Here we go with part two of compelling insights from Two Meals a Day.

In part one, we discussed how 1) fasting is king, 2) the importance of becoming fat-adapted to receive the full benefits of fasting, 3) why when you eat is just as important as what you eat, 4) why three meals a day is a dated notion and why you must eliminate The Big Three (toxic modern foods such as grains, industrial seed oils, and sugar) from your diet, and finally, 5) the importance of emphasizing ancestral foods.

In part two, you’ll learn about the origins of the three meals a day structure and why it’s no longer relevant or even recommended as a healthy eating pattern, as well as the benefits that come from matching your carb intake with your energy output. You’ll learn why your brain and willpower are no match against hyper-palatable foods, as well as the importance of honoring your body’s natural hunger and satiety signals and letting your intuition inform your dietary choices. I also talk about the creation of my Carnivore Scores food chart and why it’s optimal to emphasize the foods in the upper ranking system (meaning, above the steak line), and explain why there is absolutely no need to worry about getting in enough nutrition via salads and kale when you’re consuming animal foods (especially organ meat). We also talk about how to successfully incorporate (and enjoy!) indulgent moments in a way that doesn’t tempt you to stray away from your healthy diet, as well as the complementary lifestyle practices that best support a dietary transformation. 

TIMESTAMPS:

The idea of three meals a day is from the industrial age when our lifestyle was very different. [01:34]

After you have cleaned up your act by ditching processed foods and emphasizing ancestral foods, your own intuition can be the guiding force that helps you decide how to eat healthy. [03:01]

Animal foods trump even the best plant foods in terms of nutrient density.  [06:39]

The variation in daily carb intake needs to be aligned with the energy output from exercise. [09:42]

Dopamine is released to get us to pursue behaviors that bring rewards. [12:38]

Don’t have nutrient-deficient foods in your house. [16:28]

Healthy eating is only one piece of the big picture for your lifestyle changes. Dealing with stress and getting enough sleep are important. [19:19]

Keep moving. Don’t be an active couch potato. [20:47]

Mindset is of critical importance. Cut out the BS and give yourself a break. [26:35]

The calories you burn during workouts don’t really contribute to fat reduction. [28:24]   

When you have accomplished the first eight ideas, you can adopt some advanced strategies. [32:53]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• Brad’s Shopping page
• Two Meals a Day
• Carnivore Scores Chart
• Huberman Lab
• Podcast with Dr. Joan Ifland
• Podcast about micro workouts
• Body by Science
• 1st Podcast with Dr. Herman Pontzer
• 2nd Podcast with Dr. Herman Pontzer
• Breather on Dr. Pontzer’s work
• Burn
• Therapeutic Cold Exposure podcast
• Brad’s Morning Routine

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B.Rad Podcast

Brad (1m 34s): Good greetings. Here we go with part two of the compelling insights from Two Meals a Day. Sure. Hope you listen to part one, but to quickly summarize the first five of 10 compelling insights, we’ll cover six through 10 on this show. The first five or that fasting is king. That’s when our bodies work most efficiently, but you want to proceed with caution that’s number two. First, you’ve got to become fat adapted before you explore the wonderful benefits of fasting. Number three is when you eat is just as important as what you eat. So we want to focus on eating less frequently, maybe landing on a long-term template of two meals a day without much snacking in between or without any snacking as your baseline. Brad (2m 19s): Sometimes you might even eat fewer meals than that. Maybe sometimes you’ll eat more, but boy, three meals a day. That’s kind of a dated notion leftover from the industrial age. When we went off to hard labor and factories and had to have breakfast before we headed out. Lunch to take a break during that busy day of hard toil. And then of course coming home and having another meal. But today when we’re not burning a massive amount of calories every day, two meals a day is plenty. Number four is eliminate the big three toxic modern foods that would be refined sugars, grains, and industrial seed oils. And then number five, consequently, when you’re eliminating all the junk food emphasize ancestral foods. Brad (3m 2s): So this brings us to 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. And number six is titled intuition. And I believe that as you build momentum and get your act together, ditching those processed foods, emphasizing the ancestral foods of your personal preference from the list of foods that have fueled human evolution, the meat, fish, fowl, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, and certain healthy, modern foods like raw organic high-fat dairy and high cacao percentage, dark chocolate. When you get your act together and you’re in a good groove, I think intuition can come to the forefront and really be the guiding force that helps you decide how to eat healthy, following regimented meal patterns or and/or precise macronutrient guidelines can bring short-term results. Brad (3m 50s): It can get you out of carbohydrate dependency, but it can also bring an element of extra stress or extra complexity to your eating habits. Something that should be one of the great joys and celebrations of life. It can also bring a attrition over the long-term. If you’re asked to strictly limit your carbs to 50 grams a day every single day for the rest of your life. And you kind of feel like an outcast in a different social situations, or you’re missing a lot of the nutritious foods that you used to eat, but you’re in the name of the numbers in the name of honoring your breathalyzer or your blood meter. You’re keeping these restrictions in place. Brad (4m 32s): Long-term. Sometimes that can cause a problem for others. They’re perfectly happy doing it. They feel in a group, they feel comfortable. So we have to go with personal preference at all times. And that’s basically what intuition is all about and intuitive approach to eating where you’re guided primarily by hunger and satiety signals can very likely be more enjoyable and more sustainable. But boy, if you can just clear the smoke away and all the other reasons that we eat, including the addictive nature of those big three toxic modern foods. And I just did an interesting recording with Dr. Joan Ifland, who is an expert on food addiction. Brad (5m 13s): And boy, when the addictive properties take hold and these foods are in your diet for years and decades, that is a huge element. It’s a huge part of the picture where you might not even know it, unbeknownst to you. You truly, and actually are addicted to your breakfast cereal and the sweets and treats that are at the front desk that you walk by seven times a day at the office or whatever it is. So if you can get to the point where you can actually honor your hunger signals and your satiety signals, that’s when arguably you are at the highest level of sophistication of healthy eating. So that would be perhaps as simple as waking up every day and fasting until when W H E N, that stands for when hunger ensues naturally, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Brad (5m 59s): It’s just an intuitive approach, offers you some flexibility and variation within your day-to-day patterns. Personally, it feels to me like the best approach. And if someone were to ask me in an interview, describe your typical eating day. Well guess what, there’s a tremendous amount of variation on a day to day basis and a year to year basis. As I strive to maintain an open mind and think critically about the latest, greatest research and dietary habits. Also the variations in my athletic training program and other variables that might affect my dietary choices, probably the most profound example is the emergence of the carnivore dietary movement. Brad (6m 40s): This kind of hit me really hard in early 2019, and I woke up and challenged a lot of fixed and rigid beliefs that I’d held for many years. For example, that vegetables should form the centerpiece and can take up the bulk of space on your plate at a typical meal. And now when you are presented with new information, that these foods might not be necessary and they might actually be harming you in small or significant ways, depending on your sensitivity to the natural plant antigens that are contained in all plant foods. Boy, it’s a real wake-up call to realize that you’re getting the vast majority of your nutrition from the top ranked animal foods on the spectrum. Brad (7m 24s): And that’s what the Carnivores Scores Chart is all about. So go to Brad kearns.com right now, exciting new slick new website, and right there in the top bar, along the top of the page, you can download the Carnivores Scores Chart, and that is a tiered presentation of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. So up there at the very top are things like grass fed, liver, oysters, salmon eggs. Then we have the other organ meats, the nose to tail eating strategy with the true super foods like bone broth. We have the pasture raised eggs. We have the grass fed meat, the pasture raised fowl and on down the list that oily cold water fish. Brad (8m 5s): So if you’re trying, making a good effort to emphasize foods in those upper ranking systems and not worry so much about going and getting your kale salad every single day, because the animal foods trump, even the very best plant foods in terms of nutrient density. So that was a real eye opener for me personally. And that caused a significant shift in my overall dietary strategy to the point where I could describe it as carnivore-ish with a lot of chocolate, maybe I should call it the CNC diet. How about that for a book title, carnivores-ish with significant amounts of carbohydrate, because I feel personally as an athlete, especially in the older age groups that devotedly restricting carbs, when I already have a healthy blood markers and healthy body composition is not only unnecessary, but feel like it might compromise my recovery from the strenuous explosive high intensity workouts. Brad (9m 2s): So where do I get my carbs? Again, it’s not a dietary centerpiece where I’m preparing these grain-based meals and loading up a ton of extra carbs, but I kind of get them incidentally from things like the smoothie ingredients, the coconut milk that’s going in there, the yogurt that’s going in there, the incidental carbs found in those foods that are otherwise higher in fat, but they still have a significant amount of carbs. Same with the high cacao percentage dark chocolate. Very little carbs in comparison to chowing down an energy bar or a milk chocolate bar. But when you consume the amount that I do, there’s going to be a significant amount of carbs coming in there. Brad (9m 43s): Maybe the occasional sweet potato or the occasional enjoyment or indulgence like a bowl of popcorn. And then of course becoming more and more prevalent in my daily diet or these mini corn tortillas, because I love frying those up in high quality, first cold press, extra Virgin olive oil or butter, and get them in the skillet and get them to they’re a tiny bit crispy. And those guys are a great delivery system for my steak, for my eggs and the things that are again, the centerpieces of the diet. Anything goes well in those things. So kind of leaking those in more than in past times. So that’s kind of my own personal description, and I’m telling you the details because everything came about sort of intuitively. Brad (10m 26s): And I would also contend that my variation in daily carbohydrate intake is closely aligned with my energy output from exercise. So intuitively I know when I come back from the track that maybe just maybe I’m opening up the cupboard going, Hmm, okay. Maybe I’ll make a smoothie right now and throw in not only some chunks of frozen banana, but also some frozen mango and frozen blueberries, whereas maybe the next day, because I’m not exercising as much in a recovery mode. I might not eat anything until at 12 noon. And it might be a, a high protein meal such as a eggs or steak emphasis, but in conjunction with those workouts, I’m noticing when I zoom out from a bigger lens, Hey, there goes, Brad, he’s hitting the cupboard again. Brad (11m 13s): He’s making a smoothie early. He must’ve just come back from the track. You get what I’m saying here. So that’s the description of the intuitive approach. Now this whole concept of eating intuitively can be pretty tricky. It’s going to be highly personality dependent. And I think all of us need, or could benefit from additional rules, restrictions, and guidelines, and putting more of that in place in this decadent, indulgent, modern lifestyle, where we have constant access to food, especially the hyper palatable foods that are presented to us from the massive marketing forces that are trying to get into our brain and convince us that we can eat this stuff and we need more and more of it. Brad (11m 58s): And that has a huge impact on our consumer purchasing decisions. Everyone can reference going to the market feeling full from just having a delicious meal or when you’re very hungry, tired, stressed out. You tend to throw more stuff into the cart that might be characterized as instant dopamine trigger hyper palatable. And remember with the research on dopamine, again, I’m going to plug this great new podcast called the Huberman lab from Dr. Andrew Huberman neuroscientist at Stanford. He clarifies this common notion of dopamine being the reward neurotransmitter, but really what it is, is the motivating neurotransmitter. Brad (12m 38s): So it provides you with the impetus to act and go and get what’s going to be a reward. But the dopamine trigger is strongly coming from the anticipation of having sex. The anticipation of making a lot of money when you take your company public. The anticipation of a winning the basketball game that you’re about to participate in. So dopamine is released to get us to pursue or continue to, to engage in behaviors that bring rewards. Let’s say a nuance, but a very critical one, in my opinion, and especially when it comes to food. So you want to kind of make sure that your dopamine reward system is operating in healthy balance with the other. Brad (13m 27s): Neurotransmitters like the more sustaining serotonin. Serotonin is basically associated with contentment ,satisfaction, rich and meaningful life, kind of a longer track than the dopamine, which is the quick hit, the quick trigger of instant gratification. We talk about dopamine and association with your text messages dinging, which you might’ve heard in the background. Oh my goodness. How could I not turn that off to make this podcast or tracking on your social media or getting any new and novel stimulation? So with diet, we know that those high reward, hyper palatable foods like going and getting the ice cream on a hot summer’s night, all that stuff is strongly dopamine triggering. Brad (14m 9s): But again, if you can enjoy a wonderful, fine dining experience at a slow and leisurely pace where you’re having a multi-course meal, candlelight dining, whatever the description is, that’s really a calming, relaxing situation that is also going to bring in the serotonin receptors to where you feel satisfied in a different way than slamming down an instant dose of the Seven 11 Slurpee when you’re driving around and need a quick hit. So we want to keep those in balance. Of course, we’re not going to escape the strong pull of the dopamine receptors, but when we can virtually eliminate these nutrient deficient hyper palatable foods from the diet, that is going to be a big help in us living a clean, rich, rewarding, meaningful life in general, and also having the diet that we dream about or aspire to. Brad (15m 5s): So we have this kind of war between the dopamine reward pathways and knowing better up there in the front of our brains and the frontal lobe, which comprises only 2% of the total brain real estate. And Dr. Joan Ifland, who I mentioned, describes how this battle is a, a mighty battle because the, the overwhelming impulse and the overwhelming power of not only the marketing forces outside of us, but the dopamine reward centers, we really are strongly primed to go and grab another pint of ice cream, even when we know better. And when our higher level strategic thinking and reasoning brain says, geez, you really shouldn’t be eating this stuff. Brad (15m 45s): If you want to align with your eating and dietary goals. So to get intuition working best for you. Oh my gosh goes hand in hand with cleaning up your diet from these hyper palatable reward, triggering foods and focusing more on the enjoyment of the entire experience, which means going to the farmer’s market, shopping, talking to the vendors, maybe going online and forming a relationship with wonderful companies that are putting out this really sustainably raised animal products. They’ll ship them to your door in a frozen state and you can go. So for the very best, no matter where you live and work through recipes, get some books, learn about the, the flavorings and the ways that you can in up your game. Brad (16m 29s): When it comes to fine dining. That’s going to be more rewarding in a different way. So back to the rules and guidelines and restrictions, because it’s such a free for all, it’s really nice to put these things in place. For example, not eating your first meal until a certain time of day, as you build more and more momentum and realize that you’re not hungry until 12 noon as a general as general lifestyle guideline, that can be really helpful. And then probably most helpful as all is to have some standards in place when you’re shopping such that your home environment does not feature any of these nutrient deficient hyper palatable foods. So you absolutely never buy them. Brad (17m 10s): Never allow them in your house. And Hey, guess what if you’re off to vacation in Seattle, which I am in a couple of weeks, and we will definitely be hitting these wonderful handmade ice cream stores that are really popular in that city. One of them is called Salt and Straw. One of them is called Frankie and Joe’s and they make these wonderful exotic flavors. And it’s sort of part of my connection to vacationing there, which we do annually and enjoy the heck out of it. When you’re on vacation, when you are celebrating a wonderful family birthday, and grandma always brings her fresh baked cookies when you’re traveling in Italy and you want to try some of their gelato great. That’s part of enjoying life. Brad (17m 50s): And that is a huge difference and a huge distinction from habitually purchasing or preparing these foods that you know, are nutrient deficient and are going to cause you an assortment of minor to significant health problems. If they are a centerpiece in your diet. So keep your home environment clean and make any indulgence, a special occasion with full mindfulness and full appreciation for the entire experience and all the cultural influences surrounding it. That’s going to be a winning strategy. Okay. That’s a lot and good to say on number six, intuition number seven is the introduction of complimentary lifestyle behaviors. Brad (18m 29s): because healthy eating, although it’s a huge piece of the picture, it’s only one piece of the big picture. And the things that you do with your movement routines, your exercise habits, your sleep habits, your stress management practices can make or break your efforts toward dietary transformation. If we’re envisioning this major goal of, of escaping carbohydrate dependency, escaping food addiction and transitioning over to becoming fat adapted and having stored body fat, be your primary source of energy to get you through the day and get you through life. These lifestyle behaviors are going to either push you back in the direction of carb dependency, because life is too stressful and things are out of balance, or they’re going to support and compliment your transition in the diet to choose a more nutritious foods. Brad (19m 20s): So prioritizing sleep would probably be top on the list. And when I say sleep, I’m also going to broaden this basket into also talking about recovery and downtime in general. So we have getting a good night’s sleep and hitting the pillow and, you know, going down for seven to eight hours, maybe more for some people like me and that’s great, but we also have this new obligation to chill out and take downtime from the constant opportunity for connectivity, digital stimulation, especially in the form of the handheld device that can be with us everywhere, everywhere we go. And now even worn on our wrists, forget about the phone in our pocket. Brad (20m 0s): And that part for the first time in the history of humanity, our brains are constantly under assault with this exciting novel stimulation, hitting those dopamine reward pathways, and that can be exhausting and fatiguing and anything that’s stressful, even in a positive sense, even if you love grabbing your phone and getting it out and keeping in touch with your social media all day long, which we could argue that might not be true, but you know, you’re in these habit patterns. Maybe you say that you need them. You need to be in constant availability for the nature of your job or your family life. Okay. That’s still going to be a stressful circumstance of the body and the more stressful and more stimulatory your life is again, positive or negative, whatever the stressors are. Brad (20m 48s): It’s going to be going hand in hand with consuming quick energy carbohydrates to sustain this high stress lifestyle pattern. So getting enough sleep at night, and also finding ways to chill and tone down the go go, go hectic high stress, high intensity lifestyle that many of us have been ushered into. Thanks to our environment. Now with fitness, pretty simple. We have a critical, huge objective to increase all forms of general everyday movement. I’ve talked about this so much on shows where the fitness, the, the workout pattern is great. You’re going to have many benefits from an appropriately structured fitness program, but boy, if you’re sitting around a lot throughout the day, you can become a statistic in this actual medical condition known as the active couch potato syndrome. Brad (21m 40s): This is where the science has shown that even people who have a devoted fitness regimen who get their butts out of bed and over onto the bike at 6:00 AM for spin class three days a week and at 7:00 AM for bootcamp the other three days, and then go out for a hike on the seventh day. Oh my goodness. Even though they have that tremendous commitment to fitness, they can still succumb to the disease risk factors, adverse blood values, excess body fat, all these things that are associated with sedentary living. If they have too many sedentary patterns in modern life. This is pretty obvious. If you take a look at, let’s say someone who works out for an hour every single day. Brad (22m 21s): A huge fitness enthusiast, maybe an hour and a half, if they’re super crazy, right? And they get an 10 hours a week putting up in the training log weekend, week out, they’re running 40, 50 miles a week. They’re going to the gym, whatever. Okay, you got 10 hours a week, seven hours a week of exercise out of a total weekly hours. You know how many there are 168. And the research is showing now that the average person is sitting for somewhere around 12 or 13 hours every day. I hope we’re sleeping for eight hours, right? Guess what? That doesn’t leave much time for any kind of movement. Brad (23m 0s): And so if you’re sleeping or sitting for 21 out of 24 hours a day, even if you squeeze in some good workouts, when you’re over there at the gym, it will not counterbalance all those sedentary patterns. And this can be easily handled easily improved by just getting up and taking short breaks from prolonged periods of stillness. Every 20 minutes. If you get up and stretch your legs or do some micro workout exercises that I talk about in a show title, just about micro workouts, you can drop for a set of deep squats. You can hustle up two or three flights of stairs and hustle back down. You can do a set of pull-ups. If you have a pull up bar hanging within reach like I do, when I’m doing recordings, I have all kinds of great examples, but putting your body under resistance load is great. Brad (23m 47s): Just doing some stretching or just walking as simple as it can get, but taking these breaks throughout the day so that you don’t have these long periods of stillness. That’s when your metabolic function can get all disrupted. Notably in as little as 20 minutes of sitting still, you can experience a significant decrease in glucose tolerance and an increase in insulin resistance. In other words, you stop burning fat efficiently and start to, consequently, feel a decline in cognitive function, energy, mood alertness to the extent that if you continue to sit and sit and sit, it’s going to affect your appetite. And you’re going to have an increased appetite for quick energy carbohydrates. Brad (24m 29s): So movement is paramount. And then when it comes to exercise, we want to make sure that, of course, we’re getting sufficient cardiovascular exercise at a comfortable heart rate where it’s emphasizing fat burning, but also taking the opportunity to put our body under maximum, maximum load, maximum effort with explosive movements that challenge the muscles to failure, to complete exhaustion, temporary exhaustion. When you’re doing something that’s really difficult and challenging. And a lot of fitness enthusiasts miss out on that top end where they’re stuck in this middle zone of doing somewhat difficult cardio, you can see their faces sweating. They’re climbing the stairs in the gym. Brad (25m 9s): They’re jogging down the street, but they’re never challenging their body to the maximum with short bursts of explosive effort. And this is where you get the maximum fitness and health adaptations in a minimal amount of time. There’s a great book called Body by Science from my friend, Dr. Doug, McGuff going to get him on the show at some point and talk further about the book. But I think the subtitle talks about working out for 12 minutes a week and getting superior results to workout regimens lasting much longer than that. So we want to move frequently. We want to avoid that middle ground where we’re doing what Mark Sisson calls, chronic cardio and draining our body accordingly leading to cravings for quick energy carbohydrates and leading to carbohydrate dependency. Brad (25m 52s): And then finally, we want to do these brief explosive efforts where they’re over with so quickly. And the workout itself is over with so quickly that it doesn’t kind of trigger those carbohydrate cravings that are so adverse and disturbing when you’re talking about the chronic exerciser. And we can identify people in that category who are training for many hours a week, forget about seven or 10, maybe it’s 15 or 20, but still carrying excess body fat. And that’s a sign of a carbohydrate dependency training regimen, where you’re doing a little bit too much, a little bit too difficult of a heart rate, not enough recovery in between these medium to difficult sessions. Brad (26m 35s): And you’re feeling drained and depleted frequently from your workout patterns leading to increased appetite for the process foods. Okay. So those are the big lifestyle objectives to address. And I think also thrown into the lifestyle category is your mindset. And we have a whole chapter in the book about mindset and the critical importance of cutting all the BS out and giving yourself a break. So if you’re coming into this game today in 2021 with past failures, with unsatisfactory body composition, you’ve struggled, you’ve tried this, you’ve tried that you’re feeling a little discouraged deep down. We want to kind of clear the slate here, erase the whiteboard and start with a blank slate, give yourself a break and start cultivating some gratitude for whatever starting point you’re at now, so that you can open yourself up to a lifestyle of possibilities and success and enjoyment and happiness rather than kind of getting stuck in these adverse behavior patterns that are so familiar to you, that you kind of default into them. Brad (27m 42s): And so you’re, you’re no you’re going to get discouraged. You’re setting yourself up for failure because of your bad attitude starting out of the gate. So we want to reprogram any remaining lingering self limiting beliefs and behavior patterns into a position and a mindset of empowerment that you can do this. You got this. Tomorrow’s another day and guess what? You are not perfect. And you’re probably going to screw up and fall off track once in a while. But you just get yourself up. You dust yourself off the very next day and you start in and you try again and you make commitments. You respect your commitments. You have some rules, restrictions, and guidelines in place that are doable and sustainable, and they don’t feel daunting and intimidating out of the gate. Brad (28m 24s): And then you give yourself a fighting chance and executing the logistics that we talk about so much. And now it takes us to number eight. So we talked about intuition lifestyle and the number eight is movement is basically the centerpiece of your healthy living objective. So we already talked about how important it is to get up and walk and take breaks. So I kind of jumped to number eight when I was talking about number seven, but it’s also important to throw in here, the insights that were really profoundly communicated by my two-time podcast, guests, Dr. Herman Pontzer author of the new book Burn. That the calories that you burn during workouts don’t really contribute to fat reduction. Brad (29m 7s): In fact, the homosapiens, the, the species here that we’re talking to and talking with burns around the same number of calories every day, regardless of whether you exercise or not. And that’s because we have this calorie burning constraint and upper limit on daily calories burned such that if we try to go out there and burn a bunch of calories every single day with a, a crazy exhausting exercise program, we are going to make an assortment of compensations in other calorie burning areas. When we bump up against this calorie burning ceiling. It’s a mind blowing insight that I think takes the pressure off and takes that stress off of having to go out there and burn an obligatory amount of calories every day through physical movement. Brad (29m 55s): In fact, if you are extreme or excess in your exercise, energy expenditure, you are going to borrow from the important, the extremely critical processes of growth,, repair and reproduction. So locomotion, growth, repair, and reproduction are a zero sum game. They add up to the same, even if you overload the locomotion, that would be calories burning during exercise. You’re going to find yourself with possibly suppressed immune function, suppressed to reproductive function and a difficult time recovering from these extreme workouts. So the calorie burning being constrained. I know that’s a hard one to get your head around. Brad (30m 37s): Please listen to the shows, including my summary show. So there’s a third show talking about Dr. Pontzer’s insights, where I tried to organize all the information and dump it over to you. So you could walk away understanding this man’s life work and how it’s affected the, the flawed notions that are the centerpiece often of the diet and exercise industry that it’s possible to burn calories and, you know, reduce body fat through calorie burning. So essentially what we’re doing when we’re talking about dropping excess body fat with lifestyle goals is backing into the backing into the ultimate goal by surrounding ourselves with winning lifestyle behaviors, such that it will optimize and regulate our appetite. Brad (31m 19s): So we’ll eat just the right amount of calories we need to get to our ideal body composition and stay there. That’s why movement is so important. It’s not about the number of calories that you burn when you walk around the block or walk for two miles with the dog in the evening. It’s how that regulates your appetite, your hormones, your energy levels. And it’s a fascinating way to approach it. Same with the, the extreme workouts that you do. It’s building all kinds of things, especially your muscle mass, which is the one variable that will increase your calorie burning. So your calorie burning is constrained in association with your lean body mass. So yes, the big bodybuilder who’s carrying 205 pounds of lean muscle in a 220 pound, 20 pound frame is going to eat a lot more calories than the 108 pound step instructor at the front of the room. Brad (32m 12s): So that’s the only variable for humans. Well, not the only, but the only that’s the major one. And then there’s some minor ones and one of them is your activity level. So if you’re moderately active, you burn around 200 calories more per day than someone who is inactive, which is a pathetically small amount, right? That’s an M and M per hour every day around the clock for, for you to be all into the healthy, active lifestyle versus your neighbor who video games for hours and sits on the couch. So another mind blower there, but nice to know that this obsession with calorie burning is off target and off-track from the true way to reduce excess body fat. Brad (32m 54s): Does that make sense? If you’re a little confused or I’m going too fast, go back and listen to the three shows, emphasizing Dr. Pontzer’s work. That brings us to number nine on the list, which is breakthrough news. Yeah. When you have done the hard work on items, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and eight. You have optimized your diet, your lifestyle habits, and now you want to make incremental gains from good to great advanced strategies can be implemented. These include fasted workouts, extended fasting, sprinting, and therapeutic cold exposure. And the goal here is to shock the body, to elicit an adaptive response. Brad (33m 37s): And sprinting is probably the best example where you can make these maximum gains in fitness in minimal time by challenging your body to do something that’s so difficult that the body is forced to come back a stronger, leaner, fitter. And again, it’s not about burning extra calories after the sprint workout so much as it is building the muscle building additional muscle mass and helping you become a more fit, active, energetic, alert person with regulated appetite, mood, energy levels, things like that, that are signs of a metabolic and cardiovascular musculoskeletal fitness. Okay. So same with the therapeutic cold exposure. Brad (34m 18s): Your body’s going to respond in the short term by increasing calorie burning to rewarm. And then if you can ride out a potential appetite spike, that’s where you’re going to create this deficit that is necessary to drop excess body fat. And again, a whole show is about that. You can go back and listen to one about therapeutic cold exposure, but these breakthroughs, that’s a really fun chapter where you can dig into the advanced stuff. Especially if you’re digging into this book, this Two Meals a Day when you’ve already had some good exposure to ancestral eating habits and some of the basics. Okay. And then finally is the 12 day turbocharge. Brad (34m 58s): And that’s a section that we present at the end of the book, where every single day, you have some assignments in five different areas. They’re titled food, fasting, fitness, mindset, and lifestyle. And there’s journal exercises to accompany each one there’s activities assignments. One of them could be purging your refrigerator and pantry on day one to clean out all the, the toxic modern foods in those big three categories: refined grains, sugars, and industrial seed oils. So you’re going to go through the assignments. It’s going to be a pretty gnarly 12 day experience if you’re going to commit to it and do it properly, but it’s only 12 days long. And what it does is expose you to all of winning behaviors and strategies. Brad (35m 43s): I describe how to get started with a morning energizing ritual that I promote so much. And you can see on YouTube, the Brad kerning is morning, Brad, Kearns morning routine with the leg strengthening and stretching exercises. So you’re going to dabble in this. You’re going to dabble in that. You’re going to try this. You’re going to try some cold exposure. And then after the 12 days are up, you will be inspired, motivated, focused to put into place the lifestyle behaviors and strategies that make the most sense to you are most enjoyable and keep those going. Long-term. So it’s sort of a boot camp immersive experience, again, with daily assignments in five different categories. You’re going to love it. It’s going to be a great way to close out this book and actually close out the show because that’s numbers six through 10. Brad (36m 30s): So recapping all 10. Number one: fasting is king. Number two: proceed with caution. Number three: when you eat is just as important as what you eat. Number four: eliminate the big three toxic modern foods. Number five: emphasize ancestral foods. Number six: cultivate an intuitive approach to eating. Number seven: dial in the complimentary lifestyle factors. Number eight: movement is especially important. It’s probably the top priority when it comes to your fitness focus. So increasing all forms of general everyday movement, especially breaking up prolonged periods of stillness with quick walks or quick micro workouts. Number nine is poised. Brad (37m 10s): Get ready for a breakthroughs after you’ve dialed in all the basic factors, you can try fasted workouts, extended fasting, sprinting, and therapeutic cold exposure to shock the body and get this wonderful adaptive response. Yeah. Finally, number 10 is the 12-day turbocharge that’s presented in the back of the book that will get you dialed and teed up for a wonderful lifestyle transformation. Thank you so much for listening to the compelling insights from the book Two Meals a Day. And you can learn more all about it at the landing page Two Meals a Daybook.com. Two Meals a Daybook.com. Brad (37m 50s): Including I think some wonderful free giveaways. So go check that page out and thanks for listening. This is Brad Kearns. 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 of Brad kearns.com for a weekly blast about the published 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. Brad (38m 33s): And if you could go to the trouble to leave a five or five star review with podcasts or wherever else, you listen to the shows that would be super, incredibly awesome. It helps raise the profile of the be read 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 record a soundbite 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 word and remember B.rad.

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