Macronutrients On The Thermo Diet - Podcast Episode 5

In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton talk about macronutrients and everything that they encompass when it comes to your journey to reach the optimal state of health that is known as Thermo.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

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Full Transcript: 

Chris: What's up everyone? Christopher Walkers, back here again with the Marshall.

Jayton: How's it going?

Chris: I'm doing good, you know? Just drinking my coffee, starting to wake up a little bit.

Jayton: Heck yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: So, what are we talking about today?

Chris: We're going to talk about macronutrients.

Jayton: Okay. Sweet.

Chris: And what's thermo, and what ain't thermo.

Jayton: What ain't thermo.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: I like it. The three macronutrients, do we just want to break it up and talk about each one and kind of segment it that way?

Chris: Yeah. What do you want to start with?

Jayton: Let's go with protein.

Chris: All right, protein.

Jayton: Whenever it come to protein, the amino acid profile is what matters most, is it not?

Chris: Well there's just ... Yeah, there's probably two elements to this. Amino acid profile, and then also the raw volume of protein that's consumed. It's probably another thing we should touch on. But yeah amino acid profiles are extremely important in terms of just the make up or the type of protein that you're choosing. Then there's better ones and worse ones.

Jayton: So for instance, things like-

Chris: And probably ride alongs.

Jayton: ... Oh, yeah.

Chris: If you look at soy protein versus grass fed beef.

Jayton: Yeah, or potato protein. That's a pretty good one too.

Chris: [crosstalk 00:01:31]. Yeah.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: Sorry. You're up.

Jayton: Oh, no. So for instance, the difference between poultry, so things that are high in tryptophan, versus red meat that is high in the more pro-metabolic amino acids or bone broth collagens, things like that. So-

Chris: There's really a spectrum of preferable proteins versus non-preferable ones. I think it is a spectrum because we're not going to be like, "Don't eat chicken." But if you eat only chicken, you're getting a skewed amount of those amino acids that aren't preferable like tryptophan.

Jayton: Yeah. Why is tryptophan specifically an amino acid that we want to avoid on a consistent basis?

Chris: Basically it'll increase the production of serotonin and contrary to popular belief, people have already too high of serotonin. It's an anti-metabolic neurotransmitter. Not necessarily protective at all. Also, it's highly correlated with excess estrogen production in the body. And like we mentioned in another episode, with gut disfunction. So you definitely don't want to over-consume any sort of amino acids that are going to up regulate the production of serotonin. People should be, in my opinion, and this has been my opinion for 10 years now is, you should be focusing way more on dopamine. Like producing your own natural dopamine, more of it.

Chris: Anther interesting thing is, with... Well, I won't move on from this topic, do you have anything else?

Jayton: I would say the main thing that I see with serotonin is that it's high in a hibernative state. So whenever animals typically go into hibernation their serotonin levels are going to raise.

Chris: That's you get sleepy.

Jayton: The reason for that is so the metabolic rate goes down, so they're not burning through all of their energy stores throughout the months that they're in hibernation, because if their metabolic rate stays high, then they're going to burn off all the energy that they have stored for that hibernation period, and starve to death. And then, if they do wake up during that hibernative state they don't have any food available because it's cold outside.

Chris: Yeah. Humans don't hibernate, so we don't need to worry about that.

Jayton: Exactly, yeah. But, no. Other than that what are the more favorable proteins?

Chris: Basically, small fish or shellfish and ruminants proteins. Animals like cows or livestock of whatever kind, that walk around and eat grass, have too many stomachs and that sort of thing. Really the amino acid profile of those are definitely preferable as long as you, the caveat is not to have any of that ride along. Like I was saying, like conventionally farmed animals are typically going to have a ton of excess estrogen and a lot of antibiotics and in the tissue. You don't want that, you want an animal that was raised ethically and in its natural form, without a ton of excess stress, and that proteins definitely be great.

Chris: Especially if you look at collagen and bone broth, and that that type of thing, if you look at like a supplemental form of the protein from those animals, that's not muscle tissue, but it's more like whether it's gelatin, or like connective tissue. Those are awesome, because they're extremely high in the amino acids that people don't tend to get enough of, and especially like glycine and proline. The interesting thing is a lot of people condemn collagen, protein and gelatin because they say that it is not a complete protein. The complete protein idea is I think kind of ridiculous. They use that to sell weigh protein. It's funny because if you look at an amino acid profile of collagen, the amino acids that are omitted from collagen that aren't in it are the ones you don't want to be eating like tryptophan and methionine.

Jayton: And Cysteine.

Chris: Yeah cysteine. They're the ones that are stress amino acids, like stress based amino acids. So it's good that it's not a complete, "complete" protein like that, because you don't want more of those amino acids. We tend to get enough of them in just the, the standard person gets plenty of that. You want to make sure that you're balancing everything and it's actually really great to get a lot more of the amino acids from these connective tissues and the gelatin and that sort of thing that you're typically not getting in the standard diet. Humans used to get a lot of it when we used to, either farmer or et cetera, but use the entire... or hunt and use the entire animal for some food source, even down to the point of just like boiling the carcass and making a soup out of it, consuming the organs, that sort of thing, but people don't do that anymore.

Chris: Or it's extremely rare, hopefully, like we're helping a resurgence back into that territory. But it's also just not easy to do, to find an entire cow. You can basically like find a farmer and buy a cow from the farmer and get the meat delivered to you and everything. Tat could be one way that you can also get the bones and the organs and that sort of thing. But other than that is you can't walk into Whole Foods and be like I want I want the entire carcass of this cow, because they don't even have it. It's not something that they even get delivered to them.

Jayton: It's becoming a lot more accessible nowadays with things like butcher box and US Wellness Meats or Primal Pastures, like a lot of these will actually deliver like the gelatinous joints and stuff like that to you, so you can make your own bone broth and stuff like that too which is really high in gelatin. But usually the role that I go by whenever it comes to putting in gelatin or bone broth or collagen into the mix is just not getting more than around a third of your protein to that, especially if like you're doing resistance training and stuff like that, because the tryptophan, methionine and cysteine are necessary for tissue regeneration of the muscle, but beyond that they really have no role. So getting-

Chris: Yeah, you can get them from the muscle meats.

Jayton: Yeah, so getting around a third of your protein intake from the collagen and gelatin and bone broth and stuff like that is usually ideal.

Chris: It's hard to get more than that for most people. Unless you're just sitting like gelatin, whatever [inaudible 00:08:47] it's kind of gross. Adding it to other things is nice though.

Jayton: Yeah. It is really good, especially the UMZU Total Bone Broth. That stuff is amazing.

Chris: Yeah, I put that on every.

Jayton: Yeah, I do to.

Chris: It's like Frank's Red Hot in powder form.

Jayton: But...

Chris: It's really good with eggs.

Jayton: Yeah. Another one is that usually up until the age of 25, like you do want to get a high amount of complete proteins because you're still building a lot of tissue and stuff like that, at least for a male, because that's usually whenever they stop growing. And then beyond that, like besides for muscular regeneration and stuff like that, it's not really, there's not really a place for those amino acids.

Chris: Well, you want the balance. That's the sum of this whole conversation on it. You want the balance of all the amino acids. Thing is that most people that eat just like breast meat or something like that, all the time, they're getting way over skewed balance of cysteine, methionine and tryptophan from like chicken breasts, but they're not getting any glycine, they're not getting any proline, taurine, nothing like that. That's why it helps to have like a whole scope of different consumptions that you go to, where you can get that stuff, you can get the muscle tissue that you want, and then you have a nice balanced amino acid profile in your diet.

Jayton: What about plant proteins?

Chris: Yeah, that's an interesting. You can basically get a lot of these amino acids from plants, especially if you're like certain supplements, a lot of supplements with the right equipment, you can extract really anything that you want from a plant that is in that plant, any sort of compound. I remember reading a study where it compared plant proteins versus animal proteins in the context of muscle building for... I think it was just 20 to 35 year old males, and the animal protein was superior in that context of building lean tissue. Plants are... probably you want to take the same approach to picking a plant protein because you can still get the certain amino acids from the protein. You want to look into what's the amino acid profile of that specific plant, and especially the protein source that you're going to be getting from it.

Chris: Then you also need to be looking at the ride alongs. What else is involved with that? How was it farmed? It's a similar... That's why I like... with thermo, it's a framework of thinking to make the best choices for your diet. Stuff that's going to bring you toward hormonal balance and good nutrient profile in your diet. But yeah, plants are no different. You should really look at... They're no different in the way that you select them, which actually ends up putting a lot of them out of the picture, if you take that rigor to how you're going to choose it. Most of them aren't really preferable.

Jayton: Yeah. Especially like soy proteins are really big one, and some of the carry alongs for that are like diadzine, any other-

Chris: Genistein.

Jayton: Yeah genistein, the other isoflavones that act as estrogen in the body.

Chris: Yeah goitrogens and estrogens, phytoestrogens.

Jayton: Yeah. The best plant protein, in my opinion, at least is potato protein. Mainly because they have what are known as these keto acids. And so, these keto acids... Well, I'll go back a little bit. Protein is in research, it's based on the digestability of four amino acids trytophan, methionine plus cysteine, threonine, and there's another one I can't remember exactly what it is but... Oh, it's lysine. The egg yolk is like the standard for protein which has 100% availability of these amino acids. Potatoes have these keto acids in them that can actually be converted into amino acids, which gives the potato 110% the adjustability of proteins. It's actually a more than perfect protein, in some cases, if you're in need of that.

Chris: Dan, I knew I love potatoes.

Jayton: Yeah, I know. There's actually-

Chris: Is there anything wrong with potatoes?

Jayton: I know. There's actually some studies that were done on... There were a couple case studies that were done on male and females and they had like, all the way up to 80% of their diet come from potatoes, and they had no negative nitrogen balance. There was no muscle loss or anything like that, which was really interesting.

Chris: Cool.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: So we need to make it UMZU potato protein.

Jayton: Definitely.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: Yeah. I think like-

Chris: For vegan thermo people.

Jayton: Yeah, so if you are plant based until we come out with that potato protein, usually around five pounds a day of potatoes is usually enough to get your daily protein intake.

Chris: You'll be really full too if you eat that many potatoes.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: [inaudible 00:14:15] going to have long bathroom trips too.

Chris: Yeah, you're going to want to like thoroughly cook those things. Roast them up or boil them.

Jayton: Yeah. So how much protein do people usually need?

Chris: My rule of thumb is like the average person eats too much protein, or the average fitness oriented person eats too much protein. Other people tended too little protein, which actually we saw when we were talking to Breton, on the other podcasts. He barely ate any protein before starting thermo so, getting up into the range of, especially like, and this is trained guys, are typically recommend somewhere between 130 and 160 grams unless you're just like, huge. Like a massive seven, seven foot tall giant dude. But if you're like a normal guy like somewhere between 160, pounds 200 pounds then hat's typically the range that it falls within.

Jayton: Sounds good.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: Yeah. There re some studies that even show if you do, like, all the way down to 0.65... Multiply 0.65 times your body weight in pounds, and that's usually like the lowest you want to go.

Chris: Yeah, 0.8's like the standard I think, 0.8 to one. But one is even a bit high, I think.

Jayton: Yeah. [inaudible 00:15:45].

Chris: Yeah, but a lot of people like if you look at a lot of bodybuilding recommendations are all in like 2, it's way too high. The problem is like for the context is... and there's a lot of research to back this up. In terms of hormones, by going too high in protein you're skimping on other the fats and carbs, which are actually more important for your endocrine system to be balanced. You need like a base level of protein that's going to support your activity and your recovery. Beyond that, put all the rest of your consumption for the day into fats and carbs. The other caveat is like most people who are paying attention to this type of stuff are actually paying attention to their caloric intake as well. So you are going... Say if you go up to 200 or 220, 250 grams of protein a day, it leaves very little in your caloric allocation to the fats and carbs. And then it's also like, typically not sustainable.

Chris: The other thing is that people typically go, when they do that they go to sources like chicken breasts, something like that, where you're... Now you're over consuming things like tryptophan on a daily basis, and then you're skewing the amino acid profile in general. There's like a couple little nuances to why that typically ends up being bad for hormones. Then the other the other caveat is if you are on like a calorically unrestricted diet and you're still going really high like that, now you're just over consuming calories in general. Unless you have a really high metabolism, it's not going to... You're going to be on an energy surplus, and therefore you're going to gain fat. You want to make sure that you stay at the minimum level of protein that you need per day to support what you're doing, and then put everything else into the right carbohydrates and the right fats, which we're also going to talk about in this episode.

Jayton: Heck yeah. Yeah, that's really all I can think about whenever it comes to protein. You got anything else? Oh, the excessive ammonia production from too much is also really bad for the kidneys too. Like it can take a toll on the kidneys overtime, which whenever you turn, 65, 70 you can get like renal failure and things like that. So that's something else to watch out for.

Chris: You don't want that.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: Again, so wrapping up with protein, that's the summation of it. You need a good amino acid profile, So you need to pay attention to the sources of the protein that you're consuming and try not to have any of these ride along things like hormones, antibiotics, goitrogens, if you're eating plant based proteins, or phytoestrogens, and then beyond that, just in terms of raw volume, keep it at the minimum amount that you actually need to support what you're doing in recovering, getting stronger if you're lifting in the gym or whatever. But then beyond that, just consume carbs and fats, which now let's talk about carbs.

Jayton: The ultimate macronutrient.

Chris: Yeah, the best macronutrient. I don't know... It probably doesn't even have to be said but like, just the keto... The carbs have become this taboo now with the whole keto craze. But I said a couple years ago, and I think it's... Like I can see it happening right now is the keto fad is dying, it's starting to die off. Now the pendulum is going to swing back to carbs. People are probably going to go... I have a theory about these trends in the human psyche, and they tend to swing the pendulum with equal force to the opposite direction. That's how these sorts of things work. It's like universal law almost. What you're going to find is that keto got pretty extreme in recent years.

Chris: It's so extreme that people do think carbs are evil, they think sugar is evil. When you start labeling things like it's evil, like what the hell. It becomes this like religious movement. It's going to swing to the opposite end of the spectrum, and then it's going to normalize back into a more moderate place. But people are going to be defiant about it, and they're going to be like, "Yeah, I can eat sugar all day long like from shitty sources and that sort of thing and still lose weight." Which you see that already happening sometimes, some people are doing that sort of thing. But the more moderate approach is what we're going to be talking about here in terms of sources, again, matter. It's no different than protein in terms of the way that you think about it in terms of a framework.

Chris: If you are consuming the right sources that your body really is designed to be consuming, then you're going to feel way better. We're not advocating like going and eating candy. Another thing is... Well, you can eat some candies. There are literally candies that are thermo, that some of these health food companies are coming out with, which is fun, because you feel like a little kid, eating these little Swedish Fish or whatever. They're made out of out of Apple pectin or some binding fiber and then then some sugar, like raw cane sugar or something like that. They're very simple and they're flavored with fruit juice. Something like that. But obviously you don't want to eat so much of that thing. That's what we're going to get to is, is how do you take a real thermo approach to this sort of thing.

Chris: You're not going to want to eat 2000 calories of gummy bears every day.

Jayton: Yeah. I think the way that the pendulum is swinging right now is with the plant based approach. We're going to see probably a large demonization of fat and protein in general, and a higher affinity for carbohydrates plant based specifically.

Chris: Yeah, there is a big plant based movement.

Jayton: I think it's made... What's that movie that is a game changer with Arnold Schwarzenegger that came out?

Chris: Oh, yeah, I haven't watched that yet.

Jayton: I haven't either. But I need to get into it. Honestly, I personally think it's all propaganda to demascularize man, so we don't have any resistance in the large grand scheme of things, but-

Chris: It's possible.

Jayton: It's all conspiracy, so I'll leave that one for a different conversation.

Chris: You know what? I like conspiracies because a lot of them are true.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: As if conspiracy is a bad word. But yeah, so, the plant based thing definitely... Especially with thermo, we want to make sure that we're inclusive for the plant based eaters, because a lot of people do it for different reasons. If you're doing it for health, though, it's not necessarily the healthiest way to go. I think let's be blunt about that one. But if you're doing it for some other reason, then I respect that. We're trying to accommodate vegans with the thermo diet by helping. And there are vegans who do thermo, so that... I mean that was just cool. In terms of carb sources, what do you think are the best carb sources for somebody to eat? Let's take the same approach of how we were talking about protein.

Jayton: Whenever it comes to this, I think it's a spectrum of get again, to the most easily digestible protein, and then it goes to the hardest to digest, which is things like grains and stuff like that. Which are not thermo and shouldn't be consumed generally at all. I would say the best sources are probably like fruit and fruit juices, specifically like the citrus fruit because they're really easy to digest, very high in micronutrients and very pro thyroid and pro metabolic. So they're going to allow for, first of all, fructose specifically is insulin independent, so it doesn't need insulin to be taken up by the cell. A lot of people have insulin misunderstood. Insulin actually raises to lower the amount of free fatty acids in the blood to allow glucose to get into the cell. That's why the glucose in the blood lowers whenever insulin goes up. A lot of...

Chris: It's like this battle between fatty acid metabolism and glucose [crosstalk 00:23:53].

Jayton: Right, the Randle Cycle.

Chris: Yeah, the Randle cycle.

Jayton: Yeah. That's the biggest thing that I see, is people just have misunderstanding of the foundational things that actually make these things work.

Chris: Yeah so fruit... There's a lot of fruit. There's savory fruits and there's sweet fruits. Which a lot of people... There's misunderstanding, and this is probably a good place to do it but the difference between vegetables and fruits it's a language issue almost or just a cognitive issue from an understanding... a societal understanding of what certain things are. But I think I prefer breaking them out into more accurate definitions, where fruits are... Fruits can be sweet, they can be savory. Fruits are typically the fruit of a flowering plant. They're going to fall. Tomatoes is as much of fruit as an apple. Also an avocado is a fruit.

Jayton: Bell peppers.

Chris: Bell pepper are fruits.

Jayton: Cucumbers, zucchinis.

Chris: Yeah, so these sorts of things... Snap peas are even fruits. These sorts of things are fruits, whereas a lot of times people are going to define them as vegetables. Then they get mad when I say vegetables aren't necessary, but vegetables are typically in a real strict definition are leaves and stems, which are not necessary for him survival or thriving at all. They're actually really hard to digest. They release a lot of like micro toxins that are defense mechanisms for the plant, which makes total logical sense. The plant is trying to protect itself. It's trying to protect its roots and it's... The fruits are actually the easy accessible part of the plant that animals eat typically, and the root.

Chris: Like you see a lot of rodents who actually are digging up constantly digging up roots and eating them from plants. They're not trying to eat the leaves of the plant. The plants defense mechanisms are also against usually insects, because the insects are what's going to be eating the leaves.

Jayton: It's like, insecticidal and goitrogenic right?

Chris: Yeah, typically they're really high in goitrogens which block iodine uptake in the thyroid, especially if you're eating a lot of leaves raw, which people do. Like most people eat leaves raw in salads or so forth. They don't highly cook them. Therefore, I think it's just completely unnecessary waste of money and waste of health to eat that stuff.

Jayton: Whenever you think of goitrogens one good thing to think about is like goiter. You can develop corner from the lack of iodine in the diet, which is like that big bulge.

Chris: That's like the thyroid starts swelling up. And that's when you see... You can see it on livestock usually if they're fed something they're not supposed to be fed, and they start to get this big swollen neck. It's a little more rare to see in people but people definitely get goiter.

Jayton: Yeah, the only reason I could see people using vegetables is first of all... Well, the only reason really is for the calcium that's found within them. But in order to have that accessible, you have to degrade these goitrogenic compounds and a lot of these other things by overcooking them for a long period of time. Like boil them for at least 20 to 45 minutes in order to thoroughly break down these goitrogens, and then you take the broth from that and it's high in calcium, which is something that a lot of plant based people lack. They don't have enough calcium in their diet.

Chris: Because they eat raw.

Jayton: Yeah. We also don't have the ability to digest cellulose which makes up the plant cell wall because we lack the enzyme cellulase, so it just sits in our gut and ferments and leads to things like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and then more indotoxin which creates more serotonin, which it's all connected. Just keeps going in a circle.

Chris: The moral of story is that you don't need to eat vegetables. Also too.. I mean, you can if you want, but we recommend really boiling them down or something to degrade everything in it. Which is then like, I'm just going to be straightforward here. Like, what's the point? It tastes bad. How are you going to... Is there really any great benefit to sticking all that time into cooking and preparing something like that? Not really. You can get whatever nutrient you need, like calcium from some other source. It's pretty easy. Like mineral water, for example. Just drink some mineral water, it's got a ton of calcium in it. Focus on fruits. Fruits are highly... They're easy to digest. They're literally like evolutionarily designed to be eaten, and you can't digest the seeds inside of them, so feces... the seeds come out in the feces.

Chris: Typically the cycle say it was like an apple tree. Picture an apple tree in your mind. Some animal is going to come by grab the apple, eat it, poop it out. The seed's going to go back into the ground somehow, and then it's going to grow another apple tree.

Jayton: With some good fertilizer too.

Chris: Yeah, with some fertilizer. It's a pretty genius system that nature has there. If it doesn't get eaten, the apples rot, they fall off, fall on the ground, and then they have the opportunity to grow again. You also have things like birds who can come and spread the seeds around and whatever. Focus on fruits. They also just taste a million times better. They're easy to digest, they also contain a lot of prebiotic fibers which your gut needs in order to support a healthy bacterial milieux in the gut. And then roots. An easy way to think about it and remember it is fruits and roots. A lot of people also call roots vegetables, but I think that's just a misnomer. They're technically tubers. So you have things like potatoes which we talked about.

Chris: You have sweet potatoes, even carrots or roots, onions, that sort of stuff. Those are going to be a preferable source of typically starch that you can consume and it tastes great also. They're extremely nutrient dense. I've seen campaigns against potatoes to where they're like, "There's no nutrients in them." "What are you talking about?" That makes no sense whatsoever.

Jayton: A potato is literally like the part that is designed to give life to another plant.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: It has all the nutrients necessary for life.

Chris: It'll grow independent of even being watered. Like if you stick a potato on a table and just leave it there, it starts to grow. It'll grow a plant out of it. They're extremely dense in nutrients. They have good protein source. And there's a lot of electrolytes typically in tubers that people need because everyone's really deficient in these electrolytes.

Jayton: Yeah, people don't realize that potatoes are probably one of the best sources of vitamin C, potassium. They're decent magnesium. One thing that I will say though is like whenever you're picking your fruits, make sure that they are thoroughly ripened, because if not then some people can experience some like digestive distress and inflammation and just some irritability in general. And then whenever it comes to things like rice or potatoes, just make sure that you thoroughly cook them very, very well.

Chris: Yeah, and then in terms of other starch that you could eat that's thermo, is go for like pure starches, like white rice. There's also with rice there is a spectrum of just based on farming practices mostly like contamination with heavy metals. That's one of the reasons why we don't recommend brown rice. It's easily contaminated just in growing practices and typically the contaminants stay in the hole. So any pesticides, heavy metals, herbicides, are in the hole which is the brown part around the rice grain. Not only that they're also full of anti-nutrients. So the anti-nutrients are going to bind certain minerals in your body and make them inert like unusable for the body, so then you end up leaching the minerals that you really need and that everyone's typically highly deficient in.

Chris: You're going to be leaching these out of your body just by consuming this brown rice. Those big brown rice fat, obviously a couple decades ago, and still lingering people still think... They still are like, "What I shouldn't eat brown rice?" When I tell someone that they're like, "Wait, I thought brown rice was healthy." It was like, yeah, there's a lot of just dumb propaganda that gets spread around for certain industries, and people think it's like a medical mandate, but it's not true at all. White rice is far healthier. And then typically the ones, the sources of white rice with the least amount of any contaminant like next to zero is Jasmine and basmati rice. Especially if you get it organic. That means that the growing practice was a lot better than if it was like a typically grown one. Those are what I recommend in terms of like another source of starch.

Chris: It gets fun because you can find good rice noodles, you can find sweet potato noodles. Basically with thermo, you can literally like recreate any recipe you ever wanted, that you like, and you can recreate it with thermo options and it ends up typically tasting better. because the source of that star for or whatever is a lot of times sweeter and it's just more fulfilling and richer. More satisfying.

Jayton: Yeah. There's a couple things that we can talk about right there is just like, so one of the anti-nutrients that are found that binds to all that things is called phytic acid. Basically it just has a negative charge and attracts all the positive ions, right? Then-

Chris: Its almost like this magnetism or... It's, yeah.

Jayton: Yeah, it's all biochemistry.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: Then make sure that the sources of rice or any type of pre-made starch if you will, is not iron and rich. You don't have too much iron. You can become very iron toxic, and then it can deposit in places which is not ideal because you can have like pituitary deposition of iron, which can lead to different kind of hormonal secretions. I see a lot of prolactin specifically that is increased in higher amounts due to iron deposition. And then if you are taking in polyunsaturated fatty acids, and those get into contact with iron, they can actually create the aging pigment which is known as lipofuscin. Interestingly enough, this can actually be oxidized with sunlight, and so we see higher rates of skin cancer and stuff like that simply by increasing iron intake, and having polyunsaturated fat intake too.

Chris: Yeah, there was a study... Excess iron also affects your gut negatively too. There was a study in Norway, where they basically took... Because who had this big mandate that you have to enrich iron on a governmental level, in flowers in countries, a lot of countries did it. And the US still does it. In Norway, they noticed when they did it, there was a large uptick in what people would call celiac disease or gluten intolerance, where there was a lot of reported gut issues when they were consuming the flour, which is interesting, because like, a lot of people say that whole idea of gluten intolerance came out of nowhere. I think there's a possibility it could be linked to this sort of thing. Because when they got rid of the iron mandate in Norway, it just went back to normal flowers, the incidences of gut issues went down massively.

Chris: It wasn't necessarily like a celiac thing, it was just too much iron in the diet. And it was messing up their gut. They went back to normal levels of gut health, reported. Obviously, all this is reported through doctors offices and that sort of thing. But that's just an interesting tidbit, where it did seem like no one had these gut issues until recently when consuming flour.

Jayton: Yeah. Interesting. Another thing is that certain organs in the body, specifically the brain and thyroid can only use glucose as a fuel source. A lot of people try to say that ketones are the preferred fuel source, but that's actually just a secondary mechanism that is-

Chris: It's for survival.

Jayton: Right.

Chris: It's for absence of glucose.

Jayton: Ketones are a signaling molecule to the body that basically tells your body that it's in a starvation state. The starvation state basically raises all the stress hormones in the body so you're more aware, and you're more in tune with your environment, not necessarily focused on yourself. Your body is focusing its energy on trying to get to a better fuel source. It's not necessarily focusing on very energetic and energetically demanding things like reproduction, digestion, abstract thinking stuff like that.

Chris: Hair.

Jayton: Hair, yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: A lot of these keto people are bald.

Chris: Yeah, they start losing hair thinning. Plus, when you get deep into a keto or ketosis wherever you see a lot of are you hear a lot of reports of people just losing their reproductive function in general, like their libido goes away. They have trouble in the bedroom in general, they have no desire, it's just gone. That's an interesting, I guess correlate to what you're just saying. Your body just literally stops focusing on thriving and starts focusing on surviving, and that adrenaline increase is known as a catecholamine honeymoon. That's what a lot of people when they switch to keto diet... The most common people, like group of people that I've seen that do the keto diet are people that typically have done like a standard diet where they're not really paying attention a whole lot, including calorie intake, and they end up getting themselves into some trouble over decades, in terms of their health.

Chris: Then they hear about keto and they see transformations of people going from obesity down to just simply being overweight. That ends up being that typical first step for the vast majority people that are in on this keto craze right now. It's like a false positive, essentially where they feel better, typically also because they're eating better foods. They're actually focused on food. And they're saying like, "Well, I'm going to eat a steak instead of going McDonald's and getting like two double cheeseburgers," right? It's just a better food source in general. Then they start to first drop a lot of body weight, like water weight. Also they drop, they do lose weight based on the fact that they're consuming fewer calories for the most part.

Chris: Unless you hear sometimes about people who are like, "I eat 8,000 calories a day on keto, and I still lose it." Its like you probably don't. because if you're really doing that, then 8000 calories of 80% fat like how the hell are you going to do that? It's disgusting. There's that, and then they have the catecholamine honeymoon at the same time, where they go from being a complete brain fog, for no motivation, they're just like, a lack of clarity in general in the mind, which is indicative of just a poor diet in general, and then go toward an increase in the catecholamines, which is going to make them more alert to their surroundings, and they're going to be like, "Well, I haven't felt this clear and focused in long time." The thing is that it's called a honeymoon for a reason because it doesn't last.

Chris: Typically, it's going to last for a period of a month or so, maybe a little longer. And then what happens is they start to... because of the catabolic nature of those catecholamines. They're called catacholamines for a reason. There's a catabolic effect of them over a chronically long period of time when they're elevated in the blood. They start to break down muscle tissue, they start to really break down any tissue because they're not anabolic at all. Anabolic means grow. It means growth oriented. So you have really low levels of anabolic hormones especially because the sex drive and the reproductive system gets really damaged by the high catecholamines levels. And so you don't even have the ability to produce a lot of anabolic hormones anymore. It shuts that system down. Now you have chronically elevated catecholamines, and eventually, people just seem to hit a wall.

Chris: Their weight loss stalls, they start to get brain fog again. They start to just feel bad in general, like very low energy and that sort of thing. Then they start to have physical symptoms, like we're saying like hair thinning and, and typically they don't even look like... Their physique doesn't even improve, it just looks like a slightly smaller version of its former self. They're still holding fat in all the same places and its typically not a good scenario. We've seen a lot of people that are in the thermo diet community come from keto, and notice massively, like just very big improvements, rather immediately. I hope we can get some of them on the podcast here because they've interesting stories about like, how they used to think versus how they're thinking now and how rapid the improvement is. It usually takes a week or two and then they're feeling like totally better.

Chris: Because another thing with keto, is you end up being extremely nutrient deficient when you're not consuming things like fruits and you're not consuming easily digested high nutrient dense carb sources, like the fruits and roots. You start to become deficient because you're in... And a lot of people again, it comes down to like maybe a lack of awareness around protein choices, but they focus on a lot of proteins that are skewing things in the wrong direction in terms of amino acid profiles.

Jayton: Yeah, during that catecholamine cocktail, whenever you're in it for a long amount of time you usually experience what is known as adrenal fatigue, if you will. Simply the adrenal glands are just overworked because they're constantly pumping out those catecholamines, and they don't have any way to basically shut down because there's no alleviation of that stressed metabolism. Whenever it comes to ketosis specifically, and like this is another thing, whenever the body has mechanisms to produce something in a way whenever it lacks something else, that kind of says that it's necessary. So whenever you have too much, whenever you have a certain amount of protein and a lack of carbohydrates, your body produces glucose via gluconeogenesis from amino acids. A lot of people that are trying to get into ketosis constantly stay out of ketosis because their body's producing glucose through the increased protein intake.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: So it's kind of crazy.

Chris: Yeah, there was a funny study, it made me laugh when I saw it. It came out, I think, last year, the year before, of everyone talks about BHP. And they're like, "Oh" these exogenous ketones that you can take, that they're being marketed as... like a firm. How do you how do you get into ketosis super fast? It was funny, because there was a study had to head with like a sugar drink, and they had the same effect on the body. Like they had similar spikes, and it was, it was funny. I was like, literally, this is no different than drinking a Gatorade. Yet people think that they're like slipping into ketosis. They're like hacking their body and I'm like, jeez.

Jayton: But uh, no. And then like a lot of people experience insulin resistance whenever they go [crosstalk 00:44:58] higher fat, lower carb too.

Chris: Yeah, I wanted to talk about that. Yeah, because your body literally forgets how to process glucose properly. So then people end up getting stuck in a cycle where they're feeling this like catecholamines high, and then they binge inevitably like everyone does. If you go to one extreme, you're going to binge the other side. It's just a matter of time. Because also, there's a important psychology with something like a keto diet where it's a restriction psychology, so if you feel like you're restricting yourself and you feel like you're, you're this low energy and you start to feel like shit. Eventually, people are going to go back toward the other end, whether they like it or not, and they're going to feel shame about it, and they're going to feel bad about it. But they're going to go binge on a bunch of carbohydrates, and they're not going to be fruits and roots. It's going to be, donuts, which way worse even.

Chris: Like now you have an enriched flour, that's fried in polyunsaturated fat. Now you're introducing the double whammy back into the system. The body doesn't remember how to process those carbohydrates in general, and now that person is going to feel sick, and so they're going to blame it on the carbs. Again, they're not eating like a sweet potato or something...

Jayton: Yeah, higher quality.

Chris: Yeah, they're eating... and they would still probably feel a bit strange after eating something like a sweet potato because their body is just off, they probably get that tingly blood sugar issue. But then they go and they'll eat like some junk food sources. Most people revert back to the diet that they're eating before they started the keto diet, which again in most cases was not good. Then they feel bad, they blame it on carbs or sugar as a singular source, but what they don't realize is that they did that to their body by being ketosis, and then they also are not... They're over simplifying this whole thing in terms of the moniker that they're putting on it. It's not sugar, it's not carbs. It's the fact that you ate a low quality food source, that was also fried in polyunsaturated fats too.

Chris: Then they feel sick, and then they blame carbs. Now they keep reinforcing the fact they think carbs are evil. And then they go right back to keto. Get "back on the wagon" on Monday, after a weekend binge, right? That's how it works. I mean, I've seen a million times, it's just a basic form of like dieting psychology. Unfortunately, there so much so much misinformation around all this stuff that people don't really realize what they're doing to their body when they do something like this.

Jayton: Going back to the cellular level. The free fatty acids in the blood are extremely elevated in a ketotic state. And so, because there's so many free fatty acids in the blood, insulin doesn't actually have the ability to lower them to an effective amount to allow glucose to get into the cell. Whenever we look at it at a mitochondrial level, so the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, if you will, so it produces CO2, water and ATP. Basically, glucose produces around 36 to 38 ATP per molecule burn. Ketones only produce about 22 ATP molecules. ATP is basically the energy currency of the cell that allows for all cellular processes to take place.

Chris: So it lowers flow of energy.

Jayton: That's another thing to think about.

Chris: Yeah, well, and that's a big overarching principle of the thermo diet, is that you want to eat in a way that increases the flow of energy through the system, which is the body. There's all these tiny systems like you have, the cell is a system. You have an organ, which is a system, you have tissues, you have whatever else. The whole organism is a system. You want to essentially make decisions that are going to allow for the higher flow of energy through that system because that creates a higher amount of order within the system, which then in the context of the body as a system creates more health, because everything's functioning properly. Even something like that, a basic facts there that it's your cells in a fatty acid metabolism start producing less or they're not... It's like transducing not necessarily producing.

Chris: But there's a lower out output of ATP in a free fatty acid metabolism, then there is in a glucose metabolism, which indicates a low... It's almost half right? So indicates just a lowering of the flow of energy through the system, which creates more disorder in the system.

Jayton: And clouds that system.

Chris: Makes it less efficient, less effective. Okay, so that's carbohydrates. I think we've touched on everything. Also sourdough hallelujah is thermo.

Jayton: Yeah, properly fermented high quality sourdough of course.

Chris: Yeah, good flour, good organic sourdough fermented over good period of time so it's actually fully fermented. That's become one of the most popular things and in the thermo communities the ability to use sourdough, because you can use it for making burgers sandwiches, whatever. And sourdough actually tastes way better than all other bread sources in my opinion.

Jayton: Yeah. I don't know, every time I get a loaf of sourdough. I feel like a Viking just taking a big bite out of that loaf of bread.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: So fats, let's talk about fats.

Chris: Yeah, fats. You want to obviously you probably picked up on it by now we're not huge fans of polyunsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats are typically you're going to get them and sources... like the most readily available sources are seed oils that like what people call vegetable oils that are used in like every restaurant and an obscene amount of food, like packaged foods. It's frustrating actually, when I see something I'm like, "Oh, that looks like it might be thermo." I pick it up and I read the label and it's like, organic potato. Like it says potato chips. It's like organic potatoes, sea salt, paprika, chili powder, sunflower. [crosstalk 00:51:22] was like, "Fuck!"

Jayton: Oh my gosh.

Chris: "Use some good oil," right?

Jayton: Yeah, I know and then you got to spend 30 minutes trying to find a good a good potato chip.

Chris: Yeah. You know what frustrates me too. I've been watching that chef show. I like that show on Netflix.

Jayton: Which one?

Chris: Have you watched it? It's just called The Chef Show.

Jayton: I haven't.

Chris: Yeah it's, Jon Favreau and Roy Choi. Then they have like all these famous people on it, or they have like famous chefs on it and stuff. A lot of the time all these French chefs, they're like French classically trained chefs like incredible chefs. They put together these recipes and they're all... it's like completely thermo, and then they're like, "Well, let's cook it." Then they just take a big plastic jug of vegetable oil and spray it all over the... You just ruined all that food. You had all this awesome food, and then you just like fry it in a bunch of vegetable oil, are [inaudible 00:52:15]. There's just this massive lack of awareness around... Not even just the harm around it, but even with the French chef. That's what frustrates me the most, like a French trained chefs is going to typically care so much about the quality of their food and the tastes and flavors and everything.

Chris: Then you see them like frying all this beautiful food in some shit oil, that's going to like ruin the whole dish, including the taste. It just blows my mind. It's like, use butter. And luckily a lot of French people are obsessed with butter, so they do use a lot of good butter. But a lot of the times when they're doing some saute or something like that, it's like vegetable oil. It's like, "Come on." Yeah [crosstalk 00:52:56] awareness.

Jayton: It comes down to like, just the basic molecular level. These polyunsaturated fats, they have... First of all, they're unsaturated because they don't have as many hydrogen bonds attached to the carbon bonds on the molecule, and they have these double bonds that are very rigid and very easy to break, which allows for oxidation. that oxidation process creates free radicals, and then it has down regulating effects that lead to inflammation, AND like prostaglandins synthesis and a whole bunch of other things in the system, versus something like a highly saturated fat which is completely saturated IN hydrogen molecules and they have single bonds so they're very flexible, and they're very stable, in heat and light [crosstalk 00:53:46] and things like that. Yeah.

Chris: An easy way to think about the difference between an unsaturated and a saturated fatty acid is the... just visually. Saturated is going to be solid at room temperature. If it's sitting on a shelf for whatever solid. Think about butter or coconut oil. And then an unsaturated fat is going to be liquid. It becomes liquid before room temperature, so you'd have to like... Can you even freeze it? What happens if you freeze unsaturated fat? It should turn solid right?

Jayton: I don't... An unsaturated fat?

Chris: Maybe not though.

Jayton: I don't know if they-

Chris: Maybe not.

Jayton: I don't know if they freeze. I don't think so.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: What's interesting is that you can actually get... and they've actually done studies on mice with peanut oil, and that what they've done is they'll go through... They'll fully hydrogenate this. There's a difference between partial hydrogenation which is like hydrogenated vegetable oil, which has trans fats and all those other things. And then you have fully hydrogenated oil which allows for the chemical process to go to full hydrogenation which means-

Chris: Hydrogen.

Jayton: ... they're... yeah. They're completely saturating this molecule with hydrogen ions, and it allows the fat to become completely saturated. They did a study on mice with peanut oil in Russia, and they actually found that it actually increased the activity of the mitochondria because it was a complete 100% completely saturated fat. Obviously, I'm sure it was completely isolated, too so it didn't have any of the anti-nutrients that are associated with that. But I use a fully hydrogenated coconut oil, and this thing, it kind of sucks because the melting point goes from like a regular 76 degrees with coconut oil to 92 degrees, and the bottle that it comes in is super hard to get it out, so I'll be sitting in the kitchen for like 10 minutes trying to squeeze the coconut oil out of the stupid bottle, and it won't come out. And so yeah, that's the challenge of having a really gets saturated fat I guess.

Chris: Yeah, well for the most part, saturated fat sources that you're going to find are going to come down to animal fat sources. Again all the same rules apply in terms of quality and you want like a, you want good butter, not some butter that was made from a cow that was artificially in... What do you call it when it's lactating? Which they do with estrogen treatments, to keep them lactating for long, long periods of time because it just commercially, financially like makes more milk, makes more cream. So you want to get like just a responsibly raised animal source for that fat. Another benefit of it is it tastes way better. Say you're going to cook something in butter versus peanut oil, its going to tastes a lot better.

Chris: Another source of fat though there's... which I recommend using less often than saturated fat his monounsaturated fats, and they're typically going to come from fruit. The main sources being olives and avocados. The cool thing about avocado oil is that it's got a really high smoke point, so it takes a lot of heat for it to degrade. It actually ends up being a good cooking oil option. It's got a good flavor to it too. Whereas olive oil, you could cook with it, but keep it on low heat or don't cook with it and use it for things like a salad dressing or something like that.

Jayton: Yeah, there was another one that I heard you talk about it, I think it started with an A. It was a monounsaturated fat. I think it was... It was on the 30 man foods. The man foods list.

Chris: Argan oil.

Jayton: Argan oil, yeah. That's another good one.

Chris: Yeah, argan oil is way more common over in the Middle East. Yeah, so that's another monounsaturated fat source. There was research talking about it increasing testosterone levels.

Jayton: Really?

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: Interesting. But...

Chris: Yeah. But I'd recommend in terms of fat sources sticking mostly with saturated fats from good animal sources.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: In terms of like macronutrient ratios, what are your best recommendations for those? Just to like a general range for each.

Chris: This one is always interesting because it's... My views have evolved over the years on it. It also really depends on... they've evolved because I noticed it depends on the person, on kind of a starting point, and then a progression within that individual about where they're going to end up. Say somebody is coming in from a keto diet, they might not handle a higher carbohydrate load very well, right away. Eventually, they will, they'll be fine, but that's one of the most common things from people that I hear about coming off the keto diet. Again, for reasons we've already discussed the body's not great at handling the carbohydrates right away.

Chris: Shifting a bit of a lower ratio of the carbohydrates, and then increasing it over time, is probably going to make them feel best. I think a lot of it comes down to the that individual monitoring their body, and monitoring how they are feeling, monitoring how they're thinking and the clarity there and their digestion and so forth. So it is a progression. A lot of people, especially with who are leaner, who have a good amount of the muscle tissue can handle a high load of carbohydrates, especially if they're in some training, resistance training especially. You're going to be able to eat like a massive amount of carbohydrates without gaining fat, it's going to be increasing your metabolic rate in the meantime, so therefore, you can with a higher metabolic rate getting pushed up over time, you can actually eat more food and still stay very lean, as long as the food sources are like these thermo sources.

Chris: You can you can consume higher amounts of calories over time and keep the same level of leanness or actually drop body fat, which is fun, and it's cool, especially when it comes down to like eating more carbs is always fun.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: Heck yeah.

Chris: Then I would recommend... like maybe a good place for people to start is to find what that... Maybe it's the 0.8 grams per pound, start with a protein calibration and then start there and then mess around with your carbs and fats until you start feeling really good. Then you're on this progression forward and you start to... you can readjust and increase the amount of carbohydrates that you consume over time.

Jayton: Yeah, usually as a recommendation for protein for women as a minimum, it's usually around 80 grams, and then usually as a minimum for males as Like 120, like you said. Then I usually see people start off with around 40% carbohydrates and then like a 30% to 35% fat. That's usually the best for less sensitive people for the carbohydrates, usually. Some people, especially if you're fresh off the keto, it'd be an even lower percentage probably around like 35 somewhere around there for the carbohydrates.

Chris: Yeah, stick with sources that are going to make it easy for you too.

Jayton: Yeah, fruit, specifically, fruit can be very good whenever you're trying to get back to the insulin sensitive state.

Chris: Yeah. Oh, and just on top of the fructose, because I know there will be people that mention this. There's a lot of like false demonization of fructose causing fatty liver disease and it doesn't...

Jayton: It's just a choline deficiency.

Chris: It's a choline deficiency. Population wide 92% of people are estimated choline deficient. It's probably higher than that. It's probably one of those 100% type things. And that lack of choline actually is what causes the fatty acid accumulation in the liver. It's not the fructose, it's choline.

Jayton: Yeah. There's a big difference between fructose and high fructose corn syrup. There is a huge difference there. We're not we're not promoting HFCS.

Chris: Yeah. Well because again, you want a nutrient balance. You got to be able to consume nutrients that your body needs. If you're focusing your carbohydrate consumption on, again, like a corn source isn't necessarily thermo, in the first place but then if you're focusing your carb consumption on like always eating high amounts of sugar that's not.. has no nutrients intact. Then you're also still going to become deficient in nutrients. It seems pretty simple to me, but like a lot of people just don't grasp that nuance. They want it to be like dead stupidly simple. I guess while we're on it, we're already talking about carb sources to is masa.

Jayton: Oh, yeah.

Chris: Masa is another one that's thermo. It's made from corn, but it's the corn that's grown and prepared in the typical traditional Mexican culture. They use calcium hydroxide, otherwise known as lime to break down all the anti-nutrients. They've been doing this for thousands of years, and you can still find it. It tastes awesome. Especially like people... like they'll make tortillas out of masa and they'll fry it in lard or butter. It's like-

Jayton: It's delicious.

Chris: ... it's delicious, yeah. So opt for that type of thing. It's like with sourdough and masa. I'd still recommend Like not basing your primary intake carbohydrates around that, also cause it is harder... It's harder to find that thing.

Jayton: Yeah. Especially good quality.

Chris: Yeah and you want to just have easy to digest very nutrient dense carb sources to make up the bulk of your carbohydrates which end up being fruits and roots.

Jayton: Yeah, one last thing that I want to touch on those is like, so the masa, whenever it goes through this alkalization process, it actually frees up a lot of the nutrients that are found within the corn, so it has a higher...

Chris: It's the only way to get them out.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Jayton: So it has a higher nice niacinamide content in it, it has a higher calcium content in it stuff like that. And then whenever it comes to the sourdough, it actually breaks down the gluten molecule which allows those amino acids, so gluten is a protein, it breaks down that protein and allows those amino acids to be more bioavailable. So it's actually increasing the amount of protein that's found within that bread. That's another-

Chris: Protein bread.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: That's why you also see all this enriched bread, like they have to put all these other nutrients into it, because you can't get it out unless you go through a fermentation process or like a lie. Is it lime or lie? I think it's lie.

Jayton: I think... I don't know.

Chris: I don't remember what the street name...

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: But the masa process.

Jayton: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah, so okay, cool. You got anything else? I think this is a pretty detailed episode.

Jayton: Yeah, definitely.

Chris: Yeah. All right, so if you liked this podcast leave us a good review wherever you're listening to it iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM, YouTube or wherever. Drop us a good line. If you don't like it, don't leave a review at all. And if you want to hear more like it, then just subscribe to the podcast. We'll see you on the next episode. Also, we have other episodes if you want to listen to those. Go check out thermodiet.com to learn more about thermo.