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Nutrient Intake

So how do you maximize your intake over nutrients? Well, you eat nutrient dense foods and you're not what you eat, you're what you absorb as well, so having good gut bugs, those there's a lot of buzz about probiotics these days that helps a heck of a lot because your body actually contains ten times more bacterial cells than human cells, which is very bizarre. I knew the first time I learned that I'm like that means I'm like one tenth human that's crazy, so you want to make sure that you're feeding the good bacteria as much as you can and getting rid of the bad guys as much as you possibly can as well. One of the ways that we've done this traditionally is by eating fermented foods it's an ancient way of keeping foods edible and preserving foods over a long period of time. One of the things that also happens in fermented foods is that you're basically nurturing the good bacteria the probiotics. So what this is is actually my parents making sauerkraut and kimchi uh at their home in new h...

ampshire and they always have something that's out and kind of like fizzing on the counter whether it's computer or kim gi or you in making their own yogurt, which happens quite frequently and it's absolutely delicious eating fermented foods is something that can help you, especially if you've been consuming a lot of antibiotics or chlorine or other things that can disrupt the natural probiotics in your body? Uh, antibiotics are actually something that are fed to chickens and cattle when they're younger not not just two get rid of all the diseases that they have necessarily because they're in these cages and can't move their legs and a lot of instances or they're too close to each other. That sort of thing antibiotics are actually fed to these these industrial animals because it makes them fat, they gain weight more quickly. They don't know exactly why, but the industry has figured this out, so they do it that's why there are so many tons of antibiotics in these industries in feedlot beef and chicken and others as well. Pork is because it makes them fat there's a high probability that it makes us fat too. And conversely, having a healthy belly like the one that's advertised on the front of that yogurt is something that you actually do want and one way that you can do that is by feeding yourself probiotics, which include garlic, onions, tomatoes to resell marred artichokes and asparagus as well as probiotics. Fermented foods like yogurt, fear sauerkraut, kimchi, cambodia and there are plenty of other ones as well, when you include probiotics is part of your diet, fermented foods is part of your diet most people experience many great effects especially as it relates to digestion and how they feel after a meal energy levels the a lot of the digestion that happens actually comes from the bacteria that's in your gut that's taking foods that you wouldn't normally be able to digest or absorb and creating vitamins out of them and creating things out of them that your body can actually use to function optimally so once you do that let's let's cover a little bit the vitamin vitamins and minerals so there are fat soluble vitamins a d k to I don't want to go into this in too much detail just because uh this is highly specific to each individual you want to make sure that you're not just blindly supplementing stuff you wantto get certain key nutrients on dh make sure you're not getting too many of others their thyroid mineral selenium and iodine electrolytes potassium and sodium water soluble minerals, magnesium and calcium, vascular antioxidants, zinc and copper as well as college in repair calling in full aid for the brain and that sort of thing um instead of getting caught up in all of these different vitamins and a certain amount of r d a that you should be taking every day is much more beneficial to recognize that you should be eating nutrient dense foods and covering off on the ones that most people are naturally deficient in which generally speaking is d three a omega threes on a few other things that will get into a little bit later, and I plan to cover this in a bit more detail when dr sarah godfried comes in tomorrow for that session so we can take a lot of questions as it relates to supplementation then. But one thing to keep in mind is that the ratio of vitamins in your body matters a heck of a lot more than a total amount in your body so that they had studies when they were kind of kicking off a lot of this science more than fifty years ago. I believe that looked at vitamin a and vitamin d and their abilities to prevent colds, and they found that vitamin a and vitamin d prevented colds are very well, they were very effective. But if you had just one of them, if you had just vitamin a or just vitamin d, they're absolutely ineffective. So it's not just a matter of like having skyrocketed levels of vitamin c it's, a matter of having a a filled out spectrum of nutrients that your body is getting from your foods, and perhaps from some supplements as well. So what are nutrient dense foods? This is kind of a squishy term that a lot of people throw around their fresh local, organic, seasonal, often heirloom pasture raised wild hole, properly storing prepared rock or gently cooked these air sweeping generalizations but this is pretty it's a pretty good thing to follow as opposed to marketing speak the word natural means absolutely nothing when you see it on packages when you hear it in marketing lingo doesn't mean anything which is problematic and kind of annoying to someone like me because like natural actually has a meaning and when most people hear it doesn't anymore on legally, it doesn't mean anything either. So don't look for natural foods on the label of something or on the marketing of something look for real foods and the way that you can tell if a food is real or not is usually by using your common sense not by looking at the marketing of the food itself you also want to eat a wide variety of nutrient dense foods. This was a meal that we had in thailand actually in one of the coolest things about going going to thailand is that when you got a soup or a stew or a salad or something like that they didn't have like iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing with bacon bits on it they had like forty different ingredients in one soup or one salad and it was colorful and uh it was bizarre, you know, some of these they would have a different kinds of seafood and one little studio would have bizarre um kind of like herbs and sea vegetables and little spiny things and you know I don't speak the language I didn't know exactly what it was but I'm just like this is what it should be like you know, this is the way that we used to eat it wasn't this basically having a diet of a lot of different disguise foods that are basically just corn and wheat it was really foods that people spent time and effort in preparing and taste absolutely amazing because they're there full of nutrients and when you get away from the industrialized sugars and flowers and salts you realize that the actual flavor and foods comes from the minerals in the vitamins within those foods it's really important teo eat nutrient dense foods because it's good for you but it has also once you have retrained your palate palate to appreciate it um it also tastes amazing it's completely different than anything you've ever tasted before when you have a napoli that was picked right off a tree in your back yard it tastes fundamentally different and something that's been stewing in the basement of a convenience store for months which you know there's nothing worse than biting into an apple and then like it's brown in the middle and that's happened many times they actually gas these a lot of these fruits to make them ripen more quickly s o they look right but they're not actually writing what you want are foods that were recently living and picked at the peek nous of their rightness this is a little bit encouraging for people who might be on a budget because a lot of frozen foods a lot of frozen veggies I mean not like packaged foods lot of frozen fruits and veggies are picked at the peak of their brightness and then flash frozen so that they actually maintain not all but a lot of the nutrients that would naturally be found in those foods if you just plucks them yourself so that's actually a great way to maximize the amount of density of the nutrients that you're consuming one of the things that they gained a lot of popularity especially around the time that the slow carb diet came out and I had tim farris on my show I know he's been a past guest that creative life really appreciate his work really cool guy does cool stuff, but one of the things that I really disagreed with that people took away from his book was that you should if you want to lose fat eat the same thing every day because what that does is basically if you remember the graph that I was showing earlier what you're doing there is your sure you're getting plenty of nutrients from certain foods and you're getting maybe the right ratio off macronutrients to make sure that you're losing fat you're keeping the carbs low you're making sure that you're not having significant spikes and glucose except on cheat day or whatever, but the problem is, when you eat the same foods over and over again, is that your building up to many of the nutrients that are in those foods to many of the toxins that are in those foods as well, and you're not feeling in the gaps. So the best way to really, um, to lose fat and to maintain your health that they're really the same thing. What you want is a wide variety of nutrient dense foods. The best way to do that is by eating seasonally, which is what we were designed to do in the first place. This is all stuff that would have happened automatically, but we need to artificially recreate this because our world is so unnatural now we're all kind of out of touch, like the idea that you can get watermelon year year round is just kind of like a given right they of course, we have watermelon, but watermelon doesn't really grow year round. In fact, almost nothing does the more that you can eat food that just came out of the soil, the better off you are actually even a lot of people excuse me, people don't know that gary is highly seasonal as well you want tio. In order to maximize the c l a and a lot of the other nutrients that air in your dairy, you want to make sure that you're getting your dairy at the times of peek health for those animals when they're producing the healthiest milk when they're eating the healthiest grass so the more that you can eat seasonally the better is a picture from my brother's organic farm in new hampshire um it's it's such a life changing experience when a child or even when an adult goes to a farm for the first time because so many of us just kind of think that food comes in packages and it doesn't it comes from the ground it comes from the earth going and seeing uh on actual form can be a transformative experience for your kids for yourself I highly encourage people to do it. I know a lot of people kind of dragged their feet, but I would encourage you to decrease your distance between food that you're eating and what you understand it to come from because if you yeah it's one thing for me to say yeah, you get a burn more fat if you eat wild foods if you eat grass fed beef, you'd that is going to be torched off your body piece of cake umm it's quite another when you see a picture of what actually happens to conventional cattle when they're raised this way it is sickening they're raised in their own feces the reason people get sick from feedlot animals is because there is feces in your food there's puss in your milk that is that's the reason that they're pasteurizing and suggesting subjecting a lot of these foods to very high temperatures it's because they're trying to get rid of possum species and pathogens and all this other stuff when you look at pictures of that stuff I'm not going to show any today because it's not really I don't want to scare you anymore but I encourage you to check it out know where your food comes from it doesn't come from packages it comes from farms and if it doesn't come from farms know exactly where it comes from because I would I'd be surprised if you didn't start to go in them or farm direction. This is really cool one of the best ways to get fresh foods healthful foods is by going in your own backyard so I grew up middle of nowhere in new hampshire and like every year we would find a new fruit or veggie that was naturally growing like in our backyard which is just the woods we used to play in the woods and we'd find all sorts of stuff we had apples, pears, wild strawberries these little guys kind of tart but absolutely delicious we found cranberries a few years ago in my parent's field in new hampshire they go and collect wild mushrooms cha ge and that's it's fun to get into that sort of thing it's playing outside it's learning about the world around you and it's super nutritious and it's free so check that stuff out this is actually a picture so I live in austin, texas now it's not really conducive to a lot of those things like cranberries and apples and other things that might find new hampshire but we went out back and we kind of looked at these things that this tree that we had never seen anything on um we're like what the heck is that? And our dog kind of ran up to it and started nibbling on I'm thinking that edible fruit and it turns out they're lok watts there their natural fruits that grow behind our house in texas that I hadn't even noticed until they popped up just one particular week and then allison made a pie out of them and it was awesome it was totally cool and this is something you know when people complain about food being really expensive it's like if you look there's a lot of food right around you there are lots of great books and resource is on wild edibles there are a lot of things like my mom is big into eating the weeds and so she'll come back with a bunch of milkweed and uh and other things from around the fields that is literally free and super high in nutrients so eating local eating from your backyard that's that's a great way to maximize your nutrient density this is my dad with a new enormous liver from a cow and this is something this is another way that you khun maximize the bang for your buck as well as the nutrients in your food liver is one of the highest sources in the world one of the most nutrient dense foods in the world we hardly hever as americans eat anything that's not muscle made muscle meat is just about the least nutritious food you can get. Most of the nutrition comes in the organs and the weird stuff like liver and right down here is actually an enormous heart. One of the coolest things about all of this my dad is friends with a guy who raised these cattle knew the cattle well, you know, get the cattle he had it kind of a relationship with them. It's it's almost like it's a very emotional experience when you eat an animal that you've new so I don't want to say that you know it is much meat as you want to and don't care about it that's all I'm saying all I'm saying connect with it when you do actually go teo eat it it's a different experience is a completely different experience it becomes a part of who you are, I used to be a vegetarian is the mission before because super and animal rights and all that will lose stuff that a lot of people make fun off. But when you connect with your food it changes your relationship with your own body your your health skyrockets and when you eat liver you feel like an absolute rock star might not taste amazing to everyone. It takes a little bit of getting used to but it's absolutely incredible so one of the best things you can do if you want to maximize the nutrient density of your diet is he nails details or knows details which is basically just eating the whole animal. There are many sources of nutrients that are very difficult to get from hardly anywhere else unless you eat chicken feet or marrow bones or bone brossel radar. So that sounds weird like most people that want to eat chicken feet. But uh, one of the best ways around that without completely grossing yourself out is by making a bone broth. The way that people used to make soups was by taking a bunch of bones and chicken feed. But one of the best ways is to take marrow bones or the carcass of a chicken that you ate and boil it down for a long period of time. We do it in a crock pot over the course of twelve to twenty four hours and you use that basically all of the nutrients are taken out of the bones are a lot of the nutrients leech out of the bones of the college in a lot of the connective tissue the spinal tissue all this stuff goes out and can be directly consumed without eating chicken feet so the way that they used to make broth was just like that we don't really that's completely foreign to us now is really easy and really cheap to do at home and it's just packed with nutrition way have bone broth several times a week when you have it your eyes light up there is very different difficult to describe what it feels like but if you could imagine what a five hour energy feels like in an unnatural way and kind of this awkward wired way it's like that but it feels totally balanced and real and I highly encourage you to check that out it's absolutely worth it so eat weird food real food supplements so this is where you can cover off on a lot of those things that that most people try to supplement with synthetics. You can actually get it from real foods and treat them a supplement so I have certain things in my friends and I tried to take either every day or most days or sometimes once a week or just every once in a while one of the things that's great is eyes fish oil we should be eating mohr omega three's your omega sixes it's brain food I'll get into that a little bit later anti inflammatory one thing uh so fish oil the problem is a lot of these things that are actually or healthy our pounced on by food marketers or supplement marketers as soon as people recognize that there's a market for this and so you're seeing all these crappy fish oil cap capsules there been some studies that have shown that if you take those junkie oxidized official capsules and actually reduces the length of your life don't take those take the real stuff there are a few brands that uh I recommend basically you just want to get the highest quality you possibly can you want to make sure that it's not oxidized if it's been sitting on a shelf for too long it's probably oxidized it which basically means it's becoming unstable and it khun do bad things with in your body when you consume it instead of good things the problem with omega three's is that they become oxidized very easily is supposed to saxon saturated fats so you want to make sure that they are fresh and always refrigerated especially after opening so breasted butter is another brilliant way to get vitamin k two c l a and a bunch of antioxidants that are really difficult to get from other places so I eat a heck of a lot of butter we're gonna be talking about that with dave asprey tomorrow I know that he's a big butter fan as well have butter in my coffee it's a really easy way to make sure that you're getting a bunch of butter you can also you know it comes from heavy cream as well it's more concentrated in butter and even war castrate than that in g barry's or another great source of antioxidants and as faras fruits go they are relatively low in sugar so you get a lot of bang for your buck there cinnamon is brilliant for regulating blood sugar it's also antioxidant it's been shown to reduce tumors ginger anti inflammatory anti cancer make you feel better if you have a little comey upset from eating too many chicken feet green tea is could be great unless you're a little bit sensitive to it like me antioxidant detox afire packed with polly funerals garlic, onions, shallots you're gonna like this one doc dark chocolate the real stuff is actually good for you it's something that we eat almost every night and uh oh it's super good so as long as it's above seventy, eighty percent actual chocolate and low and sugar don't worry about using that as a little treat it's actually relatively good for you dry wed red wine is another one that can protect against cancer slow aging and has some other positive effects if you drink it in moderation, one of the biggest uh biggest changes I see in people when they make this shift to living in a healthy way is actually a mental shift it's understanding the cliche that high quality bodies require high quality foods and it's pretty easy to dismiss, but if you use that as the one rule that you follow, if you want to burn fat and get lean, get ripped, get a six pack whatever this will get you most of the way they're just understanding there's a very simple concept doesn't mean that you have to go after the most expensive food ever just means you always have one hundred percent free agency to eat the best possible food you can reduce the amount of toxins and chemicals you're getting from your food, maximize the nutrient density of your food refuse one of things I do is absolutely refused to put bad things into my body azan active choice every once in a while you might not know what's in your food I'm not saying that you need to be totally crazy about all this stuff, but I am saying that if you follow this is a general rule, you will get exceptional results and it's a shift that takes some time for a lot of people to accept but it's the most important one that you can make, huh? So what should we actually beat what does this all translate into in terms of when you're making your meal and you're freaking out because you're worried about all of these toxins chemicals and what should I get? The grocery store is what it looks like you should eat green leafy veggies and a heck of a lot of them um fill up on those guys eat as many as you want tio you pretty much cannot have too much as long as you're getting a diversity of this wild meets nails details pastor dicks wild fish full fat dairy if your body can tolerate it some people can some people can't quite as well bone broths absolutely low glycemic index tubers and rice so what that looks like it is in terms of the tour like a sweet potato is a great example of a something that's known in the paleo community anyway is like a safe starts which is something it doesn't skyrocket your blood sugar white potatoes okay in moderation as well and other sorts of ancient tubers are pretty good too fermented foods are also great but you want to avoid processed foods, sugar, industrial oils, conventional meat and eggs yes, they're very different than pastored eggs you want to avoid modern drains most lagoons this one is it's a little bit tricky someone booms are fine some people do do better than others but they are high and anti nutrients especially if they're prepared in a way that is nontraditional. So what you want to do is make sure they're soaked, and that takes a period of time to do it. Most ways that people do it in a modern wait today, skip a lot of the steps that are necessary if you want to digest lagoons effectively. So eating a peanut every once in a while that's fine, don't worry about it, but try to go organic if you do, by the way, peanuts or not nuts thoroughly game's artificial sweeteners don't eat those unless you're talking about something. That's natural stevia, zyla tall are some exceptions that I think are not perfect, but they worked pretty well for most people, and the there aren't a whole lot of risks in consuming them. A cz well is avoiding liquid calories. That's a great way, tio basically make sure that you're not over consuming a bunch of calories from places where you don't need them. There is a really pop one of them both. Most popular block posts from a friend of mine who, road crew, a dartmouth and basically, he had to lose twenty five pounds in about thirty days and he's like or he was off the crew team it's like crap, what am I gonna do? So he had to do it. This is something that he absolutely needed to do or he was off the team, and this is like, integral to his integrity and and identity and all this stuff he had to be at the scene. He didn't follow any crazy diet. He stopped drinking liquid calories, he stopped drinking beer. He stopped, uh, drinking milkshakes, diet soda, anything with calories in it. That was a liquid milk even. And he also exercise like crazy train like crazy, put on muscle, burned off fat, but that in terms of a dietary change, that's what he did. And he lost twenty five pounds and that that period of time. And he was on the team and that's pretty cool. So it doesn't mean that you have to be perfect and follow all of this stuff it's, like. If you apply some of these hacks and methodologies, you can. You can do some pretty amazing stuff when it comes to your own body composition.