machines before and after you use them and just use good hygiene around this. And for the most part, you're probably going to be successful at not getting it.

[00:03:18.690] – Rachel
So for sure. Absolutely. That's great. Good to hear that.

[00:03:22.380] – Allan
How are things up north?

[00:03:24.120] – Rachel
Good. We actually had a break in the weather, which was nice. And over the weekend I had a little win myself. I actually surprised myself. I did a 10K, which is not a huge thing for me, but I was challenged in the month of February to set, in FKT, a Fastest Known Time within this community I participate with online. And so I chose my normal 10K route to do my time. My FKT and my prior time for this route has been about an hour, four minutes and hour, six minutes or so, and we've had snow. So that kind of is a difficult thing to get through. But we had this break in the weather and the sidewalks are clear.

[00:04:10.200] – Rachel
So I set out to do my 10k and I thought, okay, I don't know if I can do this, but I'm going to pretend it's a race day. And I set out and I ran smoothly and the downhills. I ran relaxed on the uphills. And when I got home and turned off my watch, I had a fifty-eight minute forty-seven second 10k. So I actually beatmy proposed time of a su-hour 10k. So it was a win.

[00:04:38.550] – Allan
Awesome!

[00:04:38.850] – Rachel
Thank you. I was really surprised. So it was a good day.

[00:04:44.010] – Allan
Awesome. That, that has to feel really, really good.

[00:04:47.100] – Rachel
It does. I've been really focused on training for my fifty miler that's coming up this summer and so that means a lot of slow miles. So I'm not used to running fast. So again, that's another reason why it was kind of a surprise for me.

[00:05:01.350] – Allan
And, you know, sometimes that's kind of the way these things work is you're not expecting it and you just have a really good run.

[00:05:08.790] – Rachel
It was.

[00:05:09.000] – Allan
But you've got to be out there running to have a really good run.

[00:05:12.000] – Rachel
That's right. You got to do it.

[00:05:14.040] – Allan
Good on you.

[00:05:14.370] – Rachel
Thank you.

[00:05:15.450] – Allan
Not letting the Michigan weather keep you indoors.

[00:05:18.330] – Rachel
That's right.

[00:05:19.540] – Allan
So you're trained and that's. And then show. So good job.

[00:05:22.910] – Rachel
Thank you.

[00:05:23.570] – Allan
All right, are you guys ready to talk to Brad?

[00:05:25.790] – Rachel
Yes, let's do this.

Interview

[00:06:21.080] – Allan
Brad, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:23.700] – Brad
Allan, I'm so happy to be here. And I have to say that was one of the best warm chats of any podcast. We are on fire right now. The listeners have no idea what's coming. So brace yourselves, everyone. If you're listening at 1.7 speed like me, turn it down to 1.0 because we're going to hit this stuff hard, man.

[00:06:43.010] – Allan
Yeah, we I guess Brad and I kind of have a lot in common with the kind of people that we like to talk to. And so with his podcast and my podcast where we're talking, it's maybe even talking to some of the same people. We just we just realize we're both going to be talking to the same guy. And it's a pretty fascinating book. So stay tuned to this podcast for a while. Go check out Brad's podcast, because we're going to be bringing on Dr. Pontzer. It's going to be an awesome conversation, but this is also going to be a tremendous conversation.

[00:07:12.380] – Allan
Brad, you and Mark wrote the book Two Meals a Day: The Simple, Sustainable Strategy to Lose Fat, Reverse Aging and Break Free From Diet Frustration Forever. And I have to say, I had followed a OMAD, I've known about OMAD for a while and I've known about time-restricted eating. And so you guys are approaching this from a perspective of being told we have to have six meals a day to lose weight is fundamentally flawed.

[00:07:42.140] – Allan
We should give our body time to not eat, to not feed. And two meals a day is one of those sustainable ways. When I look at OMAD, I don't think I could do, OMAD because I don't think I could eat enough calories in one meal. But looking at two meals a day and thinking of it as an eating window, whether it's six hours or eight hours, I quite easily could have a moderate-sized meal and then a big meal, get all the nutrition I need and do that and allow my body 16 to 18 hours to kind of do all the other cool stuff that the human body can do for itself.

[00:08:22.460] – Brad
Yeah, well said. I think we've been programmed since we were kids to be dependent on dietary carbohydrates as our primary source of energy. And anyone can reference this. If you've ever felt terrible after skipping a single meal and then you have the afternoon blues and you're tired and cranky and you finally go and binge on way too much junk food when you get your hands on something and when you go to the supermarket and go shopping. So the idea here is that we want to continue to honor this evolutionary model of how humans are meant to operate.

[00:09:00.560] – Brad
And we're meant to have stored body fat as our primary source of energy. And that's why we store so much of it and are so good at storing it. And this is going back for millions of years where the human never had regular meals until recent times, recent generations. And so by sitting down to these regular meals like clockwork, we've transitioned away from being fat burners to being carbohydrate dependent.

[00:09:27.350] – Brad
And it's really easy to reprogram the genes. It doesn't take that long. Your body's ready and willing to become better and more competent at burning body fat and being able to skip meals. And I think most listeners who are into this health awareness know all this and can nod their heads. And they've heard that fasting is great and intermittent fasting is the latest buzzword. It just passed keto on the Google search terms as the the most popular diet search term. But here's the thing, we take the trouble to go in the book and say, look, you can't just jump into this and expect all these wonderful benefits if you don't engage in fasting properly.

[00:10:06.350] – Brad
And so if you try to go and skip breakfast because you read this book two meals a day and it says, hey, I'll only eat two meals a day, it's way better than eating three, you're going to have what we might call a stress hormone bath, because if you're dependent on carbs for your energy source. And then all of a sudden you restrict them because you heard about the keto diet or you want to skip meals and lose weight in this ill-advised manner, what's going to happen is you're going to get your glucose, your sugar, no matter what, because that's what you're used to burning.

[00:10:36.740] – Brad
And so you'll do it through this stress response that we call gluconogenesis, which is converting lean muscle mass into glucose to fuel that ravenous brain that needs to burn glucose primarily throughout the day. And so the approach here is to transition in a smooth and comfortable manner. So there's no more struggling or suffering or all these deprivation, mindset, and physical symptoms that we associate with dieting, because that is the failed approach that we can all agree is it doesn't work.

[00:11:10.820] – Brad
And so now we have an agreeable, doable, and sustainable strategy that's not painful. It's just about making good choices and understanding what the body's meant to burn as a preference.

[00:11:25.520] – Allan
Yeah. As humans, we love simple. Everybody loves a simple rule. If this then that. We like the ability to wrap your mind around things that are simple. What a lot of us don't understand is that the human body is extremely complex. And that our body developed strategies to accomplish things outside of norms. So there would be a normal way, things would be. Normally I would like to be able to walk around and there's a fruit tree. I grab some fruit and I eat it. Oh, and there's a little woodland creature. And I bash it in the head. Now I've got some meat or I go catch some fish and I eat some fish and that's my day. I'm moving about a good bit of maybe probably walking around a little bit of a fast action because that critter is not going to just stand there and the fish is definitely not going to just hang out and say, here, grab me.

[00:12:23.580] – Allan
So there's a lot of work involved in getting my food. We don't have that today. So, where we had these simple ways of things were working for us. We've developed other ways. And so what I'm kind of getting at is you bring up a concept in the book that I think it's really important for people to understand is that we have metabolic flexibility. Our bodies develop this capacity to look at fuel in different ways, depending on what our circumstances are and when we're feeding ourselves carbohydrates all the time. It's basically energy in and then what a little bit of energy we can put out is great, but the rest of it's becoming excess body fat. And we're maybe not even tapping into that body fat because we never really gave our body an opportunity to even consider that because we fed more carbohydrates before that ever happened. Can you talk a little bit about metabolic flexibility and how that closed-loop system actually helps us maintain a really good, just basic health?

[00:13:30.840] – Brad
Yeah, thanks. So what I described at the outset is really metabolic inflexibility, where you are dependent upon these regular doses of carbohydrate and other food as your energy source. So metabolic flexibility implies that you can really take or leave a meal at a certain time because body fat is always there and able to be burned for energy and keeping your focus and your mood and your appetite all stabilized throughout the day.

[00:14:01.440] – Brad
And people who are a little bit familiar with the ketogenic diet, the goal there is to restrict carbs to the extent that your body starts making this alternative internal fuel source called ketones, the liver makes ketones as a byproduct of fat metabolism when carbohydrate intake is really low and liver glycogen is really low. So you're prompted to make this wonderful fuel source that burns more cleanly than glucose and your brain preferentially burns ketones. So you're in this kind of heightened state of alertness and you feel great and you have less inflammation and you get all these benefits from the ketogenic diet.

[00:14:37.020] – Brad
It takes a lot of structure to do so because once you start consuming a little bit of carbs, you stop making ketones. But just as you teed this up, we have so many different ways that we can burn energy and sustain ourselves and even function at peak levels without having these super-duper, nutrient bomber drink juices that you need to drink in the morning to get your antioxidants. The body manufactures antioxidants internally, and the internal antioxidant response is possibly more powerful than anything you can consume in a bowl or in a smoothie.

[00:15:13.800] – Brad
So just by fasting, we get all these health benefits. We have a great anti-inflammatory response. The immune system works better. Our cellular repair processes work better when we're not eating because we can devote the energy to these other things. That's why animals fast when they're sick and humans should, too. So, this metabolic flexibility concept goes to not only getting good at burning body fat, but also if it's time for your child's 12th birthday at Chuck E. Cheese and you decide to throw down some breadsticks and a hot fudge sundae afterward, that your body can process that load of unhealthy junk food and you'll live to see another day and you'll wake up the next day and let's say engage in a fasting period to get back to your baseline of fat burning so that you can handle not only dietary imperfections, but also be skipping meals. So that's the flexibility part of the equation there.

[00:16:11.520] – Allan
We're not recommending Chuck E. Cheese, but by all means,

[00:16:14.670] – Brad
This show is not sponsored by Chuck E. Cheese.

[00:16:17.040] – Allan
Not at all. I understand you go there with your kid. It's there. It smells what it smells like.

[00:16:25.740] – Allan
One of the things you get into the book that I think is really important, and this is where I'll be having a conversation with the new client and they'll be like, okay, I want to lose some weight. And this is kind of my go-to (I haven't looked at it from this direction). I always just talk about eat whole food, just whole food, and that solves 99.9% of the problems. In fact, whether I'm talking to a vegan or a carnivore or anybody in between, the one thing they all agree with is eat whole food. You know, they may disagree on whether it needs to be all plant-based or needs to be all animal-based. But in the end, that's what they're after.

[00:17:06.480] – Allan
In the book you looked at from another perspective, you called them the three big toxic modern foods. Could you talk a little bit about those?

[00:17:13.500] – Brad
Yeah, you just remind me now that there is something we all agree on, because for years before the emergence of this carnivore movement, which I'm really fascinated by and have seen some amazing healing stories from people eliminating plant toxins. But previously we all agreed that the wonderful, colorful fruits and vegetables are the basis of a healthy diet, even if you're a vegan, even if you're a paleo person. And now even that's called into dispute. So it's like, oh, yeah, we still agree that whole foods are better than processed foods.

[00:17:42.990] – Brad
I guess unless you're pitching your energy bar or your powders and potions and things like that. But yeah, good point. So whole food would be a great starting point. And then I forgot your question now.

[00:17:57.120] – Allan
Oh, it was the three toxic modern foods.

[00:17:59.820] – Brad
Yeah, the three toxic modern foods. I think it is a great place to start because a lot of the research now is revealing that the magical, wondrous benefits of the various diets are mostly what the person is eliminating rather than the amazing transformational powers of going on a vegan plant-based diet.

[00:18:21.930] – Brad
In fact, we pretty much trying to be polite and not cross into the boundaries of the faction building and all that. It's a high-risk diet because you're eliminating a whole bunch of nutrient-dense foods. Same with carnivore. People have all kinds of criticism for that, saying that it's unbalanced and you're going to drop dead of colon cancer and a heart attack.

[00:18:46.050] – Brad
All those challenges aside for a moment, if you just get rid of junk food, you're probably going to experience an incredible health transformation. And that's where a lot of these leaders of whatever it is that they're touting can kind of attribute this amazing success stories. Is that any transition away from the standard American diet, which Dr. Loren Cordain cites research that 71% of the calories that we consume today in the traditional diet are completely absent from our evolutionary experience.

[00:19:22.260] – Brad
So they're processed modern foods that are nutrient deficient and calorie-dense things like grains, things like sugars, and refined industrial seed oils. So those are the big three right there. And I probably should put it up at number one, the refined industrial seed oils, because those are sometimes overlooked. People all know that sugar is overconsumed. And we got to cut back on our sugar. The paleo ancestral movement knows that we call refined grains sort of in the same category as sugar because they're quickly converted to glucose as soon as you ingest them. They don't have many nutritional benefits whatsoever. And so we have grains, sugars, and the industrial seed oils, which are the bottled manufactured oils like canola, corn, soybeans, sunflower, safflower, etc. and then the prevalence of these oils in processed foods of all kinds, frozen, packaged. You can look on the box of anything that's pretty much of a manufactured product and you'll see these oils included in there, even salad dressings, condiments, things that seem innocent. The oils are thrown in left and right.

[00:20:31.800] – Brad
And then, unfortunately, almost all restaurant food starting from junky, fast food, of course, where you're getting your fries in your burger and what have you or getting stopping at the gas station and getting some quick fare off the shelf. But even at medium to fine restaurants, they are most likely cooking these wonderful meals. You're paying a good money for the entree in the refined industrial seed oils. A lot of people call them vegetable oils.

[00:20:58.740] – Brad
That's a challenge because when you're out there, you can't go back in the kitchen and see. But you can ask and inquire, can you please cook my omelet and butter or something besides vegetable oil? And if you don't succeed there, you might want to find a different restaurant because this stuff is the most toxic thing that's in the food supply. As soon as we consume them, we experience an immediate disturbance in healthy cellular function, especially in the cardiovascular system.

[00:21:24.030] – Brad
So the big problem here, too, is that the ingestion or the inclusion of these oils in the diet renders your fat burning capabilities dysfunctional because the the agents are integrated into healthy fat cells. And so they become difficult to burn because you have this chemically altered component into your body.

[00:21:46.050] – Brad
If you have trouble burning stored body fat, guess what's going to happen when you try to cut back on dietary carbohydrates? It's going to be difficult, if not impossible, because you're going to be dragging ass in the afternoon and you're going to need some quick energy because you're not kicking into fat burning.

[00:22:03.450] – Brad
And that's, I think, where a lot of people have suffered and failed with devoted dietary restriction. I mean, we interact with these people for the past decade where you we'll be putting on a live event or retreat. And I see people coming up to Mark Sisson with tears in their eyes saying, Mark, I got your book three years ago. I've done everything you've said to the letter and I can't succeed. And I feel terrible. And a lot of it's because of the chemical ingestion that's throwing off your your metabolism.

[00:22:30.630] – Brad
And then you don't have this wonderous gateway to the fat-burning lifestyle where you can fast you can enjoy meals, you can get up from the table, you feel alert and energized and all these wonderful things. So the seed oils would be the number one thing to really scrutinize and get rid of immediately. And then with the grains and the sugars, we know that these agents have addictive properties. The great work of Gary Taubes, Dr William Davis, best selling book, Wheat Belly, talking about the addictive properties of the gliadin and protein in modern-day wheat and gluten.

[00:23:04.950] – Brad
And so this stuff is also nasty because when you try (and I'm making air quotes here on the video), when you try to cut back on sugar, you have a very difficult time. So what we advocate is, look, take a few weeks. Twenty-one days would be a great benchmark to have a complete restriction of grains, sugars, and industrial coils from your diet.

[00:23:26.520] – Brad
And that will help you up regulate. The fat burning gene, so that you can manufacture energy internally and feel okay without slamming down meals and snacks all day long, and so this kind of devoted, cold turkey approach seems to be the way to go because these foods are so addictive.

[00:23:49.280] – Brad
Now, is that going to be difficult? Yeah, it's going to be tough for many people. But a lot of times we hear people saying, stick it out, hang in there. Yeah. The keto or the low carb flu is really tough and you feel terrible. But don't worry. Three weeks from now, you'll feel okay. And I strongly reject that ideal, because if people are struggling and suffering with a dietary transformation, something is flawed with the approach. And so instead, if you agree to ditch these big three toxic modern foods, what you can then do is transition over to beautiful, delicious, lavish meals that sustain you and nourish you.

[00:24:29.340] – Brad
In my own personal example, 13 years ago, when I switched over to a primal ancestral style eating, I traded in this giant bowl of cereal that I'd had every single day of my life. I used to be an endurance athlete. I was burning many, many calories every day. So I'd have this giant horse trough bowl of cereal with five different kinds, of course, all the healthy kinds of cereals. But I'd have nonfat yogurt on there and sliced bananas and berries and a ton of calories.

[00:24:56.210] – Brad
So I traded that for a gigantic omelet that I made every morning. And I would use five or six eggs and saute the vegetables and have sliced avocado and salsa and cheese and bacon. And it was incredibly delicious and it sustained me for many hours, but it wasn't giving me that carbohydrate bomb. But that made my transition smooth and easy and enjoyable rather than, let's say, trading in that cereal bowl for a fasting period of four hours. I honestly couldn't have couldn't have done it.

[00:25:25.010] – Brad
And that was a healthy person without metabolic damage that a lot of people are bringing to the table. So if you can replace the processed food with nutrient-dense foods, it's in most cases you're going to feel great. There's not going to be any suffering involved and you'll be looking forward to your next nutritious meal and then build that momentum to where at a certain point in a natural and graceful manner, you'll probably be able to skip. Like I was finally able to skip that omelet every single morning because six months later I felt great and I wasn't super hungry as soon as I woke up.

SPONSOR
This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Ucan.

On the podcast, we often talk about low carb and ketosis as a way of managing your metabolism and how managing your blood sugar is key for weight loss and avoiding metabolic dysfunction. But how do we fuel a hard, long workout?

I remember having a conversation with my trainer about low-carb, keto, and fasted workouts. He was skeptical. I was getting stronger. But on my heavy days, especially when I was doing more than six reps per set, I would get winded and need longer rest than programmed. Had I known what Ucan superstarch does, then I would have performed better and likely gotten even stronger.

Most pre-workouts have sugar and stimulants that give you a big boost, but that is inevitably followed by a crash. Ucan's patented superstarch is different. Superstarch has the remarkable ability to provide a steady release of energy without spiking blood sugar.

Ucan energy powders and energy bars are delicious and provide all the energy I need to make it through an intense training session. I wouldn't touch a pre-workout, but Ucan superstarch checks off all the boxes to give me the energy I need without the downsides. I'm also a fan of their electrolyte powder, Ucan Hydrate.

Go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/ucan and use the code 40PLUS to save 20% on your entire order. Make Ucan superstarch your competitive advantage at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/ucan.

[00:27:37.590] – Allan
Yeah, I think the kind of the worst part of this is the food that's good for us doesn't have a marketing department, but the food that's bad for us does. And so you're going to see things on labels like heart-healthy, like you would with cereal. And then, of course, you're going to see this salad dressing you just bought… Not Mark's brand, Mark's brand is avocado oil. It's good stuff. But other brands, you'll see that they'll say they've got olive oil or they've got that.

[00:28:04.620] – Allan
You'll look at the actual label. And they do have that in there, but they've also got the seed oils in there. So it's in there. It's insidious. It's in everything. So the challenge becomes now I'm asking someone to go into their kitchen and throw all that stuff out. And for, I would say the vast majority of people in the United States, particularly, you're asking them to pretty much throw out their entire pantry, clean out their entire fridge, and in many cases go through their freezer and go through all of that stuff and that you start to realize how much… It's like 71% of our total calories is coming from this stuff.

[00:28:48.720] – Allan
So when the kitchen purge to me is one of the probably you know, as I talk to people, that's one of their most intimidating events. How does someone wrap their mind around I'm throwing away all this food?

[00:29:02.520] – Brad
Yeah, I like how you framed that.

[00:29:03.240] – Allan
And I can do the food in air quotes.

[00:29:07.080] – Brad
Yeah. Michael Pollan calls it, quote, edible food like substances rather than food. This processed 71% junk. But I like how you frame that question because maybe we should do it backwards. So, first we go shopping to the natural foods supermarket and we get the sustainably raised eggs and meat and seafood and then whatever fresh produce you like or things that are on the approved list. And so you have that like, let's say waiting in the wings in your in the back of your car, and then you go throw everything away into the garbage can in a five minute binge of of cleaning out that house.

[00:29:43.530] – Brad
But yeah, I can see that we're locked into routines and have difficulty with big change. But I think the restocking of the pantry with nutritious foods and maybe browsing the 40 recipes in the back of our book. And if you just flip through it and in a minute's time you'll see, wow, this stuff looks great. It's delicious. It's varied. And so there's so much you can do. And there's so many cookbooks now that are honoring the low carb or the ancestral approach.

[00:30:13.260] – Brad
And so there's no shortage of ideas. And for Gourmet's, that's great. They can go and look at the thirty-one ingredients and prepare a recipe that takes two hours. But for busy people or a lot of times, I encounter like my male peers aren't so gourmet in many cases. We wrote a couple of cookbooks called Keto Cooking for Cool Dudes and Carnivore Cooking for Cool Dudes, and we purposely made it not precise. You just throw in a little bit of this little bit of that, put some sardines in the skillet, crack a couple egg yolks, mix it up and you know, you can get these superfood meals without much time or energy or scrutiny.

[00:30:53.370] – Brad
And so that's the big one, is nourishing yourself with wonderful, delicious foods and doing it immediately so that there's not this lull where you don't know what to eat. You're fidgeting around and then you kind of reach for a really bad choice because your body's commanding you to consume calories. And that's no joke. I mean, a lot of people are starting out with a lot of discipline, motivation, willpower. And then it cracks because as we talked about offline, the human brain and the hypothalamus when it's hungry, there's nothing that can I mean, you're going to be pushing people out of the way to get something to sustain you.

[00:31:31.020] – Brad
So we have to do this in a strategic manner. And setting up those good meal habits is the big one, like I discussed with my omelet or whatever you want to put as the example.

[00:31:40.930] – Allan
And I think that's one of the keys. You know, when we talk about two meals a day or time-restricted eating, this is not like you immediately just jump in and say, okay, I had dinner tonight at seven o'clock and I'm not going to eat again until two o'clock tomorrow. That's typically not how this works. There's a transition period to doing time-restricted eating. And I like one of the things that you guys use used an acronym called WHEN which is When Hunger Ensues Naturally.

[00:32:12.090] – Allan
So it's kind of listening to your brain because invariably your brain's right. If it's telling you you're hungry, you're actually probably hungry. And if we try to not listen to it, then it's just too easy to fall back on old habits. And there's McDonald's. I'm driving by my windows down on a beautiful day. And I could smell it. If you're not answering yourself when you have control, now, you're in a situation where you probably don't.

[00:32:42.310] – Allan
And so how does someone go through? Because I know you guys have a plan in the book. You also have the recipes, which thanks for mentioning that, by the way, because I did want to make sure those are in there, too. How does someone go about approaching getting to two meals a day?

[00:32:58.510] – Brad
Yeah, good question. And I think when it's a really easy strategy to get your mind around and it's not intimidating or fearful. So when hunger ensues, naturally, we have to make sure that we really are talking about hunger.

[00:33:13.360] – Brad
And I think what we have today is boredom, prolonged periods of stillness with our lifestyles, especially working on the screen. And a lot of these things can mess up our metabolic function to the extent that we think we're hungry. But we might just benefit from going out and running two flights of stairs and returning to that default fat burning state that requires a little bit of movement throughout the day. There's research showing that if you sit still for as little as 20 minutes, you will experience a noticeable decrease in glucose tolerance and insulin resistance.

[00:33:52.090] – Brad
So in other words, you stop burning fat really well and you start to lose a little bit of cognitive function. The oxygen delivery, the blood circulation, everything kind of goes down because the body does not like to sit still for long periods of time. And so when you feel that decline in energy, we associate that with hunger perhaps. And then we go get an energy bar out of the drawer and we get a little boost for however long and then another drop and we go on this roller coaster all day long.

[00:34:22.390] – Brad
I'm kind of jumping without answering the question fully, but we do have to include those lifestyle elements into this picture. It's not just about your food choices, because if you're sitting there all day long in a chair not trying out this wonderful stand-up desk craze or thinking that you're too busy to take a one or two-minute break every 20 or 30 minutes, you're going to have real trouble adhering to a dietary transformation, especially getting rid of those carbohydrate foods that provide quick energy.

[00:34:56.590] – Brad
So back to trying to answer that question and integrating this concept of when hunger ensues, naturally, this implies that whatever fasting periods you're going to engage in, you're going to feel comfortable. You're going to have stable cognitive and even physical function in the absence of that meal. And that includes perhaps a workout some days where you can wake up in the morning, go through, even if it's a light workout, like a cardiovascular session at fat-burning heart rates, you want to feel good and strong .And that you're not needing, desperately needing calories to complete a 20 or 30-minute workout, maybe an hour workout or maybe a 20-minute high intensity workout where, of course, you have the energy stored in your body to complete it. But we have to kind of play it out in a natural and comfortable way.

[00:35:49.900] – Brad
Once you clean up the diet and get rid of those three toxic modern foods, we don't want to talk about anything. You can drop off this podcast right now or you can close the book at page seventy-one or whatever if you're unwilling or you haven't accomplished that goal. Because that's the gateway to a fat burning lifestyle. So once those foods are out of the picture, you're making good choices and you're having these nutrient-dense meals, then you can kind of tiptoe in this direction to say, okay how about if I wake up and wait around until hunger ensues naturally?

[00:36:26.920] – Brad
And that will be kind of a checkpoint as you do this exercise and see how long you can comfortably last before your meal, which is the exact opposite of the cavalier approach that you just mentioned, to say, okay tomorrow I'm going to suck it up and I'm going to wait till 2:00 p.m. and that's going to be a 16 hour or an 18 hour.

[00:36:47.230] – Brad
We want everything. We want you to kind of back into everything. So if you are keeping a food journal and you like that accountability, you write down when you eat after the fact because that's when you were hungry and you decided to eat, as opposed to saying, I have to make it till a certain time, otherwise I'm going to drop off the A-list on my plan here. So simple, sustainable, like we say, and doing it at the right time when you really feel you're ready.

[00:37:15.940] – Brad
And so let's say you wake up and at eight thirty in the morning your stomach is growling. And the reason your stomach is growling is because the prominent hunger hormone ghrelin is making it growling. So growling is an actual it's not just fun and games, it's an actual biological response, triggering hunger. And a lot of times the circadian rhythm is a strong influencer of this. So if you start skipping breakfast as part of this lifestyle transformation, you may experience these spikes in hunger in the morning because your body's used to eating at a certain time of day.

[00:37:52.120] – Brad
Maybe it's 2:00 in the afternoon when you always have your energy bar and soda break in the break room. And so you might experience hunger spikes, even though it's more circadian than that you're actually out of energy and you need food. So we have to learn to be more nuanced and more intuitive and see what our body is capable of. And you'll probably find that you're way more metabolically flexible than you even dreamed of, even right now. And then after three weeks of dietary restriction, getting rid of the junk. Oh, man. It's going to open up an amazing world of possibilities.

[00:38:25.370] – Brad
You and I know about these extreme enthusiasts where people will go on five-day fasts every quarter and twenty-four hour fasts once a week. And it seems like unimaginable to the average person. But when you get down to it, we're all pretty good at this stuff. We're all humans. If you have the ability to be patient and, you know, keep those junk foods out of the diet, you can really awaken some good fat-burning potential.

[00:38:56.420] – Allan
Yeah, there was this time and I've told this story on the podcast a couple of times, but I was I had some property and I went out there to do some work and just got up in the morning. I wasn't hungry. So I eat when I'm hungry. I don't even think about it unless I'm hungry. Then I'll eat for the most part. I might have a meal in the evening because only because I know if I don't, then I'm going to want to eat much later. And from a timing it doesn't make sense. But for everything else in my life, I'll just eat when I'm hungry. So I went through and I went out to my property and I finished the work. So I drive my tractor back onto the trailer and I'm going to leave the property and my truck got stuck. So I call AAA to come pull me out when he comes out there about an hour later, you know, which is what they've kind of promised. He was on time.

[00:39:41.290] – Allan
He went to pull me out and his truck broke. So, he had to call for a part. And so I just went ahead and grabbed. The reason I had this property was I had some fishing ponds. I'll just go do some fishing catch and release stuff. So I'm out there fishing. And it took him like four hours to get his truck fixed. He finally gets me out and then I'm driving back and I'm thinking to myself, it's six o'clock already. And I had a pretty tough morning work doing the work I was doing. It was not easy work. And I wasn't even thinking about food.

[00:40:15.020] – Allan
Before I got into what I'm doing with keto and fasting and just paying attention to the food I'm putting in my mouth versus eating what is there, I would have been chewing off my arm. But I had that flexibility we were talking about, I had the freedom that provides to basically say, I know when I'm actually hungry and I know what I'm not.

[00:40:41.900] – Allan
And it's it for a lot of people, it's kind of an interesting feeling because they think they're always hungry and then they actually feel full when they eat because they're eating, like you said, the highly-nutritious, high-quality foods. And they know what it feels like to actually be hungry because they let themselves actually get hungry before they eat again.

[00:41:04.910] – Brad
Right. And it's it is a wonderful feeling to experience hunger and then go satisfy that hunger with a great meal. And a lot of us are hugely disconnected from that because we just sit down because it's lunchtime and we're going to go have a business lunch. And then when we get home, of course, we're going to honor the the the dinner time and the family gathering. And all that stuff's great. And when we wake up in the morning, of course, we got to get some food before we rush off to our busy day.

[00:41:34.610] – Brad
But to rethink this and kind of open up the floodgates to a different alternative lifestyle and different choices like that. And then to realize that missing a meal is a positive checkmark in the direction of metabolic flexibility. So we can kind of relax, especially I know a lot of health-conscious people, they're trying to cover their nutritional bases every day and make sure that they eat enough protein and make sure that they get their superfood, antioxidant smoothies and all this stuff.

[00:42:04.730] – Brad
So to kind of recalibrate that a bit and realize that fasting is probably the biggest thing you can do for an immediate health boost, it beats any superfood ever known to mankind. And so skipping a meal is no big deal. It's a positive step in the direction of health. And then you can kind of turn eating into one of the great pleasures of life as it's intended to be, rather than another stop at the gas station, as if you were a race car and just need to refuel all day long, which is basically the story for most people that it's just fuel and calories, a lot of times empty calories, but you need them otherwise you're going to feel like crap at three p.m. at work and you're not going to get all your work done before five.

[00:42:54.050] – Allan
Yeah, we leave a second breakfast away. We don't need a second breakfast. You might not even need the first one.

[00:43:00.320] – Allan
There was another concept in the book that I thought was really important that I wanted to bring up because a lot of people, we're busy, we've got a lot going on in our lives and we're looking at the clock and we're thinking, you know, I wanted to get out of here and go get my workout in, but I just don't have that hour.

[00:43:16.940] – Allan
I need to stay in the office for another half hour to get some work done. And then, yeah, I got to go pick up the kids and we got to go do this. And my life is just this out of control kind of thing. But you have this concept. We talk about micro workouts. And I think so many people are stuck on the I have to work out for thirty minutes every day or an hour every day, or I might as well not do it. Can you kind of talk about micro workouts and how we can make those are part of a healthy lifestyle.

[00:43:46.160] – Brad
Yeah. Thanks, Allan. This is I got a big smile on my face because this is, I think, one of the greatest breakthroughs that we've seen in fitness in this century. I know the century's young. We got a lot ahead of us.

[00:44:00.710] – Brad
But really, the fitness industry as a whole has been stuck. It's been mired in this no pain, no gain, struggle and suffer mentality. And most of the programing is based on this idea that if we crush you hard enough, you can high-five your workout partner at the end. We can put you on the commercial and you'll order this expensive indoor bicycle or join the gym or continue with the package with your trainer who's urging you for more reps. And so for the people that are really into fitness, it works fine.

[00:44:33.510] – Brad
I used to be a professional triathlete, I trained all day long for a decade of my life and I loved it and I traveled around the world and I mixed with other athletes who also loved riding our bicycles one hundred miles through the mountains. And that was all fun and games and great stuff for us. But so many people have been marginalized by the traditional approach to fitness. And you walk in the gym, you know, 63% of people are intimidated when they look over to the free weight room. And another 27% are intimidated when they look in the window at the bootcamp class where the lady is screaming and urging you for more and more jumping up and down. And you're like, wow, I'm not even in shape enough to conceive of doing something like that to my body.

[00:45:13.880] – Brad
It's true. It's catering to the fitness extremist already. So for the average person who just as you described, is busy, might not be a fitness freak, maybe they didn't feel like an athlete when they were a kid and they're just on the outside looking in. This concept of micro workouts can appeal to everyone who wants to be healthier, not necessarily a fitness freak. Just have that baseline level of physical competency to get through life with more enjoyment and less risk of injury, especially as we get older. Falling is the number one cause of injury and death in Americans over age 65. Falling. Not, pick something else. I mean, come on falling? You're kidding me?

[00:46:05.680] – Brad
But that's what happens when we go into steady and prolonged demise. And so the micro workout conveys this idea that in a minute's time or two minutes' time, you can do a miniature little burst of explosive physical effort wherever you are. You don't need a lot of implements or contraptions you can do right now in your work cubicle drop for a set of 20 deep squats or however deep you can take them.

[00:46:32.590] – Brad
And even if you're a fit person, when you get to 17, 18, 19, your legs are going to feel it. So in one minute's time, you can get a nice miniature little workout and the benefits are tremendous. One of them is it breaks up these prolonged periods of stillness that are so harmful to our metabolic and cognitive function. So even a minute's bursts of running up a couple of flights of stairs, like I said before, or doing a set of deep squats.

[00:46:57.970] – Brad
I have a rule. I have a pull up bar over my closet door and it's like a supply closet. So every time I go in there to get a another Post-it pad or whatever it is, I do a set of pull-ups that might happen once a day. Big deal. It's not going to mess up my big workout that's planned for tomorrow. Maybe I'm recovering from something and I don't want to push myself too hard today, but a single set of pull-ups is nothing to write home about.

[00:47:25.750] – Brad
I don't have to write it in my fitness workout log or anything, but if you talk to me 365 days from now and I say, yeah, this is my daily pattern and oh by the way, when I throw the garbage out, I have to go through the side yard and sitting there in the side yard is a hexagonal deadlift bar with a moderate amount of weight on it. Nothing to write home about again to the muscle heads. But let's say there's two hundred pounds on that bar. And my rule is every time I throw the garbage away, I do at least one set of deadlifts and then I go about my busy day. Maybe sometimes I'll get into it. I have some free time and I might do three or four sets and make it something that's a little bit more significant.

[00:48:05.740] – Brad
But this very low bar to jump over, to enter the world of a fit, healthy, active person is what we need to progress within the overall approach to fitness. And I think the micro workouts are so fun. It can be something that you enjoy. If you have core competency, or technique, you do something as simple as possible, like doing a squat or running up your flight of stairs, walking back down, running up again.

[00:48:32.200] – Brad
And of course, we're so busy we can't devote any more than that. That's fine right now. But as it becomes part of a daily habit and you start sprinkling these things in over time, the amazing thing happens is that, I call it like flying under the radar, but building your fitness, but without that huge risk of breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury that occurs when you immerse yourself into the mainstream approach to fitness.

[00:49:00.550] – Brad
That's the person that signs up for the personal trainer package on January 1st. And by April Fool's Day, their shoulders aching and they're going to go get an MRI and they've finished their package and they're burnt out and they're fried and they don't like it anymore because it was too physically grueling. So this is a way to kind of tiptoe to even really fit. Just from sprinkling in these little sessions that don't bother you, so they're arguably safer and less downside risk than a devoted fitness regimen. And furthermore, the emerging science in exercise, physiology and general health study is that the obligation to just move more in daily life is ranking above adherence to a devoted fitness regimen for all manner of health and disease protection.

[00:49:52.140] – Brad
Because we're so still and sedentary that even the fitness freaks, there's this idea called the compensation theory of exercise. So it's a scientifically validated phenomenon where they've studied people that do adhere to a devoted fitness regimen. So let's say that's that neighbor of yours that rolls out of there before it gets light to go to their spin class every morning at six a.m. and they're really, really into it. But then they go on the subway, they commute, they sit at a desk all day, they come home and they binge on digital programming. So they're still in sedentary for hours and hours every day.

[00:50:35.760]
They showed that this population of devoted fitness enthusiasts who are otherwise sedentary had the same level of metabolic disease risk factors as people who didn't exercise. And you can think, look, even extreme fitness person who's training an hour every single day, that's seven hours a week. There's one hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. So if those other 100 plus hours, of course, we need to sleep.

[00:51:00.660]
So we got to take a third of that and be still. But if you're engaging in all these sedentary lifestyle patterns, the exercise is not going to help you. And instead we just have to move more. Mark Sisson coined this term JFW it stands for just effing walk and that would be the centerpiece of a more active lifestyle. And you can get more health and even fitness benefit from walking more versus going and punching your gym ticket even more and pushing yourself really hard once in a while or an hour a day.

[00:51:34.620] – Allan
What I like about those is that it's something you can fit around your normal workday. So you're sitting at your desk and you want to get up to go to the restroom or go get some water or something. And so you just sit there and say, I'm a pop out 5, 10 squats, bodyweight squats. And the other cool thing about him is because these are these are things that you're adding to your day. You can really put a little bit of forethought, forethought to them and say, I want these to be functional exercises, not just something like a spin class where I know I'm burning calories, but quite frankly, you're saying squats, fundamental movement. You talked about deadlifts with the hex bar, fundamental movement to build strength in your legs, strengthen your core. You know, all of these things that even pull ups, there's some function to being able to climb going upstairs.

[00:52:26.820] – Allan
All of those are functional movements that you're building into your day that might otherwise not include any workout at all. So I just like how that can be a part of every day. You can just have those triggers. You can be doing squats while you're brushing your teeth, so there's so many opportunities for you to to do these types of things in your day and not having to think that you have to dedicate an hour or it's wasted. I just like that concept.

[00:52:56.370] – Brad
Yeah, I was just talking to someone the other day about this and they're expressing a bit of interest. How do I throw this in? I spend a lot of time at night watching my TV shows, he said. I said, well, make a rule then. If you're going to binge watch, at least in between every episode drop for a set of twenty pushups or squats or whatever. Put some rules in place because I think, hey, I listen to a lot of podcasts. I fill my mind with these great ideas. Do I execute on every single one of them? No, I don't, because I'm just too busy or whatever my excuse is.

[00:53:27.690] – Brad
So in this case, what worked for me really well, Allan was I wanted to kind of raise the fitness platform from which I launched my formal workouts because I've been a long-time fan of sprinting. I'm obsessed with high jumping. Now I compete in the old man's Masters high jump track and field.

[00:53:46.800] – Allan
Now, 55 to 59 is not old man. I refuse to accept that.

[00:53:50.630] – Brad
I'm slotted in that division, whatever you want to call it, man. So I go out and do these awesome workouts, let's say once a week and they're pretty tough. And when I get to the track I'm all pumped up and I'm competitive and I feel great. But of course I learn over the next 36 to 48 hours and I kind of pushed it too hard there. And my calves are screaming and I'm in pain now and I'm really tired. And so what was happening was I wasn't approximating that big challenge very frequently because I couldn't I had to rest and recover and the go hit it once a week again.

[00:54:23.860] – Brad
And so what I designed was this morning, routine of flexibility, mobility, core strengthening, just a fun little thing that's predicated to help me with the muscle strength and mobility I need for sprinting and jumping, I'd say. But I threw this in and decided to do it every single morning. Again, not that strenuous, but it chips away at my fitness without interrupting my busy day. I'm on a streak now of over four years, where I have not missed a single day of this wonderful morning flexibility, mobility, strengthening routine. And it started out as something really modest because I wanted to have that low bar to jump over to tell myself I'm going to commit to doing this. I'm not going to miss a day. And again, it's not too much trouble. I'm not dripping in sweat at the end, but to have it as part of my lifestyle, where I don't even have to think about it now and I get through this, it used to be a 12-minute routine and now it's a minimum of thirty five minutes.

[00:55:25.390] – Brad
I know that's not doable for many people, but whatever you have to commit to. So if you can say, hey, I'm going to give the first five minutes of my day and I'm going to do the yoga sun salutation sequence, you can see that on YouTube. It's the foundation of a yoga class where you stretch and then you compress and then you sweep and you do these movements. But if you can say that you do that every single day, we'll count that in this micro workout category and then everything else flows from there because now you've built into place this rule that this is now part of your lifestyle. It's not negotiable. It's going to become a habit.

[00:55:59.500] – Brad
And then you'll set yourself up for more success doing these little these little tidbits that we described about, you know, lifting the deadlift bar when you go through the garbage can. So I want to make sure the listener can take away something that's so simple that they might even scoff at how easy it is to implement this new commitment of five minutes a day or let's say you put a sticky note on your computer or your office door and say 40 squats before you leave the office every day. And if it's 4:57 p.m. and you're clocking out at five, I don't know if it's a home office or you're leaving whatever and you haven't done it, then you've got to do 40 right there. No big deal.

[00:56:40.090] – Brad
But if you do 10, you know, on the on the 90 minute break, you set your little timer, then it's nothing. And so we have to put rules in place because it's easy to let these things slide. And if the goal is really modest, boy, that's when I think we can build that momentum. And that's what's happened in my life with my morning routine.

[00:57:02.080] – Allan
Brad, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:57:09.850] – Brad
Whoo! Number one is to implement that morning routine and make it five minutes. Don't even go beyond that until you get into a good groove. So that one I'm really strong. It's been a life-changing thing for me, especially because I'm not a template, regimented guy. I answer to myself, I work for myself, I work from home. And so I can do whatever I want every day. But this thing is really anchored my day. And the fact that I can do that and tell the public about it, I believe it helps me become a more focused and disciplined person in every other way for the rest of my day and all the distractions that I face. So the morning routine, number one.

[00:57:54.970] – Brad
Number two is ditch those big three toxic modern foods, do it for twenty-one days. And what you'll discover is you'll habituate away from this nibbling on sugar and grain-based, high-calorie snacks. Your body will actually feel better, even though you're giving up what you think are these precious things that you can't do without and that you deserve so much. After working that hard day, of course you deserve a pint of processed ice cream with chemicals in there. Even hippie trippy Ben and Jerry's products have vegetable industrial seed oils and some of the flavors. I couldn't believe it when I saw it on the side of the box. So ditch the big three.

[00:58:36.460] – Brad
And then you asked for three, right?

[00:58:38.080] – Allan
Yes.

[00:58:39.130] – Brad
Number three is don't take on too much, so just do the first two.

[00:58:43.890] – Allan
Oh, I like that. All right, Brad if someone wanted to learn more about you and Mark Sisson and your book, Two Meals a Day, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:58:53.650]
Oh, thanks. We have this cool landing page called TwoMealsaDayBook.com, and you can get, it's called preorder bonus items. But even as the book has been released just before the show came out, you can still get our cool preorder bonuses. There's an audio summary, a recipe PDF, and a discount coupon to go shopping for healthy condiments at Primal Kitchen. And then if you go over and visit BradKerns.com, you will be regaled by wild and crazy videos like my morning routine, you can learn what I do and watch me break the world record and speed golf, don't worry if you only have a minute and thirty-eight seconds, that's all it took for me to play the fastest hole of golf ever played.

[00:59:33.240] – Brad
And I'm trying to promote all these healthy lifestyle practices that we live and breathe every day. But I also think it's important to put in a vote for having fun and having a lighthearted approach. So you'll see me kind of being silly. Same without my BRad podcast. I like to inject that sense of humor and not taking ourselves too seriously as we try to improve our lives and optimize in so many different ways.

[00:59:58.050] – Allan
You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/477 and I'll be sure to have all the links there. Brad, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[01:00:08.010] – Brad
Thank you, Allan. Great show. Keep up the good work.

[01:00:10.710] – Allan
Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[01:00:16.090] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[01:00:17.830] – Rachel
Oh, Allan, what a neat conversation, Brad seems like a really energetic guy.

[01:00:22.990] – Allan
He is a very energetic guy. And for those of you that don't know what speed golf is, that I went right over your head. But basically, speed golf is a sport where you hit the golf ball off the tee and then you run to the ball and they basically add your strokes to your time of the run. And so the secret is to run it really, really quickly, to quickly hit the ball again, but be generally accurate because you don't want to be running all over the golf course and then get the ball in the hole. And he managed on a par five basically to get a par four, a birdie. And he did it in just over a minute and a half. I don't know that I could even just run from the tee to the hole in that amount of time. But I just know when I played golf the walking, because I'd be on one side and then I'd be on the other side, then I'd overshoot the hole and then I'd be over here and then I'd be over there. By the time I got through the hole of golf, I'd already walked the whole golf course.

[01:01:23.800] – Allan
And so so that probably not the sport for me. I'm not a sprinter. I'll be the slow go. But yeah, basically that's that's one of the sports he participates in now. And he's a hoot. It's fun to watch people do crazy stuff like that. But just yo actually meet someone who's got the world record at it. It's kind of awesome.

[01:01:48.490] – Rachel
That is a riot. What a funny sport. I just love it.

[01:01:53.350] – Allan
We got into a couple of important things. I mean, obviously with the two meals a day concept is something that I feel a little bit more confident I could do rather than the one meal a day. And it's only because I don't know that I could eat enough calories at one sitting comfortably and to make sure that I'm still getting all the nutrition. The second meal would… I'm going to have to do that so effectively when I eat, I intuitively end up eating two, sometimes I have three meals in my eight hour, six hour window, but easily two meals would work out very well for me.

[01:02:29.920] – Rachel
Sure. Yeah. It seems a lot more doable and easy to plan out too. I like that concept.

[01:02:36.370] – Allan
And then we got into the toxic food stuff. And yes, we've talked about sugar on this podcast. Actually, I think maybe even my second episode, episode number two was about sugar. We know what sugar is doing to us. We know for the most part what bread is usually doing to almost all of us. And then the seed oils is an area where I probably don't talk about enough. And in the worst part of it is, the labeling on foods, all the seed oils are going to have heart-healthy on their label, because they're not saturated fat and unfortunately they're still horrible, horrible food for you to be putting in your body.

[01:03:24.950] – Allan
But they managed to get to a point where they're marketing, the healthy thing, it just breaks my heart. Eat healthy canola oil. And I'm like, no.

[01:03:38.840] – Rachel
It is really confusing. And that was hard for me too when I started keto, because you think of an oil that's derived from a plant or a seed, I mean, that sounds perfectly healthy. What could possibly be wrong? And then when you add the label on to it that says that it's heart-healthy, what could be wrong? The government said that it's healthy. So how do you weed that out? It's taken a long time to unlearn some of these habits.

[01:04:06.160] – Allan
Yeah. It does it just that that kind of stuff just drives me nuts. If you want to eat heart healthy, you're going to eat a lot of grains. You're going to eat a lot of those seed oils. And then the worst part of it is if you're going to try to go low fat otherwise and what are they going to do? They're going to put sugar in the food to make it palatable. So you're getting the trifecta of the bad toxic foods, just trying to follow the guidelines that our government is so kind to put out there for us.

[01:04:38.540] – Rachel
It's so crazy. Now, what kind of oils do you like to use when you're cooking? We've we found good success with coconut oil. It's easy and it cooks well. And it's got a good flavor.

[01:04:50.090] – Allan
I use I use avocado oil. Some I like to use I like to use coconut oil, particularly like if I'm going to make something that's more of an Asian style restaurant. So like, let's say I'm going to stir fry some chicken and some vegetables and then I want maybe I'm going to try to make it into more of an Oriental flavor or I'm going to put some coconut and curry. I'll use the coconut oil in that. If I'm going to make something that's going to be more of like a meat sauce or something like that, I'll use I'll just use the hamburger and I don't drain it.

[01:05:22.940] – Rachel
Right.

[01:05:23.600] – Allan
Those recipes are like drain the oil.

[01:05:25.584] – Rachel
No.

[01:05:27.680] – Allan
Throw away half your food.

[01:05:30.110] – Rachel
Yeah. Don't don't replace that with more oil. That's good stuff.

[01:05:33.350] – Allan
We're going to throw away half the egg because we don't want to eat the yolk. We're going to throw away the fat because we don't want fat. And I'm like, no, put that in there. It's delicious. It's what makes hamburger taste good. When you take all that oil out, it tastes like dirt. So I'll do that. And then, like, if I'm going to use like an olive oil, I'll use it as a dressing. Or I will sometimes, like if I've cooked a sauce once I'm done cooking the sauce and now it's just kind of warm, heat it ready to go. I'll slather in some olive oil at that point to give us a little bit more umph.

[01:06:09.780] – Allan
And then I, I love cooking with butter. I love cooking with butter. I'll get the Kerry Gold or good quality butter. We've got two or three brands down here that are grass fed cows from Panama and I assume they speak Spanish. They make butter and that's it's a good butter. I'll cook eggs with that.

[01:06:34.250] – Allan
Sometimes when we're going to have bacon and I cook the bacon in the pan, I might use the grease, some of the grease and bacon and just cook it with that. I'm not afraid of saturated fat because what I have found is saturated fat makes my HDL go up. And the ratio of total cholesterol, the HDL improves when I'm eating saturated fat. If I take out the saturated fat, my HDL plummets, my LDL goes down maybe a little bit, but not enough to matter as far as the doctors are concerned. And my HDL is still relatively high. So my ratio of high total to HDL is terrible. So, I want to have the best markers I can have. I'm not worried about the total because I could eliminate all of my HDL and still be over the number. And even when I did statins, my cholesterol was still over 250.

[01:07:42.320] – Allan
And I can't get any lower. So, it is what it is. I just accept that so. I'll use I'll use saturated fat, you know, I eat fish regularly, so I'm getting some omega three oils from the fish.

[01:08:02.270] – Rachel
Good.

[01:08:02.660]
Sometimes I will take krill oil. If I'm not getting enough fish, I'll go ahead and take some krill. Well, and get some more in there. Most of what I'm eating are grass-fed beef. So there's some good fats as far as I'm concerned. Good fats in there because it's grass-fed, grass-finished. So that saturated fat is actually not bad for me. Eggs and pastured eggs. That fat I don't think is bad for me. And then cooking wise avocado oil, olive oil once it's already cooked because I'm not going to cook with olive oil and then just plain old butter.

[01:08:36.560] – Rachel
That sounds great. That's about what we use in the at our house as well. The coconut oil, avocado, occasionally olive, but not often. And of course we also have butter. And I also have a little can of ghee, which I use that on occasion as well. So that was that sounds good. Yeah. The other thing Brad mentioned, which I have to say I kind of geeked out about, was micro workouts. I really liked his idea of well, he mentioned doing a minute here, a minute there, push ups or squats and and lifts and whatnot.

[01:09:09.110] – Rachel
I tell all my friends that if you're struggling with motivation, you're not feeling it. Do half a workout or go out for one mile. You don't have to spend two hours at the gym. If you just take five or ten minutes and get a little fresh air, do something that gets your heart rate up. I mean, that's enough to move for that day.

[01:09:28.010] – Allan
Yeah, there used to be this kind of mantra that you needed to have your heart rate up in the cardio zone for at least twenty-four minutes. And apparently there was a study, but the doctors, now they've done the science and they're kind of like now you're going to get the same benefit doing five 5-minute workouts, as you would, doing a 24 or 25 minute workout. So just anything that's going to get your heart rate up for just even five minutes is going to be beneficial.

[01:10:02.440] – Allan
And actually, one of the other things I really like about microworkouts is that there's something that you can spread movement throughout the day. If you go to work and you think I'm going to sit at the desk for a solid four hours, then I'm going to have lunch and then I'll sit at the desk for another five hours and not move during that period of time other than an occasional toilet break or get some coffee. You're sitting still and, you know, whereas if you when you got up to get that coffee, just did some jumping jacks or, you know, some bodyweight squats or a couple of push-ups and then move around, your energy level is going to go up and you might find you don't actually need that coffee,

[01:10:50.410] – Rachel
Right? Yeah. Just get your blood pumping, get a little fresh air. And that might be enough to energize you for the rest of the afternoon.

[01:10:58.300] – Allan
And there's another part of the micro workout theme that I like. So sometimes we wake up in the morning and we're lik I really don't feel like running. I don't feel like it. Then we put we force ourselves to do it. But I got to do it. I got to have my streak intact. That got to do it. And we get out there. And this very unfortunate thing happens is that our bodies were actually fatigued.

[01:11:21.710] – Allan
We had not recovered properly from our workouts and because maybe because we weren't feeling right, maybe because we weren't sleeping right, maybe because just doing too much, too soon. We're not recovered. And because we didn't listen to our body, we're doing more harm than good. So, looking at it from a micro workout, you get there and say, I really don't want to do this, but then you say, I'll do it for five minutes.

[01:11:47.780] – Rachel
Yes.

[01:11:48.650] – Allan
And if after that five minutes you're not feeling it, stop. Please stop. Your body was talking to you and you were ignoring it or trying to override it with reason. Please do this when the body really did need recovery time so that if you get out there for five minutes, you've got the benefit of that five minutes and you're not overtraining. And then a lot of people, you just start it like I started my route and I ran out two minutes and I agree that I'm going to turn my back two minutes or sometimes you just realize I want to keep running. I don't actually want to stop now and you get your full workout in because that's what you needed to do.

[01:12:32.630] – Allan
So microworkouts kind of have two functions. One is that you're breaking up the work into smaller portions, which sometimes makes it easier to fit into a busy day.

[01:12:41.060] – Rachel
Right.

[01:12:41.600] – Allan
And then the other thing is micro workouts can kind of be that strategy to get you started. I'm at least going to do five minutes and then if I'm done, I'm done. And you can listen to your body, as you put it, through the paces. And I just know when I ran a lot, I hated the first two or three minutes of running. I hate it. You start going and it's like man, this sucks. Then something clicks on when your body warms up and then it feels good.

[01:13:15.140] – Rachel
That's true. Some of us like to say the first mile is a liar and that you feel that this isn't right. I got to shake out the cobwebs. I'm not feeling it today. But then once you get that first mile under your belt, sometimes the to the second and third or however long you're out there, they just fly right by. So, yeah, for sometimes the first miles is a liar. Sometimes it's the first five minutes of a workout that's a liar.

[01:13:38.960] – Rachel
But yeah, if you could just do something it's better than nothing. And like Brad mentioned if you're sitting there watching TV at night, do some pushups during the commercials and then do some sit-ups during the next commercial. I mean, just these little movements throughout the day, it's always better than nothing at all.

[01:13:57.350] – Allan
Absolutely. And with the commercials the way they are today, I mean, the 30-minute program has eight minutes of commercials.

[01:14:05.810] – Rachel
Just about, yes. Pretty much.

[01:14:08.840] – Allan
You don't have to watch too much TV and you've got an hour of workouts done yet. Half an hour anyway, watching a couple hours of TV. You got half an hour right there, just watching two hours of TV. So if it's a popular program, because when they first start out, they don't. And I see this because I watch stuff on Netflix and I'll see a show the first year it came out. And, they have basically five to six minutes of commercials.

[01:14:38.390] – Allan
And then by the time they get to their fifth or sixth season, that's it's up to over eight minutes of commercials now because I'm flipping through these this shows, I'm like, how could I just watch five shows on Netflix and an hour and all those damn commercials that I'm not having to watch.

[01:14:55.130] – Rachel
Right? For sure.

[01:14:56.750] – Allan
Netflix is a little different as far as if you're going to be doing them because they don't have the advertisements, the commercials. But, okay, you know, you watch half the show or watch the show and then do the work before you start that next episode.

[01:15:13.760] – Rachel
That's right.

[01:15:17.810] – Allan
Alright, Rachel, anything else you want to go over before we cut out?

[01:15:20.390] – Rachel
No, that was great. Great conversation.

[01:15:22.700] – Allan
All right. Well, let's we'll talk next week.

[01:15:24.800] – Rachel
You bet. Take care.

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch	– John Somsky	– Margaret Bakalian
– Deb Scarlett	– Judy Murphy	– Melissa Ball
– Debbie Ralston	– Leigh Tanner	– Tim Alexander
– John Dachauer

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Can you lose weight and get healthy eating one meal per day?

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:48.040] – Allan
Raz, how are you doing?

[00:02:50.050] – Rachel
Great. Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:52.570] – Allan
I'm doing well. You know, we're prerecording these intro and outro thing conversations now because we want to take a break at the end of the year. And so actually, while I'm recording this, I'm in a town in Panama called Boquete. It's in the mountains. So it's moderate temperatures. A lot of expats that want to come down here and live. They like this region because it's really cool and comfortable and it doesn't get too hot.

[00:03:21.430] – Allan
And you're about an hour or two away from beaches. If you want to go see some Pacific beaches. So a lot of people like living here. And so we've been talking to a lot of expats and they call themselves expats. We're immigrants. But I won't let that definitional term really bother me too much. So we've been spending some time here.

[00:03:41.590] – Allan
We went to a coffee farm yesterday and went through the whole process of how they make coffee from start to finish to picking beans to all the way to grinding them when you're done toasting them. It's pretty cool.

[00:03:56.650] – Rachel
So are you a coffee drinker?

[00:03:58.270] – Allan
Oh, I am.

[00:03:59.230] – Rachel
Yeah. Nice. How does it taste?

[00:04:01.000] – Allan
As soon as we get off this call, I'm going to go back to the dining table because we're recording this around breakfast time. Tammy is having breakfast right now. I'm going to get some more coffee because it's so wonderful around here.

[00:04:11.060] – Rachel
Oh, that sounds so wonderful. I'm a big coffee drinker, too. I love trying different types of coffees. And that would be really neat to see it all in action like you just did.

[00:04:20.350] – Allan
Yeah, I bought a bag a pound of this what they call double roasted, which is basically where when you roasted I guess it's similar like make popcorn I guess is the analogy she uses. It pops the beans as you're roasting the beans pop. And so what you want to do to get to a medium roast is literally just get to the point where all the beans are popped once. And that's the kind of I like the medium roast. And so what you can do is you go to a point right before they crack and then you let them cool off and then you go and roast them again. So that's a double roast to get to that medium. And so I'm interested to get back and grind some of that up and try that tomorrow or next week. But so, yeah, I bought that. She said after you have this, you won't like any other coffee again.

[00:05:07.660] – Rachel
So that's so awesome.

[00:05:10.280] – Allan
She's like, you'll be calling me asking you to ship this stuff to you.

[00:05:13.990] – Rachel
Wonderful. That sounds wonderful.

[00:05:16.750] – Allan
Yeah. So it's good. Tammy's recovering from her surgery, so everything's good on this side and we'll spend about another four or five days here. In fact, as we're recording this, Tammy goes back to see her doctor for her follow up and have her stitches removed. So she's on the mend. And then we're going to get back to Bocas and I guess try to open up a bed and breakfast and a gym.

[00:05:37.330] – Rachel
That's exciting. For sure. Sounds like great plans for the next year.

[00:05:42.550] – Allan
How are you doing?

[00:05:43.780] – Rachel
Good. Getting ready for winter up here. We haven't seen any substantial snow quite yet, but I know it's coming. So just getting out my yak tracks and my studs for my shoes and all my winter gear, it's going to be fun.

[00:05:59.730] – Allan
Fun.

[00:06:02.720] – Rachel
Yeah.

[00:06:03.340] – Allan
I'll, I'll be walking the beaches in Bocas about the time you're running with your studs through ice and snow.

[00:06:10.240] – Rachel
That's right.

[00:06:10.900] – Allan
OK, I guess each person has to have their own and love that they have.

[00:06:14.920] – Rachel
Got to love it.

[00:06:16.300] – Allan
Oh bless your little heart.

[00:06:19.570] – Rachel
Thanks. I need it.

[00:06:21.970] – Allan
OK, well it's interesting because the podcast now has been going on for over five years and I've never covered one aspect of dieting that's called the OMAD Diet, which is basically a form of intermittent fasting. I would call it intermittent fasting 2.0. It's a little bit more extreme than than just standard intermittent fasting with one meal per day. And so let's go ahead and start this conversation with Alyssa.

Interview

Text

[00:07:20.920] – Allan
Alyssa, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:07:23.170] – Alyssa
Thank you so much for having me.

[00:07:25.360] – Allan
So, you know, it's weird. I've had this podcast for five years, over five years now, and I've talked about every kind of topic I thought I could talk about. And then I realized, oh, here's a book on OMAD, and I've never covered a book on OMAD. Wow! It's called The OMAD Diet: Intermittent Fasting with One Meal a Day to Burn Fat and Lose Weight.

[00:07:48.860] – Allan
And just general admission: I do intermittent fasting all the time. I do. I'm in keto most of the time and intermittent fasting just becomes natural. There have been a few times where I found that I did only eat one meal. It was never a planned, I'm going to go do an OMAD thing. It was a I got stuck. You know, one situation. My truck got stuck in my front yard of my property. I was at a property doing some work, and then my truck got stuck. And when the tow truck came, the tow truck broke. So it's three more hours for the tow truck to fix and get me finally get me out.

[00:08:26.150] – Allan
And so I ate. You know, I had eaten the night before. I skipped breakfast and went out, worked for a few hours. And then here I was now driving home at six o'clock. And I'm like, oh, it's been 23 hours since I even ate. I might ought to eat something. So I wasn't you know, I wasn't hungry.

[00:08:43.940] – Allan
I wasn't starving myself. And then I did have a pretty good meal. So can you take just a minute to talk about what OMAD is? Because I think a lot of people get confused and think it's just a way to really restrict calories or trick your body or can you talk about it?

[00:09:02.090] – Alyssa
Certainly. So, first of all, I'm honored that the first person you had on to talk about OMAD. And I think that a lot of people have had similar experiences to you in that the kind of you have to eat three meals a day has been so ingrained. And even with some diet programs that have been popular over the last 20 years, it's more like you have to eat six times a day or you have to eat every two hours or something like this.

[00:09:32.840] – Alyssa
And people don't realize that eating one meal a day an option and can be a kind of sustainable and nutritious approach when in fact it can be. So kind of the basic idea behind OMAD, which stands for one meal, is just as it sounds in that it's really you're only sitting down to eat once a day. But for that reason, it kind of gets rid of all of those different possible restrictions on eating. If you're kind of like calorie counting or things like that, there are people who approach, OMAD as because I'm only eating once, I can eat whatever I want, which is an approach you can take and because you are still fasting for twenty-three hours, you will still get some benefits from that approach.

[00:10:35.510] – Alyssa
But the approach that I tried to take in the book was to kind of figure out how I could create really balanced, well-rounded meals for the one meal a day that we're going to make the fast sustainable. So you wouldn't be starving and also kind of give you a wide array of macro and micronutrients that will support your health overall.

[00:11:03.920] – Allan
Yeah, that was one of the critical things that was in there that I thought was really important is you're not just talking keto, which is why I ended up in that situation where, I basically went OMAD without expecting to. And it didn't bother me because I was already really comfortable with ketosis. But you have vegan recipes and you have vegetarian recipes and you have things that are keto-friendly. You have really a good mix in there. So it's not just keto, is this keto is that, there's this OMAD is this or OMAD is that. Quite literally, whatever your approache and nutritional needs are, you're still meeting those with OMAD.

[00:11:43.590] – Alyssa
Yeah, it's incredibly adaptable in a lot of ways. One way is that you can adapt it if you are following keto or if you are on a plant-based or a gluten-free diet, you can do any number of those things. But it's also really adaptable to your lifestyle. So going back to that, like folks who felt like they needed to eat multiple times a day, that can be incredibly stressful on a person with a busy kind of full life, like trying to fit that in.

[00:12:15.570] – Alyssa
And then if they don't get their second of six meals and they think, oh, well, now today is a wash, like, I'll have to start again tomorrow. Whereas with OMAD you really you only have to find that time to sit down and eat a healthy meal once a day. And that was one of the things that actually surprised me a little as I was working on the book and speaking to people who have done OMAD. Was that the fact that it was really easy and kind of didn't put any added stress on their lifestyle was one of the things that they loved most about it?

[00:12:53.880] – Allan
Yeah, there are a lot of benefits. I mean, for me, it's the food freedom of not having to have food everywhere because I tried I tried some other eating styles after keto. I was trying some eating styles and I was like, OK, so I've got to have a snack of nuts now and have a snack of fruit now. OK, now here's my meal. And now here's this other snack and here's the other snack and then a meal and then another snack. And I had food in my truck, had foodin my office. I had at food all around me so that I would always have this available food. And it was just it was difficult. You know, if I'd got stuck in the mud and I was eating six meals a day, well, I would have just missed five of them.

[00:13:41.370] – Allan
What are some of the other benefits besides the time savings and the and then kind of having that freedom? What are some of the other benefits we could see with OMAD?

[00:13:50.430] – Alyssa
Sure, you already you mentioned ketosis a little bit. That is kind of one of the primary methods through which if you're doing OMAD to lose weight, that is definitely going to help. So that is the process where when you're eating on a regular basis and getting carbohydrates into your body, your body is first going to use up all of those carbohydrates for energy before it starts using anything else. But when you are on an extended fast, your body will work its way through all of that glucose, all of those carbohydrates, and switch to burning fat. And then the longer you go after that switch occurs, just the more fat you're going to burn. So that's one of the big ones.

[00:14:38.700] – Alyssa
Another big way that it can help with weight loss is through its effect on hormones. So the first hormone that it has a big effect on is insulin. So, going back to eating regularly throughout the day, when you're doing that, your pancreas is constantly producing insulin so that the insulin can then go in and take the sugar out of your bloodstream and bring it to your cells to be used as energy.

[00:15:07.170] – Alyssa
But if you're constantly putting in carbohydrates, insulin is constantly being produced. And a lot of people get to the point where the pancreas just gets tired of producing insulin and it can't produce anymore. And so that production starts to slow down. And that slow down is what leads to problems like Type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which are big contributors to weight gain, especially in America, with the number of people that are type 2 diabetics few days.

[00:15:42.030] – Alyssa
But when you're only eating one today, insulin does not need to constantly being be produced. So your pancreas shoots out insulin when you eat and then when you're not eating, the pancreas is like, oh, I can take a break. It gets to rest and relax and recharge. And then the next time you eat, it's ready to produce the insulin that you need.

[00:16:07.560] – Alyssa
And then the other hormone that is impacted is HGH, which has a big impact on exercise as well, which I mentioned later. HGH, human growth hormone, it plays a big role in maintaining lean muscle mass and a steady metabolism. But for a lot of people, the levels of HGH that the body produces is pretty erratic. And it's also one of the hormones that decline significantly with age. But there have been studies that show that extended fasts with things like OMAD really rapidly increase HGH levels, and so that's kind of maintaining muscle mass, especially as you get older, plays such a key role in not only maintaining a healthy metabolism and a healthy weight, but also like keeping your body strong, your joints strong, protecting against all sorts of all sorts of different things.

[00:17:07.870] – Alyssa
And then and then, yeah, there are tons of additional studies that have been done on how it can be beneficial for heart health, for brain health, how it helps people who are going through cancer treatment. There's very new research now into how it affects this process called autophagy, which is like allowing old and debilitated cells in your body to be replaced by newer, younger, healthier cells. And the idea is that the more young, healthy cells you have in your body compared to these old ones that aren't working as well, the better everything is going to run. And the more recent research into fasting is showing that it allows your body to do this cell turn over more quickly. And that is proving to have lots of different benefits as well.

[00:18:15.590] – SPONSOR
Whenever people ask me who I listen to to keep up with what it takes to get and stay fit as we age, to learn new techniques and to keep motivated, on top of my list is Brock Armstrong, fitness coach and host of the Get Fit Guy podcast. It's part of the Quick and Dirty Tips Network. So in quick, smart episodes, Brock uses step by step explanations and scientific evidence to help you move through the world with ease and enjoyment.

[00:18:41.420] – SPONSOR
He covers practical topics like how to train for a five K, how to walk your way to fitness, and how to make the most of your recovery days. And he'll share tips for applying mindfulness to your workouts, using exercise to sleep better and creating a top notch home gym. Rather, you want to begin an exercise routine and don't know where to start or you're looking to shake things up. Brocks Tips will help you reach your fitness goals and create a healthy, sustainable lifestyle. Listen to new episodes of the Get Fit Guy every Tuesday. Just search for get fit guy wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:19:21.130] – Allan
Now, a lot of people when you say, OK, well, what I want you to do is I want you to have your dinner or have your breakfast and then I want you to wait twenty four hours to eat again. I think a lot of people look at that and say, well, oh my God, my blood sugar is going to drop down to zero and I'm going to be jonesing. How how would you recommend that someone go through and basically get to OMAD? Because I think it's a process. I don't really think it's just OK, today I'm eating and I'm not going to eat again for some. Some people can. Don't get me wrong. There's people who can. But for a lot of people, it's a little scary to kind of go off that cliff and say, I'm going to do this. What are some recommendations you have on on a good general approach to that?

[00:20:04.810] – Alyssa
Well, first off, you mentioned like, oh, my blood sugar is going to get too low. Like, there are a couple, like couple kind of groups of people for whom OMAD isn't the best idea. Like, if you do have low blood sugar and that's a health concern of yours, then it like it might not be best. But for the majority of healthy people, if you get the OK from your doctor, it's definitely it's not going to hurt you to give it a shot.

[00:20:33.880] – Alyssa
I think as far as a good approach, you can definitely kind of work towards it. So maybe if you're eating three meals a day, switch to just two and see how you feel then then the other big thing is that, as you just mentioned, it really doesn't matter what time of day you eat your one meal. So when you're just getting started, mix it up and you can have your one meal around breakfast. And like, I actually I have a whole chapter in my book of breakfast style meals. If you are someone who likes to eat in the day, maybe try that for two days and then switch to a midday meal. Try that for a little bit of time. And so you can really play with it to determine what what is best for you, what kind of what timing keeps keeps your energy up the best.

[00:21:35.110] – Alyssa
And then the other another key part is that you are only eating once a day. But that doesn't mean you can't put anything else in your body during the other twenty three hours. So drinking fluids throughout the day can have a huge impact on how full you feel. So that's water, that's black coffee and tea. That's like chicken broth or beef broth, like bone bone broth, those kinds of things. A lot of the time in general, if you feel like you need a snack or something, if you feel hungry a lot of the time, you might just be thirsty.

[00:22:14.050] – Alyssa
And so kind of keeping I know you were talking about earlier, kind of always having a snack of nuts or something on you, I think, with, oh, you always want to have a bottle of water or a mug of something to keep you going. And again, to the last thing which I touched on briefly earlier is to kind of really think about creating meals that are really well-balanced and have a variety of nutrients.

[00:22:48.370] – Alyssa
So a lot of the in creating the recipes for my book, I put a lot of focus on protein and fiber because these are the ones that are going to give you energy, keep you full throughout the day. Also a lot of vegetables because those are going to increase portion sizes. Vegetables take longer to chew. Like the longer it takes you to eat, the more full and satisfied you're going to feel. I also talked a little bit about mindful eating. I'm sure a lot of listeners are familiar with mindfulness or like mindfulness meditation.

[00:23:28.060] – Alyssa
And so this is kind of applying that idea to cooking and eating. So really being in the present, like smelling the smells, kind of feeling the textures of your food and really being there with your meal and not watching TV or eating while you're driving, because hopefully, like it's only one meal, you haven't had to carve out a bunch of different times in your day. So hopefully you're able to commit that like 20 to 30 minutes just to enjoying your meal. And that can make a huge difference as well. And kind of how satisfied you then feel going into your fast?

[00:24:12.930] – Allan
I think it's really important to emphasize we brought this up at the beginning just to talk to your doctor. And if you're on any kind of blood sugar lowering meds like metformin or you're taking insulin or anything like that, recognize that when you change the way you eat, you change the formula of how your body is going to work. And so if you're on those and using those, your dosages are probably going to have to change to adapt to what you're doing now. As you get into this, this is not something to just jump in to have the conversation with your doctor, be prepared to change your meds as needed so that you can manage through that. But this is particularly for diabetes and obesity.

[00:24:53.400] – Allan
This is a hugely popular and good approach to eating well and keeping your blood sugar and insulin levels stable. So, you know, this is something you really want to look into. One thing I think a lot of people would be surprised with is like, oh, well, if I'm going to do this, I'm just going to be losing weight. I just I don't need to exercise. But I'll tell you, as a personal trainer. Yeah, you do need to exercise?

[00:25:20.880] – Allan
So there's little concern. And I you know, I had a I hired a personal trainer. I want to get stronger for a Spartan. So I hired a personal trainer, Coach Dave and I meet him every morning. And I told him, I said, you know, I don't care how early we meet. I don't you know, he says, I want you to have time to eat, wake up and eat. And like, no, I don't need to worry about eating before I can do things like, yeah, you need those carbs, you need that, you know, that protein and carbs. So you have the energy to make it through a workout.

[00:25:48.390] – Allan
And I'm like, no, Dave, I'll be fine through the workout. But it was only because I knew my body well enough. I'd been training long enough to know that I can exercise without food in my system. Can you talk a little bit about exercising when you're on OMAD? Considerations and things to do.

[00:26:06.660] – Alyssa
Yeah. So just like you can play around with the timing of your one meal, I definitely recommend playing around with the timing of your workout in relation to your meal, because like you said, some people do feel comfortable and energized and strong exercising on an empty stomach. And there have been studies that do show like some benefits to that, but other people that might make them feel nauseous or weak or things like that. And so you can definitely see if you want to do your workout before your meal, after your meal

[00:26:47.250] – Alyssa
Something else I discuss in the book as the only thing you can kind of quote unquote eat during your fast are fat bombs, which I'm sure you're familiar with as it comes comes out of the keto world. So these are like little treats that you make using healthy fats like coconut oil or coconut butter, and then add a little bit of flavoring like maybe like a drop or two of liquid stevia and some cocoa powder. And then you mix it up and you freeze them and you have really indulgent little snacks, the fat that can be kind of an instant hit of energy if you do feel like you need just that little something before or after a workout.

[00:27:34.860] – Alyssa
But, yeah, it's very personal. And there are certainly benefits to exercising during while you're fasting, while you're on OMAD, as I mentioned earlier, insulin and HGH, those are really the benefits you get from fasting as they affect those hormones. And the benefits that you get from exercising are really complementary to one another. So, like, if fasting is kind of keeping your insulin production low and steady, exercise has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, which means that the body doesn't need as much insulin to begin with to kind of move the glucose out of your bloodstream. So the way that both fasting and exercise impact insulin is incredibly good for your good for your overall health.

[00:28:35.460] – Alyssa
And then obviously with HGH as well, if your HGH levels are high there, that's kind of allowing you to build that lead muscle mass that you're trying to build through exercise, and then just as the time of day that you exercise is very personal. So is the form of exercise you choose. I think one of the most important things about exercise is that you have to be doing something that you enjoy because if you don't like doing it, then you're not going to stick with it and then you're going to feel bad about not sticking with it.

[00:29:16.830] – Alyssa
And then it's just going to be this cycle of. Not maintaining your healthy habits, and so I think that any form of movement, whether that's walking, running, biking, dancing, strength training, interval training, really anything, anything that you enjoy and that you feel good afterwards is a good strategy to take while you're also doing all that.

[00:29:49.670] – Allan
Alyssa, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be, what are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well.

[00:30:00.140] – Alyssa
My first one is one that I just started talking about, which is find activities that are good for you that also make you happy. So the biggest way to find, maintain healthy habits are to find habits that you actually enjoy doing and that you get up every morning wanting to do, excited to do, because you're much more likely to do those things on a regular basis. You're much more likely to keep them in your in your life for longer.

[00:30:41.440] – Alyssa
I'm not a huge fan of, like, doing something that just because you think it's good for you, but you don't feel great afterwards or you kind of are the second you finish your dreading the next time you have to do it. Because like you said, happiness is such an enormous part of fitness and wellness that I really don't think these things are worth doing unless you enjoy them. And there are so many ways you can impact your health in a positive way that you're bound to find at least one that that makes you happy while you do it.

[00:31:24.580] – Alyssa
My second strategy is to be kind to yourself. So life is busy. It's unpredictable. You could have this set plan of like you're going to do X workout, you're going to make X dinner, but then your car breaks down and you have to wait for triple A for three hours and then you end up pizza and really like these are things that are not going to derail all of your efforts. They're not things that mean you have to erase any progress you've made so far and kind of go back to start. And so just giving yourself that leeway to deal with those kinds of twists and turns when when they arrive and really just do what you can, when you can and be proud of what you've accomplished is really, really important.

[00:32:27.640] – Alyssa
And then my last strategy is to just be outside as much as possible. I know personally, I just I always feel better about life when I'm when I'm outside and whether that can be something of like walking your dog every day, going on hikes on the weekends or even just kind of sitting outside for a couple of minutes in the morning while you drink your coffee. I feel like the kind of being connected to nature, even if you live in a city or something like that, just kind of feeling the fresh air or the sun or like seeing grass or trees just has such a kind of calming, stress reducing effect that really can just take you out of your head, even if it's just for a couple of minutes and give you that moment of feeling refreshed and renewed and also empowered to tackle anything that might come your way.

[00:33:40.070] – Allan
Thank you. Alyssa. If someone wanted to learn more about you and the things that you're doing, including your book, The OMAD Diet, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:33:50.160] – Alyssa
Sure. When this goes live, the the diet will be available for purchase wherever books are sold. It's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, a lot of different places. So if you search for it there, you should be able to find it. You can also find it. And a lot of the other work I do on my website, which is alyssasybertz.com. And there you'll find information and links to the book, as well as to a lot of the other writing and stuff that I do.

[00:34:37.100] – Allan
All right. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/466. And I'll be sure to have the links there. Alyssa, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:34:47.840] – Alyssa
Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Post Show/Recap

[00:34:57.130] – Allan
Welcome back, Ras.

[00:34:58.570] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, wow, that was a really, really interesting interview about a whole new way of eating. It's really an interesting concept to just choose one meal per day. There's a lot of things I like about it, but I also have a few questions.

[00:35:12.940] – Allan
Yeah, it's you know, I've done it before on accident only because, you know, like, my truck got stuck in the mud. I think I've told this story on here. My truck gets stuck in the mud. I was gone working on a yard area I owned on some property, worked for the morning pretty hard. And then as I was trying to pull out, my truck got stuck. So I had to call AAA to pull me out of my own property and their truck broke. And so three hours later, waiting for a part, getting that fixed.

[00:35:42.350] – Allan
I went fishing because that's why I own the land in the first place. So I'm over there fishing and taking my you know, I'm I'm fine. I'm not worried about it, but I'm driving back and realizing it's been 24 hours since I had any food whatsoever.

[00:35:53.500] – Rachel
Wow.

[00:35:53.950] – Allan
Because when I do my fasting, which I do intermittent fasting almost consistently when I'm in full ketosis because I'm just not hungry that often. And my goal in ketosis, particularly at the very beginning of it, is to reduce some body fat. So I will skip a breakfast. I still eat breakfast foods when I break my fast, maybe lunch time or later. I'm not going to get stuck in the whole thing of eggs and bacon and have to be in the morning. I'll eat them whenever I want to. But so I've I've been to a point where I had one meal a day. But I think a lot of people that get into intermittent fasting and OMAD just they struggle initially because it is not something you just do. You don't just sit there and say, I had dinner last night, I'm going to wait until dinner to eat.

[00:36:40.450] – Allan
If you're not conditioned, I'm ready for it. You're going to see blood sugar spikes and plummets. And it's not it's not going be a fun experience. And I think the other thing that a lot of people do wrong with OMAD or with any kind of intermittent fasting is they just don't eat enough food.

[00:36:57.430] – Rachel
Mm hmm.

[00:36:58.900] – Allan
You know, food is its energy, but it's also nutrition. And so it's not just it's not just about calories. When you get into OMAD, you know, you've got to make sure you're getting your nutrition in that one meal. So if you're going to try the OMAD diet, you're probably going to have to supplement with some vitamins and minerals because you're probably going to find it hard to get all of that nutrition in one meal unless you really, really focus on it.

[00:37:27.460] – Allan
Now, Alyssa in in her book, has laid out some pretty good plans and some one approach to it. So if you're interested in it, I think you do want to do a little bit of research first.

[00:37:39.580] – Rachel
Yeah, that was my biggest question was how do you pack all of the nutrients you need to have into one meal? Like how how can you get a full day's worth of nutrients and into one simple meal?

[00:37:52.990] – Allan
It's it's really about nutritional density. OK, so you're not going to have white bread? That's going to be something you eat. White potatoes, you might you might occasionally have that, but you're going to be really looking for the vegetables that are really high in the vitamins and minerals that you're going to want.

[00:38:16.300] – Allan
You may, you know, do salt and you may have some potassium with your so you're looking at what are the foods I can have that are going to give me my potassium? What are the foods that are going to give me my zinc and then iodine and the whole bit. And that's what I was saying, is there's a there's a nutritional density limit there. So you're you're eating a lot of food. That one meal is a lot of food, but you want to look for the most nutritionally dense foods you can have so that you know that you're getting a balanced diet because it's still in the end you need that nutrition. Your body needs that nutrition. Short run.

[00:38:50.530] – Allan
You know, you can you can go with fewer calories, but that's not that's not sustainable. And if you're just doing this as a diet, meaning a fixed period of time, and then you're going to go back to eating normal, you're going to yo yo like crazy.

[00:39:05.000] – Rachel
Yeah, it sounds really challenging to not to mention that we have so many habits, you know, the morning coffee and an afternoon snack and a dessert after dinner or something or an evening snack. It's like there's so many habits that are built around our meals that it would be really a big foreign concept just to stick with one meal and not have anything else throughout the day.

[00:39:27.940] – Allan
Yeah, well, my thoughts would be, OK, start with a step away approach, you know, so like with intermittent fasting, if I were coaching someone on intermittent fasting, I'd say, OK, look, you had your dinner at seven o'clock, so from seven or seven thirty you were eating OK.

[00:39:44.140] – Allan
And then you wake up in the morning and maybe normally you would have your breakfast at seven o'clock. And so you're saying, OK, that's about a 12 hour gap. So that's a fast. We have break-fast, so we break our fast. Well, if you can push your breakfast to 8:00. OK, it's one extra hour and you might feel a little hungry. Mm hmm. That's actually good.

[00:40:06.610] – Rachel
Yeah.

[00:40:07.840] – Allan
It's it's not a bad thing to feel a little hungry. You're actually not going to starve. And being a little hungry is good because you feel that you actually now are listening to the leptin ghrelin conversation in your body, which is how we know we've eaten enough food. So you push it off an hour and you see how you feel and then you get used to that eight o'clock breakfast time and then when you're ready, you push it off to nine o'clock and it gets easier as you practice this. But the other side of it is, no, you can't you can't be eating a lot of high glycemic index foods for those meals, because if you eat high glycemic breakfast, yeah, at eight o'clock by 10, 30, 11 o'clock, you're going to be starving again as your blood sugar plummets and you're going to want that morning snack or second breakfast, as they call it.

[00:41:01.630] – Allan
So you want to avoid that in the best way to avoid that is eating nutritionally dense foods with their protein and some fat. And I would say particularly in the morning, moderate or low carbohydrate. Most of my breakfast, I have no carbohydrates, because you don't you actually don't need the carbohydrates at all, your body will turn to protein and fat into energy if it needs to. If it can, it'll also use body fat. So if you tend to be towards low carb, it's going to make intermittent fasting much easier. In fact, it might just accidentally happen. You wake up, it's like I'm not hungry.

[00:41:38.710] – Rachel
Right.

[00:41:39.080] – Allan
I'm gonna go ahead and go. And you find at 1:00 or 2:00 o'clock, you're like, well, I probably should eat and I usually do. And that's one of the things when I'm doing my intermittent fasting, as I sometimes even force myself to have a meal at two o'clock in the afternoon, because I know having just one meal at six o'clock is going to make it very difficult for me to get enough nutrition in. So I'll say, OK, I'm going to have, you know, a good salad. And so it's going to have a good mix of vegetables in it and a protein source.

[00:42:05.500] – Allan
So maybe I'm going to make a tuna fish salad. You know, I put that on an actual garden salad and I might sprinkle some bacon on there for just, you know, fairy dust and, you know, and maybe even cut up a little bit of an avocado and say, I'll have the rest of that for dinner. So that's a good, solid meal. Give me a good base of nutrition. Sure. It's it's generally light, so it's not going to be overfilling. And I have at about two o'clock and then I can have a reasonable good dinner with some, you know, a good protein source and some vegetables to round out my dinner.

[00:42:42.040] – Allan
And if I feel like I'm not getting the nutrition I need because, you know, maybe I'm saying, OK, I am eating some vegetables that have vitamin C, but I'm not eating a lot of fruit. So maybe I say I need to go ahead while I'm doing this. I need to take a vitamin C supplement. And so I might supplement with vitamin C, I might supplement with vitamin D. It's really just going to depend on how I feel I'm getting the nutrients I need based on how I'm eating.

[00:43:07.990] – Rachel
Yeah. Two meals a day. A day seems a lot more manageable than maybe one meal a day.

[00:43:15.520] – Allan
In general I would agree. But there's, there are there is a lot to be said. You know, the science, the science isn't really there to say yay or nay. At least that's what I heard going through all these, all these readings and talkings and all that is that when our body doesn't have to focus on dealing with food, you can do a lot of other things. That energy gets used somewhere else. It was a kind of a we were going through the coffee plantation I talked about.

[00:43:42.730] – Allan
He was saying, OK, if a plant gets too many berries on it, it can't keep up with all the berries. So some of the berries just die off because the plants a plant knows I only have a certain amount of energy, I can only ripen so many fruits and then while it's got fruit, it can't grow. So no more leaves. It needs the leaves for energy. So it's this trade off balance of what with the energy I have, what can I do?

[00:44:12.610] – Allan
And in our bodies are the same way. If we're not if we're using our energy or not giving our body enough energy, it turns off functions that we would like to be doing. So share in thinking about what you eat, how often you eat. You know, those types of decisions that we're making. We're making those energy decisions for our body because we're setting that mold in place.

[00:44:36.610] – Allan
And so, you know, it's that how much rain or how much sun a plant gets, how rich the soil is. We're creating our own soil. We're creating our own rain and our own sun. So if we're not drinking enough water, if we're not feeding ourselves right to give us the energy, and if we're not grounding ourselves and doing the good things for our lifestyle, we're not creating an environment that allows our body to flourish.

[00:45:03.310] – Rachel
It's interesting, you mentioned and similarly, I think it gives our brain a little bit of time away because how much time do we spend all day thinking about our next meal or what we need to do? And every day I get the question from the family, what's for dinner? Even though I'm the one that cooks it, it's Mike. But, you know, we spend a lot of time planning grocery shopping. What are we going to do for us? What are we going to cook if if that's the attractive thing about one meal a day is that I only have to answer that question once. Then plan it out once, then I've got all those extra free time. I can do other things with my brain.

[00:45:39.250] – Allan
And I think, as you go into that, you can go even a step further. And if you did some batch cooking, can you imagine the leverage you have. If you go through on a Saturday, Sunday and you cook four or five big meals.

[00:45:54.370] – Rachel
Yeah.

[00:45:54.910] – Allan
And you have those ready through the week, your whole workweek could basically be taken care of and you wouldn't even have to think about food. You just know, OK, on Monday we're having steak. On Tuesday, we're having roast, you know, maybe a roast Saturday or Sunday we're having this this vegan lasagna. And, you know, when you get through your week, you're like by the time you get to Friday, it's like, wow, you know, I didn't have to actually do any cooking and I can hit the farmer's market tomorrow and do it all again.

[00:46:24.010] – Rachel
I love that. That is a great idea. We need to do more of that.

[00:46:28.480] – Allan
Support your local farmers, you know.

[00:46:30.050] – Rachel
That's right.

[00:46:30.500] – Allan
So that's why I bought the the coffee from from this place. And if you find yourself in Boquete, please message me and let me know and I'll I'll hook you up with these guys. They've got a little they brought a container down with their stuff, you know, we did it, we high, we hired someone and it's their container. But they actually bought a container up in the States and brought it down and then they turned the container into an apartment.

[00:46:55.900] – Rachel
Oh, wow.

[00:46:56.540] – Allan
Yeah. So they rent out this container on a on a coffee farm. Oh, my God. You want good coffee every morning when you wake up, this is the place to stay. But anyway…

[00:47:07.990] – Rachel
That sounds great.

[00:47:08.920] – Allan
And you can have coffee. Coffee is not really breaking a fast or a couple calories maybe in a coffee. But for the most part, the black coffee is not a violation of OMAD. You're not going to go to OMAD jail for having your coffee.

[00:47:22.390] – Rachel
Good. It's a good thing.

[00:47:24.910] – Allan
Yeah. All right, Rachel, this is a really good conversation.

[00:47:28.300] – Rachel
It was.

[00:47:28.300] – Allan
I'll talk to you next week.

[00:47:29.680] – Rachel
Thanks. Take care.

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch	– John Somsky	– Margaret Bakalian
– Deb Scarlett	– Judy Murphy	– Melissa Ball
– Debbie Ralston	– Leigh Tanner	– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Intermittent fasting made easy with Brian Gryn

Less...