I catch up with my old-time triathlon compatriot Andrew MacNaughton, who retired from the pro circuit a year before I did, which made him that much smarter back in 1993-1994. This show is a wild ride covering a huge array of health, diet, and peak performance topics.
Most of the insights have application to all health enthusiasts, but we get a little technical here and there talking about sophisticated training matters, such as Heart Rate Variability (don’t worry, my BradBeat HRV App at the ios store is simple and user-friendly, as is this GOY Podcast episode about HRV.) Andrew kicks us off with the sensible but minimally respected premise that “Health and Fitness don’t really intersect much” and off we go. Andrew talks about his precise experimentations with different kinds of diets, and how your eating patterns might line up with your body type. We discuss the dangers of holding on tightly to rigid beliefs and the benefits of thinking critically and remaining open-minded. This is especially relevant when reflecting on “scientific studies” being the end-all. As we’ve seen so many times, a study can be devised to achieve just about any conclusion, especially when there are special interests involved!
We talk about the pleasures of racing shorter distances where you can go faster and feel like an athlete instead of just “endure.” At the end of the show, we get a little revv’d up with some emphatic admonitions to make healthy choices, reject the horrible cultural influences toward laziness and indiscriminate dietary standards. Andrew proposes that making “sacrifices” such as getting up for an early workout, or cutting pizza and beer out of your diet, don’t really need to be seen as sacrifices, and are best viewed as choices. Conversely, when you fail to achieve the bare minimum respectable standard for food choices or exercise output, you are making the ultimate sacrifice of your health, because you are most certainly headed on a journey of pain, suffering, and accelerated demise. This show will get you thinking and hopefully get you focused to make some changes in your basic diet and exercise habits for healthy living.
TIMESTAMPS:
Health and Fitness don’t intersect very well. [04:38]
In general, health is diet and sleep, while fitness is fitness. You can choose one or the other. [09:26]
Age is not really a factor when you are in your 20s but as you age…… Andrew felt he didn’t rest enough. [13:20]
There shouldn’t be a need to urinate in the middle of the night. [18:28]
Diet success is dependent on body type. [20:21]
Some vegetarians are carboholics and could probably make healthier choices. [26:55]
In trying new diets, it often seems they are good for a while, and then they are not as great as you thought. [28:52]
There are seasonal variations. [30:04]
We have to continue to be on this quest. The information is constantly changing. [34:45]
How does the training differ in preparing for a race for six weeks or 24 months? [38:01]
Going fast is more fun and harder than going long and slow all day. [41:20]
The 60-year-old body just cannot do what the 20-year-old body can. [45:16]
If you can hit this very low baseline of two and a half hours a week of very moderately paced cardiovascular exercise, you have an A+ in cardiovascular health. [49:23]
Jump up and down 20 times a day and you preserve your bone density and decrease your risk of breakdown. [53:45]
Andrew’s daily routine is effortless. He changed from “have to” to “want to”. He does nothing that isn’t fun. [57:50]
Dehydration gives you a bad attitude. When it’s hot and humid, you have to go a little bit slower. [01:01:35]
What are you sacrificing by not being as healthy? What foods that you believe are too great of a sacrifice to give up? [01:07:10]
LINKS:
- Running on Empty
- Difference between Paleo and Keto diets
- Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival
- Dr. Timothy Noakes
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad: 00:00:00 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.
Brad: 00:03:12 Hey listeners, I am back with the Mac attack. That was his nickname when he raced on the pro circuit. It’s my main man, Andrew MacNaughton. You heard him on one of the early shows on the get over yourself podcast. It’s been a long time since we connected. And I had a nice sit-down, wide-ranging chitchat on all manner of health, fitness and peak performance topics. So this is kind of a fasten your seatbelt wild ride show because we, we have an assortment of quick segues and going off on tangents and about half of it is really basic, easy to understand and easy to follow. And as the feedback we received from his girl Julie and listening in the next room, she said yeah. And then the other half was getting into some complexity and some, I guess fitness training terminology that she didn’t fully understand. She said we should have stopped and made some definitions, but the conversation was moving too quickly. So if you’re deep into the peak performance scene, you’ll dig all our discussion of the complexity of HRV, heart rate variability and so forth. And if not, you can let that stuff flow over you because the hot points that we hit I think are really valuable and give you some good food for thought.
Brad: 00:04:30 Oh man. So we started out with Andrew’s proclamation that health and fitness don’t intersect very well. Oh boy. Yes. The eyeopener of all times that all these burning calories and heading to the gym and doing these strenuous workouts or getting out on the road and putting in your mileage doesn’t really promote your health. Dang,!! that’s a tough one to swallow. What a crazy notion, but it’s true and it needs to be much more respected than it is even today when we have all this science and momentum and folks like Dr Phil Maffetone stating this premise for 30 years, that health and fitness are different and we still don’t have a basic, uh, acceptance of this position. Instead, we’re thinking that the key to being healthy is to go out and sweat and burn calories indiscriminately. And now we’re seeing the fallout finally. Uh, there’s an epidemic rate of, uh, heart problems among serious athletes. There’s been numerous, uh, prominent articles, discussions about this. Dr. James O’Keeffe’s Ted talk, uh, references some of that. You can Google articles like One Foot in the Grave and Running on Empty. Uh, these were in prominent publications like the Wall Street Journal and Outside magazine chronicling, uh, this tragic pattern of pictures of fitness, the six pack laden, prominent longterm, highly competitive endurance athletes dropping left and right, uh, blowing out their hearts due to overstress patterns of repeatedly hitting it hard for years and decades out on the road or even in the gym.
Brad: 00:06:13 So we have to respect this concept that health and fitness are two different things and do more things that protect your health and still can promote fitness if you do it properly. Uh, but Andrew makes some pretty bold statements that might offend the hardcore endurance enthusiasts saying that, uh, per participating in a long distant triathlon is in no way healthy. We talk about the diet experimentation that Andrew’s engaged in in recent years, and this guy is pretty hardcore and precise and devoted. So the data that he comes up with, for example, his experiment with Keto, uh, was very disciplined for 18 months. And he has some interesting insights about that. Uh, we talk about scientific studies and being wary of study conclusions even on the most respected and, uh, methodically carried out studies. I’m still calling BS in a lot of ways because, uh, the individual differences with the study subjects relating to your particulars.
Brad: 00:07:14 So we get into that topic of kind of, uh, maintaining healthy skepticism and also, uh, being open and constantly challenging, uh, the propensity that we all have to form fixed and rigid beliefs about things. And the carnivore diet was an example that we discuss where the basic premise that you don’t need to eat, uh, plant life, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. They do not even need to be consumed. Uh, pretty much challenges the foundational elements of healthy eating that we all share and have shared for decades. So, uh, that was interesting. And we come at you hard with a big finish where we both get riled up and offer a very emphatic recommendation to choose out of these disastrous cultural patterns that are putting us in complacency and the widespread adoption of lazy, unhealthy lifetime habits. The sacrifice that you’re making, uh, which is to endure, uh, almost certain pain and suffering if you’re unwilling to change your habits. So we give you a big time pep talk at the end to turn things around, clean up your act, make some healthy choices and lock those into habit. And Andrew’s great, uh, disposition that, uh, nothing is a sacrifice for him. Everything is a choice. So all the healthy things that he does are entirely because he wants to do them rather than he has to do them. Andrew MacNaughton from his top-secret training enclave in Southern California. Great to catch up. As always, enjoy the show.
Andrew: 00:08:54 Welcome to the Brad Kearns podcast. I’m filling in today and I’ll be interviewing Brad. My name is none of your, your business.
Brad: 00:09:02 Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Andrew MacNaughton, a frequent favorite guest on many podcasts. Uh, you’ve been through… We’ve been through it all and so today, uh, instead of a detailed outline and exciting topics to discuss, I think we’re just going to let it flow. We’ve been talking off, off camera, off my warming up.
Andrew: 00:09:26 free flow.
Brad: 00:09:26 Yeah. So I mean, you’re, uh, on this incredible health enthusiasts path, you’ve investigated so many things and, um, I guess a diet would be a good, uh, conversation point to talk about cause there’s all kinds of wild and crazy things floating around. We’ve talked about carnivore a little bit and tried it out. So, um, let’s maybe go through the last decade or so and some of the fun things that you’ve, uh, dabbled in, experimented in what’s worked, what’s, what are you skeptical about when we have all these, uh, promoters out here, uh, touting this and that. Same with supplements. We can just seque into all that. We’re gonna load you up, man.
Andrew: 00:10:05 Okay. So first thing that comes to my head when we talk about this, I was talking to my doctor for my annual physical on Monday and we were talking about health and fitness and how they basically don’t really intersect much, you know?
Brad: 00:10:19 Yeah. Could you explain that please? I mean, listeners, if that one passed by you, health and fitness don’t really intersect much.
Andrew: 00:10:27 Yeah. So basically I, I characterize health with, uh, diet and sleep and fitness is fitness and maybe there’s an argument that a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of fitness will make you healthier. But in general, I look at them as you can choose one or the other. And if I were to go back and train myself, um, I would have most of the year where I chose health over fitness. And then as I was getting ready for a big race, I would do, uh, more strenuous exercises and maybe compromise my fitness, my health a little bit for, for greater and fitness for a very finite amount of time, maybe three, maybe as much as six weeks. And then I would get back focusing on health and um, probably have more longevity instead of a nine-year career. Like I had. Um, maybe it would have been longer and maybe I’d even be healthier now had I done it that way. I think that because my career was only nine years, I’m healthier than a lot of people who did 15.
Brad: 00:11:25 No, we thought it was long at the time. Wait a second. My career was nine years and I thought you retired a year before me cause you’re the smarter, more intelligent person. You were sitting on the couch in Lake Tahoe and I, I popped up in the morning and said, Hey, which, which trail are we going to run today? And you’re like, I’m not feeling it, dude. I’m like, what are you talking about? And uh, that was you’re out. You were, you were gone in, um, late 93 I think.
Andrew: 00:11:49 Yeah. You only lasted one more year till mid 94. Right. So you didn’t make it a whole other year.
Brad: 00:11:55 I finished the season out in New Zealand.
Andrew: 00:11:57 Yeah, I was a bad influence on you and our friend Terry cause uh, I,
Brad: 00:12:02 Terry Smith Ross from Canada, Smith, Ross McCallister.
Andrew: 00:12:06 second in the world once or twice and third at Nice and a brilliant athlete and a good egg all around. Um, but yeah, I think I had a bad influence on her because I think that when I quit she’s like, yeah, that sounds like a really good idea. I’m going to quit.
Brad: 00:12:21 Well, let’s talk about that a little bit because it is an interesting time in life for an athlete. And I think it’s, um, a story that’s relatable to everyone because we, we face these, um, transition periods in life. And I remember having a lot of difficulty just admitting to myself. I mean, I knew I was done. And it’s so great to be an athlete because everything’s so graphic. You’re not like in a corporate setting where you got passed over for a couple of promotions, but you can still talk a good game or you, you get the promotion even though you’re, you’re not qualified. And it’s, it’s very vague. But in our case, like even in workouts, you know, we’d, we’d go up, uh, to the, uh, the, the track and see if we could hit our intervals that we did two years prior when we were crossing the tape and it wasn’t there.
Brad: 00:13:08 And so you start to get this sensation that, Oh, maybe, you know, maybe my best days are behind me and that, uh, that, that’s kind of a awakenings that you have to reckon with. And it, it can be difficult.
Andrew: 00:13:20 We weren’t subject to the Peter principle, which is you, you’re only truly happy until you’ve reached your level of incompetence. Where you can reach, you can, you know, live like that and they and the business world, but not so much in the sporting world because you get hit on the forehead with reality every time you step outside, you know, all of a sudden your easy runs are seven or seven 30 instead of six or six or six 30 or seven, you know, and your heart rate’s the same but you’re going 30 or 40 seconds slower. I know my heart rate’s the same now at about eight 45 to nine 15 as it was, you know, 25 or 30 years ago when I was running seven or seven 15 uh,
Brad: 00:14:00 Your heart, your, your percentage of max or your, your heart rate.
Andrew: 00:14:04 So I was still keeping it under one 25 when I was 25. Right.
Brad: 00:14:08 Your, your pace was so much faster and got yeah. Yeah. So right now we’re bumping up against aerobic maximum heart rate running nine minute miles. And, um, you know, before it was six minute miles, but that was a, yeah, that was a higher heart rate cause we had less age. So any way you slice it, it’s um, yeah, I don’t know if it’s, it’s entirely, um, the, the, the age was not really a factor between the ages of 20 and 30 when we were racing. So what do you think that was where you, you had a shortened career and you maybe could have lasted longer if you’d made some different decisions?
Andrew: 00:14:44 Um, I think that, uh, I probably didn’t rest enough throughout the year, you know, uh, working with Simon,
Brad: 00:14:52 Whitfield.
Andrew: 00:14:53 and talking with him in the years after and, and what he learned, you know, after working with me and beyond me, um, and taught me, uh, was that he didn’t like to be out of shape. So he never took big time. I used to take, you know, four to six weeks off at the end of the year cause I thought that was necessary. But what he did was he would take, you know, 10 days off, three or four or five times throughout the year. You end up with more time off, but you don’t really lose your fitness because taking a week or 10 days off, you don’t really lose that much. So you don’t have to ever do that full on six or eight weeks of buildup again. So he would basically just take some time off and then he would be almost exactly where he was except super fresh.
Brad: 00:15:36 Right?
Andrew: 00:15:36 Yeah. And he didn’t like being out of shape. So he really liked that system. I needed a mental break, but that’s probably because I did too much anyway. And if I’d had more breaks, I wouldn’t have been, you know, burnout.
Brad: 00:15:47 Right. Yeah. Um, so if you, if you had a chance to dispense advice to a recreational athlete, seems like it would fit right in. Also, I mean, take these frequent breaks, especially when life gets busy and you can still maintain your membership card and the, uh, the, the, the, the swim program or the, the multi-sport racing schedule or whatever, the, the ultra calendar. Uh, but yeah, there’s some flawed notion out there that, um, we have to do something every day to maintain fitness or have a certain minimum weekly volume. Otherwise you feel guilty and, uh, upset that you’re, you’re falling off and um, in many cases that can, you can leverage time off to get better.
Andrew: 00:16:30 Exactly. I bumped into someone at the swimming pool the other day and I just taken almost two and a half years off swimming and I just started up and I bumped into a guy, he was like, yeah, I had a lot of work and a lot of travel and I missed a couple of weeks and now I’m basically starting from scratch again. And I didn’t really encourage the conversation, but in my head I’m thinking, nah, it’s probably a good two weeks. You’re, you know, two or three workouts, you’re back exactly where you were, however you’re rested. Well, maybe not with all the work travel because you’re tired sort of in a different way. But, um, I think physically, yeah, taking a week off every now and then and you don’t really lose much, but you recharge and you get back on it. And the idea that, you know, a lot of coaches do, a lot of coaches say, especially in the amateur ranks, is they really want you to get consistency.
Andrew: 00:17:14 And that’s hugely important as we know. Um, but also breaks are too, you know, I mean, the simple equation is, is stress and rest. Don’t forget the second half, right? For improvement. You need to do the rest and you need to rest your brain too. And, and sleep in. You know, especially for swimmers who swim at five 30 in the morning. I mean, taking a week off, you know, every six weeks or eight weeks, um, is only gonna make it more fun because you won’t be so dragged out and tired all the time, you know, catch up on your sleep. Sleep is underrated, especially as you get older. It’s harder and harder to sleep. You know, when I was in my twenties I would sit down and I had an awesome nap for however long I needed. And you know, at 9:30 at night I would just be conked. And then I would wake up at six 30 or seven and there was, I didn’t move. I literally, I would lie down on the bed and I would wake up in the exact same position, you know, now I’m fiddling and fussing all night long and I turn over and I get up and go to the bathroom and you know, maybe I can get three or four more hours before I do that again. It’s, you know, Oh to be 25 again. Right.
Brad: 00:18:19 Well you think that’s entirely related to aging or was it the training volume that left you so exhausted that you could sleep so well?
Andrew: 00:18:27 Uh, it’s uh,
Brad: 00:18:28 or pleasantly exhausted. I shouldn’t say if you overtrain we know that you’re going to have disturbed sleep and you’re going to have the overproduction of stress hormones. It’s going to get you up. And in fact that getting up to pee is now known to be a bad sign. That was kind of a slap in the face to me. Phil. Maffetone told me that. Other people have now stated that if you got to get up and pee in the middle of the night, you, you should be like your dog, your dog, and hold it all night. So can humans. And it’s not really because your bladder is full. It’s because that sensation is overactive adrenal glands. Latin, Latin term adrenal means next to renal next to the kidney. So if your adrenals are going, uh, another symptom is grinding your teeth and having to pee in the middle of the night.
Andrew: 00:19:07 So well one of the things you’re kidneys do when you’re sleeping is they change the, um, uh, the way they filter your urine and it’s much richer at night. So you can theoretically go for many more hours at the night and when you wake up in the morning, it should be much darker urine than it would be throughout the day. Um, so if your adrenals are stressed, then uh, it’s not, it’s less likely to switch to your nighttime, sort of sleeping mode of filtration. And so that’s one of the, one of the reasons if your adrenals aren’t shutting you down and your kidneys don’t know it’s nighttime,
Brad: 00:19:43 so you’re getting up to do this brief, uh, minimal voiding, unlike what ideally it would be first thing in the morning where you did, did a lot of work in here, you get up and ready to go. So you’re eerie,
Andrew: 00:19:56 minimal voiding because my kidneys aren’t making the rich urine because they’re not functioning as if it’s night. They think of that. It’s just keep going that I’m just continuing to go, right,
Brad: 00:20:05 go, go, go.
Andrew: 00:20:06 So, so yeah, it’s still, it’s still clear or, or, or, or very light. It’s not the darker, richer stuff that you would get normally in the morning.
Brad: 00:20:14 Yeah. So you’re reporting this as a problem now even though you’re not training hard?
Andrew: 00:20:19 Definitely not training.
Brad: 00:20:20 What’s your, what’s your deal man?
Andrew: 00:20:21 I’m fiddling with what are the tips and tricks? I tell you what, if I, if and when I figure it out, um, I will definitely pass it on. But life is, is, uh, you know, uh, at a constant, um, training session. I figure trying to figure things out as you go. And when I think I’ve got it figured, I I, you know, tell people what I’ve been doing. And quite often, you know, a year later I say, you know, I, I’ve got better information now or, or, or maybe a slightly different or maybe more people to pool the information from, you know, there’s some things we were talking about earlier. We’re talking about a diet and stuff and, um, I really believe diet is dependent to body type more so than anything else. I think there are several diets that are good. Um, I think that, uh, I’ve tried Keto and it doesn’t really work for me.
Andrew: 00:21:14 Um, but I have a friend who is completely different body type and he thrives on the Keto and he’s a doctor. Um, and, um, and in our conversations we’ve come to the conclusion and it’s a very small sample size. So it’s still sort of in the hypothesizing phase, but, um, you feel that body type, um, is, uh, important to the diet that you choose. And I think the more the people who are tall and thin, the ectomorphs are less likely to function that well on, on, uh, the high fat diets and much more, more lean, more towards a paleo diet. And the endomorph are going to be functioning better. The, the individuals who are capable of building muscle and getting heavy rectomorph really aren’t, they’re the ones that are going to function better on the higher fat diets, which is, which is an interesting hypothesis and we’re sort of testing it out using ourselves as, uh, as lab rats, Guinea pigs, what you say? Yeah.
Brad: 00:22:20 Well I guess there’s advanced genetic testing now where they’re trying to zero in on this as well, um, with perhaps mixed reviews or mixed results, but they’re trying to, you know, pinpoint
Andrew: 00:22:31 Well it’s hard to do something in two weeks, right? It’s, it’s one of these things that we can come back in 10 years when there’s enough data to know better. Right? Cause it’s not something that two individuals can figure out on their own in a, in a short period of time. You have to do it with lots of people over a long period of time. So it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a, it’s not going to be a short term answer.
Brad: 00:22:53 Uh, however, the, the ability to, um, test and refine and assess how certain foods make you feel in certain meals, I think everybody can make a lot of progress there. Especially like Maffetone’s/ two week test that he’s been communicating for over 30 years now where if you eliminate all these, um, high glycemic carbohydrates for a couple of weeks and see, see how you feel. Most people have this incredible awakening of health and lose a bunch of weight. Same with anybody who’s transitioning from one thing to another.
Andrew: 00:23:24 I think definitely if you cut out crap, you will.
Brad: 00:23:27 Right. Huge. So yeah, that was my next thought was like, Hey, you’re hearing so much about the variation. It’s individual, but we have so many common, yeah, we got to come to the common ground.
Andrew: 00:23:37 First of all. Yeah. I have to realize that, that I am very disciplined and, uh, and, and when I do these diets, I really pigeonhole myself and I do it very strictly and, um, I don’t feel like that I’m, that I’m missing out on anything because the curiosity is, is really what drives me on how this diet will affect me over time. So, um, there’s no sense of me missing out on, you know, chocolate souffle or something because I don’t really care. This is what I’m trying to find out what makes me feel the best. Right. Um, but, uh, I also, I also know that it’s going to take more time than, you know, a couple of months to do these things. So, um, I’m, and the other thing is, is that I’ve already done all of these simple things. Like there is no, uh, any, uh, there’s nothing that I eat that has added sugar.
Andrew: 00:24:31 There’s nothing that’s processed. There’s nothing that, that, and I’ve been doing that for 30 years. So, um, I’m already extremely strict about my baseline. And so when I do change these things, it’s, it’s, it’s not as dramatic as it may be for someone else. You know? So like, like when I, when I switched to a Keto diet, they say it needs, you know, you do it, gently do it, do it, you know, cause otherwise you’ll get dizzy and stuff. No, I just started one day and I tried Keto and there was no dizziness, there was nothing. My body was already capable and it just, you know, I just did it for 18 months to see what it was like, you know? And the answer was at first I noticed the difference. And then gradually over time I felt like I didn’t have the same consistent energy as I, as I once did. So I slowly went back more towards paleo and then my energy sorta came back. So, um, again, I’m one person, you know, and I’m not a study and it’s over a two year or two and a half year period. So it’s not a huge amount of time and there are, you know, 25 or 2,500 other variables involved. Right. Um, so anyway, that’s where I am.
Brad: 00:25:42 Well that’s, that’s a huge amount of time cause I think most people make an assessment after six weeks or whatever and um, maybe engage in black and white thinking where it’s, it’s an all or nothing. And so I, I tried Keto and then I kicked it to the curb rather than massaging and nuancing it and also giving it that, you know, prolonged duration without those departures where you, Oh, except for your, your eight day cruise where you were slamming a vanilla custard three times a day. That kind of interferes with the, uh, the data collection of what Keto is really doing. Also interesting that you went for that long and had sort of this gradual observation that your energy maybe wasn’t optimal. And that’s possibly something to think about when you have this fervent a community of let’s say whole food plant based people where they cut out meat and they feel wonderful and fantastic and so clean and there’s so much better for the environment. And then we got to sit back and go, okay, well how long does it take to get nutrient depleted from lack of vitamin A, vitamin K a, the things that you’re wholeheartedly eliminating from the diet for the first time in the history of humanity, by the way.
Andrew: 00:26:55 So my, my observation with, um, vegetarianism is, um, that you feel good for somewhere between six weeks and six months and then eventually then eventually you were, you wear off. Now the other thing that my, uh, I observed that a good portion of people who are vegetarians are actually carboholics. So they eat lots and lots of rice and breads and pastas and stuff. And I don’t think that there’s much, um, there’s many people that truly believe that grain should be the base of your food pyramid anymore. Right? I think that, uh, certainly in our world, um, there is a general consensus that grains truly have no nutritional value and other than pleasure, they serve no purpose, right? So if you truly love bread, then you know, whatever, right? Or if you truly love pasta, then having it once in awhile, whatever. But if that is your, your staple and that is the main portion of all your meals and then you could probably make healthier choices, you know, and so I find that that’s probably the primary area where vegetarianism goes wrong for me in, in my, in my thinking anyway.
Brad: 00:28:10 Because you’ve excluded these nutrient dense foods, you’re forced to, uh, choose from a smaller subset. And in that subset are things like grains which can provide a lot of calories and a lot of bulk to the diet. And boy, I mean, it seems like, you know, how much, how many mountains of kale would you need to eat just to fuel, especially if you’re an athletic type or something like that. Um, the volume of food consumption necessary because you’re cutting out the, the, the high fat animal products that, that, that one’s tough. I guess they can go to high fat plant products like avocados, coconut products, olive oil.
Andrew: 00:28:52 You also have, you’re eating a lot of these raw vegetables. You’re getting the plants natural protections. Uh, I do believe they’re called lectins. And I think a small, uh, a small amount of those is probably not so bad. But when I was doing the Keto diet and I was eating massive amounts of raw foods, um, every day, you know, um, I was having, you know, a portion of, uh, uh, of meat and a fatty meat and, you know, coconut oil and avocados and stuff and, and kale and spinach and a variety of other, uh, raw vegetables. Um, yeah. Over time, like anything else, it seems like the first six or six weeks or three months, it felt really good. And I think when you do these diet changes, um, uh, which sort of leads me to believe that maybe periodization of your diet is not a bad thing. Seems like whenever I change and try a new diet, the first little bit’s exciting and you do notice differences and then over time you find out that, um, they just, they’re not as great as you thought they were in the beginning. And, and you do need more as you, as you get depleted in whatever that type of diet is deficient in. Right. So, um, uh
Brad: 00:30:04 Dang, that’s pretty heavy man. Cause that means you, you haven’t really landed on the perfect human diet yet. And what about some seasonal variation? Could be interesting. Dr. David Perlmutter says, don’t eat any fruit in the winter at all. None. Zero. Ancestors didn’t, didn’t do so go ahead and eat it in the summer, whatever you want. And uh, pulling some of those insights in where we’re trying to get in alignment with things like the seasons, but also, jeez, covering all the bases. That’s where these, these longterm exclusion of high nutritional value foods seems like a losing proposition at some point.
Andrew: 00:30:39 Yeah, I, I think I, you know, and like I said, I don’t really, I don’t really know and I haven’t done seasonal, um, seasonal diets, but I have read about people who don’t eat fruit in the winter and is, is it maybe because fruit needs more sunlight to be properly metabolized, you know, I mean, I don’t know. Is that the case?
Brad: 00:30:58 It’s, I think the argument is the, um, circadian rhythms, the shorter days, the longer nights. Um, part of this is associated with being in fat storage mode hormonally. This is a great book called Lights Out, Sleep, Sugar and Survival where they talk about, you know, our, our ancestral past was the fruit would ripen in the narrow ripening season and we’d gorge our faces with it so we could store body fat and get ready for the long winter ahead. And so now we’re channeling our inner bear. We’re eating fruit year round and we’re keeping it light for long, prolonged artificially lengthen days, year round because we got our laptop screen open from 5:00 PM in the winter time here in Northern California, North America.
Andrew: 00:31:44 That’s very unAmerican of you. Most people are watching TV for those hours. I want you to know I’m disappointed.
Brad: 00:31:49 Yeah. Any screen, even the, even the small screen is the worst. And back to that, um, uh, the, those first insights we talked about where, you know, there’s these health hazards now and I think the, the small screen, the digital screen is a big concern for me. I think it’s, I think it’s horrible and it’s leaving us without the ability to truly rest. And recover from anything. So even if you’re off training, like the guy in the swimming pool, he’s out there traveling on jet airplanes and, uh, working on a screen till all hours, then we’re, then we’re perpetually in fat storage mode according to the insights in the book and a common insight that, Oh boy. And so we’re, we’re eating the sugar in the wintertime, the fruit, and we can handle it with much less effectiveness than during the summertime when you’re out there exercising and, uh, spending more time outdoors and things like, yeah,
Andrew: 00:32:39 yeah, yeah. It’s a, it’s, it’s interesting I think as, as more people in the world or become more interested in this, there’ll be more information and there’ll be, you know, better and better information. Like, uh, I, I talk to people about doing those, the genetic tests and I was like, that’s great that they’ve got a million people now, but it’s truly going to be valuable when they have 500 million people, you know? And, uh, so anyone who did it in the first little bit, basically there you’re going to have to wait 10 years before the information that yet has any value. Cause right now they’re just sort of guessing there’s not enough information, you know? So I know, I know that I did mine and I forget which company I used, but, so it seems like every six or nine months I get an update because they’ve got more information now and it’s more accurate.
Brad: 00:33:28 Oh yeah. Same with the ancestry stuff for you. You log in and say, hello, Andrew, you have a brother and you’re like, Oh, click here. Yeah, he lives in Ottawa. Oh. Oh, I didn’t know that. Is that Manitoba? I think so. Um, yeah. I’m also getting wary of studies themselves because the headline stories that we’re exposed to, there’s a study for everything. And I talked to this about with Dr Tommy wood, who’s up on all this stuff and deep into the science and highly trained and highly educated and he says, yeah, you can, you can do a double blind, perfectly organized study and prove that blank. Uh, it is your conclusion. And a lot of these studies are funded by a special interest and so they’re, they’re pushing it toward the desired result. Like the Gatorade sports science Institute is one of the highest and most respected, uh, exercise performance, uh, bodies in the world.
Brad: 00:34:27 And for the last, uh, 50 years, we have been told with fantastic scientific validity that the muscle burns carbohydrate and the muscle stores glycogen. It burns it off and then you have to consume carbohydrate to recover from exercise.
Andrew: 00:34:41 And so consume happens to be Gatorade. It’s formulated with the electrolytes.
Brad: 00:34:45 It’s got electrolytes, that’s from Idiocracy. Uh, however, my point I’m making is like, the science was excellent. It was rigid, it was precise. It was highly respected by all scientific measure. And the muscle indeed does store glycogen and convert into glucose and burn it. And Dr Timothy Noakes was the world leader in this field and exercise physiology for so, so many years. And you can go on YouTube now and see him, uh, theatrically tearing pages out of his book, War of Running, which was this 800 page masterpiece of all matters of exercise physiology and endurance running training. And what he was doing was realizing that we were stuck in the carbohydrate paradigm for the last 50 years. And now we finally realize that the, the athlete can operate, uh, on a fat-based paradigm. Therefore all the notions and all the fantastic science that was, can be reconsidered because there’s a whole nother portal. Like we’ve, we’ve just landed on a different planet where there’s more oxygen so we can live life differently. And that’s kind of, that’s a grand example. But I think these little studies that come out every week where my mom sends me the clip, like, did you see this red meat is now cancer? So what about your carnivore thing? And Oh, mercy, it’s, um, it’s tough to wade through unless you’re knee deep into this stuff all day long. And then when you’re knee deep into this stuff all day long, that’s when you’re really stupid. That’s my conclusion about myself.
Andrew: 00:36:12 A little knowledge is bad. A lot of knowledge is worse. Yeah.
Brad: 00:36:15 Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s, it’s hard to know what to think. And a good example, maybe we can get into this a little bit, cause I know you dabbled here too, but this is 2019 when I was first really slapped in the face with this premise about the nose to tail carnivore eating pattern and Dr. Paul Saldino made so much sense on these podcasts arguing against the consumption of the plant life that’s universally regarded as the centerpiece of a healthy diet. Same with Dr. Sean Baker and the other leading proponents of it. And I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I had to go try it and experiment with it. But it was a good exercise in challenging my own fixed rigid beliefs and critical thinking processes because I’m walking through life going, you’ve already heard me on this podcast thing on all these plant-based people, how stupid. They’ve never, we’ve never done that in the history of humanity.
Brad: 00:37:02 I didn’t really say how stupid I am saying that, um, they’re restricting a lot of these nutrient dense foods. It must be wrong. And then, uh, you, you get faced with here in modern times this this year saying, Oh, maybe you should rethink the idea that vegetables and fruits and nuts and seeds form the foundation of a healthy diet. So there’s nothing else left sacred in my opinion. Like we have to continue to be on this quest and be open minded. And I think part of that is to, you know, look a study in the face and go, eh, all right. You know, maybe not the end all. Same with all the training studies because commonly they will take an untrained group of subjects. 27 healthy college age males, got an exercise bike and hammered their brains out for 30 minutes a day while the other group just went and peddled slowly for three hours and the fast guys got better in six weeks. Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk to them in a year when they’re all sick and injured, that kind of thing.
Andrew: 00:38:01 Yeah, exactly. There’s those high intensity things work short term, uh, quickly. But if you want, uh, longevity and you want a, what I would call deep fitness, then you have to do the, do the slow, easy at moderate consistent stuff over a long, long period of time. Yeah. So if you don’t have, let me say this, if I was coaching someone and they wanted to do a race, let’s say a half marathon because that’s a reasonable distance. Okay. And I had six weeks to get them in shape. What would I do relative to, if I had, if I had, you know, 24 months to get them in shape, how would the training differ? Right now for me, probably not that much because I’m a believer in you should only do what you can, what you can do, and you just show up on race day as healthy and fit as you call it.
Andrew: 00:38:54 Possibly can be in that moment. But most people, most coaches would say, Oh, we’ve only got six weeks. Let’s get you out there. Blasting, get your heart rate up and get your body used to the pounding and stuff like that. Um, uh, and, and it’s very possible that their system would give better results in that really short period of time. Right? But I always come from a health perspective and I’m like, I want that person in six weeks to come back to me and saying, I love this. Um, I had a good experience. Um, let’s keep doing it and we’ll see what I can do at the same race next year. Right? And that’s sort of the way I look because I, I love these endurance sports and granted they’re not really healthy.
Brad: 00:39:40 You know, this show is sponsored by the iron man racing circuit. You two can sign up 2.4, one 12 and 26 put them all together and you are an iron man. So it’s not healthy.
Andrew: 00:39:51 It’s, no, it’s not remotely healthy. But can it be?, If it’s fun for you,
Brad: 00:39:56 can it be possibly healthy? It can. Is there a way if I said, Andrew, my dying wishes to do an iron man, can you help me do it in a healthy way, right.
Andrew: 00:40:06 If it’s your dying wish and you’re planning on dying anyway and then went to go for it. Yeah. I try to break,
Brad: 00:40:11 try to break nine. Sure. Yeah.
Andrew: 00:40:14 The answer is no, I don’t believe you can do it. And a healthy manner, I think you can do it in a healthier manner than a lot of people do.
Brad: 00:40:22 Just slow down.
Andrew: 00:40:23 Um, yeah.
Brad: 00:40:24 Basically.
Andrew: 00:40:24 Basically you just drive for down. So yeah. So there, there’s an effort level between world-class athlete pay. So I don’t, and I know that better than I know age group pay. So the pace between a half Ironman and an Ironman is like the dead zone for training. Right? So you should basically never train there. Um, it’s not hard enough for it to be considered hard and it’s not easy enough for it to be considered easy. So you need to be going, you know, your, your, your Olympic distance pace so you can get in shape or you need to be going much slower than your Ironman pace. So you can be recovered and build up your aerobic heart rate and you know, and below and yeah, I would say, I would say between five and 10% below your maximum iRobot heart rate.
Brad: 00:41:12 Ooh, yeah. Andrew. But wait, everyone’s begging to add five beats of their maximum aerobic heart rate. Yeah. So that’s that.
Andrew: 00:41:20 So, but basically that’s where you should be training, right? So I’m doing an Ironman. Um, you know, it’s, it’s not a good idea. Um, but if it’s what you want to do, um, and you were using me as a coach, I would encourage you to do a two hour race or less. Um, and I would try to make that seem more appealing because to be perfectly frank, going fast is way much more fun and way harder than going long and slow all day.
Brad: 00:41:50 It’s a, it’s a greater accomplishment in my opinion in so many ways because if you can go out to Olympic distance race or whatever it is instead of an ultra, how about a 5K and, and break 20 minutes if you’re 50 years old, because break acts,
Andrew: 00:42:07 it doesn’t really matter how fast you go, it’s matter that you’re on the [inaudible].
Brad: 00:42:11 pushed yourself as an athlete limit.
Andrew: 00:42:13 And in these short races, your internal dialogue is, can I go faster?
Brad: 00:42:18 Can I, how can I survive this pace? We whatever. Yeah, whatever. Whatever it is, you’re challenging your, when I’m doing,
Andrew: 00:42:23 When I’m doing races that are an hour or less, and if it’s a triathlon, an hour last day, if it’s running, it’s probably 10 K or less a, which would be 40 minutes for me, I guess. Um, my question is can I go faster? That’s what’s going on in my head. Certainly with a 5 K it’s am I running as fast as I can, but you get in longer races and that’s not the question. You know, the question is, am I eating enough? You know, am I going the right pace? Am I going too slow? Am I going too fast? And it’s nowhere near as much fun as can I go faster, you know? I mean, we all buy, we all want fast things. Fast is way more fun. Fast downhills on the bike. Way more fun. You know, even if they scare you, there’s still more fun, you know? Um, so I don’t know why people are so enamored with this super, super, super long stuff and doing an eight or nine or a 10 hour race and they put that up on a pedestal like that. Some sort of great achievement. It’s not, that’s not a great achievement. It’s just that it’s not as much fun as going fast.
Brad: 00:43:26 Yeah. It’s, you know, you, you, you endured something tremendous and you finished my young friend Tyler Curly. Maybe I’ll make him listen to this show, so we’ll have a little uptake in the, in the ratings. But he just finished the Western States a hundred mile run. His father finished it, uh, 20 plus years ago. And it was such an incredible emotional experience for the family and him training hard for this thing. And to say that you ran across the Sierra Nevada mountains in one day is a phenomenal athletic accomplishment. It’s so difficult that you know, it kind of puts you in the same realm of like, can my body do this? Is this athletic challenge something that I can survive and the odds, the odds are against you because it’s so difficult.
Brad: 00:44:06 The dropout rates huge. But then when you get like these mass participation marathons where they’re running the New York city marathon with 60,000 people, okay, that’s cool. You get to tour around the city on foot and that’s nice. But if I came up to one of the spectators and put a gun to their head at the starting line and said, Hey, you’re going to do the marathon too, guess what? Most people could finish it. Yeah, but who cares? Because it’s not a quality, it’s not an athletic event. So much as like, Hey, I survived. It’s like saying you survived a tough plane ride with a lot of turbulence. So what? When we’re getting, I mean I’m sounding a little harsh to people, but that’s why I wanted to put the plug in for something that’s a, you know, a, a goal that’s super daunting and maybe a once in a lifetime achievement of going, let’s say a hundred miles. But I think there’s a lot of in between here where the triathlon triathletes progression is to keep upping their distance as they get more experience and therefore supposedly more legitimate if they can keep upping their distance rather than why don’t you go faster next year? Like you said to your hypothetical coach person, let’s go back and do this sprint triathlon and take 10 minutes off your time.
Andrew: 00:45:16 So here’s, here’s, here’s the, the misconception is in triathlon you have the Olympic sport and that’s where all the best athletes are. All right. And I don’t think you’ll get too many arguments for that. And when they can’t compete, then they go do a longer ones. Okay. And I believe that that’s pretty much fact. You won’t get too many people arguing with that. So my, my, my thinking is, and as a 56 year old person, I don’t miss being able to do a hundred miles cause I can do that on my bike. I miss being able to ride at 30 miles an hour. I really miss that. Not so much that I’m going to buy an electric bike because that’s not, what about, it’s about the feeling, right? I’m doing it yourself. Right. Those electric bikes won’t go 30 either. Sorry pal. Well, they didn’t have to, they can do it with me. Right. But uh, yeah, I miss running sub five minute miles, the feeling, and I’ve never even run a sub four minute mile. I can’t imagine what those guys feel like when they’re out running seven or eight minute miles or nine minute miles and they used to run three 55. It just must be catastrophic for them. I was, I was, I was daydreaming while I was running the other day and I was like, gosh, maybe I’ll try to run a fast mile at, you know, when I get to be 60.
Andrew: 00:46:28 And I was thinking, and I’d be up against people like, um, Steve Scott, and he’s run like 110 under five minute pace under four minute pace or something. And I’m like, so maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about how well I can do relative to anyone else, but I’d be curious to see what I could do at 60. And then I was then I was just thinking, it’s like, that’d be really, really discouraging if I couldn’t break six minute miles or something. And then I was sort of doing the math and I’m like, yeah, I don’t know if I could race six minute mile.
Brad: 00:46:57 Oh, I tried recently and I felt like I was talking to Mark Allen about this because he said his endurance right now is abismal and depressing. The greatest, uh, arguably the greatest endurance athlete, greatest triathlete of all time. Undisputed. And he’s what near your age? Maybe. Maybe he’s hitting 60 closer. Um, and so I guess you lose that something that juice and I think it’s um, possibly akin to, um, battery life where we blast it out. So much effort in our younger that there’s just, you know, the brain and the central governor and all these things just don’t want to go out there and um, suffer to that extent.
Andrew: 00:47:37 I also think that the 60 year old body, whether you’re, whether you’re burnt or not, just can’t do what the 25 year old body can.
Brad: 00:47:43 Yeah, but there’s a podium guy at iron man, right? Let’s go look him up. Um, the guy from Florida who was a notorious, cause, he got busted for doping, no offense, but he was, you know, he was setting records at all the age groups in Hawaiian. He was into his sixties with this six pack and he was going in a very, very respectable time. And I questioned whether somebody like you or I or Mark Allen even has that much juice left to get into training. If someone paid you $10 million to try to break nine 15 at the iron man. Oh maybe you could do it cause you were pretty fit when you were 50 and I’ll use myself as an example. 25 years we moved from anything impressive endurance related. Wow. It’s just hard to imagine just like you say and a six minute mile. As I tried recently, I felt like 447. Andrew, I mean I was running hard on the bike trail. Nice flat path and then checking that watch going, what the F? You know, it just, it’s, it’s mind boggling cause I could, I could swear, look I’m up on my toes, I’m running strong, I feel pretty good. And then the, then the clock says something. Otherwise yeah,
Andrew: 00:48:47 the clock moves a lot faster now. And I mean, I don’t know,
Brad: 00:48:52 Albert Einstein proved that insight to be true. It’s all relative to the eyes of the observer. So I should call my effort of 4 47 because it felt like that and that’s all that matters.
Andrew: 00:49:01 I think that if no one was there, it was ever you, whatever you want it to be. Um, I also think that, um, as a, as a percentage of your life, right, uh, six minutes is uh, a way less of your life than 447 was 30 years ago. So you’re actually running faster now.
Brad: 00:49:23 Well, the other thing I feel like at this age and broadening my perspective of fitness from this extreme endurance experience that we had when we are younger is that fitness means many other things. So my, my quest has been, uh, to broaden my, uh, my, my strength, my power, my explosiveness, and try to preserve this because I think that’s especially more important to preserve over the next decade and over the decade after that. Then the endurance. So you know if your endurance is respectable. Dr. James O’Keefe has talked about this and um, many other people. If you can hit this very low baseline of two and a half hours a week of very moderately paced cardiovascular exercise, you have anA plus in cardiovascular health and heart disease risk minimization just from brisk walking or a couple jogs, a couple few jogs a week and keeping active and then as you exceed this two and a half hour, that’s the threshold mentioned by Dr O’Keefe.
Brad: 00:50:21 He has a great Ted talk called run for your life but not too far and at a slow pace. That’s the title of his Ted talk. If you, if you exceed that, you’re going just for fitness and Andrew MacNaughton says fitness and health have minimal crossover. Now what about on the other side? We’re going to lose muscle mass. We’re going to gain spare tire as the decades go on talking into two males and with that spare tire comment, but females are going to be changing their hormonal and their body composition, losing the muscle mass, becoming more brittle, more at risk of accident, losing balance. All those things. So if those things you can kind of focus on, you might get more return on investment for longevity and quality of life by slowing shortening your workouts and throwing in some hard stuff and keeping that going as you age. It seems like a lot of people drop that as they age because they’re slower, weaker, less fit. So it’s kind of turning things upside down for me anyway.
Andrew: 00:51:15 I think that, um, uh, the theory that I agree with is that maintaining your muscle mass as you get older is really important. Maintaining good posture and you know, and muscle mass and staying strong, supporting your joints, you’re less likely to get injured. Now how you do that, um, is, you know, I guess it’s up to you. There’s people who are excited about the high intensity training things, which don’t really work with my personality. Um, I think weights are great, but I think now doing, taking any risks with injury, doing weights is not worth it. But doing weights is good idea, you know, uh, helps you maintain your muscle mass but you don’t have to lift until failure. Yes. Scientifically when you’re young, they say lifting till failure is the best way to grow your muscles. But you know, now I’m 56. I’m trying, not necessarily to grow my muscle, but I’m trying to limit the loss and, uh, I want to do it with the least, uh, at the lowest likelihood of injuring myself. So yeah, pushing stuff around a little bit and, but not super, super heavy. I don’t want to hurt my back. I don’t want to hurt any my, my knees or my wrists or anything, but I do want to work the muscles more than I, more than I do jogging or climbing out of the saddle or whatever. Right. Um, so I think that that’s, I think that that’s important. You just have to weigh how important it is for you and what risks you want to take when you’re doing it.
Brad: 00:52:47 Yeah. Yeah. I guess we should all just strive for a checkbox of checking off the bare minimum, right? So if your diet, get rid of grains, sugars, and especially refined industrial seed oils and just forget it and don’t even talk about anything else until you can. You can enter the room now and we can talk about all these other cool, interesting things but not if you’re out there at cheesecake factory on the weekend and you’re not reading labels carefully and you’re, this shit is going into your body and you’re talking out the other side of your mouth that you’re, you’re, you’re doing Keto now or you’re on the paleo. Well, you’re also on the American plan to end up at hospital and then with, um, with endurance, we’ve already stated that if you can keep these, you know, low intensity, cardiovascular exercise, not the stressful stuff, that’s that, that no man’s land that you talked about between half Ironman and Ironman pace or for someone else, someone who starts breathing hard on their walk up the Hill, you’ve got to slow down and take care of that.
Brad: 00:53:45 And then I guess with this strength, power explosiveness category, it’s not that hard to hit the bare minimum. You don’t have to risk injury, you can go into your cubicle right now. If you’re listening to this podcast, instead of working and do a set of 20 deep squats, it’s a fantastic explosive workout. It takes less than a minute and jump, what’s his name? Uh, Dr Oz’s writing partner, uh, uh, dr Oza from Cleveland clinic. He says, jump up and down 20 times a day and you will preserve your bone density and dramatically decrease your risk of, uh, the, the breakdown and the, the joint injuries that lead to be, um, lead to a mortality worse than anything else
Andrew: 00:54:27 I liked. I liked those. A I go do, I do squats to just about 90 degrees on my knee and then I jump. I didn’t make sure I’d come off the ground, completely come off the ground and, and I have about a four inch vertical. Um, so I do, let’s say half of that.
Brad: 00:54:41 So that’s pretty good for an extra athlete
Andrew: 00:54:43 and it’s, it’s a, yeah. So it’s not 100%. Not, it’s not everything I can do, but, um, I find that I do 20 and I get to about 16, and I feel it in my legs and then I do a few more and then I’m like, all right, that’s enough. You know? But, uh, yeah, getting off the ground instead of just going up and down, but pushing off hard enough where you can actually lift off the ground is first of all, it’s fun because you feel like you’re a kid playing again and uh, it serves other purposes as well. So it’s something that I would recommend
Brad: 00:55:17 and I wonder, it does sound fun. It’s not time consuming. Uh, but I’m observing just in general life, there’s difficulty with compliance with our close associates, friends, coworkers, peers, loved ones, general people in the community. There seems to be just an inability to even achieve these bare minimum basics, like cutting the crap out of your diet or doing some jumping up and down. I mean, raise your hand if you know people and that you’ve seen in their homes or at their, at their cubicle doing deep squats or jumping up and down. It’s like we’re, we’re getting drawn into the screens or something.
Andrew: 00:55:57 I just want you to know that you people listening, we can see you. So if we raise, you’re raising your hand. We’re looking.
Brad: 00:56:03 Yeah. My mom said that her friends are now taping up their little camera hole on the laptop and I don’t know enough to comment that this sounds ridiculous, but it’s a very common practice, right? Everyone’s telling you tape up this thing cause they’re going to watch you. And she said her friends started doing it because they were on a walk in the park. I don’t know. They were sitting at the kitchen table about maybe going to Vegas and then they, uh, the friend was logging onto the computer and seeing some Vegas ads. And so she contended that they were listening to the conversation, eavesdropping the powers that be in Vegas. And I’m like, you know, I probably think that along with the conversation, they might’ve done some search work, uh, at some point and typed in Vegas into their search bar. And then of course you get bombarded with the specific, I kind of liked that stuff. I have no problem with people targeting ads to what I’m interested in. I, I don’t, I don’t mind about losing my privacy.
Andrew: 00:56:56 The NSA has certain only listening, but probably not to you and I because they don’t care. Not red flag.
Brad: 00:57:02 They didn’t listen for the first seven minutes and they’re like, Oh, these guys again. All right, let’s go on to something more.
Andrew: 00:57:07 Yeah. We didn’t mention, we didn’t mention any bad words yet. So yeah, they’re, they, they, they’ve given up on us. The thing with the jumping is, is um, if you set your rule up where you can’t have your shower in the morning until you’ve done 45 seconds of jumping off the ground, that’s all it takes. 45 seconds.
Brad: 00:57:26 I was going to ask you for some tips.
Andrew: 00:57:27 They’re jumping and you jump and you do it. And unless you’re in an apartment building in a big city and it bugs the people downstairs, it’s a fine thing to do. You know? And if, and if you are an apartment building, you get one of those rubber mats and a little absorb. Some of the noise,
Brad: 00:57:44 go out to the stairwell and go up and down some stairs.
Andrew: 00:57:47 or jump on, jump on the bed. You can be six again.
Brad: 00:57:50 So do you, uh, even to this day, uh, use the incentives in real life to, to keep you, um, committed, focused and what things have gone into the category of just effortless and what things do you still have to, uh, kind of make yourself carry out?
Andrew: 00:58:10 Oh gosh. I don’t think I do anything and there’s no effort at all. It’s all want to, there’s one of the things when I stopped being competitive, you know, 30 years ago now or what is, how long have you it, yeah, 28, 28 years ago. 26 years ago.
Brad: 00:58:25 I’m more than that. Hold on a second. 90 93,
Andrew: 00:58:28 26 years. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I refuse to say I have to do any exercise anymore. It was one of my, the other thing I refused was to travel through the airport with a bike. Um, and I have friends that say, why do you come and do this? We can do it, you know, do the, do the ride, the tour, the climbs of the tour and France the week before the van. It’s like that would involve traveling with a bike. Can’t do it, can’t do it.
Brad: 00:58:52 That’s you’re still traumatized by arriving in nice France for your first international race. And the little door on the, on the carousel, uh, was, was clogged up and we were just watching somebody from behind the curtain, pushing, pushing, pushing. And then finally your bike case pops out in a different shape than before it entered the, the door that was too small for it. And that was a tough day for you man. Was, I’m sorry.
Andrew: 00:59:16 Beautiful carbon venous frame. That was all totally Mang.
Brad: 00:59:20 just pretzeled.
Andrew: 00:59:21 still breaks my heart.
Brad: 00:59:22 Yeah.
Andrew: 00:59:23 It still breaks my heart cause I did a bike race earlier in that year in Mammoth, a three day stage race. And I didn’t use my good bite because I wanted to save it for races that were important, like triathlon and that bike had like four races on it. And, uh, I could have used it in the Mammoth race because the bike that I did use broke twice. So yeah.
Brad: 00:59:46 So no more, no more traveling with a bike.
Andrew: 00:59:49 Uh, however, my friend Kyle, who did it this year, he said, I didn’t bring my bike. He did the, he did the truck tour and you just tell him what I tell him what your frame size is and they give you a bike. It’s part of the tour so you don’t have to travel.
Brad: 01:00:02 It’s a good idea of that promoters out there.
Andrew: 01:00:04 Yeah. And he was, uh, he was really, you know, trying to get, trying to get with me to go with them. So maybe, maybe next year now that you can actually do these without traveling with a bike, maybe it would fit into my life.
Brad: 01:00:16 Well, amidst all your humorous anecdotes, you, I think you said something that could be a profound insight that we’d help people, uh, stay aligned with their goals and dreams and to change from the category of have to, to want to, I think is a really powerful statement. Uh, no more so apparent than in the world of diet. And I see this negative thinking and negative, uh, talking about dietary goals or standards,
Andrew: 01:00:48 So many people take a negative approach to these things. I have to do this. It’s going to be a huge sacrifice. And, and training is painful and, and really hard. And it’s like when I talk to people, it’s like, no, these are all choices. You could be out at the bar with your friend instead of at the swimming pool. And I said, swimming, swimming isn’t really painful. Running really isn’t painful. It’s fun and it’s playful and it’s an a, it’s sort of a self experiment on, on the, the body’s feedback, you know, there really is no pain. You know, you stub your toe and break your baby toe. That hurts. All right, doing a track workout, it doesn’t hurt. It really doesn’t hurt, you know, it’s, it’s playful, it’s fun. You’re 100% in control, you know? Okay. I’m going to,
Brad: 01:01:35 I’m going to challenge that for a second because I just came back from my USA professional speed golf championships in Houston and I’ve been doing all these podcasts on positive thinking and the power of belief. My, my favorite new author, Bruce Lipton, Biology of Belief, where you, you manifest your thoughts, become your reality at a cellular level. So if you think I’m not hot right now, I’m okay or I’m going to live to be 123, better example. That’s my firm belief and I’m gonna live the rest of my life with that number in mind and that type of journey in mind and, and own it in every way. And it has a lot of tremendous amount of power. But I got overheated on the golf course. I had to walk on the back nine and I’ve never once moved from a jog to a walk and speed golf.
Brad: 01:02:18 And when that moment I was trying to talk myself out of it saying, be strong man. Mia Moore never complains. And my son was just talking about playing soccer in the Amazon with his guides when he went on the river trip and he said he was so hot, he thought it was going to blow up. And I’m like, just keep going. Keep going. But I succumbed. to the heat, I have to admit. So it was more powerful than my, my thoughts and beliefs. So, so my thinking,
Andrew: 01:02:42 My thinking, tell me about that. Dehydration is tough because there’s, there’s two things that affect you when you’re doing a exercise for a long time. One is dehydration, and I find dehydration gives you a bad attitude. So if you’re in a position where you hate everybody that you’re with and you’re swearing and you wish you weren’t, you know, running or cycling or whatever it is that you’re doing, hiking in the mountains, um, I would say that there’s a really good chance that you’re dehydrated. So I would say that do it using your mind that’s already compromised because of lack of water and your system to overcome dehydration, um, is probably gonna lead to more problems than, than, than less problems. The other thing that happens is you get glycogen deficient and that’s when you, you stop caring and it’s hard to concentrate and you sort of daydream and you’re in the middle of the race and you’re like, Oh, what was I thinking about?
Brad: 01:03:36 Yeah. You mean low blood sugar, glycogen depleted, low blood sugar. So your brain stops working well,
Andrew: 01:03:41 yeah. So yeah, it’s hard to concentrate it. Yeah. Hard to focus. If you’re competing, your, your pay slacks off because you’re daydreaming or something else and gosh, I’m hungry. Oh that really smells good. I wonder what they’re eating. And next thing you know, you’re going substantially slower. So those are the, those are the two biggest telltale signs that I’ve learned.
Brad: 01:04:00 What about the third one of, uh, overheated body temperature? Cause I think that’s dehydration too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if I was, I guess I was a little dehydrated, but when your body temperature goes up,
Andrew: 01:04:10 so there’s two things. There’s two things that you need to do when it is, you know, 95 degrees in super humid like it was for you in this race. Um, you have to know that you have to go that fraction of a percent slower to help your body manage its core temperature. All right? And it’s really not much slower is all you have to do is bring it down. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s just, it’s, it’s tiny. It’s not 1% slower, but it’s, it’s, it’s less than that, but it’s just a little bit slower. And then your body can manage the effort with maintaining a decent core temperature. But, um, you get it hot and humid and even if you’re used to the hot being hot and humid or the temperature being hot and humid, even if you’re a climatized for that, um, if you go that little bit too hard, your body can’t deal with it.
Andrew: 01:05:00 And so one of the first things you do is you, you say, okay, look, it’s going to be hot and humid and this is the mistake people make in Hawaii or wherever they’re, if they’re racing in some hot place, Mexico, Brazil, whatever is they maintain their, uh, typical watts on the bike or their typical run pace per mile as opposed to a more of a perceived effort or something like that, you know, so if it’s a little hotter, you have to just go a little slower because it’s not just about, um, uh, your, what, what you learned in training. Your watt output can be, but it’s also managing your core temperature and just touch, touch slower and everything’s fine and it feels easy as opposed to getting over overheated
Brad: 01:05:45 Or a shitload slower if you went out too hard and got overheated. Yeah. So going a lot slower. Yeah. Arguably my, uh, initial 20 minutes in the extreme heat was way too much, even though it was a slower than my usual pace. You just didn’t adjust well enough. Yeah, I think it’s hard to bring it back when you certainly, it’s extremely hard to bring it back when you’re dehydrated. It’s known to take up to 72 hours to fully rehydrate if you get, if you get deficient.
Andrew: 01:06:16 Yeah. So anyway, that’s, that’s, that’s the lesson that I’ve learned is, uh, when it’s super hot, you just have to go that tiny little bit slower and then it feels easy and it, if it’s really hot like that, it’s got to feel easy. Um, because otherwise it just hits you all of a sudden and you’re, you’re pretty much then your walk jogging the rest of the way is as you found out.
Brad: 01:06:39 Yeah. So the, the, we were discussing the notion that these things are not really hard and shouldn’t be feeling like they’re suffering or a sacrifice to go wake up early for swim. You want to put them all into the want to category.
Andrew: 01:06:53 Definitely.
Brad: 01:06:54 Will you share the comment you made about the pizza too? Was that your extended family member, someone at a dinner where they said they were thinking of uh, modifying their diet or you were trying to talk them into something and they said it’s too much of a sacrifice to give up pizza. Yeah,
Andrew: 01:07:10 that’s right. So I was talking to someone and they, uh, and they, they believed that it was too much of a sacrifice to give up pizza. So my question to them was, all right if your doctor told you that the next time you ate pizza, you would die. Would you give it up? And there’s like, well, that’s not what’s going to happen. I’m like, well, just to answer the question. And of course the question, the answer is yes, of course I would give it up if I was going to die. It’s like, all right, how about if they said it would slowly make you sick over a 25 year period and your life would be crap? Would you get, well, that’s not what’s going to happen, but just answer the question, you know, and the answer is yeah, but how could you possibly know that? No, just to answer the question, it’s a yes or no answer. And they’re like, well, I guess if I knew for sure that it was going to, okay, all right. So basically you do know for sure that’s what’s going to happen. You know, and if you don’t have a problem with wheat, which a lot of people don’t, and if you didn’t have a problem with, with dairy, with a lot, which a lot of people don’t, then it’s probably not as big a deal as if you are someone who does have those problems, which a lot of people do have those problems with one both. So these things you need to look at the other side. What are you sacrificing by doing these things that you believe are too great of a sacrifice to give up? You need to look at it the other way. You are truly sacrificing health, energy, joi de Vive, um, uh, sleep, work efficiency, uh, relationship with your family, your kids, your wife, um, your friends. Uh, those are the sacrifices you’re making by not being as healthy as you can be. So, uh, it’s, it’s this same equation but seeing it differently, you know, and that’s what people struggle with, you know.
Brad: 01:08:58 So now, um, I just checked 99.7% of the listeners turned off or nodding their head in agreement, right? We call except this, yeah. That this, this pain and suffering that we’re heading toward.
Andrew: 01:09:12 that you’re pretending is pain and suffering.
Brad: 01:09:15 It’s, it’s, um, I guess the instant gratification, the pull was, is too powerful to turn away. And I think a lot of it is, um, marketing forces, cultural forces. Um, it’s so commonplace that we lock into these habit patterns, um, and we don’t even realize how, you know, how, how we’re setting ourselves up for pain and suffering and in declining quality of life just by being everyday American and going to the kid’s birthday party and having a slice of cake and a little scoop of ice cream on top of that. And it’s no big deal. Uh, but then if you times it by a thousand and it is a big deal and um, that, that one’s, that one’s hard to, um, it’s a, it’s a disturbing notion that’s hard to shake that, that we don’t know what we’re doing to ourselves because we’re, cause we’re blinded by commonplace and because.
Andrew: 01:10:07 it’s slow, it’s slow, it’s overtime. People say, man, at 40, all of a sudden I couldn’t do this. And the answer is, well, you really shouldn’t have been doing it since you were 15, but it took you 25 years to screw your body up so much that now you’re noticing symptoms. Okay.
Brad: 01:10:20 Yeah. Right. That’s no joke was so many things, especially accumulators, accumulation of excess body fat and things like that, that your, your insulin system gets worn out over time. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew: 01:10:31 So that’s, that’s the thing is, is like I, you know, I had, I used to love this food and now I, I get a rash whenever I have it. And it’s like, well, your body never liked it. You just weren’t listening. You didn’t pay attention to the symptoms you were getting. So your body just kept increasing those symptoms and basically kicking you in the shin until you paid attention to what it was trying to tell you. You know, giving you constant feedback.
Brad: 01:10:54 Yeah. And we’re calling it aging in many cases, but it’s not really, it’s not the, it’s not the accumulation of chronological years. It’s just the wearing out of a healthy,
Andrew: 01:11:05 it’s accumulation of abuse.
Brad: 01:11:07 Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew: 01:11:08 Anyway, so you need to look at the equation differently. What are you sacrificing by doing this as opposed to what are you sacrificing by not doing this? That’s what you need to look at and, uh, or you know, or not, you know, whatever.
Brad: 01:11:24 Yeah. I mean, it’s like the, uh, the motorcycle rider doesn’t want to wear a helmet cause they love the feeling of wind going through their hair. But then I’m paying their insurance policy. So for all of us to ignore that, Oh yeah. But someone else’s getting their organs so it works out. Okay. I was looking for a finish to this show because we’ve given you guys so much to think about and I know hitting you kind of hard with some, uh, with some admonitions here at the end. But how can you top that all right there. Congratulations for being an organ donor. Enjoy your motorcycle.
Andrew: 01:11:58 I think that if I was 25 years younger, I’d say Mic drop.
Brad: 01:12:07 Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com and we would also love 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.
