In this episode, Brian St. Pierre from Precision Nutrition drops some serious knowledge on proper nutrition surrounding your fitness goals in this episode of Road To Ripped.
We get talk about the good and bad about Paleo, rising trends that are secret calorie bombs keeping you fat, post-workout nutrition strategies for hitting your goals, and the skinny on carbs. We even round this episode out with strategies to increase general well-being – “Deep Health”.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
- The skinny on Paleo – what it gets right and what’s missing
- A source of hidden calories that may be adding hundreds of calories to your diet each day
- What Brian thinks of Intermittent Fasting for fat loss (after trying it for 8 months)
- How pre- and post-workout nutrition needs to change depending on your fitness goals
- The only factor that should dictate which program you should stick to
- How to determine your carb intake and what role carbs play in your diet
- The best carb source for satiety (how full you feel after a meal)
- The concept of Deep Health and it’s implications on your wellbeing
[content_toggle style=”2″ label=”Show%20The%20Transcript” hide_label=”Hide%20The%20Transcript”] Greg: Hey, what’s going on guys? You are listening to the Road To Ripped podcast. We have a special guest today. We have Brian St. Pierre from a Precision Nutrition. And hey, what’s going on Tom? How are you? Tom: I’m good, I’m doing great man, how are you? Greg: Pretty good… Tom: Excellent! Brian, Welcome to the Road to Ripped podcast man. And I, little bit I know actually when we first reached out to you, you were actually like a huge figure within Precision Nutrition and it wasn’t until I started reading a lot of the articles like on the site. I thought it was just all jammed already on the site. And you know come to find out that you’re one of the main nutrition figures behind Precision Nutrition, right? Brian: Yeah, it’s a common I guess misconception because our article titled like the author name is in small writing because really it’s you know, we want to be about the content and less about splashing someone’s name across it but absolutely I do a lot of nutrition work. JB and I work hand in hand on a lot of projects that are precision nutrition system and certification. So I’m highly involved in all that stuff for sure. Tom: Awesome. Well great. We have tons of content to cover today in this episode. So alright you guys just wanna fire away? Greg: Now we’ll fire it away. I mean first off you know we’re just trying earlier. Let’s talk a little bit about the Paleo diet and what your thoughts are with this as far as using it as a tool to improve how and even off my performance. I mean what are your thoughts on Paleo and obviously Paleo, there is so many different ways to interpret it and how you can utilize it, but I guess we’ll just leave it at that for now. Brian: I‘ve a lot of thoughts on the Paleo diet and it really in many ways the answer is almost always “It Depends”. Greg: Right. Brian: It depends on a lot of things and that’s not a really helpful answer. No one could take any action from that answer. So really, I actually just wrote a really big article on the P-insight about the Paleo Diet. And really to me where it comes down to is, no matter which end of the spectrum you stand on; the Paleo is awesome; the Paleo misses the point, in the end the actual diet end of itself likely is more right than it gets wrong. You’re getting lots of lean protein, lots of you know fruits and vegetables, and it limits the carbs sources more than I would like, you’re getting in some quality carbs, some healthy fats from nuts and things like that. So it’s giving and it’s minimizing greatly like processed foods. I also recommend you know sunshine, exercise, fresh air like there are lot of components the Paleo Diet that I really like and I think could help vast majority of the people out there. There are other elements where I think it’s too restrictive unnecessarily so, restrictive on grains, restrictive on legumes especially, over restrictive on dairy that I think could push some people away cause it’s harder to stick to when it’s more restrictive. It’s easier short term, harder in long term when it’s more restrictive. And so that tends to try to see people cycle through so many types of diets. So in that regard, I think its part of the reason why the Paleo Diet has evolved over the past few years especially. There are a lot of Paleo advocates used to be really hardcore low-carb in addition to Paleo. Now you’re seeing a greater emphasis of carbohydrates in the Paleo diet in a more sweet potatoes, a more of just a little bit more of a relax attitude starting with that more strict template and then integrating things and see how you respond trying some dairy, trying some dark chocolate, trying some legumes and see how your body responds to it. So people used it from that constructs with that template, I think it could be awesome. Greg: Right. Yeah that makes a lot of sense and I know quite a few people that have had like various even these health symptoms and when they adjusted their diet to you know going the core of the Paleo, they feel a lot better and obviously a lot of that could be eating merely in protein, vegetables and fruits, but I guess there is something to say about some of these foods you know, people are just don’t do well on. And I know me personally, I know the gluten thing gets a lot of flak like, “oh, you’re getting gluten-free” but no, actually like I have a gluten sensitivity and I know that’s kind of arbitrary and what not but it always felt much better away from gluten and I know I’m not Paleo myself but I do kind of agree with some of the stuff. The only thing is when you kind of talk about earlier these unnecessary restrictions, I’ve always found the kind of me person, I don’t know if you can relate to this, just the whole like basing a diet initially off of picking food you can have and you can’t have, it’s screws me up psychologically. I hate it. I’d rather figure out the man of macros, or cowards I can work into my day, and I gravitate to whatever foods I want to hit those goals. That just makes it so much easier for me. Brian: Yeah and that’s one of the reasons why I’m not a big fan of like the “you can eat this but you can’t eat this” type of diet because it ends up crackin’ like all or none type of mindset, right? That’s bad, this is good, and people gettin’ to those types of mindsets, they’re either on the diet or they’re off the diet. Alright, and that’s not the recipe for a success long term. It’s not about a “diet” or “dieting”, or being on or off, it’s about just eating pretty well most of the time and that would get most people where they wanna go. So yeah there are definitely people who do better without gluten, they’re people who do better without broccoli, right? No matter how healthy of food might be and all seriousness, there are people who don’t agree with whether it’s green tea or it could be anything, right? There’s any number of foods that people have issues with, so that’s why we tend to be what we call “Nutrition Agnostics” at Precision Nutrition. No matter how healthy that approach might be in general, you have to adjust it for each person and their particular needs, dietary intolerances, goals and things like that. Greg: Right and I guess, I mean you kind of touch a few things but I guess what would you think the biggest kind of mistakes or unnecessary food eliminations are there with the Paleo Diet? Like? Brian: I think the biggest one is just eliminating legumes off the top. If you look at the data on eating beans, and lentils and things, it’s nearly unequivocal in their support. The amount of people who have issues with legumes are very very small and even the issues that they cite in Paleo, these fears are, it’s not strong data, it’s just not. When you look at the control trial evidence, observational evidence, the history of eating legumes, humans have eating legumes, even in Paleolithic times, and even in substantial amounts that’s estimated, so it’s just not there. I just find that to be the strangest one to eliminate. Greg: Okay, very interesting. I’ve always like not been down to eliminate dairies, I’ve always like loved specifically like cheeses like some kind of cheese from skimmed milk, it’s just in the high protein calcium and I find it very very safe —–, in fact I will take as far as getting lean is concerned, I would take dairy over nuts any day. And they just taste so good. I guess is there merit in eliminating dairy for how the body composition goals, I mean what are your thoughts there? Brian: Uhhmm, yes and no. I mean personally like I like dairy and I eat dairy every day, generally just a little bit of butter and some yogurt but to think that eliminating dairy in and out of itself is just gonna get people leaner, it’ll get you leaner but decreases your calorie intake but in and out itself it’s not inherently fattening or even unhealthy such as more and more control trial evidence comes out for people who can tolerate it, who don’t have a lactose intolerance, don’t have a Casein allergy, or other type of milk allergy. It’s a pretty solid food especially if you can get it from cow’s that are mostly grass-fed outside which is can be harder. It’s not the majority have dairy. I’m fortunate where I live, in Maine, that’s very easy to come by. And there are other great resources of survey by the Cornucopia Institute where they surveyed, they call it the “Organic Dairies” in the US and then based on their responses gave their scores and of course some of the big name companies like Horizon right owned by Dean Foods, the biggest food manufacturing the US wouldn’t respond, other big companies wouldn’t respond, they’re not going to be transparent about their practices. Whereas like Organic Valley and all kinds of smaller or regional producers responded and you can see like Organics organic producers in which one actually produce higher quality milk and that’s something I think it’s valuable to know. And if you’re gonna consume dairy, that’s where out push people towards. Greg: Okay, yeah that’s I’ve been really lazy, I’ve been getting the Kraft shredded cheese made from my skimmed milk, it’s actually got pretty good macros but I don’t think they do organic pre-shredded cheese. Brian: They might, I’m not sure actually do Organic Valley does sell a pre-shredded organic cheese. I mean in the end it’s not like that’s gonna make or break your entire health, right? If that’s so, you’re one bad food you know. But if I was to encourage people to make a choice, that’s the direction I would encourage. Greg: Okay, cool. And you know, just earlier you mentioned how you know if cutting your dairy helps you reduce your calorie consumption and yes we’ll help you get lean and I guess I mean that’s one kind of a tricky area with the Paleo Diet is that yeah it gets you to cut out a lot of you know easily over to consume calories but the same time if you pick up a Paleo recipe book, there like the calorie density of a lot of these meals is crazy. You’re getting like really fatty cuts of meat using tons of coconut oil and making stuff on like ground omen and so a lot of these meals, I mean even though you’re cutting back a lot of hype-easy consume foods, you kind of balance is out. I mean I did the Paleo diet a few years ago, and I had a hard time eating less than 3K calories with like the Paleo style meals. Brian: Uhhmm.. And that’s when you look at like the controlled trials of Paleo Diet versus the Mediterranean diet or whatever, in those versions of the Paleo diet, you know they weren’t eating meals like that you know like super high fat, they’re actually eating pretty high in protein, so their total calorie intake came down cause of the high in protein content. Right, we consistently see that in literature and people eat more protein, their total calorie intake tends to come down. When you look at a lot of Paleo diet cookbooks, you’re right, they pound coconuts and almonds and in some instances that they allow butter tons of like gee or you’re practicing like the bullet-proof coffee, and you know some people in the Paleo’s fear and now doing huge things in bullet-proof coffee plus their high fat meals you’re talking like 200 grams of fat a day. Well that can be done if you really know what you’re doing, for most people that tends to be an issue in their eating calories and they realize for sure. I’ve seen it over and over again with clients who are trying a Paleo diet and having issues. Greg: Okay yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now let’s switch gears here, this is definitely a topic that Tom and I enjoyed quite a bit and that’s intermittent fasting. A couple of years ago, moments for three years ago, John Berardi did this extensive intermittent fasting experiment and he had a lot of you know pretty cool conclusions and so I guess what are people like really need to know about intermittent fasting and it’s beneficial for them and what kind of benefits are there with fasting opposed to a higher meal frequency. Brian: I mean when JB did it, what he really found was for him personally, you know a study of an equals 1 was that it didn’t, it wasn’t any more effective for him to lose weight in a traditional dieting approach but he was more easily able to keep it off, and he was more easily able to manage hunger which is super important when you’re trying to diet down because hunger is a big recyclable fall off their diets. They’re eating less calories that they need so their body is ramping up hunger signals and he just found you do fasting and your hunger tends to come in waves so you just fast for a little while and unable to eat a smaller time window, you can eat bigger meals and kind of get away with it more because your total calorie intake is where would normally be if your just spacing the amount. So in that regard, he found it very helpful. In our coaching programs, we actually have people fast for days just to experience what it’s like, and a lot of people after that just try with the experiment with that moving forward. And what we really found is it’s most beneficial in younger males who are already pretty lean. So I say a 25 year old guy who’s 15 or 14 percent body fat and wants to be 10, that’s refunded to be the most beneficial. And someone is 45 and 25 percent body fat for male, or in 35-40 percent for female, especially for females, it’s not any more effective than your regular concur approach unless it just helps you control your intake more. But for some people, we find fasting becomes again part of that like all are non-mindset don’t fast that day or their fasting falls through, they tend to get guilty over it and ancy over it because they have this pre-defined idea of success and that success revolves around their fasting window. So, from a physiology stand point, it can have some benefit but again what we really found even a literature is starting to agree, it’s most beneficial in young already relatively lean males and the least beneficial for women. It seems to impact them negatively in terms of ——— can impact them negatively in terms of sleep simply because they’re a mono-profile maybe is suited to it and there’s lots of speculation as the exact reasoning, I don’t think anyone really knows for sure but for women, it seems to be the least effective for health improvements or body composition improvements and things like that. Greg: Right, it’s very interesting and anecdotally I’ve always noticed that most guys tend to do fine on it, well they absolutely love it and women is very like if it’s very you know you get both sides and I know Tom’s fiancé, she didn’t do well on fasting at all. Tom: Well yeah, actually when we first starting doing the Kinobody nutrition plan, I mean because you’re the advocate of the intermittent fasting and that’s actually why I heard about it from when I started digging in your courses and then I started researching and I love it honestly I think it’s the easiest way to stay within my macro, you know count every single day and I noticed it’s like natural for me now, it’s like in nature. My fiancé Emily, we did it for the first week, she was absolutely miserable and I mean she is just one I don’t know if it’s just like if it’s leading to wipe like she has to eat breakfast within maybe like an hour of waking up. If she doesn’t have that, like I can drink coffee, I usually fast for the first 5 hours of waking, 4-5 hours and in that section where I did my training to use so I train fast and then I come home within a couple of hours later where I had my lunch, it’s a huge meal it’s like well it’s satisfying. She’s miserable, after the first week she’s like nope, ain’t for me— for me and so she started you know, eating smoothies, you know a later breakfast but yeah, it’s just crazy how it affects guys and girls so differently. Brian: Absolutely, I mean I personally did it for 10 months after I am working for PN and after talkin’ to JB about it and I was like, “well, how can I really talk about it if I’ve never really tried it”. So I did like the 16/8, lean gain style for about 10 months where all I did was take my breakfast and my normal like ten o’clock mid-morning snack, I just combined it all at ten o’clock so I get up like 5 o’clock in the morning. So I too am awake for like 5 hours, 4-8. So my total calories intake was the same and for me I noticed absolutely no benefit and absolutely no harm. My training was just as good as fasted or fed, and my recovery felt the same, my energy level sleep, it didn’t affect me like honestly it made it was like I did nothing different for me. So I still felt great, I still trained well, I was just as strong, I was same body composition. I enjoyed it by the same time like my kids are older now so we like eat breakfast together, so I prefer you know just in my lifestyle to eat breakfast and enjoy with my kids. And now so to me it’s like again it comes back to, at PN especially we are very results oriented. If you do intermittent fasting and it works for you, then by all means, keep doing it. But if you do it and it doesn’t work for you, don’t just stick to it because it’s supposed to work or it worked for somebody else or it works for your fiancé. So if Emily kept doing it, even if it worked for you, if she was miserable, what good is that? That’s not actually helping her. Be result-oriented. Greg: So I guess now it’s logical to kind of talk about like really as far as getting lean is concerned in building muscle, intermittent fasting is a tool that can help some people on nutrition life much easier as far as getting macros or just making meals as easier to cook 2 meals and is to have what I guess depend on the meal prep and where not on the mix sets. But you know, what is getting lean and like how important is you know the macros over the course of the day, and then what are your thoughts on like meal time regards to workouts and pre-imposed workout? Brian: Yeah, so I mean when it comes to you know macros over the course of the day, I am definitely a big picture guy. So to me total intake is far more important than any nutrient timing strategy. It doesn’t mean nutrient timing is irrelevant; it still has a place, it’s just when you look at the literature as it continued to grow and now that Aragon is still too phenomenal, research reviews in the past couple of years that I’ve been fortunate to chat with him about really what it shows. As long as you have good chunk of protein and carbs within an hour or two before, and an hour or two after, your workouts, you’re pie gonna get the vast majority of the nutrient timing if not all the benefits of nutrient timing protocols. So it doesn’t have to be you know, when I was in College, man I had some fast adjusting proteins and carbs, pre-workout, precept it during my workout, had another one after my workout, then ate again like an hour late, it was crazy! Like I was eating like I was eating like 8x a day. Like you wanna talk about ease of meal prep, like in PN, we got which I only recommend, we eat about 4x a day just as a starting point. We just find it tends to be the sweet spot. Reasonably sized meals, they’re filling and satisfying, not so big like people like thanksgiving, alright I just overly stuffed, and some people don’t like that feeling. So for males, we find to be good sized-meals, satisfying, not so much food prep you’re constantly thinking about food or you’re prepping six different meals a day which is difficult, exhausting, you’re constantly thinking about it. And it still allows you to utilize nutrient timing to some degree reading 4x a day, that’s about 4 hours between each meal. So if you eat, like I get myself for example, for breakfast I like at 6, snack at 10, I tend to workout at 8 o’clock in the morning. This is what works for my schedule, so I work out from 8 to 9, come home, shower, whatever, and then I have the super shake, a smoothie at a 10 o’clock. So I eat breakfast at 6, 2 hours after I work out for an hour and then an hour after that, I have a smoothie. So I’m bookending, you know my training with 2 good sized mixed meals, plenty of protein, plenty of carbs, and I’m making sure still in my total intake of the day is in place. So they’re both important. It’s a very long winded answer to a very short question. Greg: No, no, fair enough. Yeah I guess it’s important to stress up on cause a lot of people get hung up on as you’re saying you know, obsessing about their pre or post workout and during work out shakes and they don’t even bother tabulating their entire macros of the day, right vastly more important and I guess one phenomena that I see some people do make is the goal with getting like literally lean, but then we adding all these pre during post work out shakes, and is like your visible calories up. They may get hard to lean down because they’re taking in a bunch of a fast absorbing and a very minimally stay shaping calories like pact around their work out instead of like really trying to get there like the macros of the day left to hit dialed. Brian: Absolutely. Tom: Those are liquid meals so clearly they are free calories. Brian: That’s right, that’s right. You know like someone we see are a lot of guys who want to get leaner, so afraid to lose muscle like they’ll have protein and calorie drink, you know like a surge type of product or something like that while they’re training. And then their overall intake for the day is actually too high because they had 300 extra calories of protein and carbs supplements while they’re training. It’s just necessary, right? That’s what that research shows like you just have bookend to your session that during work out nutrition specifically you for weight loss, it’s not necessary for guys who you’re trying to squeeze in every last calorie possible to gain weight, there might be a place for it; for endurance athletes, definitely a place for it. At the highest level of sport, like with my work with the San Antonio Spurs for example, there’s a time and a place for it but for most of us like myself who work out 3-4 x a week, they’re thrilled to no need. Greg: Right and I guess that’s part of the confusion, a lot of the research and literature is based around athletes, and then I guess people are trying to… Brian: Strap away, that’s right. Greg: Strap-away that and project that on to themselves when you know they’re not professional. Brian: One is training 12 hours a week, one is training 3 hours a week, right, there’s a big difference you know. Greg: I guess it’s a huge difference, and then I guess the pre-post work out strategies for tri-athlete, for professional boxer is vastly different. Brian: Right, then my 45-minute weight work-out, right. Greg: Right. So I guess if you are like someone that is training potentially twice a day, that’s a 4 hours a day, like I guess the specifications are like much different like you’d want it refill on a bunch of carbohydrates immediately after training to quickly re-stock glycogen then. Brian: Absolutely, just because in that case, speed of replenishment is imperative. If they’re gonna do to glycogen depleting sessions a day, then speed of replenishment is critical. If you’re working out on Monday, you’re heading weights again on Tuesday or Wednesday, you’re gonna reflok like you’re number 24 hours easily, just a normal carbohydrate intake. But if you are a high level athlete, a tri-athlete or a UFC fighter for example who might do grappling work, and then weight work and then excess conditioning work in addition catches what fighters do, yeah, speed of light is what punishment is really important but for most people most of the time, it’s simply not. Greg: Okay.. And like I guess, is there like gonna be improved nutrient partitioning when you don’t get the bulk of your calories and carbs around training or I guess after training as supposed to the different part of the day. And I guess like I might be very very extremely hard to quantify how much that difference gonna make in the grand scheme of things. Brian: It’s a good question and it’s something that I think most people in like my line of work will tell you it’s true, but to what degree, I don’t think any of us are really sure. It’s probably still a really good idea to get in a good chunk of your carbohydrates or at least make sure that you’re consuming carbohydrates post training coz’ you’re gonna better tolerate them, you’re gonna better utilize them for like a replenishment, oxidizes fuel right, things of that nature and it’ll help with your recovery, are shown improved next to performance, the list goes on and on. Does that mean it’s gonna make you like tremendously leaner if you put all your carbs post-work out versus spread throughout the day? The research doesn’t really necessary to support that. You look at the data, there are studies that people have majority of their carbs and calories are breakfast, versus the majority at night, and the data is equivocal. And some cases, breakfast is superior, and some case at night is superior. Well, that really tells us is it just comes down to personal preference and results. If you’re someone who does best with majority of recovery post work out, then do it. If you’re someone who does best with the majority at breakfast or at dinner, then do it. Don’t stick to anyone dogmatic approaches because it’s a persuasive expert telling you so, find what’s best for you and follow it. Greg: Right. That makes a lot of sense and I guess all this talk about carbs before and after training, I mean let’s pull back and talk about carbs in general, and what are your thoughts on for someone that wants to be very very lean on doing a low-carb approach like maybe a 150 grams or less a day or maybe even like 50-80 grams. I guess switch experience with what kind of doing low-carb as far as you experienced it and research and stuff about nature. Brian: Sure, I mean low in carbs is definitely an effective method for weight loss. I think that’s unquestionable at this point especially for lowering calories at the same time. However like a at PN, what we teach for assuming you eat like those 4 meals a day, we recommend many about 2 cup handfuls if you could see my hands, 2 cup handfuls of carbohydrates at each meal, and women about 1 cup handful. Now obviously men don’t need twice as many calories and twice as many carbs as women, but it’s just to get people really good framework, easy way to control portions and just to go from there. Now what we also teach is of you want to lose weight, maybe you remove 1- 2 cup handfuls a day from your intake. We also teach thumbs a fat as well. But in this instance, so we’ll use carbs; so for assuming, 2 cup handfuls, that comes out to about 40% of your calories from carbs, so it’s a pretty moderate carbohydrate intake. However, we definitely know and we found and I’ve written about that to me, carbs need in the fall like a bell curve. Most people do pretty well with that moderate intake, 2 cup handfuls for men and 1 women per meal. However, there’s one standard deviation away who do better with just one for men – 1 cup hand, for women, a half of a handful of carbs at each meal. And even at the farthest end, there are people like on that, that’s more like 150 grams a day a little bit less you’re talking about. On the farthest end, we’re taking like a ketogenic diet right, for a 50 grams or less per day you’re talking, basically 0 cup of handful. Maybe 1 cup handful a day, a little bit of fruit, you know basically coming from vegetables essentially. And so there are people who exist that definitely thrive on that kind of diet. To me there a small segment of the population like in that bell curve most are in the middle that chunk about 15 percent of the population of pie does really well with just 1 cup handful or half a cup of handful per meal. And then it’s like 2 percent of the population does best on a ketogenic diet. Definitely seen the work with clients, I’m working with someone when they’re going low-carb and it is effective, we roll with it. If I’m working with someone who’s going low-carb and it’s not working or noticing some negative aspects, then I try to encourage a different approach. I have seen it work, I’ve used it with clients personally, so one of the things like I was saying, we’ll start with that middle ground but we do pull back carbs coz you only wanna minimize protein so much. There’s a bare minimum for protein you definitely wanna hit and in the reality, this plays a barely minimum fat you wanna hit. Carbs are the most variable depending on the activity level on goals or need. So if you are trying to get ultra lean, and you’re already down to 10 percent body fat, and trying to get down to 6/7, and in that case, you’re getting into levels in body fat that are pretty much like super physiological levels right. There are most people are going to achieve those levels, they’re not just gonna happen upon them, they take a serious and concerted effort. So in that case, yeah you’re probably gonna have to go lower carb and is something I recommend for most people, probably not but for instances like that absolutely. Greg: Okay, yeah very interesting and I’ve always yeah definitely felt that carbs of various variants, I used to do the low-low carb approach, and ultimately if did not, it was not for me. There are lot of pros that definitely outweighed by the cons. Yeah and temporarily helped like kind of keep a good like you know a curb hunger very well like poor sleep, poor sex drive, poor training. Yeah, I was not worth it and so, you know it’s interesting whenever you worked with clients or you’re talking to people, I mean it’s interesting to see kind of what they gravitate towards these because some people eat like very low, very little fat like less in 20 percent are calcium fat and then it makes me scratch my head and like if I did that, I would kill someone. And then they could eat tons of carbs and then they love it, and then they do it and I guess I was like the old school approach when they eat very high carbs, high protein like minimal-minimal fat, but then those other people that literally if they eat a carb, they go into like a food binge. Brian: Alright. Greg: Maybe that’s psychological but you know… Brian: There is some physiology to it right? I mean you look at like their genes for amylase which is the enzymes into your saliva that helps to start breaking down carbohydrates. There are people who have like one copy, there are people who have like 10 copies. So it’s just in there, that’s one example of a genetic difference and you can get into different levels of insulin sensitivity, different levels of transporters on cells. I mean there’s any number of things that are gonna affect the way people, if different bacteria in your gut, different probiotics in your gut that will handle them differently. There are number of things that differentiate people on carb needs, carb tolerance. If you’re an endurance athlete, you have a much higher demand for carbohydrates that you’re expending a tremendous amount of carbohydrates. If you’re a power lifter, how many carbohydrates are you really expending, right? If you’re doing 8 sets of one rap, you’re not really expending a whole lot of glucose. Maybe in some of your volume work, you’re expending a little bit but you’re right, carb intake is driven by many things; goals, weight loss or weight gain, need so type of training that you’re doing, genetics, you know what type of build you have, if you have a family history of metabolic syndrome, or diabetes or you have metabolic syndrome, right, you’re gonna do better with a lower carb intake, you have a disease where you don’t tolerate glucose as well. Since there are many things at play, but overall, most people won’t be able to process all that on their own if they go exactly what their carbs need are. That’s how we start pretty middle on the road, and then you can adjust from there based on what you respond best to. You’re right coz some people do great with a high carb intake, that same bell curve not other 15 percent do better with 3 cup handfuls from then and each meal. And even a small percentage will do best with like 4 cup handfuls, not like 700 calories from carbs and then they thrive on it but there again, a tiny percent of the population. Greg: Right, now that’s very interesting that the genetic differences of how you tolerate carbs, and it’s interesting personally for myself, and actually a lot of people I’ve noticed that a certain kinds carbs can be just a bad dietary decisions for as counting is concerned. I mean for me If I eat rice or pasta, it just a bottomless pit. There’s very little signal to tell myself that I am full, and firstly when I eat fruits and potatoes, and sweet potatoes, I get full. Like same way as I would like to eat a piece of meat like potatoes and why not it fills me up. So I do get a quite a carbs and keep my calories controlled as long as I pick my carbs wisely. And that kind of goes against the whole flexible dieting approach but I have that in minds but I have to fill up on my macros with whichever could get the job done makes me well satisfied. Tom: Yeah it’s pretty interesting that you say that too just because around like the whole topic of dieting in general, a lot of people that I’ve talked to automatically assumed that like if you’re going on a diet or you’re trying to restrict your macros or calories in any way, you have to keep carbs to a minimum. And I found personally if I keep carbs to a minimum, I’m miserable. And you know by introducing a moderate amount of carb, coz’ I keep to about between 30-35 percent of my macro intake a day which I know that is there because I’ve actually done the way in the food and calculating everything and… Brian: You’re a better man than I. Tom: Well I started out that way, now I can eyeball it so, but I mean it’s a task though but when I introduced carbs back into my diet, not only was I able to hit my macros a lot more consistently, but I felt a lot more satiated. And I think a lot of people trying to cut carbs out of their diet because of the books that they read or magazine or articles or what not and it’s really a shame because to me it makes dieting so much harder. Brian: I couldn’t agree more, I mean I found personally and now I’m working with clients over the past 10 years and carbs definitely help increasing satiety and like you’re talking with potatoes, how you find it that they really help fill you up. There something called the satiety index, and now it’s very minimal amount of research but what they did was they feed people foods and then see how long they felt satisfied; the potatoes where far and away, the highest like far and away higher than any other food on the list. And there’s a difference between satiation which is helpful, you feel after a meal like you could eat a big salad and be like – I’m full because the volume of food but within like an hour you’re hungry again, right? Coz there wasn’t a lot of calories there. That is called “Satiety”. There’s a difference between satiation and satiety. And so how satisfied you are between meals is satiety. And some potatoes are helpful there, and most times having any type of fiber scar will definitely assist with satiety. So like sprouted grains or legumes are having some beans. Now they all very and they are between people variations and some people will get fuller from or stay more satisfied from potatoes and sweet potatoes, other people can eat rice and feels satisfied. So it depends on the person but definitely I couldn’t agree more that I found in my work with clients, we’ve just found nutrition in general, going to low-carb for too long for most people leads to some of the problems that we’re discussing earlier like the low sex drive, poor sleep, because what really happens is when you’re going low carb and you’re exercising hard, what will happen quite research shows; testosterone drops, cortisol goes up, thyroid can go down a little bit. There are some negative aspects and now it can lead to weight loss but at what cost? You can go a little bit more moderate, attenuate those problems, kind of prevent those problems from happening, and lower your fat just a little bit and still achieve the weight loss without some of the negative impacts. Greg: Right, okay. We carry some awesome topics, there’s just one last thing I wanna kind of wrap up and finish off with. You know, you talked about achieving deep help and that kind of goes beyond eating and exercised in a certain degree and so, what are the components of achieving deep help outside of the kitchen and I guess maybe outside of the gym? Brian: A lot actually, like when it comes to deep health, we’re not just talking about physical health, we’re talking about mental health, emotional health, you can even get to spiritual health. So for example, things you can do to help that would be like adequate sleeping, you talking about the sleep issues you ran into. How many people do you know or how many clients do you have especially in high achieving like business clientele who get 4 hrs sleep at night but take a pad of honor, right. I always sleep like 5 hours a night and they say can thrive on it but in reality, what we see over and over again; people increase their sleep, they feel better; they exercise better; these are losing weight coz sleep deprivation did increase the risk of diabetes, right, and decreases your body to tolerate carbs, again another factor, increase inflammation, I mean it negatively impacts you in so many different ways. So getting better sleep – quality and quantity, using things like meditation, yoga, deep-breathing exercises, even in this drinking green tea can actually help distress, like you need some level of stress in your life that actually helps you to be productive, right? So if you don’t have any stress, you actually can become detrimental, so you need an appropriate amount of stress over the course of the day or time period, I mean that also respond to that stress well. So things like I was saying like appropriate sleep, meditation and yoga can definitely help you or it can rewire your brain to actually better manage stress, decrease inflammation, I mean it improves so many different health markers, and improves you resiliency which is the term that we talked about a lot at PN, be more resilient to life and to life stressors, will just make you a much healthier person over all. When you get a high level of stress, coz it happens you know, life happens, work things happen, financial things happen, family stuff happens, being able to tolerate it better goes a really long way. We also talk about getting fresh air, and sunshine like being connected to the real world having a social network. There’s evidence of isolation, like being isolative from other people is just detrimental as basically like smoking 15 cigarettes a day, of course there’s some other stuff that’s related to really really horrific things are being just unhealthy for you, I mean think about it, they kind of make sense like if you picture like old prison movies, like what are they doing to punish people, they put them in isolation, right, because you drive yourself insane, you just sit in there, no one to talk to. Humans are social creatures, so if you don’ have a social network or are consistently socializing with people, that can negatively impact you. So, there are even more layers but here goes in 3 different big ones; sleep, stress management, socialization. Greg: Alright, so a couple of things real quick, I mean you talked about meditation and in the research on the benefits of meditation are extensive and balanced. Have you personally started meditating or is it that something that you talked to a lot at clients about? Brian: It’s something like in our PN coaching program, it’s a habit. It’s something we have people trying to practice, to add in we just start with like 5 minutes a day of meditation, I mean to slowly build it up. Personally, I don’t meditate much but what I do do, for the same kind of benefit, I do a little bit yoga with my wife, I walk my dog everyday in sunshine, in fresh air, I live, I kind of live the of a city in Maine if you really can call it that. And so I get a lot of trees, fresh air and so I get outside, I get to be with my pet, like there’s a lot of a benefits just to that are comparable to meditation. I probably should do more meditation, but personally, no, I don’t do much. Greg: Right, yeah. I’ve always like kind of a flatter around with the idea of doing meditation for a while and I have done it a little bit but I guess the concepts of meditation is just that you come very presence of moment, state of mind and either ways to that without sitting and staring to walls for 20 minutes. Brian: And that’s exactly what we teach within that habit we talked about some of those exact things like you don’t just sit there and all of your fingers like in the Zen pose and I could picture people staring at the wall like that’s not required to meditate. I mean you can do, it can work but there are other ways to go about achieving the same benefits in just clearing on my own. I go for a walk, and things just come and go into my head but I don’t necessarily trying to think about anyone thinking particular, just to get some sunshine and go outside and do a little bit of yoga like I said, 1 or 2 times a week. Same kind of idea you’re getting; breathing aspect of it, you’re slowing everything down, you kind of clearing your minds, so much more like a moving meditation. We are not perfectly consistent with it but it’s a very similar approach. Greg: Alright, you know I think we’ve covered an amazing topics and it’s been a pact episode. Thank you so much again for coming on. Is there anything that you have coming up soon? And if people wanna to find you or take a look at what you got going on, where should they go? Brian: Well, a couple of things; first just go to precsionnutrition.com, we have a lot of stuff going on there, I read a lot of articles for the site, I go out and give samples, seminars all over the US which where I attend to record and we post on the site for people to listen to as well. In terms of what we have going on now, we actually have our precision nutrition certification launching in a couple of week and a half maybe something like that – 2weeks, anything about 2 weeks, maybe next week, I should probably know that, within a week or so. Definitely something to keep an eye on, we work with tons of fitness professionals, people like yourselves to become a precision nutrition certified and learn about not just a physiology of nutrition, but the art of coaching nutrition. Access just important, we can talk all day about how many carbs best for this, what nutrient timing is best for here and there, but if you can actually coach that to people in a way that’s empathetic and that they will actually follow through on, then you’re basically an academic, which is nothing wrong of being an academic but is not an effective coach. Greg: Right okay, awesome! Alright, well, then thanks again, and if you guys wanna take a look at that – precisionnutrition.com. Alright, thanks for listening. Brian: Thanks! Tom: Take care guys… Greg: Bye. [/content_toggle] Resources from Precision Nutrition for further reading:
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