In part 2 of my conversation with Tawnee, we start off with a discussion about cold therapy and heat therapy. As many of you know, cold plunges have been an integral part of my daily routine for some time now, so I share a few choice tips, as well as some of the many benefits that I’ve been getting out of my daily practice.
People have been doing this in Finland for many, many years, so clearly there’s something to it, but how do you do it exactly? Is there a right way and a wrong way? Is cryotherapy worth all the hype? Is it really an instant cure for anxiety? The answers to those questions are no, and yes, and soon, you’ll get way more information about the subject as I’m actually currently working on a book all about this ancient healing modality – there is still so much to learn about the benefits of cold therapy, as well as the best methods to use for maximum effectiveness. This segues into a discussion about heat therapy, and I tell Tawnee about the home sauna I’ve recently invested in, which I have been using frequently and really enjoying lately – so simple, and the perfect companion to a cold plunge.
Speaking of cold water, Tawnee entertains us with some great stories about life on the road aka VAN LIFE! Can you imagine taking a cold shower when you’re in a van while it’s 40 degrees outside? Yikes! But as Tawnee explains, the main thing that got her through the icy shower was knowing that, since cold water is a hormetic stressor, the cold shower was actually good for her. You know what else is good for you? Not being tied down to having to eat regular meals as your main source of energy. We also talk about how I was actually advised by my doctor to “eat more healthy food” and why I advocate for being extremely strict, dedicated, and committed to the purity and quality of your diet, instead of just trying to discipline yourself through the use of “moderation.” I see “moderation” as a pretty ineffective method when you think about the fact that we are the fattest nation by far. As William Davis explains in his book Wheat Belly, the gliadin protein in gluten actually stimulates your appetite and causes you to eat more…and he’s not talking about eating a tiny snack here and there, he’s talking 300 calories per day more!
My thoughts on moderation are, when these things like sugar and gluten are so powerfully addictive, how can you even really indulge in them moderately? It’s such a slippery slope… There’s a reason why Dr. Robert Lustig says a little bit of sugar leads to a lot of sugar, because after the inevitable blood sugar crash, you find that you’re instantly craving more. So, my view on moderation is, when it’s so tough to be moderate with these things anyways, why try and struggle so much, just to satisfy that craving to have “only a little bit?” I also think if you don’t place the highest priority onto your health and your diet, that in itself is a habit that is seriously worth trying to turn around ASAP. Some things might seem extreme, like automatically reading the labels on everything you buy. But since you can never really be sure that someone else’s health standards are up to par with yours, you’ve got to cultivate healthy habits, such as reading labels automatically, and make sure it sets in, so it no longer feels like this thing you’re doing that might be too extreme or make you too picky of an eater, but it’s just a normal part of your routine. This applies to bad oils too. Unfortunately, it can be quite challenging to avoid these since they’re hidden practically everywhere, so you do have to be proactive and assertive and just ask restaurants if they can cook your food in butter. Is it possible to be too strict on the bad oils stance? Is it ok to occasionally indulge? Unfortunately…no, not really. The reason why you cannot let this one slide is because the effects it has on your health are super serious: as Dr. Cate explained on the show, bad oils are so toxic that just one serving of French fries can harden your arteries and make blood flow less difficult for up to 24 hours. It’s actually worse for you than smoking!
OK, so we pretty much know what to do now, right? Just eat clean, whole foods, don’t smoke, don’t let bad oils sneak into your diet, and you’re all good, right? Well…not always. It’s just not that simple…. the reality is, so many people have autoimmune diseases and food allergies, which can complicate things. Avocados, almonds, and beets might be staple foods for one person but will cause severe allergic reactions for someone else. As Tawnee points out, so many people think they’re doing the right thing for their health by eating a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, and they don’t even realize that they’re inadvertently causing harm to their digestive system, because they don’t even know that some of the “clean food” they’re eating doesn’t work their particular body! And how do you know that you’re eating food that your body is sensitive to? Do you get bloated after eating? Do you burp or hiccup after meals? If you are experiencing these symptoms, then you know that internally, something could be way off. Tawnee also urges us not to forget the importance of testing – you can get blood tests done, you can take a stool test, and Tawnee also recommends doing a GI test, so you can get a feel for what is happening internally on a real, scientific level. Tests are not usually inexpensive, but they are undoubtedly worth it, considering the amount of information you will learn about your body, and what you can do with that information – which is know how to heal yourself by lowering inflammation and giving your body the proper fuel, so you can thrive, and not merely survive. Tawnee has helped countless clients with her knowledge about nutrition, so sit back, relax, and take advantage of this opportunity to learn from a true health and wellness expert.
TIMESTAMPS:
Brad talks about the importance of his cold therapy. [03:39]
What you are putting in your body and your exercise regimen are very important to getting the change you want. [09:50]
There are many opinions on the proper healthy diet, but the bottom line is getting rid of the crap first. [13:38]
Keto has many health benefits, but it has been bastardized and distorted. [16:06]
Moderation has failed disastrously because the bit of sugar and the bit of gluten stimulates appetite. [23:30]
The psychological component is important. If there is suffering and stress in association with dietary change, you are guaranteed to fail. [26:52]
Does Brad completely avoid vegetable oils? [27:27]
A serving of French fries disturbs normal healthy cardiovascular function. [28:09]
Before cutting calories in your attempt to lose weight, you have to be healthy. [30:36]
Same with training. When do you go back to training after an illness? When you feel fine is the answer. [33:02]
Your own knowledge of how your gut feels (pain or discomfort) can sometimes be an indicator of what is going on more than a test can. [36:53]
When returning to endurance training, how did Brad approach the carb refueling? [38:05]You can restock glycogen overnight or in hours without eating carbs. [41:13]
Food can be a coping mechanism for stress. [44:55]
LINKS:
Get Over Yourself episode with Cate Shanahan
Get Over Yourself episode with Tawnee PrazakKeto Reset Diet
Maybe Not So Definitive Guide to Cold Therapy
QUOTES:
- “It’s extremely healthy to get good at manufacturing and burning your own energy sources internally. That’s what keto is all about.” – Brad Kearns
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad: 00:00 Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author, an athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit, and happy in hectic, high-stress, modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge, and expertly balance that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.
Tawnee: 03: 10 Several weeks ago we released part one of my conversation with Brad Kearns who is the host of the get over yourself podcast and coauthor of Primal Endurance and the Keto Reset Diet along with Mark Sisson. If you haven’t heard that part of the conversation yet, head over to the show notes for the link. Get on that. And this is part two of my conversation with Brad. You can find out more about Brad over bradkearns.com. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy this part of the show.
Brad: 03:39 And so for me, like my daily routine is so easily getting out of hand when I’m self-directed and I have these objectives I want to do in these priorities. And then the emails come in and the phone calls come in or whatever’s happening. I know that if I can like develop the ability to just wake up first, I do my flexibility movement drills, I put that video on YouTube also and then I jump in the cold water every time. It gives me a sense of like control and satisfaction that I’m kind of in the driver’s seat with my life and hopefully that will carry over into my ability to manage my email inbox with my other ambitions for the workday. And so that part is kind of like the intangibles, but the physical part of getting that norepinephrine boost and it’s like an awakening, it’s invigorating and gets more blood and oxygen going. So there’s some research about having how that helps boost testosterone levels. So maybe that can be thrown into the picture. And then you were talking about Ray Cronise. In his success with dropping body fat just from cold exposure, it’s pretty, uh, pretty compelling and interesting stuff.
Tawnee: 04:40 It is now in the cold exposure. Do you know this from what the studies show? I don’t off the top of my head if something like the cryotherapy stuff that’s super trendy right now, if that qualifies is getting your, you know, exposure for the day for this, for these purposes.
Brad: 04:53 Yeah. There’s some talk about that and Rhonda Patrick’s paper and it might be slightly less efficacy because it’s called, you know, conducting the, you’re getting colder when you go into the water and um, it’s if you’re a big on the cryo thing, um, I’m sure you’re getting an assortment of wonderful benefits that are pretty similar. Um, Kelly Starrett thinks cold water is way better than cryo and I trust what he says a lot. Um, my thing is like, I bought this thing for 380 bucks or something at Home Depot. They ship it to your door, you plug it in, you buy a timer, and it’s 24/7 temperature therapy. And so for the investment compared to 45 a pop at the cryo place or whatever, the monthly membership of 99 or the sauna was a little more expensive. But if you go to almost seven.com, you can seem like you can order a home sauna.
Brad: 05:48 There’s a personal use one, and they’re really affordable, easy to assemble, and all of a sudden you have 200 degrees sauna at your disposal also. So I’m digging my side yard in Sacramento, it’s, it’s unbelievable. But for cold exposure, yeah, I mean, it makes sense that it’s so simple to do. And I transitioned from taking the cold shower, which is not quite the intensity that I want. I want something serious, you know, and then putting buying ice bag and putting in your tub and all that, going to all that trouble. Now you just, you know, this things, you’ve got to unplug it and then you jump in, unplug it first when you’re jumping into an electrical appliance that’s filled with water. Uh, but it’s really convenient. So I tell it that for the water,
Tawnee: 06:26 I have to say for the convenience factor too. Um, I’ve done the cryotherapy chambers and they’re interesting. I think it’s always kind of a trip to like, you know, have all the smoke or steam or whatever. It’s not steam. I don’t know what it is, vapor vapor or something. But I think there’s more of like a mental challenging component to doing it yourself as far as like putting yourself in the cold water and saying, you know, this is what I choose to do or I don’t know, there’s just like a, a mental strength thing that I think that is really valuable.
Brad: 06:58 Um, go look at Mark’s Daily Apple, the, it’s, it’s called the Maybe Not So Definitive Guide to Cold Therapy. Cause there’s a lot of question about whether it does contribute to fat loss with this brown fat activation, which could be amazing benefit, but you could also get a higher appetite if you spend a lot of time in cold water so it could wash it out. But it’s an instant cure for anxiety. It’s known as an instant cure for anxiety. Even you jump in that cold water, you get this diver’s reflex and then you get this hormonal boost of norepinephrine. And so if you’re having a rough day, literally you can jump in there and in 30 seconds you will alter your chemical and hormonal state in a positive manner. Um, Van Gogh was treated with cold exposure twice a week for two hours for his adult life cause he suffered from depression and anxiety and it’s been used and the, the baths and the spa, uh, you know, uh, treatments in, in Europe for hundreds of years.
Brad: 07:51 So I don’t know anybody who’s like an Finland in the sauna and the cold jumping in the lake has been a part of their culture for 800 plus years. And, um, it’s there, there’s something to exposing yourself to temperature, stress, especially today when we’re in temperature controlled environment our entire lives, um, that hormetic stress or is very important. And if you lose that or you don’t challenge your body, you start to atrophy. All these attributes that are really important, like managing your, your hormone balance. And your emotions. So it’s a, it’s a hormetic stressor, a brief positive, natural.
Tawnee: 08:23 So when we’re living in the van, um, there’s days this time of year when, so it’s all hooked up to solar, so we don’t have to run the engine to power anything. But when you’re in fall and winter months, especially traveling around the country, you’re not in Southern California, you’re faced with cloudy, rainy days so you’re not getting the solar charge. So there was a handful of days where we could not heat our water and so we’d take, cause we have a shower in the van and we’d heat or we wouldn’t be able to. So we’re wanting to take showers. Especially me, I’m like a shower person. So it’s like I’d much take a cold shower than no shower at all. But you know, going into that, cause it’s like cold water. It’s so cold and especially when it’s like 30 or 40 degrees outside, it’s not like you get to walk out into like a tropical environment where it’s super nice all of a sudden. But I kept telling myself, Hey, there is a crap ton of benefits to me doing this and standing in this ice cold shower and then naturally warming up afterwards, um, that make it well worthwhile and look at this as just a really good opportunity.
Brad: 09:26 Yeah. And just so people don’t freak out. Again, I’m going in this cold tub and I’m getting out before I start shivering, before I start to feel goofy because that can, you know, hamper your immune functioning, catch a cold from getting in cold. But on the contrary, like a proper temperature therapy regimen has shown more resilience against cold. So if you go in the cold tub all winter long, you can experience improved immune function.
Tawnee: 09:50 And that’s what Ray Cronise. Um, when I talked to him, he was having me do it specifically for the cold iron man that I was going to be doing was, you know, that again, that [inaudible] kind of thing where it’s not as much of, but the water there is funny that day, I’ll never forget it cause it was like 30 something degrees outside, but the water was like 60, which is, was actually like,
Brad: 10:10 Feels better.
Tawnee: 10:12 like a hot tub. So in this whole equation of optimizing testosterone, especially as we age, I can’t help but talk about the diet component or supplement component. You know, what you’re putting in your body now. So we’ve talked about things that are working and obviously you’ve been aligned with Mark Sisson and Primal Endurance for years and years and years now, you know, which promotes more of the low carb approach. Um, so yeah. When you’ve been experimenting the last couple of years with your own return to your endurance training, how does your nutrition play into this? What have you found that’s been working for you?
Brad: 10:50 Right. So we’re, we’re making our way to the, uh, the, uh, the solution, the, the secrets. And we covered the, uh, reduction of stress in your, uh, aerobic in your endurance training patterns. So that was the big one. I think if you’re in a chronic training pattern, you’re going to tank your hormones and you’re going to do all kinds of mess to your body that nothing can make up for whether you’re eating healthy or even sleeping a lot. Yeah. So, um, we had that respecting the, the math heart rate as an important distinction between a workout that’s comfortable and minimally stressful and a workout that’s stressful. And of course, you’re gonna get all these benefits from high stress workouts in terms of fitness. And you can do those. And when you do them once in a while, they can have a, a, a boosting effect to your hormones, right?
Brad: 11:40 I mean, a high intensity strength training session that’s 30 minutes or less will spike testosterone and human growth hormone for females and males and give that important anti-aging pulse of hormones in your bloodstream. Now when start going over that 30 minute mark and you’re in the gym for too long at boot camp or with your trainer or just hoisting the weights over and over until you’re exhausted, then the stress hormones circulate in your bloodstream too long and you end up getting depleted and burnt out and exhausted and you lose those, uh, that, that hormetic stress or benefits. Same with sitting in the cold water for 30 minutes, right? So toning down your aerobic activities to be fat burning emphasis doing the strength training, the high intensity stuff, uh, you know, in a strategic manner. So you’re not doing it too frequently. And then we’re going into the diet part and Oh man, we’re, we’re getting fatigue on this, on this corner too because there’s been so much hairsplitting I think there’s been like faction building and critique and, um, now we’re 10 years into this, uh, this ancestral health movement, which has exploded in popularity.
Brad: 12:47 You call it paleo primal. Keto is now the hot word and most searched term for diet. And it is.
Tawnee: 12:54 all mainstream level to, you know, I remember when Ben and I
Brad: 12:56 I know.
Tawnee: 12:58 this like six, seven years ago,
Brad: 13:00 cutting edge man now it’s like there’s signs of your grocery store, the Keto aisle or whatever. Yeah. So I, I, I’ve tried to maintain, um, an open mind and maybe even tone down some of my extreme enthusiasm for this and that cause I found like, especially with like family and friends, the more exuberant you are and the more like, uh, you can, you can kind of drift into a preacher mode, soapbox mode and then you don’t even get the message across that you, you might wish you could. If you’re in this world, and this is my game. I’m a health and fitness promoter expert, author. I’m trying to get the message out, right?
Brad: 13:38 So I like to pursue that common ground where we don’t have to argue about things and find, find our top priorities. Like when you go into the ER, there’s a triage strategy. So the person who’s bleeding out of their face gets treated before your, uh, your thumb that you got hurt in the, uh, in the gardening accident. Right? So all of us listening, especially in the athletic scene, might want to make a concerted effort to eliminate nutrient deficient foods from the diet. And it can be a huge awakening to health, whether it’s called going vegan for 45 days and I feel awesome. Oh yeah. What’d you do? I cut out this, this and this or going carnivore for 45 days and all my, all my health problems have vanished and there’s data and there’s research and people you know, saying this stuff is the end all and they’re all right.
Brad: 14:27 They’re all correct because they’re hitting this common ground of getting rid of the crap first. And I know carnivore guys, I’ve talked to Danny Veiga on a podcast and he’s as fit and and you know, incredibly healthy as they come. And he was in the midst of a six week carnivore diet, but he was an early adopter that just eating stuff off a cow. Only that was it. No health risks. Nobody is, his blood values got better and better. And same with the vegan community. They’re having this plant based lifestyle that’s extremely healthy and they’re more conscious about what they’re eating. So I’m thumbs up for all of that. But then to answer your question again, yeah. The, the ancestral health, uh, rationale, uh, hopefully make sense to everyone because we’re looking at our evolutionary past example, Hunter gatherer, and here’s the foods that we ate that sustained human evolution.
Brad: 15:15 Now there’s healthy foods today, like dark chocolate. I’m a big fan of, we didn’t eat those in paleolithic times. It doesn’t mean they’re not healthy. They’re in fact, there’s a lot of health benefits to modern foods. So we don’t want a pin hole with like a soundbite saying, Hey, is it off the ground or off a tree, then donate it or do we eat it or whatever. So you can have too many things that come off the ground or off a tree. And especially in like eating fruit in the wintertime or eating an excess of fruit in general. It’s just turning into sugar in your body and it could be contributing to your fat reduction, uh, frustration. So you know, a sensible approach where you’re emphasizing healthy foods. And then, you know, Mark coined this term metabolic flexibility however long ago, or maybe he doesn’t get total credit for that, but people are talking about this concept of not being wedded to regular meals as your main source of energy.
Brad: 16:06 So I don’t know how much more simple and non-controversial I can get, but it’s extremely healthy to get good at manufacturing and burning your own energy sources internally. That’s what keto is all about. Keto for the ten second primers, when you extremely restrict your carbohydrates or you’re fasting or starving in life, your liver will make these ketone bodies are ketones and they’re burned like sugar, especially in the brain, which is highly reliant upon glucose. And it burns, uh, at a rate of vastly more than any other organ in the body. The brain burns 20 to 25% of all our daily calories and is only two to 3% of the total body weight. In our case it’s 4% but for most listeners, it’s 2% to 3%. So, Oh, I was going to push that laugh track button, but it didn’t work anyway. So there’s so many health benefits to Keto, but it’s been bastardized and distorted.
Brad: 16:59 It’s the bacon and butter diet, right? Dirty keto. Dr Oz just did a show on this where, yeah, what is dirty keto? It’s eating the, you know, cheese and crackers and throwing the crackers away and eating this crap and that crap. And, um, so, you know, the, the, the main goal should be metabolic flexibility. And a big part of that is, uh, fasting and getting good at, uh, you know, burning your own energy without needing to have a meal. Or what about the endurance athletes? And it gets all complicated. We have female hormone issues and we try to make blanket statements like fasting’s great, and everyone should fast until noon, cause that means you’re burning fat and it’s not, it’s not so simple. So I think if we just back up a few steps,
Tawnee: 17:42 even with you beyond just female athletes, uh, and that, you know, I totally hear you what you’re saying there, but even people from high cortisol levels up to hypercortisolemia and adrenal issues, you know, usually the recommendation there is to not be going very long without, are not having these periods of high fasting where you do actually allow more intervals of eating within to allow some of this like more, it actually can promote a way more even blood sugar rather than like the huge spikes in fluctuations for somebody. But I think the key there is you’re often probably talking about somebody who’s not as metabolically flexible to begin with. So any level of fasting is going to like send them into this tanking mode and then they replenish and they’re just still kind of creating this themselves but all over the map. So yeah, it’s, it’s a tricky one. A little
Brad: 18:34 very tricky. I’ve done so much testing and especially writing the Keto Reset Diet and trying this keto out for myself and doing 140 days strict Keto and getting scar tissue on my fingertips from testing my blood so much. And I found some crazy insights. One of them was, um, I can make my blood sugar just fine whether I eat or not. So I’ll come in to hit in that stick, you know, first listening to podcast with Peter Attia saying my glucose is 84. It’s been that way for three years. I have a continuous monitor. I’m like, wow, I’d like to get down that low cause that would mean you live a long healthy life. And then I’m sticking my finger and it’s like 117, like, WTF, what the hell? You know, welcome to Facebook. That stands for, uh, this is coming off of an 18 hour fast. And the previous meal was, uh, salmon and broccoli. And the previous meal to that was a salad. So I haven’t had any carbs in my system for 30 something hours and my glucose is jacked up.
Tawnee: 19:30 So telling you that it’s not just the carbs creating the issue.
Brad: 19:33 I’m making the glucose in my system for what I need and I’m a highly tuned athlete that maybe is a responding to a training stimulus and making a bunch of glucose cause I want to do a sprint workout and then I’m going to fast for four more hours after the sprint workout to get the maximum hormonal benefits and the autophagy and all that stuff. And all this stuff is scientifically validated, but there’s a fine line that you don’t want to kick into stress response because of your dietary, uh, ambitions are beyond your abilities. Okay. So Mark Sisson talks a lot about his compressed eating window. He eats between 1 and 7 p.m. each day no matter what. Does killer weight workouts. He has a physique where he has a lot of muscle mass. Even he’s 65 years old. He has no problem eating a salad, eating a dinner.
Brad: 20:19 He doesn’t eat that many calories. We’ve done macronutrient profiles for the book and he’s doing wonderfully. Um, I find personally I’ve experimented with different strategies and one of them, thanks to Maffetone and Dr Tommy Wood Nourish Balance Thrive. They were looking at some of my blood values and Tommy said, you know what man? Eat more healthy food. That was his prescription. To me the doctor’s prescription was I needed to frickin eat more food because I had these unique factors: A, I’m trying to do these magnificent athletic feats at an advanced age. That’s A and B cause I’m old guy trying to do crazy stuff like sprinting or break the world, record in speed golf and B, I have no risk factors in my blood. Healthy body, fat levels, no desire to drop excess body fat, no frustration from a past of yoyo dieting or anything that’s messed up my metabolic flexibility.
Brad: 21:12 And so he said a.
Tawnee: 21:14 larger window.
Brad: 21:15 They said, you know what, if you’re healthy, you should be able to handle anything man. You should be able to go and get some ice cream and enjoy that bowl of ice cream. Not saying that’s a health or peak performance strategy. He goes, it shouldn’t be any, any big deal. You eat the ice cream and you burn it off whenever the next day you store. Some of it is fat, whatever. So it just kind of gives us more relaxed approach where, and Cate Shanahan said, maybe it’s not all your diet cause I’m complaining like I had a little bit of fatigue over the last seven weeks on these particular weeks. I sort of have crashed and burn patterns where this three days I couldn’t train. And it was it because of my macros where, you know what, there’s all kinds of other factors.
Brad: 21:54 Maybe you had some, maybe had a bad time and uh, daily life and um, you know, uh, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re stressed in a high strung and you’re making a lot of glucose and you know, whatever. So, uh, if we can, especially in the context of this podcast, we can do a three hour show on food if you want. But like, if we can resolve to be more sensible and less extreme, maybe, uh, rely on personal experience and also be sensible and cut out the grains and sugars and the refined vegetable oils that are killing us at an accelerated rate. And get a guest on here that’s going to disagree with me on that. I will, you know, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll buy a new microphone.
Tawnee: 22:34 The problem is, and you know, if you worked with me directly as one of my clients, you’re going to be familiar with me saying this, but moderation isn’t sexy. You know, it’s like you’re talking about cutting the extremes. I agree. And just getting back to kind of like a whole food, like I think we’re in one of the email exchanges we’ve had recently. You had that Michael Polen eat food, mostly plants. Not too much. Yeah, I mean, so, well said. So simple but so effective. And it’s so true though. And we get on, you know, especially this time of year, it’s, you know, mid January and we’re all, everybody’s on a bandwagon or you know, in some camp right now to, you know, jump like on the latest diet fad to change their life forever. But it’s not sustainable habit. Creating and moderation and creating like healthy habits that are going to stick with you is what’s really going to get you the longterm changes. But in the context of testosterone,
Brad: 23:30 I want to say something on moderation. cause I, I think we have to be very careful with our, um, syntax and we say the word moderation. Most people take that and run, Oh, they just stopped listening to the show and they’re going to go have their cheesecake factory now because we said moderation’s okay. And I’m advocating for an extremely strict and devoted and committed attention to your diet as maybe the biggest variable for your health and longevity. And we cannot fool around with this. And it’s disgraceful what’s going on in this country. The richest country in the world. We have the fattest population in the history of humanity and we have the life expectancy of your child coming up is lower than your own for the first time in the history, in recorded history as a disgraceful statistic, when we have all the medical advancements. So moderation has failed disastrously because when you leak in a little bit of sugar and a little bit of um, appetite stimulating gliadin protein in the gluten. Dr. William Bell, William Davis “Wheat Belly” talks about this, that uh, gluten bread is, uh, is triggers appetite stimulation.
Brad: 24:34 It hits the opioid receptors in your brain and causes you to eat more to the tune of 300 calories per day. So if you like a little bit of bread with your meal or you can’t live without your bread or whatever your comfort foods are, these are a slippery slope downward, especially the sugar. We know that sugar has addictive properties. Dr Robert Lustig leading figure on that. You can watch his YouTube talks or his books talking about a little bit of sugar leads to a lot of sugar because you get the blood sugar crash and your brain is telling you to eat more. So we have to be extremely strict and devoted to cutting out grains, sugars, and refined vegetable oils. And then when we’re 20 steps down the road, maybe you and I are and your fridge is getting an A plus score. And people who are super into it and they’re on the aisles and a sprouts and nugget in the top markets.
Brad: 25:18 I didn’t say the big one cause we need sponsor money to give you WTF. If you’re super big into it, then we can talk about these nuances and things like that. And who should I, should I up my carbs from 50 to a hundred while I’m training for the endurance event? Yes. And all those other things. But we have to get way far down the road from the average people that I associate with that don’t think it’s any big deal to finish off a gigantic meal with, uh, you know, a serving of cheesecake. It’s like this is a habit. If you don’t have like highest priority for your health and your diet, that’s a habit that might be really worth breaking with a really serious plunge into something for 21 days just to, just to extricate from the gluttony and the, uh, the decadence that we exist in in modern life. So,
Tawnee: 26:07 Oh, right. And that’s not, I guess, you know, when I say moderation, I don’t mean moderation is, you know, kind of ignoring some of these bigger components that you’re talking about. I think of it, it’s just not having to go to diet extremes to achieve the desired goals. But still, you know, maybe I’m a bit biased in the sense because the way I approach fine oils and fats and scrutinizing nutrition labels is still part of.
Brad: 26:33 it’s habit. It’s also knowledge.
Tawnee: 26:34 It’s something I’ve done so many years, right? It’s what I do professionally, helping people learn how to do these things. So maybe they’re still, you know, okay, well getting back to basics is the key. And for some people that might not feel like moderation at first, that may feel, but more like an extreme until it then becomes the habit.
Brad: 26:52 Uh, and also we have the psychological component, which is so important. So if there’s any negativity, struggling, suffering, stress in association with a dietary change, you’re guaranteed to fail. So we don’t want to go down anything that. Right? So w however you want to describe it, that’s why I just wanted to open up more. Like, if you want to do a gradual cutback, if that’s the type of person you are, some people cold Turkey better, some are gradual, but just do something working toward this ultimate goal of eating nutrient dense foods and eliminating the stuff that’s toxic and poisonous literally. So, um, that’s, that’s simplifying it pretty well.
Tawnee: 27:27 Question for you. Do you avoid vegetable oils and things? CDOT or, yeah, like refined seed oils and all that. Like canola oil at all costs are, do you, if you go out to a restaurant in Los Angeles and you’re unfortunately just not aware of what oil they’re using, do you allow yourself a pass on that?
Brad: 27:45 Um, I forget. That’s terrible. I order. my own whenI forget to say, can you please cook it in butter? But I would, you know, when you watch some of the content from Cate Shanahan, I think we’re on YouTube, her and I together. So you can search our two names together. And she talks about the, how these vegetable oils, um, they, they destroy your brain. They destroy your cells.
Tawnee: 28:05 for resources are always a number one. I recommend to people if they want like the basic,
Brad: 28:09 um, smoking a cigarette delivers a disturbance to normal healthy cardiovascular function of like eight hours. And having a serving of French fries can disturb normal, healthy cardiovascular function and make your arteries harder and less the blood less flowing for up to 24 hours. So the acute response to French fries and vegetable oil ingestion is worse than sugar and worst than smoking.
Tawnee: 28:32 That’s insane. And actually it just made me, I was having a conversation with athlete last week. I’m relatively new to coaching him and so he, we’re, we’re introducing all these new, you know, nutrition concepts and he told me that when, cause you know, he’s still in that phase of learning. So not every meal, every day is a perfect day, the quote unquote perfect. And so when he has a bad day, um, he mentioned that, you know, his Maff pace will be kind of blob, but when he has a good day, he’s seen up to 30 second improvement in his Maff pace just from what he ate that day alone. Of course, you know, we both agreed that there might be other variables contributing into that, but it’s a trend. He’s starting to notice what he eats that day directly has a positive effect on his Maff. And he’s newer to Maff too. So you know, he’s not going to be one of those guys that’s going from like a six 30 pace to a six minute pace. You know, where it’s, you’re at that pointy end but still like, I think that exactly ties into what you were just saying on that cardiovascular function of what junk food can actually do to our diet. And you know, going back to the Brownlee brothers and genetics and it’s like, shit man, those guys really got blood. Hashtag blessed with the best possible gene.
Brad: 29:39 Well, you’re also getting a tremendous metabolic flexibility from just training at a high rate. And I remember going back in the 80s when I was training, um, we did some a hundred mile bike rides with Johnny G my, my spiritual guide and mentor doing crazy shit. And he had me, uh, fasting for a hundred mile bike ride just to see. I could do it, just drink water and Kelly tea with a little chlorella powder. That was a serving to me that he goes, we’re going to feel yourself on this day. I didn’t find. Yeah, yeah. And then I got home and had, you know, two hot fudge sundaes from Baskin Robbins and a pound of pasta and whatever. So, you know, if I didn’t eat breakfast back in the day when I was training hard, I would start to feel woozy at 10:30 AM so I was in a carbohydrate dependency pattern. But when I started peddling for the first hour, second hour, and there was no food coming in, um, and my brain knew there was going to be no food coming in, I kicked into massive fat and ketone burning. Um, thanks to uh, having that athletic metabolism.
Brad: 30:36 So I think that brings up an important point. If you’re listening and you have, that’s right. I mean, if you are, congratulations. If you’d have excess body fat and you want to get it off and you’d been struggling and having difficulty doing it, you’re sort of taking a fork in the road and you’re going down this stone path that’s different than someone who is maintaining their ideal body composition. And so when we talk about this big picture discussion of cutting out the junk food and uh, then transition to the next point, the next point, um, the surest and easiest way to drop excess body fat we know is to cut carbohydrate intake and minimize insulin production. But before we’re, before we do that, that’s my flippant one liner that I use a lot. But then Chris Kelly corrected me in nourish, balance, thrive.
Brad: 31:25 He said before that you gotta be healthy. So if you have gut dysfunction and you go cutting calories or you have hormonal imbalances or any of that stuff and you go cutting calories trying to lose weight, you’ll be just like me pricking my finger with the 117 glucose. You will make your own sugar and you’ll just, you’ll just plunge into high stress mode for however long that the shoot is on the biggest loser. What is it, six weeks? So those guys are in a long hot cortisol bath for six weeks. They’re dropping a bunch of weight, it’s water content, it’s muscle mass, and it’s some body fat. And then they’re going to gain it all back and they’re going to feel like crap for a year because they pushed themselves too hard. That’s an extreme example. But for us listening, Oh my gosh, you can get yourself into some deep trouble by well-intentioned things to go Keto and cut your carbs back, cause your, your gut’s not working right.
Brad: 32:12 You’re not, you know, digesting the nutrients properly. You’re not burning fat well, so you’ve gotta be good at burning fat before you mess around trying to lose weight. And that’s this Keto Reset Diet. The most recent book Mark and I wrote, it’s this three stage approach where the first one is ditch the bad stuff, right? And just bring in some good, healthy new foods. We’re not talking about restricting calories or ignoring hunger signals. Have a big Ole omelette every day instead of your bowl of cereal. Simple, no pain, no suffering. And then there’s a certain point where you’ve done some hard work on yourself on your metabolism and you’ll see if you can last by skipping a meal. Say you wake up and see if you’re okay. And if you get hungry at 10:47, you go eat something. If you can make it till noon, that’s showing that you’ve done some pretty good metabolic work and you have some, a certain level of metabolic flexibility and you build upon that.
Brad: 33:02 And then day you can go Keto and get all these other benefits of transitioning into the glorious state of a ketone burning. Uh, but not without a long longterm view of the ideal candidate is someone who’s healthy and energetic and feels good. Same with an athlete like when do you, when should you return to training after an illness? When you feel fine all day long and you can’t wait to return to training, not before, you know, I don’t want you feeling like crap at work. And then thinking about your workout until you feel great and you’re wake up and you feel clear and all those things.
Tawnee: 33:34 A tough one though for people, it’s a tough one to wrap your head around because it’s like, well if it’s just a stuffy nose I should be good enough. Um, so what do you, in the book that you’re mentioning that you Mark coauthored, uh, with the Keto and getting your health and everything in line first. You know, I’ve had a million conversations with Chris and Tommy and the fine folks, nourish, balance, strive about these kinds of things. But I’m curious what you think about or what you guys propose as far as getting your health in order in the gut area. If someone’s feeling like gut function is less than optimal, say they’re an athlete with, you know, the supposedly leaky gut, but they don’t really have like a clear picture of what is going on. What would you, what do you guys advise?
Brad: 34:14 Well, first of all, like we all have leaky gut. If we go bike 50 miles or more in the heat, I mean that is what’s happening during these long workouts. When we elevate our body temperature, everything’s permeability. So geez, what about starting with like clean nutrition when you’re out there training instead of slamming down all that sugar in the name of, you know, making it through these hard workouts.
Tawnee: 34:34 The thing is sometimes people clean nutrition can still include like a FODMAP, um, ferment. Some of these fermentable fruits and vegetables. And if someone has CBO, a clean food can still be a disruptive food to their current condition. So it’s, it’s a very tricky,
Brad: 34:50 that’s a bad one because you’re going to go do your expensive test too, and they’re going to say, Oh, you react to almonds, avocados, olive oil, um, carrots, uh, macadamia nuts and salmon. You shouldn’t eat any of those things. And there’s some, there’s some measure of truth to the fact that you’re so messed up that you can’t even eat good healthy stuff because your, your gut lining is, has been destroyed by a 47 years of eating gluten or whatever’s, whatever’s going on. So,
Tawnee: 35:18 so yeah, I was actually, a friend of mine was just showing me her Viome results the other day. This was a new one to me and I have not seen an actual report on it. And some of the things that she, she, you know, she’s exactly like us on board with health to the nth degree as far as her quality nutrition. But it was saying things like Swiss chard, or sauerkraut because of the histamine response, which I can kind of see that one and a few other, you know, popular vegetables. I think even zucchini, she was supposed to limit certain things that you’re like, you would never even really think that you have to limit and you may not even feel a reaction when you eat them. Um, obviously the goal is to not have those foods be limited forever. That’s always the goal. But in term fixing things, that’s why I don’t really, I don’t do the, I’ve never in my, my practice, um, or working with people recommend, um, some of these food allergy or food intolerance tests.
Tawnee: 36:15 I just think that they’re, they leave some holes. Uh, I’m much more of a fan of when a person is willing to self experiment a little bit and then do a more in depth gut tests that’s going to show, you know, like I, I like a test called like the GI map which shows what other pathogens or bacterial imbalances or fungal overgrowth or whatever markers are out of line, which could then correlate to like diet, dietary recommendations. Um, but yeah, I dunno, I think there’s like the food intolerance test seem to be an imperfect approach to what’s,
Brad: 36:53 yeah, I mean I have my own budget food tolerance test, which is seeing how my digestive track works and if there’s any pain and discomfort there, especially associated with workouts. And, um, I think I got myself into real trouble after a series of surgeries, a ruptured appendix, and then three, uh, appendix and then three followup surgeries with weird stuff going on in my kidneys, bladder. And so I was in the hospital for in and out and taking massive doses of antibiotics, you know, I.V. For four days after my surgery. And, um, I think it messed me up for maybe two years. I wasn’t right in my gut and I was just pounding the probiotics and all these different forms, um, making these, you know, great meals with all the healthy gut foods and it took a long time. But we have to progress toward healing rather than these backslides due to, um, indulgences because it’s, uh, your niece’s birthday and you’re going to have a, you’re going to have just one of these and just two of those the next day or Oh there’s Halloween candy. So I’m going to blame my office cause the bowl was there and I ate them. And if your health is wavering, as you know, with all the hormones and the training decisions, if you’re not Bulletproof, like the Brownlee brothers, this stuff can mess you up and it’s, yeah.
Tawnee: 38:05 And then we’ll get down on ourselves. Cause you know, we think like, Oh, we’re not resilient, we’re not good and all that. But, Hey, there’s a lot of us on this boat where we just, you know, have some more special considerations that we have to take for our bodies to get to our, our definition of optimization. Um, so how, so the, going back to the testosterone context, um, Did you stick to more of a Keto oriented diet in this process of returning to endurance training? Or did you already bank off the medicine ball that flexibility you’ve earned and allow yourself more of that like, um, appropriate time, appropriately timed carbohydrate approach, you know, like carb refueling, especially after one of your competitions when you’ve been pushing 170 plus heart rate for 45 minutes or so?
Brad: 38:53 Yeah, yeah. Good question. Um, you know what I like, uh, I like Ben Greenfield story on this where he talks about he banks a lot of hours in a fasted state in a ketogenic state. He does these hard workouts when he’s in a fastest state, ketogenic state. And then he says like family time at nighttime cause he wants to live a healthy, happy life and he’s got young kids and they go and bake a bunch of stuff and they have these wonderful meals and he films them for his Facebook, YouTube, whatever. And he’s maybe putting away a whole ton of carbs that night, but that ensures that his glycogen reloads insures he gets the, um, the, the gut health benefits that you get from an assortment of carbs that you might otherwise be cutting out if you’re Keto. And then you also get the best of both worlds because you spend a lot of time in fasted or ketogenic state.
Brad: 39:38 So I’ve kind of transitioned to this highly spontaneous and intuitive approach where if you pinned me down and asked me what my typical eating day is like, the answer is tremendously varied. Um, thanks to Dr Tommy wood, when I had that, uh, that scolding on September 1st, 2017, it goes eat more food. What the heck are you doing? You know, you’re trying to be an athlete, you’re complaining of crash and burn patterns. Cause I do. I mean I, I go great. I feel great. And then I have three days or four days where I feel terrible or a weak, uh, you know, up and down and I’m like, I want to get rid of those walls. Yeah. Okay. So I started eating this super nutrition green smoothie, uh, many mornings instead of fasting. So I replaced a fasting until 12 or one with this massive green smoothie.
Brad: 40:23 And then, uh, other days I might be at home putsing around trying to write a book and getting distracted and just eating and nibbling and having a weird day where I ate a ton of calories and maybe had consequently more carbohydrates. Sometimes I go on these popcorn binges at nights where I’ll make this wonderful popcorn with a bunch of butter and salt and olive oil and just inhale that stuff because it’s like delicious. And I’m not like eating a bowl a day, so I have moderation in my, in my corner, you know. Um, but again, you should be able to tolerate those things and go to Seattle. There’s this vegan, a handmade ice cream place. Frankie and Johnny’s and this stuff is incredible. It is so delicious. So I will pound the ice cream when I’m visiting Seattle. But then other times I’m pretty hardcore Keto and I’m pulling up good blood numbers and I don’t have that many carbs in a certain day.
Brad: 41:13 And I think there is some, if you pattern your carb intake around your training efforts, that’s probably a sensible thing to do. But we now know from faster study, it’s not necessary. You can restock glycogen overnight or in hours without eating carbs. So, um, the more we learn, the more we know the, the more, um, the uncertainty or individuality there is so that you can’t make these blanket statements anymore and come out. Right. Uh, but I always, I do want to go back to like the psychological value of living in a manner can grunt with your stated goals such as, uh, I want to maintain this type of body composition. This is my favorite weight be at, or I want to look good for my cruise, where I’m going to wear a bikini and work toward that goal and progress without interruption. Or, or suffering or struggling or feeling discouraged like you say and just make that shit happen.
Brad: 42:08 And the way you can make that happen is get healthy, get metabolically flexible, get good at burning body fat and then turn down the carbs. So I ideally you’d have your hand on a dial and say, I want, I need to drop four pounds cause it’s the tour de France is coming up and I’m on the team this year and you just turn the dial down and you’d drop the body weight that you want. It’s the simplest thing ever, but it’s the greatest frustration in hundreds of millions of people’s lives. So I want to break free from that.
Tawnee: 42:35 I think a lot of the frustration if we look beyond adrenal health, cortisol level, some of the other things that we were talking about that can kind of hold you back in some of these situations from just saying, Hey, I’m going to dial back the carbs and magically lose whatever amount of pounds is our mental state. And this is something that I’ve just been focusing on so much more, not only in my own journey but just observing other people. And I feel sometimes it’s, you know, that form of self sabotage where we have unhealed wounds of whatever kind in our own lives that prevent us from opening these doors to the healthier eating approach. So we kind of sabotage ourselves. And so it’s really not about so much of listing everything we just have listed as far as how long you’re going to fast carbs and all that kind of stuff. Uh, if there’s unhealed wounds from a mental perspective are things that are coming up that you’re pushing away and you’re, you have not faced some underlying issues in your life that’s going to sabotage your body composition goals. I don’t even want to say weight loss, but body composition because for some people, body composition goals are about putting on pounds. Yeah. I just feel like that has, you know, in this, in what you and Mark, um, you know, getting healthy first. The mental component, is it equally as important as that physical component? Yeah.
Brad: 43:54 Same with the shopaholics up at South coast Plaza. What do you guys try? What void are you trying to fill with nine bags?
Tawnee: 44:01 Yeah, living in a van really teaches, has taught me that you don’t need a lot to, you know, have the good stuff going on in your life. And if I wear the same shirt every other day, I that never once bothered me. Not a big deal. Even when there was a couple times throughout our travels where John and I went out to like a nicer dinner or something. And it’s funny actually, I think I talked about this already on a podcast, but when it was one day we weren’t sure of the dress code and we didn’t have anything nice. So we went to Target and bought some stuff, which we ended up returning cause I’m like, I don’t think I want this.
Brad: 44:34 Queen Latifa and girls road trip, they’re like renting from target. Oh I left that tag and I was just doing a fashion shoot. That’s all. Yeah.
Tawnee: 44:44 But yeah, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s that mental component I think that really like that’s going to, what’s that? Is what will open doors for us where some of our physical goals I believe.
Brad: 44:55 So what does the, what does the food represent? Is it like, uh, you know,
Tawnee: 44:59 it’s a coping mechanism,
Brad: 45:00 coping mechanism for stress or for, um, I also think it’s, it’s you have the emotional eating. Uh, it’s a spectrum, but you also have the physical need for calories to sustain your mood, energy level and hormone balance. So you’re, you’re asking yourself to become an addict because you have that physical underlying thing.
Tawnee: 45:19 It’s a better bit of a double edged sword because, you know, I’m not necessarily talking about straight up depression when I am speaking to, you know, mental stuff. These can be way more subtle where you carry on relatively normally and you just realize, Oh Hey, you know, I had this experience 15 years ago that is still lingering there and I haven’t actually like gone to therapy or something to work on it. And that’s been kind of an underlying theme of maybe that’s holding me back from some things. There could be something like that, but then there could be like straight up depression where the diet component we know is so huge. Um, you know, where if we’re not careful with our food choices there, it becomes a form of a drug by consuming sugars and carbs and all that and weaning ourselves off. That is where the magic starts to happen as far as our mood state is concerned. So we have to, you know,
Brad: 46:05 Right, right. And it’s going to perpetuate if you can’t win yourself off it. So when I, when when I flippantly said just cut grains, sugars and refined vegetable oils, that’s your first step.
Tawnee: 46:17 It’s a sometimes deeper conversation than just eliminating those things, putting it, you know, I truly believe that we can change our taste buds in a relatively short amount of time, but emotionally these things take much longer time.
Brad: 46:31 Yeah. That’s why I would, I would wish for anybody struggling is like, go, uh, indulge yourself in some fabulous meals. Buy some of the great cookbooks and find your five favorite, um, you know, ancestral aligned, low carb meals or breakfast. I mean, when I went cold Turkey from normal routine healthy eating guy, I thought grain-based diet. Um, I had this giant bowl of cereal every day dating back to my triathlon days. Yeah. It just power this thing. And then I met Mark inJune of 2008 or we started working on the project, uh, for primal blueprint and he’s like, so no grains. I’m like, so okay. So yeah, no bread, no pasta. Uh, what about oatmeal? Was that a grain? He’s like, ah, yeah, that’s a grain too. So I went cold turkey from normal high carb diet to uh, having a giant omelet instead of my cereal bowl every day.
Brad: 47:22 So I knew I woke up and I was still in that habit pattern of chowing, a bunch of food soon after I woke up. Cause that’s what I’ve been for the previous 30 years. Um, so that was an easy transition in these, on what’s tastes great with the bacon and the cheese and the avocado slices on top and the veggies. And I did that for probably a year straight before the first time I woke up and realized I’m not really hungry. I don’t need this omelet to survive and exist because I’d become good at burning fat and metabolic flexibility and all those great things that will happen down the line. But you can’t force that to happen. You have to kind of make sure that your, your habit changes are not overwhelming you because then you’ll, you’ll backslide and burnout.
Tawnee: 48:03 And that’s the other thing, the overwhelming, you know, especially the word restriction is where I feel like I really specialize in working with people as well is what creates our, what can make us more prone to now disordered eating patterns. Maybe not even a full blown eating disorder, but an unhealthy relationship.
Brad: 48:22 Raise your hand if you don’t have any disordered eating patterns. Please. And send us your name. You have the courage to send an email with your address and I’ll send you a fricking bottle of mayonnaise. We all have disordered eating patterns, every single one of us. And then whatever, wherever you stand on the spectrum. Um, yeah, don’t, don’t judge, man, or. We’ll be watching you with a spy camera.
Tawnee: 48:44 And me being careful though, to not let those turn into an eating disorder where it ends up having, you know, what was originally intended, healthy effects for yourself now ends up being unhealthy effects. Like the kind of like the orthorexia I think is what stands out the most is something that’s subtle enough where it’s not straight up, you know, interrupts here, believe me or something like that. But it’s still, it’s still a form of eating disorder this day and age. And we have to be careful with that. And that’s why I tend to be not as strict with the grain thing, like sugar. Yeah. But with grains I case by case it depends on the person. And for a lot of people, especially if you know, gut health checks out and everything and blood sugar levels are managed well, like I’m not too opposed to gluten free grains in a diet at all.
Brad: 49:33 Yeah. Um, well even, even if you don’t have any trouble with gluten,
Tawnee: 49:39 It’s, but you know, so John and I experiment, cause I’m most, I’m say majority gluten free and he is not. So we’ll share like he has the opposite effect. Whereas most people would react to gluten. He reacts to gluten free things. And I’m talking like if we get the occasional gluten free pizza or something like that, um Oh like a baked good, not like naturally go gluten free foods like sweet potato. But like if it’s like something that uses a replacement flour that is gluten free, that’s where he has like the reaction, a gut reaction to it. Whereas most people would see relief by eliminating the gluten. So we always kind of joke about that because again, it’s just shows individuality. You know, he’s a great guy keeping up with his blood work and all that kind of stuff too. And at 43 years old, he’s kicking butt with his health markers and all those kinds of things.
Tawnee: 50:26 And he’s never had a problem with gluten. So he hasn’t really seen a need to eliminate it. And I’m not gonna sit here and you know, preach that, you know, find a try to find a reason to why he needs to, you know, especially there’s like the happiness component for a lot of people. And I, I think that if something’s working for you and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that it’s bad for you. All right. You know, you can make, you can look into Wheat Belly and some of these other resources though and say outright, no matter who you are, gluten is, you know, killing us in some to some degree, maybe not straight up killing us, but it’s not necessarily doing us any good. And I think you kind of just have to choose how you want to interpret a lot of these things in your own personal life.
Brad: 51:11 Well, uh, yeah, we’re, we’re all, we all, we all have our free choice and our priorities and I hear a lot of people with their, uh, their, their own one-liners back at a, at a, at a health, uh, enthusiast where, you know, you might as well might as well enjoy. So, of course I’m not going to deny myself the cheese cake cause it’s fantastic. And same with hot fudge sundae and same with the five handfuls of the thing. Um, but that’s where like at the star of the show, I can me being honest with myself and identifying myself as an overly positive person because I didn’t want to face, um, you know, confrontational conversations or negativity in my life. You know, that’s, that was a big awakening for me. And with this thing like the story you’re telling right now relating to your dietary habits and you told John’s story for he, he didn’t get to speak for himself, but he sounds like he’s pretty well adjusted or it’s like whatever story we’re telling, I hear a lot of stories where I, I bite my tongue, you know, coming back at them like, Oh really?
Brad: 52:13 You know, cause it’s, it’s sort of like a, a copout or some sort of coping mechanism where they’re not really facing that they are living in a manner incongruent with their goals where they wish they looked better and felt better. But they have some statement like, well, you know, um, beer is the centerpiece of the social occasion for me and my buddies. Well, you know, if someone came with a soda water, like I have my whole adult life, I don’t drink alcohol just cause I don’t like it. No, no big deal. Um, I haven’t missed out and I was also like, I had an upper hand in college cause I’d go to these parties. Everybody was drunk except me. But I could act silly really quickly and look like a drunk. But I was the only one in the room that knew what was going on.
Tawnee: 52:52 a friend like that who.
Brad: 52:53 It was fun. Yeah. So there’s always a way. There’s always a way to find, to try to be better and have more, more pleasure, pleasure and less suffering is kind of the conclusion to that thought. Yeah.
Brad: 53:12 Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com and we would also love it if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop, iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews, and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars. And it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves cause they need to. Thanks for doing it.
