Knowing When to Use Certain Foods | ETP#145

What's up guys, happy Tuesday. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is episode 145 and we are talking about knowing when to use certain foods contextually. So to give the episode brief here a little bit, we've all heard the statement that there are no bad foods. But there are however, contextually poor uses of various foods, which we'll get into a little bit more. And in this episode, we will break down when certain foods can be more appropriate. and less appropriate on how they help or detract you from your goals. So before we jump into today's topic, as always, Brian, can you kick us off with some updates, please? Yeah, for sure. I don't think I have too much today, but just real quick, I know everyone's always on the edge of their seat with my with my weed updates. So keep them short today. I have gone back to using moderately and I feel pretty good about it. So I'm eating gummies a few days a week and not on other days. As I mentioned in the prior episode, the big commitment I have to myself, well, two of them. is not to smoke at all ever anymore. I just feel like 2024 is the cessation of Brian putting anything into his lungs that is inhaled. So that's my big overriding goal for really the rest of my life. And then the second one is just to not use the gummies more than a few days a week and to keep it to the evenings slash late afternoons. And that's all been fine. Really no cravings or desire to do it outside of that. The one thing that has been kind of a little disconcerting is that on the days that I don't use it, the dreams are just really lucid and not super happy. Like last night, I didn't use it yesterday and all night I was dreaming about like, I was at a really crowded, sporting event and then there was a natural disaster of sorts and we were trying to get away and somehow in the midst of getting away we lost Bryson so I had one of my kids with me but lost the other one and I woke up in this huge panic like we got to where we were going and I was like oh my god we don't have Bryson and so anyway I'm not a huge fan of when people tell me about their dreams because they're so individual and personal but it's all dreams like that like weird anxiety ridden pretty disconcerting dreams. And so I don't love that aspect of this. And I'm wondering if that's just going to continue forever. If like, you know, the other days I don't use, I just have bad dreams. And then on the days that I do, I sleep like a baby. So I'm still kind of working through that. But that's really the the only update I have there. Regarding my second update, it's kind of just about my mindset in regards to training and my plan going forward. And I had a number of people reach out kind of excited about what I dropped at the end of the episode on 10 exercises for the rest of your life. And what I kind of said at the end was that I'm probably going to build my plan for when I finish my bro split around those 10 exercises as I kind of ramp up cardio and get going with the next phase of my training in the spring. And, uh, As I've been DMing with people about it and people are kind of building excitement and I'm kind of thinking about how I would lay it out and stuff like that. I'm starting to find myself already getting excited about this next phase of training and had a few requests for us to do a full episode about that. And so maybe we'll just do kind of like a our training going forward episode as that time approaches, maybe in a month or so. where I can discuss how I'm going to kind of put all that together and you can discuss, you know, what's going on with your training and stuff going forward. Um, but the timing is kind of looking at this point, like I'm going to continue the bro split through mid March and then, uh, March 16th, 17th, I go to hypertrophy camp at N1 and I'm supposed to not train for a few days prior to that. Cause I think we're going to train like three times a day or something. Um, So I feel like the few days before March 16th is probably going to be the end of the bro split because right after hypertrophy camp, I go to Costa Rica for 10 days and we're going to be in the town where Kim and I lived for three months back in 2018, 1918 Santa Teresa. Beautiful, beautiful, really magical town. But they don't have a lot. They have like this one gym that I think the dumbbells go up to 50 pounds and there's a couple of barbells, but. really nothing that I can use to train pure hypertrophy the way that I would want to do it. So I'm thinking a few days before hypertrophy camp, the bro split ends, I go to Costa Rica. I mostly take a down week. I train a few times, swim a lot, stuff like that. Come back from Costa Rica on April 1st. And then Dave McConnie comes to visit me. We were just on his podcast for anyone that's interested in Aaron's TRT journey. We basically did a whole podcast on Brains and Gains with Dave the other day that should be dropping in a week or two on Aaron's kind of TRT journey. So check that out. But he comes to visit me April 4th, I think, something like that. And so we're obviously going to go to N1, meet up with Nunez and train a little bit there. And then so, yeah, I'm thinking around that time, early April is when the new training plan is going to drop. And so maybe at some point in early mid-March. we can do an episode about that. So a little less than a month now. And that's really my plan going forward to train two times a week, full body using the 10 exercises for the rest of your life format, and then add in what's likely gonna be like six days a week of cardio. I think I wanna do four zone two sessions and two like interval hill climbing, higher heart rate type sessions. So we'll discuss that more as we get into the episode, but that is sort of my tentative plan going forward. So as we were, Brian and I briefly chat before we start recording and I was like, I don't think I have any updates this week. Like nothing's changed and Jenny's been gone. Jenny left about a week ago to go back to, she was in LA for like a work conference sort of thing and then she went down to San Diego to visit some like old friends and stuff. So she's gone for like nine or 10 days. And I've, so in times past it would be like, Okay. Like Jenny's not here. Maybe I'll make an effort to like, you know, hang out with some of my friends or I don't know, like do something, but I've just kind of accepted it now that like, I just don't want to, like, I like my life and I've literally, it's like the eighth day straight. I get up, I work a little bit. I have caught, or I have coffee. I come in here, I work, I have breakfast. I go train at 11. If we're doing, if it's a non -training day, I'm in there by like seven doing cardio and like stretching sauna. I come back, I work. I eat, I play with the cats a little bit, I feed them, and I fucking go to sleep, and I just like do it again. And the thing is like, I'm not mad about it. And then I do try and still take advantage of like my free meal on the weekends. And something that I've really kind of realized is before I used to be kind of like in years past, maybe ashamed a little bit to like go out to dinner by myself. But now I'm like, I kind of just like it. Like I would prefer. if I'm being honest to go out there by myself and then I can just like play on my phone and read like finance Twitter or something like that, like, and have my meal instead of trying to have like small talk and conversations that I maybe don't want to be in that much. I'm like, this is great because I get to do exactly what I want to do. And I get this meal. And like now I love going out to eat by myself. Like I said, I almost kind of prefer it. So I've just been doing all of that and it's been a pretty chill week. But, um, As much as I, I was really hesitant around being super transparent on the TRT stuff because I didn't want to field a million questions around it because by no means do I feel like an expert in it. Whereas in training and nutrition, I do feel confident saying that I would consider myself an expert in these things. And I have gotten questions about it. Some guy asked if I would like coach him on TRT and I was like, no, you need to go see a doctor in your like, country, whatever, I will not do that. Some dude messaged me and was like, oh TRT, I've been thinking about that. I can get that at TRT, or I can get that at GNC, which one should I buy? And I was like, no. It's like in the United States, it is a schedule three controlled substance. Like you need to go to a doctor. And I was getting like kind of frustrated and then second guessing myself, I like, this is the reason why I didn't wanna be super public about it. But at the end of the day, like I just. It didn't feel right to me. And there's people who I know who are on and like don't really say anything about it. But then they're like posting physique updates and stuff. And that just didn't align morally with me. So I wanted to be super, super transparent about it. And I have been purposefully posting like this was the max. Like this is where it ended for me and comparisons and stuff. And then I will not be comparing like. Aaron at 20, 25 with like, you know, Natty Aaron, because you're playing a different game. And I just don't for me personally, my business. I also know people who will like post before and afters of like natural and on gear. And I'm like, come on, like no fucking shit that's going to happen. You know, so I was very, very hesitant. But I guess in order for me to make things turn out the way that I would like them to, I have to be transparent about it. So. Now into my kind of soul update in something that was, uh, became very apparent to me. This was actually last week, so it could have went into last week's updates. Um, there's a guy that we'll train with sometimes here. It's a friend of Jackson's from, from back in Australia who was a really good, you know, uh, bodybuilder in Australia. And when we will train, he'll let you get to like that kind of like two RIR thing. And then he'll be like, okay, like get aggressive now, like get angry, like get aggressive. And when we would be training towards the peak end of the diet, like I remember when he would like the first day I trained with him, I just remember thinking to myself like, dude, there's no aggression left in my body. Like there's there just isn't like I have no aggression. So when he's like, get angry, I'm like, there's just nothing in there. Like those bones don't exist anymore, you know? And then literally like last week, we trained with him and it happened in Oh my God, it's it was there again. I was like, holy fuck, the aggression is there like. And you never realize it's gone until it comes back. And then like in training, like aggression is there again. And I was like, that is literally like, that is just the testosterone. That's 100 % because I'm doing the exact same things. Like nothing else has changed. And I was like, I have aggression in training again. And that one was very kind of interesting because I, when, when it, when it wasn't happening, I was like, Oh, maybe I'm just past that age, you know, where. I'm just not angry and stuff anymore. Don't get me wrong. Things still frustrate the hell out of me all the time, but that's different than like aggression, you know? And no, voraciously came back with the training. So I was like, okay, that was the difference there. Interesting. Yeah, so a couple of questions on that actually. One, could the confounding variable be that you also are increasing food intake? So maybe it's like hard to decipher out that it's just the TRT. No, because I remember like, I remember thinking about it and being like, dude, it's been so long since I've like been like aggressive, you know, with training, like you just, it's just not there. And even I would think like, you know, when, when you're, let's say you're taking like a, a top set on your hack squad or hack press or something like that, there's the people who kind of like slap themselves and like get hyped up sort of thing. I find I'm like the complete opposite. I like close my eyes, I take a few like really deep, like smooth controlled breaths and try and like focus, you know, mentally as opposed to relying on the like kind of cortisol sort of thing. And I still do that now, but it's just like, yeah, I don't think it's food related if I'm being honest. Yeah. Yeah, I've talked about this before that before my top sets, I always try to similarly to you take a few deep breaths, close my eyes. I kind of try to stay parasympathetic almost before the fight begins. And I feel like that really allows me to focus better. Whereas if I get amped up, do the slap thing and kind of yell and whatever, then I feel like it throws off my mind muscle connection, my rep tempo and my ability to kind of focus and execute the way that I want to. So kind of on that same vein, I have an interesting question that I think people have different opinions on this. But some people when they get angry outside of the gym, they get frustrated, they get upset. They feel like they want to go to the gym and get that angst out of them. And they have their best sessions when there's something like wrong in their life outside of the gym. And then there's people that perform better in the gym when life is really good outside the gym. And it's almost like training is a gift. It's like I'm feeling so good about life. I can't wait to go train right now. And I certainly fall into that latter category. When I get frustrated or angry, the last thing I want to do is go train because I'm very distracted and I just don't have good quality sessions. So where do you stand in that spectrum? That's a really good question. I think when I was younger, it might have been like an outlet thing. But not anymore. No, like, if I'm really like, I'm in, I don't experience it as much. I don't know if we've ever kind of talked about it on the podcast, probably not because it's not really related. There's like your high and low emotion people who experience these like really high highs, really low lows. And then there's me who's just like fucking riding, you know, ambivalence in in the middle. Like my best days look marginally different than my worst days. And I'm just on like the world's most boring, boring, emotional roller coaster that, you know, doesn't really go up or down. So for me, it's it's not it's like training just like it's it's pretty much a character trait now. You know, I use it as like self development. But if I'm like really upset or whatever, like the last thing I'm going to go do is train. I would probably maybe try and figure out why I am or what I need to do to get out of it. But it's not just like I'm not going to go distract myself. It's like, no, what is causing this and how do I address it head on so it doesn't turn into a two or three day thing sort of thing. Yeah, for sure. I agree. It's not a Punnett square because that's a biology thing, but there's four personality types. I can remember three of them. There's a judge, a cheerleader, a poet, and I can't remember what the other one is, but it defines your ability to have high highs, low lows and stuff. Judges are more even keeled just across the board. They don't really have high highs and they don't really have low lows. Then you have the poet who has... high lows and low highs. So they tend to be a little bit more depressive. And then you have the cheerleader who's the opposite of the poet, where basically everything is just happy go lucky. So they have very high highs and very low lows. Or no, very high. Anyway, they don't have very many lows. Everything's looked at very optimistically. And then there's the one that is the opposite of the judge, I believe. And I can't remember what that one's called. But I align definitely more with the judge side as well where I tend to be a lot more even keeled for the most part. So that's interesting. I'll try to clarify what those four are and drop that on the next podcast. Yeah, that's all cool. I don't really have anything else to add. We can jump into the topic. Yeah, so I'll give a little bit of a quick backstory so we can dive in. Obviously, nutrition coaching is my bread and butter, it's my career. And I have a lot of nutrition, you know, emphasized conversations with, you know, various clients every single week. And something that, this actually happened today and it kind of spurred the idea for the episode. I have a client, very, very good physique, natural physique. absolutely wonderfully. He's still quite young at like 24. Had this wonderful diet, got super, super shredded. He's the sole person, right? I'm sure you get these too, Brian. People reach out to you and they say things like, oh, I'm, you know, 7 % body fat and stuff like that when they're literally like 13. And I remember being like, okay, you know, and he's like, oh, I just, I did my own diet. You know, I think I'm like 7 % body fat, maybe 6%. I'm like, okay, dude, you know, I was like, send me some photos. No, he was absolutely fucking shredded. Like he was actually 6 % body fat. And I was like, Okay, congratulations on being the first person to ever actually be like accurate saying that to me. And now we're he wanted to start a build. So we're so we're going through. And as I'm going through some of the food logs and stuff, he's been having a little bit of a challenge of moving away from the diet foods, right. And something that can happen is you get this physique and you're like, holy shit, this worked. I'm here. I'm afraid. to change things because I don't want to lose it. On one side, you effectively need to lose it. You can live at like 7 % body fat with a lot of compromises. I wouldn't recommend it. But different choices need to be made. And we're starting foods up. It's not super high. And he was giving me, I'm really, really full. I'm having a hard time getting the food in on my rest days. I'm like, okay, let's dive in into specifics. He's eating all the same diet foods, but in insane quantities. and pretty much shooting himself in the foot from a food volume and fiber standpoint when our goal has changed. So understanding what the goal is can help dictate what types of foods you bring in for your carbohydrate sources, your fat sources, your fruits and vegetables to either help you or to help you, but oftentimes many people will choose not the best food for the job, right? And I don't want it to make like foods are bad, but again, there are more appropriate and less appropriate times where certain foods shine and other foods do the opposite of shine. So what I thought would be kind of a good idea if we just ran through some of the kind of top choices and the most common foods that I see, and then. This will be very beneficial for you guys as the listeners out there when you do have a gain phase or a deficit. Yeah. No, I love that. I love the contextual approach that I have. I've discussed this on the podcast before, but just to provide kind of an umbrella view of the way I generally would approach this between the dieting and the, the, let's call it surplus or maintenance phase is I'll take it in reverse. So when I'm just in surplus or maintenance phase, I have my plate and it has like two burger patties on it. The burger patties probably have a bond. They have cheese. There's a side item that has potatoes, maybe that has some cheese on it. And then there's a vegetable or whatever next to that. And maybe the vegetable has some butter on it or something like that. Right. As the diet goes on certain things from that begin to disappear. So it's like the bun goes, then the cheese goes, then the butter goes. Right. And eventually you're left with just burger, plain burger patties that maybe are even leaner beef than they were before. And then there's plain ass potatoes and plain ass veggies. And so. In a sense, the foods that I'm eating are the same, but it's the garnishments or the additions to the food that change. And so I know that's not 100 % exactly the path that we're going to go down here. It's more exchange, potentially exchanging foods that are higher calories for lower calories within the spectrum of the same food. For example, different cuts of beef would be, I think, maybe one reference there. But anyway, kind of along that line, yeah, it's... It's almost impossible to keep eating diet foods and to eat enough of them as you go through to stay, to get enough calories in to continue gaining because those diet foods tend to be so satiating. Yep. It's like, it's a different tool for a different job. So something that I love that you brought up is potatoes. So potatoes are the first food. And to give a kind of a funny backstory before nutrition was my profession, I would say in my like, I remember doing this in my early twenties. I from, for whatever reason, thought that potatoes were like fattening, right? I literally have thought this, that like potatoes will make you fat or make you gain. So if you want to like, you know, lean out, like you don't eat potatoes, but in a different, you know, on a different page, when you're gaining potatoes are great, right? Like that, I literally actually believe that. It couldn't be further from the truth. Like the complete opposite is true. Like potatoes are a wonderful dieting food. There was a, it's years old now, a study published. that wanted to find out what the most satiating food was, right? And they had this food satiety index. Boiled potatoes are literally number one. There is no better food than boiled potatoes, right? So when you're dieting, for your carbohydrate, various potatoes, baked is still good, boiled is... objectively better because of how the water makes its way in and then you get a little bit more volumous those sorts of things which all play a role in satiety are great for dieting they're not great for gaining because when your carbohydrates are three four five or six hundred per day the amount of potatoes that you have to start eating becomes so large you're eating a pound plus of potatoes in a meal and it bogs down your digestion and you can't get to your next meal because you're still super full from the meal you ate three hours ago. So potatoes, red skin potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, right? All the typical variations on potatoes, wonderful in a calorie deficit for a carbohydrate source, not so wonderful in a gain because of the same reasons that make it so wonderful in a calorie deficit. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense if you're pulling on the carbohydrate strings during the gaining phase. But if you're pulling on just the calorie amount overall, you can take potatoes and you can make them higher calorie by making them mashed potatoes and adding, you know, milk and butter to them or lightly frying them in some sort of a healthy oil or something along those lines. And so, For me, who tends not to go super high carbohydrate when I'm gaining, I tend to prefer to pull on some of the fat strings. I actually use potatoes in both cases, whether I'm dieting or gaining, and I'll add some fat to the potatoes, and I find them extremely enjoyable that way as well. I do enjoy kind of like a breakfast kind of skillet potato if I'm like, you know, going to like a diner or something like that, which obviously I haven't done in a couple of years, but. Similar idea. Similar idea, yep. Now, I kind of structured this as to like the most bang for your buck, you know, or the largest impacting foods, and then we get into like other ones that still play a role but are less impacting. So as the list goes on, the potency or relevance starts to kind of decrease a little bit. Next, I have strawberries and watermelon. So strawberries are... Objectively, I believe the best bang for your buck food available in terms of a carbohydrate. Technically, I think cucumber actually is or maybe like a lettuce, but like that's technically kind of cheating. That's, you know, uh, leafs and that sort of thing. Um, strawberries, you can eat a disgusting amount of strawberries when you are in a calorie deficit, uh, relative to other fruits, right? Um, I'm pulling on my on my brain memory here a little bit. So apologies if I'm a little bit off 100 grams weight of a banana is about 19 grams of carbs 19 to 20 grams of carbs 100 grams weight of strawberries is like 6 .8 So you can eat like 2 .5 as much Carbohydrates so our sorry strawberries. We're talking 250 grams of carbohydrates of strawberries. I for the same carbohydrate as 100 grams of banana, right? That, when I speak to clients about this, I like to call it fat loss chess, right? And that is the, I'm giving away my secrets on Eat, Drink, and Prosper right now. Like that is the power move of fat loss chess is your strawberries. Other berries are similar, but not quite as profound as strawberries. Like blueberries are still, Typically moving fruits to berries in your deficits is positive, but strawberries are like the king of the berries in terms of playing that game. And then watermelon is another fruit that you can eat just ridiculous amounts of in a calorie deficit for very little carbohydrate. And that's just because it's full of so much water. Yeah, I usually find, so I tend to lean toward berries for the most part anyways. I just enjoy berries. I like them. And I feel like you get a lot more fiber as well for the amount that you're consuming, which seems like a great hack in there. And then it seems like citrusy fruits tend to be much higher in sugar volume or carbohydrate volume per amount that you're consuming, right? Like if you eat an orange, or is up there towards the banana on that scale. Yeah. peaches, stuff like that. One that I really love as well as cherries. Like whenever they're in season, I'm always going to go get cherries, especially if I'm in a calorie deficit. And part of that is because of the way that the pit actually forces you to slow down when you're eating them. So you can really only eat one cherry at a time and you have to. extract the pit out of your mouth and spit that thing out. And so I could eat an entire bowl of cherries, like 30 of them or something. And while that might be like 25 ish carbs, it lasts me for a really long time. And so I find that kind of kind of be a nice dieting hack as well. I will not agree. I will not costamp that one. Their cherries are very, very dense as a carbohydrate relative to being a fruit. I just can't because I don't want clients to be like, Hey, I'm going to start having cherries. And I'm like, no, please do not do that. They're just. have the amount of fiber in them and the amount of nutrient density that you get from cherries is up there as one of the highest of the fruits as well. Mm hmm. I'm not disagreeing with that, but they are more dense in carbohydrate relative to others. Yep. Yeah, I can just pound strawberries. Like if you give me 250 grams of strawberries, they can be gone in like a moment, you know.-hmm. Anything else on fruits? So I guess one thing that you said that I love is I would agree, berries are great. They're super, super micronutrient dense as well. Others, when I'm in a surplus or when moving clients into a surplus, I will start to back down the berries a little bit and bring in things like pineapples, kiwis. This is the time to use the banana, right? Pre -post -workout, it's... easy to take with you and those sorts of things. Like these are the times to then shift gears and start to bring some of these foods in because they have their contextual use in a surplus if it's not in a deficit. Now this one is it's not as known but my god will it change the game right if you find yourself dieting in fall or winter There is like a cousin to potatoes called the variations of winter squashes We have acorn squash. We have butternut squash. We have delicata squash, which is my personal favorite. There are others I'm getting it confused with that fucking tractor company. One's Kuboka, one's Kubota. So please forgive me, but I can't remember the difference between the squash name and the fucking company that makes tractors. So something with a K and a U and a B, that's another one. They are very, very similar to potatoes where they're kind of like this hybrid. It's a starch, but it's a starch that is leaning dangerously close to like vegetable territory, right? There's a certain term, and I think it might be tuber or something like that. Apologies if I cannot remember the specifics. You can eat a disgusting high amount of Delicata squash for your carbohydrate. So works great in a calorie deficit, but if you're someone who, for our fellow Americans out there, it's fall time and you're like, I'm gonna commence my winter bulk. The winter squash varieties are around. Not a good choice because you're gonna be so full and you're gonna feel gross and all bogged down because you have to eat so much of them. So the seasons don't really work out the best for North Americans, but the winter squashes are wonderful. Yeah, I don't personally eat squash. I know that a lot of people love it and it's, I co -sign everything you said as far as from what I know. Do you spaghetti squash it ever? Do you make it into like a pasta -y type thing or do you just kind of eat it more as like a mash or how do you prepare it? The spaghetti squash, which is one I forgot to list, so thank you for that. I have had that in the past. At this point in my life, I am not putting in that type of work to get food out. I just won't. It's... a mash or you bake it or? Oh yeah, so of that list, my favorite is delicata squash. And the reason with the delicata squash is it's pretty easy to prepare and it's really sweet actually. It's a very, very interesting food. So I mean, it's like, I mean, the squashes are effectively like pumpkin family. Sorry, it's just like a pumpkin. You chop it down the middle, you scoop out the insides, and then I would just like chop it into slices, you know? And then I just bake it. with a little bit, maybe olive oil or something like that, a small amount, bake it and it's really wonderful. I haven't made it obviously in quite some time because I live in a region of the world where we don't have it. And then the other kind of caveat, as much as I love it, pumpkins are like my vomit reflex smell. So while I love Delicata squash, it's so, so good. Like cutting it open is immediately like vomit inducing. for me and that's with the spaghetti squash at all. I just can't handle the inside of pumpkins for some reason. It's the only thing, but it's just like, it literally, it's like I'll start to vomit and it doesn't work well when you're trying to prep food in the kitchen. So I don't have it that much unless sometimes Trader Joe's makes it pre -cut already and then I would always buy literally every single one in the store because I was like, this is, you guys did this for me. I'm buying them all. But yeah, winter squash, wonderful. for dieting during the colder months, if you are. Cool, so we did talk about banana a little bit. Banana has its utility at maintenance phases or a surplus because it's arguably the most dense fruit source. If you're someone who's early in a diet or something like that and you have a large amount of carbohydrate, for instance, I kept a banana in throughout my entire most recent diet. It did, I was not eating the 120 gram. you know, 130 gram bananas, it was like the 75, the small size ones, but I was also fortunate and able to keep carbohydrates very high when I dieted because of all the activity and training that we were doing. So more use towards surpluses, less utility in calorie deficits. Next, we have rice and rice -based cereals. I'm talking primarily like your Rice Krispies cereal. And then the chocolate variety, which I believe is called Coco Pops, I think, which are effectively just puffed rice. Excuse me. The Coco Pops has the cocoa powder. And then there's a small amount of sugar in there. I think it's like three grams per serving or something like that, or maybe four. Not a lot. These are wonderful for gaining faces. The rice -based cereal, it's very, very easy. It's portable. Um, you can eat it in very large quantities. It digests rapidly. If you're deep into a game phase, the rice based cereals, wonderful pre or post workout with a banana, right? Works great. The rice is another one. Right. Right now my rice, we're just as my carbohydrates are getting insanely high right now. Um, we're pretty much just filling rice. Uh, it's lower volume. Uh, you can get a lot of it in. It digests very, very easily for a lot of people. It's. quite safe, wonderful to use. This is one that I will see people try to keep in too long in a calorie deficit and it's just because it works so great in a surplus, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot in the deficit because you might only get like 65 grams of cooked rice for your like 30 grams of carbs for a meal or something like that and you could just push that to winter squash. a baked potato or a boiled potato like there's just much better returns on volume, which is obviously going to be productive for your satiety there. Yeah, rice is absolutely my favorite number one go -to starchy carbohydrate. I would say I pretty much eat rice every day and I really struggle if I'm trying to diet. I really struggle taking rice out. So I'm probably guilty of keeping it in too long as well. But it just goes so well with everything and it absorbs the flavor of the food that you're eating. It just, it's like the perfect starch in my opinion. Yeah, I love it. I, when, once we got to the point of my diet where my final, my final carb meal of the day was post -workout. And then I had like two more meals that were just ended up being like chicken vegetable. And they used to be like chicken rice vegetable. Like that was the only time where I was kind of like. Yeah, yeah. oh, just like a sad five year old who lost his balloon or something like that. I was like, okay. Well, it really like when you have just chicken and vegetable, it really does feel like you're missing a critical component because the rice is it just accompanies the chicken or the beef or whatever is in there so well. And it makes each bite much more palatable than to just eat straight chicken. So yeah, I very much struggle with that too. So I usually try to decrease the amount of rice I'm eating first. before actually eliminating it and then eventually you just have this little sad portion of rice on your plate and you're like, oh, I should probably go with something else. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Next we have pastas. And let's talk about, maybe start with like a whole grain pasta or something like that, which is just going to be like a slightly more voluminous and fiber laden version of like a regular pasta. When I have, so to give a little bit of a background, I kind of have two options with my coaching. I will have a meal plan based route where I'm steering the ship. You just execute and I make all of our decisions for us. And then I have like a macro based approach and the client can kind of choose which one they want. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes we will have, I'll have a client and I would say like 80%, maybe 85 % of my clients come to me. Like fat loss is one of the primary interests. If they're choosing their macros and they put pasta in there, I like crack the whip hard and fast. And I'm like, you cannot be serious, right? Or what I'll say is like, you cannot tell me that you are hungry if you're putting pasta. Like if you're choosing pasta as your carbohydrate source, you are literally not trying. So pasta, it's, you're taking like. Wheat, turning it into like a dough, it's, what's the word I'm looking for? Processed. Yeah, it's a processed food, but not like an awfully processed food, but it's just compressed and dense. You can eat so little of it and the carbohydrate numbers are very, very high. You can do the chickpea pasta, the black bean pasta, those are steps in the right direction. I still don't think it has a place in fat loss because the trade off for the volume and satiety is very, very high. I think in your surplus, your maintenance phases, this is the place to include pasta. Pasta can be a wonderful gaining food so long as you digest it well. Sometimes with certain individuals and the gut microbiome diversity sorts of things like. pushing really, really high volumes of the wheat and stuff can start to impact some people negatively from a GI standpoint. So just do your due diligence there, but that is the time to have pasta is during your maintenance and surplus spaces. If you have it or plan it as like meal prep or something in your deficit, you're gonna have a hard time. Yeah, no, I fully co sign that when you open your box of pasta and you look you look at the back and it says eight servings in the pasta. And then you're like trying to eyeball it and you're like, Okay, I am going to take out one eighth of this pasta and put it in the water. And literally like, you think you're taking an eighth, you're taking a quarter of it, which is literally 97 carbs or something like that, because I think it's 48 carbs per serving. And even a quarter of that box. ends up not being a lot of food. So before you know it, you've had 100 grams of carbs and you thought that you were having 50 or something like that. So yeah, and then you're not even full afterwards. It just, I fully agree with you. Yeah. And next moving, we have like fattier cuts of meat. And this is one where I would say this is an area where people, they get really hung up in, in this gets even some of the decently seasoned like, you know, dieters and eaters, those sorts of things. Typically it's going to be beef varieties because the, the propensity and cuts of, and in fat is just significantly higher than in most of like either your fish or chicken or something like that. but the ones that I have kind of laid out here, ribeye, super, super fatty, tri-tip, which is not widely available. Brian, can you guys get it in Colorado? Yeah, so I was going to comment on this because I'm a massive fan of tri tip and I eat a ton of it. And it doesn't matter whether I'm dieting or surplus because tri tip inherently is a very fatty cut of meat. But that's because they don't inherently come trimmed. And so all of the fat on the tri tip is on the outside of it. And so if you get your tri tip trimmed, the actual center of the meat itself of the loaf is very, very, very lean to the point that sometimes I struggle to eat. eat it because it's so lean. So if you get your tri tips trimmed, it's something like add to the it's like a chicken breast, it's like five grams of fat to 25 grams of protein. But if you get it untrimmed, it's like 15 or 18 grams of fat to 25 grams of protein. So it makes a huge difference whether how you have your try to Very good point. Yeah, I would recommend for listener out there, prepare it yourself. If you want it prepared right, prepare it yourself. The other one I have in there like ribs, any of your ribs are gonna be super, super fatty there. And the last thing there, and this one ends up being a little bit more common, ground beef, right? Ground beef is gonna come in your various varieties from 70 % lean, 30 % fat up to 95 .5, I've even seen a 97.3 before. I have my clients only buy 90 .10 or leaner. When, a way that I present this, like even at an 85, I know it's the case at, I know it's the case at 80 .20, I can't remember off the top of my head if it's still the case at 85 .15. At 80 .20, which is, Looks pretty decent on paper, right? 80 % beef, 20 % fat. The way that the calories work out, that 80, 20 beef, the calories are over 50 % coming from fat. It's like 54 % comes from fat and like 46 comes from, it's even higher? Okay. if at 85 15, you have 17 grams of fat for 21 grams of protein. So that's 153 calories from fat to 82 calories from protein. So it's actually 65 % fat and 35 % protein. If you're at 85 15, um, if you're at 90 10, it's 11 grams of fat for 22 grams of protein. So you're getting 88 calories from protein and you're still getting 99 calories from fat at 90 10. So even in 90 10, you're getting more calories from fat than you are from protein. Okay, question for you. Are you reading off the screen or do you just fucking Dennis Hoffman Rain Man that shit real fast? Okay. that. I've put so much time and energy into my consumption of beef and I used to track my calories by hand. I never used an app, so I would just use an Excel sheet. And so I began to memorize all of this stuff like second nature. Mm hmm. Yeah. So you pretty much want to buy as lean of beef as you can. And then I recommend or from from a ground beef. I like I recommend for my clients to drain off the excess. It's easily drain drainable. I don't have them like patting it down with paper towels and all that shit. But I did at one point go down a rabbit hole a couple of years back of, hey, if I drain the fat off my, you know, beef, does it actually. Is it actually like leaner? And it is like if you buy 90 10 and you drain off the fat, you had effectively end up with like a 95 five. So that's typically what I have. Most clients do. If if if we're ever at a if I'm ever with a client where we really need to bottom out fats, if we're trying to get sub 10 percent body fat or pushing something really far, we're not going to be having beef. We might have beef like once per week or something like that, because it's just a hard trade off at that point. Yeah, and I'll also say that grilling it also does the same effect as draining the fat. So when you put it on the grill, you can turn 90 10 into 95 5 by just cooking it. It doesn't have to be really well done, but making sure that it's at least medium temperature. Half of that fat will drain off that way too. And so once it's 95 5, you're looking at about five grams of fat for 23 24 grams of protein, which is equivalent to not quite a chicken breast, which would generally be leaner, but it's also not as fatty as a chicken thigh. So it's kind of like somewhere in the middle there. And so I personally tend to keep 90 10 beef in my diet or 93 seven for most of it. And then I just either drain the fat or grill it in a way where it cuts the fat in half. Yep, so the little things like just changing the choice or the cuts. Oh, I remember what I wanted to say on this one. The cuts that I do recommend that are going to be a good balance of lean versus not tasting like rubber are going to be your tenderloin and top sirloin. Eye of round and top round, I believe, are like technically the leanest. I remember going through phases of trying to eat those and stuff, like even for me, I'm... Someone like, as long as it's decent, I'm happy. And I even remember being like, these kind of are fucking awful. So I wouldn't recommend running that experiment for yourself. But top sirloin. Yep. pretty, pretty bad. Top sirloin for sure. That's like a five to 25. Um, from my understanding of tenderloin, which is the same as filet mignon or whatever, um, the fat is marbled in it. So you can't really see it, but usually what I find with that is that it's about the same as 90, 10 beef before you drain the fat. So it's about 11 grams of fat to 25 ish grams of protein. So a tenderloin, at least from my understanding, it would be about double as fatty as a top sirloin. It's a little bit fattier. Top sirloin, if you're like Aaron, you have to pick one. I'm buying top sirloin. That's always been my favorite. But yeah, it's typically, I have clients, if they're going to a steakhouse for an anniversary or whatever, I'm like, this is a good happy medium sort of thing. So we got through the ground beef. Okay now moving into like nuts, right? in some primary fats so things like almonds cashews and this is really the the first place where people kind of get hung up on Like sometimes when I have consults with people and stuff and they're like, ah, you know I just don't know why I can't lose fat like I eat healthy, right? That's a very very commonly thrown around not for phrase in the thing is like Eating healthy does not mean fat loss, right? Healthy is subjective. It means different things for different people with different like biomarkers and those sorts of things. Again, nuts are not bad, right, for you or anything like that, unless you're allergic or something like that. They can, however, be very inconducive to fat loss because they are incredibly calorically dense for a very small volume of something eaten. So almonds, cashews, I have two more here. Walnuts, Brazil nuts are things that I would not recommend eating larger quantities of in a calorie deficit because of those. I do however, like to point out that if for some reason I have a client, maybe we are going a little bit higher of a fat approach with our calorie deficit. Maybe their training intensity and training volume overall and not duration. Frequency. is just a little bit lower. And I'm like, listen, we do not need 55 % of our days, you know, calories from carbohydrate. You train three times per week at a, you know, four RIR. It just doesn't make sense. We'll go with a little bit higher fat. I will say like, hey, I would like your, you know, maybe nut or something like that that we're using to be a walnut or a Brazil nut. And the reason I like to take that approach is the walnuts are going to be one of numerous foods, but it's a little bit higher in omega -3. fatty acid content. And then the Brazil nut specifically has a very, very high selenium content. And selenium is one of the, I guess the proper terminology would be a mineral there, but a nutrient is a better term to use that is necessary for optimal thyroid production. And we know that as we calorie deficit, our thyroid downregulates. if we are, it's often correlated with down regulation, sorry. And we know that if we supply certain nutrients that the thyroid needs to produce thyroid hormone, we can influence or at least stave off the degree to which that may otherwise occur. Because in a calorie deficit, as our food needs to come down, what often happens so that we can control that better is our food variation comes down. As the food, or variety I should say, as the food variety comes down, so does our ability to get various nutrients in. So there's some foods I like to bring in that are specific in certain nutrients, like things that come in for the thyroid there. So that is why I like to use walnuts and Brazil nuts if I will keep them in. Yeah. So I actually had a question that you half answered by saying, well, let's have higher omega -3. My question was actually going to be how much priority do you put on choosing nuts that have that higher omega -3 content? Because almonds are probably the most ubiquitously consumed not across the board. And there's also a plethora of studies linking almonds specifically to lower levels of blood pressure, hypertension. And I find that. really interesting because almonds are basically omega -6 dominant. I don't even know if there's more than traces of omega -3 at all. And so do you know anything about that? Do you know why almonds are so good at lowering blood pressure or is that just a product of them being used in studies and maybe changing people's dietary habits or anything along those lines? If I had to put money on it, which I'm not saying this is conclusive or anything to anyone listening, I would say it's probably more of a correlation as opposed to a causation. Like almonds are gonna be like, people are, I need to eat healthier. Okay, I'm going to start eating almonds because they're a healthy food. And then I would imagine that would be my primary. To answer the question, I guess fully, the walnuts, yes, they are higher. It's smaller and it's still a very, very, uh, ALA dominated Omega three, which we know we don't get a wonderful conversion to, but it's kind of like, if I can pick one that has a little bit like this is what I'm going to go with. But, but for, for the clients who are in a calorie deficit, if I want to push the Omega threes up a little bit, it's going to be via like a fish oil, or I might say, Hey, I want salmon twice per week, these sorts of things. But it's like a very, it's, it's like a, pennies, extra pennies in the in the effort per se. Do you know what other nuts other than almonds, or rather walnuts, tend to be higher in omega -3? Walnuts are the only one I can pick off the top of my head. I believe chia seeds as well. I mean, that's not a nut, but it's a nut slash seed. I believe so. I could be wrong on that though. Yep. And I guess, oh, this is, we'll move number 12 up. Nut butters are another one. Nut butters, that's one where I find people try and hold onto a little bit too long and it ends up negatively, you know, it's just, it's a bad spend when we are in the deficit, right? It could be allocated to something that's going to get you a little bit more fiber or a higher satiety or something that you're actually kind of like chewing. The kind of hack that I will use with people is there's a product that I know is in the States, it might be in other places. It's called PB2, like peanut butter too. It's powdered peanut butter and the macros. So you get the same kind of flavor, but the macros are very, very favorable. So those are ones I do like to try and pull out decently early in a calorie deficit. And then conversely are wonderful to start bringing in just to add some. some additional fun and flavor to your oats or those sorts of foods when you are at maintenance or in a surplus. I don't really do much with nut butters. So yeah, I just kind of leave them out all the time. I feel like the density is just too high. And even in a surplus, it's almost like I'd rather get those calories somewhere else. Yeah, I don't, I very, very rarely consume them. Next, and this one is your various milks. I do have, what I had originally wrote down was like whole milk, full fat Greek yogurt. These are things to drinking your calories that are not, you know, a protein shake. The protein is obviously what we're getting out of there. It's hard to justify unless you are on like a fringe case of very high training intensities and we're doing like intra workout carbs. Like I know Brian does, does that a lot. I do as well. Um, it's a very, very low hanging fruit. And with that, there are some that are better options. Like you go with like the unsweetened coconut milk or the unsweetened almond milk, where we're just getting a little bit of fat in it. But I know ones that like clients have tried to kind of push back with me on is like an oat milk, like a flavored oat milk. And I'm like, listen, this is like, you're doing like 12 grams of carbs from this oat milk. we're behind the ball as is, things are not going well. It's just a very low hanging fruit to pull or move to the unsweetened coconut milk or something like that. But typically, not drinking your calories is a wonderful choice. Conversely, once you're at maintenance or out of the deficit, these are some of the very first niceties to bring back in. Maybe we go from the black coffee back to the latte or something like that. because our obviously contextual goal has changed and there's more appropriate, you know, allocations of calories and those sorts of things to go to those. Yeah, the some of the flavored or sweetened like oat milks and almond milks can have way more than 12 grams of carbs. Like when I've been looking at them, because Kim doesn't drink dairy. So she'll always ask me to buy almond or oat milk. And of course, I always get her the unsweetened one that has, you know, 30 calories in it or something like that. But when you look at the nutrition facts of the ones next to it, they could have 3035 grams of carbs per serving because of the way they're sweetened. So you definitely definitely have to be cautious of that. And then I also agree that I would never drink milk or any of those products during a deficit. But for anybody that's younger than us and may not be aware of the way that people used to bulk back in the day before protein shakes were everywhere, the GOMAD diet gallon of milk a day was a thing. And people would literally drink a gallon of whole milk every day as a way to get 128 grams of protein. on top of whatever else they're eating. And so back in the 60s and 70s, this was very, very popular. If you go look at old magazines, Strength and Health magazine from the 60s and 70s, they talk a lot about it. And guys would get, guys basically get fat, but they'd also get really big and strong. And so it just kind of shows, A, times change, but B, if you're trying to bulk and put weight on, drinking your calories can be a positive. Yeah, I it can be. It can be. There's better ways. Yeah. now that shows you don't need to go dreamer bulk when you do this. Whereas back in the day, they didn't know that they just were like, Hey, let's get up to 25 % body fat and get strong as fuck. And then we'll cut it down later. Yeah, one thing, this is a, we only have one more food and this is a little aside. Here in Bali, and I haven't been to much of other Indonesia, so I don't wanna speak for Indonesia, a lot of the supplement stuff is really like, kind of like 15 years behind, you know? So a lot of the supplement stores and the online shops and stuff, it's a lot of like, C plus, B rated, like American brands that they have some deal with and then they import and it's just like all. the 10 pound like gainer bags and everything. And you see people buying them. And I'm just like, God damn, dude, like there's a better way. And it's all it's just like the uninformed. It's a thousand calories, but it's like you get the people who they eat breakfast and they like don't eat anything else. And they just have their like three gainer shakes. And they say that, hey, I have a hard time gaining weight. And you just don't fucking eat, dude. You eat one meal per day and then you're having these shakes that are just literally. just dextrose, you know, and maltodextrin. Like there's a better way, but it is wild. It's like, it's rampant here. Whereas like, you're not really seeing that much in the States anymore, like the gainers pushed and stuff. No, I haven't even seen one in a store for, man, maybe even a decade. Like they just aren't here anymore. Yeah, because they're all over here. And then the last one, I was on the fence about this, but I think it's just important to understand, right? And this food I have is carrots, and I'm not gonna demonize carrots or anything like that. I will often explain to clients where we have low density vegetables, and that would be like spinach, cucumber, these sorts of things. You have like your medium density vegetables, green beans would be one that comes into there. like peas, Brussels sprouts would be another one. Brussels sprouts would be like a medium to high density. Then we have a high density vegetables, like a carrot. Carrot is how I kind of said the winter squashes are kind of like this bastardization between like a starch and a vegetable. That's the same thing with a carrot, right? And other tubers. It's this kind of like hybrid mix. And. Fortunately, unfortunately, carrots are very easy and simply obtainable and you don't have to cook them. So when I have some of my lazier clients or people that just want to make things really easy, they'll just eat carrots for their vegetable. And then I get, I'm really hungry and I'm looking and I'm like, dude, you're just having carrots for all of your vegetables. He's like, okay, Aaron said I need to eat vegetables, like checking the box. And I'm like, yeah. Like you are, but you're not using it right. Like you're trying to beat, you're trying to, you know, beat the system and it's not going to work out for you sort of thing. They can just, they're just dense and you're not going to be able to eat a very large amount that are going to make them very, very satiating, but you are still going to, you know, quote unquote, spend a moderate amount of carbohydrate on them. Whereas we, if we move to a medium or low density vegetable, you will literally be able to eat like four, five times as much. in terms of volume for an equal carbohydrate spend. So that covers the deficit side of things. Obviously maintenance surplus where we have more adequate numbers to work with. They're wonderful. I enjoy carrots. I sometimes will be very lazy myself and use them in parts of like my, you know, maintenance or surplus phases in the past because I don't have to cook them in. You can just buy them already, you know, bagged and stuff like that at the grocery store. So anything on carrots, Brian? yeah, one of the things I really like to do with carrots and this does require more preparation. So it's not a lazy man's approach to them. But I like to cut them. Like you'll take a few carrots, cut them into thin kind of thin chips, so to speak, and then throw them in a pan with either just a teeny bit of olive oil or like some olive oil spray if you want to be lean. And then I, as they're cooking, I'll drizzle cinnamon on top of them. And they end up almost kind of coming out like a treat. because the cinnamon brings out some of the sweetness. Carrot has sweetness anyway, but the cinnamon adds a little bit of that extra flavor to them. And so I really actually enjoy doing that, especially when I'm in dieting phases. It takes a little bit of extra work, but it is what it is, you know? And then one thing we did actually skip over on the dairy milk section was yogurt. You had made a note on yogurt and we didn't really touch on that at all. And so I personally love... yogurts, I don't eat the full fat versions ever. Like whether I'm dieting surplus, it doesn't really matter. I'm always getting the leaner yogurts. But if you're getting a yogurt with two grams of fat to 18 grams of protein or something like that, that's a pretty good bang for your buck. And then depending on how many carbohydrates you have, you could even get them semi flavored. So I usually use the vanilla flavor and it's maybe 12 grams of carbs for 16 grams of protein and then it's two grams of fat. So it's actually a pretty well balanced snacky type food or something to add on top of other things. And I'll use some powdered protein in there sometimes too. So then that adds even more protein on top of that and add some additional flavoring. So yogurt is extremely malleable. And I think there's a number of ways that we can include yogurt at kind of both phases of dieting. Yeah, I would agree that the, the, the, in a calorie deficit, you're going to want to go low fat, you know, or no fat yogurt. Um, cottage cheese is another one that you can do. You're going to have to have a pretty good dairy stomach for that. They just, I just cannot, I can't eat them. So, um, I would say those are, I am a little bit salty about that. Like sometimes I do, I do enjoy them. I do like them, but they're just no -goes with my digestion. can be very, very useful, right? Especially in, you get some kind of moral hybrid of people. Like sometimes I have clients, a very recent one, wants to just eat less meat, right? For his own moral compass. And I'm like, okay, perfect. But was like cool with dairy. So I'm like, okay, we're gonna bring in Greek yogurt, we're gonna bring in cottage cheese. And it can be a very, very good solution. There are not many. high protein foods outside of like your animal meats, your fish, your protein powder, which you do want to kind of put an upper threshold limit on. So it is kind of like a, maybe we call it like a B plus tier sort of thing that can work for a lot of people. One thing I did want to say, this is becoming more prevalent in the past few years in the States of these like high protein yogurts. where they're literally just adding whey concentrate into it. Like I know Ratio is a company that does it. I just can't remember any of the other ones because it's been a few years, but read the labels, read the ingredients, especially if you are sensitive to a whey concentrate and typically use like an isolate. I've had a couple clients at that bit, bit them in the ass before, so just read your labels. And if things look too good to be true, right? If you have like, I remember one of them, it was like 35 grams of protein per serving. And I remember being like, well, how the fuck are they doing this? You know, when you look into it and they just add weight concentrate into the, into the yogurt. I'm like, okay. So. Any foods that you think we maybe forgot, Brian? I'm sure there's probably a couple. sure there's some but that's a pretty thorough list in my opinion. It covers most of the foods I eat. Yeah, I guess I love chicken thighs. We didn't even put chicken on there. But that can fit into kind of like the meat section is I really struggle with and when I have to change from chicken thighs down to chicken breasts. It's just significantly less enjoyable experience for me. And there really isn't even anything you can do to make chicken thighs leaner. They're just They're just fattier. And so they're a great food for maintenance or surplus, but not a great food, especially as you get deeper into the deficit. Yeah, yep. Okay, cool. So I know it's been a while since we've talked nutrition at a higher level. And I think we did a pretty good job of this one. I think it's something that we haven't really covered from this angle. I'm glad we got to talk about it. And this is something I think that I just kind of gloss over, because I have these conversations so, so frequently, multiple times every single week. But hopefully for some of the listeners out there who maybe have just never. kind of thought to look and dig that deep. You know, one of my big things is objective nutrition, right? There's numbers. It's a numbers game, right? You can play math with nutrition and it can really change the difficulty or ease of outcomes. So I'm glad we had this conversation to distribute some of this information to you guys. Hopefully you find it helpful. If you do, let us know on socials. Brian, do you have anything to add before we wrap this one up? Nah, just that I love that you picked on something that comes up with your daily practice of nutrition coaching. And that specific example of that one client that you mentioned in the beginning, because I think those are really, they make the best episodes when there's practical applicability across your clientele base and things that you deal with on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. So that kind of makes me think, you know, more about. when topics come up with my clients, whether they're training or nutrition related or whatever, I'll try to make notes of those so that we can kind of build episodes out of it. I think that's wonderful, I'll try and do the same. Awesome, so as always everyone, thank you for listening. Brian and I will talk to you next week.