Coach's Corner With Justin and Ethan
Welcome to "Coach's Corner with Justin and Ethan," where your health and fitness journey gets a simplified makeover! Join Justin and Ethan, two seasoned coaches with a combined 30 years of experience, as they navigate the labyrinth of health and fitness, unraveling myths from facts to guide you towards success.
In each episode, we dive headfirst into the vast world of well-being, shedding light on weight loss, dissecting diet fads, exploring diverse workout styles, and fine-tuning the often overlooked aspect of mindset. Our mission is to demystify the complexities surrounding health, making your journey not only effective but enjoyable.
Get ready for a lively and informative conversation that feels like a chat with your favorite fitness buddies. Justin and Ethan draw upon their extensive experience, sharing real-life stories from working with thousands of clients. No stone is left unturned as they break down what really works and what's just another fitness fad.
Whether you're a fitness enthusiast or a beginner taking the first steps toward a healthier lifestyle, "Coache's Corner" is your go-to source for practical insights, debunking myths, and embracing the joy of the journey. Tune in for a fun and engaging exploration of the truth behind health and fitness, and let Justin and Ethan be your trusted guides to a healthier, happier you!
Coach's Corner With Justin and Ethan
Mindful Eating For Weight Loss Inspired by Global Perspectives
Ever wondered why America's food culture leans towards bigger, faster, and indulgent? Join us, Justin Scolard and Ethan Wolf, as we promise to unravel the curious dynamics of American consumerism in episode 36 of Coach's Corner. With insights drawn from our 40 years in fitness and nutrition, we dive into the contrasting worlds of food consumption in America and abroad, focusing on our experiences in Spain, New Zealand, Fiji, and Japan. This episode challenges you to rethink your diet choices amidst the cacophony of modern food culture, encouraging a shift towards more mindful eating inspired by global perspectives.
Our journey uncovers stark differences in food perception between the U.S. and other countries. Through personal anecdotes and cultural observations, we reveal how American habits of overindulgence and fast food abundance contribute to a disconnect from genuine hunger cues. In contrast, Spanish dining culture emphasizes smaller, more meaningful meals, fostering social connections and mindful consumption. This discussion brings to light how cultural environments shape our eating habits, urging us to draw inspiration from European traditions where food is celebrated for its experience more than mere sustenance.
By the end of our exploration, we tackle the societal influences on our dietary preferences, examining inherited beliefs and habits that hinder personal growth. We share practical tips on creating flavorful meals without the caloric overload often seen in American cuisine, advocating for home cooking and mindful adjustments such as using spices and reducing butter and oil. Our conversation aims to empower you to reimagine your relationship with food, adopting healthier habits without sacrificing taste or satisfaction. Tune in and discover how small, conscious changes can make a significant impact on your diet and overall well-being.
All right, well, welcome to episode 36 of Coach's Corner. I am Justin Scolard, I am Ethan Wolf and today, guys, in case you don't know who we are, we've been personal trainers, we've been nutritionists, we've been working with people for fitness and weight loss and just getting their health overhauled for 20 years each. It's all we've both really ever done, and currently Ethan has his own gym in Los Angeles where he works with people individually. I have a business online where I coach people for nutrition and weight loss mainly, but we've come together in this podcast to just share our expertise and our knowledge and really, just, you know, try to help you guys sift through all the noise out there, of which there are many and, you know, hopefully get you guys where you want to be faster than it took me, because you know it.
Speaker 1:Know, I, unfortunately, was one of those guys that just had to do it my own way. Yeah, it's a learning experience. Yeah, you know, but anyway. So here we are. So today let's talk a little bit about the standard American diet, aka SAD, which is just crazy. You know, you mean SAD as in the emotion, or is that an acronym, as the acronym standard american?
Speaker 2:diet sad, oh wow, you know it's so funny because I was. I was going to seasonal affective disorder because my mind had a pre-acronym film anyway, but yes, the, the sad diet, american diet, and uh, you know it's interesting.
Speaker 1:So what inspired this conversation is I just did a 10-day trip, road trip, through Spain with my wife and I say wife because it's still so new it's like weird to say it normally, so I have to like put like a Borat accent on it. Yeah, yeah, but, and you know, you can't help when you're in Europe, to just notice like just the crazy cultural difference and, of course, being like a fitness professional, just the different attitude around food and eating, and I think then the consequence of that is just body types and like body fat levels. It was just really mind-boggling just to compare and contrast the difference. That's what inspired this episode. You, you did a big trip through, um, new Zealand, didn't you?
Speaker 2:correct. Yeah, New Zealand, I haven't done too much international travel but I've done New Zealand, Fiji and Japan. All pretty not standard Western, even comparatively to Spain and Europe.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it is interesting because I was thinking about this and it's not like other cultures don't like to eat. Food is a cornerstone of any culture. Right, it is the culture itself, it is lineage, it is storytelling, it is the essence so much of a people in their particular geography and how they have lived their life and how that's represented in food is so important to so many people and people love to eat. So it's not like other cultures, just like, don't give a shit about eating. No, it's one of the most important things, but there it's just an interesting reflection of each. I guess I'll say each culture is unique and food is important to everybody and everybody loves to eat.
Speaker 2:But I think the love of eating and what it represents outside of just sustenance right Cause there's kind of food for fuel and then there's, you know, if you kind of adopted, just like I'm going to eat, just to be optimal for optimization and not worry about so much about flavor. It's not that I'm just gonna eat but, for example, like a lot of, I've seen bodybuilders that just like, purposely, for whatever crazy reason, just eat like plain eggs, like not even pepper and plain chicken breast, no salt, no pepper. It's almost like they have to dive so deep into the dark corner of the extremity of eating for them that they just have to adopt the mentality of this is not about pleasure whatsoever, right.
Speaker 1:Whereas a lot of pleasures, I think have pleasure associated around food.
Speaker 2:So if you're not kind of in that path of food purposely just for fuel and whatever percentage that might be integrated into your eating patterns, that food is enjoyable and that's half because of the hardwiring of us being an animal and things we've talked about in the past about food as survival and dopamine and pleasure rewards and just it being something that means we're not going to die but also because of all of the other many factors of sharing love with loved ones and pass on recipes and the uniqueness of where you live and all the ingredients that are available.
Speaker 2:So there's so many facets to food but everybody loves to eat and food is super important. But there's just I do think there is a particularity about american culture that is associated with overindulgence, kind of like similar to the quick fix of like the conversations around ozempic, of like I just want, like the, the most stupidly delicious tasty thing, regardless of its value to me as a food, for the experience of it. Right, and I'll get a little bit more into that in a sense of why I don't think that has to be that way.
Speaker 1:But yeah, there's just like I do think there's an overindulgence, hyper large portion kind of like thing that makes american food good is based around like high or high calorie ingredient additions yeah, and I think that, well, I think, really, you know, I thought about it a lot while I was there, but especially just like getting ready for this episode of just like, well, what, what is it about America and our, our appetite no pun intended of just like wanting everything more, bigger, now, faster, and it's just right, I think, cars yeah, everything right.
Speaker 2:There is like this reflection in our culture of like bigger is better, totally more is better and I thought about it.
Speaker 1:I'm like, okay, well, first of all, america is a very new country, right, and so it's like it's especially places like the suburbs where a lot of people are living now maybe besides, like New York or Philadelphia, something like the older cities, but like anything like from the Midwest over, is kind of like very new, you know, relatively speaking. And so it's almost like it's actively being built as we speak, like suburbs are actively being built right now because this country is so new, and I think another part of that is that the culture is also new, and so it's like we we're in a new country where things are actively being built, and that means that corporations and I don't mean to like, get all like.
Speaker 2:Honestly, he's crazy.
Speaker 1:You read me mine, cause I was going to do.
Speaker 1:Here too, I was like totally, totally, and it's not that corporations are bad I mean, I own one, but like, I just think that, like it's, it is about the bottom line and you know it's like if, if, if a developer is building a new little city or suburb and you've got Chili's TGI Friday Cheesecake Factory, you know Pink Dot or whatever they call them now, like it's just they're getting to like design the cities now based around these like box chain restaurants that have the most insanely delicious food that it has more calories in one meal than the average American needs to eat for the entire day. But then when that just becomes the norm, like the norm, that's just the status quo, then then yeah, then I think that like 20, 30 years later, we have a population that is like 70% obese.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, and it's interesting. Interesting because, again to your point, like I don't want to go like too down the conspiratorial line. I do think for me, however, this is going to sound, take it or leave it but like I do think that if there's a certain awareness of our history as a country and the understanding that it is a modern country, we weren't the these, these weren't established before the internet and before corporate, before federal reserve and the style of money making that exists now and just the whole nine right, and that I'm not saying that like, it's just human nature, like every, every established empire has always wanted more money, more control, more of it, right, it's just that people get better at it and it's just human nature. So I'm not necessarily saying that like america is some like evil thing, it's just I think that there's just the most involved, advanced expression of that human desire totally, and that there is some, some, some kind of shadowy stuff that comes with that, which is just that, yeah, it's, it's, it's a bottom line, it's about profits and that there's, so there's, there's just, when I say about there's enough awareness, is that there's not getting into crazy conspiracies, is that there's just enough information that is factual, that shows that corporations and the relationship to food have been tied into our government and influenced our government and influenced policy for the sake of profit and not for the sake of the better man and not for the sake of health, and it's just.
Speaker 2:It's just the the, the really deep complexity that is just life, where human nature wanting more and moving about profit and the cheapest exporting product available, so using the cheapest ingredients, and it doesn't matter how good the ingredients are, how healthy they are, but how cheap can we make our bottom line While also making the foods just so appealing that people consume more of them. Like I saw this meme that was like, oh, it was like a joke about Doritos and it was like it was so funny to watch other cultures, not from america, eat doritos, because it's almost like crack where all of a sudden they eat a bag of doritos for the first time. They're like, yeah, there's like five empty bags next to me and I just ate it out. I didn't know what happened and like the meme was like yeah, welcome to america, and it's like I love doritos, like it's like I love Doritos, like.
Speaker 2:It's like, trust me, I eat them. There are as a guilty pleasure. Sometimes I just get a bag of Doritos and I eat them and I'm like these fucking things taste so good, they're so satisfying, so bad, yeah, and it's like that's a good representation of how the food culture is in our country, as well as the reflection of other people that aren't from here experiencing that for the first time. Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's like you get this perfect storm of lobbying to the government to ease up regulations and, in a lot of cases, subsidize the ingredients that way they can bring the price down. Subsidize the ingredients that way where they can bring the price down. Meanwhile, you have, like you know, phd physicists or not, probably not chemists, excuse me, figuring out the perfect flavor, because I mean the gritos has a machine that puts a needle through the chip to figure out the perfect crunchiness oh yes, you have like the perfect texture and flavor yeah, and then none of us, you know, like agriculture and certain groups lobbying to the government to create food pyramids and things like.
Speaker 2:The bottom line is, I'm not saying like the food pyramid is absolute garbage, but there is absolute factual evidence showing that sure, these sects of agriculture and kind of corporate holes like milk or the wheat industry or the corn industry influencing governmental regulations and you know, advice to increase their, their kind of take in the game, yeah, right, no doubt, and like that might sound like crazy, but it's really actually quite, it's factual. I mean, it's a lot. Even when we talked about in our cholesterol episode, you know, where it's not just cut and dry. So I think there is a big part of it there, where, yeah, I think so I think so too, I think I think it's a little bit of that.
Speaker 1:But then, like I don't want to like sit here and pretend like we're all just victims either, because certainly we have free will and we can all choose, and especially nowadays, I mean like if you follow any fitness person online, everyone's saying, hey, you gotta get in fucking calorie deficit.
Speaker 1:Like dude, like get your shit together. Like you cannot like who doesn't know that a bag of doritos is gonna be a calorie bomb at this point? But it's just, people are people, and like I and I think this kind of brings me to my next point of just culture, where we've developed this culture because of the commercials we've been watching, because of the branding around Carl's juniors, like you know, dropping the bacon avocado cheeseburger into the screen, it's just like fucking avocado cheeseburger into the screen. It's just like fucking food porn, you know, it's just like, oh my god, that is the most insane looking thing I've ever seen. And and so then we create a culture around it, like when you and I were talking yesterday, before this episode, when we were in our 20s, we would go to these like barbecue joints and like we would have like this, let's like unspoken competition of who could eat the most, you know, and between you and I.
Speaker 2:And there's just this culture in america of just like we must if we're not full, we ain't done right, and I think that's not even full, because I think we don't eat so fast that we don't even have, like our body takes a. There's a regulatory system that actually has a slight delay to actually tell us we're full, totally.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, I can't fit more food in my stomach I mean, and people will say that all the time it's like like they'll panic because they've never felt hunger before. Or let me put it this way, it's not that they haven't felt hunger, it's just that they've never not been able to satisfy the hunger immediately. So like they might come on board and we go okay, great. So it looks like you're averaging 3,000 calories a day. We need to bring you down to about 2,200 so we can get you in a nice calorie deficit, and you know, we'll have a check-in call with them and it's just like they're panicking. They're like I feel like something's wrong with me because I've never felt hunger like that and I'm like it's not that you haven't felt hunger, it's just you've never felt hunger and then not immediately went and satisfied that hunger craving, and so it's just like that, I think, is a big shift. Also, what I wanted to say too about this is that is that like when you, when like just being in Spain and kind of being in like the old world, I, what you notice very quickly is that, like we're talking about towns and cities that are a thousand years old, you know, and these places were built, like the city centers were built a thousand years ago and they were. There's these little tiny buildings, these little tiny storefronts, these little tiny cobblestone streets. It's almost like there's so many hundreds of years and so many dozens and hundreds of generations of culture around, moving more, walking to places because you can't drive. In most places it's like you don't even want to drive. The roads are so narrow and it's like forget it. Even if I could, I'd rather not. So you're walking around. There's just a culture of you know, it's not about these huge meals, it's about like let's just get a baguette with some ham on it or some prosciutto, and like you know, or and then or croissant, and then, like we go about our day.
Speaker 1:Like you said, food is certainly a big part of every nation's culture, but it's like more. What I noticed in Spain is that it's more of a special occasion, like it's a dinner and we'll have a whole dinner and we'll sit here for three hours and we'll have like we'll crack bread, we'll drink wine. We'll have whole dinner and we'll sit here for three hours and we'll we'll have like we'll crack bread, we'll drink wine, we'll have, you know, um, some food, but, but it's. But it's like the food is like there, but it's also there to facilitate the conversation, like that's, that's the biggest thing. It's not that they don't appreciate it, it's just that we're not sitting there just devour food. Yeah, and so it was, you know, I.
Speaker 1:I just think that, like when you, when you look at a culture like spain that's thousands of years old, then it's like a I think just the infrastructure has a lot to do with that like there's just not a lot of places to put tgi fridays and olive gardens and mcdonald's. There's no, everything's already built out. It's like little tiny mom and pop, little like grab and go, little things. It's not like you can just grab a little like tapas and a cafe and you're out the door. It's just a different way of viewing it, you know, versus us, where it's like it's fucking drive-through and I can get a big mac, a large fry and a coke in fucking four minutes flat and that's 1300 calories in one meal right, and you eat it in your car.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's interesting, I think your car, yeah, you're eating your car, you know, and so both points are actually yeah, we're definitely on the same page here. But you know, in terms of the hunger thing, I think that that is a common thing in our culture, is that there we don't have a relationship to hunger?
Speaker 1:Right and it kind of goes back to like we're animals, right?
Speaker 2:So one of the angles of the food porn and showing a full pound of meat and four patties on a single burger, you know is appealing to the animal in us that doesn't want to starve.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We're so hardwired to not die, yep, and to make sure that we continue living, which we don't. Again, we don't live in food scarcity 0.01 or 2% of our human, you know, time on this planet has not had access to food like this, and so it's appealing to these kind of like almost what I would say. I was like to use an analogy of almost like a root shocker like this the survival, lowest instinct thing, and so it's food porn, because it it it picks at the part of us that is purely based on survival, this like lowest denominator human primal desires.
Speaker 1:Primal desires desires.
Speaker 2:And so I think, because of our culture having such an abundance of food and appealing to that that we don't have a relationship with hunger. And, just like you're talking about with your clients that are freaking out when they feel hunger, it's not like, again, we've all been hungry at one point or another, but we don't have a personal relationship with it that maybe understands that hunger is okay, right, like fasting whether it be an acute fast where you don't eat for 24 hours, or being in a general calorie deficit has shown to be one of the most beneficial things for our health. Right, so there, there is benefit there. But we just think it's bad, like, oh my god, I'm hungry. It's almost like we're, we're like infants in relationship to hunger, because as soon as we feel it, the, the animal instincts of survival kick in and we're like, oh my god, oh my god, I'm gonna die, like I just don. I don't have any nuance with this sensation that then builds an emotion but then builds a reaction to it.
Speaker 2:And so I think, if we can just take a step back and I'm not saying hunger is comfortable, but, like many things in life, the uncomfortable, hard things are what progresses us, and so One of the aspects, I think, is developing a relationship with hunger where, no, we don't want our blood sugars to crash and to become hangry and, you know, snippet our coworkers or wife or kids because we're just like stressed out and hungry, like that's an extreme we don't want to get to, but at the same time, like I do think that if we can understand that hunger isn't inherently bad, we can start to develop a relationship with it that doesn't have the same reaction and same kind of like oh, I can't be hungry.
Speaker 1:I'm not allowed. And also, it's like you know, the the peak of the high is comparable to the depth of the low. And so if you're, if you're so satiated all the time because you're eating four or 5,000 calories a day through, just like you know, delectable, fatty, rich food, and then all of a sudden you go into like a cal, like it's gonna feel way, it's gonna feel way more painful, all right, yeah, even hormonally right.
Speaker 2:Your body's gonna be like, wow, where you've been so fed, like here's all the ghrelin, here's all the hunger hormone, like we're gonna make you freak out totally. We're not used to this and and so that was kind of like totally fully on the hunger point and 100 like I feel like the culture in other places. Obviously we all need sustenance, but I think a lot of places it's based around community and it's based around shared experience and so, whether or not you eat a very large meal or you don't, the primary thing is that, like the food is a container to then share with community. Right, it's to have an experience, like you said, it's about the conversation, right, it's about these other things. It's even almost like the culture of the experience. It's about going out. It's about connecting with people, versus the other end of the spectrum which we talked about, which is like you can go and within minutes, versus a three-hour meal where you're hanging out with people the whole time, get food and eat it alone in your car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can plow through your entire day's requirements for calories and one meal in your, in your car, in the parking lot of the car.
Speaker 2:So you know there's so much disconnection and there's so much around that. Like you know, they talk about addiction and depression being really a lack of community in a lot of ways. Not that there aren't physiological components to addiction.
Speaker 2:But there's a lot of ways not that there aren't physiological components to addiction, but there's a lot that talks about addiction being a reflection of not having community and that anxiety and low mental states are also related to not having community. So it's just a very interesting kind of again cultural reflection of here. We have so much push, advertising, appeal and practice of quick satiation that just like, oh my God, this tastes so fucking good, you know alone, versus like yeah, this tastes delicious, I need to overindulge, but I'm going to have this other experience, which is satisfying.
Speaker 1:And then you know, and then I think too, it's like food choice is obviously the main culprit, and this is where I think it really goes wrong. I think that you know now that I've been working with people on weight loss for so long and I've just seen so many people fail at managing weight loss sustainably is because you this the studies are showing that people are 50 to 100 off in their, in their calorie counting, and so it's like it's just people just don't understand how easy it is to like double your calorie intake and not even know, and like you're and this is people this is someone who's actually trying to lose so that they're actually conscious, they're putting awareness and attention on their food intake and yet statistically they are 50 to 100 off. And so if someone's like I'm only eating 1200 calories a day, it's like when you look at the weekly average, it's more like 2000 to 2400 calories a day. It's like when you look at the weekly average, it's more like 2000 to 2400 calories a day, because they're thinking about the three or four days they probably were close to that, and then the three or four days where they were way off the target, and so it's like what? Here's an interesting little tidbit that I found the average, the average consumption of calories.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to use Spain again because you know I was just there. But the average consumption of calories in Spain men and women average is 2,300 calories a day. In the United States the average consumption is 3,500 calories a day, so 1,200 calories more per day on average with an American versus a Spanish person. The average man in the world burns 2,000 to 3,000 calories a day. So you can see right there, if the average intake in Spain is 2,300 and the average person burns, the average guy burns 2,000, burns two to three thousand calories a day. They're kind of right in the pocket. You know, they're like right in that sweet spot right, yeah, yeah the average woman burns 1600 2400 calories a day.
Speaker 1:So we got the average calorie intake of 3500 and the average person's only burning, you know, sometimes half that, and so it's just, you know, a lot to do with. Just there's your problem, right there, you know, that's really it. And I think that when you think of like a 2,000 calorie a day diet right, easy math. If everyone in the world just ate 2,000 calories a day, we probably would end so many metabolic diseases. But let's just take 2,000 calories a day as just a rough number. That can be a pretty hearty amount of food if you make good food choices. Like 2000 calories, like what I'm trying to work on right now personally, like and for my own content creation and just to help my clients is I'm trying to really master these 500 calorie meals that have 50 grams of protein. So I want, I want there to be a um, a 10, a 10 to 1 protein to calorie ratio. So if it's 100 calories, it's hard, it is hard, but the funny thing is it's like anything. It's like once you kind of crack the code and you put a few of these things together, you sort of build this repertoire and I've got like dozens of these together. You sort of build this repertoire and I've got like dozens of these meals that take 10 minutes, that in my back pocket and the trick is truly just lean proteins, tons of veggies and then just a complex carb with kind of relatively low fat, and it's not that crazy hard to do.
Speaker 1:But it's like you could have three pretty chunky, beefy size plates of food that has 50 grams of protein in each one. They're 500 calories, plus a nice uh snack and that's 2 000 calories. And I guarantee you most people that I know, if they ate three big plates of food like that plus a nice snack, they'd be totally satisfied and that'd be 150 grams of protein and and and 2 000 calories. Yeah, I mean, or that'd be 150 grams of protein and 2,000 calories, or that could be. You roll through McDonald's, you got your ranch dressing that you're dunking in barbecue sauce, you're dunking your large fry in, you're getting a Big Mac and you're washing it down with a large Coke and that's also probably around 1,700, 1,800 calories. And so it's like it's so relative to the types of food that you're eating and I think that if people can just wrap their head around that, it would make everyone's experience. Just so much, gentler to try to diet and lose weight and not feel like they're just starving all the time absolutely.
Speaker 2:I love we're so on the same page today because, like, what I was going to talk about next is the culture of how we perceive flavor and satisfaction in our food, because I think a lot of time when people go on some type of concerted calorie effort diet whatever you want to say, you know, like chicken breast gets boring and is lame, right, it doesn't necessarily taste good and I think people have an aversion to diet foods because they assume it's going to be bland and boring and you know.
Speaker 2:So I love to cook and I love watching. I'm an adventurous eater and so one of my favorite things to do is like watch shows about crazy food and cultures and food markets and cambodia and all these other places like really like looking at like snail stews and just like all this random stuff and how different. So I got really I watch it for a long time, or I've been watching it for a long time, so I've had access to this understanding of witnessing true cultural differences in food, and one of the things I think is that when we want to make things taste better's adding butter, adding mayonnaise, adding cheese right like and sugar, yeah, like three examples of just, and I'm gonna you know, and the fats in particular, because, again, fats aren't bad, they're just calorically dense yeah, you consume.
Speaker 2:Nothing's good or bad, just the amount makes it exactly, but I think, like cheese and butter and fried foods, like vegetable oils, are just so prominent, right, like you want to make something taste better, add a bunch of cheese. You want to make, oh, this is cooked in a big block of butter. You know so that the the food choices, that the american culture because again, culture is just like what we're exposed to. There's no right or wrong.
Speaker 2:I took cultural anthropology in college. They basically said in that class that there is no single practice in the human race. That is universal and everything is a learned behavior. We all get hungry and want to eat, right, but in terms of the nature versus nurture, nature being like genetics, what we're born with and inherent to our being, versus nurture being what we're learned through our culture, that every cultural practice is unique. Some people practice these crazy things, but there's not like some universal cultural practice and so everything is this kind of like learned thing, like you know, people eat insects in other cultures, people eat brains in other cultures a lot of americans would be like what the fuck?
Speaker 2:that's just gross and weird. But it's completely normal to them. And one of the things I witnessed, though, particularly in a lot of Asian cultures, is this inclusion of tons of herbs and aromatics and spices, like everything just has lemongrass and ginger and garlic and chilies and galang All of these flavors that don't necessarily carry any inherent caloric value, but they're just making the dishes flavorful and therefore potentially satisfying. If you've been exposed and grew up in that culture, where I feel like a lot of american foods kind of lean away I mean you got barbecue with spices it's not saying that there's no but the but the ribs, the spices are on or like.
Speaker 2:Part of the thing is like french fries, hash browns, cheeseburgers, you know, like a lot of these things don't really involve a lot of spices to. I mean, I'm talking about really in-depth, complex spice flavors that could be very satisfying to eat and be enjoyable as a food experience, but they're just really kind of based on, again, the human need for calories, because fat and sugars are so satisfying, because again they trigger our brain to be like we're not going to die and so instead of it's almost like our culture doesn't have the complexity of flavors because, again, geography, a lot of these herbs and spices are more available to these cultures that have been around for thousands of years, even though they're available now and plenty, there's plenty of Indian food and Thai food and all these things around.
Speaker 2:But that like, fundamentally we lean as a culture into fats to trigger our brain to say this is a good tasting thing versus flavors, and that then racks the calories up. So in another culture, like a lot of play, like I was just watching this one about Cambodia and they eat like a bowl of noodles with some slices of pork and some stuff, rice noodles, a bunch of herbs and a couple pieces of meat yeah, it's like pho, basically right and yeah, it's not going to be that many calories?
Speaker 1:no, in fact, there's a really there's a pho place next to us and it's one of our favorite places to go to and and, uh, I went on a deep dive just trying to figure out like how many calories are in like a proper bowl of pho, just like chicken pho, nothing crazy, it's like everything I found is like 300 calories exactly right big bowl of food, you know, and it's breakfast versus eggs, hash browns, bacon, biscuits and gravy and kind of a name trying to name a classic american cultural foods which are just so fat, heavy and so that you know you could have a 1500 calorie breakfast easy, easy five bowls of a cambodian breakfast right and easy, yeah, total
Speaker 2:comparison of a difference. It's like you know, and I think what happens too is that we get lost in our culture. We don't realize it. I'm not saying people need to go out and eat rice noodle bowls for breakfast, but just like maybe taking that step out of what's just been automatically exposed to us and just assuming that, like, breakfast is always bacon, eggs, hash browns, and just maybe choosing something different because we understand what that means and translates to in terms of our actual personal lived experience yeah, and I think the fat.
Speaker 1:The thing about fats is it's, it's. It's so easy because it's like a liquid, it doesn't really take any space in your stomach and so you could have a couple of ounces of fat is hundreds and hundreds of calories that take up zero space in your stomach and it doesn't really make you feel full necessarily. It doesn't really make you feel full necessarily. But if you were to eat an entire bowl of pho in that example, with like lean chicken breast, a whole bunch of rice noodles, broth and vegetables, you're going to feel really full, like, oh, there's just no more space in my stomach. And that kind of goes back to that food choice of like, without even having to track calories, you just switch to like turkey bacon instead of pork bacon. You switch to spray oil instead of just like dumping olive oil in your pan or butter. You switch to low-fat yogurt or zero-fat yogurt instead of whole-fat yogurt. You just you go like 95% lean beef instead of 85% lean beef, like those choices alone, without even tracking calories.
Speaker 1:Just doing that is going to probably, on average throughout the whole week, shave a couple thousand calories off of your weekly average by just making those switches alone, which you know it is what it is and we are where we are. You know, if I were to say that to someone from Europe, they'd be like ugh, zero fat yogurt, turkey bacon. They're like what's wrong with you people? It's like well, we're not sophisticated enough yet to like have a culture that is like Europe, where we can like look at food a little differently, like we are very much like. No, no, no, no. You just need to like trick us, like give us, like a zero sugar Oreo.
Speaker 2:That's where we're at. It's unfortunate. That's the case, because it's like, in one sense, it's just is what it is. It's like there is. It's just an expression of our culture. It is like this shellac layer. It's like this. It's almost like concentrating a, a sauce. It's just, it's. It's this feedback loop of what we know to be, what we know to be, and as we continue down this road, we've got the corporate influence. We just got what we know. We don't like that. I mean, you know, acquired taste is a real thing. You know what? If somebody is eating a meal bug or a grub and we're just like Jesus Christ, that's so fucking gross. I would never eat my life, but they're like it's my favorite food. That's just an exposure thing. You know. It's not that they're gross for eating a grub. They might think we're gross for eating like you know, I don't know biscuits and gravy.
Speaker 1:Who knows?
Speaker 2:Whatever right, and so our exposure to these things is our kind of acceptance to it too, and I think that if we don't know any better, it's all what we're exposed to, then that's all we know, and of course that's what we're going to choose well, you know, listen to.
Speaker 1:To grow as an adult is, it is just an endless succession of belief breaking, because we have these beliefs that we inherit from our parents, who they inherited from their parents.
Speaker 1:They just keep getting passed on these generations. The neighborhood we grew up in, the city that our friends we hung out with, is all of a sudden. We turn into adults now and we have this like operating system that we've, you know, kind of bolted on to us over the years that have been downloaded into us and it's like most of it's just not true, you know, like you know, we actually don't need to have um mayonnaise in every meal. We actually don't need to do a lot of these things. Maybe that culturally in our household we just kind of grew up thinking that we had to be full or we didn't get dessert until we finished our plate, so you don't get more calories until you finish the calories that are already in front of you, you know. So it's like these weird reward systems that we've created for ourselves, and I think that if we're really trying to improve, we have to investigate this and, like, actively break these belief systems that are basically the bottlenecks in our own personal growth and development.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%, and I think that's just with any culture, you know it's, and it's tricky, because even in enjoying foods it's like I think there's just even exposure to more foods will allow you to incorporate for me, more flavors as somebody who likes to cook, that will make life enjoyable, because I think the bottom line is that if you always are eating, you know low protein options are, you know I'll reflect that they're going to limit your food intake and they're going to make you only able to eat certain animal proteins which are then not going to often taste as good.
Speaker 2:Like a ribeye that's well marbled tastes a lot better than like a shitty new york strip that has no barbling right, and because, again, fat tastes good. And so I think there's a component of we have to start to incorporate enjoyment in some capacity into the consistency and lifelong expression of our food choices. Because unless you're so dedicated to a path, like the bodybuilder who doesn't want to put salt or pepper on their eggs because they just are so fucking committed that it's just fuel and they don't care that like you're realistically not going to stick to eating these repeated foods if they are not enjoyable. That's just realistically, unless you're on that, like you know, in that spectrum we've talked about, about like the super refined on point way, everything mechanical, robotic, high performance commitment, all the way to like gluttony, chaos. It's like we are humans and I think that like part of it is to me. You know, allowing flavor profiles into our lives, learning how to incorporate them at this point.
Speaker 2:We've got the internet. We've got pre-made spice blends. You can go to a market and get thai basil or just whatever the fuck is happening to that.
Speaker 2:Allow enjoyment in your food that doesn't necessarily come with calories I think like spices, aromatics and maybe you don't get to cook and maybe you find restaurants or you just find a certain hot sauce that you can put on your food or something but allowing enjoyment and flavor to be something that you actively look for, so that having food choices that honor your body composition goals are still enjoyable and make them able to be consistent because, as we know, consistency is the number one most important thing I think that when you combine, when you combine conscious food choice right with cooking your own food, it's very difficult to overeat.
Speaker 1:You can still do it, but if you're but I think the operative word is conscious food choice. So in other words, okay, I'm gonna make my version of this pasta dish. In the new york times cookbook it said I needed like a half stick of butter. I needed like a you know three ounces of parmesan cheese and a bunch of olive oil. Let me just cut all that down to a third and just see what that tastes like. Right turns out, it tastes fine with with.
Speaker 1:With 60 less butter, oil and cheese, it still is delicious because of different salts and flavors and spices. And so it's like when you go on a journey where you're actually give a shit and you stop, just like ordering door dash and like rolling through drive-thru and you participate with your food actively, a cook, a meal for yourself in the kitchen, even if it's just 20 minutes, you probably are going to clock 500 to a thousand steps just making the food. You're, you're. It's that non-exercise activity you've just tenfolded by simply making your own lunch instead of just sitting at your at your desk ordering door dash. Sometimes you gotta do that and that's okay.
Speaker 1:But the idea is that like making it a creative act, having fun with it, participating with it, like finding out how can we make this traditional recipe that I love, how can, but? But it's a gut bomb. You know it's got all it's got 100 grams of fat per serving. What if we brought it down to 30 grams of fat and but just beefed up some of the spices? Can we make it delicious to like my, like tanya, she has this great dish. It's the italian sausage. It's like a pasta with curry and italian sausage.
Speaker 1:It's like delicious, but it, but italian sashes man that stacks of calories and she's used to pouring a ton of like coconut milk and a ton of like olive oil as we're cooking this thing, and like sardines, like all these, like high fat ingredients, um, or anchovies and uh, you know per serving was like for a small little bowl? It was like 800, 900 calories. So now we do 99 lean ground turkey instead of italian sausage. We just beefed up the italian seasoning. Instead of a whole, you know, two cans of coconut milk, we brought it down to just half a can and we've just experimented with and instead of using olive oil, you spray and guess what. It is still a hit, it's still delicious.
Speaker 1:And instead of 900 calories for a bowl, it's 400 calories for a bowl and actually more protein, because the 99 lean ground turkey has way more protein than italian sausage does. And so it's like you make these little adjustments and it starts with just one recipe and then your brain gets work and you think of another one you could do. Oh, and then another one. Next thing, you know you've got like 10, which is all really anyone needs on rotation to feel satisfied of these like high protein, lower calorie recipes that you can make in 10 minutes, that you own, and there's something about that. There's like a satisfaction of like achieving something on your own like that, that you've hacked the system in a way where you're not just like scratching your head wondering how, how am I going to lose weight, weight, but like being active and proactive with your meals and your food and I'd say it's also, like you know, to the fortunate, fortunate nature of our culture.
Speaker 2:We tend to have access to a lot of food choices totally, especially in more urban environments. I mean, you know, I want to honor that not everybody's life has time to cook and not everybody's life has access to food Right, and so you know a lot of this. None of it's universal, but a lot of people have a lot of access to a lot of things Totally and in that same capacity. It's like the, you know, making a dish that requires heavy cream but substituting Greek yogurt. Yeah, it's going to have a little more tang to it because of the yogurt, but again, zero fat, higher protein content.
Speaker 2:And there's just there are a lot of substitutions. There's just so many spices that you could even if you are eating plain chicken breasts that you can just put a spice blend on it to make it taste pretty tasty.
Speaker 2:You got so many hot sauces I mean even sugar-free hot sauces. You know that have stevia and things in them but that's tastes pretty good and still have zero calories. And you know, sometimes you got to bite the bullet. And if you're trying to cut calories and you only have 1300 calories, you know there's a, there's a dance, you're going to have to dance and we don't live in a culture where we walk all the time and ride bicycles or you know it's it's.
Speaker 2:It's like we have to swim in the waters that we're swimming in and other cultures might not have to worry about it, just because of the inherent nature of their culture and how active they are and what the food choices are and just the inherent nature in which they eat. But we are in our waters with our inherent culture and our food choices and what we've been taught and learned and what is standard for how we eat and it just, in a lot of ways, it is what it is and it's only, I think, through self-awareness and being aware of the currents that you can then start to make the choices and in a lot of ways, we have a lot of choices that can still make life pretty enjoyable and accessible for what we're looking to do because of the waters we're in. But at the same time, if we're not starting to bring that a little bit of a bird's eye view to it all, then we're kind of just lost to the currents, you know.
Speaker 1:Totally. Yeah, no, it's, and the margins are thin. You know, if, like, if the average man burns 2,000 to 3,000, let's just call it 2,500 calories a day, that can you know, 20 like I'm at 2,300 right now and it takes effort, like it's really easy to like and I'm a pro and I go over and it's important because I think there's kind of like, there's this data that unfortunately reflects that the American diet kind of sucks.
Speaker 2:And you know, many cultures around the world are not obese. I'm not saying none of them are, but a lot of them are not. But, as you witness, western culture integrate into these cultures and I'm going to say like American more versus maybe like European Western, quote unquote. But as you've watched it happen, you'll notice that obesity rates are rising. So in a lot of these kind of Asian countries Cambodia, thailand, vietnam you rarely witnessed obese individuals but now obesity rates are rising substantially in these countries for the first time. And if you notice it, there is a parallel to the integration of Western foods and Western eating patterns For sure.
Speaker 2:When there's a KFC in fucking every corner in Tokyo, it's like and again, I think part of it is that all of that just kind of appeals to the quote most delicious foods, that the caloric abundancy, in my opinion, because they're everywhere, just tends to also parallel this shift in body composition which we know, that health effects and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So for sure it does and there's no doubt. You know, yeah, and so that you know, and like I was saying, like exactly in the margins of, are super thin. If you're a woman, if you're like a 50 year old woman and you're like skinny fat and you don't train and you're trying to lose, I mean you might only you you might need to be eating like 1300 calories. I mean it's, it's, you know, like the margins are real thin and if you're, if you listen anything we just said in this entire episode, I mean that could you know? You know, one large fry could be 60% of your entire day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and it's like when you think about that, it's like okay, or it could be, like you know, three pretty decent size plates of like lean, high protein food if you make good choices. And it just takes effort and a conscious, you know, awareness of what you're doing and probably more participation than what you're used to, not just defaulting to ordering it in. But all right, let's get set up for success this week. Cool guys, should we leave it here? That's good.
Speaker 2:It is good. Anything else you else like to add to this? No, I mean I, yeah, I hope, I hope you know, I think for me, I think that what I want people to take away from this is to just think about themselves, think about culture and, like you said, like you know, maybe challenge beliefs, just kind of just don't operate out of what you know and kind of have some critical thinking or just to be self-aware. I think you know what I want out of this is to build self-awareness, because I think you know culture can be so bad or so good and if we've been taught to treat other people a certain way, if you've had abusive parents, whatever it might be like, the culture that we learn doesn't necessarily serve us, even if it's all we know.
Speaker 2:And I think that, across the board, the practice of just looking in the mirror of our cultural inheritance can be very beneficial, because we might be like, wow, this is a really beautiful thing of acquired through parents, school, friends, america. Or it can be wow, I realize this doesn't serve me and to your point of like, challenging those beliefs, I think so much of it is just a blindness to what we operate out of, and I think we can be just better people if we just take a moment and do some self-reflection and I think obviously we talk about food and weight loss and composition and performance in this podcast. But I think overall, I think I just hope that people understand that taking a step back and looking at ourselves can just be really beneficial from a cultural standpoint.
Speaker 1:Yeah, final thoughts Boom, mic drop. All right y'allall. That was episode 35, 36. How we are stacking them. Uh, catch y'all next week later, peace.