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episode #3

Interview with Brian Sanders: Optimize your Health through Ancestral Eating

April 8, 2021 in Podcast

Intro

In Episode 3 I interview Brian Sanders who is the filmmaker behind the feature-length documentary Food Lies and host of the Peak Human podcast. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and then used his technical background and love for fitness & nutrition to also work as a Health Coach and be the co-founder of the health, media, and technology company SAPIEN. We touch on everything it takes to live optimally through ancestral eating with modern science. We also touch on the following: * Food Lies Documentary * Nose to Tail Nutrition * Importance of Protein * Brian’s anti-aging diet * How important are veggies? * Principles of the Sapien Diet * Eating meat and its effect on the environment * Lastly, Brian’s one tip to get your body back to what it once was! Links: Food Lies Documentary https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post#/ Peak Human Podcast https://www.peak-human.com/ Nose to Tail Nutrition https://www.nosetotail.org/ Sapien – Learn how to Thrive! https://www.sapien.org/

0 (1s): Coming up on the Get Lean Eat Clean podcast.

1 (3s): Like I just posted today about not having to count calories if your Eat the credit foods. Right. And, and I th but then I completely understand and appreciate people in the beginning of their journey, wanting to count calories, because they have to understand Food you want to quantify things and know like, Oh, this is what a steak is. This is what an egg is, so that, you know, so, yeah, I think that that's important as you do a test with all of these types of things, CGM do a test, you get to know a lot, and then you don't have to do it for the rest of your life. You, you just know, and you understand, and then yeah. Your more in tune with your body. So then you can see it like, Oh, wow. I ate this, my blood sugar skyrocketed, then it crashed and I was tired. And then you kind of put some data too, your feelings, and then, you know, to not do that again.

0 (48s): Hello and welcome to the Get Lean Eat Clean podcast. I'm Brian Gryn. And I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it wants. It was five, 10, even 15 years ago, each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get your long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed Brian Sanders, who is a filmmaker behind the feature length documentary Food Lies and host of the Peak Human podcast. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and then used his technical background and love for fitness and nutrition to work as a health coach and be the co founder of the Health media and technology company.

0 (1m 28s): SAPIEN he also owns Nose the Tail dot org. And on this episode, we're gonna touch on everything to live optimally through ancestral Eating with modern science. We also touch on his Food Lies Documentary Nose to Tail Nutrition the Importance of Protein Brian's anti-aging diet. How important are veggies, and Principles behind the SAPIEN Diet Lastly. We talk about Eating meat and its effect on the environment. And we also give is one tip to get your body back to what it once was five, 10, even 15 years ago. So I hope you enjoy the episode, a lot of great information packed in here and thanks so much for listening.

0 (2m 10s): All right. Well, welcome to the Get Lean Eat Clean podcast. This is my second interview and I'm with Brian Sanders. He is out of LA and he's a filmmaker Food Lies is coming out and we'll talk about that. And he also has a podcast called Peak Human, which I was, which I listened to quite regularly. And a few other companies, one is a Nose to Tail, which we can talk about as well. And I have ordered from you as well from there. Yeah. So I'm excited to have you on,

1 (2m 42s): Well, thanks for having me fellow Brian here. Let's do it.

0 (2m 46s): Yeah. We both spell your names the right way with the I. Yeah. All right. Well, I figured we just start off with, I I'm curious as to how you got into where you're at and, and then we'll touch a little bit on, on that, on your Documentary that's coming out as well.

1 (3m 7s): Yeah, well, it's sort of this long road of me discovering that I wasn't doing well. And I kinda, I was in that mindset of, I think everyone else in the country where they just, you get older and you just gain a little more weight and you're just not as athletic and things are harder and you have more and more, a little problems that you just deal with. And I thought this was life. And then I had a wake up call. So a lot of people have wake up calls with themselves when its too late or with family or friends. So mine unfortunately was with my parents and they both were just going downhill. They, I basically lost both of my parents around the age of 30.

1 (3m 48s): My mom had stage seven Alzheimer's that cancer. And I didn't really connect it with their diet and lifestyle because most people just think its more about no type two diabetes or obesity is, is, is more easily connected to the diet and lifestyle. But then I started getting into this research and realizing, Hey, are, you know, native living people are, ancestors are modern. People are living the way we used to live, don't get Alzheimer's or cancer. And I took a look at their diet or how were, how I was raised and how we just ate. And we've, you know, we fall the food pyramid.

1 (4m 28s): We did, we made our own food. We weren't going out to eat a lot. We weren't going to McDonald's. Ya know, it was just a rare, special treat. And we just were making our own food. Lean chicken and rice. I grew up in Hawaii, we are doing all the, the healthy Diet things, you know, eat Brown rice and vegetables and lean chicken and low fat products and this and that. And it just did not serve us. Well, it did not serve me while I was eating that way into college and beyond, and just was, I had a terrible body composition. It just wasn't working and I need to skip ahead. I made a few simple switches in my diet. I never counted calories. I didn't do much at all.

1 (5m 11s): I've always made my own food, but I just, as people say, do the opposite of the food pyramid, you flip it upside down that type of thing, just go to more ancestral eating whole foods and my entire life and body changed. And that really led me down this path. I decided to make a film. I did the podcast and so many other things and it was just all based on a simple idea of Eating like a Human and it, it seems so simple now I'm like, well, yeah, I didn't, I didn't really do much, but everything changed.

0 (5m 42s): Yeah. I mean that's yeah. I mean obviously having a wake-up call like that, you don't want to have, but sometimes I would say most people wait until it's almost too late to make a change. Like my story was not quite like that, but in a sense, I mean I just turned 40. I was, I've always been in a, in a pretty decent shape and ate clean for what I thought was Clean. But like you said, as you get older, it's like you almost, you have to work that much harder to get the same results that you got when maybe you were in your twenties. And that was sort of part of the reason why I wanted to do the podcast as well was because I'm seeing, you know, a friend's family, they get into the thirties and forties and fifties and they keep doing the same things that they were doing when they were younger.

0 (6m 32s): And they're just not getting the results that they were getting. One of the things for me was intermittent fasting is something that actually I had a client of mine who, who, who was like pre-diabetic and she got really got into fasting and the results were just unbelievable. And that was just something that really struck me. And, and so I've gotten into that along with ancestral eating, learning from guys like yourself and, you know, Paul Saladino, I actually used to be more of like a pescatarian and I've changed my ways a bit. How did you get into ancestrally Eating was there someone that you looked up to, or, you know, did you read a book or watch a documentary or what sort of clicked?

1 (7m 15s): Yeah, Mark Sisson. He's a man. I feel like anyone who's seen him w wants to age like him. He, he wrote the primal blueprint, which is kind of like a Bible on just ancestral living. And you know, it came out, I don't know, 12 years ago. And so, I mean, I read it like seven years ago and that really led me down this path and he lives the life. I mean, my dream was to, you know, play ultimate Frisbee with them. Not that I'm a big ultimate Frisbee guy, but I just know that's his thing. And so we filmed with them in the ER for Food Lies we went over to Miami where he was now and this guy was running around with 18 to 25 year olds keeping up with them, just outrunning them, catching Frisbees.

1 (7m 59s): It was amazing. And so, yeah, I S I still, I still want to be, you know, Marxist and when I grow up, I'll say, but he's a big, but I mean, there's hundreds, there's a a hundred other people that I've interviewed. I've probably interviewed a, a 150 people by now. So there's many more in the space that are living well and doing all these practices. And you mentioned Sal Dino. I was just with him in Austin, you know, he is out there sprinting and the w we're actually, I, he was barefoot. I went barefoot until I was in seventh grade and they made me wear shoes, but, you know, you don't have to go bare for it to live this primal sort of ancestral lifestyle, but it's a, it's cool to see all these people doing really well into their forties and He Mark 65 and yeah.

1 (8m 43s): Doing amazing.

0 (8m 44s): Yeah. And so then what led you to, to get into the Food Lies Documentary and how long has it been process going? How long is that process been going on for? Yeah, well,

1 (8m 56s): It's actually been over three years. It's a slow process. I, I was in the film growing up and I was always into just different things, gaining different skill sets as a mechanical engineer, by trade and college, I got into tech and then I started getting back in the film and I saw what the Health three years ago. It came out. I dunno, when it came out in the, in the summer three years ago, I saw it and I was like, this is terrible. I mean, these people are just making a documentary on false information on just a vegan bias on the animal rights is basically a animal rights film, the skies as Nutrition and environmental science.

1 (9m 36s): And it, I don't know, I just thought I had to do something about it. So that's really the story.

0 (9m 43s): So you went down that path and just started interviewing a bunch of people in that space, right?

1 (9m 49s): Yeah. I mean, that's why its a long slow process. Right. I just started interviewing people and its just one leads to the other and new ideas happen, new opportunities open. And,

0 (10m 1s): And is it, when do you plan on coming on with it? What is it?

1 (10m 4s): It shouldn't be a day in the late spring and the summer. So this maybe a year and we, you know, we kinda got a little slowed down by the lockdown. We're going to Africa. We're actually going to go back to our roots and film with some tribes in Africa, in January. So the border close and you know, we're waiting for, we're going to shoot with an amazing paleoanthropologists in the museum of a natural, what does it, the museum of science and natural history, the Smithsonian in Washington DC. So we're waiting for that to open and we just get some more things to fill, but

0 (10m 38s): Yeah, but maybe June. Okay. I'm excited. I'm excited for it to come out. Also another venture Nose the Tail which goes along the theme of ancestral eating. And this is actually products that I've been ordering. I've been ordering quite a bit of a firm, your company and a few other ones that, that have gone this route during the lockdown because I've been doing a lot of cooking for myself and my wife and I enjoy, I've always done that. I think that like that is the one good step. If everyone can just start cooking for themselves and know what goes in their food, you can make, you know, you can make some major strides in your health.

1 (11m 19s): I'm, I'm obsessed with cooking for myself and I've gone up and down over the years. But I think it's one of the biggest things you can do for your health and for your budget and for anything it's a great skill set to have. And yeah, Nose a Tail I, I always wanted to do it and I partner with a great ranch that just does everything well. Right. Sustainable agriculture, all the grass finished, everything we put Oregons in the meet part of the reason was that people don't eat a lot of organ meats. I don't need to do a lot. I didn't eat a lot of organ meats beforehand because it's a little weird unless you grew up with liver, it tastes weird. Right? So We so we put it in the ground beef and we have liver, heart, kidney, and spleen in it.

1 (12m 1s): So I, yeah, I mean, you don't have to buy from me if you have a local butcher or you have a local ranch that does, does processes are made and you can ask them to, you know, grind up some Oregons and I think it's, it's super nutritious and I, I don't really believe in supplements. I feel like these organ meats are natural supplements, right? This is how we lived. Right. And is always the ancestral approach. I always check in the ancestral approach with modern science. So I don't know if everyone listening, you know, you don't have to be completely bought into this. Oh, I'm gonna live like a caveman thing. Like that's not what I do. And I mean, that's not what the film is going to do. And some people do get caught up in that.

1 (12m 42s): Some people are just like paleo, like that's it, that's all it is. If it wasn't around the paleo day, I'm not going to eat it. And I think that's a good start. And if your eating a paleo diet, you're eating whole foods. Right. And you you're probably cooking for yourself a lot, but it doesn't mean that it's the end all be all right. We can talk about dairy and maybe it works for some people, maybe it doesn't, but it just because it wasn't around the paleolithic period, does it mean modern humans? Can't enjoy some raw dairy. You know, the raw part is, is a big story, right? It's like people think that they're lactose intolerant, but maybe it's just because they're eating pasteurized like skimmed milk and all this stuff.

1 (13m 24s): But if you Eat the natural version of it, it has the enzymes that allow people to digest it. Well. So there's, there's more stories there or even just fermenting it into cheese and then it removes a lot of the lactose and then its a nutritious food and it has great vitamins and minerals that you need. And again, you wouldn't have to supplement if you were eating all the right foods. Yeah,

0 (13m 48s): No, I agree with you. And the thing about like companies like yourself with Nose the Tail and some of the other companies with the Oregon meats and the blends, you can't even taste that, that they are in there. I mean, I can't, I can't, and I've tried both blends and ones that are just, you know, straight, you know, be for whatever. So I think you do a great job of making it accessible and easy for people to have a, those organ meats where maybe they might not want to have a liver. I don't even know how you, how do you prepare the liver?

1 (14m 19s): Well, there's some people, they put it in milk that actually, or a buttermilk and it helps sort of mellow out the flavor. But yeah, people want to try liver. I'd say you could just go to whole foods or whatever. You can get some decent liver and you can cook it in garlic and onions is another way. Yes. I'd say it like garlic are liver and onions is sort of a bit of a joke, right. But that used to be what is the sort of grandparents would eat and they understood that it was healthy and same thing with a Cod liver oil or a cottage. You know, these are these old antiquated things that they, the liver and onions. Like I think both my grandparents, both sets of grandparents ate liver and onions and use Cod liver oil and now, and I used to not get it at all or what, what is this bogus stuff they're talking about?

1 (15m 4s): But then I got into this world and realized, Oh no, yeah. Like Cod liver, these are a great source of Omega threes and DHA and this and that. And it, it all makes sense now

0 (15m 14s): Coming back full circle. Right? Yeah. Well what do, what would you say, like I'm curious like your routine on a daily basis, just trying to give people tips in an actionable advice, you know, like w what's your morning ritual and then how do you go about eating and things like that?

1 (15m 35s): Yeah. I love this because I'm sort of obsessive with this or I'm an engineer and I'm always trying to think of the most efficient way to do things and you know, always trial and error always advancing, you know, changing, open to a new information. So what I found is intermittent fasting, like you said, I think that's great. I don't even call it that you can call it a condensed eating window, but I don't even think we need to call it fast. And I think it's just normal is, is what, what, what humans, we didn't just eat 24 hours a day. We didn't, Eat all of our waking hours, like many people eat from when they wake up to go to sleep. So just by only eating within about eight hours, condensed eating window is what I do.

1 (16m 16s): And I think that's normal and I eat two meals. I think two meals a day is great. You can do whatever you want and there's different contexts. You know, if you want to put on weight, maybe you should be eating more meals per day. If you're in a growth period, if you're a pregnant woman, a growing child or a weightlifter, that's a, that's a growth, that's a growth period of your life. So there's different recommendations. People, most people need to lose weight or lose fat specifically. And there's completely different recommendations. And maybe it should be doing one meal a day. Even if you know, a lot of people have success doing OMAD one meal a day and whatever works for you, you know, there's all different ways to do it. But my, I settled on two meals a day and I also have this idea of the longevity diet of like how to eat for a longevity and the need to balance growth mode and longevity mode.

1 (17m 9s): So like I said, there is a growth phases and there is that you do want growth, right? People. So people are in the vegan world, the plant based world, their, their trying to say you, you should low, lower, like these, these growth signals as much as possible and tore on IGF one. Right? Yeah. And then you hear these guys going on big podcasts like David Sinclair, or there's another guy, what's his name? Valter, Longo. I don't know if he's been on a podcast, but then there are these sort of plant focused people that are really focused on lowering these growth signals like into the basement though. It's like, okay, I get it. You don't want to always be signaling to your body to grow. I mean, that's sort of more like cancer, right?

1 (17m 51s): The cancer cancerous cells grow uncontrollably, right? It's a little bit the same. You don't want unlimited growth, right? But we don't want no growth. We don't want to be frail. And sarcopenic as we age and Protein is super important for older people. And sarcopenia means you lose muscle mass as you age. And this happens a lot. This is a huge problem in modern world is the people there on these low Protein diets. There are scared of Protein there scared of animal fat. You, as you age, you can digest protein less efficiently. So they need even more protein and they're wasting away and then they fall and then they, you know, break a hip, then they'd go downhill.

1 (18m 36s): And then, then they'd die soon after write it, all of this compounding events that so you want to maintain muscle mass while sometimes is a super important, I'm not saying you need to be a bodybuilder so that you need to balance longevity mode and growth mode. So after talking to these 150 people listening to opposite opinions, listening to the Davidson, Claire, all these people kind of just put together this idea that you on a smaller eating window, give yourself some time to not eat, right? There's this idea of the tough a GE is your cells can clean up the clean themselves up when you're not eating. Right. Yeah. And my idea is, is to be during the day I'll eat at noon.

1 (19m 21s): I say, we'll just call it a noon. And this is the first time I eat. I'll have no calories before noon, but I'm not hungry before noon at all. Right. And it's about to be new. And right now I've not thought about food yet today. So I do have some black coffee, but I will eat a, basically a high fat meal, like moderate protein, low carb, like a keto meal. Right? So during the day I want to stay in ketosis. I've been fat adapted for years now. So I'm very good at running on fat. My body prefers fat as a fuel source. I did a pentathlon, right? A fi like a, a championship track meet with the, the North American and central American championships.

1 (20m 1s): Master's right. There is a knot that there was like a huge competition or anything. It's just a bunch of old people, but I did a championship meet. I flew to Toronto and I didn't even Eat before doing this, it started at noon. I didn't eat all day. And I just did it fat adapted. And everyone there was just guzzling, like little gels and the a, or a what's it called those little bars and stuff. And just like carbs, just like, and I just didn't even eat. And I beat out, I, the only one guy who beat me in the 1500, at least I came in second in my Asia, but I also came in second in the main group in the 15th. So I ran a mile without eating all day at probably 4:30 PM. Right. So that's just to illustrate that you don't need the carbs for athletics.

1 (20m 45s): You can be fat adapted, but your carbs are fine. I'm not saying they're bad, right. In certain circumstances or how you use them or all this stuff. So, okay. So this is the meandering sort of explanation of what I'm doing. So I'm fat adapted. I'm eating at noon. I don't want to eat too much protein at noon. I don't want to, How make my body. You go through gluconeogenesis to, you know, if I give too much protein, you can get these growth signals and maybe I don't want it. So I'm trying to get the balance. So I stay in ketosis. I stayed, my energy stays high. Right. You know, I'm not crashing a lot of people who eat carbs or especially processed carbs will crash at two or 3:00 PM.

0 (21m 30s): So when you have that high fat meal around noon, what are we looking at?

1 (21m 36s): I'll do maybe three eggs. And I do that kind of classic breakfast meats. I realized breakfast meats are breakfast foods for a reason. I think it is their high fat. They're like lower, you know, sausage and bacon and are very high, fat and lower in protein than most meats. So I'll do breakfast meats. I'll do three eggs. I'll do some sauerkraut. I'll do avocado of Azu. Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. I mean, that's, it's like a keto meal, but it's like a whole foods keto meal. Right. And then I, then I, I actually go on the sun and read, I think that's important. Then I go, then I finish my Workday and I work out say 6:00 PM. Okay. And I work out for about 15 minutes, only intense, brief, intense exercise.

1 (22m 19s): I do dips way to dips. Right. I got a weight vest. I'm doing 40 pounds weight best I'll do. I don't know. I think I can do 18 dips with the 40 pounds. Then I take it off and then I'll do like 15 more. Right. And then I, so I like this idea of going into failure

0 (22m 37s): And the it's because

1 (22m 39s): There's also this idea of a hit, right. And most people heard of hit that, you know, for sure. High intensity in a real high intensity interval training in sprinting, you know? So its like the, this is the idea that you can sprint, you can do intense exercise and it's a lot more efficient and it signals to your body to grow and it's to get stronger. So I do that at around six and then I'll eat a meal and I'll eat more protein and maybe some carbs with that. And maybe some, you know, I don't know some whole food carbs or maybe we'll just have some honey or something. I'm just exploring different things. And so then it, my, so I'm not in ketosis. I'm like I'm in growth mode now. Right? This is so I worked out, I told my body to get stronger, I'm eating adequate protein, you know, enough Protein meaning maybe a more Protein and I'm eating some carbs.

1 (23m 28s): I'm not afraid of carbs. Some people are in and, and you know, different animal based worlds, but, and then that's about it. And then yeah, just to get good sleep. Yeah. I'm always in bed for at least eight and a half hours. I'm giving myself the time. A lot of people don't even give their self the time to get good sleep,

0 (23m 44s): You know? Yeah. No, I, a lot of good stuff there. I mean I talked with Brad Kearns who was my first interview and he was with PR he was with primal and, and yeah, he talked about those micro workouts that he's been doing something that actually for me, cause I've been lifting for a long time and mainly like traditional I'm like in the gym over it, you know, like at least an hour. But I used to, as you get older and not even as they get older, you realize you don't really need to go crazy. You can get it a good efficient workout done. And actually something, I use it during the quarantine cause I did a lot of workouts outside and in my basement was, and I, you might've interviewed him what the X three was a Dr.

0 (24m 29s): Jones

1 (24m 29s): Kush. I haven't, I spoke to him briefly online once. I don't know. Yeah. I just sort of, yeah.

0 (24m 36s): Okay. But yeah, I've I have found that whether it's his system or whatever, resistance bands have been a lot easier on my joints. And so I've been using that and yeah, like, I mean my workouts are probably 45 minutes just because I'd rather just make them longer.

1 (24m 55s): Well, it's good. Yeah. It can get good gains. I'm not saying you're going to get insane gains by doing only 15 minutes and sometimes it'll take me 20 minutes, but I have this idea of if you, well, for one I'm, I'm experimenting, I'm trying to see how, how little I can do for a great results. And also I think most people don't have the time or they're not going to keep up with it if it's a full hour. So if you know that it's only 15 minutes. So my thing is the consistency of it is great. So I know I'm going to do it every day. I do it five days a week because it's short. I know it's going to be over soon, but I love, I mean, if I can work out for 45 minutes, I be bigger.

0 (25m 39s): Yeah. Per se, you know, one thing I noticed too, just doing home workouts with the resistant bands is like, there's no excuse like people making a soup all day. They want to go to the gym. You know, now, you know, with the Courtney and I'm like, I don't have any, like I used to maybe do three or four workouts a week and I have to do a pretty much every day because like, is it,

1 (25m 58s): Well, you can't say time. You can't say time. I yeah. People try to tell me they don't have time. I was like, they're 24 hours a day. If you don't, if you can't get some resistant bands and do something for 12 minutes in your own home, like while you're cooking dinner, I actually do it while I'm cooking dinner. Like I'll start some, some onions or something going on or whatever it start in the oven and work out. It's it's not an excuse.

0 (26m 25s): No, I agree. And, and I was curious when you did your workouts, you did about six. Like for me, I do my workouts. I've been, I've been experimenting a little bit when I would like to do the workout. And I usually do mine in a fasted state. I'll do it maybe around like 1231 and then it's almost like a reward and then I'll break my fast after that. Yeah. And I've been condensing my window a little bit and just seeing how it is. And it's just amazing the body, like you said, like, you know, the, body's just an amazing thing. It it'll like, you know, you ran, you know, you did that race with nothing in you. I think once you get into fasting or if you don't want to call it a fast as condensing your, your eating window, you start to realize that your, your body will just adjust and it doesn't have to run on glucose all the time.

0 (27m 15s): And like I'm in a fast, as they run out, it's 2:00 PM and I'm probably going to go, you know, you start to be in tuned with your hunger, like what is true hunger, you know, just an amazing thing. So

1 (27m 27s): You don't know, it's great. Most people don't understand it. Or even if there is a slight, like they could just think about food or you could just smell food and then you think you're hungry, but you're not really a hungry. And then if people who do this intermittent fasting, like, yeah, you mean to you, you are about price is going to say, you might not even eat for a couple more hours because you'll wait until you actually feel hungry. And that's what very few people do in the world.

0 (27m 51s): Right then. And then you'd be like, you touched on balancing out like anabolic and catabolic stages growing and the opposite. And I'm like, for example, today, my thought was, I'm not going to do a workout. I'm just going to fast all day and I'm going to be in less of a growth mode. And then other days when I'm more active and do a hard workout, then I'll consume more calories and being more of a growth stage.

1 (28m 17s): I love that. And yeah. I mean guys like Marxists and have been talking about that kind of thing for years, it's variable. It's change it up. Listen to your body. You yeah. It, he calls it a fractal too. Like, you know, it's all the different sizes and shapes and if you go exactly right, you're, you're, you're going to do some days where it's fasting and longevity mode some days where its growth on it.

0 (28m 43s): Right? Yeah. No. So I've been messing around with that. I'm curious, you talk about carbs. I know that like some people demonize them and I agree I'm I'm, I'm not, I do have carbs from time to time and avocados is actually one of my favorites. What other carbs do you like to add?

1 (29m 0s): Yeah, I like avocado mushrooms. Okay. Fermented foods. So I mentioned sauerkraut. I think fermented foods are great because you get some kind of probiotic thing. It was something we've been traditionally doing for thousands and thousands of years. And it gets rid of anti-nutrients in plants. A lot of people don't understand that there are bad things in plans. And I kind of went down this, I got kind of caught up in the kale shakes, spinach smoothie type of world. And I had way too many oxalates f

or way too long. And so I'm sort of off of the green vegetable Trane for a while. And I've been doing great, right. As people that are, Oh my God.

1 (29m 41s): Have to get your greens. Like, I don't know about that. I I haven't had a green in a year and I'm feeling better than ever. I mean, I'm sure I haven't had a few greens. I, I got some cilantro, a little, you know, every now and then, but now you don't, you don't need, Oh, I don't want to say you don't need it, but it was a challenging this idea that you need the certain things like greens, but fermented vegetables we'll get out those anti-nutrients right. The act of fermenting le

ts the bacteria kind of eat away and it actually gets a lot of the sugar out to so you're, you're left with something that I think it tastes amazing. And doesn't even give you that many calories. 1 (30m 21s): If you want to talk about calories. I mean, I'm, animal-based 90% by calories, but I could have a huge scoop of sauerkraut and its like 20 calories, you know, it's nothing really there, but it's just giving me some probiotics and it's giving me some vitamin seed people that maybe not know that vitamin CS and in sauerkraut and fermented foods and it's given me some flavor, it's going to be all kinds of stuff. So, so yeah, I really only eat avocado fermented foods, but that could be pickles. It could be jalapeno. It was like any kind of just some, you know, fermented or just even lacto-fermented which has been salty. Right. Its not traditionally, 0 (30m 56s): Do you ferment your own vegetables?

1 (30m 59s): I've tried. I'm going to try again. I kind of screwed it up and then I've been a little wary of starting again. But yeah. I want to do that and then onions. I do onions too. I love to saute onions. I mean, if you're gonna eat a steak, just sauteed onions. It's so good. Really? It has some like a prebiotic. I mean it has some, you know, good, good stuff in it too.

0 (31m 22s): Yeah. Onions. That that's what that was like the main meal. I was like mainly sometimes I do fish from time to time. So I'll do we'll grill like salmon wild salmon or, or grass fed grass, finished meat and then saute onions and mushrooms that I was like the go-to meal for the quarantine.

1 (31m 43s): It's so good. I mean, I don't understand how people aren't on this train. It is. So every one I make it for. They're just like, this is a mess.

0 (31m 52s): Yeah. And I, you know, I actually went out to one restaurant, honestly it probably maybe to two restaurants through the whole like quarantine and one was like a major steakhouse. But you know, you go to these places, then you Eat there. You're like, how do you know what it is? Just not that good. I w I would, I would prepare that ribeye a lot better than that, you know, seventy-five dollars steak house.

1 (32m 12s): I always say that and think that, and yes, a a hundred percent,

0 (32m 21s): My other question is what I wanted to touch on his, the SAPIEN lifestyle. I know I'm I was on, I was on your site a bit. It looks like you have like different courses and things like that for people to go through and learn about it.

1 (32m 33s): Yeah. So I have Dr. Gary is my business partner and we developed a program and we have all kinds of stuff. I mean, you just got to save in that org, but the idea is putting all these things together and just kind of teaching people how to do it, and maybe they can do it on their own. Again, you, you don't have to use our products or services. It's. I mean, I, I've never really worried about trying to make a lot of money doing a documentary is the opposite way to make money by the way, how to lose money. But yeah, I think there's a simple Principles I'll just tell you what, what, what was the safety and Principles are Eat?

1 (33m 13s): Well, the, the Diet part is just eat real food. That's number one, if you're eating whole foods, your there and focus on number two is focused on protein and micronutrients. So the Protein the micronutrients are your building blocks, right? This is what matters. Like every meal should be focused on your whole complete protein source, which is very, very heavily animal based. Well, it would have the complete sources of Protein and fishes. Absolutely great. I'm interviewing a lot of people recently on how important seafood was to early humans. And this whole idea of this is how we drove our brain growth and how it mushrooms sort of a hockey stick growth of our brain over that period of time was due to seafood.

1 (33m 57s):

So folks that had a lot of protein, a lot of micronutrients complete Protein that's number two, number three is your energy source is, is embraced fat minimize carbs, right? So just know the food is for things, its the protein micronutrients, right? Which is what you focus on. And then it's just fat and carbs, which are the energy sources. And basically everything we've been talking about today is that fat is just a better energy source. So embrace fat know that it's not bad for you. And minimize car's is not saying have any carbs. And the last one is just don't Eat all the time. It's just the idea of a condensed eating window. So if you do those four things, your kind of set and he also can kinda make your own Diet.

1 (34m 38s): I mean, if you're a vegetarian, I guess you can do it following those Principles you'd just be eating a ton of eggs.

0 (34m 47s): Right? I was down that road a bit. I wasn't like full veget

arian, but I did have a problem getting enough protein. I found it had finished from time to time and I was really active and I actually didn't get into Eating grass fed, you know, responsibly sourced meat until like probably like the beginning of this year, probably like March. And I just saw a difference in the way I felt into the way my body looked. I almost, when I wasn't, I I just, before that I thought I, I just felt like I was just like underweight a little bit. So I got stronger. My workouts were better.

0 (35m 27s): So I, I definitely found a difference in the way I felt

1 (35m 31s): Well there's a lot of things in red meat. So the problem is the mainstream media or just mainstream demonizes red meat. And that's one of the big focuses of the Food Lies film is showing that all of these ideas aren't really founded on good science at all. And that it's mostly just propaganda from anti meat, people that, and even the WHL that, you know, this is the big governmental body, well its not even a government. So behind it, it's actually just as an organization that has sort of an agenda really. And part of their agenda is to disparage red meat and they put together a working group in 2015, I interviewed one of the scientists had to get special permission to interview this guy who was just a USDA scientist.

1 (36m 16s): And he said that they had an agenda that these people was a bunch of vegans and vegetarians and they, they purposely didn't part of the in group is to bring studies to the table. And then we're like, okay, let's look at all of the studies. Then we'll make a decision. They ignored his studies. They wouldn't use them. He was like red meat. It is not bad. And this is insane. We'd been eating red meat forever. And he's just sort of this in the middle of the road, random middle-aged guy that thinks we should eat a very balanced diet and is not even in anywhere near in the meat community, but he just no science. And he knows that meat is good for you and just kind of call them out for being really biased and that they came to this conclusion in a really unfair way.

1 (37m 4s): And now every one sort of quote Nose that meat causes cancer, a process to be, you know, this and this is all based on this one working group from 2015 from basically a bias little working group. That so basically what that is just one little, Oh I could, Oh, okay. We'll talk about the core. I'll do one more thing. So when we use epidemia, so I'd only used epidemiology to show this right? So for people who don't know that's correlations, right? You cannot, by definition, you cannot use these epidemiological studies, which are correlations to show causation, right? To show causation, you need randomized controlled trials and stuff like that. And so for smoking, we did a epidemiology and the, we saw that there was 30 to 40 times the amount of cancers and people that smoked.

1 (37m 55s): Right? And so there are like, okay, this is obvious. Then we did some more studies. And then of course we realized that smoking causes cancer and with meat, there was a 1.8 X increase in the suppose that cancer, right? So 30 to 40 times with smoking, it was 1.8. So that was a, a, a ratio of the risk ratio is 0.18. So that, so really if that is so small that it's statistically insignificant. So it really in science, you're supposed to ignore the study. If there is a correlation is less than to you it's it could be due to noise. So you can't really, it doesn't anything less than two.

1 (38m 37s): So it was, this was a point, this is 1.8, right? Point one eight means 1.8%. So it, and we never had any controlled studies that showed that red meat causes cancer. So really there's no reason we should think this and it doesn't make any sense. So that was basically a long way of saying is Eat red meat. It's good for you. It has tons of B vitamins and tons of things that you can't get elsewhere. And that's probably why you felt better in your body responded. Yeah. Carnosine creatine. There's a way where B12 Coleen all the CS, the C words just,

0 (39m 17s): Yeah, it is the bioavailability of the Protein as well. Right?

1 (39m 21s): Absolutely. So vegans will say, well, you could get Protein from broccoli or beans or this, it is not even close. I mean, I don't have all the numbers. I don't remember the exact numbers, but just know it's, it's way more bioavailable. Your, your body can actually use the protein in meat and yeah, it's just plant sources of protein are not complete and they're not bioavailable. Right? It does it not, they don't have all the amino acids. You have to combine foods to try to get them. And they are not bio available to us and their fallback foods. This is another concept that I've sort of understood. Once I started looking back into history is that plant foods are just around when we couldn't get an animal.

0 (40m 2s): Right. The fruit fruit as well.

1 (40m 4s): Yeah, fruit's fine too. I mean the fruits of least toxic a plant Food right. It doesn't have a ton of antinutrients in our monitor. It has a lot of sugar. And so maybe people shouldn't eat too much of it. Cause most people are sort of metabolically damaged and the first place. Right. But yeah, fruits, fruit, we had fruit and we had meat that was sort of our basic animal foods. And then we got some fruits when we could, but it also wasn't near round. Right. It was when they were in season. Right.

0 (40m 30s): Eating seasonally. Right. That's a good one. And then, you know, I know you touched on, I'm sure you touch on it a lot in Food Lies is a, just the environmental factor in to speak on that a little bit. Cause I think there's some misconceptions, you know, regarding meat.

1 (40m 51s): That's a big one. Yeah. We've hit the nutritional one a lot. We can hit the ethical side to usually vegans have the three arguments, but the environmental environmental side is that it takes up way too much land that it takes up too much water and that we should just be feeding plants directly to people. So that's all false. It actually is really efficient. So it takes, so cows for cows are the best example. I'm actually not a huge fan of chicken or pork because it's not particularly the nutritious fish and beef are more nutritious, more vitamins, stuff like that. And it's also the they're not really raised well, you know, most chicken and pork is kind of really factory farms and the way of, in a sense that there like in a giant rooms and a half,

0 (41m 39s): Yeah, it probably, you can find it. You could find better quality, but I know you guys have it a little bit, but

1 (41m 47s): To do some good stuff, that's actually a high, it was gonna say that the proof was so the mega six, a mega three ratios of the high level view is we don't want high Omega six in a Diet. We want to balance it with a mega three. So most people know the mega three's are good, but most people don't know how bad Omega six is our and that all these process, fruit foods, all this seed oils, especially have huge amounts of mega six that we've never seen in our diet and we don't want. And so even with the animals of the animals, most, like I said, most chicken and pork, they're eating these grains and high Omega six foods and in that goes in to their fat. And so when you eat them, your eating a high Omega six meat, right?

1 (42m 29s): So grass fed meat is very balanced with the mega threes or mega six. And yeah, we do some chicken and pork that's high Omega three low six, but just know that it's not really raised well. And yeah, it does take a lot of resources to relatively speaking, I guess, you know, if we want to go down this rabbit hole of using resources, I mean most plant foods to have tons of resources involved, especially if your shipping them around the world, especially if you're using monocropping methods and tons of synthetic inputs and fertilizers and this and that. And all foods have inputs, but chicken and pork, they do have quite a bit of inputs, but cattle are ruminants sheep, bison, Buffalo.

1 (43m 9s): They don't actually require that many inputs. They Eat, they actually are miracle workers. I say they take low quality foods that humans can't eat and turn them into highly nutritious bioavailable protein. So at the thing with chicken and pork is, is because their motto gastric stomachs are their digestive systems more similar to ours. They need more higher quality foods and more proteins, right? A pig eats kind of the same that as a human, but a cow eats a bunch of grass, right? So that's why we should be eating more beef and sheep, you know, based in Buffalo because they take grass and all of, all of these rumen and spend most of the life on pasture anyway, especially, you know, Buffalo, bison, sheep, sheep, they're there are traditionally just on grass, their whole life really, but you know, cows.

1 (43m 58s): Yes. I understand we have a CAFO system combined confined animal feeding operations, and yes, most cows are put in these, but they're not so bad, but at least two thirds of their life are spent on grass. And then when they are in these confined operations, they do get leftover grains and, or a corn stocks and all of this other stuff from a leftovers, right. It's actually a really efficient system where we make ethanol. We make biofuels out of corn and we give the cows the leftover. So it's pretty efficient and it's not edible. It's the people think are the vegans will have you believe that there's just these rows and rows of corn fields.

1 (44m 42s): And it just goes to cows and it actually doesn't work like that. We use the, the corn for, for something like ethanol and then give the cows a leftover same thing with distillers use for make a bunch of beers. And then we'd give the cows a leftover. So they aren't competing with us for Food really right. Read me the one that's most demonized is the least competitive too, from the food perspective to humans. We so also we can't just give people these low quality foods, like they're not going to do well, but are there, are there ideas I'll just give to the corn Wayne sort of humans

0 (45m 15s): Is not a good Diet know that's how you get it hands.

1 (45m 18s): It's a very low quality of Diet. So, I mean, we can go on forever about all the, the problems with these vegan ideas were the count, the rainwater that falls on fields into the calculations. Yeah. Right there. Like they all minds require way more avocados, even require way more water than a cow with just getting grass in getting rain. There's a study that shows that the amount of protein that a cow eats over its life. We they double, when you look at the usability of that, Protein they take low quality protein and turned it into a high quality protein by a factor of two.

1 (45m 59s): Right? So, so that kind of debunks, this whole argument of, we could just eat the food ourself. Well, humans need Protein. That's what I said. The one number, one thing we need to focus on is Protein this is a building block of our bodies. And if we were eating this low quality plant source protein, we're not gonna do as well. And cows double, they, they upcycle the Protein. Right. They, they turned it into more usable.

0 (46m 23s): The Protein right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a rabbit hole. We can probably go down to one another. There's so much to it. Yeah. A couple more questions I just had for you. What about like a cheat Food if you're going to have, you know yeah. If you're going to splurge.

1 (46m 47s): So I have this idea that I want to be antifragile. I want to participate with society. I want to push the limits. I'm still, I'm doing fine. So a lot of people in the Nutrition world, especially the carnivores space, they have severe problems and they have to eat a certain way. And then they'd go really hardcore into this rabbit hole and be like, everyone has to be carnival here. And if you eat any vegetable food, you're insane. Talk about Paul. He's a friend of mine, so I'll call him out. But he, but he has eczema. He talks about all the time. And if he does eat other foods, he does have problems. But I think it w we can't get too caught up and being crazy and that I can eat a piece of, with a bunch of friends on a weekend.

1 (47m 31s): And I will actually be fine because my body can your mind about a metabolically flexible. I don't, but I wouldn't eat that every day. I mean, when I was eating stuff like that, every day I had chronic problems. I think there's a, there's an idea of this chronic versus acute. So if you eat a piece of pizza, okay. I don't think humans do well with grains, right? There's this idea of gluten people know about gluten, but I think that most people do have problems with gluten. What they know are not right. So when I was Eating, I never had any gluten tolerance. I was always fine. You know, whatever I'd live my life completely fine. But when I was eating grains, just once a day, I was chronically inflamed. I had chronic overuse injuries, all this type of stuff.

1 (48m 12s): I had allergies at all of these little things going on when I just cut it down to, Hey, maybe I'll have some pizza once in awhile. And maybe I'll, you know, whatever, once or once a week, something happens, it happens, right. Everything went away because it's that it's acute versus chronic. If you have it every single day, your life it's bad, the human body is pretty resilient and you can have them. So I don't want to tell her what to go cheat every weekend. And you know, if you're trying to lose fat, it's, it's, you're just slowing your progress. Or it could be flaring up some other things if you have certain conditions. But I would say I'm okay personally with the cheating, but really, I would say you could do some things like dark chocolate, honey, you could get some like Quito ice cream.

1 (48m 54s): I don't know, you know, there's ways to do it.

0 (48m 56s): Well, the thing about it is like, you know, if you get into this lifestyle of, you know, eating clean, like we're talking whole foods and nutrient dense foods and doing fasting and this and that. And then I almost feel like, at least for me, like I'll cheat from time to time. But like, you know, like if I went and had like a deep dish pizza, I'd be feeling it. You know, you feel it when you're having a deep dish pizza every other day, your body you're just like, you don't even know the difference. You're not that aware of it. Yeah. So for me, I don't even want a cheat. I do this from time to time, but I, but, but you just, you know, you're going to get right back on the bandwagon and lead a healthy lifestyle.

0 (49m 37s): So it's not a big deal. So I always tell people if they're getting into it, if they are just getting into this type of lifestyle, maybe save those cheat days. Cause you don't want to go down that hole again, you know, go a month or two or three of, you know, Eating pretty clean whole foods and nutrients that dense foods to, in some fasting, you know, obviously doing some, being active. And then once you get into that and once it becomes a habit, then you know, if, if you cheat from time to time, it's no big deal.

1 (50m 4s): I a hundred percent agree. And it also depends on the personality. It's like, I know I'm going to jump back on. Right. But many people don't do that right away. And yeah, a hundred percent He, I mean, I went a long periods to get really fat adapted and I guess I did choose a little, but still you want to set yourself up to become metabolically flexible. And then yeah. Maybe if you figure it all out, then you, you will be able to, but right. Yeah. You're right,

0 (50m 32s): Right. Yeah. And something that I was, I know, I see a lot on CGMs. We won't go and down and talk too much, but those are, you know, continuous glucose monitors. I actually have one on me right now. And it just, I wanted to see, I think that the more you're in the Health game, it's like, how can, I Optimize know what you're doing, you know, your, your health, but I will say the best way to optimize and feel great is just to follow your own intuition on your own and in your own senses. Cause like, I think a CGM is great, but I could also feel it too in my body. And like what foods, how that was a main thing. How how different foods react and my, how does my blood sugars and insulin levels and how they spike and things like that.

0 (51m 18s): But it isn't, it is good to get feedback. I think that's important, especially if you're trying to Optimize, you know,

1 (51m 23s): I like that. Yeah. I used one for a little bit. I'm actually supposed to try and get another one soon, but if it does help to get you going in the beginning, it's the same thing. Like I just posted today about not having to count calories if your Eat the correct foods. Right. And, and I th but then I completely understand and appreciate people in the beginning of their journey wanting to count calories because they have to understand Food you want to quantify things and know like, Oh, this is what a steak is, or this is what an egg is so that, you know, so yeah, I think that that's important is to do a test with all of these types of things, CGM do a test, you get to know a lot, and then you don't have to do it for the rest of your life. You, you just know and you understand, and then yeah, you are more in tune with your body.

1 (52m 4s): So then you can see it like, Oh wow. I ate this, my blood sugar skyrocketed, then it crashed and I was tired. And then that you kind of put some data too, your feelings and then, you know, to not do that again.

0 (52m 16s): Right. It's like, yeah, no, it, it, it is, it is, it is a good thing that it never hurts. And like, I know what people were like, aura rings and things like that. And I try not to get too caught up in all the tech, tech rage with the bio-hackers, but, but I think most importantly, just follow, follow your body and follow how you feel. I mean, as far as fasting is concerned and condensing your time, your eating window, you are going to have hunger. You are going to have hunger pains, especially when, if you first start out, try doing it. And once you realize that those hunger waves just come and go, and that is really not a big deal. And maybe even just having some sparkling water can actually just help that subside and just keep going.

0 (52m 60s): It takes time though, like you said, for all this stuff, it takes time to get into that rhythm and to, and to be fat adapted. So

1 (53m 7s): Yeah, that's a good point is to get used to it. It's, it's hard. Yeah. It's hard for people in the beginning and yes, you probably will be a little hungry and maybe you just do it gradually are pushed your with your eating window back just half an hour or one hour each day. And pretty soon just know that the body's super Dashville is super interesting how adaptable it is. And there's all kinds of transition periods. People go through, even with fiber or removing fiber or people have problems if they go carnivore. And the all of a sudden Joe Rogan famously, he was saying he had like diarrhea for like a couple of weeks or something, but your body goes for an adjustment. And its pretty amazing. And I liked to tell people too, is this way of eating.

1 (53m 50s): It is so delicious and amazing, but maybe its just not the same way you eat currently. And you think your way of eating junk food and eating pizza is delicious and amazing, but I'm telling you, this is also delicious and amazing and you just need to go through that transition period to get here. And then once you're here, you're fine. It's not like we're sitting here eating steak and eggs and bacon and whatever else and thinking we're restricted. Right? It's delicious. It's great. You just have to go through that process of transition.

0 (54m 19s): Yeah, no I agree. And, and be patient. I mean I'm forever, you know, if, if you know, for a lot of the clients, I have it, it might've taken them decades to get where they are, meaning maybe they're obese. So it's going to take time to get to go the other way and you have to be patient with any of this. And I had one, one question I wanted to add one last question I wanted to ask you and you've probably touched on it already, but what would it be like one tip you'd give an individual if they're, you know, maybe in their, their middle age and they want to get their bodies back to what the, what it once was when there were in their twenties, what would it be?

0 (54m 60s): One tip you'd give them.

1 (55m 2s): Hmm. Well I always just say Eat densely move intensely. So this is my little forward thing that's supposed to replace eat less, move more. Right. And I think eat less. Move more is so stupid. I mean it's meaningless. It's it's like telling someone how to, how to get rich is just spend less money than they make. Right. All right. Well that's pointless. So if you Eat densely move intensely, it's what we're saying is eat nutrient dense foods and do this more intense exercise is not saying you can't go for a walk or go for a job as well. But really I guess on an even more specific point, I'd say on, on a good way to Eat dance and move tensely is just focused on Protein said that it's a one thing.

1 (55m 44s): If you're a middle middle-aged any time in your life, if you just take what you're eating and replace some of the empty carbs or empty nutrients, which is usually carbs and replace that with more Protein you will do better. One thing that people take that away. So go order maybe a little more of a friend, if you're going to go out to eat or maybe its just, you can buy your own food and it will be cheaper. It won't be as expensive, but just get double the protein and cut out the car and it will change your life.

0 (56m 18s): Yeah. I love that. And that's it simple, actionable tip that its easy to do. It's easy not to, but you know, like, you know, get into that rhythm of doing it and then the results will come so well, I, I appreciate Brian I'm glad to have you on here and I look forward to all of the things you have going on, especially Food Lies when it's coming out. What w what would be a good place for people to find you?

1 (56m 43s): Yeah, I'm on all this social media outlets at Food Lies or just search for Food Lies and then safety net org. You can find everything from safety net, Oregon leaks out to everything.

0 (56m 52s): Okay. Perfect. Awesome. Well, thanks again. And yeah, I appreciate it.

1 (56m 60s): Absolutely. I appreciate you letting me spread the good.

0 (57m 3s): Yeah, we got to keep spreading it. So thanks again. Brian okay. Take care. Thanks for listening to the Get Lean Eat Clean podcasts. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there, and you've chosen to listen to mind. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes at Brian Gryn dot com. Everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member has looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.

Brian Sanders

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