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Marathons, Calorie Counting, Moms, and Tea


Carrie: I have with me Jonathan Bailor.

Jonathan: Wahoo! What’s up Carrie? How are you?

Carrie: I’m still deliriously happy. Deliriously happy.

Jonathan: I love it. When you’re in studio, we’re in studio together so it should just kind of be assumed that you’re deliriously happy, no?

Carrie: I was deliriously happy before.

Jonathan: So now you’re just doubly deliriously happy.

Carrie: I’m just doubly deliriously happy.

Jonathan: Both of us said that with quite a bit of alacrity. If I use another big word.

Carrie: I still can’t tell you why.

Jonathan: No, it’s all good. Someday you will able to tell us.

Carrie: Yes, and then we can all be deliriously happy.

Jonathan: Exactly. Exactly. Well, here’s a way we can become deliriously happy, Carrie. That way we can become deliriously happy is by helping Sonia out. Sonia had a very interesting question about how to adapt a SANE and eccentric lifestyle to marathon/triathlon/ultra-endurance training. Because quite a few – Carrie, let me just, let me just…

Carrie: Did my eyes just glaze over? We’re just like why would anybody want to do that?

Jonathan: Yes, yes. There are people that run for two to four hours at a time for enjoyment purposes. So Carrie’s going to shed some insight onto that. No, just kidding.

Carrie: Really? We love you Sonia. I don’t understand you but I love you anyway.

Jonathan: Well, just asking for some guidance and how to train for these ultra-endurance events in a SANE fashion. So first thing, I’ll give some guidance but I’ll first actually refer you to another source. That’s actually Ben Greenfield who’s another wonderful podcaster out there. He has resources specifically dedicated to SANEer, he doesn’t call it SANEer that’s my phrase. But to SANEer approaches to ultra-long distance training.

He advocates and takes much further what I’m about to say, which is simply instead of using exclusively sugars and starch it is very, very possible and easy to use readily digested fats. This is going to sound a little bit geeky but if you’re running for four hours at a time, you need to do a little bit of geeky things to ensure that doesn’t harm your body. Coconut, specifically. So coconut water, coconut manna, just coconut primarily gets its’ calories from a form of fat known as medium chain triglyceride.

Medium chain triglyceride is unique both it and short chain triglyceride which is harder to get. Medium chain triglyceride find the high concentrations in coconut is processed differently by the body and it can give you energy rapidly. If you need to run marathons and if you need to just amp up your caloric intake and you need energy you don’t have to carbo load at all. In fact, the only kind of athletic training that really requires sugars or some type of carb, inSANE type carb is explosive movements because explosive movements are actually using the glycogen stored in your muscles, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Getting too geeky. Point being Sonia, what I would highly, highly recommend is one, eccentric training is going to be very hard for you because to train eccentrically and then go train for four hours running, is just going to be overkill for your body. So, be careful with that. If you need to augment your caloric intake to allow you to do these incredibly calorically expensive activities, focus on getting that additional caloric intake from healthy fats.

Focus on coconut, medium chain triglycerides, focus on your omega 3s, focus on your monounsaturated fats, macadamia nuts, avocados, things like that and you should be good to go.

Carrie: You know what? I think you’ve just given me a good reason to maybe want to run somewhere. I mean wow I get to eat all of that fat.

Jonathan: Well, I mean this is why we see…

Carrie: There’s nothing in this world has ever made me want to run around the block before. You may be onto something here.

Jonathan: What is funny Carrie I think, there are people in the world for example, marathon runners who are already so, in some ways un-healthfully thin and they’re putting — If you burn 6,000 calories in a day because you’re running four hours at a time at a fast pace you must ingest. Believe it or not if we’re eating healthfully it is borderline impossible to eat 6,000 calories in a day.

Actually I’m glad Sonia asked this question. Thank you Sonia because it reminded me to talk about something on this show that I’ve wanted to talk about for a quite some time so kudos to you Sonia. Carrie, this is going to be interesting. Check it out. Okay, you know how I feel about calorie counting.

Carrie: Yes.

Jonathan: How do I feel about calorie counting?

Carrie: It’s a myth.

Jonathan: It’s a myth and it’s just unnecessary. It’s just not necessary.

Carrie: We were slim before we knew what a calorie was.

Jonathan: Exactly.

Carrie: See I listen to you, once in a while I pay attention.

Jonathan: Something is different about today’s podcast, what could it be? But in all seriousness folks, what jogged my thought of this is for example, marathon runners, people who need to eat six, seven, 8,000 calories per day, that’s not easy. They have to try to figure out strategies to do it because… don’t count calories it’s not necessary. However, imagine you could spontaneously know, like there was some magical thing that told you… Billy you ate 4,000 calories today.

Okay? If Billy was physically able to fit 4,000 calories into his body and Billy’s sedentary, Billy knows that he’s not eating SANEly because it would be painful for Billy if he was inactive to consume 4,000 SANE calories in a day. The reason I bring this up is, let’s say you do count calories and there’s at least 30 million people in this country that do. Maybe because it helps you to be more conscious about how you’re eating and I do think that is the one use — I mean tracking what you’re eating is a useful exercise because it helps you to be accountable.

For me I don’t do it because it’s just too much but for some people they enjoy it. At the end of the day if you’re eating SANEly, if you’re eating the types of foods that provide the nutrition your body requires, if you’re healing your body’s natural ability to keep you in balance you will not overeat and in fact, it is hard, it is hard. People have to go out of their way to do crazy stuff if they want to eat the, let’s call it typical number of calories that an individual who’s struggling with their weight and their health and our culture eats, if they’re getting their food from SANE sources.

It’s literally hard. It’s a chore to try to overeat if you’re eating SANEly. That’s why I love eating SANEly, because if you have to go out of your way to overeat and it’s uncomfortable to overeat, probably ain’t going to overeat which is good news. Does that make any sense, Carrie?

Carrie: Absolute sense. Everything you say makes sense. Well, sometimes not always but most of the time.

Jonathan: In this instance —

Carrie: In this instance… absolutely.

Jonathan: So again just to quickly summarize. Do you need to count calories? Absolutely not. Does the amount of calories you’re eating mean anything? Actually it does. If a sedentary 150 pound woman is eating 4,000 calories in a day, we know the quality of her diet can be improved. In some ways your total calorie count, assuming you’re not hungry, let’s assume non-hunger.

Your total calorie count in a day is a proxy for the SANEity of your diet because if your diet is SANE you will naturally consume the appropriate number of calories. If your diet is inSANE, you will over consume calories or you will be hungry because these foods we talk about satiety right? They’re not satisfying, they do not provide sufficient nutrition. So your body is going to crave foods until you’re satisfied and it’s going to crave foods until you get required nutrition. If you’re eating foods that do not provide satiety and do not provide nutrition, you have to overeat by definition because the foods are deficient in that which satisfies you. Make sense?

Carrie: It makes perfect sense.

Jonathan: That’s my meta-physical rant inspired by Sonia.

Carrie: But it’s still difficult to make that mental mind switch to that truth when you’ve had ten, 20, 30 years of all the noise that’s been thrown at us by the marketing people and the stuff that they thought was true but now we know isn’t and all of that.

Jonathan: But the good news Carrie, is sometimes – actually this is great, this was not planned. Well, nothing is ever planned on this podcast.

Carrie: Exactly. Nothing is planned.

Jonathan: Literally not planned. That’s why I keep asking Carrie if it makes sense. If you like counting calories or if counting calories makes you feel in control, it’s not a bad thing to do. In fact, what you will find which is cool is if you just use SANEity as your guide, again that’s just non-starchy vegetables, nutrient-dense protein, whole food fats, and low fructose fruits. Always focusing vegetables first, nutrient-dense protein second and then the low fructose fruits and whole food fats as desert for lack of better terms.

You will find that without trying you will likely consume fewer calories and spontaneously not be hungry than you ever did before when you weren’t watching out for the quality of the foods you were eating. That’s actually really cool because maybe after a few weeks of that, maybe after a few weeks of just seeing like oh, my gosh, I’m not overeating and I’m not hungry maybe it will be easier than for you to trust your body because you’ve proven it to yourself through math if that’s what you need.

Carrie: I was also reading a very interesting article, I’ll see if I can find and send it to you Jonathan so you can post it. It was talking about how manufactured, processed foods — The manufacturers if something does not have a very intense flavor, you can continue eating it for far longer than if it has an intense flavor. This article was talking about how they deliberately make processed foods with a blander flavor so that you will keep on eating it in an effort to make your taste buds happy.

My point being that with the natural whole foods that we’re talking about you eating do have a lot more flavor than the processed food. So there’s yet another and of course fat, fats have a lot of flavor in them. If you’re eating those healthy fats you’re actually — your body’s going to tell you to stop eating sooner just because of the intensity of the taste that you’re getting through eating these whole, healthy foods.

Jonathan: Carrie, this may be the most educational podcast for myself we’ve ever had. I’m having some thought bubbles and some epiphanies, I’m writing notes down here because actually, you know Carrie I’m a big fan of saying like let’s celebrate our similarities rather than demonizing our differences. As you know Carrie I’m bringing, we have these bonus podcasts during the week and I’m bringing on — I’ve had some amazing conversations with people who I think maybe our listeners would be like oh, my gosh, why are you having that person on the podcast?

They have a difference of opinion. What I’ve been able to see is that there are wonderful common threads and pretty much everyone agrees that what we’re currently doing isn’t — to be clear, everyone who I’m talking to agrees that it’s not just about eating less of our existing diet, It’s about changing the quality of our food and it’s about eating more nutrient-dense foods. Now there’s some disagreement on where we should source those nutrient-dense foods for — from the point being it’s not just about taking a diet that made us heavy and sick and just eating less of it.

That’s just like smoking less, it doesn’t fix the problem it just slows the deterioration. My point is Carrie, that even this seemingly completely antithetical model of counting calories, if you count calories and if that brings enjoyment to you, you can still live a SANE lifestyle. In fact a SANE lifestyle will prove to you empirically, through the data you are meticulously gathering that your body when it’s healthy and when it’s fed the foods it’s designed to digest, you can prove to yourself that it will automatically prevent you from overeating.

Even for those people who might otherwise feel alienated like man, I like counting calories, I have this little app on my phone, it’s fun, I think it’s interesting I’m kind of a data geek. I’m a data geek, I don’t like counting my calories but when I was in college I did this. It was interesting. Even that can be supported by a SANE lifestyle and even that can be complementary to a SANE lifestyle because it will demonstrate empirically what we’re talking about here biologically which is that proper nutrition and a healthy body will automatically ensure that you do not overeat.

Carrie: I love that.

Jonathan: Celebrate similarities rather than demonizing differences, yay!

Carrie: Yay!

Jonathan: So Sonia, that’s how you train for a marathon.

Carrie: See… we love you Sonia.

Jonathan: Sonia, thank you so much. All right next Carrie Brown we have green tea. Carrie’s not as happy about the green tea. Well Carrie…

Carrie: However, I had a bit of a breakthrough this weekend.

Jonathan: Oh? Do tell.

Carrie: Thanks to the lovely Jonathan Bailor. You mentioned something last week or the week before or sometime you mentioned something about using whole leaf. In desperation because I have reached the point of desperation with my whole green tea lack of intake. I was making a smoothie and I ripped open ten bags of green tea and tipped the leaves into the Vitamix with whatever the other green, whatever else was going in there.

I literally just tipped the leaves into the thing and whizzed it all up and by Jove, Bailor was right you cannot taste that stuff in there. However, had I put the water, had I brewed it and put the water in you could have tasted it. The actual throw the leaves in there I could barely detect it but only because I knew it was there.

Jonathan: Exactly.

Carrie: If I hadn’t known, I would not have known. I mean I’m now eating tea plant but who cares, I’m getting the green tea in.

Jonathan: Now eating tea plants. That’s so terrible. A tea plant, I hate those tea plants.

Carrie: But the point is I have found a way to get the ten bags of green tea in and not notice it.

Jonathan: Just to recap folks, if you didn’t —

Carrie: Hallelujah.

Jonathan: The technique is and you don’t actually need to necessarily rip tea bags open you can buy bulk green tea actually there’s a — here we go I’m going to give a plug to a website so you’re welcome website I have no affiliation with this website. There website called, I think, CoffeeAM. I think. They sell a bulk — It’s called gunpowder green tea. It’s just sort of the base grade of green tea in bulk, you can get two pounds of it for $16.00. Put that in perspective, that’s…

Carrie: That’s a lot of tea.

Jonathan: That’s a lot. You would put maybe one, maybe two tablespoons into a smoothie because remember you’re eating the whole leaf. That’s much different than brewing green tea so you don’t need, I don’t know if I would actually take ten — Moving forward Carrie I don’t know if I would take ten bags of green tea and eat the leaves of ten bags of green tea. That might be…

Carrie: Jonathan, Jonathan, I just found a way to eat it and now you’re telling me to eat less.

Jonathan: No. I said ten brewed bags of green tea. Not ten bags worth of green tea plant as you called it.

Carrie: I cannot please this boy. I don’t do it, he complains. Now I’m doing it, now he’s complaining.

Jonathan: Carrie, I am just trying to help you to be the most optimal and robust and wonderful, beautiful, intelligent Carrie Brown that you can be.

Carrie: We’re working on the intelligent bit but the green tea came out with everything else.

Jonathan: So anyway the technique we’re talking about here is taking the green tea leaves and putting them into a smoothie. So if you’re doing your green leafy veggies and citrus fruits, just toss it right in there, you ain’t going to know it’s even in there. Maybe blend it up a little bit beforehand first… that I found to be helpful. Carrie, what I wanted to give our listeners, I’m going to warn before I say anything like this, this is a tip, and it’s kind of a trick.

It’s a technique it will not do anything close to what simply eating a SANE diet will do but I want to throw it out there because I think it might help some people. So, please again, this is just a tip. Don’t get hung up on the little things, focus on the big things. But, if you find it hard to eat breakfast because there are people, my mother for example, who we were talking over and I talk to my parents every Sunday.

They’re back in Columbus, Ohio. They’re wonderful people. My mother was like, “Jonathan, trying to be SANE. I still have a hard time eating breakfast. My stomach just isn’t ready for it in the morning.” She drinks coffee. It’s like drinking things is not a problem for her but even drinking a smoothie, it’s like it’s too much, it’s too much of a thing. So I said, “Mom, if you want to — Here’s a thing you can try. You can try. Take a lemon, toss it in the Vitamix, some Blendtec, some kind of good blender. Take a tablespoon or two…”

Carrie: We’re going to peel the lemon first, right?

Jonathan: Of course yeah. Peel the lemon, peel the lemon. Mind you what I’m about to describe does not taste good. This is something you would do for your health and for your fat loss goals. Peel the lemon, throw it in there. Take some green tea, throw it in there. This is going to be geeky right now but take a branch chain amino acid powder. So something that has the amino acids leucine, valine and isoleucine. Carrie’s like ahh. The point is you want to put enough of that into the blender to be three grams, approximately or at least three grams of leucine.

The reason I mention this, we talk about eating 30 grams of protein at a time, we talk about eating 30 grams of protein at a time because as a general rule that will enable the concentration of the amino acid leucine as well as some complementary amino acids to reach a point in your bloodstream that triggers muscle protein synthesis which is great because it avoids your muscles deteriorating over time. Which is called sarcopenia which is like osteoporosis but for your muscles instead of being for your bones.

However, research suggests this is – we’re going out on a limb folks this is a suggestion. That if you were to just ingest that amino acid, leucine, in sufficient quantities along with some other dependent amino acids such as valine and isoleucine that you could trigger muscle protein synthesis without having to eat 30 grams of worth of protein. So you want to get your morning started off with the beverage, you’ve got some lemon there that’s going to help create an alkaline environment in your body. It’s also going to help your liver produce bile more easily which is going to help you break down fat more easily.

It’s also a wonderful detoxifier. You throw some green tea in there, also a wonderful source of antioxidants, also a wonderful detoxifier, also just generally good for you. Then you throw three grams of leucine worth of branched chain amino acid powder in there. You kick off some muscle protein synthesis, you get your metabolism going and you don’t have to drink a big, thick smoothie. If you don’t like eating breakfast it is a way to “hack” your body. You’re essentially providing it with a massive amount of things that are natural and helpful from a metabolic perspective and you’re not putting yourself in to a state where like — Frankly, for my mother, and I don’t know why this is but if she eats food in the morning, she has an upset stomach for the rest of the day.

When she does this she doesn’t, she feels more energized and it’s really helping her. I’ve been experimenting with it myself because I’m not hungry right when I wake up I usually get hungry about two hours afterwards. It’s been really helpful for me too. To be clear it tastes gross, it’s not something you do because it’s fun or delicious. It’s something because if you’re just really saying like, “I want to do this, do this, do this and I don’t want to eat right when I wake up.” It’s an alternative. Of course, eating is a better option but if you don’t want to eat, that’s something you could do.

Carrie: I’m just imagining your mother having this conversation, putting the phone down and turning to your dad and going “We created that.”

Jonathan: What did we do?

Carrie: We made that.

Jonathan: And then what? [inaudible 00:22:22] or something. To my dear mother Mary Rose, thank you for inspiring this concoction which is now being shared with the world out there.

Carrie: We’re very grateful that you gave birth to this man. Very grateful.

Jonathan: Yeah, no actually Carrie, while we’re talking, I’m actually every excited because I think as the listeners know we recently moved out of — My wife and I moved out of our 680 square foot condo and we finally have a nice home where we don’t have 680 square feet for two people to live in and my parents Mary Rose and Robert, are actually coming up to visit us this summer for like two weeks and they’re going to help us paint. So I want to ahead of time thank my parents for making the two week trip. Two weeks. They’re going to be with us for two weeks.

Carrie: I need to meet them when they’re here.

Jonathan: We should have them on the show.

Carrie: Yes we should.

Jonathan: That would be so much fun. I don’t know if they are going to do that but that would actually be pretty funny.

Carrie: I need to talk to your mother.

Jonathan: Maybe we could do like a podcast interview or something. Meet the Bailors kind of a thing, meet the parents. We could have a meet the… There is — [crosstalk 00:23:26]. Oh, that’s funny. Okay, well on that note, folks. Hope you enjoyed this week’s show as much as I know Carrie and I did and remember, this week and every week afterwards, eat smarter, exercise smarter, and you will live better. Have a good one.

Carrie: See ya!

Jonathan: Wait, wait don’t stop listening yet.

Carrie: You can get fabulous free SANE recipes over at carriebrown.com.

Jonathan: Don’t forget your 100 percent free eating and exercise quick start program as well as free fun daily tips delivered right into your inbox at bailorgroup.com.

This week:
– A smarter approach to marathon training
– A SANE approach to calorie counting
– SANE moms
– Tea is awesome

And much much more!