Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss
Progression often times comes with a change in location. We have a tendency to become comfortable with the familiar. As a coach and bodybuilder I have seen stagnation within my own physique when I’ve become comfortable with residing within the same gym for an extended period of time expecting a new result; call it insanity if you will.
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Jessica Gouthro from Paleohacks is joining us today to offer tips for strengthening glutes and hamstrings without traditional gym equipment. Enjoy, everyone.
Strong glutes and hamstrings are more than just nice-looking legs and a booty.
The glutes and hamstrings are the strongest muscles in our skeletal muscular system. When we strengthen these muscles, we can prevent strain and injury while also enjoying a greater ability to squat deeper, lunge pain-free, push heavy objects, run faster and jump higher.
To best train those glutes and hamstrings, you’ll want to emphasize both leg curling (knee bending) and hip extension (or straightening) actions for balanced training. One of the best exercises that do this is the glute ham raise, or GHR.
Very few exercises can isolate the hamstrings and glutes without top-loading excess weight on the spine or testing your grip strength with a loaded barbell. Although you may think this exercise looks easy in comparison to a Barbell Romanian Deadlift or Hip Thrust, it is just as challenging (if not even more so) when performed correctly.
A glute ham raise is an eccentric, or muscle lengthening, exercise that involves a fixed location of the feet, ankles, and hips and a hinge only at the knee joint. By securing the foot position and starting with a bent knee, we enable the hamstring to lengthen eccentrically against gravity using only our own body weight.
Rising back up to the starting position is done by a combination of hamstring contraction and assistance from the upper body pushing against the floor.
Typically, this exercise utilizes specialized equipment called a GHR machine (pictured) that can hold your feet and ankles in place and cushions your knees with a curved, shaped knee pad.
Since you may not have access to one of these in your home or gym, we have a great alternative you can do with a partner. All you need is a friend and a rolled-up towel to cushion your knees!
Kneel down on a rolled-up towel. Tuck your toes under and straighten your hips. Lift your hands up in front of your shoulders and tighten your core.
Have your partner press down firmly on your ankles to secure your position. Keeping your hips and glutes tight, inhale as you slowly lean forward, hinging only at the knees.
Once you can no longer control the descent, use your hands to catch yourself and lower the rest of the way down. Push into the floor with your hands, and on an exhale, contract your glutes and hamstrings to rise back up to the starting position.
Complete six reps while your partner holds your ankles steady.
Note: This is an advanced exercise. If you find this exercise too challenging and cannot complete six good reps, you can try this next partner-assisted resistance band hamstring curl exercise as an alternative.
Kneel down on a rolled-up towel, tuck your toes under, and get into an all-fours position. Extend one leg straight out behind you.
Have your partner loop a resistance band around your heel, just above your shoe. As your partner holds her end of the resistance band tight, bend your knee to curl your heel towards your butt.
Exhale and hold momentarily at 90 degrees, then slowly straighten to return to the starting position. Continue to bend and straighten your knee while maintaining that lifted leg position. Complete eight reps, then switch sides.
Note: You will feel this in your glutes on both sides as well as in your hamstring.
In case you don’t have a partner available, here are the five best glute and hamstring exercises you can do anywhere, by yourself. You’ll need a yoga mat, a towel, and an exercise band.
To get the most out of your efforts, I recommend performing all of these exercises at least two to three times per week.
Kneel down in an all-fours position with your feet flexed (toes pointing to the floor). Lift one knee up and out to the side to hip height. Exhale at the top as you flex your glute muscles, then lower back down with control. Maintain a steady torso and upper body as you focus on contracting your glutes.
Complete 10 reps on one side, then switch to the other leg.
Note: Work slowly to ensure quality muscle contractions. Pause each time you hit the top and strongly contract your glutes. You’ll feel this on both sides, even though you’re working one side at a time.
Sit at the bottom edge of your mat with the full length of your legs on a smooth surface floor, like hardwood or tile.
Lie down flat on your back and press your palms into the floor by your hips.
Place your heels on a towel and keep your feet flexed. (If you are working on carpet, use a piece of paper or two paper or plastic plates instead of a towel.)
Engage your glutes and lift your hips off the ground. On an exhale, bend your knees to slide the towel towards your butt. Stop when your knees reach a 90-degree bend. Inhale, and reverse by sliding back out to a straight body.
Complete eight reps, keeping your hips elevated the entire time.
Stand tall with your core tight and shoulders rolled back and down. Balance on one foot as you float the other just off the ground.
Inhale to hinge at the hips to tilt forward until your torso and top leg are parallel to the ground. Keep a slight bend in your standing leg and reach your fingertips towards your toes. Exhale to lift back up to standing, contracting your muscles.
Complete six reps per side.
Note: Keep your gaze on the ground to help with balance. If balance is still a challenge, you may hold onto a wall or chair with one hand while you do these reps.
Balance on one leg with your torso and lifted leg parallel to the ground. Keep a small bend in your standing leg, and grab onto your quad for stability. On an exhale, curl your top leg towards your butt, while maintaining your hip and torso position.
Inhale to straighten your leg, reaching it out long behind you.
Continue six reps on one side, then complete six reps on the other side.
Slide one end of your loop resistance band underneath your left heel, pressing down with your heel to secure its position.
Lift your right leg. Loop your right heel through the other end of the band, positioning it on the back of your shoe. Place both hands on your left knee and hinge at your hips with your spine straight.
Exhale to bend your right knee to 90 degrees, then inhale as you lower back down with control, maintaining a small amount of tension on the band so it does not come loose. Your range of motion should be about eight to 10 inches.
Complete six reps, then switch sides.
Note: Hold onto a wall or a chair for balance if you need to.
Here’s a sample workout you can incorporate into your weekly routine.
Warm up with three minutes of light walking or jogging. Follow with three rounds of the circuit of seven exercises, resting for 10-30 seconds between exercises depending on your fitness level.
Note: Beginners can do just one round and work up to three rounds after a few weeks.
Thanks again to Jessica Gouthro for these tips and to Brad Gouthro for demonstrating them. Be sure to check out Jessica’s other workout lineups on MDA:“Arm Workout Without Weights,” “13 Ways To Move More At Work” and “10 Moves To Help Ease Joint Pain.”
Questions or comments about exercises or glute and hamstring strength? Share them below, and thanks for stopping by.
The post Glute and Hamstring Workout appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
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Our previous video dealt with Ankle Mobility. This time, I want to review your hip flexibility, specifically abductors and adductors, and hip flexors, predominantly how tightness in those areas hinders your mobility.
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You creep quietly towards the bathroom, holding your breath as you silently pray you’ll miss the creaky floorboard. Closing the door with a click, you breathe a sigh of relief. You made it to the bathroom without waking the kids!
You know you’ve probably got, at most, 10 minutes of peace. So, following the inevitable minute (or two) on the loo, you do your best to make yourself presentable. Clothes, hair and a dash of makeup — since having kids, you’ve got your routine down to a fine art. In 6 and a half minutes, you’re ready to meet the day.
But nobody is stirring yet. You know it’s inevitable at least one of them will wake when you open the door, and once one is up, they’re all up. You’ll be lucky to get some alone time — even in the bathroom — before 10 p.m. tonight. You take a deep breath and let your mind wander to your favorite daydream — a beach holiday where you begin every day with a massage, and finish it with cocktails by the pool.
You hear a thud as one of the children springs out of bed, and it snaps you back to reality. Breathing a heavy sigh, you think to yourself “If only I had time for self-care… Maybe once the kids leave home.”
As the remnants of the daydream dissolve, you reach for the door to begin your busy day.
Parents and personal trainers are very similar in one respect: by nature, they’re hard-wired to look after other people first. This quality is what makes trainers so good their jobs, and parents great parents.
Unfortunately, this giving nature can mean many women find themselves on a fast-track to burnout because their own dreams, goals, and self-care happen once everyone else’s needs are met.
Many women don’t pursue what’s important to them because they feel guilty about taking time out for themselves. For parents, it’s easy to feel like self-care time should be spent with your children instead. For coaches, there’s always a session to plan, an email to write, social media to check, and often children to spend time with too. Naturally, those responsibilities come first, so self-care in particular often falls by the wayside.
The trouble is, frustration builds when you don’t achieve your goals because it feels like there’s never any time left at the end of the day to complete the actions required to achieve them. Before long, you find yourself riding the rollercoaster of resentment, wishing you had more time to pursue your personal achievements, then circling right back to guilt for wishing you had a few child-free — or client-free — hours to look after yourself.
But you don’t. To top it all off, after running at a hundred miles an hour, day after day, you hit the wall. One morning you wake up feeling so exhausted you’re not so sure you have the energy to drag yourself out of bed.
If you’ve ever run head first into the wall of exhaustion, you know what I’m talking about, and you likely don’t want to go there again. By taking steps to add a dose of self-care to your day, you can keep exhaustion, frustration, and guilt at bay.
The term “self-care” often sparks visions of a day at the spa wearing a fluffy robe, with a glass of champagne in hand, chatting with your bestie while a beautician gives you a pedicure. What’s worse, self-care sounds like it requires expensive studio memberships, Instagram-worthy outings or childcare that costs more per hour than you earn in a day.
While a spa day, a five-course brunch or a Caribbean holiday sounds lovely, it’s simply not realistic that this vision of self-care can happen daily; nor does it have to.
In reality, self-care is so much more (or less) than this.
Day to day self-care is the basics:
We all know we should be completing these activities almost every day. But unfortunately, many women don’t tick these boxes, be it because even doing the bare minimum feels inaccessible, or because their many responsibilities leave them with little time for themselves.
If you’re struggling to make self-care a priority in your life, try these seven tips to improve your self-care.
Trying to change your whole life at once will likely be your downfall. Instead, focus on one self-care task at a time. Depending on the task, try taking five minutes per day (for example, to prepare a healthy lunch) or an hour per week (for example, to start a new exercise routine) to prioritize your self-care.
In approaching self-care this way, you set yourself up for success. It’s a lot easier to find five minutes in a day than it is to set yourself a goal of an hour per day when you’ve hardly had time to visit the bathroom alone for the last five years.
Success breeds success, and failure spreads like the plague. That’s why it’s so important to choose the self-care strategy you love and hence, are more likely to complete. For example, if you hate running, it’s probably not the best choice for beginning your self-care strategy.
If, on the other hand, you love to read, you’re far more likely to be successful if you try to read a chapter of a novel one night per week. When it’s something you’re looking forward to, you’re far more likely to prioritize the task (and prioritize your self-care). So choose something you love and set yourself up for self-care success.
Depending on the difficulty of the habit, it can take between two weeks and three months to get into a habit of doing something new. Once you’ve chosen your first self-care task, work on it — and only it — until it becomes a habit. Try to schedule the task at the same time each day, or each week so you develop a regular routine.
In time, you’ll notice you look forward to your weekly yoga session, nightly reading or fortnightly catch up with friends. Once this happens, you’re likely ready to add a little more self-care by introducing another task that will, in time, also become a habit.
Until it becomes a habit, treat self-care time as a set appointment. If you want to exercise more, book it into your calendar. If you want to meditate often, add it to your daily to-do list. Then remember, you wouldn’t skip a doctors appointment or an eye test because you had too much work to do, so once it’s scheduled, don’t skip your self-care time either.
Set the time in your calendar to “busy” and don’t book other appointments during this time. Don’t be tempted to constantly reschedule either. Book self-care time, then use it. You’ll thank yourself later.
When you’re busy, planning ahead is essential for maintaining a self-care routine. There’s plenty of things you can plan ahead, like:
When you make healthy decisions in advance, you remove the last-minute decision-making that may take you further away from your goals, like grabbing Chinese takeout on your way home from work on a Tuesday evening.
One of the biggest barriers to self-care — for parents in particular — is feeling like they have to give up time with family in order to look after themselves. Rather than seeing self-care as taking time away from others, consider how you can get them involved instead.
Want to be a little more active and spend more quality time with your kids? Try planning an active weekend outing with your family, like stand up paddle boarding or cycling.
Need some time out from home or work and feel like you need to spend more quality time with your partner? Make a reservation at your favorite restaurant and make it a date.
Struggling to fit in workouts and catching up with friends? Rather than going for coffee and cake with friends, ask them to meet up at a local park and go for a walk instead.
While “alone time” is an important part of self-care, you don’t always have to be alone to look after yourself.
As someone who’s always supporting others, it can be hard to ask for help. In order to make self-care a reality, you have to. Ask a family member to watch the kids for an hour so you can take some time out. Hire a babysitter. Talk about self-care with your partner. Just because you’re looking after yourself, doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
The key to adding a dose of self-care into your life is letting go of visions of perfection. Don’t wait until you have enough time on your plate to meditate daily or exercise five days per week. Start with as much as you can do, even if it’s five minutes per week, and build up from there. Because five minutes per week is always better than nothing, and starting is better than waiting for the perfect time to start.
So, what self-care task will you make time for today?
The post 7 Tips to Improve Your Self-Care (When You’re the One Who Takes Care of Others) appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.
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Brad Johnson is your typical American teen. He grew up playing baseball, watching MTV, and taking two Adderall pills each day for his ADHD.
Brad first showed signs of hyperactivity in kindergarten, where he often lost his daily recess because he, “couldn’t keep his hands and feet to himself.” During story time, he’d be flopping his legs from side to side, or playing with the braids of the girls sitting in front of him.
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We get lots of questions about how a ketogenic diet works in the context of exercise: Is it possible to maintain one’s fitness (strength, endurance, performance) and also drop one’s carb intake to ketogenic levels? Is it advisable? Will it help me lose weight faster?
Mark already addressed some of these topics, but it’s clear that many people still feel uncertain about how to pair a keto diet with their current workout routine.
Rather than write a single behemoth post, I’m going to tackle this in two parts. For today, let me talk keto and cardio, specifically how keto works for the average fitness enthusiast who thinks more in terms of general exercise. In a couple weeks I’ll follow up with a post on keto for runners and other endurance types who tend to focus on training programs and racing.
So, keto and cardio… This is for people who like to attend group fitness classes, or go out for jogs or spins on the bike, or do a mix of low heart rate exercise with occasional bouts of HIIT. (This is a problem with the term “cardio”—it can mean so many things.)
You probably already know Mark’s stance on cardio: avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns. The Primal Blueprint approach to exercise comprises lots of everyday movement, lifting heavy things, and occasionally going all out. If you simply must do cardio, most of these sessions should be conducted at an aerobic heart rate not higher than 180-age, as detailed in the Primal Endurance book. So, with the caveat that cardio exercise in the traditional sense of slogging away on an elliptical machine or treadmill doesn’t jibe with the Primal Blueprint approach, let’s get to some frequently asked questions.
This is a common concern because some people do report that they feel sluggish when they first go keto. And yes, you might feel like your performance in the gym (cardio, strength, HIIT—all of it) takes a hit in the first few weeks of keto. Rest assured that this is a temporary dip as your body becomes efficient at using fat and ketones for energy in the absence of incoming carbs (glucose). It’s a learning process for your body, so to speak.
The more glycolytic your workouts, the more you are going to notice this. Prolonged, difficult workouts that fall into the category of chronic cardio or “black hole” sessions are especially likely to suffer.
During the first few weeks of starting keto, you should not add back carbs. It is important to create a low-glucose, low-insulin environment to promote ketogenesis and the adaptations that accompany a ketogenic state. If your workouts are too hard right now, the correct answer is to change your workouts, not to increase your carbs.
After you have done a dedicated period of a minimum three weeks of strict keto—six or more is even better—you should be feeling better during your workouts if you are not engaging in prolonged, chronic cardio activities. (It might take longer to adapt to longer endurance training, as we will discuss in the next installment.) At this point you have some options:
One, you can continue in strict ketosis (less than 50 grams of carb per day) as long as you are feeling good.
Two, you can start experimenting with eating carbs strategically before your workouts. This is known as a targeted keto approach. There are various ways of implementing this, but the basic formula is that you would ingest 25-30 grams of glucose or dextrose (not fructose) about half an hour before high-intensity workouts to replenish muscle glycogen.
There are a few caveats here. First, most sources of glucose/dextrose are not Primal (think hard candy, gels). Probably the closest is pure maple syrup, but that also delivers a hit of fructose. If you are a Primal purist, you will have to decide if this is a compromise you want to make. Second, people tend to overestimate the degree to which they are actually low on glycogen and how much it matters. It is a common misconception that once you go keto you have “no glycogen.” While muscle glycogen stores are reduced, your tanks are probably still at least 50% full, and perhaps on par with non-ketogenic folks if you have been keto for a long time. Furthermore, the average low-to-medium intensity cardio session isn’t truly depleting glycogen. Remember, the point of becoming fat- and keto-adapted is that you burn predominantly fat and ketones at these lower intensities, sparing glycogen. You have to go hard and/or long to really burn through your muscle glycogen stores. Thus, you should target pre-workout carbs only before truly high-intensity sessions.
Instead of adding simple carbs before workouts, another option if you feel like you need more carbs is to add back nutrient-dense carbs after workouts, when insulin sensitivity is increased. This might make sense if you feel like your ability to recover between workouts is lagging, or you want to recover quickly because you have back-to-back hard sessions planned. In either case—adding carbs before or after exercise—the amount you add should be proportional to the difficulty (intensity) of the workout. You don’t need to carb up for your yin yoga class, for example.
Lastly, if you are feeling underpowered during exercise, instead of adding back carbs you can experiment with adding more protein and/or fat. Some people report good success with “protein ups” timed around heavier workout days.
Maybe. It’s a common refrain that “abs are built in the kitchen,” meaning that your food plays a bigger role in fat loss than does your exercise. This isn’t to say exercise is unimportant; it does matter. A caloric deficit is necessary to lose body fat, and exercise is one way to create a caloric deficit. However, this can also backfire if your exercise routine leaves you hungrier, so you unintentionally overeat calories due to increased hunger and cravings. Ketones have known appetite suppressing effects, so a ketogenic diet might help counteract any increased hunger that comes with exercise.
That said, I think the root of this question is the fact that ketosis is a fat-burning state, and so the logic goes that if you are metabolizing fat for energy, you will automatically shrink your body fat stores. Moreover, if you add keto and cardio together, especially if you are exercising in the so-called “fat-burning zone,” you will lose more fat than either alone. Right? Not necessarily. The fat you burn can come from your adipose tissue or from your plate. If you are eating an excess of fat calories relative to your daily caloric needs, you still won’t lose body fat.
We know that for body recomposition, the best bang for your buck comes from a combo of resistance training and HIIT. Cardio exercise still has many benefits for physical and mental health, and of course a lot of people simply enjoy their cardio; but you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs in the cardio basket if fat loss is your goal. All else being equal, though, it certainly can’t hurt to upregulate your body’s ability to use fat for energy.
Thanks, everyone. Questions, comments? Share them below, and have a good week.
References:
Koeslag T, Noakes T, Sloan A. Post-exercise ketosis. J Physiol 1980;301;79-90.
Malhotra A, Noakes T, Phinney S. It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet. Br J Sports Med 2015;49:967-968.
Matoulek M, Svobodova S, Vetrovska R, Stranska Z, Svacina S. Post-exercise changes of beta hydroxybutyrate as a predictor of weight changes. Physiol Res. 2014;63 Suppl 2:S321-5.
Newman JC, Verdin E. ?-hydroxybutyrate: much more than a metabolite. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2014;106(2):173-81.
Sleiman SF, Henry J, Al-Haddad R, et al. Exercise promotes the expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) through the action of the ketone body ?-hydroxybutyrate. Elife. 2016;5:e15092.
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Do you routinely have a shower before bed and hit the sack with wet hair? If so, do you worry when people tell you it is a bad idea and that you are going to get sick if you continue doing so? Going to bed with wet hair and a number of other popular myths […]
Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/
The past 7 months have been really eye-opening for me.
In May of 2018, after spending the past 33 years of my life trying to get bigger…
I decided to go in the other direction:
I was going to make a concerted effort to get as lean as possible while still having a life.
After 6 weeks of very focused effort (counting calories) and seeing NO progress, I made a few key adjustments.
Since then, I’ve lost 22 pounds AND hit strength training personal bests:
Sure, we’ve featured success stories from people in our community who have lost 100+ pounds in a year, 50+ pounds in a year, and other amazing transformations.
So, who wants to hear about an in-shape guy who got more in shape?
BORING!
However, I want to share my story for a few reasons.
For starters, I want to show that 15+ years later, I still practice what I preach and I’m still learning every day.
Next, I want to share the things I did that might seem counterintuitive:
Whether you have those final stubborn 10-15 pounds to lose, or you have 80+ pounds to lose, I promise the lessons I share here can help you level up.
Note: We all have our challenges, and we all find certain things easy and other things brutally difficult.
As you read, you’re NOT allowed to say the following:
And instead, you’re ONLY allowed to say:
“How can I make this lesson work for me in my situation?”
Deal? Deal.
Here are the 7 biggest lessons I learned while losing 21 pounds and leveling up my workouts…
If you are trying to lose weight, calorie restriction is King (or Queen).
In order to lose weight consistently, my body needed to be in a “caloric deficit”: burning more calories than I ate, consistently.
Most people attempt to do this by out-exercising a bad diet.
I instead put 95% of my effort into fine-tuning my nutrition.
Specifically, I ate more calories on training days (to help rebuild muscle), and fewer calories on non-training days (to force my body to pull from fat stores).
However, the average between the two was low enough to force my body to start burning stored fat which led to overall weight loss.
As a 6 foot tall, 190 pound male who trains 4x a week, here’s how I ate:
I followed the above calorie strategy with a 90%+ compliance rate. In other words, I did not let perfect be the enemy of the good. (Calculate your own caloric intake estimates here.)
I knew one bad day wouldn’t screw up any progress – it’s total calories consumed over many weeks and months, so as long as my average day was good, I would get results.
I’ll get into what those calories were composed of and how I trained below. But my strategy allowed me to build strength and minimize muscle loss despite the deficit (yes, you can lose weight and build muscle at the same time).
LESSON: Start with calories – know how many you eat daily, and adjust the number down. You can vary your calorie count for training days or rest days – as long as your total average number is low enough to induce weight loss.
Tracking calories and not getting results? Check your tracking – see #4 below.
I strength trained 4 days per week for about 60 minutes each workout without fail.
This is something I truly prioritized in my life. I can count on 1 hand the number of times I did not hit the gym 4 days in a week.
Each day composed of a heavy barbell lift:
I also did lots of body weight training and gymnastic ring work:
So, despite the fact that I was losing weight and eating a caloric deficit, judging by the pictures and my measurements I was able to maintain most of my muscle, and even build strength strategically.
I got stronger at a lot of lifts throughout this experience.
I hit a personal best deadlift of 420 pounds – a 30 pound record, at a weight of 172 pounds.
By lifting VERY HEAVY weights while also eating a caloric deficit, my body was forced to adapt.
It diverted as many resources as possible to “rebuild muscle stronger to prepare for the next weight training session,” which didn’t leave many calories for “store as fat.”
I cover this extensively in both “Why can’t I lose weight?” and “Can you build muscle and burn fat at the same time?”
Not only that, but because I was in a deficit my body started pulling from the “store as fat” pile to fuel myself and my workouts.
So this strategy really crushed it for me:
LESSON: Most people go about weight loss by creating a calorie deficit and doing a bunch of cardio – this means their body will burn both fat and muscle for extra energy. Weight can be lost from both places.
If your goal is to build a muscular, lean physique, you need to teach your body to preserve as much muscle as possible – and you do that by training heavy!
For the past 6 months, I’ve been batch cooking up a storm.
1-2 times per week, I batch cook trays of chicken breast, potatoes, brussel sprouts, broccoli, and/or cauliflower.
Most days, my dinner looks like this:
And most weeks, my fridge looks like this:
To answer your next question: That’s SodaStream sparkling water (much cheaper than buying bottles or cans), and homemade cold brew coffee. Yes, I’m a weirdo who drinks cold brew in the dead of winter!)
By batch cooking just once a week, aka making ONE big effort just once, it essentially changed my default behavior for the rest of the week and set me up to succeed.
I had developed this nasty habit of ordering delivery multiple nights per week – which practically everybody does in Manhattan.
Here’s why: compared to cooking a meal, it was just easier to a hit button on my phone and have food show up 30 minutes later.
However, once I started batch cooking, the “lazy” option WAS the healthy (and far less expensive) option.
Every evening, I could either:
Here’s what I batch cooked:
Once a week or so, I’d go out to dinner with friends or family and eat whatever the hell I wanted. I’d also drink whiskey (neat). I went on multiple trips and vacations
I knew the more diligent I was with my weekly behavior, the more ‘fun’ I could have with my ‘occasional’ behavior and still not get derailed.
The most important part of this: by eating the same foods each day, I knew exact portion sizes without having to calculate or figure out much. I just did the same stuff over and over.
That is…once I figured out how much I needed to eat!
LESSON: Your default behavior is the reason you are where you are right now with your health. So change your default. Consider batch cooking to make the easy, lazy, default option the healthiest.
Learn to cook one thing. Literally one thing. And then expand from there once you build up some confidence!
For the first 6 weeks of my weight loss journey, the scale didn’t budge.
I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going wrong.
If you’ve ever tried to lose weight and the scale didn’t go down, it’s easy to assume, “my metabolism is broken” or “it’s because I’m eating carbs” or “my body is unique and different. Damn my parent’s genetics”
I was counting calories accurately (or so I thought), and the scale didn’t move which made my head hurt.
Clearly I was broken, right?
All those years of ‘bulking’ had ruined my body and I was no longer able to lose weight.
Welp, as a firm believer in things like “science” and “logic,” I decided to test my assumption that I was actually eating the amount of food I thought I was eating.
So I bought a cheap ass $10 food scale.
And it rocked my world.
EYE OPENING EXAMPLE: I eat 3 servings of oats each day, blended into my post workout and post dinner smoothies. A serving of oats is described as “½ cup or 40 grams.” So I used ½ cup of a measuring cup and thought that was pretty close to accurate.
I then WEIGHED half a cup of oats, and it came out to 60 grams!
Which means that for 6 weeks, I consumed an extra 225 calories without realizing it.
The same thing happened with my lunch from Chipotle: I weighed out the portion of rice in the serving, and compared it against the weight that Chipotle says is a serving, again I was overeating by 50%.
Realizing that I was overeating my carb portions by 50% multiple times per day, NO WONDER I wasn’t losing weight.
I was accidentally eating hundreds of calories without even realizing it.
So I adjusted my food intake accordingly.
And for the next 5-6 months, my weight steadily declined.
Part of me was frustrated, embarrassed, and angry that I didn’t realize I was overeating with every meal of every day.
The other part of me is SO THANKFUL I was tracking everything and dug deeper when I wasn’t getting the results that I should have.
For starters, I stepped on the scale every morning at the same time of day.
I kept a rolling 7-day average to make sure the trend was moving in the right direction, but didn’t sweat variations from day to day. After all, water weight, sodium, one unhealthy meal – can really make the day swing.
I’m very thankful I educated myself on the exact macronutrient breakdown of the foods I ate regularly.
I also took weekly pictures from the front and side. Week to week I couldn’t see changes.
But month to month, especially with the scale moving down, I started to see differences and was encouraged with the progress.
LESSON: Educate yourself on the food you’re eating, and how much. Every online calorie calculator will give you a different answer, and should be considered just a starting point.
And then start tracking your progress! Take photos. Take measurements. Write down the number on the scale. And then make small adjustments based on the results you’re seeing. Adjust your calorie intake down or up.
Not getting the results you’re expecting? Consider tracking your food more closely to educate yourself even further!
Want to know my favorite ab exercises that allowed me to get a 6 pack (with those final 2 abs poking through?)
I actually didn’t do any cardio or ab exercises over the past 7 months.
Another note: I also didn’t do any bootcamp or “muscle confusion” or any of that stuff.
And yet here I am with 8-pack abs and healthy and happy.
What gives? Why didn’t I do those things?
Because I hate ab exercises, I hate bootcamps, and I hate cardio.
You also can’t spot reduce fat, and a flat stomach comes from a low body fat percentage (aka – how you eat!)
Sure, I went for walks, often long ones through the city. Sometimes through the course of a day I would walk 5+ miles.
But I never went for a run, or got on a treadmill, or did the elliptical.
Instead, I just focused on getting stronger, eating a caloric deficit, eating enough protein, and getting enough sleep.
I trained my body to think: “I better build muscle, because I know I’m gonna need it again soon.” My body then diverted as many resources to muscle building as possible, pulling from fat stores for energy, and helped me lean out while staying strong.
Abs aren’t made in the gym, as they say – they’re made in the kitchen.
Everybody has ab muscles, they’re just hidden under layers of fat.
So to get my abs to ‘pop’ it simply required me to cut my body fat percentage low enough to remove the fat on top of them.
LESSON: Everybody has abs, they’re just hiding under layers of fat. Cardio isn’t a prerequisite for weight loss. To build a certain type of physique, you need to eat and train in a certain way.
These days, it’s easy to assume carbs are evil.
Paleo says “booo” to carbs, while Keto says “GTFO” to all nearly all carbs.
So what’s the real deal?
Is the choice REALLY:
Nope. Thermodynamics still apply. I do 100% agree that certain people are affected differently by carbs and sugar and fat (check out The End of Overeating for a deep dive into this).
At the same time, vilifying carbs doesn’t get to the root of the problem, or set you up to live a sustainably healthy, happy life.
Carbs can still be a valuable part of a nutritional strategy, provided they’re used strategically!
I ate rice, oats, and potatoes most days:
Notice anything missing from my list of ‘approved foods above?’ Liquid carbs.
I didn’t drink any sugary beverages – I stuck to black coffee, tea, or water. I occasionally drank alcohol, but that was 1 or 2 drinks, once a week or so.
So how do carbs fit into a weight loss plan?
Carbs help replenish the glycogen stores in my muscles (which get depleted during a workout), provide me with fuel, and help me not be miserable while staying in a caloric deficit most days.
They’re also delicious.
The reason carb heavy foods get a bad rap is because most people don’t know true serving sizes.
They’re easy to overeat, and people can’t stop themselves once they start. This is why these foods are notorious for causing people to gain weight.
I still eat plenty of carbs in potato or rice form, I just make sure I have the correct amount, and made sure the rest of my plate is filled with protein and veggies.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with carbs – you just have a smaller margin for error if you plan on eating them while trying to lose weight!
If you accidentally eat 2 servings of broccoli, you might consume an extra 30-50 calories. Accidentally overeat candy, soda, pasta, or cake? It could be hundreds of calories.
So – yes, you can eat carbs. You just need to plan for them. And know that you have a smaller margin for error if your goal is weight loss – especially as you get down to lower body fat percentages.
LESSON: Don’t eliminate carbs completely if doing so will cause to go off the rails and give up on your miserable diet.
Continue to eat them, just eat them intelligently!
For example, a portion of pasta is probably 30% of the size of what image you currently have in your head.
Some other tips:
I have a coach.
I could say it’s “expensive,” but that’s relative. He’s worth every penny.
Either something is worth it, or it isn’t.
We all pay $12/month for netflix and $60 a month for a phone and $80 a month for internet because it’s worth it to us.
I personally pay hundreds of dollars a month for an online coach because the return on investment I get for my health, my confidence, and outsourcing my workout programming is a no-brainer for me.
Here’s why:
Then, I simply followed the instructions. I know that I never would have been able to lose this weight or hit my deadlifting goals without him: picking up 420 pounds at 172 pounds of bodyweight.
I can’t wait to see what I’m capable of next, and I hope my coach (Shout out Anthony!) will work with me for the next decade!
LESSON: Every day, whether you realize it or not, you prioritize what you invest in with your time and your money. I used to invest my time and money in ordering takeout, travel, and nights out at the bar.
I minimized a lot of those things to instead focus my investment in two key areas:
How are you investing your time and money? It’s not what you say, it’s what you do that shows your true priorities.
If you are serious about your health, if you have specific goals you want to reach, or you’ve tried multiple times to get in shape on your own without success, consider hiring a coach.
It’s a serious investment, but I’ve found it to be the best money I spend each month. I found so much success with it, and we had so many people requesting Nerd Fitness instruction, that we built our own coaching program.
You can learn more about our Coaching Program and speak with our team by signing up in the box below:
Everybody asks, so I figure I’ll just tell you the exact portions. You’ll notice that I ate a LOT of protein. Because I was eating a caloric deficit, my goal was to eat plenty of protein, which helped me feel full (not hungry), give my muscles enough fuel to rebuild themselves, AND not lose my strength.
Training days: 2,600 calories
Non-training days: 2,115 cal
TRAINING DAYS:
REST DAYS
SPECIFIC SUPPLEMENTS
Any other questions? Leave them in the comments below and I can expand this section!
My weight loss and strength gains weren’t effortless, but they also weren’t impossible or unsustainable.
My largest investment each month is my coach, and he’s worth every penny.
Otherwise, my days are fairly boring and consistent:
Sure, I don’t look like an instagram fitness model, and Marvel Studios won’t be calling anytime soon.
That’s okay with me!
This is what 7 months of focused effort, calorie counting, and consistent strength training results look like for somebody trying to get lean.
Although I enjoyed the occasional adult beverage and slice of pizza, spent plenty of time playing video games (I just finished the story of Red Dead Redemption 2), and still took vacations and trips to visit family.
I was also damn focused and really dedicated to my efforts over these past 7 months.
They say “happiness equals reality minus expectations.”
We’re sold quick fixes by beautiful people, and assume in just 7 minutes a day, or with a pill or powder, we too can look like them.
This is my reality: a guy who lives and breathes this stuff, trying to build a better physique sustainably, while also enjoying life.
Make sure you have the right expectations matched with what you’re willing to sacrifice and focus on to get those expectations!
Here’s what it required:
I know I know, this isn’t very sexy.
Measuring stuff isn’t effortless. And saying no is hard. But damn it, I am so proud of the past 7 months and can’t wait to see what the next 7 months hold.
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: This feels sustainable to me.
I didn’t crash diet. I didn’t put myself through misery and manipulate water intake to look “ripped” for my “after” photo.
It’s more like a “before and now” instead of “before and after,” because this is me as I am.
I feel like I can eat like this for the next 10 years. I can make small adjustments to build more muscle while staying lean, and start working towards hitting a 500 lb deadlift.
To recap:
I hope this helps you make your next steps. And I’d love to hear from you and answer any questions you might have!
-Steve
PS: If you have the money to invest in yourself, I would recommend you looking into hiring a coach. Whether it’s an online coach with Nerd Fitness, or an in-person trainer to help you perfect your movements, the right coach is a game changer!
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All photo sources can be read right here.[1]
http://chriskresser.com/
In this episode, we discuss:
Show notes:
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Chris Kresser: Diana, thanks so much for joining me again on the podcast.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Chris Kresser: So, we have a lot to talk about.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah.
Chris Kresser: This is an annual event, where there’s some big news story that comes out or study that’s published that demonizes meat and animal foods and purports to be the final nail in the coffin for anybody who’s eating animal products. In fact, as you know, I just went on the Joe Rogan show, my third appearance there, to debate Dr. Joel Kahn about the merits of animal foods in the diet and eating a vegan diet. And I spent a lot of hours preparing for that and wrote a lot of articles. And the debate itself was almost four hours long, and admittedly I was a little tired out after that experience. And I just couldn’t muster the energy and strength to write a rebuttal to the EAT-Lancet paper that was published. But you did, and several other people did.
And so I’d love to dive in and talk about that, as well as just stepping back a little bit and discussing some of the environmental impacts or the purported environmental impact of eating meat and what’s wrong with the traditional narrative there. Because I didn’t get to talk much on the Joe Rogan show about that. And then some of the difficulties of addressing this, and how I know you’ve been working on a film to try to get this message out that we’ve talked about. So why don’t we just start first with the EAT-Lancet paper, since this is what’s really making the rounds now and bringing this to the forefront of everybody’s attention.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, definitely. So there’s, they were really attacking red meat on a nutritional and environmental angle. So, I know your arguments on the Joe Rogan podcast were purely nutritional. I think that the main narratives are always nutrition, environment, and ethics. And ethics were kept out of the EAT-Lancet. Very long paper that took me quite a long time to read. But there’s definitely a lot of misinformation in there about meat.
I mean, they’re using observational studies to basically tell us that we cannot have any processed meats at all, lumping them all together, and that we can only eat less than half an ounce of red meat per day. We can only have less than one ounce of chicken per day. But yet we can have eight teaspoons of sugar per day.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, and plenty of corn and rice and wheat. Let’s talk a little bit … I think most of my listeners are pretty familiar with the nutritional arguments. I and others have written a lot about that, and most recently my … in preparation for the Rogan show, I published a whole cornerstone page with everything you need to debunk the nutritional arguments. So, that’s at ChrisKresser.com/rogan, if you want to look it up.
But I just want to briefly talk about the nutrient density of this EAT-Lancet diet. Because if you just look at it from that single perspective, nutritionally you’ll see very quickly that it falls short. And our body needs micronutrients to function properly. And if a proposed diet doesn’t offer those micronutrients in sufficient quantities, I think we can safely say it’s not a good diet for humans to follow.
And I don’t want to spend a ton of time on this, so I’m just going to go through this really briefly, and then I want to switch over to talking more about some of the environmental issues. Because that’s, I know, an area where you have a lot of expertise. And I really love what you have to say there. So, Zoë Harcombe did an analysis, and I think you had mentioned, Diana, that Marty Kendall did too. So we can talk about that. But Zoë’s analysis, it’s not publicly accessible. You have to be a subscriber to see it. But I can share this part of it. She analyzed the EAT-Lancet diet using food tables and found that it was well below the RDA for several nutrients: B12, retinol, vitamin D, vitamin K2, which wasn’t even studied separately, but 71 percent of the K in the diet came from broccoli.
So we know that there’s probably very little K2 in the diet. Sodium, potassium, calcium, and iron. So that’s a lot of the essential nutrients that we need, and in some cases it was providing less than 20 percent of the RDA of those nutrients. So, to me, that’s pretty much case closed on that basis alone. And then we can look at all the other problems that observational studies on red meat and all of that entail. And I just think it’s … there’s really nothing to be alarmed about. This study doesn’t add any new evidence that meat and animal products are harmful.
Diana Rodgers: Not at all. And another thing she didn’t mention in her paper or her review is the conversion rate of some of the vitamins, like beta-carotene to vitamin A, and almost half the population can’t make that conversion easily. And so even though on paper it my show that the vitamin A was adequate, actually not.
Despite what the EAT-Lancet paper says, meat is still a healthy addition to your diet. Check out this episode of RHR for my discussion with Diana Rodgers about what a real healthy diet looks like. #nutrition #chriskresser #wellness
Chris Kresser: It’s the same with all of these other nutrients. I actually wrote an article. I addressed this in my article on nutrient density you can find at the ChrisKresser.com/Rogan link. Iron, 94 percent of the iron in the EAT-Lancet diet is from plant-based forms of iron. And we know that heme iron that you get from animal products orders a magnitude better absorbed than most plant forms of iron. And the same with calcium, that is better absorbed from, in most cases, from animal products. And virtually every other nutrient, zinc, long-chain omega-3 fats, only found in animal products. So it’s really, yeah, that conversion and bioavailability piece is almost never addressed in these kinds of studies.
Diana Rodgers: Right, and you also write a lot about B12 and how these plant-based B12 analogues actually increase your need for a real B12.
Chris Kresser: Exactly. Yeah, so, really nothing to see here from a nutritional perspective. But part of why it’s making such a big splash is in addition to the highly coordinated launch campaign that is driven by celebrity, very wealthy celebrity type of people who are behind this, is the argument that not only should we avoid red meat and animal products for these nutritional reasons, but they’re destroying the planet. So let’s really dive into that and unpack that from the perspective of the paper. I think you wrote an article, something like 20 reasons or 20 points against this. So we don’t have to go through all of those, but let’s cover the highlights.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, well, I think the number one thing that people need to understand is that we can’t just assume that if we’re not raising animals that it will automatically free up land for more crops. So, agricultural land isn’t interchangeable. Most of the agricultural land on the globe is not suited for cropping due to water availability. It’s too rocky, it’s too steep.
So, I think a lot of people, especially that haven’t traveled much, look around and just see the nice flat land and just assume that everywhere in the world is like that. I mean, picture Iceland, Norway, picture many parts of Africa, Mongolia. I mean, there’s just so many places that really will only support grazing animals and not wheat and corn and soy production. And so that’s a huge thing that we need to consider, and if we are to not graze animals on that land, not only will we lose that for food production, but the land will also desertify. Because we just don’t have those wild herds and the numbers that we used to any longer.
And ruminants are actually incredibly beneficial. Their impact on the land helps increase water holding capacity; their grazing actually stimulates new growth in a good way. So you can’t just have these fenced-off acres with nothing on it. You actually need grazing animals as part of healthy grassland ecosystems.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, that’s a point that is really misunderstood. I see a little bit more discussion about it certainly, at least in our realm. But I’m having kind of a hard time thinking of a mainstream article that really did justice to that point. Do you know of any?
Diana Rodgers: Well, I’ve written a few blog posts on it and have talked a lot about it. I think Allan Savory does a really good job.
Chris Kresser: Certainly.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, in his Savory Institute work that they’ve done and also his TED talk. But I think that’s definitely the number one point that people need to understand. And it’s funny because I am working on a book as well on this topic, and my publisher actually has published a ton of vegan books, and he was skeptical. And once he read my environmental argument and specifically wrapped his head around this very topic, I won him over.
Chris Kresser: That’s amazing.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, people just, because we’re so divorced from nature, you and I have talked about this before just off-line, but that’s the number one problem is that people just have no idea how food is produced and what makes a healthy ecosystem. And a lot of the vegans will, the ones who do accept that not all land can be cropped, just want it turned over to be rewilded.
So let’s just crop everything we can possibly crop and then we’ll just rewild all the pastureland with deer or something cute. But then what are we going to do because we’ve eliminated all the predators? I mean even in the town I live in outside of Boston, we have a massive deer problem. And nobody wants hunting because they don’t want to see dead animals on their beautiful hikes around the conservation land here in my town. And if we eliminate the predators, we need to be responsible for how these populations of wild animals are managed. And so the other option, if we’re not going to hunt them, I suppose would be to bring back wolves. I don’t know how.
Chris Kresser: I don’t think that would go over well.
Diana Rodgers: I don’t know how my waiting for the bus in my town with wolves swirling around at dawn will go over. So it quickly backs them into a very uncomfortable corner there.
Chris Kresser: I think another thing that you point out that people don’t realize is that 90 percent of what cattle eat is, at least in a natural grazing state, not in a CAFO type of arrangement, is forage and plant leftovers that humans can’t eat.
Diana Rodgers: Right, exactly. And even in, I mean, I’m not an advocate for feedlot beef, but I think one thing people don’t understand about even cattle that are raised on feedlots, or that are finished on feedlots rather, is that they’re not raised on feedlots.
Chris Kresser: Right.
Diana Rodgers: So 85 percent of the beef cattle in the US are actually grazing on land that can’t be cropped. And even if they do end up on a feedlot, 90 percent of their total intake is non-edible food to humans. And so they’re eating, for example, soybean cakes. But that’s left over from the soybean oil industry.
Chris Kresser: Right.
Diana Rodgers: They’re eating large amounts of distiller’s grains, lots of foods that would normally emit greenhouse gases and decompose anyway. Ranchers are also grazing cattle on spent wheat and cornfields. So you know that corn would just decompose and emit greenhouse gases either way. So why not run it through a ruminant gut and make protein out of it?
Chris Kresser: And fertilizer, as you pointed out.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly.
Chris Kresser: Yeah. I mean, it’s so much more nuanced. This is a theme that will probably come up in our conversation a lot is, and I know Robb, Robb and I commiserate about it, and I know you do as well with him. But the vegan narrative is so simple in a lot of ways and it plays into a lot of assumptions, even if they’re wrong, that you don’t really have to explain it to people. It just, people have heard things over and over again. “Meat is bad for the environment, it’s bad for us, therefore eliminate meat from your diet and the food system, and everyone will be healthier.” That’s so easy to understand.
But as Robb has pointed out many times, the counterargument is nuanced and complex. And is not quite as simple to understand and requires that you actually pay attention to some of these finer points. And I think that is one of the challenges that we face in this struggle. But it’s not incomprehensible. I mean, if you just get a few of the simple points like this, it starts to become a lot easier to understand.
Diana Rodgers: Definitely. And now my point was … oh, I was going to say too that there’s a lot, 50 percent of the carcass of a cow is not eaten but used for other industry uses. So we’ve got leather, we’ve got insulin, we’ve got footballs, we’ve got lots of medical applications, fertilizer. So eliminating all animals from our food system, there’s a great study I think I sent you this morning that was published in PNAS about what would happen if we eliminated all animals from our food system.
So the greenhouse gas emissions would only decrease by about 2 1/2 percent. But our overall caloric intake would actually go way up, and our nutrient deficiencies would go up. So we already have a problem in our culture where we’re over-consuming calories and not getting enough nutrients. So we would just be making the problem worse for about a 2 percent emission reduction.
Chris Kresser: And those numbers don’t assume any improvement in how cattle are managed, right?
Diana Rodgers: Right. That was just typical cattle.
Chris Kresser: Right. So if we actually made improvements in how cattle are managed, do you think there could be a net sequestration of carbon?
Diana Rodgers: Oh, definitely. So there’s been some research coming out of Michigan State showing the difference between continuous grazing and what they term “adaptive multi-paddock grazing,” which is similar to Allan Savory’s method, so basically when you intensively graze an area and then move the cattle off quickly.
So, this is how, for example, herds in Africa naturally move because of predator pressure, so it’s much worse for the land to have, let’s say if you have a 10-acre field and have 100 cattle on that land for the whole summer, as opposed to tightly bunching and moving them frequently and allowing that land to rest. Because that’s when carbon gets sequestered, in the regrowth phase of the grass. And so the grass is going through photosynthesis, it’s pulling down carbon and actually exuding carbon sugars to bacteria and to fungal networks that are then passing that grass nutrient. So the fungus is actually mining rocks and getting the minerals from that and feeding it to the grass, and that’s how carbon is sequestered. And that process is most effective and actually is a net carbon gain when cattle are managed in this way.
So that’s why I like to say “it’s not the cow, it’s the how,” because there’s just many different ways of raising cattle. Just like there are many different ways of growing broccoli. We can do it in a monocrop system, or we can do it in a more rotational system where we’re integrating it with other crops. And what we need is less monocrops because that’s just not how healthy ecosystems work, and farmland is not natural. Like, when you fly over the United States, all those squares you’re looking down at, that’s not nature, that’s man doing that.
Chris Kresser: Yeah. I know from your article, you did also a podcast with Frank Mitloehner—is that how you pronounce it? We’ll include a link to that in the show notes because I think people should listen to that. He’s an expert in greenhouse gas emissions and animal agriculture. And you guys talk a lot about what’s really going on there and why some of the typical numbers that are thrown around are not accurate. And if anyone’s interested in a deeper dive, I’d definitely recommend listening to that.
So, greenhouse gas from beef cattle represents, just as it’s currently done with no improvements, like you just mentioned, is 2 percent of emissions. And by contrast, transportation is 27 percent. So, yet when I go to WeWork, which I have an office at—
Diana Rodgers: Oh, gosh.
Chris Kresser: You probably know this.
Diana Rodgers: Oh, no.
Chris Kresser: But some of my listeners might not know that WeWork is a company that has committed to this idea that eating a vegetarian diet will save the planet. And they, I think, so, I was there two days ago on Monday, and they have meatless Monday at WeWork, where they served veggie burgers in the main lounge. And then they print these cards that they post around there, around the office, that say, “If everyone was just a vegetarian for,” I can’t remember, “one or two days a week, we would save 450 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.” And again, this goes back to the simplicity thing.
Most people get in the elevator, they see that and they’re like, “Oh, wow, okay. I guess I should become a vegetarian.” So how does this continue? I mean, it’s not surprising that there’s a disconnect between actual science and what we see in the media. We know that from the nutrition world and everything else. But how do you think this got started? Was there a lot of misunderstanding initially which led to these numbers and then later science kind of brought more clarity? Or what do you think? How have we gotten here?
Diana Rodgers: Well, I actually just released an amazing podcast on Tuesday of this week, so maybe you could link to that one too, with the guy from Brussels, Frédéric Leroy.
Chris Kresser: I read some of his papers. You sent them to me awhile back before the Rogan debate.
Diana Rodgers: Oh, he’s so fantastic. Yeah, so, his opinion is that meat is unfairly absorbing a lot of our worries about our health, our state of our health and the environment, because meat is so powerful and can absorb it. But it’s unfairly the scapegoat for our stressors. So, everyone just, it’s much easier for us to blame meat than it is to perhaps look at our transportation industry and be uncomfortable about that. I mean, the main funder of that EAT-Lancet paper has a private jet and transportation was never mentioned in the EAT-Lancet.
Chris Kresser: I don’t know if this is accurate, but I read something about how just the jet trips for the reporter would have a bigger impact on the environment than the diet changes that they were talking about.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly. And so, in Livestock’s Long Shadow, that’s when a lot of this all started. The mass information about the emissions with cattle. And unfortunately, when they did that study, what they did was they looked at all the emissions, the full lifecycle of ruminant animals. They looked at production of the feed, all the transportation, all the emissions, everything. And when they compared that to transportation, they only looked at tailpipe exhaust. So they didn’t even factor in transportation, for example, in the transportation numbers.
And so when you look at the global numbers at emissions of cattle versus transportation, you’re looking at apples to oranges there. So you’re looking at the full lifecycle of a beef animal compared to just the tailpipe emissions from transportation. So that’s not fair. And also in other countries, the percentage is a little bit higher. But that’s in places where maybe transportation plays a lesser role where there are less cars per cow. And so, their relative emissions may be higher. But that’s again not taking into account the fact that cattle can actually sequester carbon and many, many other factors. And so the authors of Livestock’s Long Shadow did reduce their numbers, I think, from 18 to 14 percent and did admit that their numbers were still off because of the transportation. There are no global lifecycle papers on transportation.
But yet that 18 percent, I’ve heard even 50 percent. I don’t even know where that number comes from, but that, the 50 percent is the number that’s often cited by this group called Green Mondays and they are the ones that have worked with Berkeley to make all of the government meetings meatless on Mondays. That organization, I’ve looked into, and they’re actually funded by an organization out of Singapore that produces plant-based pork.
Chris Kresser: Right.
Diana Rodgers: And so there’s a lot, the environment and ethics and even the nutrition argument is very convenient for large food companies to profit, because processing means profit.
Chris Kresser: Well, let’s talk a little bit about that, and since we’re on the topic, I do want to come back to some of the other ways that an animal-based food system or food system that includes animals can actually benefit biodiversity and things like that. So yeah, follow the money. We talk about that a lot on this show. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but on the other hand, you’d be very naïve and misguided to assume that money doesn’t play a big role in setting food policy and coming up with these laws. It always has.
And it probably always will. And if you look at the EAT-Lancet diet, I think this is from Marty Kendall’s analysis, you’ll find that 32 percent of calories come from rice, wheat, and corn, and 14 percent come from unsaturated oils. So these are highly processed foods.
Diana Rodgers: Right.
Chris Kresser: We’re not talking about corn on the cob.
Diana Rodgers: Or wheat berries.
Chris Kresser: Wheat berries. Or even, like, in some cases, just the whole-grain rice. We’re talking about highly processed corn and wheat and rice derivatives, and then highly processed industrial seed oils that comprise almost 50 percent of calories. And who does that benefit? This study was sponsored by a basically hit list A-team of—
Diana Rodgers: Processed food companies.
Chris Kresser: Global processed food companies—DuPont, PepsiCo, Dannon, Nestlé, Cargill, Kellogg’s. So, like, food and agricultural companies that make their money by selling processed and refined foods. And so that’s very revealing.
And then the other thing that Marty Kendall pointed out, which is directly tied to this, is that this diet, when you work out the macronutrient ratios, it ends up being low in protein and moderate in fat and carbohydrates. And there are really no foods in nature that fit that profile, or very few. You have breast milk and acorns, I think, are the two that he pointed out. And this is a recipe for, that macronutrient mix of low protein and then higher fat and carbohydrate is a recipe for highly palatable and rewarding food. So if you look at the foods that are on this list that fit that profile, there are things like chocolate milk, potato chips, French toast, waffles, ice cream, pancakes.
Diana Rodgers: Kit-Kat.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, biscuits, Kit-Kat, Twix, chocolate chip cookies, pie crust. I mean, are you kidding me? This is the macronutrient profile that we should be following? Oh, who does not benefit? All of the companies that make these processed foods. So it’s really revealing when you look at it from that perspective.
Diana Rodgers: I know. And I think it’s really irresponsible to promote a diet that’s about 10 percent in protein when we have, I mean, just in America, more than 50 percent of Americans are metabolically broken and really benefit from much higher protein levels.
Chris Kresser: Increasing their protein. And we know that of all the macronutrients, protein is the one that has the biggest impact on satiety.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly.
Chris Kresser: Which it will reduce the likelihood that people overeat, which many Americans are doing.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah.
Chris Kresser: And any clinician or dietitian like yourself who’s worked with people knows if they’re struggling with weight, putting them on a higher-protein diet is probably the most important thing you can do. And there’s even some, if you look at the studies on low-carb diets, I think probably one of the reasons, if not one of the main reasons, that they’re so effective is that they’re higher in protein.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, and I have to say too, so I actually have recently been following Marty Kendall’s NutrientOptimiser diet personally, just as an experiment to try to maximize my micronutrients. And I eat really well. I live on a farm. I have a lot of education in nutrient density. I have access to all these foods. It’s really hard to get all your micronutrients in the day. But it’s really easy to feel satiated when you have a high percentage of animal protein in your diet. So whether that’s oysters, which I know I can beat his leaderboard if I just eat a ton of oysters in one day.
Chris Kresser: That’s right. That’s right.
Diana Rodgers: But liver, and then just regular old animal protein. Filling the rest of your diet with colorful vegetables is the way to go. But it still, I still was low, actually, believe it or not, in iron, even with all the protein I’ve been consuming on this diet.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, I’m always talking to my patients about a lot of, especially if they’re favoring like chicken and fish, and not eating shellfish or organ meats, is that some muscle meats are not that high in iron. So it’s organ meats and shellfish that are really the powerhouses from that perspective.
And this brings up another question about bioavailability, right? Because we’ve both talked about this a lot. It’s not at all the case that protein from plant sources like legumes is going to be absorbed in the same way that protein is absorbed from animal foods like meat and eggs and fish and dairy products. There is something called the … there are various scoring systems that are used in the scientific literature to assess the bioavailability of protein. And no matter what scoring system you use, animal proteins come out ahead of plant proteins, and usually by a very large margin.
Diana Rodgers: And, I mean, trying to get your protein from beans and rice, if you’re trying to do the combining in order to get the right profile of amino acids, you would, so I did the calculations. So in order to get the right amount, the same amount of protein you would get from a four-ounce steak, which is 181 calories, you’d need to eat 12 ounces of beans and a cup of rice. So that’s 638 calories and 122 grams of carbs. And you’re still not getting the same beautiful profile of amino acids that you can get from this 181-calorie piece of steak.
Chris Kresser: Right, which goes back to Marty Kendall’s point where you’re basically, if you eat a low-protein diet, it’s going to be a much higher-calorie diet in most cases.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, and higher carb and just setting people down to the road towards metabolic disorder.
Chris Kresser: Yeah. So let’s go back now. I want to finish up talking about the impact of animals in the food system. Because I think there’s still some other points that are worth going into here that a lot of people may not be familiar with. So one is, we talked about how not all land is suitable for grazing. But let’s talk about maybe the flipside of that is what happens when you use a lot of land for crops like corn and rice and soy and wheat?
Diana Rodgers: Right, I mean a lot of, and most of this is not organically grown and using animals to graze in all of that. So the large majority of our monocrops are heavily sprayed with chemicals that leave a residue on the leaves that we’re ingesting. And also completely sterilize the soil and create runoff that then ends up in the Mississippi River and creating massive dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.
So there are just so many problems with monocropping the way we’re doing it today. We have created an insect apocalypse. And so we’ve lost pollinators. We’re killing fish, which in turn then kills the animals that need to be eating the fish. And so we’re annihilating biodiversity both above and below ground. And so one teaspoon of soil has more microbes in it than all of the humans on earth. And when we spray it with things like Roundup, we’re completely killing all of that. And so we’ve destroyed just so much of our soil and so much of it is also just blowing away and running off.
So, I mean, the Dust Bowl was a good example of that, and we’re headed for another one right now. So according to the United Nations, we have about 60 harvests left, at the rate we’re going.
Chris Kresser: This is alarming. This is like an emergency thing on the level that’s part of climate change, of course, but also on the same level as potential for water shortages. People, I don’t think, are … I mean, some people are aware of it, of course, but we’re talking about some very, very serious implications here.
Diana Rodgers: And when the soil is compacted and we’re constantly just stripping away the biodiversity of the soil, when rain comes, it just washes all the topsoil away into rivers, and that’s how we get these really cloudy rivers. Because rivers in general should be clear. And in a system where we have healthy ruminants managed in a proper way, the soil acts like a sponge and can actually hold a lot more water from rain, instead of allowing it to just wash off and take the topsoil with it. My husband is so into topsoil that even we have two border collies, and they sleep in our mudroom at night. And they come in, they’re black and white, but their white parts are really dirty-looking at the end of the day.
Chris Kresser: Brown.
Diana Rodgers: And in the morning they’re totally white and they leave massive amounts of soil on the ground. And I literally have to sweep it up and put it in the field because that’s how into topsoil he is.
Chris Kresser: Well, yeah, and how precious it is too.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly. And just nobody is looking at our farmland as a biological system. It’s been reduced to this reductionist chemical, let’s produce as many calories as possible, which is ruining our health and our land.
Chris Kresser: Let’s talk a little bit also about how ruminants can improve biodiversity. I mean, we touched on that just briefly, but water is a big issue, and I know that cattle can improve water holding capacity of the land. And that has a whole bunch of downstream effects.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. And also too, even the worst-managed cattle on overgrazed grass is still a better system than monocrop grain. So you still, I mean, and even in a better system, you’ve got butterflies, you’ve got birds, you’ve got all kinds of life above ground and below ground that are teeming.
The whole goal, what people don’t realize, is that we want as much life as possible. And our current system is actually making sure that we’re annihilating as much life as possible. So if we look at the extinction process that’s been happening over the last 50 years, again, it’s something completely alarming. I know Silent Spring came out and people were all up in arms. But the solution is not a vegetarian solution. So Diet for a Small Planet is outdated information, and what we need is more better cattle, not no cattle.
Chris Kresser: It’s not the cow, it’s the how.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly. And not only that too, another thing I brought up is what these rich white people in Sweden were not paying attention to is that livestock are really important to the majority of people living in poverty in the world in places where, what are you going to do in Kenya where it’s super arid and the Maasai have been herding cattle forever and ever? And we’re going to tell them that they need to go grow soybeans? With what seeds? Are they going to have to go buy them from Monsanto? Where are they going to get the water to irrigate? Where are they going to get the fertilizer if they can’t have animals? So I think it’s bordering on racist to have a grain-heavy diet as a global policy for the entire world.
Chris Kresser: But we can just make more Cheetos.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly.
Chris Kresser: That’s probably the plan, part of the plan here. It’s really—
Diana Rodgers: Well, to get them reliant on our aid. I mean, we’re already ruining Haiti with our rice that we’re giving to them. We’ve ruined their local economies, we’ve ruined their health. Now rice is a much higher percentage of their diet. Very few Haitians are actually growing their own food anymore. And it’s a really great way that we can control governments. I mean, that’s a whole other thing that we don’t have to get too much into. But it really makes me mad, the idea that we’re taking away people’s innate ability to be self-reliant.
Chris Kresser: Not to mention the very clearly documented health impacts that are observed when traditional peoples adopt the Western food system.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly, exactly. And I have an image on my post. So, the Canadian government decided that they knew best, advising a local Inuit population that they should be eating a Mediterranean diet. Which I think is just, I mean, this one image of this igloo showing all of their nutrient-dense traditional foods in the red category and bananas and oranges and orange juice in the green category. I mean that just sums up exactly how wrong we’ve gotten our dietary advice just in this one image.
Chris Kresser: Absolutely. And if those poor kids start following that diet, they’re going to become morbidly obese.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah.
Chris Kresser: And this is seen. It’s been documented in so many different areas where traditional populations start to follow the government-sponsored diet, including Native Americans in the US.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly.
Chris Kresser: So, like the Pima, for example.
Chris Kresser: So let’s talk about some of the other proposals that are floating around that are based on this idea that meat is bad for us nutritionally and bad for the environment, which as I hope we’ve shown in this podcast, is misguided and others. But why not just make meat in a lab? Let’s say you accept that meat, animal protein is more bioavailable and so we do need meat, which some people seem to have accepted. But then why not just grow it in a lab and—
Diana Rodgers: Reduce suffering.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, reduce suffering and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. All of that. Yeah. And of course, make billions of dollars from the companies that are successful at doing that.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, and I think another thing.
Chris Kresser: Nothing wrong with that per say, but yeah. There’s some financial motivation there perhaps.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. I’m so glad I don’t live where you live. I was actually just out there a couple days ago, and I’m, like, so happy that I’m not living there. Because that’s, like, the hotbed of all of this.
Chris Kresser: Sure. You just have to be a hermit like me and live up on my hilltop.
Diana Rodgers: And just go to WeWork and get mad at WeWork in the halls and elevators.
Chris Kresser: Yep.
Diana Rodgers: So, I mean, it’s really interesting, the lab meat thing, because I had a woman on my podcast about a year and a half ago who was a big vegan animal rights person telling me how great lab meat was. And I asked her if she knew how it was made, and she had no idea. But she was like, she’s like a really big deal animal rights activist and very vocal about how lab meat is a good solution. And interestingly, most vegans actually won’t even accept it because you’re using fetal bovine serum in order to make it, which is not “vegan” anyway.
But what folks aren’t realizing, number one, is that it relies on this horrible monocrop system, which is ruining our environment and a completely inefficient way of producing food on so many levels. But then the lifestyle assessments I’ve read are a lot based on projections because they haven’t built the bioreactors yet. So they’re making a lot of assumptions, but even the assumptions are so bad that the energy required in order to transform what they’re using right now as the substrate.
So corn and soy, sometimes wheat, into protein, the amount of energy required for that is enormous. And when we have animals that can actually just do this on their own without having to be plugged into an outlet is really amazing. Plus, what they’re not taking into consideration is the amount of antibiotics that they’ll need to prevent bacterial overgrowth because they’re growing these at just the perfect temperature for meat to grow. But of course that’s also the perfect temperature for bacteria to grow as well.
Chris Kresser: Everything else.
Diana Rodgers: Cancerous cells, all these things. They had not figured out how to striate the meat with fats. There’s a lot of input that we’re running out of that you need in order, there’s a lot of minerals that are being mined in war-torn countries that, actually the US military is, like, guarding these mines in order to get those raw materials in order to pump it into these cellular meat company facilities. So the whole system is energetically ridiculous, and it’s not even causing less harm.
So that’s my big argument, too, is that when you look at how many lives are lost from the loss of biodiversity, of taking a native ecosystem, plowing it up to make it into a cornfield, and then spraying it to make sure that nothing other than corn, not even mice or anything can grow there. The amount of life lost for that system versus one animal, one large ruminant animal. A cow can provide almost 500 pounds of meat. I just don’t think the trade-offs are worth it at all from an ethical or environmental perspective.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, another situation where the devil is in the details, right?
Diana Rodgers: Yeah.
Chris Kresser: Because on the fact of it, lab meat sounds, “Hey, why not?” Like, if we can do that and we can make it taste the same … But clearly including that woman that you interviewed on your podcast, that was kind of the level that she was approaching it on, without actually looking into the details. It sounds pretty good on the surface, so why not advocate it. But then when you look into it, you find it’s a little more complicated.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. I’ve been really loving The Wizard and the Prophet, Robb sent that over to me.
Chris Kresser: I read that just recently.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, I think he told me.
Chris Kresser: I sent it to Robb.
Diana Rodgers: Yes, exactly, so I’m thanking you. I’m thanking you for the chain because I have my hands on it. And I’ve been not only reading the book, but then when I’m in my car or at the gym, I’m listening to it. So it’s really fantastic, and I think that that is at the crux of what we’re dealing with right now. Do we look at this, what some would call Luddite perspective of nature through Hoyt, or … I’m sorry. What was his name? Now I’m forgetting.
Chris Kresser: Vogt.
Diana Rodgers: Voight. Vogt.
Chris Kresser: Vogt. Yeah, you want to say Voight because it’s usually an i in there, but it’s V-o-g-t, so it’s Vogt, yeah.
Diana Rodgers: Or do we look at this more wizard tech solution? And that’s just where most people are right now.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, that’s the dominant cultural paradigm is we’ve gone into wizardry, for sure.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, yes.
Chris Kresser: No question about that. Back when Silent Spring was written, I think there was more, Vogt was more in vogue. There was a little bit more concern about the wizardry and the impact it would have. And now we are 100 percent in wizardry.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. And the problem is, everyone’s just sort of hoping that more rabbits will be pulled out of the hat. But we don’t know for sure.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, yeah. I highly recommend this book. This is Charles Mann, who wrote 1491 and 1493, which, if anyone has read those books about … it totally changed our view on how the New World was discovered and colonized and what was here when those people arrived. Which is much different than what was previously believed. He’s a fantastic writer and this is I think, one of the most compelling views on where we are as a society now and what our future might hold. So highly recommend it.
Getting back to the topic, I mean, that’s obviously germane and relevant here, but I want to talk about a few other proposals that are being floated around here. Which are again, if you accept what we’ve talked about here and in other podcasts, are off base. But the meat tax. There’s been a lot of enthusiasm for this because there’s some research that, beverage tax, soda taxes have been effective in terms of reducing consumption. So this is now something that’s being seriously proposed in the EAT-Lancet. I think that’s part of the agenda of the EAT-Lancet paper and authors and reporters.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, and actually they released another paper just on Sunday night of this week that goes even more strongly into the meat tax. I think the goal is to make it basically impossible to eat meat moving forward. And effectively, I’ve looked at the models. There was a good paper that looked at what would happen, just kind of projected out, what might happen in this situation. And, actually, red meat consumption wouldn’t go down at all.
And it basically is just a poor tax is what this is. And when you look at, I actually took a picture. I had to run into a typical grocery store and pick something up one time, and I noticed the shopping cart of the person in front of me. And it was soda and donuts and whoopie pies and all stuff like that. But her deli meat and her bacon were actually the most nutrient-dense things in her cart.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, so that would be encouraging even less healthy choices in people who are of limited economic means. And you mentioned this in the beginning about the private jet people who are founding this study, and you brought it up in your article. There really is a classist kind of thing that’s happening here that’s not part of the popular narrative. Because if we really wanted to reduce carbon footprint, you pointed out a meta-analysis that suggested that doing things like avoiding one round-trip transatlantic flight, more of a car-free lifestyle, having one less child in an industrialized nation would have by far bigger impact than reducing your consumption of beef.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. Or changing your diet in any way.
Chris Kresser: And who’s doing a lot of round-trip transatlantic flying? People who are at a certain socioeconomic level. And so, yeah, a lot of these proposals are like, “Let me continue to live my carbon-emitting lifestyle, and then let’s introduce changes that won’t effect that but actually will impact people who are poor and in a really adverse way without really me having to change anything as a privileged person.”
Diana Rodgers: Right, and, I mean, in order to do vegan right, you kind of do need to be a celebrity or an uber-rich person that, if there is a way to do vegan, right? But, I mean, to … there’s a lot of food prep involved, there’s a lot of time involved. There’s a lot of time spent eating.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, chewing.
Diana Rodgers: Chewing, right? Your typical person that maybe gets two 15-minute breaks a day is not going to be able to chew the food or have a staff that can make the cashew cream to make all the—
Chris Kresser: Or buy the cashew cream for $9.49 for a half pint or whatever it is.
Diana Rodgers: Right, right. I mean, this film project I’m working on, we’ve done a lot of filming in Indiana, rural Indiana. And I see what these folks have as options for stores on limited budgets and what they’re buying. And honestly, processed food, processed meats like sausages that are pre-cooked are a lot easier for them to eat and are honestly the most nutrient-dense thing that they’re eating. Because they’re not doing a whole lot of scratch cooking. They don’t have a lot of time or energy at the end of the day. So when life is really hard and you’re working really hard, you don’t have the privilege to push away something nutrient-dense like meat.
Chris Kresser: Absolutely. So let’s talk a little bit about the film. I know it’s gone through a lot of iterations and there’s been some wins and some challenges. So tell me, let’s start with a little bit of the idea and the inspiration behind it. Why we both feel that this is important to get out there and then maybe a little update where you’re at, what you’re needing, what would be helpful. We have a lot of folks who are listening, who I know want to be a part of this movement in some way.
And I’m often asked by people who are not necessarily in the health field, people who are not nutritionists or Functional Medicine practitioners or anything, like, “How can I help? How can I get involved? How can I use my existing skills or connections or resources to move this forward?” So let’s imagine what kind of help we need or could be useful to move this forward, and who knows who’s out there listening.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah. So, I was halfway through writing a book on this subject on the nutritional, environmental, and ethical case for meat when yet another vegan film came out about a year and a half ago. And I was like, “If this guy can make a movie, I can make a movie.” And so that’s kind of how it all started. I did a crowd funder that was pretty successful, and we got rolling. At the time, the project was called Kale versus Cow. And we started filming some of these nutrition stories. We hooked up with a doctor who has some amazing clinical trials and is doing really good work in a pretty rural part of the Midwest, conveniently corn country. But there’s also farmers who are plowing in their corn and turning it back to grass.
So there’s some really great stories happening there. And some of the feedback I got from the title Kale versus Cow was that, “This sounds like another vegan film,” or, “It sounds like I’m against kale,” which as you know, I’m not against kale. But I think folks maybe that don’t know me as well just had these misperceptions, and the name was a little bit of a hang-up for them. So we went back to the drawing board a little bit and changed the title to Sacred Cow, which I think works really nicely, also because there’s a double meaning of sacred cow. Because the vilification of beef is just so embedded in our system.
Chris Kresser: Yes.
Diana Rodgers: And, I mean, even when I was going through my graduate program in dietetics, red meat is not okay. It’s just not, even though in biochem it’s totally fine if you just look at it from an objective scientific perspective. And the project has also transformed from a feature film into a docuseries because we felt that it’s a more digestible way, literally, to get this information across, and there’s also more that we wanted to cover that we didn’t feel would fit into the narrative of one film.
And so we were now looking at a multipart docuseries still addressing mostly the nutritional, environmental, and ethical aspects of the reason why we need animals in our food system. I’m also very interested in sort of the anthropology of how meat became such a polarizing topic today and how people identify their whole being around how much meat they consume in their diet. The flexitarian, vegan, whatever.
Chris Kresser: Yep.
Diana Rodgers: And I still am working on the book. So, as you know, Robb is the coauthor on the book project I’m working on, and he’s the co-executive producer on the film project. But the funding has been a little bit of a challenge. I don’t know if people really get how important this is, and I think it’s one of the reasons why the Unitarian church is not funded well. Because it’s, like, trying to extract money out of atheists is a hard thing.
When people are super-passionately committed and religiously committed like vegans, where it’s, like, their religion, they’ll passionately fund things. But then when people are kind of cool with everything and they’re eating meat and they’re like, “Yeah, got my health under control now. That’s great. And if the vegans don’t want to eat meat, fine, that’s more for me.” That’s really kind of the attitude I’m running into a little bit.
Chris Kresser: Yeah people are less identified with it, which is good, in their way.
Diana Rodgers: It’s good.
Chris Kresser: But not as good when you’re trying to raise money for a movie like this.
Diana Rodgers: Right, yeah.
Chris Kresser: And I think the other part of it is, I don’t know that people really perceive the threat fully yet. It’s like you just said, they’re like, “If someone wants to be vegan, fine. No skin off my back and it’s not going to hurt me. So there’s no pressing need to fund a film about this. Because who cares if someone’s a vegan.” Well, yeah, on an individual level, you might say that. Even though we could argue that you should care if someone chooses an approach that’s in many cases likely to make them nutrient deficient.
But, yes, each person, of course, has the right to choose their own approach. And I don’t go around trying to proselytize and convert vegans to eating animal foods unless they ask me what I think they should do if they come see me as a patient. But this isn’t just about individual choice here. Because, as we know, we talked about the meat tax proposition, and this is going to affect food policy. It’s already affected food policy in the US and around the world which then will affect schools. And what happens at schools, which influences our children and the choices that they make.
You know, my daughter is seven and a half, and she comes home with some really interesting things that she’s heard from other kids and even teachers at school. And she doesn’t go to a typical school, but this is, it’s everywhere. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers: Exactly. And there’s a lot of schools now eliminating meat for health, and I think a lot of parents are kind feeling a little worried about meat consumption. And so maybe they’re thinking, “Well, at least they’re getting a healthy meal at school.” And so that’s concerning to me because for a lot of kids this is the most nutrient-dense meal of their day. And to blame it on meat is just wrong. And I kept telling folks, this is coming and meat tax is coming.
And I, for a while, was feeling like maybe I’m just nuts and I’m making all this up. I don’t know. But then of course, it is really coming. The EAT-Lancet paper is here. Meat tax is being discussed. We’ve got, LA now is trying to force restaurants and LAX to provide, to tell private businesses to provide vegan entrees. We’ve got Berkeley with Meatless Mondays now at all city meetings.
Chris Kresser: WeWork.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, WeWork, exactly. There’s airlines now that are eliminating red meat. And so this is coming at us from our clinicians, our universities, we’re hearing this from the World Health Organization. We’re hearing this from business, from the media. Constant films, there’s more coming out this year.
I think I just sent you another one that’s on its way out that I’m pretty concerned about. Because it actually has people with MD behind their name. And nobody is pushing back and people are just taking this really lightly. And so, yeah, anything that folks can do to help me get this off the ground, I’d want to come out and feature you, Chris. And I’ve got a lot of really great experts in both the sustainability and health space that very strongly feel that red meat is important to our food system.
Chris Kresser: Yeah. And the reality is that a film or in a docuseries can make a huge impact than even a book.
Diana Rodgers: That you can’t do with a book. I know.
Chris Kresser: It doesn’t work. I mean, I’ve written a 400-plus page book with all the science that you need to, I think, get clear that animal food should be part of our diet in addition to plant foods. But how many people are going to read a 400-page book? Not that many. And there’s still something about film that makes it a very viral medium. It’s more accessible, a docuseries is an increasingly popular format, as you said.
It’s easier to cover the wide range of topics that you need to hit on for this, and it’s a format that has been used for vegan and other types of films or media. And it’s something that’s just really easy to share with. People are more likely to sit down at night and watch an episode of this than they are to read a book.
Diana Rodgers: Yeah, exactly. And this is pretty dense material. But if I can just show people what a healthy ecosystem looks like and how cattle raised in the right way, what that looks like compared to a 2,000-acre field of soy being grown for lab meat, I think that those are really powerful visuals.
Chris Kresser: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. So if someone is listening to this and the alarm has been raised in their mind, and they’re now aware of the real risk here to our families and communities, and they want to get involved in some way, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Diana Rodgers: So I have more information, and I’m taking donations on sustainabledish.com/film. And for any better meat companies or folks that want to get involved in a bigger way, folks can just message me directly through the site. And we’re working with a few better meat companies and other large donors and foundations. But we still need to, these are expensive, and there are some inexpensive ways of making docuseries.
But in order for us to really get on the mainstream media channels like Netflix, we have to do something that’s beautiful and has a high production value and isn’t a $50,000 handheld camera project. And so, while the budget isn’t exorbitant, it’s certainly higher than some of the other more budget docuseries that have been coming out. And that’s largely because I’m really tired of going to high schools and doing damage control when they show these vegan propaganda films. Because that’s what’s happening right now.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, absolutely. And will continue to happen, as you pointed out. The momentum there is only building. So we need to, I think, step up to the plate.
Diana Rodgers: Thank you so much.
Chris Kresser: Thank you for doing this work, Diana. I really appreciate your advocacy and passion for this, and it shows through in everything that you do. And I hope for all of you listening that this has been up maybe a bit of a wake-up call and you have a little more perspective on what’s going on behind the scenes. And even less left behind, like more out in the open now, I think, more and more. Especially with this EAT-Lancet paper, and you see that science is not objective and dispassionate in many cases, but actually quite agenda driven and that there are often interests aligned behind those agendas that may not represent your interests. Like global food companies that want to sell more of their processed and refined products.
So none of us are not impacted by this in some way. And if you have children and family members who are getting exposed to all of this material, it’s really important to have a counterpoint that we can offer that is well researched and really hits on the most important issues. And people can change their mind. I mean, your story that you shared with the publisher of the China study was really revealing. To his credit, to whoever that publisher editor was, to his credit. He was able to take in that information and open his mind and give this a chance. And we both, of course, know many people that that’s happened with. I have lots of patients, lots of readers and listeners who were vegan and vegetarian at one point. I was vegan and vegetarian at one point, as everybody knows who’s listened to this show for a while.
And it was through exposure to research and information like what we’re talking about on this show and what you plan to present on the film that actually changed their minds. Because I think that may also be part of the resistance in some cases, like for raising money with this film. It’s like the idea that people are just not going to change their minds. That it’s, we can’t really make an impact. But I don’t agree with that. I think we can make a huge impact and already have, and we just need to scale it up so that it can reach more people.
Diana Rodgers: I agree.
Chris Kresser: So sustainabledish.com/film. We will also put some of the links to the podcast and articles that we mentioned, the critiques of EAT-Lancet, Marty Kendall’s and also yours, Diana. And then if you want that big storehouse of information I put together for the Rogan show, which has articles on nutrient density and meat and the effects of meat, and carbohydrate, macronutrients, a ton of stuff, that’s at ChrisKresser.com/Rogan. So thanks, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Diana.
Diana Rodgers: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, Chris. And thanks for all your support ever since I first met you.
Chris Kresser: It’s my pleasure, and I hope we can, with this podcast, move things forward a little bit more quickly and get this out there. Because it really needs to be seen. So thanks, everyone, for listening and please do continue to send in your questions to ChrisKresser.com/podcastquestion. And I’ll talk to you next time.
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For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering a couple of questions from the comment sections of the last couple weeks. First, it’s been established that fasting and exercise both raise growth hormone. What about fasted exercise—does that have an even stronger effect? And what about continuing to fast after your fasted workout? Then, I discuss the inevitability (or not) of wear and tear on the arteries from blood flow-induced shear stress. Is shear stress “bad,” or do certain factors make it worse?
Let’s dig in.
Marge asked:
So fasting raises growth hormone levels? Interesting. So does weight lifting. I’ll bet fasted weight workouts would be pretty powerful.
They do, and they are.
What’s even better is to work out in a fasted state and keep fasting after the workout. This keeps the GH spike going even longer. And in my “just so story” imagination—which is actually quite accurate, judging from real world hunter-gatherers—it mirrors the circumstances of our Paleolithic ancestors. You’d get up early to go hunting without having eaten. You’d expend a lot of energy on the hunt. You’d make the kill, procure the food. And then you’d bring it back to camp to finally eat. Maybe you’d pass the heart and liver around the circle before heading back. And sometimes, you just didn’t make the kill. You didn’t eat at all.
Makes sense, right? Fasting, doing something physical, and continuing to fast shouldn’t be a monumental undertaking. It should be well within the realm of possibility for the average person.
Now, I wouldn’t do this all the time. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. A hormetic stressor can become a plain old stressor if it’s prolonged for too long. Instead, I would throw post-fasted-workout fasting in on an occasional basis.
Nor would I expect huge “gains” from this. Physiological growth hormone production won’t make you huge or shredded. In fact, workout-related increases in testosterone and growth hormone don’t actually correlate with gains in hypertrophy. Instead, I’d expect more intangible benefits, things you won’t notice right away. It’s important in cognition. It helps maintain bone health, organ reserve, and general cellular regeneration. It’s great for burning fat.
Growth hormone does way more than promote overt muscular growth.
Steve wrote:
In the linked article it says:
“Endothelial cell dysfunction is an initial step in atherosclerotic lesion formation and is more likely to occur at arterial curves and branches that are subjected to low shear stress and disturbed blood flow (atherosclerosis prone areas) (7,8). These mechanical stimuli activate signaling pathways leading to a dysfunctional endothelium lining that is barrier compromised, prothrombotic, and proinflammatory.
So it seems that endothelial disfunction comes first, triggered by blood flow stresses. It’s common wear and tear in exposed areas. The patched knees on jeans. Managing endothelial health and healing may slow or diminish rate of progression or is it mostly too late for that?
I’m not a doctor. This isn’t medical advice. This is just speculation.
I find it rather hard to believe that healthy arteries are inherently fragile and prone to damage and incapable of weathering the “stress” of blood flowing through them, even at the “susceptible” curves. I find it more likely that poor health, poor diets, and poor lifestyles make us more susceptible to otherwise normal stresses.
Do the mechanical stimuli weaken the endothelium in people with healthy levels of nitric oxide production? Or are we talking about people whose poor nitric oxide status is exacerbating the damaging blood flow patterns, leaving their endothelium vulnerable to atherosclerosis?
Think about how much context matters in our response to stimuli. If you’re shy around girls, a school dance will be a traumatic experience. If you’re comfortable around girls, a school dance will be a great experience. If you’re weak, lifting a barbell will be scary, and you may injure yourself. If you’re strong, lifting a barbell will be second nature, and you may get stronger. The baseline context determines the quality of the response.
I’d argue that blood flowing through your arteries should be a commonplace occurrence. It shouldn’t be a traumatic experience. Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is stressful regardless of the baseline endothelial health and the amount of nitric oxide you produce. Maybe it’s just a matter of time. But:
That sounds like there are a lot of factors that increases and mitigate the effects of shear stress on the endothelial wall. It sounds like some factors make shear stress more damaging, and some factors make it less. There may even be factors, like exercise, that make shear stress healthy.
This topic is really pretty interesting to me. It deserves a deeper dive, don’t you think?
What about you, folks? What’s your take on fasted workouts and GH secretion? Ever try one?
And do you think your arteries are doomed to fall apart at the seams?
References:
Nyberg F, Hallberg M. Growth hormone and cognitive function. Nat Rev Endocrinol. 2013;9(6):357-65.
Park SK, La salle DT, Cerbie J, et al. Elevated arterial shear rate increases indexes of endothelial cell autophagy and nitric oxide synthase activation in humans. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol. 2019;316(1):H106-H112.
The post Dear Mark: Fasting, Training, and Growth Hormone; Wear and Tear on the Arteries appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
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