In this episode of The Thermo Diet Christopher Walker and Jayton sit down and talk about the ins and outs of fasting, some of the experiences they have had with it, and more.
Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments below!
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Full Transcript:
Chris:
All right, welcome back to the Thermo Diet Podcast, my name's Christopher Walker, and I'm here with, damn, I didn't think of a name, [Jaytonian Miller 00:00:10], okay, yeah, we'll take that, right?
Jayton:
Yeah. I think we've used that one before.
Chris:
Oh, we have?
Jayton:
Yeah.
Chris:
Oh, let's see, James, have we used that?
Jayton:
James? Jeffrey?
Chris:
No, that was last time.
Jayton:
Oh, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3:
Justine.
Chris:
What about Joffrey?
Speaker 3:
Joffrey, there you go.
Chris:
Like Game of Thrones.
Jayton:
Okay.
Chris:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
Joffrey Miller.
Chris:
Joffrey.
Jayton:
Nice.
Chris:
Joffrey Miller, and today we're going to be talking about fasting, this was a requested question from someone in the Thermo Diet Facebook group.
Jayton:
I think this was [Jake Myer 00:00:45], too, actually.
Chris:
Jake Myer?
Jayton:
Yeah.
Chris:
On a roll.
Jayton:
He sent me a couple.
Chris:
All right, cool. Thanks, Jake. So, for anyone else who has questions or topics that you want us to talk about, just leave them in the group, let us know.
Jayton:
Definitely. Or send us a message, I'll get in there and check it every once in a while. But, heck yeah. So, thoughts on fasting?
Chris:
First off, fasting, there's a lot of different types of fasting, so we could look at different types. There's obviously intermittent fasting, even the most simplified view of it is just skip breakfast, eat twice a day, or eat during a window in the afternoon, potentially, or you could reverse it and just eat in the morning and not eat in the evenings, something like that. Then there's the more strict methods, like Leangains method, Eat Stop Eat, those types of things, like Leangains being just strict 16/8, 16 hours fast, 8 hours eating; Eat Stop Eat being two days a week of a 24-hour fast. Then you have people that just do a 24-hour, they'll do 48, they'll do 72, they'll do five days, I've heard people fasting for weeks, all different types of fasting.
Chris:
So, I guess in this episode we could talk about just the different things involved with them, what you can expect, as well as the impact that it will have, potentially, on your thyroid or your metabolism, your stress, and that sort of thing. Fasting, I do think is a really good tool to have, I think it is a very restorative practice; however, it can be done wrong, and it can actually hurt people that aren't supposed to be doing it. So, let's talk about all this different stuff.
Jayton:
Yeah, definitely. And this is strictly fasting for health reasons, not necessarily religious reasons, right?
Chris:
Yeah, exactly.
Jayton:
Sweet. So, really whenever it comes to fasting, the biggest thing that I think about is the state of health that the person is in that's doing it, so if you're waking up with a waking body temperature of 96 degrees, you do not need to be fasting, that's probably the last thing that you need to be doing because your conversion of T4 to T3 or your production of thyroid hormone in general is hindered tremendously.
Chris:
Yeah, and temperature is an indicator of metabolic rate, naturally, which very logically makes sense, but not many people make that correlation.
Jayton:
Yeah, and that's one reason that if you eat a really nutrient-dense thermo meal, then your fingers warm up, you might get a little sweaty.
Chris:
Yeah, start sweating.
Jayton:
Because your metabolism's ramping up, and that's how you know that you've fed your body well. But, yeah, that's the biggest thing that I would suggest is just looking at the state of health that you're in, and then from there determining, "Okay, how can I use this effectively and safely?"
Chris:
Yep. So, moral of that story is take your waking temperature, and if you're low, then you don't need to be fasting, you need to be restoring your thyroid function. Fasting is naturally going to lower thyroid function, especially if you go a longer period of time. So let's say you did a multi-day fast, just logically let's think about this, your body is going to start to lower the metabolic rate because it's trying to preserve resources.
Chris:
And fasting is a therapeutic medicine tool, there's even stuff back, just thousands of years old, of records of doctors prescribing fasting for curing ailments because what you're doing is your body really is a self-healing organism, and in the absence of blockers, stuff people are putting in their body, it'll start to heal itself. So if you're very sick, have a lot of issues, like there's a fasting clinic up in Northern California, called, shit, I forgot what it was called, I've been there, I really forgot what it was called though.
Jayton:
Does it start with a P?
Chris:
I think it's called "North" something, like "North Star".
Jayton:
I'm not really sure. I've heard of several. There's some across the country.
Chris:
But this one specifically, they focus mostly on type 2 diabetics, very overweight people that their hormones are just all out of whack. So what they do is some people go on multi-month fasts because they have so much fat tissue to lose, and they will do this as a restorative therapeutic practice, and they're all monitored, obviously. The only issue I have with that place is they're like militant vegan.
Jayton:
Really?
Chris:
Yeah. But, really, I think they're so militant vegan because they're taking it out of context, that they're only focused on that one population, and obviously if they're fasting and drinking green juice or something, they're obviously going to become healthier because they're so out of it when they get there.
Jayton:
And if you go from a standard American diet and you start fasting once a week, you're going to see results because you're eliminating a lot of the blockers that are in the diet, so you're eliminating the polyunsaturated fats, a lot of the vegetables aren't sitting in your gut fermenting, they're actually having time to get out of the digestive system and stuff like that, too.
Chris:
Yeah. Well, and you notice, if you do a multi-day fast, that typically the first couple meals back go right through you, and that's why they usually recommend juicing to break fasts like that, a long way, three day or whatever, or more, because it's around that point that your digestive system starts to really focus in where it's like dormant almost, in terms of the ability to digest anything, so if you were to eat a full-on meal, or things that are hard to digest, like vegetables, they will literally go through you, like your body's not woken up yet.
Jayton:
Yeah, not prepared for it.
Chris:
Yeah.
Jayton:
Interesting. What are some of the benefits that you see from fasting?
Chris:
I think the biggest one, in general, actually is a lifestyle tool.
Jayton:
Really?
Chris:
Because I think a big part of the battle of having a healthy lifestyle is mental, and it's probably most of the battle, when you know what to do, and then a lot of people still get in their own way, sabotaging, it's all like a mental game at that point, there are obviously physical realities. But I think the biggest benefit, actually, of a short just-skip-breakfast kind of deal is just the lifestyle flexibility that it gives somebody, it's like they're giving themselves permission to not be obsessed about food all the time. And I think when people are super obsessed about food, then they get in their own way, they focus so much on it that they're not focused on other stuff in their life that will make their life better.
Chris:
It helps you simplify, it helps you just to be like, "Okay, I'll eat twice a day," and by the time you're eating, you're making good choices, you're not constantly obsessing, at least that's just what I've found over the years, I mean I've been talking about this stuff online for like 10 years now almost, so I've seen a lot of people also say the same thing, where it helps just kind of free up their mind, it gives them the flexibility to make better choices throughout the day and not be so obsessed. So I think that, in and of itself, is a very valuable thing.
Chris:
And then there's ways to minimize the thyroid-lowering effect of fasting, specifically breaking the fast in a specific way. So using a strategy like bone broth in a smoothie to break your fast is really good, the fructose is going to help your liver get going, and then the amino acid profile in the bone broth is also going to fire things up nicely and support your thyroid, making sure that it has all the right stuff, the right raw materials that it needs to stay functioning properly and in a nice balance.
Chris:
So, that's what I would say is ... I know there a lot of people that are more militant [inaudible 00:09:58] that they're very against fasting in general, but I would say taking it in the context of a real life, a real person's life, I think short intermittent fasting can be extremely useful as a tool for a lifestyle and mindset.
Jayton:
Yeah. And I notice that a lot of people simply just the alleviation of the stress from being neurotic about food is enough of a stress relief to have a positive benefit and mitigate the impact that it really has in the long-term. But, no, I think that's one of the reasons that it can be detrimental to the thyroid, too, so if you're in a low metabolic state it's because your liver runs out of glycogen, and then the absence of glycogen in the liver leads to less conversion of thyroid hormone to T3.
Chris:
Yeah. But you can stay [inaudible 00:10:52] with the glycogen if you're consuming plenty of starches on a regular basis, daily, in the eating window, and that turns into the issue that a lot of the keto people run into because they're not consuming any sort of carbohydrates, they run out of glycogen everywhere, muscle tissue as well.
Jayton:
And then they start converting their muscle into glucose, and they have to watch their protein intake, like their protein intake can't get too high because then they start converting the amino acids into glucose because their body needs glucose to function properly.
Chris:
The thyroid gland shuts down because it needs glucose to actually make thyroid hormone.
Jayton:
Yeah, and that's why you see a lot of these keto people with big bags under their eyes, and they have real big purple bags under their eyes, that's a sign-
Chris:
Big purple bags.
Jayton:
Yeah, big purple bags under their eyes. Yeah, so it's really interesting to see.
Chris:
Yeah, it's a bad combo, not consuming carbohydrates and fasting frequently, a recipe for disaster.
Jayton:
Yeah, definitely. So, that's the benefit from intermittent fasting, what do you see the benefits are from longer-term fast because you've done a couple long-term fasts?
Chris:
Yeah, I've done a few over the years. Initially, I started messing around with it in college, so it was a while ago, I was probably 19, did my first five-day fast, which I don't really recommend, it's not very enjoyable, it's pretty boring, too, you just get really tired. But I was very much on a kick of figuring out how to get rid of this tumor issue, so I was trying fasts like that, and that's really when I got into fasting in general, and that was way before it was mainstream popular with the intermittent fasting stuff, so it was just kind of getting started in a bunch of weird forums and stuff, people would be like, "Let's do this for health reasons," and everything.
Chris:
I'll tell you what, though, you do feel really good once you get back into the swing of things after the fast, you feel clean, more pure. So it's good if your system is really messed up, I think it can be very beneficial to take a period to do it, and then come back with a specific thermo-esque routine that can kickstart your thyroid, bring your metabolism back up, and keep your hormones balanced. It does have therapeutic properties because of the self-healing concept and just the energy moving in that way in your body. So if you're really messed up and you really need to hit the reset button, it might be beneficial, maybe not even a five-day, but like a two to three-day could be good, not necessary though.
Chris:
I've found over the years, too, that a lot of times, earlier on, I would want to go into these extreme things when I was really trying to hit some home run swings with improving my health, but what I always found was that law of compensation always held true, of if you go make a home run swing, you go real far to one end of the spectrum, do something extreme, you're going to potentially have the exact opposite compensation, essentially, of that action. So, the binge/purge cycle is a very real thing that your body adheres to, it's like a law almost, and that's why the law of compensation is considered a universal law, the pendulum swings.
Chris:
So, what I've found over the years is just that a routine, simplifying and staying in a consistent routine and building momentum is actually way more useful over the long-term; you build the habits, you're just doing the right thing every day, making progress daily, it might not be a big home run swing, it might just be a tiny step someone could take, but then they start getting momentum and they start feeling good about that tiny step, and then I'm like, "I could do something else, let me add something else in the mix, let me get rid of a blocker, let me add some activators back in the mix."
Chris:
And then eventually, before you know it, a year's gone by and you're just in a totally different place and you feel like you could do this forever, instead of swinging back and forth on the binge/purge cycle on the pendulum, you are doing that. So I'd say that would be my word of wisdom on the multi-day fasting concept is you probably get just a better effect in general if you just change your lifestyle.
Jayton:
Yeah. One of the main reasons that I stopped fasting is because I noticed that I would fall into those binge/purge cycles because I'd be hungry and I'd start eating, and then I wouldn't want to stop eating because I'd be like, "I can only eat for eight hours or four hours." I got to one point to where I tried to OMAD for a little while, and I'd just be like, "Man, I'm hungry," but I'd be full at the same time, and so I kind of got out of touch with some of those signals that my body was telling me, like, "Hey, you're full, stop eating." And I noticed whenever I stopped fasting that that kind of went away after a little while, and so that's the main reason that I don't fast anymore is just so I don't fall into that cycle.
Chris:
Yeah, and, again, it goes back to it's a mental thing for most people.
Jayton:
Yeah.
Chris:
So use it as a tool if you need to, but you don't need to. It's a mental game, life is a mental game.
Jayton:
Yeah. One of the main benefits that a lot of people talk about is autophagy, so it's simply just the lysosomal cleaning of the cell, getting rid of a lot of the dead cells and stuff like that, so the lysosomes will actually eat a lot of the material that's there and recycle it, which is really interesting.
Chris:
Yeah, a similar concept to apoptosis, where it's just programmed cell death, which can also be influenced by different things, but apoptosis is a necessary part of your brain function, you kill less useful cellular connections.
Jayton:
Yeah, and whenever that's out of whack, then you have mutations that lead to cancer, and then they start populating at an outrageous rate, and then next thing you know you got a tumor somewhere.
Chris:
Yep, which usually is caused by excess estrogen issues, throwing that balance off.
Jayton:
Yeah, what's really interesting is that most tumors are actually in a reductive state, and cortisol and estrogen are actually reductive hormones, which is really interesting. They've actually found that cortisol and estrogen kind of surround a tumor in a lot of cases, which is really cool.
Chris:
Yeah, it's not cool if it's yours.
Jayton:
Well, yeah.
Chris:
But, yeah, it's cool from a intellectual standpoint [crosstalk 00:18:22]-
Jayton:
Yeah, from a science standpoint it's pretty cool.
Chris:
Because it confirms all these patterns that we're seeing.
Jayton:
Yeah. Specifically, they've found in the types of tumors that grow body parts, have you heard of those?
Chris:
Yes.
Jayton:
Yeah, so that's really interesting.
Chris:
Don't google those, they're disgusting. The one with the teeth, that one's a fucking nightmare.
Jayton:
Yeah, they got teeth, they got eyeballs, they'll start growing different organs and stuff, it's pretty crazy.
Chris:
I'm thinking about it, dammit.
Jayton:
But, no, it's fascinating.
Chris:
Hair, they grow hair. I can't stop thinking ... All right, change the subject.
Jayton:
Oh, you got hair growing on the inside of your body?
Chris:
Yeah.
Jayton:
Oh.
Chris:
Hairy teeth. This is what nightmares are made out of, estrogen.
Jayton:
But, anyways. As far as longer-term fasts, 7+ days, as therapeutic reasons, would you recommend that just being under supervision?
Chris:
I mean, formally, yes, but informally, I mean it depends on the severity, I think, of the person's current condition, probably. If you have a lot of medical issues, a ton of weight to lose, you're obviously going to be storing a lot of estrogen in that fat tissue also, and a lot of people in that type of scenario are also on a ton of medications, so if you're going to do a long-term fast in that type of scenario, I would definitely recommend being medically supervised, just in case, because the detoxification effect of, just not even mentioning all of the medication, can be very dangerous.
Chris:
But also all of the toxins that are probably stored in that person's liver, in general, which could also be dietary issues, there's a combo of both, like dietary impact, all the nasty shit that's in the standard diet, and then also the drugs that someone would be taking, I would be medically supervised if I was in that scenario. But if you were doing it and you had just a less severe scenario and someone was just doing it to do it, to hit the reset button or have some sort of spiritual experience along with it, or whatever, if they're generally pretty healthy, detoxification shouldn't be that bad.
Chris:
But it's still something that, I mean you feel it after a couple days, you might get headaches, you get very, very tired. Some people try to still work and be active during the period of time, which I'm not sure I would recommend that; let your body rest and sleep if you're going to do that, it'll lower the symptoms of some of these issues that start to happen. And then, also, you do go into deep ketosis, the smell is bad.
Jayton:
The breath?
Chris:
Yeah, holy shit, it's nasty, you can't get rid of it because it's just the ketones, and you could take showers all day and it won't go away. So that's something to know, you're going to stink if you do a deep fast like that.
Jayton:
Interesting. So you said whenever you were looking at the mental aspect of it, you'll see, whenever you're doing intermittent fasting, a little bit of elevated cognition for a little bit, do you find if you fast for too long that kind of tapers away?
Chris:
It definitely goes away, yeah, it goes the opposite direction. After probably about two days, you start to feel way less cognizant of anything, can't think.
Jayton:
Is there any kind of benefits that you've associated with that, like as far as internally, thought-wise, like you've been able to focus on one specific thing and because you have that absence of focus on food you can focus on that one thing?
Chris:
You mean with a long fast?
Jayton:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris:
No. The long fast, in my experience, is always, around the two-day mark, you're pretty much useless, you're not extremely focused on anything. And then all you want to do is watch Anthony Bourdain or something, some sort of food show, then you're like, "Why the hell am I doing this?"
Jayton:
Just torturing yourself.
Chris:
Yeah.
Jayton:
So, what are the biggest takeaways that we could give people on fasting?
Chris:
The biggest takeaways that we covered that you need to pay attention to are, first off, if you're in a low metabolic state, you don't need to fast, it's not necessary, you probably shouldn't fast, you should probably focus on restoring your proper thyroid gland function, lowering your stress hormones.
Jayton:
Now, in that case, from that aspect, would you recommend the calorie deficit?
Chris:
No.
Jayton:
Okay.
Chris:
I'd recommend just eating thermo foods, to be honest, go pure thermo, don't eat PUFA, pure thermo, because what's going to happen is, and a bunch of people have said this a bunch of times already, your metabolic rate increases, so what you might consider to be a maintenance level at the moment, quickly you'll actually start losing weight because your metabolic rate is going to go up.
Chris:
So if you're in a really low metabolic state, like just an average-sized person might have a maintenance level in the 2,000 calorie range or whatever, you can get that up really high if your dietary intake is just thermo, essentially. There was some testimonial of a guy, wasn't he like 150-something pounds and he was consuming like 3700 calories a day, and still getting leaner every day.
Jayton:
Yeah. And [Thomas Delveski 00:24:50], I was messaging back and forth with him, we were going over his macro ratios and calorie intake, he was up to like 3500 calories a day at 165.
Chris:
Wasn't he consuming something like 600 grams of carbs or something?
Jayton:
Yeah. I kept pushing him up, I was like, "Yeah, get it up there."
Chris:
And for the people that are listening that don't know Thomas, I think is how you pronounce his name, right?
Jayton:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris:
He's in extremely good shape, very, very lean and jacked. So, again, the idea that carbs make you fat is just ridiculous.
Jayton:
Yeah, I know, carbs are protein-sparing so they're going to spare muscle, especially whenever you're in a calorie surplus, so you're going to be able to utilize the amino acids from the protein that you're eating a lot more effectively. And then what's interesting is they think that it leads to fat, but fat doesn't have to be transferred into a fat molecule to be stored, it can just be shuttled straight into the fat tissue because it's already in that form, rather carbs have to go through de novo lipogenesis. So, if somebody is overweight and looking to lose weight, but they're in a low metabolic state, what would be the best strategy for them in that case?
Chris:
First off, I would figure out what their actual caloric intake is on a daily basis because if you're-
Jayton:
Based on lean body mass or their current body weight?
Chris:
No, their caloric intake, so what are they eating now, and this takes a level of honesty that most people aren't willing to even face themselves, privately, with.
Jayton:
Yeah, the biggest thing that I see people ignore are drinks, like they're having sweet tea or a coffee from Starbucks that's like 500 calories.
Chris:
The biggest thing I've seen people ignore is just binge, the binge. A lot of times when you are heavier than you want to be, especially people that have a spiraling issue, they tend to have a binge/purge pattern, and it's hard to admit because a lot of people are ashamed about it, but it's a natural response to the compensation effect to want to do that, and then it becomes emotional, there's the shame and the guilt around it, and then the pattern becomes a habit, and then that's why a lot of people end up getting pretty overweight, and you can be extremely overweight eating a lot of calories but still be in a very low metabolic state, it's almost always that way.
Chris:
So, I think the first step is just for someone to really be honest about what they're doing, and find out how much they're actually currently consuming, including the binges that everyone wants to forget and pretend like they don't happen. You hear a lot of those stories, like, "All I do is eat salads and I'm still gaining weight," it's like, "Nope, that's not true, I know you're not just eating salads."
Jayton:
There is no way that that's happening.
Chris:
No. So, just being honest with yourself, figuring out what are you consuming right now, maybe you're consuming 4,000 calories a day or something. I would just maybe even, because it is, at that point, really psychological, I would have them probably still consume big meals, but just eat thermo meals, you get really satisfied, after a couple weeks, too, it just becomes easy, cravings are gone.
Jayton:
Yeah, getting rid of a lot of the crap in your system will go a long way.
Chris:
Yeah. So, that's part of the issue is when you're used to eating a lot of food, your appetite's going to be pretty big, [inaudible 00:28:45], especially because there's the emotional component of the appetite there. So, I would still recommend just eating big meals, treat yourself still, in that sense, but do it with high-quality stuff, so have a bunch of grass-fed beef, potatoes, rice, a smoothie, maybe some thermo ice cream, but just start small, make a baby step, and just go toward having really good, satisfying meals like this.
Chris:
You'll find that after even the first week, potentially, of doing it, that you do become satisfied at that intake level, and you'll find that it actually is really difficult to eat thermo at 4,000 calories a day, or even above 3,000 calories because your appetite just starts to go away, the cravings are gone, you start to just feel good and you're like, "Well, I don't crave anything, I feel great, I'll just stick with what I'm doing here." I would do that, that would be the first step.
Chris:
And then have them, once they reach that stage, where the cravings have disappeared and they're starting to build baby steps into better habits, then start to measuring the temperature, if you feel confident in this type of habitual pattern that you're developing and you have momentum building, do you feel confident in lowering that caloric intake a little bit? A little bit at a time, it doesn't have to be huge. Yeah, I'd go with that until they find a real good balance, where it's like the sweet spot, which is the thermo-effortless zone, which people can get to pretty quickly.
Jayton:
Yeah. And I'd say one of the biggest tips is know that it's going to take time, like it took you years to get to the point that you're at, so be prepared for it to take a while to get out of it.
Chris:
Well, the lack of preparation for that or the acceptance of that is actually, I think, what causes the binge/purge cycle in the first place because you get deep into this situation that you want to get out of, and this could be true of any situation in your life, like if you go deep into a bad habit, you want it to end now, like yesterday, but, again, you have to accept that it took years, potentially, to get here, it might take years to truly get to the goal that you want. Do you want to look like Chris Hemsworth? If you're 100 pounds overweight, it might take a while; if you're 50 pounds overweight, it's probably going to take two years to three years of consistent effort.
Chris:
But, again, it's a mindset thing, you have to accept that, be like, "All right, I'm just going to build momentum," because a lot of people attach their happiness to that end goal, but once they don't do that and they start attaching the happiness to just making progress, I mean within the first week you could just start to feel way better about everything, like you're going to feel good physically, you're going to feel good mentally.
Chris:
"Hey, I had a good week, I switched to thermo foods this week," or "For 80% of my meals, I switched to thermo foods, and I'm just eating really satisfying big meals and I'm starting to feel good. I might not have lost any weight," though you probably will, "but I'm making some sort of progress in the right direction, or "Every day I'm trying to find one blocker that I'm not going to do that anymore, just one blocker, I'm going to get rid of it," or "Add one activator, I'm going to go to sleep an hour earlier," or "I'm going to go on a walk today."
Chris:
Just do tiny things like that and build momentum, the momentum is massive, and then before you know it you're going to be very satisfied with the fact that you're making progress, and then before you know it you're going to be making very noticeable progress, physically. And then if you have the momentum, then it becomes just easy.
Jayton:
You don't even realize you're doing it at that point.
Chris:
It's just how you're acting, it's how you're living. And that's when you know, you're like, "I could just do this forever," it's like what you said, "just eating thermo forever," because that's how I feel about it, I'm like, "Why would I do anything else? It, logically, doesn't make any sense, and I enjoy it so much, I don't feel like I'm deprived of anything."
Jayton:
Yeah. Sweet.
Chris:
It's the opposite of feeling deprived, you actually feel like you have some sort of edge, you're like, "I feel like I have a secret here that no one else knows yet."
Jayton:
Yeah, I would say probably one of the biggest struggles on thermo is trying to gain weight, I see a lot of people, because we do have some "hard-gainers" in the group that are trying to gain weight and they're like, "Man, I just can't eat this much food on a daily basis," I mean you can have strategies to gain the weight if you really need to. But, yeah, I noticed that at 3100 calories a day, I still have 400 calories to go and I'm like, "Man, I don't know if I can finish it out."
Chris:
Yeah, you get full.
Jayton:
Yeah, definitely.
Chris:
What would you say would be, for guys that are trying to gain weight, or sometimes women are trying to gain weight, too?
Jayton:
First of all, getting your protein intake in, just making sure that that's adequate, making sure that your macronutrients are in a good ratio, so the best one that I've seen is a 25:25:50, so 25% protein, 25% fat, 50% carbs. And then after you get that, if you're trying to up your calorie intake, then utilizing the liquid calories or dressings, so things like honey, maple syrup, sugar, adding milk to your coffee, just all of these things that don't satiate you as much-
Chris:
They're dense.
Jayton:
And very dense in calories. Fats are going to be, obviously, nine calories per gram of fat, it's just-
Chris:
It's dense.
Jayton:
Yeah.
Chris:
But it's harder to consume a lot of fats.
Jayton:
Yeah, you kind of feel like greasy.
Chris:
Yeah. Say you cook stuff with butter or something, that's a really easy way to get extra calories, and, still, though, there's a limit, you don't want to put too much in there because then you just start to feel like, "Oh, there's literally just too much fat in this thing, it's not appetizing anymore."
Jayton:
Yeah, you immediately feel like your arteries are all clogged up.
Chris:
Yeah, even though the butter's not going to do that, but-
Jayton:
Yeah, no, saturated fat doesn't do that, it's the PUFAs.
Chris:
Yeah, it's more the balance of actual deliciousness.
Jayton:
Yeah.
Chris:
There's the right place to strike that one.
Jayton:
Definitely.
Chris:
Cooking some grass-fed beef in butter tastes freaking great, especially with salt. But you don't want to put too much butter in there or all you're going to taste is butter.
Jayton:
Yeah. And then finding the foods that you enjoy the most and sticking to those, I think that's what a lot of people struggle with, they think-
Chris:
Simplicity.
Jayton:
Yeah. They think they need to go way out of the box to try and do all of these things, and it's like just keep it simple and enjoy it.
Chris:
Yeah. Well, organic white rice is a very good thing, in that scenario, too, because it's pretty much just a pure starch that most people can eat a lot of rice, compared to potatoes, volume-wise; if you were to eat the same physical bowl/volume worth of potatoes versus white rice, you can get way more calories in the white rice.
Jayton:
Yeah, definitely. But, yeah, I'd say those are my biggest tips. Whole milk, just getting straight from the teat, if you can.
Chris:
Have you ever done that?
Jayton:
Huh?
Chris:
Have you done that?
Jayton:
So, I raised pigs, growing up-
Chris:
Pigs make milk?
Jayton:
Well, we'd be waiting for this pig to have her babies and she'd just be sitting there, we'd be out there for 8, 10 hours at a time, and I'm 12-years-old at this point, we get pretty bored just sitting there, so they were like, "Jayton, I bet you won't get some milk," and I was like, "Bet I will." And so next thing I know, I'm just latching onto the teat of an old sow.
Chris:
Nice, so you have done it, yes.
Jayton:
I have done it, yes.
Chris:
I can't claim a similar story, but that's pretty cool.
Jayton:
It was interesting, to say the least. It didn't taste bad.
Chris:
What did the pig do?
Jayton:
I don't know if she enjoyed it, but she took it.
Chris:
She was occupied with other thoughts.
Jayton:
Yeah. She was probably busy trying to push those babies out.
Chris:
Nice.
Jayton:
Yeah, so that's why they call me "The Research Cowboy".
Chris:
Yeah, Jayton is a true cowboy, from Texas.
Jayton:
Yeah, I probably won't ever tell that story to anybody else again.
Chris:
Well, it's on the internet now. All right. That is a good way to end this podcast.
Jayton:
Yeah.
Chris:
A little Jayton trivia. So now we're going to do just a quick little product nudge, we like to do these at the end of the episodes now, it helps keep the lights on and it also helps to inform our listeners about some of the cool supplements that we have at UMZU. Right here, what we're going to talk about right now is something that's called mucuna pruriens, which, if you haven't heard about it, it's a really, really cool supplement, it's an extract that contains 15% L-dopa, which is the precursor to dopamine, which is now apparently, according to Amazon, considered a pharmaceutical, which that's a whole 'nother ... I could go on a diatribe about all the ridiculous things that the pharmaceutical industry is trying to do.
Jayton:
Which is really interesting, like a natural herb is being used that powerfully?
Chris:
Yeah. Well, I mean they're doing the same thing with cannabis right now, they're trying to classify all these cannabis extracts as "drugs," like pharmaceutical drugs, when it's a freaking extract from a plant. And it's just getting annoying, I mean they're using it just for profit reasons because when they can control it and they patent it like that, then they can jack the price up. So, currently though, we're selling mucuna pruriens now, who knows how long that'll last, but it's a really, really cool extract and it's extremely useful at increasing dopamine levels in your brain. And we've had success stories, like a guy just, you found that one the other day about, he got off opioids and it helped him really restore himself and his system back to normal, way more quickly than he thought.
Jayton:
He actually said that, for the first time in 11 years, he felt like himself, which was really interesting, because he was an opioid addict for quite a long time, and then he got off of them, and I guess he's been struggling for a while, and then he started taking the dopamine-quinone daily and he said for the first time in 11 years he started feeling like himself, which was really interesting. So, dopamine-quinone is very dense in levodopa, and so a lot of people, whenever they have a dopamine deficiency, they can't convert the amino acids into L-dopa that can then be converted into dopamine, so this is basically eliminating that step, supplying the levodopa that is necessary to be converted into dopamine.
Chris:
And it's reliably useful, I mean a lot of people are talking about, with UMZU mucuna, essentially increasing their wellbeing levels very noticeably, their mood obviously goes up because of that, the level of focus increases in the brain. So, just in terms of what sort of effects that you could expect from this sort of thing, those are pretty much the big ones, and increase in energy, you start to feel good, I mean if you have higher dopamine levels you're going to feel good-
Jayton:
Definitely.
Chris:
But it's being naturally produced by your body, so that's a very good thing.
Jayton:
Yeah. And the pharmaceutical industry right now, the studies that they're doing on it is all for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and age-related cognitive decline, so I mean if they're interested in it, then it has some kind of use for that.
Chris:
It's useful, it's very useful.
Jayton:
Yeah.
Chris:
Most pharmaceuticals, they find natural extracts, and then they just try to replicate them synthetically, change one little thing about it, patent it as a drug, and then try to control the whole supply chain with that, and then they try to outlaw the natural version that they used originally.
Jayton:
Yeah.
Chris:
Yeah, it's fucked.
Jayton:
it's interesting.
Chris:
But there are ways around it.
Jayton:
But this is an old label, so it actually says "mucuna pruriens" on there now, and it has the updated stuff, so look out for that in the UMZU store, if you're going to buy it.
Chris:
Yeah, if you're interested in mucuna, you can go find it over on UMZU.com, it's also a very affordable supplement.
Jayton:
Yeah. Be prepared, if you take it before bed, you will have crazy dreams, just as a precursor, so be prepared for that.
Chris:
[crosstalk 00:42:25] fun dreams.
Jayton:
Yeah. Interesting, for sure.
Chris:
Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks for listening to this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast, we're glad that you joined us, whether it was on your commute, maybe you're at the gym, maybe you're going on a walk, wherever you're listening to us, we're glad you're here. If you want to leave a review, if you liked the podcast, you can go wherever you're listening, whether it's Apple or Google, Spotify, wherever, just give us a review, we love all the support there. And then if you're not in the Thermo Diet Facebook group, you should just go find it, I mean join it, you'll love it, it's a really cool group.
Jayton:
Yeah. And if you ever have any questions, feel free to toss them up in there, I guarantee you'll have at least five people answering them.
Chris:
Yep. And any topics for future podcasts you want us to talk about, throw it in the Facebook group and we'll read it.
Jayton:
Yeah, definitely.
Chris:
Cool. Well, thanks for listening, we'll see you on the next show.
Jayton:
Have a good one.
