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When To Eat and Savory and Sweet


Jonathan Bailor: Hey everybody, Jonathan Bailor and Carrie Brown back with another Smarter Science of Slim podcast. Actually, Carrie I was curious to get your thoughts in this. I was debating the other day. We have a new book coming out, The Calorie Myth, I am wondering if we should change the name of the show. Not necessarily to The Calorie Myth, but something that expands more broadly. People keep saying “where is the book?” And I say that it is not out. They say “it’s great that you are advertising a book that I cannot buy”. This podcast, The Smarter Science of Slim, is in reference to a book by the same name which you cannot purchase. I don’t know if we should call it “The Sane Show”, “Sanity Hour” or “Sanity 20 Minutes”.

Carrie Brown: Well, we are talking about sanity with food. We may get some push-back on “The Sanity Hour”.

Jonathan Bailor: Let us know, folks. Post up on the Facebook page or Twitter either @Jonathanbailor or @carriebrownblog or www.facebook.com/smarterscienceofslim. I would have to change everything. Let us know if we should change the name, and if so, let us know what you think we should change it to. And be nice.

Carrie Brown: Our listeners are always nice. We have the best listeners. Hi, by the way. I never said “hi” earlier.

Jonathan Bailor: Speaking of our listeners, Carrie – well this actually has nothing to do with our listeners. You have an interesting fajita story, Carrie?

Carrie Brown: Yeah, what does that have to do with our listeners? It has to do with our listeners because I’m sure we have a lot of listeners who like Mexican – or did in a pre-sane life. I was just recounting to Jonathan how I ordered fajitas to everybody at my day job the other day because I came really, really late. I had the best time because I did not have the rice and beans and I did not have a tortilla. I had this enormous plate of grilled chicken and grilled steak and onions and red peppers and I had all of the lettuce and tomatoes and a big spoonful of guacamole. It was a fantastic, saying, yumminess. Everyone else chowed down on all of the rice and corny fillers. I had the best time.

Jonathan Bailor: Carrie, I love how you said “fillers” there. The thing that made me smile so much is that the way that we eat to enjoy long term fat loss and health is basically taking the good stuff – the stuff that you remember – like you don’t go to an Asian restaurant and say “dang, that was good rice”. When you have fajitas, you are not like “man, that tortilla really made that thing delicious”. It is the other stuff.

Carrie Brown: That is just a carrier.

Jonathan Bailor: It is just a carrier. We are just saying “get to the good stuff and focus on the good stuff and have more of the good stuff”.

Carrie Brown: Unwrap the gift, don’t eat the paper.

Jonathan Bailor: Wow, Carrie Brown. Unwrap the gift. I like that. I just did a bunch of unwrapping myself. I was at work event as well and there was a big platter of wraps and sandwiches and all that kind of fun stuff. I unwrapped the goodness. Carrie came into the studio today saying she was a little bit foggy, but she has obviously brought her A-game. I like it.

Carrie Brown: My brain has just been re-hydrated.

Jonathan Bailor: I love it. I love it. Next, let us talk about – Carrie you have covered this in your blog pretty extensively – this issue of healthy fats and sugars and ratios and eating sane baked goods and other treats. Tell us, Carrie Brown. Tell us.

Carrie Brown: So, on my blog – carriebrown.com – for the past three or four months I have been posting a lot of deserts and baked goods. Muffins and cupcakes and all of that treat kind of stuff. The reason that I have been doing that is so that you can have something to fill that void, if you have that “I adore cupcakes” void and you feel like you are being deprived. There is a sane option for you to try and fill that gap. However, in and of themselves, although all of these treats are way, way, way better and saner than the regular insane versions, these should be eaten as a treat after you have eaten all of your non-starchy vegetables and fruit and protein and fiber. Once you have all of that put away, this is the icing on the cake.

Jonathan Bailor: Carrie, this is such an important topic. I think it might even take up the whole rest of the podcast. There are so many nuances and I think you have covered a bunch of it. We often hear this term “everything in moderation”. In the upcoming book I actually talk about that as one of these major myths, because we all know that that is not true. We do not say “smoke in moderation”. We say “smoking causes lung cancer”. That doesn’t mean that you can’t ever do anything, it just means do not smoke. When we talk about everything in moderation, I think what we should actually talk about is everything in the sane ballpark can be enjoyed in moderation, but if it is just this chemical crap-fest that is more analogous to a drug – the more and more that we learn about this, the fuzzier the lineation between a drug and something that you can buy from your grocery store that is marketed as food is. They are all causing chemical reactions in the body. When I see that is so wonderful about what Carrie is doing with saner cupcakes or saner brownies or saner cheesecakes – she is showing you what you can enjoy in moderation. There is no eating Little Debbie Hostess cupcakes in moderation. That is why Terry has her same cupcakes. Of course, you do not make them your main dish, but those are the things that you absolutely can, should, and delight in enjoying in moderation.

Carrie Brown: Yea, just don’t make them the main attraction. If you’ve had your big salad or whatever, then just have one of my sane cupcakes to finish it off. They have good stuff in them. There is no sugar or variance of, and a lot of them have flax and Chia or coconut or coconut oil – it is as good as you can get and still be in the sane spectrum.

Jonathan Bailor: Absolutely. That is the key thing. We’re also not saying “you have to eat these”. The question is whether or not you feel like you have this void and you want to fill it. We have to have ways of doing that that are not poisonous. Continue to listen to the bonus podcasts if you are out there reading the most recent news around sugar addiction and brain scans that they are doing. Within 20 years – I’m telling you right now, mark your calendars – these edible product things which we are now being told to eat in moderation, we will look back on that and think that is as silly as saying “smoke in moderation”. That doesn’t mean that it should be outlawed and we should take away peoples rights, it just means that we don’t say “smoke in moderation” because it is addictive and deadly. These edible products are addictive and deadly. Carries sane treats are not. That is why they need to exist and that is why they are important. But like you said, they are the treat.

Carrie Brown: Yeah. The other thing which is very helpful is that my sane versions are very, very filling. You will most likely – the feedback that I’ve had is that one is enough. Sometimes when you eat a regular cupcake, you could just eat the entire box of them or the entire box of cookies. With these sane treats that I’ve made, you find that one or two cookies or one cupcake or one scoop of ice cream satiates you. You are done. A lot of them have protein added to them, so they are very high in protein. They have all of the healthy fats, which help you to feel full. You are not then send on this spiral of eating emptiness to try and fill you up.

Jonathan Bailor: There is a reason that those standard cakes and pastries and cupcakes behave that way. They have been – quite literally – designed to. Pringles says “once you pop, you can’t stop.” It’s not like they are even hiding it. They market the fact that their food is addictive and that you will just eat it until you have to go do something else, because you will never just naturally stop. When you eat food – which is what Carrie provides for us – you get satisfied. Most of us – this is going to sound funny – like to do things to completion. If we are looking to be satisfied, we actually want to be satisfied. If you are looking for a pleasurable, satisfying experience, make sure you are doing it with something that will actually satisfy you. Carrie’s sane treats fit that bill.

Carrie Brown: They do. I make a huge effort to use all natural, real foods so that you will also find that they are totally – in most cases – not only not lacking in flavor, but they have way more flavor and way better taste than the regular versions that you are used to eating.

Jonathan Bailor: And, if you are less sensitive to how good things look and are more willing to do assembly – as I do – I have some things which are so healthy. They actually don’t qualify as sane treats. They are so healthy that Carrie laughs at me and says “that does not count as anything”. We can have a separate podcast about that. Carrie, a similar topic related to this is this idea of balancing healthy sources of fats and healthy sources of sugars – a.k.a. certain plants – across your day. We have talked about this in previous podcasts, but I just wanted to color in a little bit more. The different flavors of sanity. Does that make sense?

Carrie Brown: Mmhm.

Jonathan Bailor: Really, there is only two. We can get more complicated if we wanted to. We have see a baseline of protein we have to eat a baseline of vegetables. Those are the two things that differentiate Smarter Science of Slim and sanity in other ways of eating. There are two things that are up to us in our lifestyle. That is how much we want to fill in caloric needs – you are not going to get your caloric needs through vegetables, they do not have enough calories in them and you are not going to get them from proteins. Proteins are not a fuel source for the body, they are a structural source for the body. That does not mean that those calories don’t count, it just means that we do not run on protein. We have to get it from either fat or sugar. There is no right answer here. There is so much argument on the Internet and in nutritional communities – as long as it is coming from sane, whole food, non-toxic sources – whether or not you want to fill that gap with a little bit more non-starchy vegetables like carrots, parsnip, things like that. I still wouldn’t go into the potato arena personally. That is a little too far. Fruits are going to give you more of your calories from carbohydrates, specifically sugar, in a natural, relatively healthy form. If you prefer not to do that, you would get it more from whole food fibrous fats. Things like coconut and Cocoa and Chia and flax. Maybe even fattier cuts of ideally grass fed, non-hormone injected meats. The key thing to take away here, folks, is please don’t waste your time on philosophical debates about which one is right. There isn’t one that is right. There is one that is right for you. The only way that you will know that is by trying both. I think there are people in the world that derive more satisfaction from more of a fruity and sugary sanity; and I think that there is people that derive more pleasure and results from a little bit more savory and fatty sanity. I happen to be the savory and fatty sanity fan, but there are people that are not. As long as you are sane, either way is fine.

Carrie Brown: However, I remember you saying in previous podcasts “do not mix the two.”

Jonathan Bailor: Exactly.

Carrie Brown: Pick one or the other.

Jonathan Bailor: That is the challenge, folks. It is not hard to eat sugar. Fruit is delicious. And fat is delicious. We are programmed to crave salt, sugar, and fat. Salt is really not too much of an issue. The morn more research that comes out – unless you are a dear and are just licking a block of salt, you are probably not going to have too many problems unless you are eating packaged, processed foods that are saturated with salt. But those are crazy for other reasons as well. What you want to avoid doing is consciously pick “I am going to do savory sanity versus sweet sanity”. I personally pick savory sanity because there are non-caloric ways that you can make that sweet.

Carrie Brown: That doesn’t mean that Jonathan never eats a blueberry.

Jonathan Bailor: Absolutely, but it also means that – for me – I use Stevia a lot and I use xylitol occasionally because then I can enjoy some sweetness. The key thing that you want to avoid – it is very easy to do this – is to eat six servings of fruit and a day and then eat really fatty cuts of meats and a couple handfuls of nuts and then a whole avocado all in the same day in addition to your vegetables. Your body loves those things – especially if you eat them first. A healthier strategy and more sustainable strategy and equally satisfying strategy is to start with the vegetables. You have to get the non-starchy vegetables. Eat them. Then eat your protein and then fill the rest up with whole food fats or fruit – I would pick one or the other. Not both. You might be able to do both, but my personal recommendation is that it is simpler to pick one or the other and them once you find something that works, maybe then experiment.

Carrie Brown: Of course, the cavat is always to look at where you are and where your goals are. If you have a lot to lose, you won’t want to do either of those things at this point. You will want to focus almost exclusively on non-starchy vegetables and proteins. If you have reached your goal – if you are where you want to be and you just want to stay on this gloriously healthy continuum – you can relax a little bit.

Jonathan Bailor: The reason that I make that point is that we so often get our nutrition information in soundbites and bits and pieces. We might have a friends or lots of friends who live a more low-carb lifestyle and they talk about all of the fat that that eat. And then you think that that is healthy and there is a bunch of research thing that that is healthy. Maybe we have another friend who happens to be a vegan or vegetarian and does so in a very sane way is very healthy and very happy who eats a bunch of fruits. Then we think that fruits are natural and colorful celeb they are good for us. Then we end up eating a high-fat, high sugar, whole food diet – which is still better than the standard American diet – but you are going to have a very hard time burning body fat if you are consuming both a lot of sugar and a lot of fat. Even if they are from natural sources. If you are trying to burn fat. If you are at a steady state, that is a totally different thing. Just be aware of this. And again, what is right is what works for you. Bottom line, if you are happy with what you are doing, keep it up. If you are not, maybe pick savory or sweet and stop trying to do both.

Carrie Brown: Great advice. I’m going to sneeze.

Jonathan Bailor: Carrie Brown is getting ready to sneeze. Let’s do a countdown for her folks.

Carrie Brown: It’s there. I’m going to blow the microphone him away at any minute.

Jonathan Bailor: Carrie, while you are prepping to sneeze – the next question has to do with timing. The best times to eat, not eat, exercise, not exercise. Does timing matter?

Carrie Brown: No. Well, I think from what I have heard from you, globally it does not matter, but there are times where you might want to have your protein shake before you work out of stuff like that. All of this stuff about eating after 6pm — no. It doesn’t matter nearly as much as we are lead to believe.

Jonathan Bailor: I just wrote something down the other day that I like and I think we should use in the future. There is a class of people that are intentionally not after perfection.

Carrie Brown: That would be me.

Jonathan Bailor: Ninety nine percent of us are okay. We’re going to get 80% of the benefit with 205 of the effort. For that camp, timing does not matter at all. EXCEPT for eating easily digestible protein before and after excersizing. Simply because there is research that shows that it triggers a bunch of wonderful hormone reactions. It’s like we have opened the floodgates for things to happen and missed the trip. It is estimated that anywhere from 30-50% of the metabolic benefit that could be accrued due to exercise is lost because we are ot taking advantage of it. If you are part of the vast majority in general who wants 80% of the results with 20% of the effort, it does not matter. Just eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full, and make sure it is sane, and get protein before and after your workouts.

Carrie Brown: The other thing that I wanted to say is — Jonathan and I eat protein before bed. It stops you from waking up in the middle of the night hungry. I mention that because I have had so many people say to me “I’m not sleeping” and I say to try and eat protein right before bed. That usually fixes the problem.

Jonathan Bailor: I have a similar experience when I cherish the meal that I eat when I get home at 9:30 at night. There are so many logical problems with not eating past a certain time. It is based on the flawed “calories in, calories out” model. It makes sense in that model, but that model is wrong — as we know. To finish this question, if you are someone who wants that remaining 20% of benefit and are willing to put 80% more effort into getting it, there are all sorts of things that you can do with meal timing. I personally have not done a lot of research on it. I know that there is a lot of research on it. I know people who have had a lot of success with intermittent fasting and eating small meals very frequently. In fact, the entire bodybuilding profession has been thriving on small, frequent meals for years. Intermittent fasting seems to be making a resurgence. If you want to go down this path, try changing up your eating frequency. Whatever works for you, go with that.

Carrie Brown: Another good thing that we always say is “eat when you are hungry and eat until you are not”.

Jonathan Bailor: Absolutely. If you are eating sane, real, whole foods, you will be able to trust that. Part of the reason that we feel scared when we hear that seemingly common-sensical advice is that when we eat non-food, we can not trust those instincts. It will be like telling an alcoholic or a cigarette smoker to listen to their body. The problem is that your body is broken.

Carrie Brown: It is in mutiny.

Jonathan Bailor: Your brain is literally functioning differently than the brain of those who have not been exposed to that substance. Your gut bacteria – the flora in your stomach – and hormone levels are different. It is not just calories in, calories out. I think that is good stuff, Carrie. And you didn’t sneeze.

Carrie Brown: I didn’t sneeze after all of that.

Jonathan Bailor: We’re gonna get Carrie sneezing. We’ll be back next week with more sanity. Jonathan Bailor and Carrie Brown. We are eating more, exercising less, doing it smarter, and getting ready to sneeze.

Carrie Brown: See ya!

Jonathan Bailor: See ya.

– In need of a new title
– Why fajitas are awesome
– Do you prefer savory or sweet
– When you should eat