Brian (0s):
Coming up on the Get lean e Klean podcast
Colin (4s):
People, if all they did was scratch, make their food at home. If that's all they did, they could eat anything they wanted. Like if you made right a from scratch cake, chocolate cake with like real butter and lard and sugar and all the different things that go into it in like heirloom organic grains, like you would probably not want to make it very often cuz it's so time consuming, which would be good. It's kinda like a mechanism to prevent you from doing it. But if you ate that and that was part of your regular diet, you would, you could still be healthy person, right? It, it's amazing what, what food at home from raw corn ingredients that haven't been authored and haven't been packaged in like a restaurant or, or packaged from big food companies. It's amazing the difference.
Colin (44s):
And again, the first principle, if you just simply ate at home, you're good. Everything that's outside of your house, that's how people just think about this. Every single thing that is outside of my house that I didn't like bring from my house. Like I didn't prep food. Every single thing that I eat is, is going to be a health cost. And everything that I have in the house, if I'm optimizing or paying even close attention is usually gonna be a health promoter.
Brian (1m 6s):
Hello and welcome to the Get Lean ean podcast. I'm Brian Grn and I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once 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 you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed c e O of Wild Foods, Colin Stucker. This was the third time Colin's been on my podcast and I love having him out as a guest because he has many sound principles that can help you live optimally. This time around we discussed ways to optimize gut health reasons you might be feeling bloated, Colin's healing gut protocol, raising healthy kids along with the importance of community for mental health.
Brian (1m 52s):
This was a great interview with Colin. I know you'll enjoy it. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right, welcome to the Get Lean e Clean podcast and happy 2023 with my first guest. Colin Stucker, welcome to the show.
Colin (2m 8s):
Thanks for having me back.
Brian (2m 10s):
Yeah, thanks for coming back on. I think it's the third time Colin is the c e o of Wild Foods. A lot of great products on there, so definitely check that out. I'll put a link in the show notes and yeah, happy to have Colin on back on. We're gonna discuss all about gut health and Collin maybe tell, tell the audience a little bit about your background and how you started wild foods.
Colin (2m 34s):
Yeah, that's a long winding journey of just pursuing my own obsessions from, you know, starting CrossFit gym, getting heavily into fitness and then from fitness, getting into nutrition. I did this certification with Rob Wolf back in the day when he was with CrossFit and that got me into the paleo diet and then Paleo Primal, mark Sisson, Bulletproof Coffee. You know, it's like all these different people and brands and ideas have kind of converged over the years to now I feel like I have a pretty solid grasp of the basics of human nutrition and that's where I like spend most of my focus is just one of those core basics and it's, it's real food cooked at home and you know, like don't eat mass model crop processed food.
Colin (3m 14s):
Like that's it. If people just did that, they'd be, you know, it'd be 99% of their health journey right there.
Brian (3m 20s):
Yeah, it's interesting how like, I don't know about you, but like how things evolve, how your viewpoint evolves as you go through life and you know, obviously talking about gut health so important. I think there's something that still gets overlooked quite a bit. I find like, yeah, my, for myself I'm always like trying to, if if for some reason I get bloating or something, I'm like, well what did I eat? You know, like yeah, what is, what is affecting me in this way? Because, I don't know, I just think it's good first and foremost to be self-aware of what you know, what you're eating and then how it's affecting you.
Colin (3m 56s):
Yes, food is gonna be the primary thing obviously. And I was actually talking with Alison the other day about this. It's interesting how we think about environmental toxins and we have like toxins in our water, toxics, fume perfumes and things in a new car. Like all the stuff in our environment that around us and you know, even just like fluoride and water, things like that. And then you think about food and it's like that's the one thing, aside from alcohol and like pharmaceuticals of course that you actually put into your body, whereas everything else kinda like hits your skin first and then your epidermis is the first layer of defense. You know, it's like actually the biggest organ in your body's supposed to detox and protect you, whereas that stuff just goes right in your mouth, goes right to your gut and it's like it's Rex havoc or maybe supports you, you know, and it, and it's the single most important thing and it just, you're right, it doesn't get enough attention.
Colin (4m 48s):
I think we still don't know a whole lot about it. Like there's a lot of research around, you know, microbiome and things like that. A lot of promising stuff's coming out. You know, fecal transplants, there's all these cool things going on and you know, the, the prescription that most people look to is like, oh I'll take a prebiotic or probiotic. You know, it's like I'll, I'll just do that. I'll be good. But it's like it goes so much deeper than that and we can talk about that today. Some things that I learned through this journey, trying to solve it for myself cuz I was finding connection between like allergies I'm dealing with right now. Maybe you can hear and gut health, like when my gut health is stronger, my allergies are less, like my back pain is less. Everything and my body related to my gut. When my gut is better, my inflammation is lower, everything's better. When it's worse, everything's worse. So I put a big focus on that in the past few months and made some pretty massive improvements actually.
Brian (5m 33s):
Yeah, let's definitely dive into that. You know, you keep hearing the carnivore diet come up and you know, I always say it's like almost like could be the ultimate elimination diet where you know, you're just eating these protein, you know, lean protein or, and eliminating a lot of the gut stressors that could be causing wreaking havoc. Yep. Would you say, what would you say some first steps for individuals who are looking to sort of get gut, gut sort of improve their gut health and get some relief?
Colin (6m 3s):
Yeah, carnivores great. It's, it's hard to know whether the benefits of carnivore are more because you've removed something that's poisonous to your body or because you're like steak so nutritious. I think it's a combination of both because steak is pretty much the perfect food. But if you are struggling from an autoimmune issue, for example, like I do, I have certain genetic precursors for constantly high elevated, you know, inflammatory state, which my body like the immune response hits hard and then, and it just like throws the rest of my body outta whack. So I get like fatigue and things like that sensitive to things like cedar and certain allergies that are in the, in, in Texas right now I'm dealing with right now.
Colin (6m 44s):
And it like when you have grains and legumes and even certain plant foods, right? These can trigger a response cuz your body looks at it as an invader and it's like, okay this isn't belong here. I need to go into a hyper proinflammatory state. We need to kill this thing. And that when you have chronic chronically elevated inflammation, cause inflammation is a good thing, it helps your body repair. It's absolutely necessary just like insulin and cortisol or hormones that you absolutely need to survive. They're imperative to health. But the problem is when they're elevated or under or lower what, whatever that word is, like you know, hyper or hyper hyper hypo, hypo when that's when you have issues cuz your body's supposed to have a homeostatic state, you have the right dose of everything and when you have too much of something, you have poison.
Colin (7m 26s):
If you don't have, if you have not enough of it, then you have your whole body shuts down because it's not functioning properly. Right. So carnivores great because it eliminates so many of those things that would be a stressor on the gut. But most people, I mean it's like they don't dialed in enough where they try like one food for 30 days. Like let's say you go carnivore and you want to like experiment with whether it's bread or it's legumes or it's like dairy. You would want to only eat literally one of those things for a certain period of time and then test. And that's just a hard thing to do. Everybody wants a quick fix, they want a pill, they want whatever. But a lot of times the improvement comes from removing and that's a big theme to gut health that we can talk about today.
Brian (8m 2s):
Yeah. And I think that's also why people have success doing some fasting from time to time. Hundred
Colin (8m 7s):
Percent.
Brian (8m 8s):
Yep. You know, same idea. Yep. So yeah, what what, what would you say like would be one of the main problematic individ things that could harm individuals? I mean you have environmental, you have food, you know, I know in in you recently did just a, a nice video about gut health where you talked about leaky gut. What would you say the number one thing that could cause something like leaky gut that individuals might have?
Colin (8m 37s):
Yeah, so I'm gonna start with the thing that I first uncovered about gut health that I've not really heard from anybody ever. And this is this guy Primal Thrive who I cited his ebook, I bought it, I created a course, I basically did my video based on that cuz it was like so profound and I keep referring people to try to buy his stuff and we even sell it on the website cuz it's that good. But his, the core idea is that the number one problem with gut health, if you had to boil down to one thing is low stomach acid. Okay? When you eat more animal proteins and more protein in general, but generally more animal proteins, your stomach acid goes up. Humans have the same acidity as vultures because our ancestors would've eaten a lot of either lots of meat period.
Colin (9m 21s):
So it helps break it down but also potentially rotting meat cuz we were also scavengers early on in evolutionary past. So that's very interesting. And so it's this idea that like alkaline diet or whatever, like even alkaline water, right? I'm like I'll never touch again because it's literally lowering my gut acid and if I have gut health issue it's probably because I don't have enough gut acid so I'm not touching that stuff, you know? So like that's the first thing gut acid goes up because that improves digestibility, gut permeability, all these other things and it makes it so you're more bulletproof against potential leaky gut. Like if you think about it, if you're throwing toxins in your gut, like let's say it's lectins or it's grains or it's gluten, it's going to your gut and you have high stomach acid, it's just like burning it up. It's like lemme just sap that digested, get it through as fast as possible.
Colin (10m 3s):
If you have low stomach acid, that stuff can kind of sit around cause inflammation. It's like something that's not passing through and every single day that that's sitting in your gut, your body's like inflammatory response. Inflammatory response, I need to get it out. Right? That's a very simplistic view of like how this stuff works. But there's a, that's basically how it works actually. So it's like high stomach acid and then we talk about like ways to do that and then just simply not putting the toxins in your body, especially if you're even remotely sensitive to it. Which is what we've realized most humans probably are not gonna do well with grains. They're not gonna do with like really hardcore greens that have a lot of flax. What is it? A lot of antinutrients, lot of the other things like spinach, like if you eat raw spinach, a pound of it could kill you.
Colin (10m 44s):
Like stuff like that. Those things are going to always be a stressor in the body because they're plant plant defense mechanisms that we're used to to, to thwart predators. Makes sense. Poison, right? It's just low dose poison. So for us humans we think, oh well we'll just have some gas and we'll get over it. But the reality is like over a long period of time that can actually create like leaky gut and then all the autoimmune responses and res as a result of that.
Brian (11m 8s):
Yeah. You know it's interesting, I, I talk a lot with Brad Kerns and he's got a great podcast in itself and he used to have like this big kale shake every morning. Yeah. And he, I think he realized long ago that, that this was causing harm more good than harm.
Colin (11m 24s):
He felt it. I'm sure he started feeling. I bet.
Brian (11m 26s):
Yeah. Oh yeah. And, and I think it's all dose-dependent. You know, if you have it once a month, you know, not gonna be so bad. It probably depends on the individual too. Certain people can probably handle these sort of maybe if you want to call 'em gut stressors or things that might be a little bit harder to digest and right. Than other people. So everyone's a little bit di what are some of the things that have affected you and that you sort of realized in your journey?
Colin (11m 50s):
Well my, my list of foods that I've known muscle supposed to eat and my, you know, my adherence to is always oscillating between better and worse. Right? It, it's, it's grains, it's breads. But I've even noticed when I was doing, we had sourdough at home comparing that to eating just like grains at a restaurant or bread at a restaurant or anything like that. The response is night and day. It's insane. And I was actually talking about this recently with somebody. I was like, people if all they did was scratch make their food at home, if that's all they did, they could eat anything they wanted. Like if you made a from scratch cake, chocolate cake with like real butter and lard and sugar and all the different things that go into it and like heirloom organic grains, like you would probably not want to make it very often cuz it's so time consuming, which would be good.
Colin (12m 37s):
It's kinda like a mechanism to prevent you from doing it. But if you ate that and that was part of your regular diet, you would, you could still be a healthy person. Right? It's amazing what what food at home from raw corn ingredients that haven't been altered and haven't been packaged in like a restaurant or or packaged from big food companies. It's amazing the difference. And again, the first principle, if you just simply ate at home, you're good. Everything that's outside of your house, that's how people just think about this. Every single thing that is outside of my house that I didn't like bring from my house. Like I didn't prep food, every single thing that I eat is, is going to be a health cost. And everything that I have in the house, if I'm optimizing or paying even close attention is usually gonna be a health promoter.
Brian (13m 17s):
Yeah. I love that. I, I always, I always say that I, I honestly think that's like the number one health principle if you just learn to cook for yourself and do it.
Colin (13m 24s):
It's the number one. Yeah it's absolutely the number one cuz you eliminate like all of the, most of the things we're talking about right there.
Brian (13m 31s):
I'm lucky cuz my wife is good at making things like, I'll be like, oh this is like a good dress, this looks like a good dressing. And she'll be like Oh I can make that. You know, like you can make a lot of these things like you said, even the food,
Colin (13m 41s):
You can make all of them, you can make any of 'em and in fact they're better. Like the recipe at home is better than like the stuff in the package or whatever, right? Like euro meat for example. There's this food truck out here in Austin Euro meat, it's really freaking good and it's like probably authentic but maybe he uses seed oils, it's like hummus and euro and it's like, it's like I don't know what he's putting the meat, I'm not asking for the ingredients. I think he wouldn't even understand if I asked him like what oil do you use? I don't think he would quite understand. Right. And like maybe they use olive oil but probably not. And I started buying that here and there cause I was like, oh it's mostly proteins probably fine. And then my gut started telling me you need to stop this habit. And so I went online and I found like why is your meat so flavorful? And there's actually a process where you blend it up and then you compress it, like you put a weight on it and you let it sit, then you cook it and it's because it's so condensed the flavors make get that it's like really amazing way to cook ground lamb or beef whatever.
Colin (14m 29s):
And so we are actually tonight gonna make that recipe and try it and if I can make a really good euro that's comparable at home, I will literally have Allison make that and just start bringing it to my office. You know, it's like stuff like that. Yeah. A little bit of effort, a little bit of like testing and but but game changer in the comparison between eating out a food truck with, with likely cedars versus just like bringing it with me. Plus you save money. Like who doesn't wanna do that?
Brian (14m 53s):
Yeah. I mean, you know like in other examples like beef jerky, I don't know if you've ever made beat your own beef jerky? Yeah,
Colin (14m 59s):
I have. Or bill to you can make. Yeah, right. Jerk you can do in the oven or like dehydrator,
Brian (15m 4s):
Right? Yeah. I bought a dehydrator not that expensive and you know, really, really easy to make and you can have it for a long time and it's a great, you know, snack if you want to have it from time to time. Save a lot of money.
Colin (15m 14s):
Yeah.
Brian (15m 16s):
So what would be maybe some signs of, you know, you mentioned one of the main principles is that people maybe don't have which, or actually have, which is that could be a c cause of gut maybe gut irritants are like low acid in the gut stomach acid. Yeah. What could be signs of having that,
Colin (15m 39s):
If you have any autoimmune systems whatsoever from our current scientific understanding is it is going to be almost 100% correlated to your gut. Now it could be correlated to stress because stress is like full body, but that could then be flaring something up in the gut or making it not work as well or whatever. Or it could be like a mineral imbalance, but that could somehow downstream be connected to the gut. Like it's all kind of connected, but you're gonna go back to the gut first as a primary place. I mean they say that your immune system is in your gut. Like it's crazy and, and generally people know, like you can ask the average person how is your gut health, right? And they're gonna be like, nobody's gonna be like, it's amazing, right? And they're gonna probably be able to identify sometimes where like they ate something too much or they drank too much of this or that or whatever.
Colin (16m 22s):
Or like recurring things with it. It all comes back to the gut in some form of another, right? It's very integral piece of just your health and body. So it's like find out what those things that come to mind are like are are, is it bloated, is it gas, is it like general discomfort? Like do you eat too much after a meal and feel like you need to lay down or like whatever. Right. Stuff like that, you know, is either going to be a sign of potential stomach acid issue or if you have autoimmune response, that's gonna be a sign of, of likely something like leaky gut or something attacking the gut, you know? And I mean that's right there is like most people. So I guess, yeah I guess it's where I would start. It's like it's kind of individual dependent but just like Google your symptoms and it's gonna probably bring you up.
Colin (17m 7s):
Something related to gut.
Brian (17m 10s):
Now w what are some of the things people could do to help restore healthy digestion?
Colin (17m 15s):
Well the most important thing is that they need to remove, right? Yeah. I mean like literally everything I could tell you to do in this from eating raw carrots to apple cider in the morning to, you know, taking bitters before a meal, anything to increase acidity is good. Like I drink apple cider in the morning and I do it before a meal. That helps get the acidity going in the gut and keep that high. But if you think about it, if you're trying to supplement something like that because you have low gut acid and then you're putting in things that are going to ferment in your gut and potentially further ruin your gut acid or strain it, right? Like first remove the the, the big stressor, you know? Right? Like don't try to pick up pennies in front of steamroller. Like that's the big thing that you need to focus on is getting rid of the big thing that's causing the problem in the first place.
Colin (17m 56s):
And then the thing about the human body is it's an amazing machine. It's the most miraculous creation we found in nature in the entire universe. The known universe. It's the human body, right? Let it do it stink, let it restore itself. Granted you're eating enough protein, hum Z protein fasting is great, give your body break, you've got a break here and there and just let it do its thing by removing grains, watching your those, those kind of subtle grains where it's like nuts and seeds, which have a lot of lectins and and antinutrients. A lot of people don't realize that. And legumes, even things like hummus, things like that. Some people again are more or less sensitive. But generally if you're trying to diagnose it, just get rid of all of it. And like I said, introduce a little bit at a time.
Colin (18m 37s):
That's the most important thing. From there we can talk about some therapeutic things that they can do.
Brian (18m 43s):
Yeah. And as far as therapeutic, what would you say like, I mean I know you mentioned in your, in your, your overview sunlight exercise.
Colin (18m 53s):
Yeah. The things that everyone knows they need to do anyway. It's gonna help with the gut. I mean, but like actually getting sunlight on the gut can can help, which is pretty cool. I mean, yeah, exercise, sleep, stress and that that's all going to massively help because your whole body gets better, inflammation goes down, stress goes down, et cetera. The specific things you can do where you go in the kitchen and you're supplementing or you're eating certain things, a lot of people wanna know like what should I eat? There are a few go-tos that I would recommend that are kind of standard and I guess we can just get into 'em. So raw carrots, you can even do like a raw carrot salad with MCT oil and some salt and some lemon or lime juice. That's a good one.
Colin (19m 34s):
Apple cider vinegar with some water diluted or anything to improve acidity. So lemon, lime, et cetera. Enough salt and electrolytes. Most people are already underdosing and salt because the whole, like the whole fake narrative of salt causing hypertension, which is literally the most unscientific and unproven thing ever. Salt is extremely imperative for health and most people actually need more of it because we're in a stressful environment and we're al our bodies are already struggling half the time with not having enough nutrients like salt's. Just another one, you know, magnesium, that's a big one that nobody really talks about. Everybody thinks about magnesium is more of a before bed mineral. And this is actually something I discovered. I started looking into magnesium because I had done a hair test.
Colin (20m 14s):
My minerals were low and magnesium was one of 'em. And I was like, well that's weird. I take ZMA every night, which is magnesium, zinc and b6 and how can I be low in magnesium? But it's our soil, it's just so depleted. Plus the other thing, it's not just depleted soil, it's also the fact that our environment is so stressful and magnesium is essential for over over 600 biomechanical processes in your body. So your body uses magnesium, it's kinda like fuel, it uses it to do these different things. And if you're low fatigue, not feeling good gut disrepair, like the all these downstream things that could be connected to something like magnesium that you wouldn't even consider, right? So I still met with magnesium morning, afternoon, and night just to further optimize, you know?
Colin (20m 57s):
And then yeah, if if for sleep too, it can help you with, with relaxing for sleep. It's a muscle relaxant. Yeah, so magnesium's a big one. Those are kind the core ones really. And then, oh, eating a lot of animal protein. Like literally just prioritize it, eat animal protein and that's really what you C should be doing if you want to like stay lean. If you wanna lose weight, like prioritize protein and then energy is carbs and fat. So this is Dr. Nyman's like pro PE diet stuff, which is the really good way to think about nutrition. It's like look at your plate. At least half of it should be just protein right here, right? And then maybe you have a little bit of just energy in the form of carbs or fat and that kind of fills in the gaps. And then bam, eat and then eat your food at home that's cooked yourself and you have the fountain of youth for health and you have like the perfect way to fix your gut health pretty much.
Brian (21m 44s):
Yeah. And what would you say to someone that doesn't eat animal protein in?
Colin (21m 50s):
Yeah, I mean I would, I would have to like look at what the protein sources are and I would wanna understand like what effect on the gut they have. But I just don't know that off the top of my head. Like I, I, I have really no idea, but I would still say try to get protein in, like maybe try eggs or fish or like, I don't know if plant-based do that or like sometimes like pescatarian or whatever, but just right, anything you can do to get whole proteins that is not in the form. Ideally not in the form of a green plant that's gonna have a bunch of antinutrients. So yeah, that's a tough one.
Brian (22m 23s):
And you need to talk about apple cider vinegar. So is that something that you, you said you do it in the morning and you'll do it maybe before a meal just to get the acidity up?
Colin (22m 32s):
Yep, yep. Also bitters, digestive bitters. I have this one that's a, a spray you spray it in and it's like really bitter but chase that with a little bit of water again, you're just trying to stimulate that acid production, get it going.
Brian (22m 44s):
Okay. And do you have a certain magnesium that you use? Just
Colin (22m 47s):
Curious. Yeah, we have wild ma magnesium complex. We just launched seven magnesium in one cap. Look at that. We also have the oxy mag, which is a blend that we actually just sold out of. I'll have more soon, but it's like this. It's great cuz I can, it's got electrolytes, it's got zinc and magnesium. A hundred percent of your r d and I just take a sip of it.
Brian (23m 5s):
Oh there you go. So you got, this is,
Colin (23m 6s):
This is a new thing we launched. It's amazing. That's why we just sold out
Brian (23m 9s):
Two separate ones. Then you got
Colin (23m 11s):
Yeah, those two separate products. So we have the caps which have seven magnesiums and this has got just the one magnesium, but it's also got zinc and electrolytes in it and it's easy to just drink. But I mean, you know, look for, I like zma or just look for, you want a complex of magnesium cause a lot of magnesiums are just like citrate or some basic ones. Sometimes they're not as great for absorption. They're usually not very bioavailable. One of our magnesiums in here is a special patented version of magnesium that's binded to, so it increases bioavailability so that you actually absorb more of it. Like that's, that's a big thing with magnesium. So yeah, I just, you know, do your research and I'm always happy to answer any questions if anybody wants to shoot me an email.
Brian (23m 46s):
Okay, yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'll put your email in the, in the show notes and yeah, I was using, you talk about a hair mineral test, I had sort of the same type of thing. I was low on magnesium, dehydrated, which yep, I, I gotta imagine 80 to 90% of the people that do a hair mineral test are probably gonna come up in that same, well
Colin (24m 5s):
It's also cause people have low, low sodium diets a lot of times that, a lot of times you're actually dehydrated because you don't have enough salt in your, in your, in your body to hold onto the water. So like you're thinking I'm thirsty, but if you drink straight tap water, like let's say you drink a gallon tap water, you would potentially add up more dehydrated, because dehydration is usually electrolytes. It's not even the water itself. A lot of times it's actually the minerals. So if you're drinking a straight unmineralized water, you go flushing minerals out of your body. So you, you might be in a worse, more dehydrated state by doing that. Just add a little bit of salt to every, every, every glass of water. Add a little bit of salt.
Brian (24m 41s):
Yeah, yeah. Or find a good mineral, you know, mineral water. Yep. There's, you know, Gerald Steiner I think is a nice one. Yeah. I would say like hydration is not just drinking water, right? You gotta, you gotta add the sodium and the potassium and it's the minerals. Yep. Yeah, the minerals and, okay. What about like pharmaceuticals and toxins taken in through the body? And this could even be alcohol. How can this play a role in, in gut health?
Colin (25m 10s):
Yeah, I mean there's not a lot of good things to say about alcohol. You know, like a little bit here and there for maybe the hormetic effect. But from a health perspective it's, it's just not like, I'm not saying you can't enjoy it, but you're not really doing yourself any favors. And so if you're drinking regularly, I don't really have any advice other than find a way to mitigate as much as possible. Maybe it's sauna, maybe it's like going above and beyond what we're talking about here. Maybe it's like going almost like a strict carnivore diet. Like, you know, do whatever you need to do to mitigate it as much possible. There's also some interesting research that came out recently about preventing hangovers that was related to something like, eat 600 to 700 calories before you drink.
Colin (25m 53s):
Have some protein, have some fat, maybe like prob probably lower carb I would assume. And then do that to kind of help buffer the effects. Also take some wild charcoal to to, to buffer the effects as well. And you know, like doing something like that could, could help. But, and the pharmaceuticals the same thing. It's like your goal is to not be on them other than emergency situation. If you're on them all the time, you are paying a health cost. It's just is what it's am I fix one thing, but it's causing other problems. So your goal is to get outta that as much as possible and go to natural modalities. Red lights, got 'em here, sauna, got it at home, go outside, get sunlight, exercise, get cold, get hot, meditate, you know, get calm, find community, find meaning like all the things you're supposed to do as a human.
Colin (26m 33s):
All the, the, the complex like myriad kind of difficult things to do in a modern environment. You gotta do, you have to have a holistic plan to everything. So the more you do that, the more the better, better you have to be in every other area. Like that's, you know,
Brian (26m 47s):
What are the, what's your routine like? Now? I know we haven't talked in a few months, I think, I don't know when our last episode was with you, but do, do you have a a a new routine going into the new year?
Colin (26m 57s):
My routine is every morning I'm doing my stretches, wake up to the stretches, hang up with the kids, get outside. Ideally I'm getting vitamin D like it's been cold here in Austin, so I'm still trying to go out there, bundle it up, get a lot of vitamin D into your eyes, that's the most important, get it into your eyes and if you can get it, get outside naked. Like the dream for everyone is to be able to go outside in, in the day and be naked in the sun for like 30 minutes and sweat, move, stretch, exercise, whatever. Now this is the way I think about it. Our ancestors would've woken up from laying on the ground, likely and nature all around us. Bugs and dirt and all these different things, all these things that actually improve our gut floor by just being in nature, getting dirty. We would've woken up and then we would've moved, we would've laughed. We would've sat on the ground, we would've squatted, we would've, you know, got our hands dirty.
Colin (27m 38s):
We would've, you know, played with kids and other people, et cetera. And we would've done that all day long, likely with sunlight exposing us because we didn't even have artificial walls to, to box ourselves in then. And that, that would've, that's what you would've done for 16 to 18 hours a day. Right? Instead, like we're, we're at a, a situation where modern humans might go outside for 30 minutes a day. It is un like this is actually one of those kind of like hidden systemic insidious things that I don't think anybody quite understands. Like if you were a biologist studying any species, right? And let's say you found this, you discover this new species, you would wanna understand the environment s in and then you might compare it to like, like ants in Brazil.
Colin (28m 22s):
What is their environment like? What are the differences? And you try to make all these connections, but the most important thing you have to understand is the environment. Yet humans we're just like, we pretend that we don't have this environment because we can just like build buildings and stuff. It's, it's literally insane, right? But it's the greatest environmental mismatch. And then I think food is the next one. And then meaning and people and how we don't live in tribes anymore. Those three environmental mismatches are the core problem of everything is that is wrong with modern humans.
Brian (28m 50s):
Yeah, I mean you talk about going outside like I'm in Chicago, I mean our weather, it actually has not been cold here, but I don't know if you've seen the sun that much in the last month. Maybe a few times. So then it could be a little bit tough if you're living in an environment in the north, you know, like myself. But I do get out, take two to three walks with my dogs so everyone can get out there and, and go for a walk. You might not see sunshine, which we haven't seen in a while.
Colin (29m 17s):
There's still vitamin either that can go come through the clouds though. Yeah. Like it's still there. Right. And it's also just like fresh air getting outside, you know, whatever it's Sure. Even psychologically getting out of a, of a building psychologically is massive.
Brian (29m 28s):
I mean I love, I yeah, I, I do the walks with my dogs. Probably less for them than more for me. More for me. Yeah.
Colin (29m 35s):
Right. Yeah.
Brian (29m 40s):
Okay. What, what else? So your, your routine is, what about your and how many kids do you have Colin?
Colin (29m 47s):
I just had our third, so I got three now.
Brian (29m 49s):
Okay. Congrats.
Colin (29m 51s):
Thank you.
Brian (29m 53s):
How, and I'm sure this is a question that comes up quite a bit is how do you implement these same principles with your kids?
Colin (30m 4s):
Yeah, I mean, kids do better. Like, we've seen a correlation behaviorally recently, like with my, my son, you know, he is four, he's, he's in a full-blown toddler mode, yelling, kicking, you know, having all that. And when the other day she made a point cuz we had a little bit of warm weather, it's like we're going to the park and it was actually, there's actually like a nature, it's like a national park, right? So we go to go there, we bring their stuff, their trucks and all this stuff so they can just dig in the dirt and she made a point to just go there with them and be in the moment, just be present, no goal in mind and just like be there for them. And she's like the behavior difference, difference from that day and the day after, the lag of it even was just massive cuz they had been cooped up cuz it's been so cold, right?
Colin (30m 48s):
So yes, I know it's hard, but it's like even when it's cold, my, I can, I can see the kids already. They're like, I don't wanna go outside, it's cold, I don't wanna go outside. It's cold. And I'm like, I don't want you developing that behavior because that's the behavior that modern adults have that had just been conditioned into us that is hurting us. Right? I want them to think that temperature is like just an opinion. It's nothing. In fact, I want them to enjoy the cold or ex enjoy the extreme heat so that they go outside as much as possible. You gotta just force 'em, get outside, like force 'em get outside, bundle 'em up if you have to. And then eventually they get used to it and then eventually they'll, they'll want to do it, right? And it's always, it's habitual, you know, humans, we respond to our environment in pretty, pretty real time. So it's like if it's cold and you have a warm home and you're a kid, you're not thinking about optimizing your health.
Colin (31m 32s):
You're just like, I don't wanna stay inside. It feels good, right? But then you start getting outside every single day and you don't even consider it as a thing because you're so used to it. So that the, the temperature variation doesn't really affect you that it's like, then it just becomes something you do, right? So as it goes with everything, it's what you do. We can alter our environment. That's the greatest, you know, thing that we can do with as humans with technology. But that means that if we don't alter our environments consciously, we just sit in our buildings and our AC with our poor quality air with no vitamin D, whatever. And then we do that for years and years and years and then we end up with cancer, heart disease and also other crap while eating industrial slop, while addicted to news and fear and propaganda. We're just like no wonder that that human animal is usually overweight, depressed, lacking, and meaning, et cetera.
Colin (32m 17s):
Right? It's all connected, it's all, it's literally what you do with your environment.
Brian (32m 22s):
Yeah. No good example with your kids getting 'em outside. What else? What about eating? I'm assuming you probably cook a lot of your meals at, it sounds like you're cooking a lot of meals at home, which I'm sure goes a long way for your kids.
Colin (32m 33s):
Well they eat all their meals at home and then we, you know, we pack and then every so often, like yeah, if we're eating out sometimes, which we don't do it much anymore, they'll have some stuff or whatever. I thought I'd probably be stricter with them than I am. Most of what I focus on. And, and Allison has a similar philosophy but she, she approaches a little bit differently cuz she studied some of the eating and habit kids research. So I'm sure she knows more than I, but I'm always like, eat your protein, eat your protein, eat your protein, right? And like sometimes for lunch, I'm not there and they eat a lot of protein. Like they had tuna salad the other day for protein that we made and then at dinner they didn't really touch their protein. And I'm like kind of saying, Hey guys, you gotta eat your protein if you, you know, if we're gonna have some ice cream that daddy made, we gotta have some protein.
Colin (33m 14s):
But maybe they had enough protein, maybe they had it at lunch and then now at dinner they're just, their body's kind of craving like some energy, like whatever. Right? So it's, it's always a line you have to kind of dance around. It's like, am I being too strict or neurotic? Am I, am I living too vicariously through them projecting my own BS on them or whatever. And so I'm always trying to be aware of that, right? But it's like I want them to grow up understanding that protein is your primary goal when you're eating nutrition and eating food and then things fill in the gaps. But then I don't want them to create, I don't, I don't want them to become neurotic about either where they can only eat protein and then every time they look at like some sweets or fat or whatever, they're like freaking out. So I'm trying to, to the best of our ability cultivate that.
Brian (33m 55s):
Yeah. And what about the social environment? You know, I mean you talk obviously, you know, kids growing up in the Covid era had take, had to take a hit socially for them, you know, now we're sort of getting out of that, which is good. I mean, what are some of the things that maybe individuals can do socially for their kids to get them acclimated?
Colin (34m 16s):
You just gotta, you gotta be around other people as much as possible. Yeah. You know, and I, and I, this is something I've talked to Allison about because she's got her friends that have, we have friends that have kids and I would say an average is once a week they get together, but sometimes it's like twice a month. That is not a lot of time. Cuz I'm, I'm always thinking to myself, if we were living in the wildest hunter gatherers right now, what would our life be like? And it would involve being around other humans of all ages, old young parents, not parents. Everybody would be in the same group and every single day we would spend time together. We'd be around the fire, we would share food, we would laugh, we would play, we would do all of these things in a group every single day. So when these kids growing up in modern environment are like, I'm gonna go see kids in my same age group and maybe some that are a little bit older and a little bit smaller, I'm gonna spend time with them twice a week.
Colin (35m 4s):
And the rest of the time I'm gonna be around basically mom and dad the whole time. I don't think that's natural. I'm personally trying to solve that with probably getting a hundred acres in Austin and creating an entire community. And that's kind of a project that I'm working on like a, like a big goal of mine and just show modern humans that we need to get back to that way of life. And then kind of use cities and technology. Like maybe we use cities as like the weekend getaway, but our core living is not in an urban environment anymore. I think we're gonna eventually see a flip flop of that as more people wake up to these ideas, right? There's a reason that we have a meeting crisis. There's a reason, reason that depression and opioid use and alcohol and all these different things are just like at astronomical levels. Even though we are, we're, we're more connected than ever. Yet people are more depressed than ever. Like it's all connected, right?
Colin (35m 45s):
It's all mismatch of environment. And so, I don't know what the answer is other than if you can be around other people or kids or build a community of some kind and spend as much time with them as possible. I also think it's, it's the way to solve the adult meeting crisis. Most hu modern humans, like me as a father and an entrepreneur or whatever, like we have all responsibility. We spend our time with just our kids and our, and our partners, right? And then maybe once or twice a week we have some like friend time and I think that's complete mismatched too.
Brian (36m 13s):
Yeah, no, that's an interesting topic and I'm noticing it, you know, as getting older. I'm in, you know, I'm 42 and you know, I'm married, I have two dogs, but like everyone's in their own bubble. Yes. And like, I honestly, you know, we have more flexibility. We don't have kids but like we, I always find myself reaching out to individuals, you know, other couples and you know, whether, you know friends that I've known for a while to get together and like it doesn't, most people aren't reaching out to me. I'm reaching out to them being, dude,
Colin (36m 43s):
I know exactly what you're saying. Oh my gosh. And it's so hard. And like, you know, even if you coordinate event, it's so much energy and like people are like, I'll be there. Then they don't show up. Like, dude, it is a big deal. I mean this is like a big thing that I'm thinking about and like I probably wanna work on for like the rest of my life. Like this, this big idea. I think the meeting crisis, like John VivaKi has got a whole YouTube series that people should look into. He's a professor, he is like, this thing kind of went viral, but he's like, we have a meeting crisis today. And Nche talked about having a meeting. You know, he, the famous God is dead quote, he basically meant that Christianity at the time was the importance was lowering in people's lives. And what was happening is people nihilism was creeping up.
Colin (37m 24s):
And what that means is that people didn't have like a leader or like a belief system. They didn't, they didn't know what to turn to. And what you, what happens from nihilism is like society can break down where suicide rates go up or all these other things can happen like we see today. I mean Nche would've looked at 2022 today and be like, I called it, I called this in the 19 hundreds. You know, I think it is one of the greatest things and I think the simple solution if we could do it, is to get people living in small as close to tribe as possible. Even if you your own house but you're in like shared spaces and you're living in nature next to each other, whatever, I think that's the solution. Like cuz that's the biggest thing that's removed for people.
Brian (37m 58s):
Yeah, no, I mean, and I just, I'm the point I was saying was like getting people together, it's like trying to herd cats. Yep. And, and getting a date on the calendar. I mean, you know, it takes a little effort but it can be done. I mean we, we, I I I've been consciously making an effort to, to to reach out to individuals and couples and to have them come over. We like hosting and things like that. So I think more people, cuz I feel like more people have to try doing stuff like that. And what I, I actually noticed, I was just overseas, I was in Israel, I have family in Israel and community is so big there. Yep. It's, it's just night and day compared to the, the states and you know, everyone's just, it's just like one common goal.
Brian (38m 39s):
You know, I've relatives who live in these, these, again, the word is escaping me. I, but these just environments where the kids are outside all day playing and they can run from home to home and Yep. And it's just like, it really is, you go there and there's such a community and, and then you come back here and it's like, I haven't seen a person, I've literally been home for two days. I've maybe seen one or two people walking. And
Colin (39m 5s):
It's just, that's true of almost every other culture on the planet by the way. Every other culture on the planet other than the United States. And if you look at it, what is United States the most powerful country in the nation. There's a correlation there, there's reasons for that. That's, that's a deep topic. But it's like as we've become richer, we've become more like what are our every needs we've, in fact this is what it is. We are able to control our environment so much so because we have so much wealth and prosperity that it's all about like, me, me, me. Right, right. The narcissism or even just the corporatism in America feeds that. Right? Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with corporations making money and providing products and services. I love it. I love the fact that I don't like make all my own stuff and like make this desk and do this kind of crap cuz it frees me up to do other things. But I have to take the technology and I have to shape my environment.
Colin (39m 47s):
And one of the biggest things that most modern people don't even think about because they're so worried about my Instagram likes or I'm in debt or I wanna buy a big house or whatever bullshit they're stuck into, they don't think about where are my adult relationships. I've thought about this cuz I have a lot of time as an entrepreneur, I've built things where I can not work for a month if I wanted to. My business is still run, right? So I have this time and I'm like, well what's the point of of of making money and having all this free time if nobody that I care about is even available to do anything? It's so crazy. Right. And I bet you a lot of people that have like massive million dollar X six where they're like, they have almost money and they don't know what to do it themselves. I think a lot of that is gonna be the fact that they don't have community or people around them to even spend the time with. So they're just like, oh, I gotta start a new business.
Brian (40m 29s):
Yeah, totally. I mean, and you like, like I was just saying like in Israel, like they're, their priorities are different, right? Like not that money's not important, but it's secondary to e to like community to everything else. And it's vice versa here in the states. I I, I, you know, I I totally noticed that.
Colin (40m 49s):
Yeah, it's a big deal man. I mean that's gonna be more and more of a thing I think people are gonna be talking about trying to solve, et cetera. And I really think the a way that you need constraints, that's why I keep like this community project has to be outside of a city. Cuz if it's not in the city, people can like, even if they live there, they can do the same BS where they, like they have their yoga class, they got this thing they go to, they go to this whatever, they go to their work and then like they live this little bubble, right? Yeah. Whereas you need something that forces people outside and in collective spaces together. And then when they realize how awesome it is, then they'll become addicted to it and that will be their life and then they'll be changed forever. But we don't have that in an urban environment. Right. You know, and there's no constraints to force it.
Brian (41m 30s):
Oh, good stuff. Yeah, no that's a whole topic in itself. But I think it, it is important we, we started with gut health and we went to community.
Colin (41m 39s):
I will give one bit bit of advice for you and anyone that wants to do this. The biggest thing that I've seen work and that I've also, I'm working on doing myself is standing events. So what you do is you have something like, let's say it's every Saturday we have some friends that lived in a house in Austin. They had a big backyard every Saturday from nine to noon they would do this thing, you could like donate money, they'd make coffee. Like people would come like eventually there was like a DJ and like pe. But you would always know that from this time period I can go there and there's always gonna be somebody there. You do that and then you don't worry about having to invite people every time and whether they show up or not or whatever stand, I'm telling you, standing events is how you simplify the hurdle of getting people to show up. Because as it grows and they get used to it, then it takes on a life of its own and it's just like, and then like community can just like grow out of it, right?
Brian (42m 25s):
Yeah, I like that. I mean I'm seeing it. I moved to a new neighborhood. I mean I know we know our neighbors, we've met like a few people but yeah, like there's so many great people and I never even see them. Like yeah everyone's in their own little bubble. But I, I like that idea cuz yeah we're always trying to organize, just get togethers and it's like okay we have to,
Colin (42m 44s):
It's a lot of work. Yeah. That's why if you make it like standing and recurring, you know, and at first you start inviting people like invite everybody like every time just to the point where you become annoying. But then when it picks up and people are in the habit of knowing that like it's always going on, then it'll just, it'll take care of itself.
Brian (42m 58s):
I love that. Well this was great Colin. Where's the best place for people to find, you know, you talked to some of your products, your website Wild foods.co, right?
Colin (43m 10s):
Yep. Wild foods.co. They can use code ge get Lean 23 and we're gonna do 23% off for
Brian (43m 15s):
Two weeks. Thank you for
Colin (43m 16s):
That. I need to put that on the website right now and that's for the whole catalog. Anything you see there. And then if you need to get ahold of me, if you have any questions about anything we talked about or any of the products, call in@wildfoods.co and then I would recommend they check out the Better Human website and podcast. It's the better human.co. That's where I'm actually working on some of this meeting crisis stuff. I'm working on what I am hoping is an ultimate philosophy for life and we'll have to like do another show where we talk about some of that stuff. But like ownership and truth and meaning. I'm basically building a template for like how modern humans can live and, and have meaning and also be sovereign. And so that's like my ultimate, ultimate project for life is to cultivate that.
Brian (43m 55s):
And that's better. Human podcast.
Colin (43m 57s):
The, yeah, well the Better Human podcast but also the Better human.co is will you find the link in the newsletter and all that stuff?
Brian (44m 3s):
Okay, love it. Yeah. Wild foods.co will put link in the show notes. Get Lean 23, still get 23% off for the next two weeks. And yeah,
Colin (44m 17s):
You want to do this real quick before we break? You want, you want me to go through this list of, I got a food staples list for gut health, good stuff and I also have a list of supplements we can Rapid fire.
Brian (44m 25s):
Yeah, let's, let's do that. Let's finish with some gut health tips here.
Colin (44m 28s):
Okay. Elimination. Get rid of all stressors. That's the most important thing. Some, for some people it's coffee, cut it, go to tea, cycle it. Whatever you can do. Maybe just reduce how much you have. Reduce fiber. Most people don't realize this fibers actually gut irritant. It's a lot of the research around is completely nonsense. So that includes nuts, seeds, legumes, grains, certain vegetables, et cetera. Avoid alcohol, obviously Avoid tap water and water from plastic bottles. Avoid alkaline water, avoid a one dairy. Now I'm a little on like defense with that one cuz I think a lot of the dairy research is kind of nonsense. But we drink raw milk, da raw milk. So I don't even, like, I don't even care about a one. But if you're drinking conventional dairy, yeah, likely you don't wanna do the A one dairy or you probably shouldn't even even do conventional milk at all.
Colin (45m 12s):
Okay. Right. So some food staples include egg yolks, lots and lots of egg yolks, bone broth, lots of bone broth. Coconut oil. Coconut oil has lurk acid that helps with the gut of acid. It's also just amazing for you. Also c t, we have a wild c t that has lower acid in it. Apple cider vinegar, aloe vera juice, lots of animal protein, collagen, cod, liver oil, raw milk, pears, kiwi and banana. These are some of the better gut-friendly fruits. Raw carrots, raw carrot salad, MCT coconut oil, a ac B, salt, I sprinkle some activated charcoal in there. Garlic, olive oil, olive oils going too ginger oysters, raw oysters, amazing super food. Yeah. And just generally seafood, mix it up with seafood and then raw honey, that's another one.
Colin (45m 54s):
Raw honey's a good one. So that is the list of kinda like food staples and honestly if, if people just ate that, they would be like the healthiest humans on the planet. Like that list right there is like everything. And then for supplements, magnesium, folic acid, which we just launched. One is a miracle product. We don't have time to even talk about how awesome it is. But it's amazing. K2 D three plus lots of sunlight. Fish oil, collar oil, oregano oil is a good one. Glutamine is a very essential amino acid. Also helps gut health. Activated charcoal. I will take it sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night. Black seed oils pretty good to try that one to two grams daily for 12 weeks. Digestive enzymes, you can test like taking multiple caps until you start filling a little acid in your throat and then you kind of dial it back.
Colin (46m 40s):
Right. Toine, wild, pre-pro prebiotics, probiotics, all kinds of different products. You kinda have to test the ones but, but get, definitely get a prebiotic. That's, that's a good one. And then colostrum is really good for the gut
Brian (46m 54s):
And most of these you can get on your website. The list that you mentioned is, is that on your website as a guide? I know you have a lot of guide.
Colin (47m 1s):
This was in that email I sent. I don't even, I don't think it was there as a guide. Okay. That list. I will, I was in my principles, oh, I might as well plug the course Principles of human Nutrition. I got a course on the website that I, that I went into and I got the video on the gut health plus the full list here. It also just kind of like goes a little bit deeper into some of what we talked about. Okay. Very simple, short to the point, like most of what you need is a couple hours of understanding and then you need to implement it and that's all you'll ever need for health for the rest of your life. And a lot of the principles for optimal human nutrition are also the principles you need for optimal gut health. Like, it's funny how they, they kind of go in hand in hand.
Brian (47m 37s):
Okay, so that's your principles of human nutrition. Yeah,
Colin (47m 40s):
It's at the top of the website.
Brian (47m 41s):
Yep. Okay. I see that now. Okay. Yeah, you went through it really quick. But you can, you can get that again on your website there and, and
Colin (47m 51s):
I, and I'll also just email you this list. I'll just copy paste it cause I might as well, I just got it in front of me. Okay. And, and then, yeah, and like you can probably get half the products on our website, but the other half you'll have to, you know, source from some better brands on Amazon or something.
Brian (48m 4s):
Okay, perfect. Lots of good stuff Colin. Thanks for coming on again.
Colin (48m 12s):
Yeah, man, this is good.
Brian (48m 13s):
First one of 2023. Good way to start it out.
Colin (48m 17s):
Four days in.
Brian (48m 19s):
So focus on gut health, focus on community, and that's a great way to start the year.
Colin (48m 26s):
Sure is.
Brian (48m 28s):
All right. Thanks so much, Colin. Thanks for listening to the Get Lean EAN podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine and I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member that's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again and have a great day.
