In the third part of this show, I ask some important questions in order to identify what weak areas we need to work on in order to make the necessary changes to our lifestyle that will minimize our disease risk.
Ask yourself this: do I wake up after a night of sleep feeling energized, or groggy and tired? Do I frequently experience autoimmune flare ups? Do I digest my food well and feel good after a meal, instead of immediately experiencing bloating, gas, and other GI-related issues after eating?
In this episode, you’ll learn what happens when you have too much glucose in your bloodstream, why excess insulin production is directly associated with metabolic syndrome, and all about the addictive properties of sugar. You’ll learn the most efficient way of taking yourself off the addictive loop of processed food consumption, and how to select high quality animal products and the most nutrient dense food while also having enough variety in your diet to keep things interesting, while still being healthy. I also discuss the increasingly common issue of orthorexia and how to keep yourself from getting drawn into this overly rigid and dysfunctional approach to food purity.
TIMESTAMPS:
This podcast will focus on diet, dropping excess body fat, fitness and lifestyle. [01:00]
Ditch the big three toxic modern foods: refined industrial seed oils, refined sugars, and sweetened beverages and refined grains. [02:34]
The industrial seed oils inflict immediate damage at the DNA level in your body. [05:48]
Step one is to throw away the bad oils in your cupboard. [08:06]
Read the wrappers. [09:56]
When sugars and grains are ingested, you are eating a bunch of nutrient deficient calories. [15:43]
What happens when you have too much glucose in the bloodstream? [17:50]
Dr. Robert Lustig is the world’s leading anti-sugar crusader. Sugar has addictive properties. [22:23]
What are the best ways you can do this? Cold turkey? Gradually? [24:17]
Ancestral foods like pasture raised eggs, grass fed meats is the way to go. [27:59]
The nutrient rich foods are available and flavorful. Think meat, fish, fowl, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. Be flexible. [30:25]
Orthorexia is quite common these days. You don’t want to get in to that. That is missing the point. [37:13]
Reducing excess body fat and improving your body composition is a category of interest to many people. [38:46]
LINKS:
- Brad Kearns.com
- Brad’s Shopping page
- Dr. Cate Shanahan and Brad on oils
- Correcting Disease, Part 1
- Correcting Disease, Part 2
- Primal Kitchen
- Deep Nutrition
- Podcast with Dr. Robert Lustig
- The Four Tendencies
- The Hacking of the American Mind
- Sacred Cow
- Carnivore Scores Chart
LISTEN:
Check out each of these companies because they are absolutely awesome or they wouldn’t occupy this revered space. Seriously, Brad won’t sell out to anyone if he doesn’t love the product. Ask anyone.
- Brad’s Macadamia Masterpiece: Mind-blowing, life-changing nut butter blend
- Male Optimization Formula with Organs (MOFO): Optimize testosterone naturally with 100% grassfed animal organ supplement
- Inside Tracker: Ultra-personalized blood, genetic, and fitness data all-in-one online portal
- Primal Blueprint 21-Day Primal Reset: Online multimedia Mastery Course to get healthy and drop fat the right way
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B.Rad Podcast
Brad (00:01):
[01:00] Greetings, listeners let’s get to it. Part three, how to correct adverse lifestyle practices and disease risk factors. I sure hope you listen to part one in part two. Part one I covered biomarkers, blood tests, continuous glucose monitors, how to track your progress, see what’s up. See if there’s any problems to look further on. So we covered all that in part one, part two, we talked about, uh, additional, uh, things to track like, especially testosterone. And then we got into this subjective markers of your health status and possible disease risk factors. Do you wake up full of energy and enthusiasm near sunrise? Do you have autoimmune flareups, persistent nasal congestion or at risk of over training? So we wanna correct all that stuff reflect further, and now we will get into diet, dropping excess body fat, fitness, and lifestyle in the forthcoming show or shows.
Brad (02:34):
We’ll see how well we do. There’s a lot to cover. Uh, probably some of it will be review, but it’ll get you focused, motivated, recalibrated. If things have been slipping a little bit, and when it comes to diet, we wanna really simplify this focus in on the first and foremost objective by far the most important when it comes to minimizing your disease risk and the adverse health consequences relating to diet. And that is to ditch what we call the big three toxic modern foods: refined industrial seed oils, refined sugars, and sweetened beverages and refined grains. That would be wheat, rice, corn, pasta cereal, and every thing made all the processed foods, the breads, cookies, crackers, cakes, muffins, everything made from refined grains. They might as well be called sugar because your body ingests these foods, they have minimal nutritional value and they are very quickly converted into glucose in the bloodstream as are all carbohydrates before they can be burned.
Brad (03:39):
So when we talk about more healthy, nutritious carbohydrates, things like vegetables, fruits, starchy tubers, uh, these have a more complex molecular makeup. So they don’t spike blood sugar as quickly. They have some nutritional benefits and, of course, uh, warrant a place and a healthy diet, uh, to your particular interests and preferences. But we want to minimize or eliminate these foods that have very little nutritional benefit and can cause problems, especially when consumed in excess, which is so common when we add up all the sources of carbohydrate. So a lot of people are saying, oh, I’m on a low carb diet. I’m cutting up my carbs. I feel better. But we really wanna distinguish between healthy nutritious carbs. We wanna distinguish between a, uh, an optimal level of carbohydrate intake for your perhaps athletic nutrition and lifestyle needs versus excess of carb intake that disturbs homeostasis and causes problems with your health as evidence perhaps by adverse blood values, adverse, glucose readings and things of that nature.
Brad (04:53):
So, uh, as Dr. Cate Shanahan, uh, carefully distinguishes carbs are only problematic when consumed in excess stimulating excess insulin production. And we know very well, the health consequences and the inflammatory effects of high glucose levels in the bloodstream and high insulin production, chronically high insulin production called hyper insulinemia. And that seems to be the central focus here, the bullseye where, uh, excess insulin production is directly associated with metabolic syndrome. And that is a collection of disease risk factors that represent by many experts agreement, the number one health problem in modern life. So most of us are familiar with the excess carbs, excess insulin production story.
Brad (05:48):
But we really wanna focus on the oils for a bit because arguably these are the single worst category of, we shouldn’t even call ’em foods of calories that we can ingest, and they inflict immediate damage at the DNA level in your body. So these are the industrial seed oils often referred to as vegetable oils, things like canola corn, soybean, sunflower, safflower, and they are ubiquitous in, in the modern food supply. So if you look at labels in the grocery store in boxed, packaged, wrapped frozen foods, and of course, all manner of restaurant and fast foods, uh, the oils are prevalent here to the extent that Dr. Cate sites research that 40% of all the calories in a restaurant meal, in restaurant meals come from refined industrial seed oils, because the entrees are cooked in these nasty toxic oils, uh, Dr. Andrew wile sites research that 20% of all calories in today’s standard American diet come from soybean oil alone. The hidden sources would be anything you consume in to-go dining out, Door Dash, restaurant meals. And I’m talking about even the finest restaurants.
Brad (07:11):
I know this for a fact. I know people that work in these restaurants, and yes, indeed they have these giant jugs of oil that they cook with for the sole purpose that they’re less expensive than purchasing a really high quality, uh, more temperature, stable oil to cook with. And we know about these, uh, oils in a bottle. A lot of us still have ’em in the cupboard to cook with. And so if you can do one thing, uh, that is to grab these and immediately toss them into the garbage can you want to completely rid your home of the bottled industrial seed oils, and instead switch to cooking with more temperature, stable, saturated fats, such as butter, lard, recycled bacon grease is vastly superior and less health objectionable than cooking with the organic canola oil that you bought at whole foods market thinking you were doing yourself a solid.
Brad (08:06):
So the problem with the industrial seed oils is that they’re processed with offensive, uh, chemical, uh, solvents and high temperature processing methods, because it’s very difficult to extract oil from the raw material. So when you’re talking about the corn, the soybean, sunflower, safflower, and canola oil is derived from the rapeseed plant, they don’t naturally yield a lot of oils. Therefore you have to do this violent processing method that renders oxidative damage to the end product. So as Dr Cate says are literally consuming radiation in a bottle because it’s so toxic and so laden with free radicals and whatever free radicals were caused during the processing method are exacerbated when you heat these oils up as in cooking them or processing the food to get your Twinky or your Ding Dong. So they are very temperature unstable.
Brad (09:03):
And when they are exposed to heat, light, and oxygen they become further oxidized. So when you consume these free radicals, you’re basically consuming, you know, cancer causing agents directly associated with all kinds of cancers and metabolic problems. And this is this warrants a complete and total elimination. That’s easy to throw away the jug of oil that’s in your cupboard. And instead cook with, uh, butter coconut oil, avocado monounsaturated, extra Virgin olive oil monounsaturated, much better choice to do light cooking. And avocado oil has a high smoke point 400 degrees. So that can be used for quite a lot of cooking as can coconut oil, because it’s highly saturated that makes it more temperature stable when you heat it up. So throwing away the, the bottles step one.
Brad (09:56):
Then it gets maybe a little more difficult because, uh, a lot of the go to processed comfort foods are containing these oils. I was so shocked to see Ben and Jerry’s ice cream with oils on many of their products thinking that this is the healthy hippie brand. If you’re gonna reach for ice cream might as well go with their exotic flavors and commitment to health and nature, whatever else, good things they’re saying on the label. But it’s really sneaky how many products, uh, these are included in, uh, the whole Primal Kitchen enterprise took off and achieved great success because it was really the first ever option for a condiment that wasn’t made with these refined industrial seed oil. So all, almost all mayonnaise prior to, uh, the avocado oil based mayonnaise and the, the newer products these days, um, were just throwing these oils on what might have otherwise been a healthy meal. Like, Hey, I’m gonna make some tuna salad.
Brad (10:57):
And once the, once the mayonnaise goes in there, you’ve just destroyed potentially healthy food. So look at your condiments, look at your seasoning sauces. And basically when we’re talking about the major food conglomerates, the big brands they are gonna throw these oils in there mainly for shelf life. They don’t taste hardly at all. And so you’re not sacrificing taste. If you make this commitment to ditch these oils from your diet, you’re just making a simple choice. And fortunately, now you can find alternative products. So if you go to the gas station, you reach for some beef jerky, you think, Hey, beef jerky, um, can’t be that bad, look on the wrapper, and you’re gonna have to go searching for, uh, health conscious brands to get this stuff outta your diet. And sadly, like I said, even at the finest restaurants, definitely make a point of talking to your server and saying, can you please cook my meal in something other than these refined industrial seed oils, vegetable oils. Ask them to cook it in butter.
Brad (12:01):
If you’re ordering an omelet and get into the habit of that and see what their answer is. Usually they’re come back. If you ask ’em, what are you cooking the meals in? They come back and they say, it’s an olive oil blend. So a lot of times they will kind of stand by that because everyone knows how wonderful olive oil is. Right? In fact, a lot of the olive oil we see on the shelves is a kind of a watered down version of the best olive oil, which would be the first cold press, only domestically sourced, extra Virgin, olive oil, or fresh, otherwise fresh. I joined the olive oil club and they ship oils directly from, um, that they get harvested in Chile or in Europe, but they’re incredibly fresh. And when you taste a quality extra Virgin, first cold press only olive oil, it will sting the back of your throat.
Brad (12:52):
The antioxidants are so strong that it has a sting effect. And that’s how you can tell whether you’re consuming a fresh olive oil or something that’s been watered down with other kinds of oil, uh, treated to be less expensive to produce and have a longer shelf life. So we wanna stay fresh and choose the best quality oils, get rid of that other stuff. Go to a different restaurant if they give you a bad answer. You can watch Dr. Cate and I on YouTube. We’ll give you the link, uh, talking about the dangers of industrial seed oil. So it’s about a 15 minute presentation. Luke Shanahan is on there too with some memorable sound bites about just how damaging these molecules are, especially to your brain neurons, the most sensitive cells in the body to toxins. And so you’re basically frying your brain consuming this stuff.
Brad (13:44):
You get an instant disturbance in healthy cardiovascular function that has been seen to last for up to 24 hours. The other thing is these oil resemble healthy fat molecules. And so when you consume them, they get integrated into healthy fat cells. And once they get integrated into these healthy fat cells throughout the body, they are very difficult to burn off for energy because they, in fact, aren’t healthy fat cells. And so, uh, as Dr. Cate explains in more detail on our shows, when you see problem areas of excess body fat that won’t go away, even when you get in better shape or cellulose symptoms, um, this is often in part due to the storage of these toxic seed oils in your body. Now, the other problem is when you have these oils in your diet and they get integrated into healthy fat cells.
Brad (14:40):
This inhibits the natural and healthy burning of stored body fat for energy. So it throws off your fat metabolism. This has a strong, adverse impact on your health, especially promoting the horrible condition of insulin resistance. So if you are not good at burning stored body fat, where are you going to get your energy from? That’s right. From dietary carbohydrate, because you’re gonna get and cranky and low energy. You can’t kick into fat burning because you’ve integrated too many, these unhealthy toxic molecules into your body. Therefore, it’s gonna really screw up any dietary efforts to, for example, cut back on refined processed carbohydrates. So we gotta get these oils out of the diet to give ourselves a fighting chance at becoming good fat burners. This is an often overlooked, uh, component of the big picture where, Hey, we’re gonna exercise more. We’re gonna do fat burning workouts.
Brad (15:43):
We’re gonna get, uh, cutting back or eliminating sugars and grains, but then if you’re not good at burning body fat, good luck. So step in this whole clean out is to delete the oils, uh, forever from your diet. And then when we talk about sugars and grains, the sum total of your sugar sweetened beverages and grain consumption. What’s happening is you’re eating a bunch of nutrient deficient calories. So you’re getting energy and that’s about it. And when that happens, you are going to throw off the appetite and satiety hormones. Grelin being the prominent hormone that influences your hunger levels. Leptin being the prominent satiety and fat storage hormone. And so if you’re consuming a, a lot of calories, but not getting the nutrition that you deeply crave, you are going to have an appetite for more and more. That’s why the old Pringles potato chip commercial said, bet you can’t eat just one.
Brad (16:45):
And the reason is, is because your brain knows it’s gonna dig deeper and deeper into that can in a vane attempt to get the nutrition that it truly craves. Same with if you go on this any freaky, extreme diet that is low in protein protein being the foremost macronutrient that you need and that you crave to ensure general stable body function and the maintenance of all manner of metabolic processes, right? So your protein needs come first. You’re gonna die without getting sufficient protein. And then the carbs and the fat are more influencing how is your balance of your hunger, hormones, satiety, hormones, things like that. And so when you have this nutrient deficient appetite-stimulating type diet, you are going to promote processes of inflammation, chronic inflammation through excess insulin production, through excess glucose dumping into the bloodstream repeatedly from these processed foods.
Brad (17:50):
And what happens when you have too much glucose in the bloodstream? It’s extremely toxic in the short term. That’s why diabetics have such a, a severe health risk. If they don’t have the insulin nearby, right. They’re going to very quickly go into a state of hyperglycemia. They’re gonna collapse on the ground. There’ll be big trouble until they can get their immediate insulin shot. And so, uh, this condition of excess glucose is a really bad deal. Your body works hard to get the glucose outta your bloodstream immediately. Amazingly out of a total blood volume of, I believe it’s five or six or seven quarts of blood. The optimal glucose level is around five grams total in your bloodstream. That’s one teaspoon. That’s how delicate and fragile this glucose regulatory processes are in the bloodstream. We do not want to have that seven 11 Slurpee. It’s very, very difficult to deal with and to clear the bloodstream and get it back down to the five gram level.
Brad (18:55):
That’s why, uh, insulin kicks in so strongly. And when we do this, when we challenge our glucose regulatory systems throughout our life with the high carbohydrate diet, pretty soon it gets tired out. The cells get tired of a, uh, dealing with all this insulin. The insulin signaling becomes dysfunctional in the cells, and that’s what the term insulin resistance means. Your cells become tone deaf to the signaling of insulin and what happens the body and response the liver doesn’t know what’s going on. And so it pumps out more and more insulin to try to clear the bloodstream from this condition of excess glucose. Now when excess glucose is floating around in the bloodstream, because you’ve exhausted your delicate insulin mechanism that removes glucose from the bloodstream efficiently in a healthy subject, what happens the excess glucose molecules bind with important structural proteins throughout the body and render them dysfunctional.
Brad (20:00):
This is called advanced glycation end products. The process of glycation is the binding of excess glucose molecules to important structural proteins throughout the body. And you develop these advanced glycation end products. Guess what that stands for? A G E. A G Es. That’s, right? They age you prematurely. Guess which cells in the body are the most vulnerable? That’s right. The longest lasting cells in the body, brain, retina, kidney, cardiovascular cells and skin cells. So we get wrinkley aged skin. We get eye and kidney problems, which are very prominent among diabetics because they have very difficult time regulating glucose in the bloodstream. So they commonly suffer from vision problems and kidney problems. And of course the cardiovascular system. That’s the heart disease process driven by sedation and inflammation caused largely by the high carbohydrate high insulin producing excess glucose molecules floating around in the bloodstream diet.
Brad (21:17):
And interestingly with the increasing prevalence of the diseases of cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s dementia related conditions. Experts are now nicknaming dementia Alzheimer’s related conditions type three diabetes because these conditions in the brain are marked by dysfunctional glucose metabolism in the brain. If you have Alzheimer’s dementia, it is marked by dysfunctional glucose metabolism in the brain. So it’s literally the brain becoming diabetic. Suzanne De La Monte, Brown University, I believe, coined that term. And now it’s being widely used and recognized that these are a fundamental, a hallmark of cognitive decline is the inability to process glucose efficient in the brain because it’s become exhausted from a lifetime of consuming, too many processed carbohydrates. Is that enough, uh, motivation to try to clean up the diet? I hope so. So it’s sugars, grains, and refined industrial seed oils.
Brad (22:23):
My great show with one of the world’s arguably the world’s leading anti sugar crusader, Dr. Robert Lustig, please listen to that. He talks about how sugar has profoundly addictive properties. It floods the dopamine receptors in the brain pleasure, motivation reward, instant gratification, to the extent that you become addicted to them in the same manner that we’re familiar with with addiction to other substance. So this is a battle that we have to fight with tremendous resolve. There are so many environmental triggers that set us up for trouble. The cultural traditions, oh my gosh, I’m recording this around the time of Halloween and the kids come to the door, guess what they got at our door? That’s right. Play Dough. I think they’re pretty, they were good sports and they’re gonna have some fun with Play Dough, to go with all the overload of sugar. That for some reason, our culture just embraces and accepts all this stuff.
Brad (23:24):
You know what my favorite example this disgrace is the, the Girl Scout cookies. And I apologies to all Girl Scouts, the wonderful program and the wonderful cause that the cookie sales are raising money for, but are you kidding me? You are raising money at the expense of human health and making these disgracefully disgusting-nutrient deficient products filled with vegetable oils, as well as all the sugar and the grains and smiling at the door. And how can you turn down an earnest Girl Scou who’s trying to raise money for her camping trip? I will challenge the Girl Scout, organization. How about you sell the healthiest cookie available on the planet instead of the most disgracefully unhealthy and continue on.March on. Maybe you’ll get even better sales anyway, sorry, Girl Scouts,. But look on the label sometime and see what you’re selling.
Brad (24:17):
Okay. So how do we turn the corner? How do we get rid of this stuff? Do you do a complete cold turkey kitchen pantry purge and toss all big three laden foods in the garbage can creating a lot of shelf space, a lot of extra room in the fridge? That is one strategy that might be the most highly recommended strategy once. And for all, just get it over with, in one fell swoop. Now there could be some personality, particulars, uh, deciding what is gonna be the best strategy to work for you. Would it be a gradual cutting back in a methodical manner? Uh, we don’t know, and there’s some difference of opinion here. I did a show with Rachel Gregory on The Primal Kitchen podcast, and she talked about, um, her clients that she works with for fat reduction. They are allowed to a spoonful of ice cream every night, because if they completely eliminate the ice cream, they’re gonna obsess about it in an unhealthy manner and maybe have an increased risk of binging down the line.
Brad (25:20):
Hmm. Interesting. Okay. We’re gonna, um, we’re, we’re gonna accept that. There’s also some benefits of the cold turkey approach, where you establish a hard and fast rule for yourself that you’re gonna do it no matter what. You’re never gonna allow that into your shopping basket or into your home again. You’re gonna tell your kids as much and you can have a clean house and see how see if we can still survive. Probably will. I’m referencing, uh, my interview with Gretchen Rubin long time ago. Uh, she’s the author of the book, The Four Tendencies, and this is a little quiz you can take to determine your personality tendency. There’s the upholder, the obliger, the questioner, and the rebel. And as it particularly relates to dietary transformations. It might be really interesting to learn which tend see you fall into and how that might inform your strategy to eliminate these foods.
Brad (26:13):
But my contention after working with a lot of people and evaluating a lot of feedback on our books for many, many years, boy, the sooner you can make this happen with great authority and great conviction, uh, the better off you’re gonna be. So I think the slippery slope of trying to cut back and that terminology I’m using on purpose, when you’re trying to cut back, uh, it makes it really easy to back slide, oh, you know, everything was going well. And then I went on vacation and all this stuff came back into the picture. So I think if you are going to indulge and celebrate and bring some of these foods back into your diet temporarily, uh, it’s important to make it a really distinct and devoted experience where it is definitely classified as an indulgence and a celebration it’s out of the ordinary.
Brad (27:06):
It’s unusual. I’ve talked about my visiting Seattle and going to the gourmet handmade ice cream shops that are, prominent in that town. And it’s part of my annual trip to Seattle. It’s great. I love it. But you will not find me purchasing a pint of ice cream at any other time of the year from the local grocery store, because I think that’s crossing the line. Now we’re talking about possibly a more objectionable, uh, more processed food. If you’re coming from mass production, from the ice cream pint, even the, even the quality brands. So I draw that personal distinction myself, and the more you can ratchet down and limit your choices and limit your options so that you do not have to exercise willpower or discipline. It just becomes a fact of the matter that there’s no ice cream in your house or your diet to pick on ice cream for a moment.
Brad (27:59):
Okay. So now that we’ve done the clean out, we’ve ditched the big three toxic model foods, we are going to emphasize the ancestral category of foods. Pretty universal and difficult to object to the idea that we should consume the foods that have fueled human evolution for two and a half million years. And of course there’s a lot of dispute and difference of opinion. There’s strong voice and a strong movement for the vegan vegetarian folks who want to eschew all or some animal products on many different grounds. The environmental and the morality grounds are, you know, well respected. That’s a, that’s a deep, personal belief in philosophy. And I think, uh, to find some common ground here, we should all all agree that we wanna source the most sustainable and least objectionable types of animal foods. So when you go to the farmer’s market and you find a dozen eggs of chickens that were pasture raised, humanely raised certified animal welfare, if you’re buying a pasture raised egg in the grocery store. That is a big step up from the eggs that were laid in the chicken coop, uh, with the filthy and objectionable circumstances of the chicken., Same with the meat that you’re buying.
Brad (29:16):
If you can find the grass fed distinction for beef, the pasture raised distinction for foul and the heritage breed distinction for pork, you are looking really good and have eliminated many of the objections to the industrial feed, lot production, the adverse effects on greenhouse gas planet, all that stuff. But some of this stuff has been kind of blown outta proportion, and it really annoys me to hear the propaganda being dispensed that all animal foods are bad. You can get a wonderful counter opinion from folks like Dr. Paul Saladino on his show, where he talks about the regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture, meaning that the, uh, cows roaming on the free range are actually sequestering carbon and contributing to a net negative carbon impact of that ranch where the cows are raised sustainably. Robb Wolf and Diana Rogers wrote a, a wonderful book called Sacred Cow, going into extreme detail.
Brad (30:25):
How animal agriculture done the right way can be sustainable, can be wonderful, can deliver, uh, nutritious foods. And you can kind of transcend all this this distaste for animal products that start to become brain washing, and boy, uh, if nothing else to say about the debate, um, if you are eliminating animal foods from your diet, you are portioning out the most nutritious foods on the planet, a huge percentage of the most nutritious foods on the planet. So you’re gonna have some challenges ahead. It’s a very high risk strategy to get rid of most of the, uh, top-ranked foods on the planet. So my goal as evidenced by the Carnivore Scores Chart that you can download for free at bradkerns.com, I’m trying to maximize the nutrient density of my diet. So I’m trying to emphasize the categories of foods that are defined as the most nutritious.
Brad (31:30):
This would be things like liver increasing my liver intake because it’s arguably the most nutrient dense food, uh, on the planet. Uh, when you look at under a microscope, what it’s offering, uh, pound for, for pound ounce, for ounce. We also know an universal agreement that for example, the family of oily cold water fish have incredibly high nutrient density by far the most omega 3 delivery of any other food category on the planet. Then you have the pasture raised eggs, which I described earlier as being far are superior to a regular egg, uh, but an egg in, in that category. I mean, it’s the life force essence, uh, obviously one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. It has everything you need in an egg to sustain life. So some of this commentary that we’ve been brainwashed our entire life about, ilke going for the egg whites instead of the yolk. The egg yolk is where all the nutrition is concentrated and you can’t get any better than that as a complete food.
Brad (32:30):
If you’re stranded on a desert island forever, I would probably go with salmon eggs as my number one choice. I could live on that the rest of my life. okay. So yeah, go check out the carnivore scores chart. It’s really fun and has a, a tiered ranking of the most nutritious foods. So you can try to shoot for the foods that are highly ranked, and it’ll give you kind of a good strategy, uh, for, uh, meal choices and simplifying things, rather than thinking you need to go and have this incredible, uh, dietary variety. It’s been proven with human evolution, especially the ways that humans have colonized all different areas of the earth. And some people some of our ancestors have had extremely high intake of Marine life, oily cold water fish, seaweed, whatever they were eating as they migrated from Africa across the globe, and then others, landlocked have taken down a lot of wooly mammoth and eaten, varying little fruits, vegetables, things like that.
Brad (33:35):
So we’re really good at adapting to whatever’s available in the environment. And we can thrive on a variety of different foods provided they come from that grand list of ancestral foods, which if you’re taking notes is pretty simple. You can probably memorize this after a while. the foods that have fueled human evolution for the last two and a half million years, pretty much land in the categories of meat, fish, fowl, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. And then we make allowances for certain modern foods that have a lot of health properties and minimal or no health objections. And that would be things like, uh, organic high fat dairy products, as opposed to low fat or non-fat dairy products, which are giving you a big dose of sugar. So your non-fat fruity flavored. Yogurt is out, but full fat Greek yogurt can have a place in the diet as can things like cheese, uh, provided you adapt to those nicely and, and feel like they work for you.
Brad (34:36):
Same with high cacao percentage bean-to-bar dark chocolate. As you know, from listening to the show, I’m a huge fan. It has a centerpiece place in my diet, and I feel it it’s a great treat, but it also has some nutritional benefits. So check out the carnivore scores chart, and also, you know, put in a plug for, uh, eating the foods that you really enjoy and enhance your life. Cuz we want this to be sustainable. We don’t want to be a struggle. We don’t want you eating things just for the sake of the fact that they score high on the nutrient density chart, if you don’t really enjoy them. So if you’re getting into a good routine where you make a nice smoothie, maybe you enjoy omelets, maybe you enjoy salads, maybe you enjoy entrees of steak or fish or fowl, uh, whatever your favorite vegetables are, the, that kind of thing.
Brad (35:23):
Good to go and just dial it in yourself through trial and error and experimentation. And don’t get too caught up in the particulars and the nuances and the dogma. And believe me, I’ve tested and gone deep into the extremes cuz this is, um, what I live and breathe, right? So when Mark and I were working on the Keto Reset Diet book, I was deeply immersed in the ketogenic diet pattern for many months and pricking my finger several times a day to check my blood ketotone levels and how it affected. How it was affected by fasting, keeping my carbs strictly under 50 grams a day to determine the effect on my, on my body, energy, health, and all that great stuff. So I learned a lot from the experience. I no longer am counting my macronutrients in any way nor do I care that much to ever do it again because I’m simply simplifying diet, enjoying my life and focusing on nutrient dense foods that I really enjoy.
Brad (36:22):
And as I said, when it’s time to celebrate or depart, you don’t have to live robotically and never have another treat again, but please make the most informed and mindful choices so that you have really, really high standards when you want to endure. Yes, I consume a lot of dark chocolate, but it’s sourced from around the world from the very best sources, making sure that it has that bean to bar designation. That’s a huge difference from slamming a snicker bar on a road trip because you’re hungry and you say, Hey, I’m going to, uh, have a celebration moment here. Um, so you know, staying away from that steep processed, uh, industrial food machine foods and trying to find these, uh, quality brands that care about what they’re serving you, even if it might be in the treat category. Okay. So I talked about being flexible.
Brad (37:13):
We have some mental health components there where we don’t wanna get into the condition of orthorexia, which seems to be pretty prominent right now. And that is defined as an unhealthy fixation on the correct approach or the healthiest foods to the point that where if you’re traveling and you can’t find exactly what you want or uh, what’s part of your regimen or accepted, you get stressed out about it. That’s missing the point entirely. And remember the body’s pretty good, pretty adept at managing the occasional hormetic stressor of a junk food. So yes, you’ll find me once in a while ordering up some sweet potato fries and guess what they’re probably fried in refined industrial seed oils, the absolute toxic biggest thing to avoid. Uh, but there is some argument that if this happens once every six months, um, your body is going to respond with an extreme antioxidant response.
Brad (38:12):
So you’re kind of fine tuning your antioxidant system. I guess you could argue the same. If you smoke a cigarette once a year, it’s not gonna kill. We know that I’m not recommending that in any way. Seems kind of a stupid idea, but if it is something that you, uh, enjoy once in a while, I wouldn’t, I would certainly not get stressed out about it. And then recalibrate very nicely right away into the realm of the, the baseline of incredibly, uh, strategic and high level choices for everything that goes into your body.
Brad (38:46):
Okay, we got the diet thing handled and that transitions nicely into the next category of reducing excess body fat. So improving your body composition, gaining or maintaining an optimal amount of lean muscle mass and reducing excess body fat for those in the category of needing to, uh, reduce body fat, to get into the healthy body composition zone or the optimal, this is seen as sort of a marker or an indicator that you are making healthy lifestyle changes, right? You’re doing something that’s working with your exercise program and your diet. And I’m going to tee that up for part four of this wonderful series about correcting adverse lifestyle practices and disease risk factors, and getting things up-leveled, as they say into a new category of health, vitality, and vibrancy. Thank you so much for listening to part three good times. Good times. Any comments, questions, email podcast@bradventures.com. Thank you so much for listening.
Brad (39:56):
Thank you for listening to the show. I love sharing the experience with you and greatly appreciate your support. Please email podcast@Bradventures.com with feedback, suggestions and questions for the Q and A shows. Subscribe to our email list to Brad kearns.com for a weekly blast about the pubblished episodes and a wonderful bimonthly newsletter edition with informative articles and practical tips for all aspects of healthy living. You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. And if you could go to the trouble to leave a five or five star review with apple podcast or where or else you listen to the shows, that would be super, incredibly awesome. It helps raise the profile of the B.rad Podcast and attract new listeners. And did you know that you can share a show with a friend or loved one by just hitting a few buttons in your player and firing off a text message? My awesome podcast player called Overcast allows you to actually re record a sound bite excerpt from the episode you’re listening to and fire it off with a quick text message. Thank you so much for spreading the word and remember B.rad.
