Dude was a champion runner in his youth, then went down the tired road of decline to become an overweight, fatigued office worker with 45 pounds of excess weight.

A portal opened by way of his exposure to the incredibly awesome sport of Speedgolf. After Dude’s first round, he was hooked! But he was also awakened to the idea that carrying around an extra 45 pounds was not helping his performance. Duly inspired, Dude dropped a quick 25 pounds with a traditional calorie restriction and regimented exercise approach. Then he stalled and started looking for a better way that would enable further progress. Dude did some careful research and planning and decided to adopt the Primal Endurance approach to his weight loss and endurance-related goals for Speedgolf.

Boom! Dude dropped another 20 pounds in short order using Maximum Aerobic Function (180-age) training and a low-carb, Primal-style eating strategy.

From his entry point as a dude trying to lose weight, Dude has gone off the deep end of health research and lifestyle practices. He talks about the dangers of blue light exposure and how to mitigate it. Did you know your computer screen is four times as bright as the midday sun? Blasting your eyeballs with this powerful artificial light source, especially after dark, can result in all manner of hormonal dysregulation. In particular, you will mess up your appetite and metabolic hormones such that you crave more sugar and store more fat.

Enjoy this wide-ranging discussion with Primal Health Coach Dude (or watch it on YouTube!) as we cover weight gain and long-term weight loss and the importance of protecting yourself from blue light exposure, as well as Dr. Robert Lustig’s book The Hacking of American Mind (which I covered in a previous episode) that apply to Dude’s own personal experience with healthy living. We ask ourselves: how much should we worry about things like EMF, without letting our awareness create more stress and negativity? Can fasting be the most effective way of recovering from grueling endurance performances?

Dude may not be a household name pushing a hot new book or product, but hearing real people’s stories about living real life on the edge will be very inspiring and informative. Dude ends the show by delivering five quick tips to improve your health and daily energy levels – things that are simple, easy to apply, and do-able for anyone!

TIMESTAMPS:

The constraints of modern life have impacted our ability to take care of ourselves [7:20].

How Dr. Robert Lustig’s video Sugar: The Bitter Truth, changed Dude’s life [15:45].

Brad and Dude share effective parenting tips and talk about setting boundaries for kids growing up in the digital age [23:15].

The Biology of Belief and letting go of childhood programming to take control of your life [30:45].

Brad and Dude talk about applying The Four Agreements to daily life [38:30].

“Humans have a great propensity for fooling themselves”  [47:15].

Why 4am meditation sessions will rejuvenate your body better than sleep [48:30].

Why Dude thinks we were never meant to eat high quantities of vegetables [55:50].

How plant foods factor into our dietary history and Dude’s weight loss journey [1:00:15].

Studies show you don’t actually need glucose for your brain [1:11:10].

Dude lists his top 5, life-changing health habits [1:20:50].

LINKS:

The Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton, PhD

The Hacking of the American Mind by Dr. Robert Lustig

The Hacking of the American Mind podcast episode

Dr. Robert Lustig: Sugar: The Bitter Truth

LISTEN:

Get Over Yourself Podcast

Brad (00:00:00):
Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author, and 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 (00:00:32):
Make no mistake, man. These corporations are hiring PhDs in psychology to tell them how the brain works so that they can engineer their products to make you stay on them. You know, that’s, that’s a fact. Our grandparents, right? They were like, Oh, the TV is the death of, of America. The death of, you know, intelligence. It’s the boob tube. It’s the idiot box. And you know, there was a lot of truth in that, but basically people, old people like us are saying the same thing about social media and whatnot these days. Let me play devil’s advocate, real quick. Person, you’re trained in smoothie, so I guess you could argue that our food is so nutrient deficient today that in order to get the same nutrients you need more of it.

Brad (00:02:40):
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you dude spellings. Yes, his name is Dude and he’s an extremely cool dude and also a absolute treasure trove of knowledge, information, insights, commentary on all manner of ancestral living, athletic peak performance topics. Dude resides in the cool town of Austin, Texas and he was there before it became cool. He was born and raised there, still lives there. It’s a primal health coach there, but this recording happened in Sacramento when he came out to participate in the speed golf tournament. I told you this guy was cool. He’s a speed golfer and he came out to do my tournament. We sat down and had a wonderful discussion. You can also watch it on YouTube and Oh my gosh, we cover all kinds of topics. Going from this to that to sleep, to diet, to exercise, to EMF concerns, to parenting, child rearing, the debate between how much personal freedom kids are allowed to have and then back into deep fitness, health, biohacking, all the stuff that he’s super interested in and up on the research, helping his clients out there in Austin and remotely, you’re going to love this guy. It’s a really interesting conversation and.

Brad (00:03:55):
Oh my gosh, wait until you hear about his amazing athletic achievement and personal experimentation to the absolute limits of ketogenic endurance performance. He did a double crossing of the grand Canyon that’s almost 50 miles where you go from the South rim down to the bottom, up to the North rim, back down to the bottom and back home to the South rim, and he did it on almost no food as an experiment to see how well he could do with his Keto and then you’re not going to believe what he did when he arrived at the finish line. There he and his fellow runners were met by their crew, their support crew, and a giant stack of pizzas to celebrate this incredible achievement. You’d think that after not eating for, what was it, 13 hours or however long the trip took, he would be diving in there too, but no, he did something that I believe is going to represent a breakthrough in human peak performance in recovery in the years ahead. That’s right. He fasted for 12 more hours overnight before he ate anything with incredible results. Wait till you hear his story, you’re going to love this whole conversation with Dude Spellings .

Brad (00:05:07):
That taping videos, taping and, and I’m here in Sacramento. Welcome. Thanks for coming to my town Dude Spellings. Absolutely. Um, that’s why we busted out the video camera cause uh, we’re in person now and then the beautiful city of Austin. Thanks for uh, showing me around getting me the breakfast tacos there earlier this year. And now you’re in town for, for what big reason? The Sacramento Speed Golf Open and bringing the speed golfers together from across the country for this wonderful event. But at first we have some issues to discuss. We’re very warmed up right now because we just turned the mic and the cameras on, but we’ve been talking for a while about some big picture items, which is I think your, your specialty, your expertise is just having your hand in everything and seeing, seeing what’s going on.

Brad (00:05:56):
And one thing that occurs to me is like we’re, we’re living and breathing this stuff every single day. You and I, right? We’re in the business. You’re a coach. I’ve been, you know, in the, in the health scene and before that an athlete forever. So my life was about health optimization and keeping up on all the latest, greatest of diet, training methods, uh, getting more sleep and then, uh, surrounding us, our loved one, friends and family, and even ourselves in our own lives. There’s so many challenges to doing what’s right and what’s believed to be the healthiest believed to be now, who knows what 10 years from now will bring. Uh, but you know, that, that’s kind of where I think we could, we could pick it up. It’s like, geez, what, what do we do? It’s almost overwhelming.

Brad (00:06:41):
Definitely. So, um, like I discussed earlier, one of the things I’ve recently started was teaching a online health and wellness program and I specifically wanted to target people that are not in this space. And it’s definitely easy to get inside the bubble. It’s like once you, uh, have whatever awakening that you have that leads you to this lifestyle, you’re, everybody listens to the same podcasts and watches the same, uh, videos on YouTube and reads the same books. And it’s easy to be just kind of stay in this bubble where we’re all exposed to the same information, the same people and whatnot. And I’ve always thought, because, uh, I was definitely not in that bubble, uh, that I always thought that I really like my passion is to bring this information to people who would not otherwise be exposed to it. Um, and mostly people like I was, which is, you know, the lifetime office worker doing the right thing, holding down your office job, supporting your family. Uh, and you know, it’s so easy to get caught up in, uh, trying to live the American dream and support your family that you lose sight of the fact that you have lost your health and that you, uh, can’t bend over anymore or you can’t squat down anymore. Or your, uh, eyesight is failing or your, you know, all the myriad, multiple things that happen when you’re basically a human zoo animal inside, uh, an office, um, for 80% of time or whatever.

Brad (00:08:40):
Yeah, that’s a pretty common one is the, the sacrifice required just to make a living and get on the road and commute and sit in a, uh, a typical office environment is a huge compromise to health. And then I think, you know, there’s compelling argument that if you put the time and energy and the investment into, uh, eating healthier, getting some exercise, uh, doing some, uh, stretching and breathing in the morning before you head off to work. You know, taking this, these more chunks of time, you’re going to have more energy and be more productive. But it’s so difficult to, you know, kind of embrace that and put it into action because you’re tired, fried and burnt out. And all you want to do when you get home is crash on the couch. Watch your Netflix, hit the pint of Ben and Jerry’s. And so it’s like this vicious cycle downward.

Brad (00:09:25):
It’s the matrix. It’s the matrix. No, this is how I refer to it. Let’s, like you are literally plugged into the matrix when you are stuck in this, that cycle where you mindlessly, uh, go to work. Um, you do your job all day under artificial light and staring at us screen. You never see the real environment, which is sunshine and outdoors. And then you get home and because of your stressful day, what do you wanna do you want to plug in to Netflix, TV, YouTube, whatever it is, but you just want to chill and it’s you, it’s not a conscious lifestyle, right? It’s a, it’s a, um, a subconscious plugging in to this, um, alternate reality where, uh, even the nutritional information is, um, the, what are the, would morphea say like the, the wool pulled over your eyes so that you don’t see the truth, you know? Well,

Brad (00:10:39):
There’s so many, uh, addictive properties to the things we do, including the food reward system. Um, just listening to, um, uh, Robert Lustig’s new book, he’s the sugar, uh, Crusader from UC San Francisco. He’s got a new book called The Hacking of the American Mind. He talks about this, um, the, the, this dopamine reward system that we’re all wired for. It’s a wonderful survival instinct, right? We have to get up and, and kill an animal and eat it. So we experienced that immediate, immediate pleasure of, uh, an indulgent meal. Uh, but today, uh, the corporate interests, especially if you want to get a conspiracy about it, they’ve, they’ve kind of hacked this operation so that we are getting more and more alert into, uh, the immediate pleasure hits like the rat on the, on the wheel, uh, getting the cocaine and doing it over and over again.

Brad (00:11:30):
And so some of the pathways that, that give us, this immediate dopamine burst happened to be, uh, sugar is a big one, right? Uh, alcohol, uh, prescription drugs, uh, illegal drugs, street drugs, uh, porn, um, uh, sex, uh,

Dude (00:11:48):
notifications on your social media,

Brad (00:11:50):
social media and hyper-connectivity. And so you throw that all into the mix and no one, pretty much no one, no one I know has escaped this entirely. But if we go back a few generations and look at our lifestyle patterns we were talking about, uh, you know, America’s huge, we both have, uh, kids in the, uh, teenage to early adult age and what were we like back then? I was hanging out at the beach at UC Santa Barbara, riding my bicycle, doing running, doing all these, this sporty outdoor activity, but also sitting around and talking with my peers for an hour and a half, just talking. Maybe we’re on the beach maybe where we’re walking down the street, uh, to go, you know, get a meal where we’d sit and have no interruptions, no screens, nothing, you know, uh, dive bombing the casual interaction that was more supportive of, uh, happiness and contentment, which are hormones like serotonin, oxytocin. We hear about these things when we’re talking about healthy love relationships where you’re holding hands walking down the beach. You’re not getting a dopamine hit like you are during sexual intercourse, but you’re feeling that connection and all these things that lead to rich, rewarding life in the longterm.

Brad (00:12:59):
And if you dangle that carrot in front, it’s going to have a more powerful pull than holding hands walking down the beach. So he compare that to, uh, the, the, uh, widespread addiction to porn or to alcohol, sugar, things like that. They’re going to hijack, uh, sitting in your kitchen and making a, a meal, going to the farmer’s market, shopping for the foods, chopping them up and making this delicious meal that the ice cream is going to win out over that. And wow. Now we’re, um, you know, we’re, we’re victims of our own physiology and the incredible skill that the corporate interests have to the social media is a great example. It’s like these apps are designed to lure you in and cause you to spend more time than you originally wanted to. And these are very brilliant people behind the scenes doing the assorted mechanisms that keep you, uh, basically addicted.

Dude (00:13:54):
Oh, they’re there. These make no mistake, man. These corporations, they’re hiring PhDs in psychology to tell them how the brain works so that they can engineer their products to make you stay on them. You know, that’s, that’s a fact. Um, man, so much, um, content and just awesome information. What you just said.

Brad (00:14:18):
I did a podcast about, um, there’s, there’s something called the Center for Humane Technology. I did a brief show on get over yourself, podcasts and breather show about the guy who started this, I forget his name, but he used to be a, uh, engineer of some note at Google, uh, dealing with offer that development and now he started this nonprofit and you can go and look at their website and there’s all kinds of suggestions and a movement in the direction of compelling these, uh, these big platform people to create a more reasonable user experience rather than, um, great example is like Facebook. Hey, we met on the, on the subway and I’m going to go add you as a friend cause uh, it was nice to meet you in real life. And so I go onto Facebook and say, uh, type this person’s name and find them and then add them as a friend. And in the act of doing that, I’m going to get an alert of 17 friend requests. And they do that on purpose so that you can’t just engage and disengage. You’re sucked in. Right. Same with food. You have, you can’t eat just one bite of Pringles because they’ve dusted that with a addictive properties like the glad and protein in wheat, Dr. William Davis, Wheat Belly. So we’re, we’re getting served up everywhere. We look with things that are truly, I’m short circuiting our ability to be happy and content over the longterm.

Dude (00:15:36):
Totally. Um, I’m, I wanna go back to something you said earlier on the same lines of, um, Wheat Belly. About Dr Robert Lustig. Um, that guy is phenomenal and he was really one of the first people I was exposed to. Uh, once I decided to start looking into the food and making a change, uh, the probably the first video I saw of his was this video on YouTube called Sugar, The Bitter Truth. And, uh,

Brad (00:16:07):
It was a documentary like, uh,?

Dude (00:16:09):
No, it’s just him giving a presentation now UC Davis or somewhere. Yeah. And, but it’s jam packed with tons of facts and information and, um, you know, everything from how, uh, sugar is processed in liver very similarly to alcohol and how fructose, uh, the fatty liver from fructose looks just like fatty liver from alcoholism. And, um, he has lots of information in there about how the, uh, corporate food industry is, um, you know, obfuscating what is really in their food and how there’s 56 names for sugar so that you don’t know that there’s sugar in the food and it’s just a, it’s a really, really good primer for anybody who, um, wants to, um, kind of get into the, uh,

Brad (00:17:08):
Bitter Truth. The bitter truth. Yeah. Oh, I like his line from this is from the book Hacking in the American Mind, where the guy who originally invented Coca-Cola, the original formula had a sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and cocaine all mixed in the formula. And the guy who invented it, I forget his name, he was a morphine addict. Oh, wow. And so he was, you know, a guy who was trying to make money to support his habit or you know, create the wonderful concoction to get his fix in the, in the 1800s. And he sold the formula for like, you know, 500 bucks or 250 bucks because he was penniless. And he, you know, he, he died a disgrace. You’d go to the Coca-Cola museum. There’s no mention of the guy’s name, the guy who came up with the original formula. And then the government kind of tightened things up. So between 1886 or whatever, in 1903, when the, the final Coca-Cola product was brought to the world, they took out everything except for the, um, the sugar and the caffeine. They took out the alcohol and the cocaine due to lawmaking.

Brad (00:18:04):
But wow. You know, here, here we are today with, um, it’s, it’s almost like, uh, uh, the, the movie analogy was appropriate because I’m shaking my head because I have that grasp of three, three, three something, decades clear of technology. I mean, I remember dialing up, some of you viewers, listeners might not know what I’m talking about, but you had to make the concerted effort to tie up your phone line, hit the button, and it would make the funny noise key. And then you’d get connected to the internet and you could check your email and it was so great. And then you’d hang up and do whatever you’re doing.

Dude (00:18:44):
If you want to download a one picture, it would take, you know, like a minute and a half to download one photo.

Brad (00:18:50):
Yeah, yeah. Uh, but you know, and I’ve been writing books all this time before and after, right? And so today, like I can do a great job gathering research in an extremely rapid amount of time and put together concise thoughts and pull anything I need to in anything I’ve ever heard or thought about. I can type it into my Evernote program if I took a note about it at some point in my life or type it into Google and find it and lock in and have this great experience of putting together the best content we’ve ever had a chance to. But I also have my email inbox open and, and pulled over there for some reason during the day when I’m supposed to be focusing or pulled over into an article that I’m looking up. And then I got drawn into that. And so it makes for a haphazard experience and I’m thinking about the old days when I’d like pack up and ride my bike over to the library with a bunch of papers and notes and print books or go in the library and get print books. And the experience of compiling information and writing a book was so different and you know, what’s better? What’s worse?

Brad (00:19:51):
Maybe for me it’s worse now because my brain is fried and I know we’re advancing culture and society with the internet and the free communication. But I think it’s time to pay attention to the drawbacks and do something about it with Dude’s course, what’s it called?

Dude (00:20:06):
Primal Reboot.

Brad (00:20:07):
Primal Reboot. And you’re kind of targeting like coworkers in an office environment cause you work with people in a real setting. It’s not like a, it’s not like a health company, it’s a technology operation. So you’re dealing with real life people everyday fighting the battle, huh?

Dude (00:20:20):
Yup. Yeah. Um, so I want to get to, to my course in a minute, but I also want to address what you said about technology and how it’s um, you know, a double edged sword. And I think this has always been the case. You know, if you look back at our grandparents, right? They were like, Oh, the TV is the death of, of America. The death of, you know, intelligence. It’s the boob tube. It’s the idiot box. And you know, there was a lot of truth in that. But, um, basically people, old people like us are saying the same thing about social media and whatnot these days. And the truth is, is that all technology throughout human history has a double edged sword, right? I mean, just like the rest of everything in life. And you know, something like a gunpowder or dynamite, right? I mean, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and, um, he’s obviously the creator of the Nobel prize. And the, the whole reason that he created the Nobel prize is because, um, actually they, uh, incorrectly published an obituary about him. His brother died and the newspaper wrote an obituary about him instead of his brother. And they, they called him the “merchant of death” or some something like that.

Brad (00:21:48):
Poor guy. Yeah. He’s having a conscience. He opens up the paper. Oh my.

Dude (00:21:52):
Yeah. And I mean this, you know, he was fabulously wealthy because dynamite’s so, um, you know, useful. And, um, and interestingly enough, um, Alfred Nobel’s father, uh, invented the landmine, right? So like these, these people are, you know, they have this legacy of, it’s definitely both of devices. Well, a double edged sword, right? I mean, you know, you could argue that landmine is one of the most evil inventions ever. Or you could argue that it has, you know, allowed small countries to protect themselves from invaders or you know, like everything’s a double edged sword, which is my point. And, and, uh, you know, something is useful as dynamite. Yes. You know, millions of people died, but you know, there’s no way you could have built the Panama canal or, um, Hoover Dam unless you had these tools. And so today, uh, you know, we’re kind of faced with this similar choices where we need to, um, and just like anything in life, uh, being conscious about how we use the tools is what’s going to be the most beneficial for us.

Brad (00:23:03):
So in general, generally speaking, what would, what would you do as a parent when you’re armed with all this information, wisdom perspective, and you have kids coming of age in the digital age. And I found myself, uh, fighting these battles with my kids are now adults, uh, and out of the house. Right? But, um, I realize that the excessive screen use and the presentation of unhealthy nutrient deficient toxic foods were two things that were, you know, breaking my heart on a daily basis. And so that I, I had to get in their face and fight this battle. But you can’t really control it at a level. So if parents are listening, if you have, if you have kids ages zero to seven, start to, uh, loosen your, uh, belt buckle a little bit because right now you have almost total control over whatever. And then you’re gonna get seven to 14, then you’re going to get 14 to 21. So it’s interesting looking back like, I don’t know. Do you have any, um, insights of what works and what doesn’t work?

Dude (00:24:05):
Certainly I’m no parental expert..

Brad (00:24:07):
What works really well is the lecturing for long duration lectures. I learned as a soccer coach, we had multiple coaches. We had this, you know, really enthusiastic team of the traveling soccer team. We wanted to take it to the next level from the recreation team and they had tryouts and pick these kids who are really into it, you know? And then we’d have these practices where I’d see something and I’d want to address the team at the break. Right. And then so with the other coach want to address the team about something else and then the third coach would want to, you know, put in a rah rah at the end or whatever. And I realized like if I had a stopwatch, it would have been nice in my hand. Cause there’s like a 40 second window of attention span for a 13 year old, huge, uh, in the middle of the athletic practice. And that’s all you got. That’s your chance. And if you keep talking after that, you totally lose them. And I, I assume it’s probably the same in the household when you’re trying to pick your spots there.

Dude (00:24:59):
Yeah. I mean, I think anything thing, you know, the, the what, what’d you always hear from the experts is, you know, model the behavior that you want your children to, you know. Okay.

Brad (00:25:08):
And that’s a good one. Yeah. Um, ,

Dude (00:25:11):
and, you know It’s a tall order. It’s tough. Um, I mean,

Brad (00:25:13):
it shouldn’t, shouldn’t be that tough if you’re a parent. It’s like fricking do it man. I mean, and if you’re not, Oh my gosh, I remember like when when our kids were, you know, coming into the age where, you know, there’s, there’s marijuana on high school campuses now, surprise, surprise. And if you’re, if you’re having fun at parties and engaging in this or that thing that you don’t want your kid to do, I mean, I’m like forget it. I mean, come on, give me a break.

Dude (00:25:39):
Yeah, definitely true.

Brad (00:25:40):
Even if they’re not there, these things kind of ooze back into like, kids are so smart and so perceptive and they can see right through someone who says, do as I say, not as I do. You know,

Dude (00:25:51):
so let’s bring this back and make it really real. So the hardest place for for that for me is the phone. Oh, right. So, uh, when our kids were young, um, my ex wife wanted to get them phones as soon as they were in middle school, basically. And I thought that was a little bit too young. But then you’ve got the double edged sword where, Oh, well we can put this app on it. And they can track it and it’ll be safe when they walk to school. We can see where they are and they can, we can see if they, you know, took a detour on the way home from school and you know, all this stuff. And you can,

Brad (00:26:27):
This cause man was offering me candy on 37th street.

Dude (00:26:30):
Yeah, exactly. Um, but even, even just very, very practical terms, you know, I’m like, fair point. If you want to text your child and tell them, Hey, I’m going to be 30 minutes late picking you up. It’s very convenient. But one thing I noticed is, is that, you know, it’s really hard for me to dole out advice on, you know, the social media when I’m on social media. You know, and again, it’s, it’s got its pluses, it’s got its minuses. Um, but one, one area where I would say I might have had a modicum of success with my kids is with, um, some of the lifestyle stuff like diet and, um, circadian biology. My 16 year old goes to bed early. I think a lot of that is the function of her being fairly introverted in, um, just being in touch with how tired she is. Um, you know, teenagers tend to sleep a lot and she’s instead of, um, deciding to sleep in super late, which she does a lot, but during the week when she knows she’s got to get up early for school, she, she likes to go to bed early.

Dude (00:27:46):
Um, and then like I mentioned to you earlier, she’s also, you know, the, of course the teenagers, they don’t like to admit that I know anything that they don’t know or that I have, uh, any kind of, um, knowledge that might be correct. But she’s, she’s let her guard down a couple times and sent me text messages and said, Hey, what do you think about this article? And by phasic sleep or blue light or, and she’s got a blue light blocking app on her phone cause we’ve talked about it and she understood that she values her sleep.

Brad (00:28:18):
So yeah, I also sit back and reflect that. Um, I think generally like here’s the age of the helicopter parents, the college admissions bribery scandal, thinking that we can orchestrate everything. And my insight is that we probably have less influence than we think we do across the board. And there’s some, uh, individuality component of each, each human on the planet where they’re, they’re walking their own path and no matter what their environment is. I mean, peer group is arguably, not arguably, but some research says, I don’t know if I agree or disagree, but that there they become more important than the parents from ages 10 to 17. And it’s all about the peers and all that. Whether that’s, let’s say that’s true, your parents still have a lot of influence, your family setting. But I think there’s this X factor where, um, you know, the, the kids just going to be on a certain path because of their, maybe there’s some innate things there. Their genetics, their biology, and then the things that, um, you know, they adapt to or that, uh, cause they’re, they’re attract their interest or their passion and it’s totally random. You know, like, well, I wouldn’t say it’s totally random only because, uh, I tend to believe in, you know, like a higher power or a cosmic consciousness or whatever you want to call it. Like, you know, you hear this, um, phrase it, um,

Dude (00:29:42):
People say all the time, everyone has their cross to bear. Right? And it’s true. And you know, you see kids even, you know, when I was a kid, you know, my brother and I grew up in the same household and we have different outlooks on different topics. Um, sometimes wildly different outlooks. Um, even though we had the same parenting, lived in the same household, had the same, heard the same, um, admonitions from our parents and whatnot. And I think that part of the hero’s journey, right, is you, um, awake enough to realize that you have this programming from your childhood and that you took away certain things and that when you become an adult, you get to decide if you want to keep those things or not. That’s really the hero’s journey, right? That is written about in mythology and movies like Star Wars and the Matrix and whatnot is like you, um, at some point you have to take ownership of over your life and your, um, agency and decide that, you know, whatever happened in the past is in the past and you get to be the creator of your future.

Brad (00:31:03):
I guess you don’t have to be a nice suggestion. Well you can stay plugged into the matrix. Yeah. Well I mean Bruce Lipton Biology of Belief, they incredible insight that I can’t stop thinking about that. Um, science validates this idea that 95 to 99% of the time we’re operating from our subconscious and that consists of these, uh, programming that in in many ways flawed, flawed childhood programming from ages zero to six. That’s when we’re an open book, a sponge and we absorb all these messages and form our view of the world. And then we just play it out with reactive behavior, uh, subconscious in rather than the opposite would be being mindful. You’re into a contentious conversation and you get triggered and you react and you say stuff that you don’t mean or that you’ve said for years and years in response when you feel attacked or defensive. And so to, to kind of awakened to the possibility that we’re a victim of our flawed subconscious programming, um, is, is pretty heavy. And, uh, what does it, they, we think, um, uh, 30,000 thoughts a day, um, 80% of them are identical to yesterday’s thoughts and 70 to 80% of the thoughts are negative. I don’t think I’m exactly right on those stats, but it’s just like we’re just walking around with, um, fears, worries, anxieties, uh, a tape running in our head that was largely, uh, you know, uh, uploaded to us from zero to six.

Dude (00:32:32):
B. So that, that, um, dynamic that you described as kind of like what Joe Dispenza talks about in the Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself a few minutes.

Brad (00:32:41):
But that’s a good, Oh man.

Dude (00:32:43):
So basically the gist is like exactly what you said, you know, um, you have these constant thoughts every day and those thoughts create your reality. And what you thought yesterday is, uh, reinforces what you’re going to think today. And so if you want to break the habit of whatever cycle is happening in your life that you want to change, you gotta change those thoughts.

Brad (00:33:07):
That’s why speed golf is so great. Totally, because you’re standing over even better than regular golf. But golf is a great sport for this too. And any sport for that matter. I totally, yeah,

Dude (00:33:18):
I’ve often said to, uh, years ago I drew this analogy between golf and snow skiing because what I realized even like as a teenager is, um, what you believe about the outcome is it, it’s everything about what actually ends up happening, right? So if you’re standing at the top of a double black diamond run and you’re looking down at these rocks and moguls and cliff and over my head,

Brad (00:33:48):
Oh crap. Yeah. If you have, how dangerous?

Dude (00:33:50):
If you have one doubt, right? Oh, can I, will I be able to ski this? You’re done, right? You have to be standing at the top looking at the w what’s in front of you going, I got this and that. It makes all the difference. Same with the golf shot. You know, like we were saying earlier, when you come up to a shot in your, uh, you know, you’re playing slow golf, golfing, you got all this time to second guess yourself and introduced doubt and all that stuff. Yeah. You’re like, you know, 30% success on that shot, but in speed you off when you come up and it’s just so quick that you don’t have time to second guess. You’re like, Oh, I just got to hit this kind of shot and you don’t judge it.

Brad (00:34:33):
Right? You do it. Maybe that’s where some of the magic is because for our listeners, unfamiliar many players when they’re playing these speed golf tournaments, this crazy sport where you run through the course at high speed, you only have half of your clubs and your, you’re basically rushing through a sport that’s supposed to be super deliberate and technique oriented. But what happens is many of the players, if not most, play as good or better, they shoot a score that’s around the same is when they’re spending all day out there with their caddy and their wind and their yardage finder that it tells them exactly, you know, what to do with each shot. And it’s almost unexplainable except for you just made a nice attempt where you’re just out of your, um, you know, you’re out of that, uh, overanalytical mind where you’re subject to all the negative thoughts and beliefs that you’ve, that you’ve stored in there and.

Dude (00:35:23):
you don’t give yourself time to judge yourself.

Brad (00:35:27):
I wonder how that would work like in the, uh, in the workplace setting where you just speak whatever’s on your mind.

Dude (00:35:34):
You gotta be real careful not to do what you were talking about earlier about, um, you know, being reactive rather than responsive. Right? You got cause so much of that flawed programming is so ingrained that that, you know, you’re triggered, right? And you just say, you get defensive and say whatever, you know, whatever the F “that’s not true.!” Or, you know, whatever it is. Instead of reflecting and deciding that instead of, uh, taking the reflexive, um, response that you’re, you’ve been programmed with that you’re going to be more thoughtful about it and, and respond with something maybe that’s more productive or yeah.

Brad (00:36:18):
And make for a nicer, more respectful workplace and building that equity on your team so that everybody respects each other and their, their voice feels heard. Uh, but I’m also thinking about, uh, I think it was Ben Franklin or some other people that would make a practice of inviting their enemies or their rivals to join them in sort of a, a cabinet like setting or a trusted group of advisors. And I know some of the leading, uh, business legends of modern times would do the same thing. They’d bring in a contrarian and want to hear from that person. And I think if you can rise up to this level where let’s say your lifelong buddies that are going to tell you the straight scoop without that filter, that’s so common. And I guess so important in day to day life when you’re engaging in all these different levels. And a boy. I think there’s a lot of value to that. I remember my, uh, uh, my former training partner Weaver, he’s, uh, the late Don Weaver. It was a great, uh, an amateur triathlon training for many years and he had no filter on his mouth and a lot of people thought he was a jerk, didn’t like training with them cause he was such a pop off and he’d make arrogant comments or whatever.

Brad (00:37:25):
But if you get to know him and get through that kind of, uh, you know, tough guy exterior, he would give you, um, the straight scoop. And I remember him kind of, uh, you know, telling me that, um, I wasn’t as good as I used to be. Then I was fallen off and it was the hardest thing to hear because most people are giving me kind it supportive comments. You can do it. Oh, it sounds like you had an encouraging race where yeah, I had a good swim. Uh, but a crappy bike and a decent run. So if I can put those pieces together and I’d tell this lie in my mind rather than seeing it for what it was, which was, I’m at the end of the my career, I’m getting slower, I’m getting my ass kicked and I’m on my way out. I had my, I’ve already reached my peak. But if someone else tells it to you that has a really a strong impact, a stronger impact than 50 people patting on the back and supporting you because maybe 37 of those people have a different thought that they’re too afraid to say to you or, don’t want to hurt your feelings. You don’t want to hurt your feelings. And I think now, you know, we’re both in like life transition phase from, uh, you know, departing from a long marriages and moving on into the next phase of life and to get through these kinds of things, you require that kind of support rather than the fakey fakey everything’s okay. And we’re going to go out and talk about, uh, the UT, uh, hook ’em horns. And if there are they going to win some more? Oh, that’s, that’s the white rainbows go Hawaii. They have a pretty good football. Think of morning, there’s the horns. Yeah. But I mean you can fill up, especially today, I think you can fill up your entire brain all the way up to the top your entire day. Just dealing with nonsense. Bullshit. That doesn’t really, all it does is pass the time rather than get deep. Totally.

Dude (00:39:17):
Have you read, um, The Four Agreements? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So what, what uh, what you just, I read it. I live it every day.

Brad (00:39:25):
Oh, excellent. Well what you, what you just stay impeccable with your word. Yes. Always do your best. Don’t take things personally and don’t make assumptions in, out of, out of, out of correct order.

Dude (00:39:35):
But yeah, that point is what you just said reminded me. Like those are two, the two flip sides of the coin are, um, be impeccable with your word. Right? So like, like your friend say what you mean. Right. But then the flip side, if you’re the one receiving it, don’t take it personally. Right. So then if we just put those two in clay, I love that. So if the two people can put each of those in, play back and forth, how wonderful. And then also, uh, reminding the important, uh, elaboration of, be impeccable with your word. Don Miguel Ruiz says, be impeccable with your word to yourself to, so if I am standing in front of a mirror with that athletic example going, uh, I think what’s going on here is I’m seeing the writing on the wall.

Brad (00:40:21):
Same with people who get fired from their job. I’m sorry not to make light of it, but I’m an expert at getting fired. I get fired three times in six years. I worked two years for the white man three times in a row. And after the third one, I’m like, I don’t think this is gonna work out in general. I think I need to, you know, I don’t think I’m going to fit in. Uh, but getting fired is, uh, for most people, a traumatic experience. And they can go meet their friend at Starbucks and say, yeah, if you could put me into, you know, your LinkedIn group and putting out a good word for me. Oh sure. I will. You lazy ass, you got fired because you blank, blank blank. But you know, if you got fired 99 times out of a hundred, the writing was on the wall.

Brad (00:41:02):
You were sucking or it was a bad fit. So what are you upset about? It’s like come on.

Dude (00:41:06):
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um, so I’ve got a funny story real quick about, uh, taking, you know, like being impeccable with your word, with yourself. So I never did an Ironman. or even a half Ironman.

Brad (00:41:21):
Congratulations.

Dude (00:41:22):
But I did dabble in some sprint triathlons and I dunno,

Brad (00:41:25):
Cap Techs try.

Dude (00:41:27):
Uh, I did that one. Yeah,

Brad (00:41:28):
that’s crazy stuff out there in Austin. I announced that one year. Oh wow. There’s so many. I mean, how many thousands of people do that? It’s one of the biggest races in the world. It’s insane.

Dude (00:41:38):
I don’t know. But um,

Brad (00:41:39):
the bike racks go for like three quarters of a mile. Seriously? Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. Okay, go ahead.

Dude (00:41:44):
I never wrecked, so at least I got that going for me. But, uh, the what finally made me quit triathlon, I probably did, I don’t know, maybe like 10. And, um, you know, I’m, I’m a decent runner, so, you know, I had that going for me and the bike wasn’t too hard to, um, transition from running, but I was a terrible swimmer and the I should’ve known it from the first triathlon that I did. So the first triathlon I did, I had this coworker and she did them and she was like, Oh yeah, you should do this. You’re a runner, this would be be great. You know, so I go to this triathlon and she’s in it. And at the time I was in the, um, elite age group, right? The whatever, 18 to 35 or whatever. So we went first and then the 18 to 35 women went after us. And they, they were going to start, you know, like seven minutes after us or whatever to give us time to get out of the water.

Dude (00:42:35):
And when I got out of the water, the women had already already caught up to me. All right. So I should’ve known that. But then, but fast forward to like 10, um, triathlons later, I’m talking to this guy, this one was in Albany, Oregon, was talking to this guy beforehand and, and I’m like, I happened to have one arm. Right? And so he noticed it and I’m like, wow, this is pretty cool. You know, you can compete in these things with one arm, blah, blah, blah.

Brad (00:43:01):
He also beat you in the swim.

Dude (00:43:03):
He also beat in swim. So I’m getting out of the water and I see this guy about 50 yards in front of me and I’m like, all right, one arm man beats me in the swim last triathlon. I’m done writings on the wall.

Brad (00:43:17):
Good for him though. My gosh. Great guy.

Brad (00:43:19):
Yeah. Uh, well, let’s see. We’re, we’ve, we’ve gotten into the heavy theoretical part of the show, so maybe we should, um, turn the corner a little. And I think what you’re good at is helping people, including me. You’re like the, the encyclopedic resource for all the thing that’s going on and then dive in there, extract something, and share the message. So maybe we should give the listener viewer some, uh, helpful, practical tips of high impact things that they can do that maybe they might not be looking at right now. And I know we’ve been talking a lot about this. Um, well ,we’ve been talking a lot about the EMF thing, the EMF scare. I’m kinda freaked out about it because of the lack of full understanding of the potential negative impact. And then the, uh, the blue light, uh, really seems like it’s taking off and getting widely accepted and embraced as a problem that we can do something about so easily. And if you think of something else that goes in that same list, like, um, what the estrogenic compounds in the environment is now something that’s on my, on my checklist to worry about.

Dude (00:44:24):
Oof. Well, I think, you know, I’ve talked to him about this a little bit offline. Um, you know, I think the key to the whole thing is Bruce Lipton says is like, if you believe it’s a problem, it’s certainly probably. That one’s brutal, huh?

Brad (00:44:38):
And let’s, let’s sit there for a second because that one slapped me in the face. He was talking to Luke Story. Lifestyle was podcasts. Yup. And he’s like calling out the host who’s a real health enthusiast biohacker of of note and is upon everything and making his environment as sanitize as possible and healthy. And he said, yeah, that’s your problem is you’re worried about that cell tower that’s a half a block away from your house. And Oh my gosh, I am now. I’m seeing myself and my proclivities and my peculiarities such as that desperate need to get optimum sleep, every sleep, every night. And that goes back to my triathlon days because when you’re an athlete, that’s all you’re all about is you’ve got to deliver some workouts and you better get impeccable sleep because if you’re staying up later or screwing around with that, then you’re not all about, you know, peak performance.

Brad (00:45:29):
And so I’m long since departed from the athletic circuit where I like to, um, uh, tell the audiences I, I was asleep for half my life when I was an athlete. I slept 10 hours, a nine two hour nap every afternoon without fail. And if I missed a little bit of that nap, I would feel off on my swim workout that night. And I ‘db complain about it and I’d, you know, just be this strict devotion to incredible sleeping habits. Okay, so now how well do I roll with the punches if I get a crappy night’s sleep or I’m traveling through time zones, probably not as well as, for example, Mia Moore who has no complaints and will stay up late working and getting stuff done until midnight pop up at 6:00 AM like it’s nothing. And the lack of negativity, the lack of complaining or even observing that to be a problem, she says, I feel rested, I feel fine. Why should we even talk about it more? Like, I guess you’re dialed in. Cause I went to sleep from 10 45 to six 48 and I feel like I need 15 more minutes of sleep. I can’t get up. Hey man, help me out. Help me out.

Dude (00:46:29):
Well, I think there’s a lot to believing that, uh, you know, you’re getting enough for that. Um, and part of that is just being in touch with your body, right? I mean, if, if you are, if you are in fact in touch with your body and you feel like you need more sleep, well maybe you do. But, and then the flip side of that also is something that, um, Logan Schwartz told me when I first started getting into all this stuff, he was telling me, you know, Oh yeah, you need to change your diet. You need to take cold showers. You need to, you know, all this stuff. Right? And like every day was a new thing on the list that I need to be doing. And, you know, he was like, Oh, how much sleep are you getting? Right? And I’m like, Oh yeah, I only need five or six hours.

Dude (00:47:08):
I’m good. And he’s like, no, no, no, no, no. You need, you need a lot more sleep than that. And I’m like, no, I feel great. I feel fine. And he’s like Wow. He’s like, no, you think you feel great. You don’t, you don’t even know what great is cause you haven’t experienced. Okay. Right. So maybe there’s some truth to that and, and we, and like started the show with humans have a great propensity to fool ourselves if you want to, but at the same time, um, yeah, I mean I think you can. Um, I think Mia Moore for example, particularly if you are doing something in life that you love, that energizes you, that you want and crave to stay up late to, you know, finish because it’s your passion and you just love it. Um, maybe you’re getting, you know, you’re energizing yourself in a way that, um, is so helpful that maybe you don’t need as much sleep.

Dude (00:48:11):
Um, by the same token, I have a lot of friends who are yogis, you know, yoga teachers and, um, they are big into meditation, right? And I know of several people that get up at four o’clock in the morning to meditate because four o’clock in the morning is supposed to coincide with the time that your pineal gland makes the most melatonin so that you can get into the most deep meditative state while, while you have the most melatonin. And, um, there’s actually research to show that when you are meditating in this state with high melatonin, cause you got up at four o’clock in the morning cause you’re so devoted that the rejuvenation and um, you know, rebuilding that happens in your body is actually greater than it is when you’re asleep.

Brad (00:49:06):
Wow.

Dude (00:49:07):
Yeah. I started talking to one of my friends who, who’s a Kundalini yoga teacher about this and, and you know, cause I’m, I’m coming from the same place you aren’t. I’m like, she’s telling me that she gets, you know, that she stays up till 11 o’clock at night doing all this, you know, um, family stuff and whatnot, preparing for the next day. And then she gets up at four o’clock in the morning. I’m like, you need more sleep than that. You know, I’m worried about you. You, you know, you got to get up and, and see the sunrise and you got to go to bed early and you know, all the stuff that we teach in primal philosophy and she’s started citing some of this research and, and I looked it up and that’s the case.

Brad (00:49:48):
Wow. I reminds me, I was talking to Mark Sisson the other day. He was doing about to do a podcast with Dave Asprey, Bulletproof guy, who’s the positioning himself as the ultimate biohacker and, and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars testing all the latest, greatest things and inventing things and touting this one day and touting that next day. And everything’s driven toward, uh, you know, optimizing longevity and health and peak performance, but everything’s quantified and measured and there’s machinery involved and it high expensive equipment and tracking, you know, we’re so into, in the, in the progressive health scene, the tracking of your blood values of your macronutrients and of course your training and your workout performance. And then, uh, Sisson is coming into it from more and more over time. Uh, just the non quantified self, he calls himself and everything’s based on Hey, I do, I wake up in the morning and do I feel okay?

Brad (00:50:39):
And so if you think about back to that sleep example and wherever your beliefs lie, you know, Do you feel great or not and what can you do about that? And if you have negative energy in your life and toxic relationship dynamics and things that are interfering with your ability to get a restful, restorative night’s sleep or maybe we’ll see self limiting beliefs are one of the things on the list that’s kind of in your way of just going with the flow and, and you know, attacking the day for, for all that you can, uh, enjoy and experience and be in a giving position for, for the planet. So, um, I think we can do it without the wires and the plugins and the charting and the graphing. Uh, but you know, that that control tower of your own belief system and your thoughts and whether you’re suffering from the disease, state of FOMO, fear of missing out or folk cue, you know, it folk Q is F O K U, you have fear of keeping up. Okay. Folk. You too. Yeah. That stuff will destroy you on so many levels, whether you’re, whether you’re in a sleep chamber with an IV coming in with, you know, recovery fluid overnight, it can override all that stuff.

Dude (00:51:49):
Yup. And you know, that brings it, this brings it back to trying to live consciously and mindfully and you know, being in touch with how you really feel and whatnot. Um, so I wanna want to bring up something that I thought about, um, a while back that I haven’t discussed with anybody, but I think there might be something to it.

Brad (00:52:09):
So it’s a scoop from Dude Spellings on the podcast.

Dude (00:52:12):
So, uh, we all know that the hormetic, um, adaptive response from things like, uh, the

Brad (00:52:27):
cold plunge, which you’re going to do later,

Dude (00:52:27):
the cold plunge. or the phytates and plants or whatever, right? A lot of these, um, um, hormetic stressors, um, provide just enough stress that it actually makes us stronger. And that’s really how the human organism works, right? Is we are, if we’re challenged just enough, we get stronger, right? If you’re challenged too much, you get crushed. And so I had this thought about the EMF, um, what if the way to adapt to them in our modern life is that, you know, you cannot eliminate them, right? So you need to be able to withstand them. And so if you are devoted to this lifestyle where you’re, you know, like EMF proofing your house, you got a lead in, you’re a sheet rock to block the EMF from the self towers and you don’t let people turn on their, their phone when they come inside.

Brad (00:53:27):
And what’s up liver King.?

Dude (00:53:28):
Yeah. You don’t have any wifi and all that guys. So dial,

Brad (00:53:31):
no cell phones, no wifi, 50 foot ethernet cables, wherever you want in the house to grab one and plug in. I’m sleeping on the floor. And then every light bulb is that beautiful orange hue that just the calming he’s the boss nailed in. Yeah.

Dude (00:53:45):
But my thought was, you know, if you are, if you have no exposure, then maybe you’re not getting a hormetic response that you need to, to be able to adapt to the modern world. Like maybe you’d be better. Yeah.

Brad (00:54:01):
You’d be more sensitive when you get on that jet, right. Than you’re fried from, from a two hour flight. Right. Yeah. So, so

Dude (00:54:08):
So for me, um, that kind of helps me with my belief that I don’t have to eliminate them entirely. Right. And I just need to pay attention to how I’m feeling and do the best I can.

Brad (00:54:24):
What do you think about applying that, uh, example of the hormetic stressor to diet with the, uh, the carnivore premise that the only reason we’re, we’re eating plants is that, well, they were survival foods. They’re not necessary for human survival now. And in fact that we’re getting these, um, these brief stressors, but they’re not brief cause we’re having plants all the time and having plant based diet thinking that’s the healthiest. How do you, how do you line that up? It’s a pretty radical notion, but it’s, it’s very compelling to think about.

Dude (00:54:58):
I think there’s something to it. And I don’t think if you really ponder it, I don’t think it’s that radical. Right? So if you, let’s take the, the famous Mark Sisson primal big ass salad, right? I’m like, love the big ass salad, man. I’m, I, I would go to Whole Foods and make, like, I would go to the, uh, like the chef area and say, yeah, I’m gonna need one of your great big metal bowls. Cause I want to make this gigantic salad. It’s going to be about two and a half pounds. Um, and I just, I love it. Right? But if you think about what our hunter gatherers are doing, were, would they ever hunt and gather two and a half pounds of lettuce and chard and olive oil, which they wouldn’t even have access to. And, um, radishes and broccoli? No, they, it’s like you’re never going to spend, how long would it take to gather all that stuff? Like four, five, six, seven hours?

Brad (00:55:56):
Like you’re never gonna it’s not that many calories either.

Dude (00:55:58):
No. I mean, especially if you don’t add the olive oil. Right. Um, so I think that we were probably never designed to eat that quantity of vegetables as, and especially if you’re doing something like a green smoothie now, now you’re making, you’re basically doing the exact same thing with the vegetables that people do with fruit juice, right? So if you’re going to drink a 20 ounce glass of Apple juice, like that’s the equivalent of like whatever it is, like six, seven, eight apples. Right? You can’t do that. You can’t eat six or seven apples.

Brad (00:56:32):
You have a stomach ache.

Dude (00:56:33):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And by the same token, you know, if you’re gonna make your 20 ounce green smoothie with kale and spinach and you know, uh, radishes, whatever else you’re going to put in there, um, you know, that the, to get the equivalent, um, level of phytates and, and proteins that, um, like, I forget what, uh, the, not gluten cause that’s not in those things. But, um, but so.

Brad (00:57:03):
the oxalates and the, the, the lectins and the things that are the, these are poisonous agents and plants that we ingest every day in the name of health. And in fact, what, what happens is it, uh, stimulates an antioxidant defense mechanism, uh, in the liver and then we get this antioxidant benefit from eating the broccoli or the, the kale and the smoothie. But it’s, you know, this is a new understanding for me to take it backwards cause I just didn’t make that connection that we’re ingesting the plant toxin and responding with an antioxidant defense and therefore strengthening our antioxidant defense systems. Right. But arguably unnecessary.

Dude (00:57:45):
Right. But you know, 10,000 years ago you’re going to eat, you know, like maybe one small plant broccoli that you find right, or whatever it is. You’re not going to put, you know, whatever three pounds of it in a blender and blend it all up into a consumable form that’s going to give you, you know, 30 times the amount of lectins and stuff that we were never designed. You know, the lectins are there to, um, as a defense, as a, as a small poison for us so that we don’t eat the entire plant and cause it to go extinct. Right?

Dude (00:58:23):
I mean, it’s there to protect the plant and now we’re basically distilling those lectins and other, um, antioxidants um, proteins and stuff to, uh, cause a much bigger reaction in our body.

Brad (00:58:37):
Then we’re soaking, sprouting, fermenting, cooking. We’re doing all this crazy elaborate preparation mechanism so that we can digest it better. Uh, but yeah, taking those few steps backward and listening to, um, Paul Saldino and Sean Baker make that case. Like, you don’t need to eat your salad, your broccoli, your, your super green smoothie. And it’s kind of a slap in the face because that’s the least, the one thing that we could agree upon with Rip Esselstyn, the, the plant based, a whole movement there. And then the primal paleo keto, the whole other side of the equation saying that, uh, animals and high fat foods are okay. And, uh, now everything’s, everything’s called into question.

Dude (00:59:18):
I tell you one thing, one thing that I, um, realized a while back, I never really put it together until just now is, you know, before I lost all my weight and started on the primal path, listened to Dude’s other show. Yeah. Uh, primal blueprint podcast. Get over yourself podcast. I think we’ve talked about it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but you know, I was about 50 pounds heavier and, um,

Brad (00:59:43):
25 pound weight fast, dude. Yeah, I have one. It kind of sucks. I hardly ever use it cause none of the workouts are fun. Yeah. Cause I got 25 pound weight fast on yeah. Two of them.

Dude (00:59:53):
Yeah. And I that was what I weighed when I first started speed golfing, that’s how much I weighed.

Brad (01:00:00):
Um, that’s like carriying 27 clubs instead of instead of six. Yeah, yeah. Or 50 clubs.

Dude (01:00:09):
But the point is, um, you know, I’ve always loved the big salad, right. And so even when I was heavy, I was eating this great big salad and I realized at some point like this great big salad isn’t helping me, um, get to the weight that I want. And back then I thought it’s probably the amount of calories. Right. Cause you know, the bigger the salad, the more olive oil you gotta use to, you know, cover it. Yeah. And, and so I did a calculation and found out, Oh wow, these salads that I’m making are like whatever they were, I can’t remember, but 1500 calories, like a lot of calories. And so I started scaling back the size of my salad to help me with the weight. But maybe part of the issue was the inflammation that I was getting from the, the phytates and the lectins, you know, who knows

Brad (01:01:06):
the inflammation causing some disturbance with healthy fat metabolism. And we know that to be the case. So inflammation coming from wherever and if the hormetic stressors are beyond that healthy balance point and increasing too much. And I’ve never really heard anyone present it just the way you did. I think that was interesting that it’s the quantity that could be causing the big problems such as the, uh, the, the nutrient dense smoothie as demonstrated by Rhonda Patrick with a million videos on YouTube where she’s jamming this stuff into the blender. And I never realized you could blend everything up and then jam more stuff in. I was like, I’m not as smart as her. And I’m like, wow, you know, she stuffed the entire giant blender full of raw kale and then blended it up and now it’s down. And now you can put a whole bunch of raw chart in there and a tomato and an Apple and a carrot.

Brad (01:01:54):
Oh, I see you blended in sections and then you’re drinking this incredible, uh, density of plant matter, which ancestrally makes sense. We’d never had that. In contrast, I’m thinking if we were out there hunting for four days and we came across the woolly mammoth, Sean Baker’s famous quote, he goes, look, you take down a prehistoric woolly mammoth that’s 3 million calories. So an average hunter gatherer band of let’s say 30 they’re feasting for months and months on end without having to go pick a single berry. And it was sort of a pop off comment from the big guy who’s got big muscles and eat steak all day, but it’s like wait a second, it’s very, very bright and well researched and studied guy in that message that these are obligatory foods or survival foods is, is a, is a huge wake up call for me cause I’m trying to be open minded, critical thinking and thinking Wow. So we’re dosing ourselves with these massive ingestion of plants. Tough to reconcile ancestrally. However, I’ve didn’t even finish my sentence like what? You going to kill the mammoth? Or if you were to find a nest of eggs and you’re hungry, you’re going to eat eight of those or whatever until you’re, until you’re passed out on the ground. Because it’s a matter of life or death. So we know that we’ve gorged on animal foods to the extreme, especially I’m heading into winter hibernation time. That’s why we’re so good at storing body fat is because we need that storage mechanism.

Dude (01:03:19):
Yeah. So let’s, so let’s, uh, let me play devil’s advocate real quick with the, the um, nutrient dense smoothie. So I guess you could argue that our food is so nutrient deficient today that in order to get the same nutrients you need more of it, right?

Brad (01:03:36):
So you got a cane slam and everything. And also the gut microbiome comes in here where we’re supposed to eat this varied and diverse plant matter diets he can get. And the green foods help with uh, the red red foods help with prostate cancer and the, the, the orange and yellow foods help with, uh, ocular health and everything’s all in these categories. And we see headline stories in the newspaper, how we got to go find all this stuff to eat. And, um, potentially because we’re choosing all these crazy foods all over the place, we need a really diverse gut microbiome to process that stuff. But what about a few were hardcore nose to tail carnivore. Again, just for argument’s sake. Um, Brian McAndrew, our filmmaker audio engineer, really a great enthusiast of keto and carnivore. We have a cookbook coming out, Keto Cooking for Cool Dudes and Carnivore Cooking for Cool Dudes with great recipes for dudes that want to get into this.

Brad (01:04:29):
Nice. Uh, he said, you know, uh, the desert is a thriving microbiome as well. It’s got far fewer plants and animals than the rainforest, but it’s just as healthy because the cactus are living and the boll weevils and the animals underground. And so what if you didn’t need this crazy diverse microbiome that you constantly had to nurture with four different kinds of probiotics and all this different plant matter because you were eating only the most nutrient dense foods on earth that have, you know, created healing stories and turnarounds from people suffering from chronic inflammatory and autoimmune conditions.

Dude (01:05:07):
Uh, I love the analogy of the desert versus the rain forest. And I’m going to use it to go in the next direction of, of eating locally. Right. So,

Brad (01:05:18):
nice.

Dude (01:05:18):
So what was really happening with our ancestors is that no matter where they were, right, they were eating locally. So if you’re in Intuit, you’re saying, are you sure about that? There was no Amazon prime. Uh, so if you’re Inuit, you know, you’re, you’re eating lots of whatever, reindeer and seal. And, um, you know what.

Brad (01:05:40):
a stomach lining of the whale provided a huge dose of vitamin C cause people were concerned about the Inuits not getting enough vitamin C, I just heard a master John say that. So the, you know, the, that one of the knocks against the nose to tail carnivores strategy is you’re maybe deficient on some of these, these vitamins, but Oh, have you heard they found a way to get it heavy?

Dude (01:05:59):
Have you heard Finney? Um, explain, um, the story of, uh, I forget his first name, but Stenfansson in the, Oh, the Arctic Explorer.

Brad (01:06:10):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dude (01:06:10):
So, um, uh, I’ll give you a link you can put in the show notes, but, uh, so this guy, uh, Stenfansson, um, wanted to go look for the British exposition that was, uh, trying to find a Northwest passage and they ended up, uh, you know, basically everyone dying up in the, um, Canadian, um, um, archipelago or whatever up there. And, you know, dozens of people had gone to go look for him before, I don’t know about dozens, but several people going to look for this expedition beforehand. And their approach was that, well, you know, it’s the Arctic. We got to, we’re going to have to carry all of our provisions with us, you know, and so you’re going to have these giant sleds of, you know, like two tons of food so that we can spend a month out there looking, right? And so Stephenson is going to come along, it’s like, no, no, no, you don’t need to do that. You just need to hire an Intuit, teach you how to hunt up there.

Brad (01:07:04):
Nice.

Dude (01:07:05):
And so he goes up there to the nun and he, um, and he goes, um, eats like the anywhere to eat and he’s able to stay up there for like three months, right. And, or maybe even more. But he got back and, and, and he did, ended up did finding, um, you know, the, the wreckage and the, the last camp of the people that were missing, but he gets back and everybody was like, no, we don’t believe you because you can’t stay out there that long without, um, limes. And you know, this other things that would prevent scurvy is that’s called the cop. The pirates were limeys, right? Because they, they ate limes on the ships crossing the Atlantic to keep them from getting scurvy. And, and he’s like, no, no, no, no, no. I just ate like the Inuit and you get all the nutrition you need. Right. And Finney’s big line, um, when explaining with this is that he was writing his dissertation about fat adaptation, like in 1969 or whatever, and thought he had discovered this, this big, uh, thing about fat adaptation and the, um, low-carb flu. You know, like you feel bad for a couple of weeks until you get to become fat adapted. And this guy Stenfansson writes about it in 1890.

Dude (01:08:16):
Like if you eat like the Inuit, you’ve, you feel terrible for two weeks, but then that soon passes and you have all the energy you need.

Brad (01:08:22):
just busting out ketones looking for, for the forgotten ship.

Dude (01:08:26):
But the really cool thing is that nobody believed him when he got back. And so they put him in Bellevue hospital in New York and issued a challenge. Know, I guess he told them, he’s like, well, do you know you can lock me up and monitor what I eat so I can prove it to you? Right. So they locked him in Bellevue hospital for a year, uh, here and he only ate, uh, the animal products that he asked for, right, which was nose to tail. He’s eating organ meats and you know, everything’s getting.

Brad (01:08:58):
flown in from Amazon prime from the Arctic.

Dude (01:09:00):
I dunno how they were getting it, but, but he asked, it’s just making,

Brad (01:09:04):
sending model a shopping list, go out and go down New York city and find some sardines for me or whatever.

Dude (01:09:10):
In the turn of the 19th to 20th century there probably everyone knew how to hunt. Right. So it’s probably not hard to get elk meat or whatever. Uh, um, but point is they were doing all the measurements of things that they could measure at that time and, um, he never got scurvy or any of the other, uh, diseases that they predicted and, and they wrote down exactly what he ate and it was, you know, um, lots and lots of, of animal meat and organ meat and bone broth. That is cool.

Brad (01:09:41):
That’s like Dr Cahill’s experiments at Harvard, which is some of the still the best reference research, uh, for the ketogenic diet from back in the 60s, because he basically starved these people for, I think it was 40 days and track their glucose, insulin and ketone levels. And like, you can’t do that today because, uh, you know, no one, no one would comply. But, um, you go back and go back into the annals and find this great research about what’s possible.

Dude (01:10:06):
Is he the guy that, um, uh, you know, got these people in ketosis and starve them to the point, uh, well and gave them a blood glucose lowering meds while they’re in ketosis? Have you heard about this?

Brad (01:10:22):
I’m not sure if that was the same guy,

Dude (01:10:24):
but I ran across this, I can’t remember what video it was. I’ll have to look it up and send it to you. But, um, they, they wanted to, and of course, just like the experiment that you mentioned, you couldn’t do this today. This was, you know, back in the fifties or sixties before.

Brad (01:10:40):
probably was then it is Dr. George Cahill at Harvard. Um, but they,

Dude (01:10:44):
they gave these, they put people on a ketogenic diet and then they gave him medicine to lower their blood sugar to 30 to see how low they could get it before it started inducing. Uh, you know, cognitive effects is what they thought. And the podcasts I was listening to that mentioned this was pointing out like, you don’t need blood glucose for the brain, like we think because they did this experiment and people’s blood sugar was 30 and they were still cognitively aware and everything because they had enough ketones to, um,

Brad (01:11:19):
yeah, my understanding is the, the average person walking around is virtually 100% of the brain’s energy is coming from glucose. Maybe some small percentages first thing in the morning from ketones. Now it’s known that lactate is burned by the brain, but it can’t burn fat. So you’re basically entirely reliant on glucose. And that’s why your blood sugar fluctuations are so sensitive in the brain and you, you conk out so easily. If you miss a single meal, if you’re a carb dependent. And then, uh, I understand that a really hardcore kenogenic eater can transition all the way over to a maximum adaptation of like two thirds ketones and one third glucose. So, and all the glucose can be provided by gluconeogenesis. So like the brain burns about 150 grams of well of glucose per day, glucose and or ketones. So if you get two thirds keto adapted, you’re left with, um, only 50 grams a day that you need in a carbohydrate. And even a strict ketogenic eater is probably going to have trickling in somewhere around 50 grams a day, uh, maybe 20 or 30. And then of course you can make up that and then some with gluconeogenesis so that.

Dude (01:12:32):
they proved in the faster study where this, the day after this, they were loaded.

Brad (01:12:37):
Incredible, right? Summarize that quickly.

Dude (01:12:41):
So, uh, um, Dr Volek did a, uh, a study of uh, six keto adapted ultra runners and six carb dependent ultra runners. And one of the things that they found was that the day after they did a three hour run on the treadmill of the ketogenic athletes who were not eating carbs had perfectly replenish glycogen. The next day

Brad (01:13:07):
it’s a three hour depleting run to where most everybody in the endurance scene for the past 60 years, right, would need to go over to Jamba Juice really quickly or sometime in the next few hours you’re depleted, you do a three hour run, you’re going to be depleted who almost whoever you are. And they just send them home and they came back with full glycogen stores.

Dude (01:13:28):
Yeah. And you know, this was the dogma that I heard and I’m sure you heard too, is like, you know, Oh well after your run, even a workout, right? If you did a two hour workout, you have to go eat pasta and um, sweet potatoes and you know, all this carb heavy stuff to replenish your glycogen so that you can get up the next day and be ready to hammer it again.

Brad (01:13:54):
Yeah. We called it the window of opportunity. Oh yeah. I used to sell nutritional supplements. Yeah. And that was, uh, in the, in the hour following the workout, that’s when your, uh, your muscles are most receptive to glycogen reloading and then it kinda shuts off. Arguably, maybe the stress response is kicking in. If you’re carb dependent, you don’t get food. So it’s not super healthy. And those of you listening who listen, this is your first podcast you’ve ever listened to in this sort of topic. And then you’re going to go start fasting and doing workouts and not eating after like Dude Spellings after he climbed out of the Grand Canyon, you’re probably going to go right over into a fight or flight and start making glucose from lean muscle tissue or whatever and have a net adverse impact because you’re increasing the stress impact of the workout because you’re not fat adapted.

Dude (01:14:41):
Yeah. This is where all of the studies that say that, uh, glucose or carbs are the best fuel. This is the mistake that they make, right? As they grab people off the street who, like you were saying, can’t go a couple hours without refilling on carbs and um, they do this, you know, study to test what fuel is better and they had the study lasts for a week and you know, the, we know now like what I just said with Stefansson, you know, Well, it takes two or three weeks to overcome this feeling, this feeling of lethargy. Um, yeah. If you do the tests, the study under those conditions, yes. The people who are dependent on carbs because they can’t burn fat are going to perform poorly in your study.

Brad (01:15:28):
Right. And all the exercise physiology studies where they take these subjects that uh, are untrained or maybe moderately fit, a lot of times they’re college students cause those dudes are always up for a study and then they slam them with six weeks of high intensity training. They’re going to get more fit than someone who’s uh, jogging and doing low intensity stuff because it’s a short term observation. And so we’ve been told that these exhaustive workouts that form the foundation of many fitness programs that are super popular today, like Spinning, I worked for two years for the company that uh, delivered spinning to the world, the Johnny G and the first indoor exercise program. And we were trying to convince people to slow down and just go to class and enjoy the music and do some breathing and have a low stress workout because the, the fitness scene wants loud music, kick ass, super motivated, intense instructors getting you to push it hard and sprint to the finish. Like you’re in the Tour de France. And then come back and do it again the next day and the next day. And you’re going to get fitter for a short period of time. It’s like throwing the spaghetti on the fridge and anything that sticks is going to help and then you’re going to, you know, destroy yourself predictably if your exercise program is too stressful. But a study can be, uh, organized by well-meaning, highly trained scientists, uh, to deliver a result that doesn’t, uh, apply well when you put it in the context of real life.

Dude (01:16:56):
Yeah. Another thing to consider too, with a study like that where it’s college students is, you know, now that you and I are a little older, you can appreciate

Brad (01:17:05):
anything works for a college student.

Dude (01:17:07):
If it’s right, 20, doesn’t matter what workout you do. It’s gonna you’re going to get results. Yeah.

Brad (01:17:13):
Have you heard of this? Uh, Carol fit bike C. A. R. O. L. . it’s called for cardiovascular optimized logic and it’s a, uh, smart exercise bicycle powered by artificial intelligence and it learns your fitness level and applies this amount of resistance to get you to sprint it just the right amount to get this, uh, maximum intensity workout in a short time. So they’re, they’re touting this eight minute workout.

Dude (01:17:39):
Oh wow.

Brad (01:17:40):
Where you warm up a few minutes, you sprint all out for 20 seconds, you recover a little bit, you do another sprint for 20 seconds, cool down and you’re done. And this type of protocol has shown with a lot of great respected research for years and years. Some of it’s old that you can get in shape really quickly without that downside risk of those exhaustive prolonged workouts because you’re delivering that maximum intensity effort, which has such a profound impact on metabolism for hours and hours afterwards. You’re basically turbocharging fat burning, you’re getting the adaptive hormones into the bloodstream. And then because you’re only doing two sprints and the workout’s not that long, you get off and go about your day and you’re not in that exhausted fatigue, depleted state. That’s such a common problem for the average fitness enthusiast.

Dude (01:18:27):
Yeah. And if you think about it, um, that fitness profile kind of fits what our ancestors would it be new would’ve been doing it with hunting. Right. They’re not, you know, they’re either going to be tracking an animal over many hours, walking around,

Brad (01:18:42):
moving, moving, moving at a comfortable pace.

Dude (01:18:45):
because they’re smart enough to know that they can’t outrun a gazelle. Right. So they only, you have to, what does that type of hunting called the persistence hunting or since it’s hunting, yeah.

Brad (01:18:55):
They get used their brain basically.

Dude (01:18:57):
Or, um, you’re going to be hunting something like a, um, pheasant Rocky was hunting the chicken, right? Yeah. Where you’re going to be sprinting for 20 seconds to catch it. Uh, and that’s it.

Brad (01:19:11):
Ta TA Tata downtown dumb. Yeah. He finally cut the chicken. Yeah.

Dude (01:19:16):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a, that’s a, a good, uh, homage to primal training right there. Right there, man. 1980 Rocky movie.

Brad (01:19:25):
Yeah. Best picture in 1976. Rocky one six. Yeah. The raw eggs, which has now come back and Vogue as long as they’re from pasture raised local farms. Right. I don’t know where Rocky was getting his eggs, but maybe the eggs were more nutritious in 76, arguably, maybe he’s going to know the channels he was chasing. Yeah, exactly. Forcing him to lay an egg. Oh Dude, we got into a lot of great stuff. Yeah. Um, we’ll do another show about the blue light and getting deep into that. And I’ve, I’ve connected with some interesting, uh, interview subjects, people that are touting the, um, you know, the EMF and the blue light and getting yourself, uh, protected from technology. But that one liner, probably the most important thing to say about is, Do the best you can. Don’t worry about it too much.

Dude (01:20:13):
Yeah. So when we come back and we want to talk about this on another podcast, um, I can get into, uh, what I hear. Uh, Jack Cruz has done his, uh, longevity farm, which, you know, he’s obsessed with, uh, eliminating the, the non-native EMF. And, uh, I have, I know somebody that went down there and, uh, you know, took note of exactly what he did to and his little compound down there to mitigate the EMF.

Brad (01:20:41):
Wow. There’s trend centers out there and then for the rest of us live in busy, ordinary life, why don’t you give me like a, um, a top five of life changing health habits that are doable and easy to, to throw down right away after listening to the show.

Dude (01:20:58):
All right. Uh, no processed or packaged food that’s super easy. Uh, well I say it’s super easy, but it’s a simple, simple, not easy direct suggestion, right? There’s no nuance there.

Brad (01:21:13):
Yeah. Um, that includes a lot of the crap at Whole Foods Market. Sorry. I know you’re an Austin local, but, and they’ve done a great thing and they have a lot of good stuff, but they go to their, uh, the hot bar and there’s canola oil in two thirds of the stuff.

Dude (01:21:27):
At least two thirds. Yeah.

Brad (01:21:28):
I don’t feel like you have a lot of pull in Austin anymore. It is this, you grew up there, you saw everything. Come in. The skyscrapers and all that. Uh, but, but do you know why? Um, there’s a good segment of, uh, diet, nutrition experts, food manufacturers that think canola oil is still okay when you have other people, Dr Cate Shanahan comes to mind and many other experts saying that these oxidized industrial oils are probably the worst thing you can consume on the planet.

Dude (01:21:57):
Well, I think the, the gist of it is that it’s a, uh, polyunsaturated fat as opposed to a saturated fat. And there are so many people out there still demonizing saturated fat. But I didn’t want to note that John Mackey, the founder and CEO of, of Whole Foods has a book called the Whole Foods Diet. And in his book it says to avoid canola oil.

Brad (01:22:24):
Yeah. And I actually, um, John, if you’re watching the show with it, buddy, we loved your man. If he’s overall net positive for the planet by launching that market and getting it all over, uh, all over America, but come come straight brother.

Dude (01:22:39):
Yeah. Far as I can tell, you know, it’s, it’s about cost cause it probably is so much cheaper.

Brad (01:22:46):
I understand that’s true in the restaurants and I’ve, I’ve, you know, been at the finer restaurants and saying, is this olive oil that you’re bringing me, Oh, it’s a blend. Let me go back and ask. And they come back. It’s a blend of all of olive and canola oil. What the heck? I mean the olive oil is cheap enough at Costco.

Dude (01:23:00):
So here, here’s a, here’s another tip where we’re getting derailed for our top five.

Brad (01:23:04):
So no, no processed foods number one.

Dude (01:23:06):
Yep. And on that note, if you’re trying to avoid canola, you really have to go deep with your efforts here. So on, like you were saying, you know, you go to fine restaurant and they are serving a olive oil, canola blend. You know I asked, I went to a restaurant one time and asked for olive oil and vinegar for my salad and they bring me the little, you know, thing with the glass containers and the oil is like as yellow as these microphones. And I’m like, uh, that’s not olive oil. And then I go, no, no. It says on the package, it’s olive oil. And I’m like, okay, bring me the package please. And so they go bring out this jug, you know, like a two gallon jug industrial size and it says olive oil blend.

Brad (01:23:50):
Oh mercy.

Brad (01:23:51):
Right. And so then you look at the back and where has the ingredients and it’s like olive oil, canola oil.

Dude (01:23:56):
And I tell them this is not olive oil. I mean, how can even fault them? I mean there’s a busy, hardworking, 30% orderer person waitress and they’re, they’re messing with you right on the label. Yeah. And they, yeah. And they go and they probably go back to the, um, stock shelf and they look and it says olive oil. Done. Good. I consume Paul Newman’s red wine and olive oil dressing for years and years. My favorite.

Dude (01:24:20):
And it has canola?

Brad (01:24:20):
Yeah. And it’s on the back. Not even, it says, uh, there’s, there’s all of oil in it, but there’s also, it says, um, uh, and or hand or, and I’m like, what could the end or mean except that they’re going to the commodity brokers, like on trading places and buying whatever’s on special. Literally, they’re just buying whatever shit they can get for that production run where they going to write and or on the label.

Dude (01:24:45):
Yup. Yeah. All right. So back to our top five. So number one, avoid processed foods. Number two, uh, go to bed early enough to get restful sleep. And along with that I would say, uh, adjust your environment to, to help you get restful sleep. Right? So make your bedroom dark. Get the electronics out of your bedroom, keep your house. Cool. Um, Oh man, my Chili pad, I just got it. I got to put a plug in. It’s incredible. Really? Yeah. If you’ve never heard a Chilly pad licking it up and it’s a thing you apply right to your mattress, he put the sheet over it. Uh, but cold water runs through and you can actually program both sides of the bed. So you and your partner, if you sleep at a different temperature, which is so common, you can program when it’ll start to cool off. So you want to get into a cold bed because lower body temperature facilitates good sleep. And then in the morning you can program the temperature to rise. So you get your butt out of bed.all night. It’s pretty interesting and it’s cool. Yeah. Um, so real, um, so you had quote asleep at a good time.

Dude (01:25:49):
Well, we’re real quick, um, counter opinion there. So it’s a plugin device. Oh no, no. Uh, so the reason that the, that or the marketing behind the, the Chilly pad is that your body temperature should be lower when you’re going to sleep. And I would say if you’re, that that should happen naturally, right? And if your body temperature isn’t, if you need this artificial device to make your body temperature lower, maybe you might want to look at thyroid function or something that, um, why isn’t your body temperature going lower?

Brad (01:26:27):
Yeah. Have you been blasting your eyeballs with too much artificial light so that you still think it’s daytime or that, you know, yeah.

Dude (01:26:33):
Yeah. So I’m all of that for the sleep. And then I would say number three, um, get sun exposure, especially early morning sun exposure because we know that the light from the sun, the full spectrum light, not the indoor light is um, what resets our hormones and creates a proper hormone cascade that it’s gonna really serve you for the entire day and set, set the, uh, health for your entire body for the whole day.

Brad (01:27:01):
Uh, that includes, uh, a glass window of a car or house isn’t, Nope, not good enough. Correct. You have to get straight eyeballs. You got me stopping wearing sunglasses. You bastard, I think about you every day. And when I get to finally get to squinty point, I put them on, but Dude said, Hey, don’t, don’t wear sunglasses because you want to absorb that nice strong light source during the day and counter that with the nice dark sleeping period.

Dude (01:27:30):
Yeah, I should, um, follow up with that with the, uh, comment that I recently made on one of the primal Facebook groups. Somebody was asking the same question and mentioned that they had blue eyes, which you also have. And I would, I put a, a caveat in there that, you know, if your ancestry gave you blue eyes, then you’re Northern European where there was not really bright, direct sun. So if you have blue eyes and you live in a Southern latitude, maybe Florida, Southern California, Arizona or South Texas, um,

Brad (01:28:05):
don’t play speed golf when it’s 99 degrees out.

Dude (01:28:07):
Oh, okay. That too. That too. But, um, don’t, you know the dose makes the poison, right? So, so you need, if you live in one of those Southern areas where, uh, and you have blue eyes, you need some natural sunlight exposure on your eyes, but don’t overdo it. And, um, get to the point where you’re, uh, putting yourself at risk for, uh, some negative effects from the sun.

Brad (01:28:34):
Good. Yeah. Um, so two now that’s, we’ve got,

Dude (01:28:39):
well that’s three: food, sleep, sunlight, uh, exercise. I would say, you know, uh, get adequate, um, exercise. Not too much, not too little. Um, and you’d probably be surprised how little you need to actually, um, stay fit and, um, ready for most adult lives.

Brad (01:29:07):
Oh, I mean this, this CAROL bike is targeted at, uh, the novice as well as the in fitness enthusiast. But people scoff at that comment that you can get a great workout in eight minutes, perhaps better than your crazy 40 minutes sweat session on a different kind of bike that’s become popular in an exercise class setting. But you know, the science is there and the elite athletes have known this for a long time. The great sprinters of the planet. Uh, Charlie Francis, one of the greatest spring coaches ever. He would have his athletes rest for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes between sprints so that that sprint could be of exceptionally high quality with complete recovery time afterward. So you wouldn’t traumatize the body with a workout that was too strenuous. And then we have regular people putting themselves in a gym environment and getting trashed. That’s why you said not too much, not too little. The excessive exercise problem is, is brutal today. And there’s so many well meaning people we can, you know, put aside the, the dumb ass endurance athletes that are going too hard and they know it and they can’t whatever their reason is. All right. You know, go, go have yourself a nice life. But that, that uh, that positive energy person that signs up for gym class trying to get fit and healthy and gets brutalized by the system, by the conventional approach, that’s heartbreaking to me.

Dude (01:30:25):
Yeah. And then I would also add that there’s a, um, that that mindset creates a barrier to entry because people think, Oh, well I can’t keep up with the, um, CrossFit guy that’s got an eight pack and, um, can bench press 350 pounds and do six, uh, handstand pushups and you know, all this stuff. So what’s the point of me going over there if I can’t do all that stuff? And the reality is, is like if you are, if you are that person that’s stuck in the matrix and you’re not really doing anything and you’re, you’re barely making your life work with your 90 minute commute each way and you know, all this stuff, uh, walking after dinner is probably gonna improve your life. You know, and I’ve mentioned to you before, we got on the podcast about all the stress I have going on with a divorce and selling her house and moving and starting a new job and all this stuff. And, um, I’ve really cut back my workouts. And one of the things that I, um, added with my new job on the 12th floor of this office building is I just take the stairs up in the morning and take the stairs up from lunch and you know what? It’s better than nothing.

Brad (01:31:46):
Oh. And if twelve’s too much get the Frick off at 8 and go forward, then. Yeah, no excuses. Excellent.

Dude (01:31:53):
Yeah. Um, and you know, for me, having, you know, I ran the Grand Canyon in may and I was doing a lot of training up to then and it was really kind of a stretch for me since my divorce kind of started happening before then. You know, it was a stressor to maintain the workout I needed to in order to cross the Grand Canyon, 50 miles and 20,000 vertical feet with no food, with no food.

Brad (01:32:19):
Uh, this dude, unbelievable. But I mean there was a whole show on that. So go listen to the show. I think it might’ve been titled something about Crossing Grand Canyon, but just quickly you did the double crossing about 50 miles, the 49 miles on my watch, South rim, down to the bottom, up to North rim, down to the bottom, up to South rim. And then at the finish, you and your group had a stack of pizzas there for everyone to celebrate, but you were doing this experiment.

Dude (01:32:46):
Yeah,

Brad (01:32:47):
to do it fast. And so tell me like how that all went down.

Dude (01:32:51):
Well. just to be clear, I did end up needing some gels at mile 38 when I started to started up the South rim.

Brad (01:32:59):
Shame on your lad. Yeah. Um, so you had a few couple of gels,

Dude (01:33:03):
couple hundred calories or something. I had four gels.

Brad (01:33:06):
So you first ingestion of calories during the day. Does it besides whatever aminos are something that in inconsequential?

Dude (01:33:13):
Yeah, I was taking, um, electrolytes and beef liver from, from the liver King.

Brad (01:33:18):
Oh my gosh. Ancestral supplements.

Dude (01:33:20):
Yeah. Um, and just real quick on that, the reason that I did that was that I theorized that like this is what my whole experiment was about during the race and then the other one after the race that you mentioned, but during or wasn’t even a race, just the event. But during the event, my hypothesis was that because we’re fat adapted, um, you know, maybe what we run out of isn’t fuel, but it’s the micronutrients.

Brad (01:33:51):
Hmm.

Dude (01:33:51):
Right. And so my whole plan was just to like double up super dose on micronutrients, including sodium, potassium and magnesium for the electrolytes. And then, um, beef liver since it’s the most nutrient dense food on the planet for everything else. And it worked, worked really well. Um, and then I, you know, if it, if the last 12 miles had been flat, I would not have needed, um, any, uh, supplementary carbs if the last 12 months or it had been flat or my fat adaptation had been better.

Brad (01:34:28):
Poor guyi. . He’s flogging himself for having to reach for a gel at 38 mile mark and not just an ordinary 38 miles. Incredible climbing and yeah.

Dude (01:34:37):
And so then at the end, um, yeah, I wanted to test out this theory about, um,

Brad (01:34:43):
the Dude Spelling’s theory. This is a breakthrough theory right here. Really. I don’t know if it’s mine.

Dude (01:34:47):
I mean, it’s, I don’t know, too many people have tried this. So, uh, instead of, um, you know, going quickly for the carb reload and in the celebration meal, I wanted to fast to see if, um, it would reduce inflammation and improve recovery afterwards. And, uh, I think it did. I, I had done a rim to rim to rim 13 years prior when I was younger. And, um, you know, we don’t remember how painful things were. That’s why you have more than one baby. But why, why women have, you know, agree to have go through childbirth again. But as I recall, I think I was less sore the second time around 13 years older and 13 years older. Uh,

Brad (01:35:32):
I do think it’s a revolutionary idea that’s possibly gonna take hold in the future with the Olympic and the professional athletes because we know it’s undisputed that you’re the greatest anti-inflammatory diet known to mankind is fasting. And the least oxidative stress comes when you’re not eating art. Davine has said it for years. We’re, we’re most human. When we don’t eat, uh, we open up, uh, Jack Cruz called it. Uh, we access, uh, ancient, uh, regenerative pathways or something like that when we’re in a fastest state. And that’s when we get rid of the damaged, dysfunctional cellular material. We do our cleanup job and of course, what else do you need to do besides that? After an extreme athletic event like that is to repair, regenerate, moderate inflammation. But we’re slamming pizzas and root beer loats and hot fudge sundae because we have that free pass to RESA glycogen, which we don’t need to now because the faster study proved.

Dude (01:36:29):
Right. And the other thing I would throw in there is, is um, when you, so one of the big arguments from guys like such and Panda, um, Dr Sajan Panda who does a lot of the circadian timing with meals, uh, research where he’s, you know, his big thing is that the time that you eat is more important than what you eat because it contributes to setting your circadian clock. And one of the things he says is that when you eat late at night, your body is spending that energy digesting your food while you’re asleep, rather than doing the work of re rejuvenation and repair that’s supposed to take place while you’re sleeping. So if you finish the Grand Canyon at nine o’clock at night and you want to go to bed, you want your body to be doing that rejuvenation and repair that you so desperately needed after that effort, rather than digesting the pizza.

Brad (01:37:25):
Okay, you’re forewarned now. Go, go try that at home. Or don’t try it at home, either one, but get highly fat adapted first.

Dude (01:37:32):
Absolutely. Yeah. Um, and I’ll, I’ll throw in before I mentioned my fifth, the thing that we’ll finally get to. Uh, I want to throw in one more thing about fat adaptation, um, and stress and whatnot. So like I mentioned briefly, you know, the last nine months of my life has been pretty stressful and I, um, a lot of things have changed, so my routines have changed and, and whatnot. And I haven’t adhered to the fasting schedule that I typically do. I’m still doing daily intermittent fasting over over minimum 12 hours, um, usually probably more like 14 or 16, but I was doing a sort of biweekly, every two weeks, 20, 24 to 48 hour fast. And with all the stress I had going on, that kinda went by the wayside. But I recently, um, thought, you know, I haven’t done that in a few months. I should, I should reintroduce that. And I thought, you know, I wonder if I’m going to have trouble since I haven’t done it in a while. Maybe I’m not as fat adapted as I was, but I did 36 hours after probably like a three month hiatus and it was still just as easy as it was before.

Brad (01:38:47):
Wow. Yeah.

Dude (01:38:49):
So number five, um, I would say is, uh, mindfulness and um, and just a real effort to live consciously. And I would throw in there breathing, which, you know, if you are aware of your breath, you’re going to be aware of, um, a lot more than just your breath,

Brad (01:39:15):
instant change in your body chemistry when you started commencing deep diaphragmatic breathing.

Dude (01:39:20):
Yeah. Even so for me during the day, what that looks like is remembering to breathe through my nose. Right. Cause it’s so easy to get in a meeting or get into a frantic state because you’ve got a deadline and just subconsciously kind of revert back to like the stressful, um, habits that you used to have where you, Oh, I need more oxygen. You know, none of this is conscious, but um, I’ve definitely noticed myself in front of the computer mouth breathing because I’ve got this deadline in an hour and I got more work than I can do in an hour.

Brad (01:39:57):
So eat that clean food, get some sun exposure, get sleep was next, then get some sun exposure. Yep. Hand in hand. Number four, get some exercise, get off on the early elevator stop. Why don’t ya and number five, mindfulness consciousness

Dude (01:40:18):
consciousness.

Brad (01:40:18):
Oh yeah, I forgot Dude. Spelling’s rocking it. Thank you so much for listening.

Brad (01:40:30):
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.

SaveSave