(Breather) An interesting mix of questions gives an opportunity to sound off on important insights covered in previous shows.
First, a cross country skier says hills and altitude causing elevated heart rates can require possibly more dietary carbs? I say find a way to slow down – same for me on the mountain bike! Gabrielle the super mum from Aussie land references the great show about Ashley Merryman and Po Bronson’s insights about effort-based praise in the book Nurtureshock and the epic 2007 New York Magazine article, The Power (And Peril) Of Praising Your Kids, that changed my approach to parenting forever.
Gabrielle makes great points about separating specific praise with declarations of love and also being proud of a child’s character instead of achievements. I mention how I’ve had incredibly disparate guests on the show, like vegan advocate Rip Esselstyn and carnivore leaders Dr. Paul Saladino and Dr. Shawn Baker. I reflect that I’m not an “in your face” host getting into controversy with my guests, as I prefer to cultivate an open mind and willingness to appreciate alternate points of view. Obviously, Rip and I have drastically disparate positions on healthy eating, but during our show and with our friendship, I prefer to focus on the incredible work he has done to motivate and inspire people to be healthy, and the common ground that we do share about healthy eating and living. Hopefully if I need to be badass at some point I will step up, we’ll see! Another commenter remembers the great show with boy wonder health expert Matt Maruca, founder of RAOptics.com, and how he is taking Matt’s message to his adult kids and himself. He also notes his excitement for my next venture, Brad’s Macadamia Masterpiece, a combination of superfoods blended together to form the most delectable, nutrient-rich nut butter. Seriously, this stuff is so delicious you will be eating it straight out of the jar. Stay tuned for that, and keep the questions coming – I love receiving, and reading through such compelling commentary, so email your feedback and any and all questions you have.
TIMESTAMPS:
Wade, a Nordic skier, has a question about maintaining heart rate. Is a low carb diet approach consistent with the extreme metabolic demands of this athlete? [06:12]
Even with altitude and hills, it’s important to continue to maintain the heart rate under the aerobic maximum. [08:39]
What is the role of carbohydrates in the lifestyle of a high performing athlete? [10:10]
Females need to pay particular heed in order to be fit for reproduction. [14:31]
Gabrielle asks about the parenting podcast where the message is: When praising kids, saying you’re proud of them specifically on their achievement is ill-advised. [18:01]
Should you tell your daughter she is pretty, when our culture tends to traffic on looks? [19:53]
Be careful connecting “I love you” with the talent, rather than the effort, as this damages self-esteem. [22:14]
Brad is suggesting we keep an open mind on vegan, vegetarian, carnivore diets. [23:31]
John is getting back into triathlon and working on getting competitive while staying healthy. [28:41]
LINKS:
- Brad’s Shopping Page
- Try LGC
- Autophagy
- Dr. Tommy Wood podcast
- Ashley Merryman podcast
- Matt Maruca podcast
- Rip Esselstyn podcast
- Dr. Paul Saladino
- Nurture Shock
- CarnivoreMD
- MeatRX
QUOTES:
- “The essence of modern life is overfeeding of the cells. When your cells are depleted of energy, that’s when your cells start to do better at recycling old material, repairing, rejuvenating, rebuilding, and you become a more efficient human being – the same with fasting. So if you put those two together, you’re achieving the same goals to the extent that it’s possible to overstress the body and stimulate a flight or fight response.”
- “Don’t pile on too many stress variables particularly if you’re a female – fasting and low carb is just too much.”
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad (04:42):
Welcome to a Q and a show. The listeners have spoken or at least written yes. Sending me some very interesting questions. Let’s get right into them and please send some yourself feedback, comments, questions, get over yourself podcast@gmail.com. You only have to type it once and then it’s in your contacts. Then you can send me a comment, every show if you want. Hey, pretty good. Very good. Better than average, a little sleepy. I don’t know. We’ll take it. We appreciate it very much. So hearing from you and especially if you have the inclination to leave a review, wherever you consume podcasts, uh, most people are on Apple podcasts. Uh, there’s now market share coming from other people like Spotify, Google play. So wherever you listen to podcasts, if you can just push a couple buttons and write a nice review, it really helps with the algorithms and people, uh, finding the show and listening to it. Uh, I know with Apple, it’s a little bit tedious. You have to go to desktop iTunes, uh, navigate to find the podcasts on the list of, uh, shows there. And then there’s a button that says, write a, leave a review, and you can leave your five star review and some comments for the others in the world to share the message. So thanks for leaving the review. And thanks for writing in with feedback, get over yourself podcast@gmail.com.
Brad (06:12):
Wade wrote in and says, uh, my question is about Nordic skiing. And a lot of times it does not permit low heart rate training due to the altitude and due to the Hills, the metabolic demands are pretty high. No kidding, man. Uh, Nordic skiers have been found to have the highest VO two max of any athletic group. And that is because of the extreme metabolic demands placed on both their lower body and their upper body, right? So a cyclist and the tour de France pretty impressive physical specimen, but the upper body, uh, not terribly, uh, activated, right? Uh, even the triathlete is using upper and lower body. Uh, but the ability to, uh, to push at near maximum for long periods of time, because of the low impact nature of cross country skiing, these guys are the true cardiovascular machines of the planet. They’re unsurpassed marathon runner of course kept show gay and the rest are phenomenal, physical specimens, but the high impact trauma of running, uh, gives them about a couple hours of going all out in a world class marathon, and then they’re done.
Brad (07:29):
But some of these cross country guys are going for longer than that with elevated heart rates, crazy metabolic demands. So Wade asks a very appropriate question is the low carb approach really consistent with that? I’m not asking if the sugar-laden white flour, any carb approach is better, but how can the low carb approach really work with the polarized training demanded by Nordic skiing as compared to a diet higher in nutritious carbs? Whew! Well, here’s the thing, the parameters of aerobic heart rate training still apply. So even if you’re a cross country skier, you don’t want to be routinely exceeding your maximum aerobic heart rate and training because the training is still too stressful. So whatever you’re doing, whether it’s running, cross country skiing, swimming, you’re still subject to the metabolic demands as represented by your heart rate. And so when you exceed maximum aerobic heart rate, you’re going to drift into the glucose burning zones, and you’re going to have a detrimental longterm impact on your ability to build aerobic fitness.
Brad (08:39):
So I understand that there’s altitude and hills out there. Uh, I’m going to address another question later on where I referenced my own example of going up to Tahoe and having a couple awesome mountain bike rides in a row. One of them unintended kind of getting lost and the first, uh, intended, but so difficult, cause I’m not really in shape for biking anymore. Uh, that I was beep beep beep and exceeding my aerobic heart rate. And consequently had a long recovery time after it was kind of a bummer. You have to keep that heart rate under the aerobic maximum in order to, uh, progress with your training and avoid the, uh, overtraining burnout conditions. So altitude and hills just means that you’re going to have to go slower and you’re gonna have to figure out a way to go slower. I think you can do it on skate skis.
Brad (09:29):
Just turn those things out and walk up a hill, right? You don’t have to go fast up a Hill and with mountain bikers, you can find that easiest gear and pedal to the extent that you’re barely staying upright and keep that heart rate down in the aerobic zone. So my first challenge is to see if you can go slower and keep that heart rate low, regardless of the terrain or the circumstances. And I’m calling myself out that they didn’t do a good job of doing that, but it’s possible to go even slower and be gentle on that heart so that you don’t have that, uh, excessive carbohydrate demand that comes from these depleting workouts.
Brad (10:10):
Uh, that said, now we can talk about the role of carbohydrates in the lifestyle of a high performing athlete. And I am getting a little tired of the controversy and the debating and the hair splitting. So I want to kind of take a big picture approach here and encourage you to, uh, follow your natural appetite and let that guide you to, uh, your decision for whether to consume carbs or not. And I think this approach of being overly regimented, uh, counting your macronutrient grams, uh, because you’re trying to be Keto and you’re also trying to be, uh, an iron man triathlete or anything where you’re trying to balance these disparate goals and ignore maybe appetite signals that are, uh, signaling you to go consume more nutritious carbohydrates. I think we just have to back off a little bit, relax and let your appetite guide you. And I’m coming from personal experience here because I find if I look back upon reflection that my periods of increased carb intake are associated with periods of, uh, increased training volume or in training intensity, right.
Brad (11:20):
Training degree of difficulty. And it just kind of happens naturally without even thinking about it. So I’m going to advocate for that, uh, style of just going with the flow a little bit here now. Uh, my enthusiasm for fasting is not diminished or for, uh, the benefits of Keto, but I find a lot of times my extended fasts come on days where I’m doing little or no exercise of note. Uh, but when you try to pair those together, at least in my experience, I’ve found that to be potentially detrimental. So if I’m going out and doing a high intensity sprint workout and then deciding to fast for hours afterward after I perform the workout in a fasted state, anyway, I’m kind of doubling up on these wonderful benefits that we read about, about mitochondrial biogenesis, about autophagy. This is when the cells are starved for energy, they become, uh, more efficient with their functioning. You make more mitochondria. Those are the, uh, energy producing power plants located inside each cell that help process, uh, calories without the oxidative stress or the inflammation.
Brad (12:31):
So they make you a cleaner burning operation. You’re like a solar power plant rather than a coal plant who lives on sugar. And so all these benefits accrue when you force yourselves to become more efficient by not overfeeding them, which is basically the essence of modern life has continued overfeeding of the cells. You get accelerated cell division, inefficient cell repair and accelerated aging. So if you do a sprint workout or a weight workout, or a long distance endurance workout, and your cells are depleted of energy, that’s when they start to do better at recycling old material, repairing rejuvenating rebuilding, and you become a more efficient human beings, same with fasting, right? So if you put those two together, you’re kind of achieving the same goals to the extent that it’s possible to overstress the body and stimulate what? A fight or flight response to make yourself a little sugar, come on, give me some sugar, right?
Brad (13:35):
And so the fight or flight response is going to initiate this process called gluconeogenesis, where you break down a certain amino acids in your lean muscle tissue and send them to the liver to make glucose, to deliver to your brain because you haven’t eaten in a long time and you did a kick ass workout in the morning. So we want to be careful overdoing all these, uh, touted benefits of,fasting carb restriction, uh, when we are a high performing athlete. Now, if you are, uh, obese, have metabolic dysfunction, uh, pre-diabetic all these kinds of things where you are, uh, coming off a, or indicating a pattern of decades, long overfeeding and poor dietary choices. You stand to gain a lot more from extended fasting, uh, carb restriction, things like that because you need to turn that metabolism around and unlock your fat burning potential.
Brad (14:31):
Uh, even if you’re a high performing athlete and you declare yourself to be a 10 or 20 pounds of excess body fat still on the body, despite devoted efforts, then you’re going to do really well with, uh, emphasizing more fasting and more carb restriction. If you already are lean high performing and trying to, uh, perform and recover from an impressive slew of workouts, you’re going to stand to benefit less and possibly have more risk of, for example, a compensatory mechanisms that slow down your metabolism because you’re training hard and not consuming enough calories, a delayed recovery, because you haven’t replenished. Um, and also the, uh, fight or flight, uh, activation of gluconeogenesis because you’re simply running out of energy. This is particularly the case. If you be a female, a low body fat female athletic performer, also trying to fast and go Keto that is piling on a lot of stress variables into the equation, because as we know, what is the females primary most predominant, uh, genetic hormonal drive is reproductive fitness, right?
Brad (15:48):
So the female is biologically wired to be fit for reproduction just as the males prominent biological drive is reproductive fitness, right? Uh, preserving healthy testosterone levels. And that’s why high stress, lifestyle habits, trash, your testosterone, uh, whatever they are, bad diet, too much exercise, not enough exercise, et cetera. So the female who’s trying to stay a reproductively fit and fertile is going to have a genetic signaling to preserve body fat rather than shed more body fat to get that six pack. So you can appear on the cover of whatever magazine that is in conflict with reproductive fitness. So if you’re already low body fat and you’re dabbling and fasting and carb restriction that could send you into hormonal spiral, uh, where you, uh, come up with a thyroid adrenal problems and the females in the high performing athletic community are well aware of all these risks and dangers.
Brad (16:49):
So, um, these are the population group that is going to want to make a devoted effort to feed yourself well, as you’re performing these great workouts, Dr. Tommy wood, uh, he’s been a guest on the show a few times, and I did some great summary recordings of all the insights provided by Dr. Tommy a resource of information. Uh, he had some epic quotes about the athletes that he consults with and send their food diaries in for evaluation as part of his services. And he says, I’m looking at these food diaries of these, you know, high, hard training athletes. And they’ll say, uh, breakfast, two eggs and half an avocado. And he says, come on, man, eat a real breakfast, make it six eggs and a full avocado. You’re an athlete out there burning the calories, get some real food in ya. Okay. So Wade, I hope that answers your question about a Nordic skiing and how does it compare, how does the low carb diet pair up with that ambitious training? If you’re low body fat, you’re performing well, uh, of course adding more nutritious carbs, uh, subject to your appetite guidelines is going to be my recommendation there.
Brad (18:01):
And next comes from Gabrielle from down under in Aussie land, “Deah Brad, and team. I’m enjoying your podcast. Thanks for making it. I’ve been listening for a few months now. How’s that for an Aussie accent? I think that was spot on, I don’t know. Aussie listeners, will you give me the straight scoop? Anyway, Gabrielle says in between other shows, I’ve heard a lot of useful information. I also like your focus going back to the show’s title and the non- arrogant approach is very attractive and makes this thing more enjoyable. Well, thank you for the compliment, deah. She just listened to the parenting episode about not giving kids too much or nonspecific praise as a mum of two young boys. This was very useful. Thanks for being so brave to narrow cast it. I think I’m going to say I’m proud of my kids, but remove the statement from anything achievement linked and show them that I am just inherently proud of them for my sake, but they don’t have to earn it. A beautiful, very well said, Gabrielle, thank you. That’s exactly the message that I was trying to convey. And of course the author is, uh, Ashley Merryman, who I had on the show and Po Bronson, you can be proud of your kid, your kid’s character and the person that they’ve become. I’m proud of the young man that you’ve become. I’m proud of the young lady that you’ve become, but not associating it with a specific performance is the trick here. Okay. Uh, they also back to the original article that I was referencing the Inverse Power of Praise, um, how not to talk to your kids. That’s the New York Times article from 2007. And of course the book Nurture Shock that it emanated from, uh, Ashley Merryman and Po Bronson writing that if you’re a parent, please go buy the book, Nurture Shock. It’s wonderful. It’ll change your perspective to parenting.
Brad (19:53):
But the other attribute that came in there that was somewhat controversial was they were talking about, um, uh, you know, it may not be valuable to tell your daughter that she’s pretty because culture tends to traffic on looks and females tend to associate their self esteem with their physical appearance, to their detriment as they go through life, rather than nurturing other skills. If they just traffic on their looks, they’re going to end up a trophy wife someday, Hey, nothing wrong with that, if you’re happy, but you know what I’m getting at here. So instead of telling your daughter, you’re so pretty, you’re so beautiful all the time. Um, you kind of make that nonspecific and make a statement like, you know, you’re beautiful inside and out. So I’ve used that line on my daughter since 2007, rather than, uh, you know, trying to get this, um, potentially negative association with, uh, one’s appearance and one’s self worth self esteem, or what attributes they present to the world. Does that make sense?
Brad (21:01):
Instead of, I guess the a counter example would be, Oh, you’re going to be a real heartbreaker when you get into high school and things like that. And the girl smiles who’s 14 when she meets her uncle and, and these kinds of things, I can see the potential negativity there. Right. I think it’s pretty clear that we might want to take a step back from that, especially when our culture is so, uh, over-sexualized and so caught up on appearances and the celebrities are, you know, um, just flaunting that to the extent that we’ve never seen before. So yeah. Be chill, develop your entire personality and you’re beautiful inside and out, sweetie. Very nice back to Gabrielle’s letter. Um, granted I have philosophical conversations with my daughters about what all these words mean. So I think they might understand that parents are also silly humans without all the perfect words. every time I hope I’ve also lately been aware of removing any specific praise from mention of love, not wanting to link the two Oh, the tricky psychological minefield of parenting. So I really appreciated that episode. Oh yeah. That’s great.
Brad (22:14):
So the praise can come along, right? Wow. You did a great job on that painting. I can tell you worked really hard. I noticed the detail on the birds up here in the corner. That’s a huge difference from you’re such a talented artist. I love you so much. Ah, gag me with a spoon as they say in the Valley, not in Australia, but can you see the potential adverse impact of a statement like that where you’re connecting? Uh, first I did a double faux pas there saying you’re such a talented artist. I love you so much. So the, um, praising the inherent talent rather than the effort is what causes kids to rest on their laurels and be averse to taking on additional challenges where they have the potential of failing because if you’re a talented artist, Oh my gosh. Now they’ll sudden that’s part of your self esteem and you don’t want to go in and challenge yourself with a more rigorous, uh, educational track because maybe then you won’t find out that you’re the most talented artist in the whole region of Australia of what have you. Okay. So that was the first mistake and then connecting someone’s artistic talent with your love for them. That’s a movie mom. No TCS. Okay. Great letter by Gabrielle. Thank you so much.
Brad (23:31):
And here comes a letter from John. Hey man. Incredible podcast with Matt Maruca. Yeah. Did you like that one? The boy wonder of a light and mitochondrial health? What an amazing dude, man, traveling the, living the dream, running a wonderful business from a remote location. He’s only 20 years old, 21 now, and a wealth of knowledge and information. So John said, I listened to that podcast twice. I’m going to listen to it again, go back and listen to that. People, if you missed it, Matt Maruca he’s the founder of RA optics R A O P T I C S, where he makes these wonderful blue light blocking glasses and is huge into the health benefits of, uh, blocking, uh, excessive blue light, especially after dark. Okay. That kid makes me feel dumb. I can’t imagine being that smart and self-aware at his age. My kids are not too much younger than Matt and I’m really trying to take in everything he said from diet to digital media shutting off that digital media at night and helping inform not just my kids, but me to keep up the great content. You do a super job of taking an open minded approach with the guests and content to keep me from getting stuck in my little zone of beliefs.
Brad (24:47):
Oh, thanks for the nice compliment. You know, I hear other podcasts sometimes and have they have had that more contentious tone, where they get a guest on there and they start busting their balls and it gets into be a little spicy and controversial. And I think there’s a lot of value to that, especially if someone’s spouting some BS and you can call them on it. I don’t think I am super strong in that area. I had Rip Esselstyn on, an old friend of mine. I respect him very much. He’s done a fantastic job motivating and inspiring other people in the world to get healthy. So I come into the show with that as my centerpiece and my love and fondness for what he’s doing and his passion. And, uh, you know, he’s the real deal I’ve known him for 30 years.
Brad (25:33):
Uh, but you know, he’s the, uh, vegan plant-based advocate, uh, selling his line of foods and whole foods. He has a tremendous amount of, uh, criticism for things like eggs and meat and, uh, blanket statements that are dismissive of the ancestral approach. So we certainly could have got into it and had a spicy podcast and turned into a shouting match because of our extreme differences of opinion on things like a vegan, vegetarian, a plant exclusive diet and his blanket dismissal of the, uh, world’s most nutrient dense foods that fueled human evolution. Uh, but what’s the point. I mean, we probably have enough of that in life today. So my attempt on that show with rip was to discover, to discover common ground and also to perhaps engage in an exercise of, uh, challenging and checking your belief systems and perhaps reinforcing them at the end of the show and perhaps, uh, having a little doorway open, to be more openminded and critical thinking.
Brad (26:36):
And I will reference the same thing when I, uh, interviewed Dr. Paul Saladino and now here’s a guy who’s come and aggressively trying to upend all the beliefs that I formed in many years of, uh, being in the health and fitness scene and, uh, writing books about diet and, uh, touting the wonderful, colorful vegetables and fruits as the great centerpiece of the human diet. And, uh, Saladino makes a very, very compelling argument that we might want to second guess this basic assumption that almost everyone agrees upon from all sides of the aisle until recently, and the explosion in popularity of the carnivore diet movement. And if you go to meet our x.com, that’s Sean Baker’s website that has collected a whole bunch of really cool success stories, or go to carnival md.com. That’s Paul Sandino’s website. There are some really compelling information there that many of us might want to second guess our commitment to vegetables because of potential, uh, reactivity to the anti-nutrients that are contained in all plant foods.
Brad (27:46):
And that especially means grains and legumes, but also things like leafy greens and stuff that could be ripping up your stomach lining and causing leaky gut syndrome and all manner of downstream conditions, auto immune, and inflammatory conditions in the body that come from eating these wonderful plants that are supposed to be the centerpiece of the diet. So I am here by, uh, committed to maintaining an open mind and thinking critically about everything that comes my way, especially someone who’s nice enough to be a podcast guest. Okay. So yeah. What other show can have a guest list that includes both rip Esselstyn and dr. Paul selidino and dr. Shawn Baker, the other carnivore movement leader. Pretty, pretty awesome stuff. So hopefully the listeners will embrace that. And if I need to be more bad-ass sometime in the future, hopefully I will, uh, come out swinging if necessary.
Brad (28:41):
We’ll see. Won’t we anyway, um, thanks a lot from John for that compliment. And then John’s final paragraph is I’m getting back into tris after many years away from the sport and using my math heart rate, not overdoing the training, incorporating weight training, none of which I was doing in the nineties. I’m trying to get the competitive thrill and actually be healthy. Imagine that, Oh, you’re a funny guy. And like me, man, I almost said, imagine that for all you listeners and then I’m reading on his page. He wrote, imagine that on the next line. All right. Uh, thanks for what you do. And I’m looking forward to trying Brad’s macadamia masterpiece, the new nut butter coming soon. All right, John great letter. I know we didn’t get too, too many, but I think that was a great show and we covered some important topics and we will have more Q and a in the future.
Brad (29:31):
So thanks for listening. Please go leave a review. I’d really appreciate it. Wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcasta@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.
