Let’s take a breather and discuss a variety of interesting health and peak performance tidbits.

It’s my pleasure to serve as the curator of the museum of healthy living and share some interesting and informative quotes on an assortment of topics that we hop from one to the other. First, we cover the most simple and profound dietary advice imaginable from bestselling author Michael Pollan: “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.” Note his epic follow-up one-liner, which is the importance of avoiding what we call junk food, but Pollan more accurately describes as, “edible food-like substances.” We cover seven additional details of dietary advice from Pollan. Moving on to one of my favorite ancestral health movement forefathers, Dr. Art DeVany, who says “starve and exercise” to heal damaged cells in the brain and the body. DeVany also asserts that “we are most human when we don’t eat.” Science confirms that we function at highest efficiency when we are in a fasted state, where the natural cellular detoxification process of autophagy is optimized and the process of (desirable) programmed cell death called apoptosis is up-regulated.  

Next, a quick tidbit from Medium.com relationship columnist Kris Gage, talking about the importance of keeping promises you make to yourself in order to build healthy self-esteem. My favorite blogger Seth Godin weighs in with a classically pithy suggestion to “have the discipline to say no to distractions” and fix up flawed systems and dysfunctional self-talk that is holding us back. I share a message from Ben Greenfield where he discusses insights from Robert Greene’s book, Laws of Human Nature. We can aspire to model Leonardo da Vinci and his motto in life of ostinato rigore (relentless rigor.)  

TIMESTAMPS: 

Michael Pollan, author, advises avoiding “edible food-like substances. [00:02:19]  

Dr. Loren Cordain offers this stat: Seventy-one percent of calories in the modern diet come from foods that are entirely foreign to our genetic makeup. Dr. Andre Weil says: twenty percent of all the caloric consumption  in the Standard American Diet comes from soybean oil alone which is harmful to your body. [00:04:07]  

When purchasing olive oil, look for “first cold press only” on domestic oil. [00:06:03]  

Seven additional details from Michael Pollan: (1) Don’t eat anything that your great grandmother would not recognize as food. [00:07:58]  

(2) Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients or ingredients you can’t pronounce. [00:10:01]  

(3) Stay out of the middle of the supermarket. Real food tends to be on the outer edges of the store. [00:10:06]  

(4) Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot.  [00:10:28]  

(5) It’s not just what you eat, but how you eat. [00:10:40]  

(6) Families traditionally ate together around the table, and not the TV. [00:11:48]  

(7) Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline. [00:12:04]  

Dr. Art DeVany talks about fasting’s impact on depression. [00:12:39]  

Kris Gage on self-esteem:  You can’t build self-esteem if you keep breaking promises you made to yourself. [00:16:17]  

From Seth Godin: In order to make that forward leap, you need to trust yourself. [00:17:49]  

Robert Greene talks about laws of human nature. [00:18:25]  

LINKS: 

Brad Kearns Podcasts 

Michael Pollan 

Dr. Art DeVany 

Kris Gage 

Seth Godin 

Ben Greenfield 

LISTEN:

Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is Brad Kearns. I cover Health
Fitness Peak Performance personal growth relationships happiness and longevity.
So slow, down take a deep breath, take a cold plunge, and pursue your competitive
goals in all areas of life with great intensity and passion but release your attachment
to the outcome and learn to have fun along the way. That’s the theme of the show.
Here we go.
Forty percent of the calories in a typical restaurant meal come from refined high
poly. Unsaturated vegetable oils Horrors. How can that be you ask? When you order
a nice salad at an upscale restaurant because the oil that they’ using for the salad
dressing the oils that they’ cooking your salmon or your steak. in or whatever
meal, you’ consuming contributes so much of the caloric density to something like
a salad that you’ getting big doses of oils. Even when you’ choosing a healthy
entree at a reputed restaurant. Hey, it’s Brad and I’m going to call this breather
show.
The mixtape you got the motion.
Yes, I have an assortment of fun interesting inspiring quotes and commentary from
various articles other podcast picked and chosen for your entertainment and
edification. So here comes a compilation on an assortment of important topics all
relating to that important show theme of getting over yourself living a happy
healthy balanced fit active long life me and more my girlfriend an occasional podcast
guests. And for me that this is one of my valued contributions to the world. I’m sort
of like the curator the guy who’s into all this health stuff because people who are
living every day busy hectic lives don’t really have time. So here you go. You can sit
back and get some fun stuff.
Even if you have a short attention span, we’ll move from one thing to the next
starting with the prominent healthy eating author, Michael Hall is known for his
best-selling books like Omnivore’s Dilemma and in defense of food advocating for
locally grown sustainable natural eating and most recently writing about
psychedelic mind-altering drugs. So here he goes into the next topic.
Man, this stuff is getting super popular these days. I feel like I’m totally out of the
loop. I’m kind of in favor of that clean simple natural living lifestyle. I have a big
decision to make if I’m considering taking ibuprofen. So haven’t so far delved into
that world. But guess what my good friends Adam and Vanessa promise to come on
the podcast and talk about their Ayahuasca Retreats and this whole deal with the
psychedelics in the popularity. Anyway, Michael Pollan back to the foodstuff and he
came up with perhaps the single most profound and helpful sentence to guide you to
healthy eating and wade through all the controversy and the factions. Here’s his epic
quote: “Eat food; mostly plants. Not too much.

How’s that anyway? The follow-up to that is is other epic quote and he wants you to
avoid what he calls “ edible food-like” substances. And that is the most accurate
literal definition for the preponderance of crap that is featured in The Standard
American diet. Dr. Loren Cordain offers up this stat that 71 percent of the calories in
the modern diet come from foods that are entirely foreign to our genetic makeup
heavily processed foods such as sugar refined cereal grains refined High poly,
unsaturated vegetable oils amazing stat that 71% also referenced. Dr. Andrew Weil
saying that 20% of all the caloric consumption in the standard American diet comes
from soybean oil alone. Just one of the many
Refined high poly unsaturated vegetable oils that are toxic to your body
immediately upon ingestion go search YouTube for my interview with Dr. Cate
Shanahan when we talk about the evils of these refined vegetable oils particularly to
your very sensitive brain cells. Oh mercy. You’ll never want to consume any again,
but sadly and unfortunately when you go out to a restaurant and this is a stat cited
by Dr. Shanahan 40 percent of the calories in a typical restaurant meal come from
refined High poly. Unsaturated vegetable oils. Horrors! How can that be you ask
when you order a nice salad at an upscale restaurant because the oils that they’
using for the salad dressing the oils that they’ cooking your salmon or your stake
in or whatever meal, you’ consuming contributes so much of the caloric density to
something like a salad that you’ getting big doses of oils, even when you’
choosing a healthy entree at a reputed.
Distraught I’ve gone to the trouble to ask the waitress or the manager at times what
is in the salad dressing and they call it olive oil, but they admit under questioning in
the corner that it’s a blend of vegetable oil and olive oil. This is all to save money
which is a shocking statistic because when you buy the lousy heavily processed
uncertain product quality olive oils at The Big Box store you spending 10 bucks you
buy a big giant jug of what’s titled extra virgin olive oil, but we know that there’s
minimal regulation on these labels and when you’ looking at a product that’s been
imported from far away, even though it sounds romantic to get the olive oil from
Italy Greece or Spain. You’ very likely to do much much better when you choose a
domestically grown Oil. We’ here in California with plenty of opportunities for
that. Hopefully, you can find some at your local quality grocer, but look for a
domestic oil and if you can find the terminology first cold-press only that is your
guarantee that they have taken these olives, press them under cold temperatures
rather than high temperatures. So as not to disturb the health benefits in the
antioxidants and not introduce any impurities or free radicals. So you want to get
first cold press only extra virgin olive oil. Of course avocado oil has become a darling
in the healthy eating industry Primal Kitchen, a big driver of that making these
avocado oil based mayonnaises and salad dressings for your pleasure rather than
the unfortunate options that we’ve had for our entire lifetime made with vegetable
oils. Look at your labels scrutinize this stuff and get that vegetable oil out of your
diet as a nice aside when we’ trying to cover Michael Pollan’s profound suggestion to eat food mostly plants not too much and then avoid edible food-like substances and back to that.
Statistic about the 40% of restaurant calories coming from vegetable oil that’s
across the all spectrum of restaurants. Of course when you’ eating fast food, you
know that that stuff is just ladened with vegetable oil and that’s why we want to stay
away from that stuff at all costs. So back to Michael Pollan this article had seven
additional details digging in deeper to his dietary advice. Number one: don’t eat
anything that your great-grandmother would not recognize as food quote when you
pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes or eat something with 15 ingredients that
you can’t pronounce ask yourself. What are those things doing there? Dr. Peter Attia
echoed this in his podcast the very first podcast on the get over yourself channel.
He’s doing great with his podcast titled the drive go listen to that go back and listen
to that early show that he did on get over yourself launching us with still the most
downloads of all show so we kicked off.

The bang I barely made it through the show. You can laugh about some of my intro
where I passed out with like three minutes left because I just come back from
Mexico and was bacon an illness. Luckily the attending physician / podcast guest
helped nurse me back to health and I was on my way to my next podcast
appointment up the coast with Brian Mackenzie another awesome early show
talking about the very cutting edge of fitness and how we’ transitioning away from
this mentality that emphasizes the raw expenditure of caloric energy and instead
putting into the forefront conceptsclike recovery and breath awareness breath
practice and hot and cold therapies. Wonderful discussion. Yes, that was a tough day
on the podcast circuit, but I was sucking it up on behalf of my devoted audience
giving you those two awesome shows, so please go listen to them. I remember that
night getting violently ill and having to ride out this Mexican Illness, but I was
running on fumes and did two great recordings before.

Right, I succumbed into the bushes at the Mothers Market Shopping Center in
Orange County. Sorry about that guys. Okay back to Michael Pollan. So don’t eat
anything. Your great-grandmother would not recognize as food same advice from
Dr. Peter Attia. Number two: don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients or
ingredients. You can’t pronounce. Number three: stay out of the middle of the
supermarket. Shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer
edge of the store near the loading docks where it can be replaced with fresh foods
when it goes bad. Gee you could go into your market. And first question is, excuse
me. Can you help me find the loading docks so I can find some fresh food? Good
strategy. Number four: Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot. There are
exceptions like honey, but as a rule things like Twinkies that never go bad aren’t
really food. Number five: it’s not just what you eat but how you eat. Always leave
the table a little hungry says Pollan. Many cultures have rules that you stop eating
before your full in Japan. They have a saying that means you should eat until you’
4/5 full. Islamic culture has a similar rule and in German culture they say tie off the
sack before it is full. In America. Do we do that now? We just unbutton our belt to the next hole on Thanksgiving and on other wonderful occasions of celebration. Can
anyone name? I’ll send you a prize. If you can send me an email get over yourself
podcast at gmail.com describing some wonderful contribution that American culture
has made to global cuisine. I can’t even think of any off the top of my head. I really
can’t except for Primal Kitchen and their avocado oil based salad dressings and
mayonnaise, but how about a cultural tradition America that has enriched the global
Cuisine. Okay, that’s your challenge for the week.
Number six: families traditionally ate together around a table and not a TV at
regular mealtimes. It’s a good tradition enjoy meals with the people you love
remember when eating between meals felt wrong pull. Number seven: don’t buy
food where you buy your gasoline. In the United States 20 percent of all food is
eaten in the car. Oh my gosh that probably correlates with increased accident rates
because we know that’s not the case in some of these more refined cultures such as
Europe, Japan. That’s disgusting! Wolf and down a burrito while you’ driving and
traffic looking at text messages on your magnetized phone. Okay? Okay enough of
that. Let’s make eating a celebration of life and try to strive for those quiet relaxed
low-stress meal times. Thank you Michael Pollan,
And now we go on to one of my guys and the ancestral health movement and really
the first guy that I was exposed to through Mark Sisson. We’ve been following this
guy’s blog before Primal Blueprint even started. He was such a great inspiration to
the many current leaders and practitioners of Primal Paleo ancestral living and his
name is dr. Art DeVaney by trade. He was an economics professor specializing in the
economics of Hollywood movies. One of the first people to try to refine and extract
some insights about whether a movie is going to make money or not. And one of his
most interesting principles that he advanced was this sort of chaotic theory of
success where you can’t really predict things in a linear manner like we want to but
that’s an aside in the economics Department. That was my major in college. So some
of his commentary in his core area of expertise is career is really interesting. But of
course, these are deep Health Enthusiast. He’s over 80 years old and still in shape
with this wonderful exercise regimen focused on lifting heavy things for short
duration workouts and also prolonged fasting and caloric restriction to promote
longevity and avoid disease. So he was asked the question. This is on an old-time
podcast from nine or ten years ago that he was talking mostly about economic
theory and also got into some dietary discussion and the question was how can diet
impact our mood what would be your advice for someone who struggles with
depression and DeVaney? His answer was starve and exercise quote the starvation
part of it is to eat up some of these dysfunctional synapses as we know when you
are starving or when you are fasting you up regulate the wonderful Natural Cellular
detoxification process that is called autophagy and also the cancer prevention.
Programmed cell death that is called apoptosis. So you up regulate otology and
apoptosis in the body. And this keeps your cellular matter in good shape and avoids
the proliferation of diseased or damaged cells you’ doing some housecleaning
when you are fasting that is why experts assert and confirm that when you’ in a

fasted State your body is operating at the highest level of efficiency back to DeVaney
my saying is for every damaged molecule. There’s a damaged thought those are
injured neurons inside the brain and you just need to get rid of the dysfunctional
molecules that are causing those neurons to malfunction again. He’s tying this back
to the answer about how to handle cure depression anxiety difficulties with brain
function and damaged neurons.
Then back to the quote heal the brain with neurotropic factors be outside formulate
new thoughts and new patterns of behavior when my first wife was declining from a
host of other things I’d take her walking as much as I could. I would tell her bad
jokes change her surroundings, the typical things people have to do being outside is
enormously effective. There’s stimuli you can’t even relate to but you perceive them
you’ unconscious brain is what’s going to heal you first and right onto my favorite
relationship columnist named Chris gauge on the medium.com. I want to do some
more shows talking about all her relationship insights may be talking over with me
and more but right now a quick tidbit talking about Peak Performance aspirations,
like committing to promises I made to myself is how you build self-esteem and
here’s her quote when it came to
I made to myself. I talked a lot of shit, but I rarely did anything. You can’t build self-
esteem. If you keep breaking promises, you’ve made to yourself the action of
keeping promises to you is what loving yourself looks like. This is how I started to
trust myself again. Yeah, if you listened to enough podcast interviews with Peak
performers, this theme comes up over and over where they’ making these
commitments just to themselves. You know, who’s really awesome for this kind of
message is Seth Godin. He writes a wonderful daily blog post. That’s very very short.
It can range from a couple sentences to maximum of a couple few paragraphs. So
please go sign up for his wonderful daily email newsletter, which is just the
repurposing of his blog post at Seth Godin.com. I send so many emails to myself and
take screenshots captivated by this simple sensible and very practical.
Advice and on the topic were discussing. Here’s a message from one of Seth’s Post in
order to make that forward leap. You need to trust yourself to create space to have
the discipline to say no to distractions or even two projects that put you back into
the One X mode instead of the 10x mode that we all fantasize about right? I added
that clause and back to Seth the reason that there are so few 10x contributors. Isn’t
that we lack innate Talent. It’s that our systems and our self-talk seduce us into
believing that repeating 1X work to exhaustion is a safer path. Whoo. How about
Ben Greenfield go listen to that wonderful show. I did with the biohacking king of
the universe and such a thoughtful an interesting guy. I’m greatly inspired every
time I listen to him or talk with him because he’s just pushing the outer edges of
human Peak Performance. And so
Curious and passionate about all areas of Healthy Living athletic performance and
being happy and expressing gratitude for life and a daily basis. Anyway, here’s been
talking about Robert Greene’s book laws of human nature. Keep in mind that your

life is short that it could end any day. You must have a sense of urgency to make the
most of this limited time. You don’t need deadlines or people telling you what to do
and when to finish any motivation you need comes from within you are complete
and self-reliant when it comes to operating with this inner Authority we can
consider Leonardo da Vinci our model his motto in life was ostinato regard that
means relentlessly rigor whenever Leonardo was given a commission he went well
beyond the task pouring over every detail to make the work more lifelike or
effective. No,
I had to tell him to do this. He was ferociously diligent and hard on himself. Although
his interests range far and wide when he attacked a particular problem. It was with
complete focus. He had a sense of a personal mission to serve mankind to contribute
toward its progress impelled by this inner authority. He pushed beyond all of the
limits that he had inherited.